Children's Book Covers: Old vs. New

Some of the best books I’ve ever read were children’s books. Not even joking. For the young, aspiring, bookworm, there’s plenty of quality literature out there, if you know where to look. Trust me, the books you love as a kid will remain in your memories all your life. You can revisit them. I know I do. And I’m always delighted to see that some of my favorite kid’s books are still on the shelves, ready to be snapped up by another generation...

Problem is, I despair that no one will buy these awesome books because of their utterly moronic cover art. New editions of old books, especially kid’s books, get updated covers because, I dunno, the old covers weren’t hip enough or something? Hey, it provides work to struggling career artists and that’s fine. But I swear to GOD, kid’s book covers have just gotten lamer and lamer as time goes by. And I’m gonna prove it to you with some side-by-side comparisons. Hop aboard the bitter nostalgia train! (And don't forget to click on the images for larger versions. You're gonna want to see all the detail, for better or worse.)

DANG-BLASTED LOOKS AT CHILDREN’S BOOK COVERS...OLD VS. NEW

CASE FILE #1: HATCHET by GARY PAULSEN
The Book: A classic of wilderness survival. Bourgeois young Brian Robeson is stranded in remote Canada after a plane crash, and must learn survival skills from the ground up, with nothing but the clothes on his back and the titular tool/weapon. Terse, gripping, very harsh in places, it represents the kind of badassery that these days is considered too “dark” by many parents. Who are retards.
The Old Cover: Back in the olden days, they knew how to work with minimalism. We have a stark portrait of our hero, looking solemn and determined. We have a wolf, a plane, trees, the hatchet. What else is needed? This bare-bones collage tells you that you’re holding a book that doesn’t fuck around. It pops out and gets its point across perfectly.
The New Cover: This isn’t as bad as it could have been, but...come on, seriously? The book is called Hatchet so apparently they decided the hatchet was the main character. Instead of something bold and poetic, we get a giant glass axe floating in the middle of waaayyyy too much neon green foliage. This cover, and many others, suffer from what I like to call the “Dirty Windshield Effect,” when a whole lot of shit is superimposed together and it just looks cluttered and grimy. Why are those vertical bars even there? Because it’s “artsy”? Hatchet does not need art direction. I do like how the little wolf is clearly going, “HOLY SHIT, look at this giant fucking hatchet!” But that’s all I like.

CASE FILE #2: ALIEN SECRETS by ANNETTE CURTIS KLAUSE
The Book: The best young-adult sci-fi murder mystery ghost story you’ve never heard of. Set in the far future, it follows a resourceful tomboy who finds herself on a spaceship with a stolen alien artifact to find and an eclectic rogue’s gallery of weirdos who might be the culprit. And there’s alien ghosts and secret agents and even some cute kitties. Why aren’t you reading this?
The Old Cover: Another trend that’s largely vanished is the book cover that actually shows a scene from the book. I know the image quality sucks, but you can still see how awesome everything is. There’s nifty spaceships and a colorful planetscape. There’s a happy alien with a turnip for a head. The heroine is holding what looks like an exploding Twinkie, and there are those ghosts again! This cover is interesting. It grabs you. You want to read the shit out of this, if only to learn WTF is going on here. Also, the girl looks like an actual girl and not an underwear model.
The New Cover: So it’s no longer a slam-bang space adventure; now it’s an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. Our heroine is looking more underwear-modely and is staring slackjawed at an unseen glowing something-or-other. Is it the Holy Grail? Is it the briefcase from Pulp Fiction? Do we care? Yeah, it’s projects a nice sense of mystery, but it’s pretty drab compared to the older art’s explosion of color and coolness. Points for use of a kitty, though.
The Even Newer Cover: Aaaaand there we go. The insufferable, needs-to-die modern trend of plastering blank, puffy-lipped models across the cover of every YA book in the universe. The heroine now looks way too old, has stupid hair, and is framed by...strange curvy lines...that signify nothing. And there again is the Dirty Windshield Effect, with swirling smoke and ghosts that look like leftovers from your high school principal’s lame, chaperoned Halloween party. The kitty’s still there, but it looks ashamed to be caught on such a generic book cover. Who’s gonna want to read this now? It tells you nothing about the story or characters, just “Here is a hot girl and also there’s outer space involved. Woohoo.”

CASE FILE #3: MY TEACHER FRIED MY BRAINS by BRUCE COVILLE
The Book: It’s the second entry in a four-part series about kids discovering their teachers are aliens in disguise. In this one, a dimwitted bully becomes a genius, thanks to an alien experiment. He also learns that he and two classmates are gonna have to save the world. But the aliens aren’t really the bad guys...it’s complicated. And it gets very mature for a kid’s book.
The Old Cover: Gasp! Thrills and chills! Red Sweater Kid is getting his noggin electrified, Mary Jane Watson is really a three-eyed monster, and only Nancy Drew and one Hardy Boy can save the day! Or something like that! This exciting image once again demonstrates the power of A) lots of color, and B) having an actual scene. Doesn’t matter if it’s a scene that appears in the book (in this case, it is not)...you just gotta know what happens! Also, the title font is perfect, invoking old-school sci-fi just as it should.
The New Cover: Wow. That’s...actually kind of horrifying. For some reason, they went with an overly cartoony art style, and the end result may give younger kids nightmares with its depiction of a boy having his soul violently ripped out through his sideburns. Seriously, who looked at that dude’s facial expression and found it funny? On the whole, I dislike this “whacky” style of art because it cheapens the material. It says, “This book is juvenile; do not take it seriously.” Note also the minor title change, which I find oddly insulting. Yes, publisher, we’re smart enough to know that “brain” in the singular is more grammatically correct, but do you think kids give a shit? You already scared them off with the Evil Dead artwork.

CASE FILE #4: SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD by DIANE DUANE
The Book: The hip alternative to Harry Potter, this fantasy adventure (the first in a series) follows two NYC kids who discover they have wizarding powers and must join the world’s spell-casters in fighting death, entropy, and so forth. For my money, it’s actually a bit better than Harry and co., with great young heroes and an interesting, highly technical take on magic.
The Old Cover: Hello, most metal kid’s book in the world! Look at this shit! It’s like the artist was channeling Bosch or something! Cars and helicopters are turning into snarling monsters. A fire hydrant is eating a fucking pigeon. And whatever’s going on with that tree, Lovecraft would approve. All awesome creepiness aside, just bask in the amount of detail poured into the image. These days, people create book covers with some lazy mucking about on a computer. Back then, cover art was ART.
The New Cover: Lazy mucking about on a computer...check. So our heroes are taking a stroll high above the city on...a trail of spoo? Gross. Also, generic. Magical glowy portal things equal fantasy, yay! The original cover told you exactly what sorts of badass shit you were going to find between the pages. This cover screams, “Harry Potter knockoff,” which is hideously unjust as Duane’s series began in 1982. J.K. Rowling was seventeen in 1982, and probably not thinking much about boy wizards. Also, I see a bit of Dirty Windshield going on, yet again.
The Even Newer Cover: I will give them credit for making the kids look age-appropriate, but...a dragon? Just a dragon? Yes, the dragon is in the book, but so are helicopter monsters and sentient stars and a climax wherein all the statues in NYC come to life and kick the ass of a malevolent god. Any one of those things would make for a cooler cover image than a goddamn dragon, aka, one of the laziest of all fantasy tropes. Oh, and there’s that overly cartoony art style, never mind that Duane’s writing is very mature and doesn’t condescend. They’ve taken a great book and made it “Dick and Jane’s Very First Magical Dragon Adventure.”

