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Are you tired of hearing how AI can revolutionize how you work, play, shop, eat, sleep, drink, etc.? Are you sick to death of hearing about how you can leverage social media to earn crypto to buy NFTs? Do you miss the days when you could just walk around the corner without worrying about a self-driving car running you over while influencers record it with their drones to get likes on Tik-Tok?

Well, Paul Kingsnorth is and does. And he’s written a book about it. Not merely about our current state of affairs, but about how we got here, where we are going, and why we are in this handbasket.

He starts off slowly, explaining how “The Machine”, as he calls it, was built. By “The Machine”, he doesn’t just mean computer technology—though that certainly seems to be the endgame—but all of the quantitative, precise, “rational”, scientific, and “left-brained” modes of interacting with the world. An example from James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State is instructive: the Germans chopped down all their messy, organic trees and replaced them with nice, evenly-spaced ones. It was orderly, symmetrical—and disastrous for the ecosystem.

The same thing, more or less, has been happening to everything for the last 400 years in Kingsnorth’s view. It’s become harder to ignore lately, but as he explains, artists, poets, writers and other such people have been complaining about the phenomenon for centuries. To take one notable example, consider the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, who mused at the end of World War II, “Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter–leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines.”

Of course, World War II was hardly “the first War of the Machines.” World War I featured tanks, airplanes, machine guns, etc. I’m not sure when “the first” War of the Machines was. Maybe when they introduced the siege engine?

But this just goes to prove Kingsnorth’s point: that this is an ancient problem that has been evolving over the course of world history. The petty political squabbles of this or any other day pale in comparison to this steady, monotonic trend toward a fully-mechanized planet.

Where will it all end? In gray goo? In Kingsnorth’s view, even that might be more merciful than what’s in store for us.

Because, as he takes some pains to elaborate, the danger of technology may be something more than just mass unemployment and the gradual loss of our ability to do anything other than stare at screens. Kingsnorth, a Christian, sees something darker, more metaphysical and spiritual at work here:

“Silicon Valley mavens, from Mark Zuckerberg with his metaverse to Ray Kurzweil with his singularity, regularly talk… about where the technium—The Machine—is taking us. Our job, they seem to imply, is simply to service it as it rolls forward under its own steam, remaking everything in its own image, rebuilding the world, turning us, if we are lucky, into little gods. They never consider where this story has been heard before… that ‘AI’, on the right lips, can sound like just another way of saying ‘Antichrist’.

Humor me. Imagine for a moment that some force is active in the world which is beyond us. Perhaps we have created it. Perhaps it is independent of us. Perhaps it created itself and uses us for its ends… Perhaps it has always been there, watching, and now is seizing its moment.”

This sounds pretty dramatic. On the other hand, there are weird things in the history of technology. As Kingsnorth observes, an apple with a bite out of it has rather major significance in Western theology, and not as a good thing. And then you find out the original price of the Apple I…

Still, this could all easily be dismissed as the human tendency to look for patterns where none exist. (For example, when I typed “exist” just there, it was the 666th word of the post. Does this mean anything? Probably not.)

What is clear, whether you believe in dark supernatural forces at work or not, is that technology is having a significant effect on our ability to relate to one another as human beings. I don’t know if talking to an AI chatbot really is summoning demons, but there’s no doubt that they are capable of producing immensely destructive results.

In example after example, Kingsnorth hammers home the devastating effect that technology is having on people, ruining bodies and minds, destroying relationships, uprooting communities, and in general, “turning man against his brother / till man exists no more.”

All right, I admit that’s leading the witness a bit. Kingsnorth doesn’t necessarily expect us to believe that The Machine is the antichrist, although reading between the lines and listening to some of his interviews, it’s pretty clear to me that in his heart of hearts, that’s exactly what he believes. Which might explain some other things about the way the book ends up.

Because after documenting, in great detail and at some length, all the ways in which The Machine is ruining everything that is good and beautiful, we come to the part where we reasonably might expect him to offer us some kind of solution to this problem.

And what he offers is, essentially, nothing. Oh, he says some fine-sounding words about “setting limits” and “drawing lines.” For example, he himself has resolved to never use an AI chatbot, before almost immediately conceding that it’s possible he might have already unknowingly used one when calling a customer service number. He says he’ll never have a smartphone, but agrees that this makes life in the modern world exceedingly difficult.

Yeah, I’m sure that limiting ourselves to only 4 hours of screen time per day will stop the autonomous weapons systems right in their tracks. “Mr. Dent, have you any idea how much damage that bulldozer would suffer if I just let it roll straight over you?”

Kingsnorth is clearly a very intelligent man, and he must know his proposed solutions are woefully inadequate. And frankly, I think that he really believes that trying to fight it is a lost cause. As a Christian, he presumably believes that this has all been foretold, and that his victory will be attained not in this world but in the next, by holding true to his faith through the suffering that is to come.

Which is all well and good, I guess. Although if so, why even bother to write the book? And charge $13.99 plus tax for it on Kindle? This seems like it’s starting the resistance to techno-capitalism off on the wrong foot.

I’m not really accusing Kingnorth of hypocrisy. He is guilty, and he freely admits it. But then, so am I. I’m here writing in sympathy with his anti-machine manifesto on a blog on the internet. If The Machine really is some kind of malevolent xeno-intelligence, this is the part where we cut to it sitting in its lair, cackling maniacally at the pathetic ineptitude of its foes.

All this is a long way of saying that I agree with the general substance of Kingsnorth’s case. And I also agree with his observation that many, many other people throughout history have made the same observation. And all of them have proven largely correct at each step.

And it has never once mattered.  The Machine remains the undefeated champion. It should be clear enough by now that simply writing “The Machine is bad”, however eloquently, is simply not an effective form of resistance. Neither are any of the other obvious forms which have been tried over the centuries, from the Luddites to the Green Party.

If anyone wants to do anything about this, it seems to me it will have to be something that has never been tried before.  They will have to approach the problem in an entirely new way, because all other methods have failed.

Either that or take the Kingsnorth route, and try to live the best life they can while praying for deliverance in The Final Conflict with The Enemy. Well, who can say? The early Christians took over the greatest empire the world had seen to that point with a strategy of pacifism and martyrdom.

But that didn’t stop the advance of The Machine, either.

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It’s been a long time since I read an Agatha Christie book. I read a few Poirot stories as a teenager and liked them, though I found them distinctly inferior to Sherlock Holmes. But this is, as the title suggests, a Halloween story, and so of course I had to read it.

It starts out at an English country house, where Mrs. Rowena Drake is throwing a traditional children’s Halloween party, very much in line with those described in this handbook. Among the adult attendees is Ariadne Oliver, a mystery writer and friend of the great Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

All is going well until one of the young attendees is found drowned in the tub used for apple-bobbing. Making this even more suspicious is the fact that earlier in the evening, the young girl had proclaimed to everyone at the party that she had once witnessed a murder, though she refused to disclose details.

