Royal Wedding

I see from the news that the bookies are enjoying the preparations for the wedding between Prince William and a-little-bit-posh-but-definitely-not-a-baronet Kate in their usual manner by offering odds on the likelihood of any combination of events that one might dream up. You know - if it will rain or not, what colour the best man's suit will be, whether the Queen will punch anybody - that sort of thing.

I didn't get around to making any bets but here are my predictions for tomorrow;

1) At ten o'clock the Libyan rebels release a video revealing that they are in fact a branch of Al-Qaeda. Osama Bin Laden comes out of hiding to lead the charge into Tripoli and the Americans order NATO to start an immediate bombardment of his position. Meanwhile, the BBC interviews the cook who made the cake for the royal wedding's reception.

2) As the rebels storm his compound and long range missiles land around him, Gaddafi sword fights with Bin Laden on top of a minaret. In London, the BBC journalist talks to a 90 year old woman who has the nation's largest collection of royalty-themed mugs.

3) With a dramatic lunge Osama sends Gadaffi's weapon flying from his hand. However, as the Libyan dictator prays for his life, an Israeli helicopter lands a few metres away from him. It turns out that Colonel Gadaffi was a Mossad plant all along, kept in power to secretly forward the Israeli agenda. Elsewhere, the BBC focus their cameras on the cheering crowd and talk about what it means to be British as the happy couple walk down the aisle.

4) As the Israeli aircraft shoots down two RAF typhoons and flies across the border trailing smoke, the BBC interview the Libyan ambassador about how he feels about not being invited to the royal wedding.

I suspect that the odds would have been pretty good.

Racial Essentialism and Fantasy/Science Fiction

I've been mulling over writing a blog post about this for a while but only as I was girding my loins in preparation did I remember that I'm nicking the idea almost entirely from another blog I read a bit back and had forgotten about; the awesome Blasphemous Geometries series by the creator of the Ruthless Culture blog (http://ruthlessculture.com/). Being fairly new to this blogging business I don't know if I can be sued for this pretty harmless bit of plagiarism.

Preamble (and copyright worries) aside, set species or racial traits are a staple of much science fiction and fantasy. Give the average sixteen-year old male a picture of an Orc and he will probably hazard a guess that it is war-like, unintelligent and ferocious without needing any further context. Without realising it we are bombarded with this basic idea by mainstream fantasy games, books and films such as Small World, Lord of the Rings and Star Trek/Wars. Surely this reinforces certain attitudes that we may then take across into real life political discussion? Namely that conflict between certain races is near inevitable and that assimilation between cultures is a pipe dream due to their radical differences.

Now my problem with this is that I'm usually left wing and liberal in my views. I'm more likely to read George Orwell than George Bush's memoirs in the world of non-fiction. While I have read my fair share of Nietzsche, Machiavelli and Nozick it was more in a sense of 'know your enemy' and interest in gaining knowledge about historical and philosophical topics than with any sympathy for their viewpoints. So why am I prepared to let these almost crudely racist (or speciesist if you prefer) caricatures pass in the sci fi that I read?

I think the answer is that there are other things I like about the genres mentioned. A book with some slightly odious politics in it might have passages of beautiful desciption, brilliant atmosphere and style, engaging fight scenes or a radical new way of looking at the universe that you couldn't find anywhere else. Rarely is the political angle so blatant that it ruins my enjoyment of the book (I'm looking at you Peter Hamilton, Frank Herbert and Robert Heinlein).

Also you can rarely tell the political slant of science fiction without reading the book. Milton Friedman's works usually have some reference to the Free Market, monetarism and Margarat Thatcher in the blurb. 'Ringworld' on the other hand has a picture of a gigantic ring in space and some whaffle about an unlikely group of aliens launching a daring expedition into unknown territory on the back. Its political angle is a lot harder to work out. It took me quite a few pages to work out that Larry Niven really was that sexist and wasn't just being ironic.