CASE FILE #5: THE GIVER by LOIS LOWRY
The Book: Oh, you know. Only one of the most iconic kid’s books ever. Long before The Hunger Games and its imitators, this was the original YA sci-fi dystopia, only it was also deeply poetic, profound, and metaphorical. They’re making a movie version that will ignore everything good about the book in favor of wooden teen actors and hovercraft chases. Fuck Hollywood.
The Old Cover: Instantly recognizable and truly perfect. A stark photo of an old, old man, his craggy face carrying all the memories, joys, and tragedies of his species. That hint of trees and snow in the corner, a bit of darkness ripped away to reveal something warm, strange, and long-forgotten. You wouldn’t even know you were looking at a book for children. It gives me goosebumps.
The New Cover: Well, this might have looked nice before someone spilled pea soup everywhere. Here is the worst example of the Dirty Windshield Effect, taking the original image and just smearing and pissing and glopping unwanted filters across it. And even the original image is kind of dumb. Something deep and metaphorical, the passing of memory, is given an overly literal interpretation. “The Giver teaches Jonas about snow and winter and Christmas. Sooooo...maybe have him hand the kid a snowflake? Symbolism?” Nice try, guys.
The Even Newer Cover: What? WHAT? No. Just...fucking no. I hate and loathe everything about this bullshit; it’s everything wrong with the marketing of kid’s books today. Nothing poetic or subtle at all. Even the “handing off the snowflake” nonsense looked kind of pretty. Here we get Jason Bourne’s silhouette running through a tunnel of swirling Kool-Aid, surrounded by distorted stock photos. Bicycles! Trees! An elephant! Why an elephant? Who gives a fuck! Kids are stupid! They don’t read books willingly, so why should we make the books look appealing in any way? The Giver is a thoughtful, slow-paced read, but the publishers are desperately trying to make it look Hunger Games-y because they think kids won’t want it otherwise. Hey, assholes, maybe kids WOULD want to read if you didn’t plaster the stupidest, laziest, most generic “artwork” across the covers of really wonderful books!

And now, just to spite the big publishing houses, here are two kid’s fantasy novels written by my dad:

Were these books a huge success? No. But you know what? When they are on bookstore shelves, adults and kids alike noticed them. Picked them up. Maybe didn’t buy them, but were at least captured by their gorgeous, evocative covers. I theorize that if today’s youth weren’t conditioned to expect dopey teenage hotties and cheap Photoshop effects, they’d all be reading more. A book might be something a child would be proud to carry around and show off. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

If and when I ever become published, for kids or otherwise, I’m gonna have some FUCKING AWWWWWESOME cover art. Wait and watch.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: The Abominable

Here’s one from my third Cautious Enthusiasm list.

I’m a bit bewildered. I thought I was reading a horror novel. Hell, I thought I was reading a novel. What I got was a research manual on old-school mountain climbing that occasionally, grudgingly, allowed some story to intrude. Dan Simmons, WTF happened?

Simmons is an author whose body of work I can recommend in its entirety...except, I guess, for The Abominable. He’s taken effortless leaps from mind-expanding science fiction to Stephen King-y horror to, most recently, the supernatural-historical. Believe me, I was ready for his latest horror-tinged rewriting of famous events, even though I worried that the plot (explorers are stalked by monsters in a remote icy setting) sounded way too much like his earlier novel, The Terror. I shouldn’t have worried. The Abominable has its own, unique set of problems that make it, not an unbearable read, but certainly the worst Dan Simmons novel I’ve read in...ever.

The premise is hooky enough. Back in the 1920s, between the world wars, a race was on to summit Mount Everest (which, with typical colonial smugness, was considered a “British hill”). Said race-to-the-top hit a huge snag in June of 1924 when renowned climber George Mallory and his companion Sandy Irvine vanished near the summit. The details of their fate have remained submerged in mystery (Mallory’s body wasn’t found until 1999), and no one will ever know if they stood atop the world before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay did in 1953. From this ambiguity, Simmons builds his alterna-history, which follows a secret expedition to find the remains of a wayward young noble whom Everest claimed at the same time as Mallory and Irvine. To set this up, the author smudges the borders of fact and fiction. In the introduction, his idea-seed for an Antaractic-set novel leads him to Jake Perry, an elderly climber whose stories give Simmons the motivation for both The Terror and The Abominable. Eventually, we realize that Jake Perry isn’t real -- or, at least, the character in the book isn’t. Did Simmons really meet an elderly climber, or is the “factual” origin of the novel equally false? In any case, it’s not as clever as Simmons thinks it is.

Most of the book is Perry’s account of the secret attempt on Everest, which he undergoes with a haunted British veteran and a super-capable French guide. Their story is utterly buried under piles and piles of RESEARCH. And this is why I didn’t like the book very much: Dan Simmons fell way too in love with his RESEARCH. Readers are assaulted with endless paragraphs describing everything from the mechanics of a Very-brand flare gun to the entire fucking history of British mountaineering. Simmons breaks down the logistics of the climbers’ gear, tents, stoves, weapons, tools, food, and clothing with such drooling fervor that I had to coin the term “equipment porn.” And when it’s not equipment porn, it’s architecture porn: Chapter Two devotes page upon page to the history and features of a wealthy estate that isn’t even important to the plot. I’m not saying research is a bad thing; it usually makes a historical novel richer and more enjoyable. But the sad fact is, a big chunk of The Abominable is simply boring. It takes three hundred pages to get to Mount Everest, and the analogy of trudging up a punishing mountain slope begins to seem perfect for reading this damn thing.

But, yes, eventually our heroes are climbing Everest, accompanied by a badass gentlewoman-adventuress and a doctor who’s basically Indian Jesus, along with a pack of native Sherpas who are on hand whenever someone needs to get killed off. Things get a tad more interesting, but the narrative also spins off in directions that disappointed me. Based on Simmons’ prior work, and based on the book’s title, and based on foreshadowing within the book, you’d think there might be, I dunno, some yetis at some point? Isn’t this a horror novel? Ehhhhh, well, about that. I won’t get into details, but the nature of the “creatures” is not what it’s cracked up to be. And when we realize where the plot’s going, we realize that we should have seen it coming, thanks to Chekov. You bring a gun onstage in Act One, it has to be fired in Act Three. You introduce (SPOILER ALERT) a band of evil Nazis, you damn well make sure they turn up later. The book’s climax is an endless, tedious chase sequence, which reminded me of another thriller I just read, Neal Stephenson’s Reamde. The difference is that Stephenson’s prose was lean, gripping, and witty, while Simmons keeps pausing to show us how much fucking RESEARCH he did. And said research largely consists of characters explaining stuff to each other in the way that nobody does in real life (“Let me pause to tell you the entire history of this German Luger in the context of World War I and beyond!”). After all that, the ending of The Abominable drags, with more architecture porn and cameos from famous historical figures. For some reason.

I have to emphasize that I wasn’t expecting the book to be such a slog. Simmons’ recent novels have certainly featured a ton of research and historical details, but they were also exciting and interesting. With The Abominable, he seems to have been so into the RESEARCH that he forgot how to write a good novel. His prose and dialogue are kinda janky, his characters are likable but stereotyped, his villains are beneath even Indiana Jones, and he falls victim to a lot of age-old clichés (for instance, no one knows the woman is a woman until they meet her, due to a contrived lack of pronouns in earlier dialogue). The Terror was about the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition to the Arctic, and its research was well-woven into its plot, and it had a monster that didn’t feel like a giant lazy cop-out. I’m not sure why Simmons fumbled here. I mean, The Abominable is far from the worst book I’ve ever read; he’s still a good writer and some of the research is interesting. But it’s not up to standard. Why didn’t he just write a nonfiction book about early mountain climbing? It’d attract the right kind of readers and it wouldn’t feel like a betrayal to those of us who value Simmons for his horror fiction. I guess that Simmons, like so many before him, got done in by Mount Everest. I just hope he hasn’t become the frozen corpse of a writer.

