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There’s nothing like a good redemption story. And if that redemption story also happens to feature space pirates and interstellar battles, so much the better!

Sol Linocass is a divorced dad down on his luck. His attempts to win back the favor of his ex-wife invariably seem to go sideways. He can’t hold a job, and he’s an alcoholic. His life, in short, is going down the tubes, and his dream of a better future thanks to his skill as a pilot from hours in simulators doesn’t seem likely to materialize any time soon.

But one day he stumbles across top secret information hidden in some scrap he hauled in from the junkyard. Sol may not be the best decision-maker in the world, but he is wise enough to know just what the government would do to get their hands on such data. So, he decides to flee as fast as he can, by joining up with his sister Trudy and her rag-tag crew of space pirates.

Trudy is the opposite of Sol in many ways; competent, organized, and in command of her life. She makes it very clear to Sol that once they leave port, he’s not her little brother, he’s just a member of her crew. She stops just short of making a “row well, and live” speech, but it’s very clear who’s in charge here.

I’m not usually one to want prequels or retellings or things like that, but I would love to read the story of this book told from Trudy’s perspective. She’s a fantastic character, especially once you know the whole story, and can appreciate all the different concerns she’s required to balance.

What follows once Sol joins the crew is a spacefaring adventure full of danger, intrigue, political-machinations, and double-crossing. It reminded me a little of Frank Herbert’s sadly neglected novel The Dragon in the Sea, about a submarine crew where everyone suspects everyone else of being a double agent. With everything that’s at stake, Sol never knows who can be trusted. (In the sage advice of Natalie Portman in My Blueberry Nights: “You can’t even trust yourself.”)

But in the end, everybody has to put their faith in something; and ultimately that’s the decision Sol is forced to make under the highest pressure imaginable.

There are so many things I could praise in this book: the obvious points are the compelling and twist-filled plot, and the vivid, memorable characters. It reminded me of a Carrie Rubin novel in that regard. (And yes, there is even a bit of a medical subplot to it.)

A less obvious, but equally important quality is how Holtschulte handles the world-building. World-building is key in a science fiction story since, you know, it’s set in a different world.

Tall Boy Sun contains a bare minimum of world-building. It conveys just enough information about the setting that we can follow what’s happening, and not a bit more. There are no info-dumps or long-winded expositions here, which is perfect.

When you read an exposition-heavy section in a character-driven novel, it has the effect of taking you out of the moment, and reminding you that you are just reading a story. For comparison, imagine reading a novel set in the present day: if it weighed you down with a bunch of needless backstory about politics and history of our own world that wasn’t relevant to the story, it would be distracting and even a little confusing. You would be asking, “why would the author need to tell me this?”

We accept more explaining about the world and setting in sci-fi or fantasy novels, but how refreshing it is to read one that feels like it really is of a piece with its setting! Tall Boy Sun‘s world is so well-built that it ceases to feel like it was built at all, and feels as if the writer truly inhabits the world being described, and simply penned a novel set in it.

There are many more praiseworthy things in this book, such as Trudy’s colorful crew, and the sinister antagonist Gilbert Bane, who is a mixture of Boba Fett, the Red Baron, and the Dread Pirate Roberts. But, it’s more fun if you can just discover the world and denizens of Tall Boy Sun for yourself. I highly recommend this book, even if sci-fi isn’t one of your typical genres. It is first and foremost a book driven by its characters, who are as well-crafted and memorable as any you’ll ever meet.

Now if we can only get a spin-off about the adventures of Captain Trudy…

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Andrew Crowther posted about this book the other week. I shared his reservations, but as a longtime Marxist of the Groucho School, as well as a fan of offbeat books generally, I had to give it a try.

The book is narrated by… some guy. Frank Denby, I think, or something like that. And he’s a reporter in 1930s Hollywood. But he’s just filling the role of the Poor Nut, to use Stephen Leacock’s phrase. Nobody’s reading this book for him. No, they’re reading to see how the author manages to turn Julius Henry “Groucho” Marx into a detective.

