The Man In The High Castle!

I've been meaning to read The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick for many years and have finally gotten around to doing it. It was at once what I expected and very surprising as well. Residing now comfortably in the 21st Century it's probably difficult if not downright impossible for most folks, save those of us of a certain age, to comprehend the impact of World War II. Now it's just another of those dusty historical events, shoved together with "The Great War" and "The War Between the States". It's been long enough that some of the old poison which invested the enemies of WWII with such awful power has returned to the public discourse. The hatred of the "other" rules the passions of too many people in our society and that hatred will ultimately destroy our society as it did the society of Germany overcome by the Nazi dogma. 

On the off chance you don't know about The Man in the High Castle, the story takes place in an alternate United States which is no longer united. When FDR was assassinated the whole of history was altered and the result was that the Nazis won the war and eventually conquered the Eastern half of the continent. The Japanese took control of the West Coast while in the Rocky Mountains a fragile territory exists not under the control of either foreign power. We follow several characters who are trying to live and prosper in this strange old world of 1962. The story tracks an antiques dealer, a jewelry maker, his estranged wife who teaches judo, a trucker with a dark mission, a venerable Japanese representative, and a mysterious Swede who has a secret that will shake the planet. The titular "Man" from the title is a mysterious figure who wrote a book titled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy which is a bit of a sensation where it can be sold. It is banned in Germany-controlled regions. It speaks of a world in which the Allies won the war, and the Axis was defeated.

Published in 1962 (the same year it is set) the novel won the Hugo for best novel in 1963. It is of course one of the great classics of science fiction. I've bought it a few times over the decades, but only now have I successfully read this rather short novel. The fault is entirely mine. Dick said he was inspired to some degree by Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore which speculate about a United States in which the Confederacy prevailed. I cannot recommend this novel enough. It shows what life is like under a government which as policy enslaves part of the population and routinely murders others. The utter nihilism of the Nazi philosophy is laid bare, and we get a peek into the foul world such hatred brings to one and all. 

Rip Off

The Iron Dream!

The Iron Dream purports to be nothing less than a novel by the science fiction writer Adolph Hitler. Norman Spinrad's conceit in this brazen 1972 work is that in an alternative world Adolph Hitler did not rise to power to lead the Third Riech to evil ruin, but rather that he migrated to the United States and took up the career of a science fiction writer, finding some small success in the myriad sci-fi pulps of the day. The Iron Dream contains the final 1959 novel of Hitler known as Lord of the Swastika which proves to be his magnum opus, and it's a doozy. Within the meta-frame of the story the novel was reputedly a Hugo award winner and triggered a following of devoted acolytes. In our actual, real world The Iron Dream did actually win the Nebula. 

Norman Spinrad's novel was first published in 1972 and I first encountered it when I went to college in 1975 and chanced upon SF Rediscovery edition in the college bookstore. The cover art is fascinating, a clear image of Hitler astride a stylized motorcycle with the omnipresent swastika in the background. Even as callow college Freshman I got the joke, that this was a takedown of the attitudes and beliefs of Hitler and the cretins who believed as he did in the morbid notion of racial purity. 

The story is that of Feric Jaeger, a young pure-blooded Aryan who leaves the limits of his sordid little hamlet in a post-apocalyptic world and seeks to enter the center of "true humans". He is dismayed by the lack of rigor in thought and practice to maintain the purity of the race. Radiation from what is referred to as the "Great Fire of the Ancients" has mutated mankind. And he takes it upon himself with no hint of self-doubt to bring a violent revival to the land. To that end he takes command of the local political group and later still a gang of motorcycle toughs. These he blends into his "storm troop". The sign of his leadership is not just his might and powerful personality but a mythic powerful truncheon which responds to his unblemished genetic heritage, marking him in Arthurian fashion as the chosen leader. (It's just about as phallic as it gets as the story unfolds.)

As we follow Feric, he gains more and more power preaching his message of racial purity. Long passages describe the leather garb and resplendent decor of this racially ideal culture. Rarely if ever does Feric make a misstep as we see the repulsive characters around him somehow fail to see the true power of a true man fueled by his undaunted philosophy. It's "might makes right", but the "right" here is a reverse-engineered psychotic vision of a singular race stable and dominant in the world. Feric leads his assembled nation against the hated enemies in the East, sweeping the enemy away in a mighty swathe of pure will and military glory. Eventually we are treated to the sight of camps built and run for the express purpose of gleaning the preferred genetic models and disposing of the remainder either by exile or euthanasia. It's an orgy of battle, blood, metal, explosions and gory destruction of all that is less than the ideal of humanity which somehow dances in the heads of the psychopaths we are to see as the heroes of our tale. 