VERDICT: Meh.

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Upside Down

It’s another Cautious Enthusiasm post!

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Upside Down. It is just so goddamn EARNEST. It wants to be loved and admired. I mean, hell, it’s a love story! That’s also a science fiction film! With a strong sociopolitical message! I think one problem is that these are three different film genres clamoring for space in a single movie of average length. Me, I like the sci-fi parts best (though they have serious problems; we’ll get to that). I confess to being charmed by this film while admitting that it doesn’t quite work. Like Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou or David Fincher’s Alien 3 or Tarsem Singh’s entire body of work, this is a wonky film that alllllmost works because of its sheer creativity. I mean, you have to like a movie where the hero tells us, with a totally straight face, that the pollen from pink bees is used to make levitating pancakes. But it’s only creative if you ignore the plot.

The big problem with this sci-fi film is that it should have been a fantasy. It takes place on two planets which (astrophysicists, prepare to bite through your pipe stems) orbit side by side, so close they almost touch, each with its own gravity field. This means that the people of one planet can look up and see the other above their heads, inverted. And this, of course, raises a bajillion questions. The movie apparently takes place at the point where the two planets are closest. If they truly are spheroids, then they would gradually curve away from each other. So...what’s life like for all the people who don’t live at the junction? We never find out. Also, wouldn’t the very laws of physics grind both planets to pieces? And do they somehow share one atmosphere? Heck, at one point, the moon is visible. How can there be a moon that close to the junction? Wouldn’t its orbit cause it to smash into one of the planets? And since the opening narration establishes that these are indeed planets, does that mean it’s a movie about aliens? Aliens who look like humans and speak English with American accents? See, none of these questions would matter in a fantasy film, because fantasy has no need to explain itself. Upside Down errs when it applies real-world cosmology to an entirely impossible scenario. I love learning about the weird phenomena of the cosmos, but this is a fucking stretch.

But never mind. The plot! We have two unequal societies, Up Above and Down Below (who the fuck named these planets?). The former is opulent and high-tech, resembling what the future looked like in the 1950s. The latter is a cross between a Terry Gilliam film and the London Blitz; life is hard for the Down Belowers, who must scavenge reverse-gravity material to make a living (this is dangerous, because objects on the wrong planet will eventually combust). Our heroes are named...ugh...Adam and Eden. They’re from separate worlds but they meet as teens, thanks to two kissing mountain peaks. The Powers That Be tear them violently apart, and ten years later, Adam (Jim Sturgess) is attempting to turn his pink bee pollen (snicker) into a cosmetic cream that will give consumers a very literal facelift. When he learns that Eden (Kirsten Dunst) works for a planet-spanning corporation called Transworld, he scores a job there in the hopes of rekindling their forbidden passion. Little does he know that Eden has Convenient Plot Amnesia, the terrible affliction that strikes movie characters who need to forget things so there can be, y’know, conflict and stuff. And the subsequent plot progresses along very familiar lines. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, bad guys chase boy and girl, quirky supporting characters are quirky, fairy tale ending. Credits.

Upside Down has to sell itself on its special effects, and they don’t disappoint. Seeing the trailer was what got me excited, but I worried that the trailer showed the only good bits. Not to fret. The dual-world visuals are exploited to the max, and look astounding. They used every trick in the book to create their topsy-turvy aesthetic. The entire film is somewhat impressionistic, and definitely owes a lot to French surrealism; everything is dreamlike and heavily color-filtered (which, of course, further hurts the quaint notion that this is science fiction). From the creative, elegant opening credits to the inverted architecture...oh, yes, the movie’s a treat for the eyes. The gravitational magic trick never falters, and some effects are wonderfully subtle: when a man smokes a cigar on Floor Zero, the center of the Transworld building, the smoke roils in midair, trapped between the two gravity fields. Adam dons weighted clothes to help him move about Up Above, and when he removes them, he falls upwards and sticks to celings. There’s even a peeing joke. Watch Upside Down for the effects alone.

Just don’t expect much else. The rules of gravity may be constant but other rules are not. Contact between the worlds is so verboten that you could be arrested, have your house burned down, even be hanged for breaking the law...and yet, when the main characters are caught canoodling (more than once), they seem to get off scot free. Basically, story convenience wins out: Adam’s combustible antigravity clothes do not combust with any regularity, and Eden is of course destined to regain her lost memories at the exact point when it’s time for some backlit kissyface. Security is super-tight at Transworld, yet absolutely no one notices Adam scampering about after hours, doing highly illegal things with classified materiel. The subplot about Adam’s magical facelift cream could be its own movie, but it’s unclear as to how it works, or doesn’t work, or whether Adam’s trying to strike it rich, or whether he’s trying to stick it to the man, or where he keeps his secret stash of pink bees (snicker). The token third-act crisis when Everything Seems Hopeless is rather abruptly resolved, and the fairy tale ending is rushed and essentially discards everything that just happened, because TWOO WUV AWWAYS WINS, D’AWWWWWW. Blech. It’s romantic sludge in a setting that deserves better. Jim Sturgess also deserves better; the character of Adam is a stammering, giggling, abashed manboy with hair like a rat’s nest who is quite frankly a pain in the caboose. Kirsten Dunst is more lovable, but her Eden is so idealized she might as well be flapping her snow-white wings and tooting a golden trumpet. Luckily, the invaluable Timothy Spall is on hand to class things up as Adam’s friendly coworker. Nobody else in the movie is at all interesting.

In the end, is Upside Down a trippy sci-fi adventure? A Romeo and Juliet redux? A pointed commentary on the haves and the have-nots? A rags-to-riches tale about a boy and some pink bees (snicker)? It wants to be all these things at once. It’s best when its exploring the rules and physics of its world(s), worst when the characters are sticking their doe-eyed faces into each other’s personal space and spouting romantic goop from their pieholes. I know it’s supposed to be a timeless tale, and there’s a reason romance is always the top seller at Barnes & Noble, but that same reason is why Upside Down doesn’t quite work. Because it builds an amazing concept and then settles for the lowest common denominator. That said, I liked it. I recommend it to lovers of visually beautiful movies. Just...brace yourself for the DERP factor.

FINAL VERDICT: A squee for the effects and a big old raspberry for everything else.

Top 10 Plot Twists (pt. 2)

WARNING: SO MANY SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW. EACH ENTRY ON THIS LIST IS A BIG OLD SPOILER. IT CAN RUIN YOUR DAY IF YOU LET IT. PROCEED WITH GREAT CAUTION. BRING A BLINDFOLD.

So I wrote a top ten list of my favorite plot twists in movies, books, TV, and games. And here’s another twist: it wasn’t enough! Sequel time! I’ve thought of a bunch more unexpected story turns that left me amazed, or stunned, or delighted, in some way. My timing is good because the new season of Game of Thrones is starting up, and soon enough, King Joffrey will get married to Margaery Tyrell, and...well, let’s just say it’s going to be yet another wedding that’ll make folks lose their shit. Can’t wait!

Please enjoy...

DANG-BLASTED’S TOP TEN PLOT TWISTS, PART DEUX

American Horror Story: It’s an Anthology
This first entry is very unusual, because it’s not really a plot twist per se. More like...a twist about plots? I think it belongs here because it had a similar effect on our expectations. Season One of American Horror Story wound up as it wound down, with all kinds of supernatural mayhem. Violet Harmon’s discovery that she’d been dead for several episodes was easy to telegraph, but by the season finale, the entire Harmon family had become cozy domestic ghosts. So Season Two would showcase a new family moving into the same haunted house, right? NOPE! Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk waited that long to spring the news (in between puckish cackles, I assume) that their horror show was a horror anthology and every season would tell a self-contained story all of its own. Some people whined about that (we’ll never know what happened with Jessica Lange’s adopted killer Antichrist baby!), but most were thrilled that we’d been fooled, and that AHS was going to hit us with different horror homages every year. It’s a “twist” that’s kept on giving.