Well, all told… it’s a mixed bag. Groucho, as depicted here, is certainly witty and gets off plenty of good lines. Moreover, I don’t think they’re just recycled gags from the movies; at least I didn’t remember most of them. The author appears to have gone to some effort to mimic Groucho’s style while furnishing him with original material.

Less impressive is the mystery itself: a starlet is found dead, and the authorities rule it a suicide, but Groucho knows better. He suspects foul play by shady characters in show business.

And, lo and behold, it turns out that it is indeed foul play by shady characters in show business. Granted, there are enough of them that figuring out exactly which ones did it is something of a mystery. But not really enough of one.

Again, though, is anyone reading this because they expected a mystery to rival one by Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie? Or are they reading it because it’s an amusing novelty? Exactly. It is the literary equivalent of a gadget play. And for what it is, it succeeds well enough. My favorite scene is the one where Groucho, disguised as his brother Harpo, narrowly avoids assassins sent by some of the villains. Groucho’s press conference afterwards is particularly amusing.

Fans of the Marx Bros. will probably enjoy it. Fans of mysteries will find it fairly predictable. But to me, the acid test of a book like this can only be: what would Groucho himself think of it?

My guess is he would say something complimentary, and then immediately add something else that would reframe his initial comment as an insult. Then he’d waggle his eyebrows, take a puff on his cigar, and walk comically away to his waiting vehicle, which Harpo would drive away without him.

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Well, right off the bat, you’ve got to love the title.

I’ve been a fan of Andrew Crowther since I was a teenager. He was the world’s leading expert on W.S. Gilbert, and I was a kid who used a dial-up internet connection and an iMac G3 to read archived Savoynet discussions on the G&S Archive.

Well, times have changed, but Crowther is still the leading expert on W.S.G. Now I have faster internet and a MacBook Air, but I have never lost my appreciation for Gilbertian humor, which is to say, sharp wit and clever satire. Crowther’s book contains plenty of both.

Which is not to say he’s just imitating Gilbert. Far from it. His style is different; darker and starker, with a harsh edge not found in most of Gilbert’s works. (With important exceptions.) Crowther tackles the absurdity of the modern world by heightening it just enough, until the contradictions and hypocrisies become impossible to ignore.

Some of the stories verge on horror, most notably “Jasper” (which animal lovers may wish to skip), others, including my favorite, “The King’s Juggler”, are more in the Victorian satire vein, wherein we are invited to shake our heads and chuckle sardonically along with the author. And some are downright uncanny given current events.

You don’t see a lot of books like this any more. Short stories have been said to be dying for decades. Now, novels are said to be dying too, and indeed literacy itself may be on the way out. Therefore, I encourage you to rage, rage against the dying of the light by reading this collection. It’s just the right blend of Victorian and modern cynicism.

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Imagine a biography. But not a normal biography. This biography starts out with the narrator—presumably the author, although we can’t be sure—describing how he doesn’t know anything about his subject. He wanders around for a couple chapters, talking to random people, including his girlfriend, about how he doesn’t know anything about this guy.

Some of the people he meets give him advice. Some of them tell him conflicting stories. Then he decides that since nobody has a really firm grasp on the facts, he will use literary license to fill in the details of his subject’s life. That is, he will just make stuff up.

Having told us he is going to do this, the second part of the book begins, chronicling the life of the subject as imagined by our author. You might think that, while what we are reading is not true, it will at least be clear.

But you would be wrong, because the author assumes you will be familiar with most of the details surrounding the main character’s life. Even though, again, he is making it up.

People appear and start talking with no introduction. Who they are and why they are there is not explained. The focus and perspective shifts abruptly without warning.

Also, it is translated from French.

You might say this sounds like it would be absolutely baffling.  Completely incomprehensible and impossible to follow. But wait! I haven’t told you the very best part yet.