Spinrad even goes so far as to create a bogus critical essay by a fabricated professor who puts this blasphemous saga into a bogus literary context. Spinrad even goes so far as to create a bogus critical essay by a fabricated professor who puts this blasphemous saga into a bogus literary context. "Afterword to the Second Edition" is a little essay written by "Homer Whipple" which lays bare the neurotic and psychotic content of the novel suggesting even that the man Adolph Hitler who wrote Lord of the Swastika was at the end of his days and his sanity thanks to syphilis. He points out that there is not a single female character in the book and the homoeroticism is redolent page after page, though likely unknown to the author. With this essay Spinrad through the voice of Whipple gives us the point. In regard to the hero, it says "Of course, such a man could gain power only in the extravagant fancies of pathological science fiction novel. For Feric Jaggar is especially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of introspective self-knowledge. In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior." Sound like anyone we know. 

One way to view The Iron Dream is that it gives insight into the stunted mind of those who dream of something as inane as racial dominance. The fear and loathing of the other is first and foremost a theme in this book and I cannot read it today without hearing despicable echoes from the political discussion of my own land in my own time. Another way to see the book is an enormous prank played on racists and bigots of all kinds. But the biggest joke there is they are incapable of getting it. Most ironically of all is that Nazis hold this satire in high regard, proving how dim they are and how thoroughly they missed the entire point. Or course the dullards did. 

Rip Off

Slaughterhouse-Five Or The Children's Crusade!

Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade by Kurt Vonnegut was all the rage when I was first dabbling in science fiction matters as a teenager. It was an era in which not that much science fiction material broke through to the mainstream and it seemed every little bit was glammed onto by fans and critics, sometimes out of proportion to its relative value. Vonnegut likely would've denied that his 1969 novel was a work of science fiction, despite his use of various motifs like time travel and alien abduction. He'd likely say he'd written a satire with its aim to decry the hideous nature of war and its malignant effect on the people who not only suffer it but prosecute. The United States was embroiled in the Vietnam War, a war no one quite understood then nor seem to have much of a grasp on even today. 

Our protagonist is the nearly always befuddled and bewildered Billy Pilgrim, a man who has come "unstuck" in time and so ambles back and forth across the decades inhabiting his own life at various points with little control. He's in the midst of World War II, near the end and has become a prisoner of war who ultimately ends up in the German city of Dresden before it is firebombed into to ruins. He and a few others survive the deadly attack tucked away in the titular and very real "Slaughterhouse-5".  

(Slaughterhouse-5)

We also meet Billy as a successful optometrist in later years, a married man though he seems not to understand his rotund wife, a father though his children seem eager to get the older Billy into a safe place when he goes mad, saying things like he's been kidnapped by aliens. We meet a Vonnegut regular, Eliot Rosewater who loves the science fiction work of Kilgore Trout who he later meets. There is also Howard W. Campbell Jr., a Nazi ally and propogandist who shows up in another Vonnegut book. We slide up and down the totality of Billy's life and spend no small amount of time on the planet Tralfamadore where Billy was taken by aliens to be put on display for the entertainment and efficacy of the alien population. There he had sex with kidnapped porn star Montana Wildhack, who had his child. It's a heady brew as the changes come paragraph to paragraph at times.  The novel is a blend of real-life experiences from Vonnegut and furious imagination, all brewed together to expound on the futility of war and perhaps human ambition in total. 

They adapted the highly successful novel to film in 1972. The film directed by George Roy Hill is remarkably faithful to the novel, more so than I expected honestly. We follow Billy Pilgrim (Michael Sacks) as he tumbles through time in his passive and haphazard way. The novel is small but still things are compressed. Very quickly he and his fellow soldiers are rounded up and shunted to a POW camp and later still to Dresden. At the same time, we follow him in his later life as he marries, has two children and pursues a successful career as an optician. I was very curious to see how much of the sci-fi angle the movie would pursue, and it did enough, though that clearly was an element they wished to compress and deemphasize. 