Arkham City: The Joker Hires a Stand-In; Dies Anyway
I knew about this twist in advance, which kinda sucked, but enabled me to appreciate all the clues and foreshadowing. Of the many, many subplots pinballing around in Batman: Arkham City, one deals with the fact that the Joker’s dying of a virus. But...it’s the Joker! Yeah, the game perma-kills several Batman villains, but...it’s the JOKER! When he makes a miraculous comeback partway through, we’re both mystified and oddly relieved. Only, if you pay really close attention, you might guess the truth, which is that the Joker recruited the shapeshifting Clayface to impersonate him. Dun dun DUNNNN! Okay, now where’s the last-minute save? It’s...not there. Batman defeats Clayface, the last vial of antidote is lost, and the Joker dies. He fucking dies for realsies, and it’s such an unexpected thing that even Batman is left kinda traumatized. I mean, what will he do without the villain who all but defines him? It was a great swansong for Joker-voicer Mark Hamill and a great way to show how comic book rules are for the weak.

Final Fantasy X: Being Dead Is One Thing, But Imaginary?
“I’ve been dead this whole time!” An overdone twist if ever there was one. Leave it to Final Fantasy to offer a very unusual alternative within one of its typically bizarro plots. Tidus, the hero of FFX, is a spoiled athlete from the high-tech city of Zanarkand, and when the city’s destroyed, he is catapulted far into the future. Or so he thinks. Something weird is going on with poor whiny Tidus, and we don’t figure out what until very late in the game, when we learn that Tidus isn’t a ghost, he’s a fucking imaginary person. To condense an extremely convoluted explanation, there are these mystical entities known as the Fayth, human souls locked in a dreamlike stasis, and you wanna know what they’re dreaming about? Zanarkand, the long-destroyed city. And when the need arises, an individual from the dream, Tidus, is booted into the real world to be a savior. Don’t ask me how the hell it works; just know that I was delighted to have my expectations upended. Oh, and it turns out another character, Auron, really has been dead the whole time. Just in case y’all weren’t confused enough.

Identity: The Man Who Wasn’t There
Identity is a neatly underrated little horror/thriller from 2003 in which John Cusack, Ray Liotta, and a bunch of other rubes are trapped in a remote motel during a thunderstorm, and start to die horribly. Pretty typical Agatha Christie fare...only why do some of the deaths seem like improbable accidents rather than murder? And why can’t anyone leave the motel? And why is there a seemingly unrelated subplot involving a condemned murderer whose therapist is making a last-minute attempt to get him off? Did he kill the people at the motel? Nope. It’s quite simple, actually: the murderer is the people at the motel. All of them. He has multiple personality disorder and his doctor is subjecting him to a procedure intended to purge all but one identity. The people at the motel symbolize this process. It’s a great fucking reveal. The twist about who the killer is (it’s the cute little kid!) might be silly on its own, but in the overall context, it’s just the final piece in a very awesome puzzle. It’s also creepy as fuck. “As I was walking down the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there...”

InFamous: Does the Bad Guy Seem Oddly Familiar?
“I’m you from the future!” Yet another twist that’s been done to death, to the point where it’s now mostly employed as comedy. InFamous, however, took it seriously enough to effectively pull the wool over my eyes and make my jaw drop at the big post-final-boss-fight reveal. As the electro-powered Cole McGrath attempts to save (or subjugate) Fake New York City, he quickly learns that someone has been pulling his strings the whole time, puppet-mastering events to turn Cole into a tortured Jesus/Rambo figure. Main baddie Kessler, the sinister and mysterious leader of the Second Sons, knows just how to push Cole’s buttons, as well he should. Yep, he’s Cole from the future -- a future in which civilization is in ruins and Cole/Kessler has lost everyone he ever cared about. The horrible irony is that in order to avert tragedy, Kessler must cause it, turning Cole into a darker, more ruthless avenger than Kessler ever was. When Cole realizes the truth about everything, it drives home the point that there’s really nothing super about being a superhero. Reality’s too cruel.

My Teacher Flunked the Planet: There’s Only One Human Being
This extremely interesting and profound twist was well-hidden inside a children’s book. I didn’t quite get it as a kid; now I think it’s beautiful. Bruce Coville’s series about aliens disguising themselves as schoolteachers started out fluffy but got super-serious, and the fourth and final book is about no less than the fate of Humanity. Basically, an alliance of advanced alien races is considering blowing Earth to smithereens, that’s how appalled they are by the Human tendency toward violence, genocide, and self-destruction. Three Human kids have to be Earth’s defense lawyers. Tall order. But then our young heroes discover something amazing: Humans share a collective consciousness. Technically, we are a single entity in billions of bodies, but as we developed civilization, each individual body built up mental barriers, shutting itself off from the single great brain. And that’s why we as a species are such assholes: because we all know, on a subconscious level, that we are missing something crucial. That we are not alone; we are all part of the single Human Being. And if we could tear the walls back down and become a collective mind once again, we would have limitless potential. Let me reiterate that all this is in a children’s book. So let’s not condescend to kiddie lit. Well, unless it’s about lovelorn vampires.

A Night In Terror Tower: Oh, I Just Can’t Wait to Be King
More kiddie lit! Alright, the Goosebumps books were never very profound. They were kinda dumb. But author R.L. Stine did love his third-act twists; hell, he did “I’ve been dead the whole time!” long before it was cool. A Night In Terror Tower is about two American siblings, Sue and Eddie, being all touristy in London. While visiting the titular edifice, they get chased by a creepy executioner, discover alarming gaps in their memories, and travel back in time. What could it all mean??!! Maybe grown-up me could have figured it out, but ten-year-old me was blown away to learn that “Eddie” and “Sue” were Prince Edward and Princess Susannah of York, sent forward in time by a friendly sorcerer and given modified memories to spare them from a bloody coup. The discovery that our snarky modern preteens were actually medieval royals was awesome, and the TV adaptation (seen above) did a fantastic job of bringing the twist to visual life. (How convenient, that the magic spell also covered the kids’ clothing and accents!) It ain’t great art, but it gets a heap of nostalgia points.

Passage: Main Character is Perturbed to Find Herself Dead
This is kind of a distant cousin to the Chrono Trigger entry from my first list o’ twists: you don’t expect the main character of a story to get killed off two-thirds of the way through, especially when there’s no indication they’ll come back. However, Chrono did come back (in some endings, anyway), whereas the heroine of Connie Willis’s novel Passage ain’t so lucky. The book is an endearing mix of supernatural mystery and screwball comedy, as psychologist Joanna Lander struggles to unlock the secrets of near-death experiences and eventually starts inducing them via drugs. Startlingly, her own NDEs all involve being aboard the Titanic, which turns out to be a metaphor for the body’s attempt to save itself. But then Joanna dies. Permanently. For realsies. Only she keeps on existing within the narrative, because the book’s final act gets into metaphysical territory that’s actually pretty cool. When you’re done, you realize that the whole book was about Joanna’s death, in one way or another. This is why people read books more than once.

Star Trek TNG: See You In 500 Years
I find this twist just...sweet. Simple, yet profound in a personal way. It’s basically the culmination of the unique relationship between Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the USS Enterprise, and Guinan, the centuries-old alien bartender. Guinan is never hugely important to the plot, but her wisdom and sense of humor make her a great recurring character and she hints that something very special exists between her and Picard. All is revealed in a two-part episode (“Time’s Arrow”) during which the Enterprise crew visits 19th-century San Francisco. See, Guinan happened to be living there at the time, and thus, the first “meeting” between her and Picard took place after Picard had known her future self for some time. Thus, Guinan spent centuries knowing she was destined to become Picard’s friend. It’s an entirely character-driven twist and the relationship between said characters is so understated, yet so effective. I wish Whoopi Goldberg hadn’t sunk her own career in kiddie bullshit, because she’s good. She’s goooood.

