by on

New Dawn is a military sci-fi thriller. The premise is that a dystopian Earth sent the titular colony ship to Mars, crewed by dissident and free-thinking scientists and explorers, who rebelled against the authoritarian Earth governments. The ship disappeared, and it was assumed that all the crew had been lost.

Many years later, New Dawn reappears in the sky above Earth, with a mysterious crew and sending ominous messages demanding Earth submit to their demands or face an invasion.

The Earth nations quickly scramble to fight back against this foe, including rounding up a team of their best engineers and scientists to go aboard. They are some of Earth’s most brilliant minds—and, as it happens, some of them have crossed paths before, and not in pleasant ways. This leads to tension between people like the brilliant engineer and his bitter ex-lover, as well as the young graduate student who would very much like to become his current lover.

There’s plenty of emotional turmoil among Earth’s military personnel as well. We have the daring Italian pilot who flies for NATO and the young Russian who fights alongside him. These two were probably my favorite characters in the book.

And then there’s the sinister NATO intelligence officer who oversees the whole operation. A classic manipulative bureaucrat, using blackmail and coercion to get others to play into his hands.

It’s an interesting concept, and the characters have potential. Unfortunately, a number of things didn’t work for me. The dialogue is quite stilted, and much of the prose seemed choppy and repetitive. Also, a number of key plot points were telegraphed early on.

Also, early on in the book, a traumatic event happens to one of the characters. It’s mentioned briefly, and then people carry on as if nothing happened. Then it comes up again much later in the story, as part of a plot twist (although this is one of those things that I could see coming), but then it’s dropped again, and it really shouldn’t be. Because it calls into question the whole modus operandi of what is being presented as a largely sympathetic faction, but it’s just hand-waved away in a couple pages. I wish could be more specific, but I don’t want to spoil it.

The book feels very much like the later Tom Clancy books: many of the plot beats are predictable because it’s quite clear who is supposed to win. Also, like Clancy, the book does get politically heavy-handed towards the end. I’m not against political messaging in books, and I try not to let whether or not I agree with an author’s views color my opinion of a book.

But what does color my opinion of a book is whether the political commentary is handled deftly or not. I mean, what is the point of putting your story in a futuristic sci-fi setting if you are just going to have exactly the same political dynamics as present-day Earth? To me, the advantage of a different setting is to be able to create allegories and analogues to political issues, to allow discussion of topics that otherwise would be too charged to raise.

In summary, I think New Dawn is an interesting concept, but the execution was so-so. But I will say this much: I kept reading it, because I wanted to know what would happen next. And to me, that’s the ultimate test of a story.

by on
Movie poster for 'Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World' featuring Russell Crowe as Captain Jack Aubrey, with a sailing ship in the background.

It’s become a meme to say derisively that a film has been made for “modern audiences”. This is usually a synonym for the dreaded “W” word, which in today’s usage is curiously not far off in meaning from another “W” word. Essentially, when somebody says that a film is being pitched at “modern audiences”, it is understood to mean that it has changed the demographics of characters, or altered details to reflect modern political concerns, and, perhaps above all else, prioritized the audience’s perceived sensitivities over honest storytelling.

Master and Commander has gained a following over the years as a film that takes us away from all that; a film that hearkens back to the good old naval yarns of yore, about a daring captain and his steadfast crew on a bold seafaring journey. Everyone loves sailing for adventure on the big blue wet thing!

The story begins with the famous intro: “April, 1805. Napoleon is master of Europe. Only the British fleet stands before him. Oceans are now battlefields.” Captain Jack Aubrey of the HMS Surprise has been ordered to pursue the French frigate Acheron along the coast of South America. Aubrey enthusiastically follows his orders, even after his first encounter with the Archeron goes against him, and through setback after setback after that. 

But of course, that’s not the real meat of the film. The charm of Master and Commander is in its portrayal of life aboard a 19th-century man-o’-war, The confinement to close quarters, the dense ocean fogs, the dependence on the wind (or lack of it), the camaraderie and conflict among the crew, the superstitions of the common Jack Tars, the ambitions of the young boys who hope one day to rise to command a ship themselves… all these elements are portrayed in great detail, making HMS Surprise as vibrant and alive as any city. 

And most memorable of all is the friendship between Capt. Aubrey and the ship’s doctor and amateur biologist, Stephen Maturin. The two men talk, argue, affectionately mock one another, and, when the time comes, stare down death together. At it’s core, it’s a buddy movie, and who doesn’t enjoy a good pair of friends facing adversity together?

Small wonder the film has become a cult classic. I’m reminded of what somebody said about The Man Who Would be King (another great historical epic buddy movie): “even when it was made, they said they don’t make films like that any more.” 

However… there is just one small issue. Go back and read the first paragraph of this post. Now, Master and Commander doesn’t do any of the typical things associated with films for “modern audiences.” Not only are there no female characters who could be accused of being too-perfect “Mary Sues”, there are no female characters, period. It fails the Bechdel-Wallace test almost as hard as Lawrence of Arabia. The crew of the Surprise, while racially diverse, has a distinct and well-defined hierarchy to it. Modern political sensibilities are largely absent, save perhaps for one brief discussion on the ethics of flogging.