To that end Billy's encounters with writer Kilgrore Trout are absent. Lazzaro (Rob Leibman) is interesting in that his loathing for all people is so intense and fuels his tortured life. Billy's wife Valencia (Sharon Gans) is outstanding in a role that demands quite a bit from her. The wild car ride which ultimately spells her doom in the most outlandish way possible is actively hilarious. Poor Edgar Derby (Eugene Roche) is a sincerely good man who only wants to help and is rewarded with savage violence. I was very much pleased to see so much of Montana Wildhack (Valerie Perrine) as she was a gorgeous woman. All in all, a decent movie version that hews reasonably true to the source. 

Now as for recommendations, I'm a bit mixed on that. Slaughterhouse-Five is a difficult book to get into because of its hectic structure, and the payoff is somewhat meager. The film delivers much the same message with less effort, though to be fair without having read the novel, I might have been quite confused at times. The capricious nature of war, the way people die is not as if written in a novel, but a terribly random affair. It's difficult to swallow in a land in which white hats prevail and justice supposed wins the day. Sometimes the bad thrive and the good die. So it goes. 

Rip Off

The Handmaid's Tale - The Graphic Novel!

When I first read The Handmaid's Tale long ago, soon after it was published in the 1980's I was startled by its vision of a possible future for the United States. I've even taught the book a time or two over the decades. But I was convinced it was sufficiently distant and the chances of it really happening so remote that I took as a mere allegory for the real struggles, women had at the time in achieving a level status in society. Boy was I wrong. 

Having quashed a woman's constitutional right to control her own body and determine for herself what will happen to her in the only life she has, the "Conservatives" (they are actually "Reactionaries", but no one calls them that.) who are ascendant in some states (mine included) swiftly took that right away as soon as the States became responsible to protect it. Since then, they have gone further in some states, and now the struggle is to protect a woman's access to any kind of birth control and consequently much needed medical assistance. There is even talk of outlawing recreational sex, though no one takes that seriously. (I've learned to take everything they say seriously.) 

It is in that new present-day context that I read The Hand Maid's Tale - The Graphic Novel. I have not watched any of the television series, so all I know about Margaret Atwood's cautionary story is what she herself has put into words. I has been long enough since I read the novel that his adaptation still has moments of freshness, as details I'd forgotten fall into place. The story is adapted by Renee Nault, and it's important that it's a woman who adapts this story. Not that a man couldn't have done it well, but no man could share the feelings which run to the core of this nightmarish tale of a not-that-distant dystopian future. 

For those who might not know, let me describe what the story is. It's the personal document of one woman who we know as "Offred", but that is meaningly since women of Gilead are forbidden to have names. Her name means "Of Fred" and indicates that she has no identity apart from the man who once a month ritualistically tries to impregnate her. Due to war and toxins birth rates in the world have declined and many cannot have children. For wives of important and rich men this means that they are supplied surrogates who live in the home of the wealthy and wear only red and speak rarely if ever, and serve effectively as an alternative womb. These tragic women are stripped of identity and freedom to choose. They are sex slaves in an aberrational Christian cult which runs "Gilead" or what is today Maine and surrounding states. We only glimpses of the larger world because glimpses are all that Offred has. She once had a husband and a child, but those things were taken from her by the repressive state regime which uses the Bible to justify its perversions. 

As the novel and this graphic adaptation make clear, this is not a story which will have a happy ending or really an ending at all. We are privy to the thoughts, memories, hopes and fears of one woman for a period of time and then no more, save for a coda ending which suggests that Gilead must have passed into the history books as all societies must. The artwork by Nault in this story is tenderly rendered and is designed to propel the story and not to exist on its own. 

If you want an insight into what some of the more loathsome Christian cultists desire for society today as I write this, take a look at The Handmaid's Tale and you might get a terrifying glimpse. 

Rip Off

Little Wizard Stories Of OZ!

Frank Baum enjoyed the success of the OZ series, but he was always bristling to bring new and different stories to his vast audience and so attempted to end the OZ series with 1910's The Emerald City of OZ. But those other efforts largely were unsuccessful and facing economic hardship he returned to OZ with The Patchwork Girl of OZ in 1913. In the interim he produced six little books for very young readers to attract those readers to the OZ series. The collection titled Little Wizard Stories of OZ brings together those six little books originally published independently. They are graced with a great deal of artwork by John R. Neill and tell brief vignettes featuring many of the OZ favorites. 