The X-Files: Leonard Wants a New Big Brother
Well, this final twist ain’t profound, but what the hell, I like it anyway. In “Humbug,” a classic episode of our favorite 90s cult sci-fi procedural, Mulder and Scully visit a town populated by ex-circus performers, some of whom are getting killed and mutilated. Best rogue’s gallery ever, dude! Is it the bearded lady? The tattooed creep who eats raw fish? The Fiji Mermaid? What about the alcoholic bellhop with the dead conjoined twin attached to his torso? Well, we’re getting warmer, actually. In a gross and creative twist, the killer is, in fact, the conjoined twin, whose name is Leonard and who tears himself loose from his big bro to prowl the night. The bellhop is dying, see, and Leonard only desires a new person to cling to. Too bad it’s an impossible dream. Family really is everything, I guess. Seriously, WTF. This twist is so bizarre that I had to put it here. The X-Files could be great that way; I prefer stuff like this to black oil and conspiracies.

Okay, time to fess up. These are all my least favorite twists. I hate them all. Fooled you! No, not really. Um, I’m actually not Dang-Blasted. I’m his long-lost Hungarian cousin, and I killed him and stole his identity. No? Not buying it? Plot twists are hard to pull off, which is why I love it so much when a work of fiction manages to fool me. I honestly don’t mind if people skip this list, because maybe then they can be fooled too. Fooled in the best of ways.

To Squee Or Not to Squee, vol. 4

Another year, another cornucopia of upcoming (or recently released) pop culture events by which to get potentially excited. Just to remind folks, these are all things that I’m looking forward to experiencing, while at the same time dreading for one reason or another. Sometimes, when you reach into the barrel of pickles, you get an electric eel. No idea where that analogy came from. There’s a tenuous theme this time: science fiction and the cosmos! So it’s only fitting to call this post:

C4UTIOUS ENTHUSI4SM 4: SP4CE 4DVENTURES

American Gods: The TV Show
WHAT IT IS: With no exaggeration, I consider Neil Gaiman’s American Gods to be not only one of the best examples of modern fantasy, but one of the finest 21st-century novels, period. It’s a whirlwind of gods, mortals, and stranger beings; it’s a love letter to Americana; it’s a murder mystery. It’s a masterpiece, which is not a term I just toss out. And it’s apparently gonna be a TV show! Someday. Maybe.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Because American Gods is a novel that cries out for this type of serialization. Tons of main and recurring characters, interesting subplots, a lot of fantasy but not a lot of crazy special-effects crap. A high concept in a largely urban setting. Thanks to Game of Thrones, the mega-budgeted TV epic is no longer a pipe dream. And you don’t have to be a mythology buff to appreciate modern-day incarnations of Odin, Loki, Anansi, Anubis, Kali, and other such deities. It’ll have something for everyone. And everything for me!
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Well, besides the usual potential for cock-ups, the status of the show is a wee bit tenuous. HBO originally nabbed it, which would have been perfect, but then they dropped it and now it belongs to FremantleMedia, the folks behind American Idol. Okay, they’ve done a lot more than that, but I would’ve preferred HBO because this is not a story that can be watered down. Okay? It can’t. Make it into another Supernatural and I will kill you all, TV network people. This is almost my favorite book of all time and I expect you to blow me away with delight. Is that too much to ask?
SQUEE FACTOR: 9
DANGER LEVEL: 9

Broken Age
WHAT IT IS: It’s the thing that made people realize the world is now ruled by Kickstarter. Well, in part. Tim Schafer, the man behind such gaming gems as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango, and Psychonauts, decided to raise money for a modern-day point-and-click adventure, and wound up with more moolah than many world charities. Hence, Broken Age, a game following both a young man in the future and a young woman in a fantasy realm. The game’s first act has recently been released.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I thrive on games like this -- artsy puzzlers with real atmosphere. Some people say point-and-click is obsolete. I say, eat a dick strudel. I love Schafer’s work and it gives me such hope that so many people are willing to pay to support a new, “traditional” game from him. This could start a true rebirth of the genre!
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Unfortunately, it seems like the old ways are lost. Modern point-and-clickers, even good ones like The Cave, often seem scared to alienate anyone by being too difficult. By contrast, a game like Monkey Island could keep you puzzling for hours, and that was the damn point. I’ve heard Broken Age is pretty easy, which isn’t entirely a bad thing if the writing and design are topnotch. But I still fret. Also, I fucking hate the new trend for releasing games in installments. I do not fucking want to play half the game and then wait around. I fucking want the entire fucking product. Which is the main reason I haven’t bought Broken Age yet. Ugh...it frustrates me. Don’t get me wrong, I plan to love the hell out of this game. I just insist on holding it to an unfair standard. I must be aging.
SQUEE FACTOR: 8
DANGER LEVEL: 5

UPDATE: I played Act I of the game! Read about it here.
UPDATE 2: My post on Act II can be found here.

Cute Fuzzy Video Game Movies
WHAT THEY ARE: At first, this entry was just about the Ratchet & Clank movie coming out in 2015. And then along came the trailer for 2016’s Sly Cooper flick. Good lord. Two game franchises I love, both starring charismatic furballs, both getting the big-screen treatment. By the same film studio. It’s a sinister plot!
WHY I’M EXCITED: Well, not only do I adore these two series, I feel like both of them could use a jump-start. Ratchet’s been twiddling his oversized thumbs. Sly just had a fun new game that, I fear, wasn’t successful enough to warrant another sequel. But if their movies take off...it might open the door for awesome new gaming. Plus, of course, both films look like they’ll be fun, silly, exciting, and overall faithful to the source material.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Besides the fact that most of Rainmaker Entertainment’s oeuvre consists of Barbie films? I guess I just fear that nobody will take these seriously. In today’s animated feature film world, you have to work your ass off to compete with the likes of Pixar and Dreamworks. Will these films even snag a theatrical release? If they do, I have different qualms about each. Based on its trailer, the Ratchet film looks like an extended video game cutscene, and it’s also an origin story, which’ll be exasperating to us fans. (Ratchet started out as a real douchebag...) Meanwhile, the Sly film features a massive redesign of the characters (my God, they gave Sly PANTS!) that could alienate the fanbase. And both will have to appeal to the uninitiated. And, again, Barbie films.
SQUEE FACTOR: 5
DANGER LEVEL: 7

X-Men: Days of Future Past
WHAT IT IS: Hang on, is there an Avengers movie this year? No? Okay, then this might just be the big honking superhero event of 2014! Somehow tying together all the X-Men movies, this epic escapade sees Prof. Xavier, Magneto, Wolverine, Storm, Mystique, and the rest of the mutant gang travel back in time to avert a horrific future caused by mutant-hunting robots created by Peter Dinklage. Did I really just write that sentence?
WHY I’M EXCITED: Mostly out of shock. I like the X-Men movies but they are all the fuck over the place in quality, and after the confused mound of misfortune that was X-Men 3: The Last Stand, it seemed like the main franchise was kaput. So I was utterly bewildered (in a good way) when they not only lured back original director Bryan Singer, but also got so many cast members to return! It feels like the Greatest Hits album of the franchise, and it’s dealing with a very beloved story arc from the comics, not to mention introducing fan favorites like Bishop and Quicksilver. Bottom line, this might well be the incredible world-shaking X-Men spectacle that The Last Stand tried and failed to be. It’s a miracle that this project came together and I hope for its sweet miracle juice to spurt from theater screens.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: On the flip side, this looks like it could be a trainwreck more historical than the Old 97. One of the series’ biggest problems is having too many mutants bloating the storyline, and Days of Future Past will have more mutants than ever before. Original superteam plus younger prequel team plus a bunch of newcomers? Yeah, remember how Mystique had like three minutes of screen time in The Last Stand? It may be like that, only worse. A HUGE warning siren already went off when they revealed that Anna Paquin’s Rogue has been entirely cut from the fucking movie during the editing process. So, no biggie, we’re just treating our beloved main characters like disposable resources. This film is a bomb waiting to explode, but when it does, will it shower us with glory or decaying whale blubber? Jump-start the franchise or dip it in cement and bury it forever?
SQUEE FACTOR: 8
DANGER LEVEL: 10

UPDATE: I watched it! Read my reaction here.