Ms. Oliver at once contacts her mustachioed friend, and he sets to work on interviewing the attendees at the party. As he does so, more mysterious intrigues begin to emerge about life in the seemingly quiet little village—he dredges up past murders that might fit the bill for what the poor child might have witnessed, as well as a complicated scheme of apparent forgery committed by a now-missing au pair girl. (Yeah, I had to look it up, too.)

The middle of the story dragged a bit, as it seemed like it was just Poirot going around talking to one person after another who laments that crime is worse nowadays because the justice system is always making excuses for criminals, looking for reasons to let them go only to have them kill again. “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, etc.” There really is nothing new under the sun. If there was one thing that surprised me about this book is how very modern it felt. I think of Agatha Christie as writing a more genteel sort of mystery, but parts of this were surprisingly direct. Strange that so dark a book could be dedicated to P.G. Wodehouse!

In the later stages, our elderly detective ties the threads together and works out who must be responsible for the crimes. Simultaneously, however, another murder is about to take place, under sinister, vaguely ritualistic circumstances, and it’s a frantic rush to stop the lethal hand in time.

Is it a great book? No, I don’t think so. Parts of it were a drag. On the other hand, other parts were quite interesting and, as I said, felt surprisingly relevant. They say the most enduring books are about human nature, which makes them timeless. That certainly would be the case here. If you want a good mystery to read at Halloween, about the darkness which lurks under the benign veneer of English country estates… well, read Hound of the Baskervilles. But if you want a second one to read after that, Hallowe’en Party is a good choice.

Now, I said above that the story is timeless, and so it could be adapted, like Shakespeare, into a different setting. And no doubt this is what the great Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh had in mind when he decided to adapt it to the setting of post-World War II Venice in his 2023 film, A Haunting in Venice, starring himself as Hercule Poirot and Tina Fey as Ariadne Oliver.

I like Kenneth Branagh. He’s a great actor (who can forget his St. Crispin’s Day speech?) and he directed one of the few Marvel superhero movies that I have both seen and enjoyed. I also like Tina Fey. (“How could I not? I’m entranced by those mud-colored eyes… that splay-footed walk… and that whole situation right there…”) Seriously, though, I like both leads and of course the whole thing is set at Halloween. What could go wrong?

Well… a lot.

First of all, it’s not really accurate to say A Haunting in Venice is “based on” or “adapted from” Hallowe’en Party. You can’t even really say that Hallowe’en Party “inspired” A Haunting in Venice, even though the cover of my edition of the book does say that. I think it might be correct to say that A Haunting in Venice was “suggested by an incident in” Hallowe’en Party. Even better might be to do as W.S. Gilbert did with his play The Princess, which he called a “a respectful operatic perversion” of a poem by Tennyson. “A cinematic perversion of Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party” pretty much fits—no need, I think, for the “respectful.”

In the Branagh Version (not to be confused with The Browning Version) Poirot has retired to Venice, disillusioned with life, humanity, and God. Until one day Ariadne Oliver shows up and asks him to join her at a children’s Halloween Party being held at the palazzo of a wealthy diva whose daughter recently drowned by falling into the canal. But, to quote Richard and Linda Thompson, “did she jump or was she pushed“?

So, to cheer herself up, the grieving mother has decided to hold a party that features a shadow puppet show about the vengeful spirits of dead children as entertainment, followed by a séance to communicate with her dead daughter’s spirit. Make it make sense, I dare you.

Poirot quickly finds proof that the medium conducting the séance is a fraud. Even so, it does appear there is something ghostly and mysterious happening in the creepy palazzo. For example, the medium has Poirot put on her cloak and mask, after which he goes to bob for apples and has his head shoved under the water, but survives. The medium appears to be a slight, thin woman. How would her cloak even fit the portly Poirot? She may be a medium, but he’s definitely a large! Ba-dum tss. I’ll be here all week, folks.

But the medium won’t, because she gets mysteriously murdered while Poirot was being nearly drowned. This prompts Poirot to lock everyone in the palazzo, since they are all now suspects. Except not Ariadne, because she’s Poirot’s friend, so he enlists her help to solve the case. And they’ve got a tall task before them, because you see, it turns out that they are operating in a universe where nothing makes sense and normal rules of logic do not apply. It is the detective fiction equivalent of Calvinball.

In the end, Poirot figures out what really happened, which is more than I can say for myself. All I know is it’s a sordid tale of murder, revenge, betrayal, and ends up showing that you can never really trust anyone. Naturally, this helps Poirot rediscover his passion for work and apparently restores his faith in humanity???

And the stupidest part is, I sort of enjoyed it. The story may make absolutely no sense whatsoever, but the acting is good, and the aesthetics are absolutely top-notch. The vibe of being in a haunted palazzo during a storm on Halloween night is carried off beautifully, so much so that it takes a while before you notice how inane everything is. It’s like eating all your Halloween candy in one night: in the moment, it’s delicious, and it’s only afterward that you feel sick with the consequences. 

A Haunting in Venice is the epitome of style over substance. It looks amazing, and maybe if it were just a generic thriller, that would be enough to go on. But the whole appeal of detective fiction is the pleasure of seeing how all the pieces fit together in a logical chain. You can have a weird, supernatural story where tons of things are left unexplained. Some of my favorite stories are like that. Or you can have the denouement where the genius investigator explains how all the seemingly-unrelated events are actually part of a coherent whole. But ya can’t have both! 

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“If you loved The Wizard of Oz,” the back of the DVD case informs me, “you’ll love accompanying Dorothy on this second thrilling adventure.”

Well, I don’t love The Wizard of Oz. I saw it on TV as a kid, and it left me cold. Sure, the transition from sepia to color must have been amazing in the ’30s, and the “it was all a dream–or was it?” ending hadn’t become a trope yet, but like Citizen Kane, it’s one of those movies that’s remarkable for its time, but is actually not that impressive.

Luckily, however, the box for Return to Oz is straight-up lying. If you loved The Wizard of Oz, this thing will probably strike you as a bizarre perversion; a downright nightmare. But if you’re like me… well, you can at least approach it with an open mind.

And of course, Wizard of Oz is based on a series of books, and the translation from page to screen altered the story a good deal. Return to Oz aimed to be more faithful to the source material, while still incorporating a few elements from the first film.

We start off with Dorothy back in Kansas, telling her aunt and uncle about her adventures in Oz. They of course don’t believe a word of it, and are concerned by her obsession with her imaginary friends. So they do what any concerned guardians would do: take her to get electroshock therapy from a smooth-talking doctor and his sinister nurse assistant at a Gothic asylum in the middle of nowhere.

And so Dorothy finds herself alone in a room–little more than a cell, really–at night, during a thunderstorm, waiting for the doctors to begin the treatment. While she waits, a mysterious blonde girl appears, ghost-like, and gives her a jack-o’-lantern to keep her company, before vanishing again as suddenly as she came.

The first 20 minutes of this film are pretty much a horror movie, culminating in the scene were she’s wheeled on a gurney to the electro-therapy room, hearing muffled screams of other patients as she goes. But just before the treatment can begin, lightning flashes, the power goes out, and the blonde girl reappears and releases Dorothy. They both flee into the stormy night, pursued by the furious nurse, finally plunging into a raging river to escape. Dorothy’s new friend disappears beneath the water, and Dorothy clings to a floating box for safety before finally falling asleep.

She awakens again in the land of Oz, accompanied now by her pet chicken Billina, who, like all animals in Oz, can talk. But Oz is much changed from when she last visited–the yellow brick road is in ruins, the Emerald City looks like Thomas Cole’s Desolation, its inhabitants turned to stone, and its streets patrolled by monstrous creatures known as “Wheelers,” which cackle insanely and threaten Dorothy and Billina. With the help of a clockwork automaton named Tik-Tok, Dorothy escapes the Wheelers and gets them to take her to the ruling power in the Emerald City, Princess Mombi.

Mombi lives in an ornate tower of gold and mirrors. She is a very beautiful woman. Actually, she is dozens of beautiful women, because she is a witch who keeps a collection of heads in glass cases, swapping them out as her whim dictates, like a fashion plate would switch her hats.

The scene where Mombi leads Dorothy through the winding hall of disembodied heads, all awake and staring back at her, might be even more disturbing than the earlier asylum scenes. It’s hard to say.

I’ve only described about half the film so far, but I don’t want to give everything away. While this is still a family-friendly picture, the ending, like all the best horror, is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. See if you can figure out what I mean!

But I hope what I’ve described above is enough to convince you that this is not your typical Disney movie. It has dark fantasy elements that feel distinctly unlike the lighthearted fare we normally get from the Mickey Mouse studio.

At the same time, it is also not simply a lazy conversion of a children’s story into a schlocky slasher film. Nowadays, if you hear they’ve made a “darker” sequel to a beloved story, you probably shudder–and you are right to do so! Cinema today has none of the craft displayed in Return to Oz, which is why it’s worthwhile to take a little time to discuss who made it.

Walter Murch is perhaps one of the greatest film editors of all time. (The only competitor I can think of would be Anne V. Coates.) He worked on such films as THX 1138, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and The English Patient. Return to Oz was his one and only directorial effort, and that’s a pity, because he clearly had a talent for filmmaking. In his short book, In The Blink of an Eye, he makes many noteworthy observations on the cinematic art, such as that seeing things in a discontinuous order, as opposed to one continuous “shot”, is a relatively new phenomenon for humans, who were used to seeing things strictly in order until the advent of film technology in the early 20th century.

And yet, our minds took to this new experience rather easily, Murch observes, probably because it is similar to the process of dreaming, which is the one other state apart from watching a film in which we see disconnected images presented one after another. Murch specifically likens the experience of viewing a film in the theater to that of dreaming, suggesting we must first enter the proper state in order to experience films properly.

Also interesting is Murch’s article, “A Digital Cinema of the Mind? Could Be”, included as a sort of appendix to In The Blink of an Eye. Written in 1999, it contains some very curious ideas:

So let’s suppose a technical apotheosis some time in the middle of the 21st century, when it somehow becomes possible for one person to make an entire feature film, with virtual actors. Would this be a good thing?

…Let’s go even further, and force the issue to its ultimate conclusion by supposing the diabolical invention of a black box that could directly convert a single person’s thoughts into a viewable cinematic reality. You would attach a series of electrodes to various points on your skull and simply think the film into existence.

Does this remind you of anything? Anything at all?

But, Murch optimistically predicts, cinema will never die off as an art form, because it is fundamentally a communal, collaborative experience:

The midcentury pessimism about the future of cinema, which foresaw a future ruled by television, overlooked the perennial human urge — at least as old as language itself — to leave the home and assemble in the fire-lit dark with like-minded strangers to listen to stories.

The cinematic experience is a recreation of this ancient practice of theatrical renewal and bonding in modern terms, except that the flames of the Stone Age campfire have been replaced by the shifting images that are telling the story itself. Flames that dance the same way every time the film is projected, but that kindle different dreams in the mind of each beholder, fuse the permanency of literature with the spontaneity of theater.

But I would like to emphasize the leaving of familiar surroundings. The theatrical-cinematic experience is really born the moment someone says, “Let’s go out.” Implicit in this phrase is a dissatisfaction with one’s familiar surroundings and the corresponding need to open oneself up in an uncontrolled way to something “other.” 

In his essays, we start to get an idea of why Murch’s Return to Oz works so well: it feels fundamentally like a dream. (Indeed, one possible interpretation is that the Oz parts are Dorothy’s dream.) And because Murch recognized that film is itself a kind of dreaming, he was able to wed his subject matter to his medium quite beautifully.

If you loved The Wizard of Oz, you may not like this darker, more eerie and ambiguous sequel. But if you enjoy an escape into the realm of dark fantasy, hearkening back to the days when fairy tales were anything but saccharine, you will find much to enjoy in Murch’s take on L. Frank Baum’s world.

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First of all, this should not be confused with the 2000 Disney animated movie, The Emperor’s New Groove. That is a great movie in its own right, but it’s about an Incan emperor who is forced to grow and mature after being turned into a llama. Whereas this movie is about… wait for it… now, this will really surprise you…

Napoleon!

Yes, I know; you may be saying, as Louis Castaigne exasperatedly does to his cousin Hildred in The Repairer of Reputations: “Napoleon, Napoleon, Napoleon! …For heaven sake, have you nothing but Napoleons there?”

But let me reassure you that I am every bit as sane and well-adjusted as Hildred Castaigne, if not more so! You have no need to fear on that account. 🙂

Besides, I needed something to wash away the bitter taste of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. Whatever you think of the guy, he deserved a better movie than that.

The Emperor’s New Clothes begins with a teaser: we see a young boy looking at an illustrated biography of Napoleon on a magic lantern. As he gets to the final image, showing a picture of the emperor on his deathbed, a shadowy figure enters the room and says, “No… that’s not how it ended.” He steps in front of the screen and says to the boy, “Let me tell you what really happened…”

Flashback to St. Helena, where Napoleon and his aides have hatched a daring plan to retake the throne: Bonaparte will switch places with a lowly seaman named Eugene Lenormand, a deck-hand on a ship bound for France. From there, he will meet with a Bonapartist officer, who will convey him to Paris. Meanwhile, Lenormand will pretend to be Napoleon to fool the British authorities, until the emperor is in Paris and the switch can be revealed.

It’s a clever scheme, but it quickly goes wrong when the ship changes course and instead lands in Belgium, forcing Napoleon to improvise a new route to Paris, which takes him through Waterloo among other places, before he finally meets a Sergeant Justin Bommel, formerly of the Imperial Guard, who helps him make his way to French soil, and tells him to find a Bonapartist officer named Truchaut in Paris.

Napoleon finds Truchaut—in a coffin. The emperor’s best hope of retaking his throne has died, leaving behind a widow nicknamed “Pumpkin”, an adopted son, and a struggling fruit business.

Meanwhile, on St. Helena, the faux-Napoleon is coming to enjoy his life of luxury, gorging himself on the emperor’s food, taking long baths, and dictating a risqué memoir, all while the impatient officers wait for the deception to be revealed. Eventually, one of them tries to force the imposter to confess, but he simply tells the British guards that the man has gone mad.

Back in Paris, having been injured in a fall, and not having a clear idea how to salvage his plan, the real Napoleon devotes his brilliant strategic mind to rescuing the widow Pumpkin’s fruit-selling business. Armed with maps of the city, and his legendary talent for planning and organization, Napoleon provides the fruit vendors with a detailed plan of battle and heroic words to motivate them: “Remember,” he says, “we conquer or perish!”

This scene was when I knew this movie was something special. Much more than in the Ridley Scott film, more even than the 1970 Waterloo film, this scene captured why Napoleon was a great general. I think Scott’s film just took it for granted that because we have all heard about the formidable strategist’s powers, we would automatically believe it. Not this movie, and certainly not Ian Holm, who conveys it perfectly.

Soon, the fruit business is booming, and Pumpkin is finding herself drawn to the charismatic stranger lodging in her home, as he is to her. This is much to the dismay of Pumpkin’s friend, Dr. Lambert, who suspects the new arrival is hiding something.

On St. Helena, the Bonaparte doppelgänger dies suddenly, and the French and British officers both agree never to reveal the deception. When word of “Napoleon’s” death reaches Paris, the real emperor decides it is time to take back his rightful place… only he quickly realizes he has difficulty persuading anyone of his true identity, while Pumpkin is devastated that her beloved Eugene now suddenly seems to believe he is the Emperor of the French. As she tearfully says, “I hate Napoleon! He’s filled France with widows and orphans. He took my husband. I won’t let him take you too.”

When you read enough history of the period, you see there are basically two schools of thought re. old Boney: the Bonapartist view, that he was a Great Man who, through the sheer force of his will, brought the values of modernity forward, sweeping away the stale old monarchies and overseeing tremendous advances in science, letters, law, and the arts across Europe and elsewhere, all through his supreme gifts for military conquest.

And there is the Bourbon/British view: that he was a “Corsican ogre”; a weird little guy who stumbled into ruling a Revolution-devastated France and, thanks to his own neurotic insecurities, tyrannized the continent for 15 years before cooler heads finally brought him to heel. (This is basically the position Scott’s film took.)

The Emperor’s New Clothes takes a different view: that Napoleon was a Great Man, possessing great talents, but that he misused his gifts. That he was led astray by the siren song of ambition to a mirage of empire; believing that he should be a Caesar or an Alexander. And what did all this conquering get him in the end? Dying of stomach cancer on a wretched little island, away from his wife and children and family.

What if he had used all his tremendous talents for something else? What if he’d realized that being happy consists not in ruling over a massive empire, but in coming home at night to a loving family, sitting around the fireplace together?

This film gives Napoleon, as Paul Simon might say, “a shot at redemption” so he doesn’t “end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.”

(Incidentally, in a way, this is also exactly the theme of the aforementioned Emperor’s New Groove movie. I find this rather cool.)

If you can’t tell by now, I’ll just straight-up say it: I love this movie. Ian Holm gives the best portrayal of Napoleon I’ve ever seen, capturing both his greatness and his flaws, not to mention also playing an amusing caricature of him as the impostor. And beyond the depiction of the upstart Corsican himself, the film felt authentic to the whole period. The early scenes of Napoleon wandering Belgium are especially gorgeous, and the film is great at showing us these little slices of life from the era, be it fruit-sellers, soldiers, deck-hands, carriage drivers, and even, in one memorable case, the inmates of an insane asylum.

If you’re into Napoleonic history, it’s a must-watch. If you’re not, well, it’s still worth checking out just for its beautiful scenes, its sweet story, and its inspiring message.

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You know I don’t often review non-fiction books. What am I supposed to say? “This guy’s life should have been different to be more dramatic.” But sometimes I read a non-fiction book that’s just so good, I can’t resist.

Remember when the Napoleon movie came out, and people were like, “it’s not accurate,” and Ridley Scott was like, “Were you there, bro?” Well, Captain Blaze was there! Admittedly, he wasn’t at the big battles, such as Austerlitz, Borodino, or Waterloo. But he was wounded at Wagram, and took part in many Napoleonic campaigns in Poland, Germany and Spain. As such, he is in a position to speak with authority on these matters.

Not that he purports to be telling us an authoritative history of the period. No, Captain Blaze’s manner is much more casual and friendly, as he tells interesting stories of things that happened to him throughout his military career. The feeling is rather like you’re sitting at a bar, knocking back a few with him while listening to his war stories.

This is how I like to learn history. It’s not random lists of names and dates; it’s things that happened to real people. Captain Blaze is witty, human and relatable. Well, mostly. He does have a few old-fashioned attitudes towards some groups that may strike some readers as offensive. But when we study the past–or at least when I do–I want to study the whole past; even the ugly parts. No sense in sugarcoating it.

Still, for the most part, Blaze is actually quite likable and self-deprecating, as when he says that the best battle he was ever in was one that he was able to observe through a telescope from the safety of a church steeple. It was the “best” in his view, because he was out of harm’s way.

Most interesting are Blaze’s insights into human nature. He has little use for people claiming that the French soldier was inspired by love for the emperor. While Blaze has a certain admiration for Napoleon, he makes no bones about why they fought:

“How often has it been asserted in print that the soldiers fought for the emperor! This is another of those current phrases, which many people have taken up and repeated without knowing why. The soldiers fought for themselves, to defend themselves; because in France, a man never hesitates when he sees danger on one side and infamy on the other…

…show them the Prussians, the Russians, or the Austrians, and whether they are commanded by Napoleon, Charles X, or Louis Philippe, you may be sure that French soldiers will do their duty.” 

But again, he respects Napoleon. Or rather, he respects General Bonaparte. His victories early in his career are what Blaze values most highly, for as he reasons:

“The glory of Bonaparte will never be eclipsed by that of Napoleon; for the means of the emperor were more vast than ever general had at his disposal. When a ruler drains a country like France of her last man and her last crown, when he renders an account to no one, it is not surprising that, with a well-organized head, he should accomplish great things; the contrary would be much more astonishing.”

I’ve really just scratched the surface here. I could go on quoting passages from this book for a very long time. Capt. Blaze is insightful, clever, and, above all else, very funny. Yes, while he never shies away from the horror and tragedy of war, he also has a knack for recounting humorous incidents he witnessed or was told about. He makes a jolly guide to what must have been a rather grim time.

Of course, not being able to read French, I’m going by the translation. I also was unable to find much more information about Captain Blaze, and I was obliged to use a Google-translated version of his French Wikipedia page. Apparently, he went on to a career in writing after his military service. Quite an interesting fellow.