So it generally seems worth reading through the crude politics and racial (/species) stereotyping to get to the good bits. On top of that there is the gambler's desire to hit the jackpot. Occasionally in these wide genres your faith is rewarded when you come across an author who brings a persuasive left wing, pacifist or even anarchist approach to the theme. I'll gladly save fellow lefties a bit of searching by recommending Ken MacLeod, Iain M Banks and Joe Haldeman. Not only are their politics more kosher than many of their fellow genre writers, they are truly amazing authors whose novels are well worth reading.

Doctor Who!

First episode of the new series is up on iPlayer tonight and I've got a few comments to make. I went into it without having read too many spoilers and so only knew that it was set in the Wild West (which actually turned out to be false. 1968 America was the scene of the show) and Nixon was involved. I was quite sad to learn of my mistake. Nixon vs Cowboys would have been almost as good as Spitfires in space.

For the first half of the programme I didn't like it at all. Too many in jokes and cheesy bits. The opening sequence was bizarre and the 'I wear a Stetson' line was too obvious, especially when followed by River Song's display of sharpshooting.* The only one that made me laugh was the Doctor's request for '12 Jammy Dodgers and a fez' while trying to work out the location of a mysterious phone call.

Also they pulled that bloody Doctor dies in the first five minutes thing again. We know he doesn't. You don't have to be much of a Dr Who obsessive to know that Matt Smith is here for the duration of the series. Even as a framer for the series it is a bit tired and old. I much preferred the cracks in time from last series that only later on were revealed to be caused by the exploding Tardis. Still we'll have to wait and see how it develops. We aren't usually hit with something so monumental so early in the series.

Luckily the episode got better as it went on. I really like the Canton character. The repetition of the name, Canton Everett Delaware the Third, made me think he must be a character from history. I was thinking involvement in Watergate or inventor of the many worlds theory throughout the episode but neither fit with the facts and a quick internet search didn't find anything so I guess he's probably fictional.

The aliens also have a lot of potential. The Men in Black/Grey-alikes are terrifying and have a bit of a mutant human vibe to them that may or may not be going anywhere. I won't ruin the ending but the reveal about the 'Spaceman' and subsequent cliffhanger ending were both high points.

* Interesting that she later managed to miss multiple shots at close range when firing at the slow moving, semi-submerged 'Spaceman'. Hmmm.

Cameron's odious speech

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13072509

Bravo, Vince Cable, bravo. Just because Clegg seems to have given up on an independent policy doesn't mean that every Lib Dem minister has to.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

"The government has appointed former Labour minister Alan Milburn to monitor its progress on a series of indicators, including whether top universities are allowing enough state-school educated children in. He told the BBC: "Sadly, we still live in a country where, invariably, if you're born poor, you die poor. Just as if you go to a low-achieving school, you tend to end up in a low-achieving job."" - quote from the BBC news site.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment that lack of wealth shouldn't be an obstacle to those with the aptitude for university. Neither do I support the government hiking up tuition fees to exclusionary levels similar to those charged in the USA.

However, it is a little worrying that a former MP doesn't seem to know what 'invariably' means. Coming from a poor background makes you more likely to be poor throughout your life, sure, but there are always going to be exceptions who manage to escape from poverty. There is enough bias and spin in media and government debates about wealth inequality and equal opportunities already without an experienced politician, who should know better, unnecessarily making things worse.

Just when I thought I was out ....

Initially I was a bit wary of the two part film of 'The Hobbit' that is now in production. I love the book, much preferring it to anything else that Tolkien wrote. I've also got great faith in Peter Jackson after he directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, I always have the niggling feeling that if I go and see a film of a book I really like it will turn out to be crap or (worse) just good enough that it insidiously gnaws away at the mental impressions of characters and locations that I got from the book. Eventually I end up losing my own subjective image and just remembering the cut and dried package the director produced.