Guardians of the Galaxy
WHAT IT IS: Hold the phone, perhaps this is the big honking superhero event of 2014, though the term “hero” must be used loosely. The Marvelverse is reaching out to its more eccentric properties and exposing us to this, a kooky space adventure featuring a team of lawless mercs that includes a humanoid tree, a trigger-happy raccoon, and Zoe Saldana with green skin. Basically, if you had no clue what was happening after the credits of Thor: The Dark World......this. This was happening.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I like weird. Nay, I have a massive love affair with weird. And I’m super-chuffed that Marvel’s biggest movie event of the year is something so kooky, anarchic, random, and WTFish. Hell, I never even read the source comic and I still think this looks awesome. As we’ve learned from Master Downey Jr. and Master Hiddleston, the Marvel movies are best when they mix action with humor, and GotG does that in spades, with extra humor. Also, it looks like they’re staying true to the comic (for instance, Rocket Raccoon is not a cuddly-wuddly mascot; he’s a mean, ruthless badass). Just watch the trailer and tell me it didn’t make you grin. All the message-board people going “Baww, this looks retarded!” can fuck off, because they said the same thing about The Avengers and look how that turned out.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: I’m not. Not really. Well, maybe a little. This film could fall into the trap of trying too hard. “Look, something funny and random! Aren’t we clever?! BE AMUSED!” I’ve seen that happen enough times. Action plus yuks can equal poison. But the Marvel films are the cure. I’m confident that this rude, oddball cousin will fit right into the family. And maybe one day...dare I imagine...a Guardians/Avengers crossover? Oh, my stars and garters.
SQUEE FACTOR: 9
DANGER LEVEL: 2

UPDATE: I watched it! Read my reaction here.

Obduction
WHAT IT IS: A new game by the creative team that made Myst. It’s a first-person puzzler, like Myst, in which a mysterious object transports you to a cryptic world. Like Myst. Another crowdfunded project, details on this remain scarce, but I hear it might be a lot like Myst.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Omigod. Omigod, you guys. Did I or did I not write an entire series of blog posts about Myst and its sequels and legacy? Do you have any idea of my reaction when I learned about Obduction? I may have screamed a bit. This is my new favorite thing to watch breathlessly for updates. I love the concept art they’ve released thus far. I love that they’re keeping the focus on puzzles and exploration. See, I told you games like this will never die! This one’s powered by the Unreal engine and seems to have a vaguely steampunkish flavor, and absolutely everything about it makes me happy. When it comes out, I will take any steps to ensure I can play it right away. Including buying a whole new fucking laptop, if need be.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: In my last Cautious Enthusiasm post, I mentioned that it’s sometimes awkward when an artist returns to their defining work after a long absence. I want the makers to remember what they did right, and not compromise their vision at all. There’s no real reason to assume this won’t kick ass. I’m just paranoid because this game’s a dream come true. I’m afraid it’s going to pop like a soap bubble. I’ll feel better after I go play some more Submachine.
SQUEE FACTOR: Over 9000
DANGER LEVEL: 2

Interstellar
WHAT IT IS: Christopher Nolan’s next film. And we all know who that is. I don’t even have to mention that he directed the recent Batman trilogy, Inception, and Memento. You already know that. Interstellar will be about a group of cosmonauts (including Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, and Anne Hathaway) who set out to explore a wormhole.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Everyone else is, so why shouldn’t I be? Nolan is a darling at the moment, with a reputation for mixing intense action with artfulness and Big Ideas, dragging the action/adventure genre out of the pits of inanity. Even his weaker films (like The Prestige) are a cut above average. Like Inception before it, Interstellar is being kept under wraps and projects a great cloak of mystery; all the first trailer told us was that rocket ships are cool. We’ll be learning more as the year progresses, and I’m pretty confident that the final film will be exciting, brainy, and profound.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Every great director fumbles now and then. Spielberg had his 1941. Scorsese had his Gangs of New York. Shyamalan had his Everything After Unbreakable. Will Nolan finally drop the ball? I mean, if it’s too nerdy, the drooling masses will be scared away, but if it’s too dumb, we’ll feel betrayed. Plenty of people like to point at Nolan’s work and scream, “Overrated!” and the things he’s often accused of -- weak female characters, plots that don’t hold up to logic, pretentiousness -- will probably resurface here. And you can’t make a sci-fi action film and not tell anyone what it’s about; we learned that from the tragic fate of John Carter. So let’s not crown this with accolades until we know more about it, mmmkay?
SQUEE FACTOR: 8
DANGER LEVEL: 4

UPDATE: I watched it! Read my reaction here.

More Freaking Harry Potter Films (Sort Of)
WHAT IT IS: You thought the franchise was dead? Fool, it NEVER dies! Yep, there’s gonna be more Potter films, though they won’t be about Harry himself. Next up is an adaptation of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the popular textbook/field guide that J.K. Rowling published IRL. The film will be set in the early 20th century and will focus on Newt Scamander, famed wizard zoologist and “author” of the text. Google “Newt Scamander” and you’ll find many, many photos of Benedict Cumberbatch, so I guess we know how the fans swing.
WHY I’M EXCITED: Hey, Harry Potter is fun. I never said it wasn’t. I’m excited to see a Potterverse story set in the past; Rowling has clearly plotted out the entire freaking history of her world, and this gives both her and the filmmakers the opportunity to explore deeper. Also, something tells me Fantastic Beasts may have a lighter, more whimsical tone, and I’m down with that. I mean, the later Potter films were very good, but all that gray, drippy grimness wears on you after awhile. This could be something younger kids will like, while still bringing the wit that appeals to adult viewers. And I agree: Cumberbatch.
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: Welllll....the first two Potter films were very light and whimsical, and they were also absolute rubbish, ignoring atmosphere in favor of carefully checking off plot points. Fantastic Beasts won’t have to worry about such things, but that leads to another problem: the book is a fucking field guide. It is literally just a list of weird creatures -- fun to read, yes, but to adapt into something with a plot and characters and stuff? Turning it into a film seems a bit like a forced attempt to get more moolah from a franchise that has already reaped bajillions. And where do you go from there? Quidditch Through the Ages might be neat, but...Tales of Beedle the Bard? Give me a break. I worry that twenty years from now, a withered J.K. Rowling is going to be wheezing, “Great news! They’re remaking the entire original series from Percy’s point of view!” I’m all in favor of a movie about magical monsters, but don’t create a monster.
SQUEE FACTOR: 7
DANGER LEVEL: 6

The Playstation 4
WHAT IT IS: Oh, come on.
WHY I’M EXCITED: I’m just hardcore enough of a gamer to get all worked up over a new console generation, and my loyalty has been to Sony ever since I watched a friend play Shadow of the Colossus. They misstepped a bit with the PS3, but now it seems like they might be on the right track, helped along by the fact that Microsoft hilariously shot themselves in the balls by attempting to present the Xbox One as a combination Facebook app, creepy stalker, and money-burning device. Because it’s about the FUCKING GAMES, guys. And the PS4 has some cool-looking ones. The Witness. InFamous 3. Rime. And...maybe...one day...if God is merciful...The Last Guardian. For that alone, I want a goddamn PS4. I want to help it win the 8th-gen war. So far, the Wii U is too gimmicky and the Xbox One has already become the Newt Gingrich of consoles. Go, Sony!
WHY I’M SKEPTICAL: I can’t make any real predictions yet -- especially now, when console exclusivity is a thing of the past. Consoles always seem to disappoint with their starting lineup, probably because game studios don’t know when the console shift will happen and often have to hurriedly revamp an in-development game, with painful results. Believe me, I will be getting a PS4. But not for awhile. I have a whole bunch of PS3 games I haven’t even gotten around to yet, and just because the 8th-gen graphics look great doesn’t mean the gameplay is any good. The PS4 needs to prove itself before I’ll take it seriously, and its victory over Microsoft is due mainly to the fact that Microsoft went first at E3. Wait and watch. And never let your guard down. To be a console gamer is to be paranoid.
SQUEE FACTOR: For the games, 9 or 10. For the console, too early to say.
DANGER LEVEL: It goes to eleven.