The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger serve as official guard for Ozma the Queen of OZ, but that proves to be a boring gig at times, so they decide to spend some time getting back to their roots and eat a baby and tear up a citizen. They of course change their minds when the moments come. 

Dorothy and Toto like to spend time wandering in the country when they get bored with the doings in OZ. The Little Wizard suggests that's too dangerous, but they ignore him. The have reason to remember his cautionary advice when they run into the size-changing Crinklink who takes them both prisoner. 

Tiktok the Mechanical Man pays a visit to the Nome King in order to get a few new springs to make him more efficient. The Nome King in rage smashes Titkok and orders him cast into a dark pit. But thankfully Kaliko, one of the Nome King's servants attempts to put Tiktok together again to avoid Ozma's retribution. 

Ozma and the Little Wizard run afoul of three imps named Udent, Olite and Ertinent. When the Wizard changes the three imps into bushes the trouble only gets worse. The same is the case when he changes those shrubs into pigs. 

Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse go to save two kids who have been captured by the King of the Squirrels for taking some of the store nuts the squirrels will need in winter. When Jack's head is smashed, the adventure is really only beginning when the Little Wizard lends a hand. 

The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman decide to go on a sailing jaunt, but things get prickly quickly when they capsize. Crows gather as the Scarecrow tries to rescue the Woodman who is trapped on the bottom on the bottom of the riverbed. It's not long before the Woodman begins to rust, and the Scarecrow starts to lose parts of his face due to the water. Once again, the Little Wizard rides to help. 

Baum returned to OZ full time with 1913's The Patchwork Girl of OZ. More on that next time when we pick up the series this summer. 

Rip Off

Astro City MetroBook Five!

Astro City MetroBook 5 continues to collect the outstanding series from Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson and Alex Ross. The saga of this bizarre town which has enticing echoes of other comic book universes, unfolds with the same naturalism which informed its earliest installments. I am sometimes amazed at how complete a vision Astro City has always been and continues to be. As we learn about new denizens in and around Astro City through many decades, it's as if they have always been part of the fabric. 

Astro City 11 introduces us to The Silver Adept who is something of a "sorceress supreme" for the Astro City universe. But we learn that it takes nigh a village to make the Adept's work effective as we are told the story through the eyes of her personal assistant Raitha, and we meet among others the horned domestic Orn. While the Adept deals with all manner of bizarre problems across multiple dimensions, it's up to Raitha and Orn to hold down the fort and deal with problems which inevitably rear up. 

Graham Nolan slips in to illustrate the story of Ned Carroway in Astro City 12. Ned is a small-time hood who is part of a sub-category of villains who fancy themselves rogues who engage in sartorial splendor. It's less the loot than the look that drives these obsessive types to grab some distinctive outfits and rob a bank or three. Ned is a bit of a loser though, captured time and again and a man who throws away romance and a family to feed his need to rob and look awesome doing it. He fancies himself a wolf in a world where wolves are hardly ignored. 

Astro City 13 introduces the reader to the Dancing Master, a mystical entity who comes to the city and brings with him romance. People set aside their responsibilities and find someone to love. One couple realizes they have to make time for each other.  At the same time a hood named Gundog is robbing banks in sequence just to see if he can. His bravado and charisma attract at least one young woman who absconds with him after they dump the loot. They've found something more important than thrills and wealth. 

It takes two issues of Astro City to tell the story of a reclusive woman named Ellie who takes care of abandoned robots. She seems to have an uncanny knack for repairing robots which have been used by villains. Her little operation is isolated, and she is happy to scrape by on donations. When her nephew Fred shows up, his ambitions change the game and we learn that there's much, much more to Aunt Ellie than we'd imagined. 

Identity is the core aspect of the story in Astro City sixteen where we meet Starbright, a hero of a small town outside of Astro City. He's a hero who is more interested in reforming his arch villain Simon Sez than capturing him. When the very youthful Simon makes a request in exchange for help with crime busting, Starbright takes him up on it. But this story is about secrets and about finding out who you are, and it's hardly obvious to everyone. The secret we learn is one that challenges our society a great deal in our modern day. 