The subject of our story, Baron Nikolai Robert Maximilian Freiherr von Ungern-Sternberg, sometimes known as Roman, is totally insane. Thus, everything he does, he does with no apparent reason or motivation. The main through line in his life is violence. Some kids dream about being doctors or firefighters; young Ungern-Sternberg dreamed about committing war crimes. Well, he achieved his dream.

What history does confirm about Ungern-Sternberg is that he was an anti-communist (“White”) general in the Russian Civil War. He committed many atrocities fighting in southern Russia and Mongolia. At some point, he decided he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan and attempted to reestablish the ancient empire of the great warlord of the Asian steppes.

Even Pozner’s account, as fantasy-based as it is, agrees with later historical research on this point, although Pozner almost certainly took it upon himself to embellish Ungern’s rampage with extra horror. Because, you see, Pozner was a communist, and deliberately chose the Mad Baron as his subject to make the anti-communist side look as bad as he possibly could.

In that respect, he made a good choice, because the Baron’s reign of terror definitely does not make him a sympathetic  figure. Of course, Pozner left out many of the atrocities carried out by his own side. He’s far from the only chronicler of history to do that.

Now, here’s the odd thing: for as bizarre as this book is—and it certainly is way more bizarre than what I was expecting when I went looking for a simple biography of an obscure historical figure—it is nonetheless interesting, and held my attention in a way that a conventional history probably wouldn’t have. In the words of Benoit Blanc: “It makes no damn sense. Compels me, though.”

Books like this don’t get written anymore. Nowadays, books hold your hand, explain everything, often multiple times. In a weird way, it was refreshing to read a book that was like, “Here’s a baffling account of a little-known period in history, as seen through the eyes of a violent lunatic and described by a lying communist. You’re on your own, kid; have fun storming the castle!”

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Remember that book, CCRU Writings: 1997 – 2003 that I reviewed last Fall? The one full of weird occult philosophical ramblings about AI, techno-demons, and inhuman pseudo-mythology?

If you read that review, or the book itself, and thought, “that was good, but it’s just not bizarre enough”, well, my friend, have I got good news for you!

Cyclonopedia is written in an academic style. Or rather, it’s what would happen if H.P. Lovecraft wrote in an academic style while on acid.

The book is framed as a found manuscript discovered by an American tourist on a trip to the Middle East. What she finds is a disordered collection of notes loosely centered on the works of a Dr. Hamid Parsani, who has developed an esoteric theory of the world, particularly the Muslim world, and the Global War on Terror.

Dr. Parsani’s thesis, insofar as it can be discerned from the many cryptic documents and references, is that the Middle East is actually a conscious organism, powered by a dark god that lives beneath its surface. This viscous Lovecraftian xeno-intelligence is the substance we know as “oil”, and it subtly shapes humanity to suit its purposes. It runs our machines, drives our economies, and provides the impetus for massive wars, all in an effort to increase its control over the Earth as it seeks to burn as bright as its nemesis, the Sun.

Scattered throughout the writing by and about Parsani are references to other characters, including an American soldier called “Colonel West”, a Kurtz-like figure who has begun to understand the bizarre and occult nature of the battlefield and gone rogue, leading a renegade Delta Force unit on brutal sorties informed by his and Dr. Parsani’s research into the esoteric nature of the desert and the demonic forces that rule it.

This West character is especially interesting to me because in certain respects he parallels the real-life Lt. Col. Allen West, who was tried for the use of unnecessary force during the Iraq War, even down to such minor details as the fictional West’s fascination with oil and the real-life West’s line that “if it’s about the lives of my soldiers at stake, I’d go through hell with a gasoline can,” which he said by way of defending his actions. Is this literary license, satire, hyperstition, or mere coincidence?

I’m probably making this sound more compelling than it is. Parts of it read like a really dry and incredibly confusing dissertation, punctuated by moments of bizarre horror that aren’t as shocking as they might be simply because they feel so out-of-left-field. Still, like CCRU, the book does manage to gradually instill a sense of gnawing unease in the reader.