So, these should keep me busy. If I totally run out of ideas for blog posts, at least I’ll still have my Cautious Enthusiasm series. Don’t forget to check the old lists for updates (here, here, and here). And stay optimistic, because I’ve found that my enthusiasm pays off more often than not. Woohoo!

To Squee Or Not to Squee: Bobby Dollar

I’m working on a fourth Cautious Enthusiasm post, but in the meantime, here’s something from the first list!

I love to read, but there are very few authors of whom I can say I’ve read their entire body of work. Hell, I worship Neil Gaiman, but I’ve never gotten around to Stardust, mainly because it looks like something silly he scribbled down in between official projects. But talk to me about Tad Williams. I dare you. I’ve read every damn adult novel he’s ever published, and loved each one. It’s partly because, rather than whip out a bookshelf’s worth of quickies, he’s published a modest number of books, all of which are gi-freaking-gantic. I suspect he’d feel unworthy of his ancestors if he ever published a book that had fewer than four hundred pages. And I devour long books like Adam Richman devours Texas-themed steakhouse challenges. Williams is probably best known for traditional fantasy, but the man ain’t content with a single genre. Thus far, he’s written three series: Memory, Sorrow & Thorn (Tolkien-style high fantasy), Otherland (ridiculously epic cyberpunk), and Shadowmarch (more Tolkien-style high fantasy), as well as the standalone novels Tailchaser’s Song (like Watership Down but with cats and way weirder) and The War of the Flowers (best described as “fairy tales meet heavy metal”). Now he’s doing something brand-new. Well, to him.

It’s urban fantasy! A genre I find slightly tiresome because...well...it tends to all look and sound the same to me. Oh, look, we’re in a noir cityscape and everything is dark and gritty, but there’s also supernatural creatures and magic and shit! I’d put Tolkien-style as the most overdone fantasy genre, but urban is close behind. That’s why I was cautiously enthusiastic: I knew I’d enjoy anything by Williams, but the idea of badass angels and demons who keep silver-bullet-shooting magnums in their trench coats is so tired. Hellblazer did it. Dresden Files did it. Night Watch did it. China Miéville has done it several times in several ways. Those are just the examples I don’t have to look up. And let’s not forget that the current market is swamped with repetitive romantic tripe in which some streetwise woman or girl is armpit-deep in vampires, werewolves, demons, immortals, faeries, genetically enhanced superhunks, blah blah blah blah blah. I really wanted Tad Williams to try a less abundant genre. But we’re resigned, so how does his “Bobby Dollar” series compare?

Based on one book, I like it fine. If it’s gonna embrace urban/biblical fantasy clichés, at least it does so with some flair. Our hero is Bobby Dollar, a wry, likable dude who inhabits the parched, history-stung metropolis of San Judas, California. Bobby’s seen a lot in his life...and his afterlife. You see, his official name is Doloriel and he’s an angel. Heaven, Hell, angels, demons -- all exist. Thankfully, Williams doesn’t waste time with logical explanations for any of it. It all just is, and your average mortal is conditioned to ignore the celestial and infernal beings duking it out right under his or her honker. Bobby is an advocate, basically a divine lawyer, who appears on behalf of the recently-deceased and argues that they should go to Heaven rather than Hell. When he’s not working, he hangs out with his angel buddies and drives gorgeous old cars. As you’d expect, weird things start happening. Certain deceased souls are beginning to vanish, and neither Heaven nor Hell knows where they’re going. A demonic advocate is horribly murdered. A monstrous shadow-beast begins hunting Bobby to the ground. There’s a mysterious MacGuffin that everyone seems to think Bobby possesses, even though he doesn’t even know what it is. There’s a love triangle, complicated by the fact that one of the female elements is a drop-dead gorgeous demon. There’s gunplay and sex and comic relief and a tangled plot with many red herrings. It all gets the job done.

I admire Williams’ ability to change his narrative voice. He excels at the overly arch fantasy tone (“I am undone, sir!” cried Briony tremulously. “Would that I could but know your true feelings!”), but with Bobby Dollar, he shifts easily into a modern, snarky voice. I believe this is the first book he’s ever written with a first-person narrator, but you wouldn’t know it. Bobby’s a fun guy, wisecracking but never grating. His love affair with San Judas is palpable, and his flair for rule-breaking is refreshing if typical. Williams surrounds him with an entertaining mix of angels, demons, ghosts, clueless mortals, and even stranger entities (Bobby’s information broker is a reverse were-hog; it’s complicated). As with most noir, there’s a long list of possible suspects, and it’s likely that more than one dirty deed is underway, and everyone has a secret to tell, and so forth. The difference is that Bobby knows the clichés himself, and keeps his damn eyes open. Well, most of the time. The narrative gets a bit weaker in the second half when Bobby gets cozy with the aforementioned gorgeous demon. He does that annoying thing that male protagonists do where he can’t get over his romantic conquest, and -- recite with me! -- the more she pushes him away, the more he wants her. Because women, even strong women, are somehow defined by how much a man wants them. Come on, Tad, that’s old-school chauvinism, and the annoying thing is, it’s possible he’s doing it on purpose because it’s another noir archetype. The Hero and the Dangerous Woman. Tale as old as time.

Anyway. I still wish Williams had tried something off the beaten path, but his take on urban noir fantasy is quite enjoyable. The Dirty Streets of Heaven is the first in a trilogy about Bobby’s escapades, and the ending solves the mysteries that need solving while establishing the footwork for the sequels. I’ll read them for sure. Honestly, Tad Williams would have to drop the ball pretty hard for me to not read his work. I respect him for genre-hopping, for crafting incredible epics, and for keeping fantasy literature from sliding entirely into the mire of Forgotten Realms bullshit. Keep fighting the good fight. Maybe I’ll be able to join you one day.

VERDICT: Holy squee.

Dang-Blasted Video Game Theories

Dang-Blasted Video Game Theories

Know what I haven’t heard much about recently? That debate over whether video games can be art. I’d ask if my side won, but during the debate it became pretty clear that everyone was gonna have to agree to disagree. It all depends on whether you believe art can only exist for its own sake, and whether anything with an “agenda” or “use” loses the right to be art. I don’t believe that. I believe a video game, a car, a building, or a gourmet dinner can be art if they stir our senses and emotions. I think history will prove me right. Sorry, Roger Ebert. I love you but you were wrong.

On a somewhat related note, some of the games I played last year stirred my brainbox, and I found myself developing some interesting theories about stuff in the games that went unsaid. Hell, most of my theories are no doubt completely wrong and serve only to demonstrate how even a video game can have multiple interpretations. You know, like ART. Please enjoy these odd little interpretive suggestions; I’m proud of them.

SPOILERS AHEAD! WATCH YOURSELF!

