raphael.longbournprods.com

Recently, I took a look over my list of read classic science fiction and found that it was wanting. Driven with a mad desire to succeed at any cost, I launched forth to overcome this deficiency in my character and consume those works of the genre that were glaringly absent from my I’ve-read-that list.

One such work of classic science fiction is one that is probably missing from many an American’s list, especially those born from the 1970s onward. Until recently, I believe that this particular book was hard to come by in the US. In any event, it was completely under my radar until I chanced to learn of it in the most unlikely of places.

When they’re not grunting like primeval apes, passing out from alcohol consumption, or preoccupied with shopping for the latest leather S&M gear, members of the classic metal band Judas Priest can actually form complete sentences. Unsurprisingly to anyone who listens to their lyrics, lyric-writer and vocalist Rob Halford (who once looked sorta normal, unlike his current incarnation as an Earth-bound Vogon escaped convict) is a fan of science-fiction (you can’t hear it, but as I wrote this I said “science-fiction” with a bad Birmingham accent, just to get in the Priest mood). Happening to watch a documentary recently about the band, I heard Rob Halford mention John Wyndham’s 1951 British sci-fi classic Day of the Triffids as an example of science-fiction he loves. Not having heard of this novel before, I instantly declared that if Mr. Rob Halford liked it, then goddamnit so would I.

And I did. A lot.

I just finished the book a few days ago, a nice slim volume that doesn’t fart around like, oh, Robert Jordan, but just gets right on with it, so committing to reading it takes slightly less time than writing a doctoral thesis, or building a pyramid.

Briefly, the story tells of survivors of an apocalypse brought on by humankind’s stupidity and arrogance, two separate catastrophes which unite to utterly destroy civilization, and nearly everyone on the earth, in the most unsettling and disturbing of ways — when a satellite loaded with nasty bacteriological weapons crashes to the earth in a spectacular worldwide light show, it blinds all who watch it. Our hero Bill, recuperating from an accident to his eyes, has missed the whole thing, and removes the bandages to discover a world that doesn’t work anymore. Chaos ensues, and typical post-apocalyptic violence results, while Bill struggles to survive and eventually to locate the handful of others who through pure luck missed the light show, and saved their sight.

But that’s not the end of humanity’s suffering. From somewhere in the heart of Soviet Russia, a genetic-modification experiment gone wrong has resulted in the Triffid, a plant that gets up and walks, and has a nasty habit of lashing out with a poison whip that instantly kills its victim. After a nice ripening process, the Triffid then proceeds to scoop up the flesh of the festering corpse.

With humanity blinded and incapacitated, the Triffids take over, and things get bad very, very quickly.

Day of the Triffids is a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel before there was a genre called The Post-Apocalyptic Science-Fiction Novel, published years before books like A Canticle for Liebowitz and I Am Legend solidified the stereotypes and established the term. There were obviously grim views of the future (a British specialty), but none so typically post-apocalyptic as this book. From a plot point of view, this story would not have felt at all out of place in the more jaded climate of the 1970s, or even the 1980s. Without artifice, John Wyndham wrote a quintessential survival story in a world irretrievably destroyed.

I’ve been peculiarly interested in the post-apocalyptic novel of late, since I’m knee-deep in my own little composition of the genre. Day of the Triffids proved a particularly enriching read, as Wyndham masterfully exploited the possibilities of the genre to mine immense riches of character and drama. The hero Bill struggles through not just the exigencies and miseries of outer world, but his own internal turmoil, fighting within himself to have a reason to even go on. Post-apocalyptic novels can illuminate the human capacity for hope like no other, and I have yet to read a novel which illustrates it so well as Day of the Triffids.

Tackling the idea of bacteriological warfare and genetic-modification is startlingly prescient for 1951. Indeed, it was so far ahead of its time that it is only now, in the 21st century, that the concepts seem at all timely, particularly the genetic-modification theme. In our current climate, when scientists fiddle with nature by affixing animal genes to plants, suddenly the concept of creating a plant which walks and eats flesh is not so very far-fetched after all.

I grew up on British literature of all types, from When the Tripods Came to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from P.G. Wodehouse to Arthur Conan Doyle, and discovering a classic written in the literary style I love so much which had somehow passed me by, is a wondrous treat indeed. Had this same story been composed by an American, it would have been so different, in texture, in attitude. Anyone who has ever read a novel by a great 20th Century British novelist knows what I’m talking about. The quality is ineffable, but inescapable.

Humorously, author Brian Aldiss dubbed Day of the Triffids a “cosy catastrophe”, without meaning irony, and I’m damned if he didn’t hit the nail on the head with the term. For even among the dreadful misery and horrors that we experience in the book, there is a grounded, solid and imperturbable core of domesticity and warmth in the English character that even man-eating plants and bacteriological catastrophes cannot diminish. And it’s wonderful.

One of the great classics of science-fiction.

Next up: another of Wyndham’s masterpieces, The Midwich Cuckoos (twice adapted to film as Village of the Damned)

photo from Wikipedia

I may not have written much on this blog — at all — in recent months, but I actually have been writing. I totally blew nanowrimo (although that material will find a new home in the near future; more on that soon), but I did a short story for my Internet buddy Dustin Cooper, who has a highly entertaining podcast called Zomcast, which helps us all come to terms with the modern world’s most disturbing threat: the zombie.

Part one of the romantically titled “Stench” appears in episode 3 of Zomcast, which has just been posted, and the second half will be in episode 4, which has not.

Visit the Zomcast homepage here to download it and the other episodes. It’s a great podcast. Really, not just because my story is in it.