Dear readers, we live in a strange and unsettled world. Last week, a controversy broke out over edits on the Star Wars wiki to a page about a minor character, to bring them into line with something that happens in one of the innumerable new Star Wars productions. It escalated to death threats. As Dave Barry would say, “I am not making this up.”

My purpose here is not to relitigate Star Wars-related controversies. There are no good guys in Wookiepedia edit wars. But what has this world come to, when people care more about the biographies of fictional aliens than real people who actually existed? Maybe once Captain Blaze has an English-language wiki, and a few of his other published works are available online, then we can worry about what is considered “canon” in a fictional universe. Or, better yet, not.

This powerful electronic network we’re using houses vast repositories of human knowledge. Yet we ignore that and use it instead in the pursuit of the most trivial inanities. People are always prone to recency bias, but c’mon; this is pathetic. This is worse than destroying the Library of Alexandria. At least the Romans were in a war. What’s our excuse?

Oh, well. Let me quote once more from Blaze himself, from a bit later on in the book. To set the scene a bit, he has been talking about the tendency of people to romanticize war and soldiers after the fact, exaggerating the dashing and adventurous element far beyond what existed before peace came.

“I was talking one day on this subject with a publisher of lithographic prints, and was beginning to prove what I am here advancing. ‘You preach to one who is already converted,” said he at the first word: ‘I am well aware that all this is not true, but such things sell. In trade, “such things sell” is an unanswerable argument…'”

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People sometimes ask me, “Berthold, why do you do it? Why do you insist on reading obscure books, watching movies no one has ever heard of, etc.?”

On the face of it, it does seem a bit weird, I admit. And quite often, it turns out that something is unheard of because it wasn’t worth telling anyone about it.  To quote from Noah Goats’ wonderful Unpublishables (a book every indie author should read at least once) “one of the worst things about this planet is that the naysayers are almost always right.”

You know, the reviews of mine that do the best numbers are the ones about recent, big-name Hollywood movies. I’m still getting daily page views on the Napoleon review. This one will probably only get the die-hards who read every one of my posts. You people are built different, and I love you for it.

But, I digress! The question, why do I do it? Why am I reviewing things like… well, like some random movie from 1969 that is loosely based on a novel unfinished by Jack London in the 1910s and then completed by another author in the early ’60s?

The answer is that lesser-known media is blissfully free from all the corporate hype and criticism and commentary and meta-commentary and critical consensus and (shudder) discourse around something new and popular, and you are left with only art in its pure state, as something to be understood on its own terms. It’s like being in the gallery after hours, when the lights are out and the noisy tourists have all gone home and now it’s just you and the pieces on display. No docent will tell you what to think, or what the history was. It’s all up to you.

And sometimes, the most amazing thing happens: a story starts being told, and it pulls you right into it, and before you know what hit you, you’re meeting new characters, and getting interested in seeing what happens to them.

Well, I suppose I’ve wasted enough time on preamble; time to get on with the review proper! Only, there’s one thing you need to know first: while this movie is generally released under the title above, the full title in the UK is the much funnier The Assassination Bureau, Limited. (or Ltd.)

The story begins with a freelance journalist, Miss Sonya Winter, who is investigating a string of assassinations in fin de siècle Europe. She has discovered that there is a disciplined organization behind these murders, and she is hired by newspaper owner Lord Bostwick to investigate the bureau.

She does this in a rather bold way: by engaging the bureau’s services to assassinate its own chairman, Ivan Dragomiloff. Dragomiloff is rather excited at the challenge posed by Miss Winter’s request. He feels it will test the bureau’s abilities, and provide them with a much-needed exercise of their wits. Therefore, he cheerfully accepts the contract on his own life.

However, there is more here than meets the eye. Other members of the bureau’s board of directors have their eyes on using Dragomiloff’s death to gain full control, in order to use the bureau to foment a great war in Europe. And so begins a game of cat-and-mouse, with Dragomiloff racing across Europe and falling into the clutches of various members of the bureau; with Miss Winter following him all the way in pursuit of what promises to be the story of the century.

The film is fast-paced, quick-witted, and funny. It has this wonderful Edwardian aesthetic that, combined with the many  intricate and lethal gadgets the assassins employ, gives it a quasi-steampunk feel. It’s not a revolutionary story by any means, but it’s told so well that it doesn’t matter; it’s a fun ride from the first stop to the last.

It’s kind of like if they made a James Bond film set right before World War I. Except it’s better than almost every James Bond film I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, while also not turning into a farcical self-parody. It knows that its situations are at some level completely absurd, while at the same time taking the trouble to make the characters realistic enough that we care about them.

Now, of course, the film was made in the ’60s, so there are some things that haven’t aged well, and the special effects in the climactic scene are rather weak, even by the standards of the time. I’m not saying it’s a perfect movie, but it still makes for a fun way to kill 90 minutes, and it even manages to work in some philosophical thoughts on the morality of violence. Each of three main characters embodies a specific view on the subject, from Miss Winter’s pacifism to Dragomiloff’s chivalric code of killing to Lord Bostwick’s, shall we say, more pragmatic approach.

Anyhow, it’s a good movie and I recommend it to fans of thrillers and comedies alike. Don’t let it get too popular, though, or next thing you know, they’ll remake and reboot and franchise it until all the joy gets sucked out of the whole enterprise. The great thing about movies no one has heard of is that the studios haven’t thought to ruin them yet.

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I first read this book more than 20 years ago, when I was only a 12-year-old lad.  I remember enjoying it immensely, especially a certain plot twist about 1/3 of the way in. For years after that, I felt no hesitation about listing it as one of my favorite science-fiction books.

But, a curious thing happened as the years went by. When I would hear Clarke’s name or the book mentioned, I would think back and remember it fondly, but I realized I had only the vaguest memory of what actually happened in it. There were aliens, of course; and I remembered the revelation regarding their physical appearance very well, but what happened after that? I found I couldn’t recall.

I started to wonder what the book was actually about. After all, my 12-year-old self’s judgment is not always to be trusted, and the fact that I had forgotten huge swaths of the book made me wonder if it peaked at the Big Reveal scene, and perhaps the rest was mere twaddle.

So, what better excuse to go back and reread it than Vintage Science Fiction Month, during which we all revisit and review the classics of the genre? Vintage Sci-Fi Month was made for things like this, and you should be sure and check out all the posts related to it.

Now then, Childhood’s End. Again, as a boy, I thought it was a pretty cool story. But now, upon re-reading it with a mature eye…

…I think it is perhaps the greatest science-fiction novel of the 20th century, and it’s holding its own well into the 21st, as well.

The plot twist that blew my mind as a kid still works, sort of like a Twilight Zone punchline. The difference is, that’s only the beginning of the story, not the end. It’s only the end of Part I, after all. From there, it gets much more interesting.

In broad outlines, the story of Childhood’s End is that aliens come to Earth, demonstrate that they have vastly superior technology, and quickly begin to reign as benevolent overlords, so much so that they are actually called “the Overlords.” Under their firm but peaceful rule, humanity is shepherded into a new Golden Age of Peace and Plenty.

And yet… there is a strange sense of something not quite right about it all. The Overlords seem to have some greater purpose, yet no one can tell what it might be. Early on in Part II, we learn that the old customs have been shattered:

“…by two inventions, which were, ironically enough, of purely human origin and owed nothing to the Overlords. The first was a completely reliable oral contraceptive: the second was an equally infallible method—as certain as fingerprinting, and based on a very detailed analysis of the blood—of identifying the father of any child. The effect of these two inventions upon human society could only be described as devastating, and they had swept away the last remnants of the Puritan aberration.”

Clarke wrote this in 1953. The birth control pill was introduced in 1960. DNA testing came along in the 1980s. How’s that for some prescience?

Still, here we are in 2024. This is 40 -to-60 year old tech at this point. So what if a dude in the 1950s predicted the next 30 years? That’s like reading somebody in the 1800s predicted the existence of the airplane; a mere minor curiosity.

This middle part of the story dragged a little; although there is a scene with a Ouija board. Personally, I’ve always been suspicious of Ouija boards, largely because Art Bell, a man known for his openness and willingness to be exposed to the strange and surreal, unequivocally cautioned his listeners against using them, for reasons he refused to explain. When a man like that tells me not to do something, I listen.

In any case, the Ouija board in this story reveals key information to several characters, although exactly what it is does not immediately become clear. Instead, Part II ends on this haunting note:

“They would never know how lucky they had been. For a lifetime, mankind had achieved as much happiness as any race can ever know. It had been the Golden Age. But gold was also the color of sunset, of autumn…”

And then we come to Part III, which begins innocuously enough on an island colony of artists, called New Athens, created by a man who wanted to give humanity a chance to excel at something on their own merits, apart from the watchful eye of the Overlords.

As one of the residents of the island explains:

“There’s nothing left to struggle for, and there are too many distractions and entertainments. Do you realize that every day something like five hundred hours of radio and TV pour out over the various channels? If you went without sleep and did nothing else, you could follow less than a twentieth of the entertainment that’s available at the turn of a switch! No wonder that people are becoming passive sponges—absorbing but never creating. Did you know that the average viewing time per person is now three hours a day? Soon people won’t be living their own lives any more. It will be a full-time job keeping up with the various family serials on TV!”

Again, this was written in 1953, people. Nineteen Fifty-Three.

We can’t write this off like we did the stuff about the pill and the DNA testing; this is getting into the realm of eerie prophecy. Which is particularly disturbing considering where we’re about to go from here.

Gradually, it becomes apparent that human children are mutating into… something else. Some kind of inhuman psychic hive-mind consciousness that no longer recognizes their own parents. The Overlords ship them off to a sequestered colony, and people just… stop having children. That’s right, the human race ends.

Well, except for one guy who stowed away aboard an Overlord ship to visit their homeworld. They send him back, and thanks to relativity, he has only aged a little while everyone else is dead. Lucky him, he wins the special prize of getting to witness the psychic collective consciousness gang annihilate the Earth and ascend to the heavens.

The Overlords, who explain that they have witnessed this same phenomenon occur many times with many species, simply move on to their next assignment.

Here’s the weird thing about this book: the Overlords are practically as irrelevant to the plot as Indiana Jones is to Raiders of the Lost Ark. They really are neutral observers.

Which leads us to another realization: so many of Clarke’s other predictions came true, without the intervention of the Overlords. Should we feel a bit unsettled about what this means for the future?

Words fail me, reader; they really do. When I finished reading this book I was left with a haunting disquietude that was frankly rather hard to shake. The Overlords, and the implication that due to the non-linear nature of time, their appearance heralds the end of humanity, wasn’t even the most disturbing thing in the tale.

If you enjoy science-fiction at all, and given that you are reading this I presume that you do, then this book is a must-read.

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I’ve written about this film before, but I fear my review of three years ago fell short of its intended purpose. A friend of mine, a fellow writer whose opinion I greatly respect, watched it on my recommendation, and she hated it.

It could be due to an age difference, I suppose. Christmas Crush has what I think of as a millennial sensibility. Joke-y, banter-y, with lots of cultural references in the dialogue. It’s a bit like Adam Bertocci’s writing, and as I’ve mentioned before, Bertocci’s fiction is what I consider quintessentially millennial.

And let’s face it: we millennials are a polarizing bunch. Our culture is one people either love or hate. So it is with Christmas Crush. It is not by any means a complicated story. The plot is simple: a woman named Addie has a crush on her next-door neighbor, Sam. She makes a wish that her next-door neighbor will fall in love with her.

Unfortunately, her careless wording results in the wish being misapplied, and her other next-door neighbor, a man named Pete who is engaged to be married shortly after Christmas, falls in love with her. What follows is a series of humorous episodes as Addie tries to undo her wish and make the lovestruck Pete go back to his fiancée, Gina. All the while, trying not to give Sam the impression she’s two-timing him.

Such is the basic synopsis. Nothing earth-shattering, I’m sure you’ll agree. But as Chuck Litka reminds us, why does every story need to have high-stakes? Isn’t the future happiness of the characters reason enough to care about them?

So why do I like the film so much? Well, let us count the reasons:

#1: I’m Sick Of The Grimdark

“Grimdark!” Isn’t that a wonderful word? It comes to us from the world of Warhammer 40K, a science-fiction universe where life is nasty, brutish, and short. But there are countless films, books, TV series, etc. that feature the grimdark aesthetic. It’s got to where it’s seeping into everything. They made a horror spin-off of Winnie the Pooh, for crying out loud.

Now, I don’t mind a bit of darkness in my stories. I regularly re-read H.P. Lovecraft, you know. But recall the Duke of Dunstable’s speech from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience:

Duke. Tell me, Major, are you fond of toffee?

Major. Very!

Duke. Yes, and toffee in moderation is a capital thing. But to live on toffee – toffee for breakfast, toffee for dinner, toffee for tea – to have it supposed that you care for nothing but toffee, and that you would consider yourself insulted if anything but toffee were offered to you – how would you like that?

For “toffee,” read “grimdark.” At some point, the consensus in the entertainment industry became that nothing wholly pleasant can be allowed to exist. Or if it does exist, it should be mocked. And that is why everything became saturated with gloom and serial killers.

Christmas Crush, like any good Christmas movie, is not grim. Even when Addie’s spirits are at their lowest, the mood is still one of holiday cheer. Also, Hollywood, if you’re reading this: it’s in color!

#2: Sincerity 

Now, I have to be careful with this one, because even Christmas Crush has its share of ironic humor. That banter I referred to above can’t exist without a certain style of comedy that relies on a developed sense of irony. To a degree, this goes hand-in-hand with that millennial sensibility I alluded to earlier, and is again something Christmas Crush shares with the works of Bertocci. (I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Zachary Shatzer is the millennial P.G. Wodehouse, and Bertocci is the millennial Oscar Wilde.)