Anodyne: The Game Is About Making a Game

Anodyne is one weird little trinket of a game -- a fake-retro adventure in the style of, say, early Legend of Zelda in which you play an archetypal hero saving an archetypal realm from evil -- armed only with a broom. The game absolutely refuses to make sense. The overworld is pretty standard -- green fields, cliffs, desert -- but from it you access some utterly bizarre realms, such as a black-and-white suburbia populated by ghosts and dead bodies, and a trippy sci-fi fortress ruled by friendly talking pyramids. There is no thematic or spatial connection between these areas. Many of the characters and bosses speak as if they’re ordinary people in some dude’s ordinary life. Are you that dude? Since the main character never talks, we don’t know. If you die and then decline to continue the game, you appear in a plain-looking bedroom. So is the whole game a dream? A metaphor? If the latter, what the fuck does it signify? The game’s so obtuse that you could pick any explanation you wanted.

And here is mine. I believe that Anodyne is about the creative process -- the very act of making a game (or a novel, or a painting; pick your poison). I believe this because I am a writer of fiction, and the arc of Anodyne is familiar to me. You construct a story, beginning with stock elements, then embellishing the framework with distinct details. Some stuff doesn’t work, while other stuff appears from nowhere and surprises you with its brilliance. You work in elements from your own life, facts you find interesting, people who become characters. The initial idea may be altered and twisted beyond what you imagined. It’s like the guys who made Anodyne just took every idea they had, every boxcar in their train of thought, and stuck it in there to demonstrate where the process of gamemaking took them. They got frustrated, they slacked off, they changed their minds -- and it all went into the final product. That’s pretty metaphysical and probably too corkscrewy of an explanation, but like I said, this game refuses to explain itself. So why not? It’s a game about a game.

God of War III: Athena Isn’t Real

In the third God of War installment, main protagonist Kratos kills all the Greek gods. Allllll the Greek gods. (Well, except for Aphrodite, who merely gets done in by Kratos’ presumably tiny penis.) He is aided in his odyssey of murder by Athena, who he killed in the last game, but who seems cool with that. She appears as a kind of mystical green Force-ghost, giving Kratos advice and pointing him in the right direction as he seeks Pandora’s Box. At the end, after killing Zeus, Kratos learns he has become the vessel for Hope, the one good thing within the box. Athena demands that he turn Hope over to her so she can rule the world with it. Instead, Kratos kills himself, thwarting her plans. The problem I have with this scenario is that they never explain why Athena can stick around as a mystical ghost and none of the other gods can. What makes her special? It ain’t her goodness, because she turns out to be kind of a gigantic bitch. What?

My theory is that the goddess of war and wisdom (oxymoron, lol) is truly dead and gone, and that the “Athena” who appears in God of War III is a hallucination experienced by the deeply unhinged Kratos -- basically a manifestation of his own conscience. His self-loathing stands in his way, so his brain conjures up an image of someone he respects to act as a motivator. He’s tricking himself into continuing on his terrible quest by making himself believe Athena’s got his back and knows all the answers. Then at the end, when Athena wants to claim Hope for herself, it’s really Kratos struggling with his own desire for power, with the devil on his shoulder telling him he could rule the human race. But he’s just noble and/or nihilistic enough to reject the idea and hand Hope over to humanity so they can figure things out for themselves. In other words, the last power-hungry god Kratos kills is...Kratos. Because we need to evolve without powerful assholes dictating our fates. And when Kratos dies, Athena vanishes, because she was never there to begin with.

And, yeah, I know that the post-credits easter egg implies Kratos isn’t really dead. But let’s save further theorizing for when they make God of War IV: Oops, We Forgot to Kill Dionysus, God of Wine and Orgies.

Thieves In Time: Sly Cooper Is His Own Ancestor

Okay...out of all these theories, this is the silliest and least convincing. But when it occurred to me, I could not leave it alone. It won me over with its utterly bonkers logic. I’ve written plenty about the fourth Sly Cooper game, but let’s talk about the ending. It is a cruel ending, because it sets up yet another sequel that may never exist. After defeating his latest foe, Sly winds up...wait for it...lost in time. His allies have no idea where he went or how to find him. But we’ve got an inkling. If you get full completion on the game, you’re treated to a bonus scene in which Sly wakes up to find himself stranded in ancient Egypt. Cool, so the probably-never-to-be-made fifth game will have an Egyptian level! But I think it may be way more than that.

The franchise has heavily referenced Sly’s various ancestors, skilled raccoon thieves from different time periods. One of them is the ancient Egyptian thief, Slytunkhamen. According to the Sly Cooper wiki, he is the original creator of the Thievius Raccoonus, the holy bible of thievery. He also had a son, Slytunkhamen II. So here’s my crazy-ass theory. Sly Cooper isn’t descended from Slytunkhamen -- he is Slytunkhamen. I think that when he was stuck in ancient Egypt, he renamed himself and set about beginning the Cooper legacy. And he was there long enough to have a son, continuing a line that would eventually lead to.....himself. How’s that for a paradox? I don’t have a shred of concrete evidence to support this. Well, except for the name: Slytunkhamen. Coincidence?

Now, it appears Slytunkhamen didn’t begin the Cooper lineage. One known ancestor predates him: Bob the Cavecoon from Prehistoric times. But I can work the theory around him in a couple ways. Perhaps Bob’s own lineage produces the female raccoon whom Sly falls in love with, and knocks up, in ancient Egypt. (It can’t be Sly’s regular love interest, Carmelita Fox, because they’re different species.) Or, alternatively, perhaps Sly wins the affection of Slytunkhamen, gets “adopted” by him, and becomes Slytunkhamen II, going on to build the hidden vault where the Coopers keep all their stolen treasures. Is it weird, how much thought I can put into this? It serves to distract me from the fact that the fifth Sly game will likely remain a dream in my head. Sigh.

Bastion: Rucks and The Kid Are the Same Person

I’ve saved the best for last; this was the theory that kicked off this blog post, and it’s the one I most think could be legit -- a possible easter egg from the gamemakers. In Bastion, you play as a voiceless kid (known, creatively, as “The Kid”) who awakens to find his world has been destroyed by a cataclysm. Soon enough, The Kid meets an elderly man named Rucks, who also narrates the game. With Rucks’ mentoring, The Kid is able to build the Bastion, a kind of combination stronghold and secret club house, from which civilization may be repaired. There’s a lot of plot after that, involving two warring nations, betrayal, secrets, romance, etc. Through it all, Rucks is there, guiding The Kid to success. And why?

Because Rucks is The Kid, all grown up.

I really, really believe this is true. First off, their physical appearances are similar enough; The Kid even has white hair. Secondly, Rucks helpfully tells us The Kid’s entire backstory. Did he learn it from The Kid? Nope -- he lived it. The Kid is a soldier-guard for the city of Caelondia and Rucks, we eventually learn, was a military engineer who designed some nasty weapons for Caelondia -- you can imagine such a career path from child to adult. But the big giveaway is at the end. You have a choice: you can abandon Caelondia to ruin and set off to explore the world, or you can turn back time, resetting the world to before everything went to hell. However, if you choose the latter option, Rucks warns that all knowledge since then will be lost, and there’s nothing to say the same calamity won’t occur all over again. And he should know. Because he’s seen it. He was The Kid. And when he turned back time, he somehow wound up in some sort of loop, retaining his memories, continuing to age. Perhaps he’s witnessed the wrong choices made over and over. Now he’s trying to fix things permanently by mentoring and coaching his own past self. When I played Bastion, I turned down the time-reversal option because I believed it to be unwise: everyone would just relive their mistakes. And that’s what I believe Rucks is trying to tell you. You who are also him.

I love video games. Can you tell? Can’t wait to see what gaming treats come next. And what secrets may lie between the pixels.