And also like CCRU, most of this unease comes from the fact that its central insane thesis seems to align with observable facts. If the Middle East really is a sentient force that compels humanity to wage eternal war over the black gold beneath it, we would expect to see exactly what we do see in the real world.

More curious still are some of the things that the philosophy of Cyclonopedia implies rather than stating outright. For instance, the curious fact that the monotheistic religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originated in the Middle East, and slowly but surely defeated and subjugated the sun-worshipping religions—a fact which dovetails with the supposed envy the dark god oil harbors against the sun. (“Since the beginning of time, Man has yearned to destroy the sun!“)

It’s worth noting that the basic concept here isn’t all that different from Dune: a mysterious desert populated by a adherents of an esoteric religion, and a vital resource that is key to control of the universe. Frank Herbert based his story on the Muslim world to begin with; Cyclonopedia is like what would happen if you removed the sci-fi setting, and restored Dune‘s weird, psychedelic vibe to Mesopotamia proper. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Cyclonopedia is stranger than both.

Now, this is where I need to step back and acknowledge that most people are not like me. Most people like a story with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, and do not like to feel like their understanding of reality is slowly unraveling when they read a book. So I probably have a higher tolerance for this sort of mind-bending madness than most. And even I was getting impatient after a while. In a lot of ways, the book felt like it was building up to a payoff that it never delivered.

So, should you read it? If you love bizarre esoteric theory-fiction that requires a huge amount of close reading to even begin to understand. Since I think that only describes about nine people in the entire world, it’s likely not for you. But if you’re one of the nine, you’ll probably love it.

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I don’t generally care for zombie apocalypse movies. I also don’t much care for the “found family” trope in fiction. This is a zombie apocalypse movie that ends with a found family, so… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

A few weeks before Christmas, a comet is expected to pass near the earth, one that has not come by in 65 million years, since the extinction of the dinosaurs. People naturally see this as an occasion to party.

Except for Regina and Samantha Belmont, two sisters living in LA. Regina, the elder, spends the night with her boyfriend in a steel-lined movie projection booth, and Samantha hides out in a yard shed after a fight with the girls’ abusive step-mother, Doris.

As a result, both are spared the effects of the comet, which turns most of the population into dust, except for a few who are turned into zombies, one of which eats Regina’s boyfriend when he ventures out. Desperate to find any survivors, the two sisters head for a radio station that is still broadcasting. The DJ is nothing but a tape, but they meet Hector Gomez, another survivor who had spent the night in his truck.

When Samantha decides to start broadcasting her own announcements over the radio, the signal is picked up by a group of scientists who had prepared for the comet’s effects, and are looking to find survivors to bring back to their labs.

What follows are series of frightening experiences, from zombie police officers to sadistic zombie stock-boys when the two girls venture into what they think is an abandoned mall. Eventually, they reach the scientists’ lab—but even there, they are not safe from the hungry undead.

Eventually, Regina, Samantha, and Hector emerge from the apocalypse, along with two other young survivors. As Regina remarks, having taken on the role of matriarch in the newfound family: “The burden of civilization has fallen to us.”

That’s a basic, spoiler-free plot summary. But it omits the best character in the film, a rogue scientist named Audrey White, who is played exceptionally well in her brief screen time by Mary Woronov. She has only a few scenes, but they’re some of the most memorable ones in the film, and I would be remiss not to mention her performance.

So we’ve got zombie horror, a found-family ending… you would think I would hate this movie. But I don’t. I was actually really impressed by how well the film used its spare resource to focus on the core of the story. There is very little fat in this thing; it shows you just what you need to know to understand the characters and keeps moving along.

Then there’s the aesthetic, which is pure ’80s. The clothes, the hair, the cars, the music etc. As someone who never actually experienced the ’80s, I can’t say for certain, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything more aggressively ’80s than this. It’s a world for young people, and like another 1984 film declared: “tonight is what it means to be young.”