But the conclusion of Christmas Crush is sincere, as all Christmas movies are.

I’ve got a theory that most people who watch these Christmas movies with a mocking eye secretly hope to be charmed. We actually want to see a nice, sweet story that is pleasant and predictable. But, our culture does not exactly reward wholesome content, so we mask our desire with a veneer of irony. And of course, a lot of the movies are quite silly, so it’s not like it’s hard to find things of which to make fun.

But, as Nietzsche said, “He who scoffs at Christmas movie cheesiness should take care that he does not become a cheesy Christmas movie antagonist. And when you hate-watch the Hallmark channel, know that the Hallmark channel also hate-watches you.”

Or something like that. The point is, once you get used to sneering at sincerity, you become immune to it. You can’t appreciate it, even when it is earned.

#3: …But Also Comedy

If you’ve made it this far into this post, you probably can at least tolerate comedy. But some people just aren’t into it. They will see no humor, for instance, in the scene where Pete’s jilted fianceé, working at a Christmas pop-up store to pay for her canceled wedding, tearfully greets customers with a somber, “Welcome to Santa’s Ho-ho-holiday emporium, the happiest place south of the North Pole.” They will not delight in the numerous references to the holiday event that Addie and her friend Drea are planning for a client named Donner as “the Donner party,” before hastily correcting themselves.

Obviously, there are many different kinds of comedy. For Christmas Crush, you’ve got to like wordplay and maybe a dash of light slapstick. If these don’t do it for you, then probably Christmas Crush will fall flat. Actually, probably all of my top favorite Christmas movies (Fitzwilly, Jingle All The Way, and The Lion in Winter) will not work for you. And that’s okay.

#4: No Villain

So many movies feel obliged to give us a villain: the cheating fiancé, the wicked step-mother, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that in most stories, but in the spirit of the Christmas season, isn’t it nice to have a story where no one is motivated by evil intentions? Pete, even at his most obnoxious, is only doing what he is doing because a spell has twisted his inherently good nature. Gina, even when she is rude to Addie, only does so in reaction to understandable hurt feelings.

I don’t mind a good villain. But I also find it refreshing to have a story without one.

#5: Avoiding Clichés and Boring Romance Tropes

We all know how holiday movies rely on clichés. It’s a running joke on Twitter: how many movies are there where the overworked big-city something-or-other is forced to go to a small town for Christmas, where, despite her best efforts, she falls in love with the man of her dreams, who as often as not turns out to be the Prince of Monte Carlo traveling incognito?

Instead of Addie being a workaholic who finds love when she is whisked away to a bucolic setting, she actually likes her job, and finds love with the guy next door. And instead of bonding over something superficial, like, I don’t know, chocolate or something, Addie and Sam discover they actually have mutual interests in philanthropy. That’s something that can be a foundation for a relationship.

#6: Addie Takes Action

Instead of waiting around for the plot to resolve itself in her favor, Addie steps up and takes responsibility. At the end, she says something that is, by the standards of made-for-TV Christmas movies, rather profound:

To everyone in this room, I wish you all the courage to tell the people close to you how you really feel about them. Whether it’s your best friend, your fiancé, or even your next-door neighbor. Even if you’re scared. Even if you’re not sure if they feel the same. Because making a wish, even making a wish for Christmas, it’s not enough. You have to tell them. Because you don’t know what you might be losing if you don’t.

Now, I can’t live this past week over again. But I hope that next time–No. No, I have faith that I won’t make the same mistake again. 

Unlike so many stories of this type–or maybe of many types–Addie grows and learns over the course of the story. She realizes her mistakes, she admits them, and she vows to grow. Maybe you laugh and say that’s a low bar to clear for a story. Maybe it is. But ask yourself this: how many modern Hollywood blockbusters give us this level of character development?

#7: A Beginning, not an Ending

And what I like best of all is that at the end, it’s suggested that Addie and Sam will start dating. Not get engaged, not have a royal wedding, but maybe go out for coffee. I’m not saying whirlwind romances can’t happen, but in general, it makes far more sense for people to fall in love over a period of months or years, not a few days as so often happens in these things.

A real romance is a whole life-time long, and a wedding is just one stop along the way. So many stories treat it as the Final Boss, the last quest before the story ends. Real relationships seldom work in such a cut-and-dried manner, and that is what makes them magical.

Conclusion

Here, my case rests. It may be you are unmoved by all this. Like my friend, you might find Christmas Crush the most awful dreck. And, well, after all, you may be right. I may be crazy. But it just may be etc.

If this blog has an agenda–which I am not prepared to admit, but I say only if it does–that agenda is to convey to people that the media that is easy and accessible may not be the greatest art there is. To find great work takes great work.

The flip side of this is that you can find it anywhere, and sometimes in places where the critical consensus least expects it to be. Thus, we find that when our curators of High Culture are debating whether video games are art, some of the greatest stories being told in that form. And when we hear the voices of the taste-makers putting down made-for-TV Christmas movies, we wonder: are the lavish, big-budget productions of the major studios any better?

And of course, there is the humble indie book. We all know, beyond any doubt, that great stories are being told in the pages of little volumes sent out into the world by lone authors, supported by nothing more than their desire to tell them.

My technique when reviewing something is to try and forget, insofar as possible, how and where I found it, and evaluate it on its own terms, independent of who wrote it or whether or not fashionable people sing its praises, and simply ask myself if I like it.

(There is of course a final irony here in that, by publishing my opinion, I am in some measure trying to be one of those people who influences other peoples’ thoughts on the matter. And indeed, there have been times when I have had to ignore myself in order to evaluate something clearly.)

I don’t mind if anyone else’s opinion varies wildly from mine on these things. I am, indisputably, a highly idiosyncratic critic. There is only one key to reviewing anything, be it a Christmas rom-com or a war epic, a Renaissance painting or a video game, a big-name publishing house novel or an indie ebook; and that is to make sure that your opinion is authentically yours, not one that somebody else told you to have. It’s not as easy as it seems, but it’s more rewarding that way.

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Picture this: a movie that takes place mainly during the day, on a picturesque Scottish island. There is very little action in the movie; it’s mainly a police procedural, with a stony-faced, prim and proper policeman questioning the local population. The film contains almost no violence, except for a very brief scene towards the end. Indeed, what earns it its “R” rating is nudity; a few scenes of naked women dancing. Other than that, it could air on broadcast television with no cuts. 

Moreover, did I mention this film has a number of songs? It’s not exactly a musical, but there is fast-paced nursery rhyme-like patter, a few ribald drinking songs, and a ballad performed by one of the aforesaid nude dancers. 

There’s almost no blood, no sinister torture chambers, no howling dogs on desolate foggy moors; instead there is only a quaint little village in a quiet part of the world. I ask you, with such a setup, can a film really be scary?

Comes the answer: this is possibly the scariest movie I have ever seen.