Later I found out out that my favourite film director, Guillermo del Toro, was working on it. I dread to think what he would have done with it (the words 'darker', 'weirder' and 'edgier' spring to mind immediately as this is the guy behind 'Pan's Labyrinth', 'The Orphanage' and 'The Devil's Backbone') but it would have been great to find out and gave me a real buzz about the whole thing. This lasted until last year when he quit and I started to lose my enthusiasm for the project again.

Then they pull me back in. Aidan Turner from 'Being Human' as (that well-known character) Kili. I love Aiden Turner's acting and it will be nice to see what he does with a new role as so far he doesn't seem to have done much outside of playing Mitchell. In fact the whole cast list is great (Elijah Woods as a slight exception although since Frodo wasn't actually in the book he shouldn't get much screen time) and I like that they have echoed the LOTR film trilogy by selecting most of them from Britain or the Antipodes.

I'm still curious as to how they will deal with its non-standard structure though. Film producers generally like films with a few main characters who stay involved throughout the whole movie and a larger cast of bit characters who are only present in a few scenes. With 'the Hobbit' they will have the difficult task of making thirteen distinctive dwarf characters memorable, who will be around for most of the movie but by their sheer number will be difficult to fully develop. Possibly this is part of the reason for turning such a short book into a two part movie. It might just let them flesh out the characters adequately.

'Dupin and Holmes' Part 1 - The Murders in the Rue Morgue

'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' was Edgar Allan Poe's first story containing C. Auguste Dupin, his Holmes like fictional detective, and the anonymous narrator, who bears more than a passing similarity to Dr Watson. The connections are no coincidence. Poe's detective stories were some of the first ever written and had a strong influence on Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes even mentions Dupin in 'A Study in Scarlet', denigrating him as showy and extravagant while conceding that he has some analytic skill.

So how do Holmes and Dupin compare? While both fictional detectives share eccentric lifestyles and a whimsical approach to the horrors they encounter there are some noticeable differences. Dupin and his narrator are Byronic loners. They spend their days in a dim, shuttered house, occupying themselves with reading, writing and conversation in perfect seclusion. Only at night do they venture outside into the city in conversation on the topics of the day or in silent observation of the Parisian populace. In comparison, Holmes' dark moods and eccentric working habits seem relatively normal and Watson is so ordinary that he seems to exist only to narrate and trigger explanations of Sherlock's methods by his slow grasp of what is going on. Dupin's financial situation and background is also more romantic (in the gothic sense) than Holmes'. Sherlock is portrayed as obtaining a fair wage from his investigations and living a comfortable middle class life. Dupin, in contrast, is a fallen aristocrat who despite his brilliance has had his energy crushed by poverty. The only luxury he permits himself is the buying of books to distract him from his meaningless life.

As to who is the better detective I will have to wait until I've finished the other two Dupin stories. I've not read every Sherlock Holmes story but I think I've read enough to attempt a comparison. My only preliminary conclusion is that Holmes is right to accuse Dupin of showiness. Considering Poe's love of atmosphere and the macabre I think it would have been more surprising if Dupin hadn't been a bit of a showman.

Unfortunately the story itself is not quite up to Arthur Conan Doyle's standard. Early nineteenth century Paris makes just as creepy a location for a cryptic detective story as late nineteenth century London. However, the reader is not given enough clues to be able to preempt Dupin in any meaningful way. In this respect, Poe might have been better off writing a full length novel rather than a short story so as to draw out the conclusion more slowly and give a few hints about where it was going before the last scene. A longer novel would also have enabled him to make the most of his strong characters and excellent scenario. The final reveal, that the murders were committed by an escaped Orang-outang, has more than a faint whiff of the ridiculous about it. Worse, a similar idea was used later and in a superior manner by Doyle. The 'murderous beast' turning out to be the killer has had some of the novelty value stolen from it by the excellent Holmes story, 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.