But part of being young is growing up, and that’s what Regina does over the course of the film. It’s never belabored or heavy-handed, but in a crisis, she goes from being an immature goof-off teenager to a capable and resourceful woman.

I never in a million years would have imagined I’d like a movie like this half as much as I do. It’s scary, it’s funny, it’s well-written, and above all else, it has real heart; not cheap sentimentality nor faux-sophisticated cynicism. Why can’t they make movies like this anymore?

Well, I think the answer lies in the words “low budget.” This typically signifies bad special effects or other negative qualities, but having a low budget forces talented artists to squeeze the very best out of what they’ve got. A big budget is wasted in the hands of a hack, and even truly skilled creative minds may be tempted to get lazy, to let the big special effects and gorgeous production values substitute for solid storytelling. Filmmakers with limited means have no such luxury.

Seriously, even if you hate zombie movies, I encourage you to watch this. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but by all logic it shouldn’t have been for me, and I love it, so you just never know.

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“The past is a foreign country,” according to L.P. Hartley. In his latest volume, Zachary Shatzer sets out to explore this foreign country, armed with nothing but his own whimsical sense of humor.

The first, and perhaps most educational section of the book focus on Emily Post’s Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home, published in 1922. Specifically, the section the proper usage and modes of address on visiting cards. Personally, I’ve wondered what visiting cards were since I listened to “The Grandson of Abdul Abulbul Amir,”  which includes the line: “and his visiting card / bore the name of this bard: / Count Ivan Skavinsky Skivar.”

Well, they were like business cards (which I’ve also never used) except in the early 1900s, everyone used them for social calls and occasions, and an incredibly complex system of etiquette evolved regarding their use. Ms. Post—excuse me, Mrs. Price Post, which is apparently the correct form of address for a divorcée—describes the rules for what a card should and should not say in different situations.

A few years ago, I reviewed a book that made reference to the debutante season, and I said it felt like reading about an alien civilization. I get that same vibe here. Frankly, the scariest part is that it feels like an alien civilization that is superior to our current one. Like we’re just apes throwing bones at monoliths.

But I digress. Shatzer then turns his humorous touch to more of the jests of Joe Miller, whose work he had previously collected in another volume. If you read that one, this feels like more of the same, although personally, I thought some the jests were too dark. As Shatzer notes, hating one’s spouse seems to be a source of much of Miller’s comedic material this time around.

From there we get an excerpt from a book (which sounded promising, I might actually read it), a selection of fables from the notoriously jaundiced eye of Ambrose Bierce, and a complete short story about baseball. Now, here I must confess that I find baseball to be extremely boring, and unless a work of fiction about it is written by, say, Mark Paxson or Kevin Brennan, it’s not a must-read for me. Shatzer’s humorous asides make it tolerable.

We then get another set of acerbic observations on relations between the sexes from a writer named Helen Rowland. I’d never heard of her before. Sadly, she seems to have had bad experiences in relationships. One of the running themes in this section is that men are constantly being unfaithful with chorus girls, which, oddly enough, was apparently the reason Emily Post divorced her husband.

Speaking of Emily Post, the book ends with another set of tips from her, this time on the art of camping, or roughing it without anything rough. This idea of simulating hardship while not actually having anything difficult or upsetting happen is, if anything, the most recognizably modern sentiment in the book. Perhaps that’s the reason Shatzer chose to end on that note, to remind us that we are not so different from our ancestors after all.

As a whole, the book is a charming look into the past, and an invitation to reflect on what future eras may think of our own. The public domain is a treasure trove of interesting works, and I hope Shatzer continues this practice of adding his commentary to older works. They can enliven even rather dull stories.

And I would also note that The Great Gatsby recently entered the public domain, so if Mr. Shatzer ever feels “borne back ceaselessly into the past…”

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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.

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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.

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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!