But here’s the thing: in the book on which the film is based, the action is set in 1812, not 1805. And the vessel that Captain Aubrey is pursuing is not French, but from a different hemisphere altogether. It is… the USS Norfolk. 

Now, if you know a little something about history, this makes a hell of a lot more sense than the movie’s actual plot. Why would a French ship be sent south to plunder whaling ships, when we have just been told Napoleon is planning an invasion of England, and could use the ships somewhere closer to home?  But it actually seems quite logical for a ship from a piratical upstart nation to be seizing whalers. Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing that John Bull would expect Brother Jonathan to be doing, and in fact, did. 

But the North American box office is a considerable market, and a film which portrayed the Americans as antagonists would presumably just not fly. So they made the enemy French instead, and no one questioned it, because Britain and France fighting each other just seems natural. “And I’ll wager in their joy they kissed each other’s cheek / (Which is a-what them furriners do!)”  

Does this ruin the movie? Well, it pretty much did for Peter Hitchens, but he’s a hard guy to please. It does take it down a peg in my estimation, from being “great historical epic” to merely “good flick.” But good flicks are hard to come by these days. So, if you enjoy the minute details of 19th-century naval life, and don’t care about the larger geopolitics of the era, it’s a decent way to spend 138 minutes.

by on

Do you like cozy mysteries? You’ll be hard-pressed to find a cozier mystery than this one. Indeed, I believe it is an example of what the young people call cozy-maxxing.

Of course, this is no surprise for fans of Litka’s work. All his stories take place in a warm, gentle world where even the crimes have a certain pleasant kind of charm. It’s like the world of Wodehouse, albeit with sci-fi technology. But this story is even closer to a Wodehousian never-never land than Litka usually gets. It has a quaint country fair, complete with games and sports. Shades of “The Purity of the Turf.” As if that weren’t enough, there’s a scene where a lady is painting in a field when she is surprised by a sudden rainstorm. Reading this, I instantly was reminded of this intro to a Beatrix Potter video I watched as a child, which is possibly the coziest thing ever.

You’ll notice I haven’t said much about the plot yet. Well, once more, the lawyer-turned-detective Redinal Hu, AKA “Red Wine”, is hired to investigate an intrigue among the Great Houses. A mysterious character called “Agent Nine” has been leaving ominous notes in the dead of night at a wealthy businessman’s estate. No one knows how this Agent Nine gets in or out. Some believe that he or she is no living creature at all, but a ghost haunting the old manse.

A good plot, but if we’re being honest, the plot is not really why we’re here. It’s just an excuse; much as Red’s frequent walks with his dog Ellington are an excuse to see the attractive lady painter holidaying in the nearby village. So if you want an escape into a far more pleasant world than our own, I encourage you to pick up this short story. My only complaint is that it goes by so fast—but then, Litka has given us no shortage of other delightful tales of near equal-coziness to enjoy as well.

by on

The great philosopher-humorist Zachary Shatzer recently told me I might read “too many books about gritty, unshaven antiheroes who say things like ‘Sometimes a man has to do what must be done.'” And he may well be right. I’m descended from Irish policemen, many of whom probably played by their own rules and refused to do things by the book. So I’m a sucker for stories about tough cops who can’t stand being hamstrung by red tape. My epithet might well be the line Gallus says to Sejanus in an episode of I, Claudius:

A song sung by every small-town corrupt policeman, which is what you are and what you should have stayed!

Well, come to that, I think Sejanus got a bad rap.  He was just trying to get stuff done in the notoriously corrupt Roman Empire. But I digress.

This book is about just one such gritty cop: David Forbes Carter, a brilliant, daring and extremely anti-bureaucracy Interplanetary Police Force agent. Since the mysterious death of his sister, Carter has become an increasingly loose cannon, and so the IPF assigns profiler Veronique de Tournay to try and get a sense of his unstable psychology and determine if he is still fit to serve.

It’s the classic set-up: two cops forced to work together, neither of whom likes the other. It’s been done a thousand times. But, as George Lucas once said, “they’re clichés because they work!” He ought to know. Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark are nothing but clichés, and they became some of the most beloved films in history.

So it is with Phoenix. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, and that’s exactly what made it so much fun; like seeing an old friend again after a few years. It doesn’t hurt that Janeski and I seem to have more or less the same vision for what a future solar system-spanning civilization would look like. Space stations, corrupt mega-corporations, cultists, conspiracies, etc. I had a very easy time picturing this world.

And of course, those cultists and conspiracies and mega-corporations soon get in the way of Agent de Tournay’s efforts at profiling Agent Carter, and the pair is caught up in trying to solve a massive plot to destroy the entire interplanetary government. As often as not, they resort to Carter’s decidedly non-standard methods of operating, though with time, Agent de Tournay helps him understand that waving a gun in people’s faces isn’t always the best answer to a problem.

Like I said, if you’re expecting something groundbreaking, you won’t find it here. But if you’re expecting a fun adventure story in a great sci-fi setting, this is just the ticket. And it would make a great movie!