It follows Sgt. Neil Howie, a devout Christian police detective, who is dispatched by seaplane to the remote Summerisle to look for a missing girl. The townspeople are not unfriendly, but not exactly helpful either, referring Howie to Lord Summerisle, the nobleman whose family has administered the island’s affairs for generations.

During Howie’s investigation, he sees odd things. Strange rituals out of centuries past, like maypoles and disturbingly explicit fertility rites, quite at odds with his conservative Christian beliefs. When at last he meets Lord Summerisle, he confronts him about the unsettling things he has witnessed, and Summerisle acknowledges that, as part of a program to revive the island’s agricultural output, his grandfather gave the people back their ancient, pre-Christian folkways, to entice them to believe in the Old Gods of the Harvest.

Howie is appalled and horrified, and in view of everyone’s refusal to aid him in finding the missing girl, begins to suspect that she has been sacrificed to their Old Gods in some sort of bizarre druidical ceremony. 

I really liked Howie, who is played perfectly by Edward Woodward. His refusal to compromise his beliefs, and unwavering resolve to find the missing child no matter what stands in his way, make him easy to root for. And also perhaps easy to… but no, that would be saying too much. This is not exactly an unknown film, but it would be wrong to spoil it.

The late, great Sir Christopher Lee is also fantastic as Summerisle. Offhand, I’d say it’s his best role. In fact, he said it was his best role. Of course, playing a charming but sinister aristocrat was pretty much Lee’s standard, but the devil is in the details, and it’s how he plays it that makes this interesting. He seems relaxed, almost easygoing, compared to the straight-laced Howie. But, let’s just say he has another side to him…

Okay, but what makes this movie so scary? I did say it might be the scariest film I’ve ever seen, after all. I can’t spoil it, but if I’m going to make such a bold claim, I have to try and justify it somehow.

Those of you who made it all the way through the sprawling post I wrote about the Metal Gear Solid 2 book a while back may remember that I made reference to a non-fiction book called The Meme Machine, by Susan Blackmore. Blackmore is a student of Richard Dawkins, the well-known evolutionary biologist. Dawkins coined the word “meme” as an analog for “gene” in the realm of culture. A “meme” is a unit of information; a word, a phrase, a song, a mannerism, a belief, that is transmitted through human culture, by a process not unlike evolution.

Dawkins derived his neologism “meme” from the Greek word mīmēma, which means “imitation.”  And just as Dawkins described genes as “selfish,” memes likewise seek only to replicate themselves, so much so that we can analogize memes as if they were beings with conscious desires.

It’s all quite interesting, and Blackmore takes Dawkins’ idea and runs with it, arguing that the human brain evolved as a kind of super-powerful meme replicator, and our capacity for imitation of memes allowed us to evolve into the dominant life-form on the planet.

As she explains: 

Memes spread themselves around indiscriminately without regard to whether they are useful, neutral or positively harmful to us… they are selfish like genes, and will simply spread if they can.

Elsewhere, Blackmore proposes the following thought experiment:

Imagine a world full of hosts for memes (e.g. brains) and far more memes than can possibly find homes.

Of course, as Blackmore takes pains to point out, it’s not as if these memes are literally flying around the world, taking over human brains and using them to replicate themselves. It’s just that, ah, they might as well be. It’s not literally true, but it’s a good model for approximating the behavior we see in the world. (Anyone who has studied Economics will be familiar with this sort of thing.) 

However… there is something curious about all this. Because there is another Greek word Dawkins might have used instead, that describes much the same phenomenon. The Ancient Greeks tended to model human thought as the work of external entities—e.g. inspiration being given from Apollo, lust from Eros, and so on. 

The Ancient Greek word I’m thinking of is daimōn, from which we get the modern word “demon.” “Meme” and “demon” even sound somehow similar, with the same phoneme as the central component.  Now consider Blackmore’s hypothetical rewritten:

Imagine a world full of hosts for demons (e.g. brains) and far more demons than can possibly find homes.

In an instant, we have transformed the work of modern scientists (one of whom is famously an atheist) into something that sounds like what the wrinkled old woman living in a strange cabin in the woods tells the horror movie protagonist.

And this is what I find curious: the superstitious ancients described the world as inhabited by invisible spirits that took hold of people’s minds. The modern memeticists describe the world as inhabited by invisible memes that take hold of people’s minds.

If I tell you that I got an idea for a story when “out of the blue, it just popped in my head,” you would nod understandingly. If I said I got the idea when “the God of Fiction whispered it in my ear,” you’d think I was a bit of an oddball, at best. Yet, for practical purposes, the two are the same.

So if you say someone is possessed by a demon, it seems strange, but being possessed by an idea is totally normal. 

Coming back around to The Wicker Man, this is what makes the film so scary. At the end, we see people who are possessed by something. We could argue all day about whether it is some true supernatural force or merely certain memes which they have learned to imitate; memes handed down from an ancient tradition dating back millennia. The film, like all great horror, leaves much to the audience’s imagination.

Practically speaking, it doesn’t much matter, does it? The fact is, there is something—call it a demon, a meme, an idea, a fashion, a spirit, whatever name suits you—that can take hold of human minds and compel them to do things that seem unthinkable to those immune to the phenomenon. 

And that’s the ultimate horror of The Wicker Man.  Here, in this bucolic setting, we gradually uncover the darkest impulses that lie in the hearts of human communities; primitive urges predating everything we call civilization. A base need for rituals that give meaning and provide a sense of power, of grandeur, even, to those craving it.

Unnerving, unsettling, disturbing and uniquely memorable, The Wicker Man is one of the greatest horror films ever made.

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As I think most of you know, Halloween is by far my favorite holiday. But even I can go for a good Christmas tale. So naturally, a Christmas book that brings a witch into the picture is going to get my attention.

This book tells the story of Cinnamon Mercy Claus, who unexpectedly finds herself journeying to the North Pole for the holiday season. There she meets her grandparents: Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus themselves.

This would be a shocking enough discovery on its own, but she next learns that her grandmother is a witch and that she wants a divorce from the jolly old elf, who has been taking all her Christmas magic for granted. She angrily leaves her bewildered granddaughter in charge of handling all the arrangements for delivering toys to all the children of the world.

This is a lot to take in for Cinnamon, who is more comfortable working in the world of spreadsheets and number-crunching than of magic, but, with the help of the elves, she throws herself into the task.

The book is a lot like those made-for-TV Christmas movies that they broadcast this time of year. Which are not everyone’s cup of tea, of course, but I happen to enjoy them. Yes, they can be predictable and sometimes overly-sentimental, but hey, what are the holidays about if not the comfort of something cozy and familiar? It is true that most of the time I prefer darker varieties of fiction, but when December comes round, there’s nothing wrong with little light trifles.

And that’s exactly what this book is; a fast-paced bit of Christmas-themed fun. Read it while eating some gingerbread cookies or something, preferably by a fireplace or under some decorative lights, and you’ll surely be filled with the Yuletide spirit.

[Audio version of this review available below.]