Then we are treated to one of Astro City's best stories in a four-part sequence which gives us a close look at Quarrel and Crackerjack. The former is a woman from my part of the country, the hills of Eastern Kentucky who grew up with an alcoholic mom and a distant dad, who turned out to the villainous Quarrel. She takes on the responsibility to raise her brothers, but when she finds her dad's old gear becomes a heroic Quarrel, one driven to prove something to everyone, herself included. She finds a soulmate of sorts in Crackerjack, a brash hero who like Quarrel only has his own skills developed and honed to their peek to battle crime. They are a pair, lusty lovers and rowdy partners in a tempestuous relationship that lasts years. When we meet them at the beginning of this story, they are feeling the pangs of age and doubting the road forward. There are some poor choices made. And some good ones as well. This one literally brought tears to my eyes. 

It's more growing up tales as we meet the mother and daughter team who become Hummingbird. The former was a crimefighter who used artificial tools to be effective while the latter is gifted with magical powers which seem to be taking her over. Her powers come from the land of her father, and she sadly discover there's a curse embedded inside the gifts. Jesus Merino steps in to draw this installment for Astro City 25. 

In Astro City 26, an issue which celebrates two decades of Astro City, Busiek and Anderson invite the reader to once again share the dreams of the Samaritan, the mightiest of all of Earth's heroes. Samaritan is a hero who is on call all the time and the only rest he gets is in his dreams. In this story his dreams have become disturbed, and the lack of rest is making him less effective and even at times dangerous as a hero. So, the superhero community bands together to fill the gap so that Samaritan can get treatment from the Furst Family. And we learn what is causing the problem, at least some of it. A great callback to the debut issue of Astro City that started it all. 

Under an adorable Alex Ross cover, Busiek joins forces with guest-artist Joe Infunari to tell us how the strange and delightful American Chibi came to be. She looks like she ought to be in a video game and we learn that's pretty much the case. There is as usual a plot to invade the Earth and to forestall that scheme American Chibi as well as Honor Guard must travel to another world, a world with its own rules, the rules created to some extent by the young woman who created American Chibi. This one is a change of pace for sure and the artwork is distinctive. 

In Astro City 28 we learn the origin story for Wolfspider, the member of Honor Guard who is tiny and hails from Australia. We also learn of his affection for an old 80's cartoon show called Queenslaw with heroes named Captain Cookabura, Banana Bender, Goldrush, Kokolite, Numbat, Seadragon and the Territorian. When these animated favorites suddenly appear in real life, Wolfspider rushes to learn and perhaps join. But the secret of his new team has as you might suspect some insidious aspects. Artist Gary Chaloner steps in and uses his smooth style to bring this story from down under to us. 

In the next two issues of Astro City we are treated to a Furst Family adventure, but not really. The focus is from the point of view of the enemy, a young alien who is part of a warrior culture where the people are born and bred and trained for warfare. The people celebrate the glory of their leaders without question due to brainwashing. When our narrator meets a human being for the first time he doubts the truths of his culture. The Furst Family has come to this alien enclave to rescue their mother, and they furiously. Brent Anderson is back and he and Busiek do a fantastic job of transporting the reader into the mindset of a culture which is lied to, but both conditioned and trained to accept those lies. I'd be remiss if I didn't say I recognize my own society as I followed this tragic tale. 

In Astro City 31 we at long last learn the origin of the Living Nightmare, a longtime denizen of the comic who has been both a villain and a hero. Many members of the Honor Guard get new looks as well in this story which tracks the monstrous creature born from the stuff of fear. The Nightmare is being used by someone or something to battle the Honor Guard and scare the bejeezus out of regular folks. If he (or it) and overcome that control is what this story is all about. Anderson's artwork is quite slick in this one after many issues where he was trying out a rougher hewn style. 

This fifth collection closes out with a fantastic trilogy that features Steeljack, the ex-baddie who is trying to make it good on the outside. He runs a detective agency, does some reclamation work for the city, and tends to a cemetery. He's the go-to guy in Kiefer Square, a down and out part of Astro City where bad guys and the families of bad guys live. Cutlass, an ex-partner of Steeljack's when he was part of the Terrifying Three with her and the first Quarrel looks him up because she's being framed for murder. Turns out she's not the only one and the path leads to a guy who fixes old gadgets for villains and to a collector of memorabilia of a very different sort. This trilogy has a wonderful blend of action, intrigue and humor. Ross's covers were especially nifty for these issues, I think. It's easy to take his great work for granted. A great way to wrap up this penultimate MetroBook. 

When the sixth and final Metrobook arrives, expect a review right here at this very blog. Until then as always...

Rip Off