Like or hate the story, you cannot help but have your breath taken away by the masterful reading of Sarah Fenn, who took time away from the bestest podcast in the whole world, Does My Geek Look Big In This?, to read the story. And. It. Fucking. Rocks. Halfway through writing this baby, I realized that I was writing it to her voice — if she had not agreed to do it, I don’t know what I would have done.

Yes, it’s true. I died.

Yes, it’s true, I came back to life (a very nice little sorceress with a runestaff resurrected me, and she’s offering a very low-interest payment plan to reimburse her).

It’s also true that I wasn’t in a very good headspace for the last few months, and I felt like I had nothing to contribute to the world (not that very many are reading anyway…).

But now that I’ve been resurrected, my brain isn’t working right, so I’ve decided to embark on a journey like many of the rest of you out there, a journey for which I have absolutely no time to spare, but am going to try to do anyway (in other words, I’m a madman).

Yes, that’s right, I’ve joined nanowrimo, or the National Novel Writing Month, where, along with the rest of you, I’ll be trying to write a 50,000 word novel in one month. How good those 50,000 words will be, on the other hand….

My username there is “raphaelt”, and my affiliated region is Los Angeles, so if any of you want to make me a writing buddy, or see how my novel is going, please stop by.

Now to get those words flowing….

(An odds and ends post of fragmented thoughts. Apologies if this is hopelessly scattered)

I mentioned I’d been listening to some podcasts lately, so I’ve added a little “podroll” in the sidebar. At the moment most of these (well, all of these) are either gaming or geeky sci-fi type podcasts. Hey, they were there. These links will take you to the homepage of the podcast, rather than to the RSS feed, which I think is a more useful link.

Something has struck me about the gaming podcasts — these guys have way more time to play boardgames than I do. Forget roleplaying games; I haven’t had the opportunity to play one in years. I’m really envious actually. I’m embarrassed to admit how many boardgames I actually own that I haven’t gotten to play yet, let alone those I don’t own. Yeesh.

I’ve grown very fond of Fuller’s ESB beer lately. It’s not my favorite beer of all time, but it’s rock-solid and I find its dependability reassuring. The London Porter is also a fave of mine, but my local Whole Foods has a nasty tendency to run out all the time.

Of late I’ve been sorting through all the junk that’s accumulated over the years. There’s something liberating, freeing, about sorting through what you have, weeding it out, giving bits away, selling other bits; it’s like lightening a load you’ve been lugging around on your back. There can be a bittersweet edge to it, though; sorting through bits from your past, even your recent past, can remind you of things about yourself that you’d forgotten, that you’d laid aside. Being suddenly reconnected with these things can be overwhelming, force you to see all the different divergent paths and decisions you’ve made over the years about when and how you’ve spent your time.

At least, this bittersweet quality always happens to me when I weed through stuff I’ve stored away for any length of time. But working through this bittersweetness, and divesting yourself of bits and pieces representing paths perhaps you chose not to take, can also be liberating and freeing, because it reminds you why you’ve chosen to spend your time the way you have, and why you’ve made the decisions you did. By tossing out all the junk moldering in closets and in boxes in the garage, you’re also cleaning out junk in your head.

Whatever anonymous poster has been putting the archived series of Family Ties up on the Usenet — thanks, mate! One of my very favorite shows as a kid, despite the fact that it was not the most even of sitcoms in terms of quality, and despite its occasional foray into trite “issue” episodes, this show still means a great deal to me. The different characters in the family mirrored personality traits in families in my real life more than any other show of the time, and it’s been a real treat to be able to go back and see them again, many for the first time in well over a decade. I was stupid and lazy when TV Land broadcast them a few years ago, and didn’t tape them for myself. I’m glad that someone who did bother to tape them has had the graciousness to put them up on the newsgroups to share with people like me.

As a kind of exercise, I’ve been writing super-short stories lately, like 2000 words or less. These post an interesting challenge, because you cannot rely on the more conventional narrative structuring of a tale with a beginning, middle, and end as you can with short stories of 6000-7000 words (let alone novels and screenplays). At least, most super-short stories are more experimental in structure. What I’ve been trying to do is devise different tactics to tell more conventional beginning-middle-end stories in very brief lengths, and still make it work; for example, starting the story right in the middle of the action and using clues to key the reader in on what’s happened before, even as we’re racing toward the conclusion.

It’s really been quite fun. And it’s a good exercise, because short stories in general, and super-short stories in particular, have never been a field of great experience with me. I’d much rather be writing longform works with complex plots and strong structures. It’s what I’ve taught myself to do, and it’s what I think I’m best at. So stretching myself into territories where I feel less comfortable would seem to be a healthy exercise. There’s also something satisfying about completing a writing project so damned quickly — sometimes, in just an hour. Compared with the thousands of hours that can often be put into a script, this is like nothing. It’s quite refreshing to work with material which is so compact and easily handled, like working with a novel in microcosm.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll market these to buyers, or just keep them as exercises. Either way, I won’t feel like I’ve wasted my time.

Although I have yet to participate myself, I love the photographs taken of LARP and medieval reenactment events. They’re like fantasy worlds come to life, and they really fire my imagination. (For those who aren’t familiar with it, LARP — or Live-Action Role-Playing — is all about dressing up in costume and tramping about while masquerading as an alter-ego in an imaginary setting, like Dungeons & Dragons in the great outdoors).

One of my favorites is the following amazing photo at flickr:

(click on photo for full-size version. Note that this is a slightly doctored version of the picture. The original can be viewed here)

I was so impressed with this photo that I wrote a very short piece of fiction inspired by the picture, and asked Bruno Mazzi, who posted it on Flickr, for permission to post it here, along with my story. He graciously complied, so if you’re interested, you can read my (and full photo credits) piece after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »