Author Archives: natechen

Cool Things: Master of Plagues

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If you’re not reading E.L. Tettensor‘s Nicholas Lenoir novels you’re really, really missing out.

In her first novel Tettensor introduced us to Lenoir, a tired old detective who spent a good chunk of his adult life in terror of an otherworldly creature that pursued him for crimes he barely understood. Now, with his peace made to the higher powers, Lenoir has to try and find a new purpose to a life he long though forfeit. His passion for his work has returned, his brilliance, once shaded by apathy, now shines all the brighter and things are generally going well for him.

And then the plague breaks out.

Normally this wouldn’t be the territory of the Kennian Metropolitan Police but some of the doctors working to contain the plague have become convinced that it was started on purpose and that… well, that most definitely is a crime. Problem is, even if they catch the people responsible Lenoir and his fellow hounds won’t be any closer to actually stopping the plague.

Or will they?

Master of Plagues is a wonderful progression from Tettensor’s first Lenoir novel. It changes the game in a number of ways – supernatural elements in this yarn are much less pronounced, although one paranormal character from the first book returns. Lenoir is up against criminals with totally mundane motives this time, even if their methods are spectacularly unusual, and he’s not looking over his shoulder for specters or fiends any more either, making the threat of death by misadventure or disease somehow more intimidating.

What’s more, Lenoir now has to juggle his desire to see criminals brought to justice with his desire to see the suffering innocent brought relief. He’s trying to find a cure as well as catch a mass murderer and every step he takes in one direction seems to take him further from the other goal. Lenior’s trying to reconcile this quandary gives us great insight into his character and motivations.

On top of that, there’s a new dynamic between Lenoir and his Sergeant, Bran Kody. Kody is ambitious and worked with Lenoir to learn how he solved cases. Kody’s goal was to move up the ranks as quickly as possible. He didn’t really like the apathetic Inspector Lenoir, even if he did respect his superior’s brilliance. But now, with Lenoir more invested in what’s going on around him, Kody is starting to see the foundation of a good man emerging from the stagnant soul that once was Nicholas Lenoir, and, for his part, Lenoir is starting to value Kody’s drive and goals as well. The pressure the plague puts on both really brings out the changes as they happen.

The story itself is well written, well paced and suspenseful. There’s a real mastermind at work here, scheming for their own profit at the expense of others using a scheme that is as brilliant in it’s simplicity as it is chilling in it’s callousness. Lenoir’s (and really the whole culture’s) unfamiliarity with disease and the unusual angle the criminals are exploiting make it no surprise the police don’t catch on faster making it a story uniquely suited to Tettensor’s world as well.

Master of Plagues is a well written story, perfectly suited to its characters and its world and offering deep and satisfying insights into the people that populate it. What are you waiting for? Go read it now!

Thunder Clap: Knock Down

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Izzy

Helix and I crashed into the room below, which looked like a really swank office before we left it full dust and rubble. I kicked the massive hardwood desk in the center of the room up to form a makeshift ramp that Circuit could use to half roll half slide his chair down to us. Helix and I caught him by the wheels of his chair. As we set his chair back on its wheels. As we did Helix said, “Another floor down, Izzy.”

“You sure?” I asked.

He grinned. “Circuit may have built this place to counter me but I’m betting his lackey-”

“Davis,” Circuit put in.

“I doubt Davis,” Helix continued, “could have kept things Circuit-proof and me-proof. Another floor down.”

There wasn’t much more of an explanation forthcoming so I smashed my was through another floor, trying not to calculate the damages we were going to have to pay out when this was over. Project Sumter might have nearly bottomless pockets thanks to Federal funding but we do have to get our budget approved every year just like everyone else. People who put too much strain on that budget can loose their jobs. Of course, I was a rookie and Helix was the season agent so hopefully that meant he knew what he was doing.

The next corner down was a large cubicle farm and I had to clear a landing place before Helix could jump down. To save time I just went back up and brought Circuit back down with me, chair and all. For good measure I went up again and dragged the desk over to the hole and tipped it onto the hole, slipping down under it as it fell, so anyone trying to follow would have to waste time moving it. The whole process took maybe thirty seconds but I came back to find Circuit and Helix arguing again.

“No, it’s not a matter of trust,” Circuit was saying. “But I’m not charging through the building at random just because you remember a skyline and think you know where we can see it at.”

“Not what I was saying,” Helix said, smiling for some reason. “I don’t know the city well enough to guess what part of it was looking at from just the skyline, that’s what I have people like Mossburger and Movsessian for. But I do know you, and I know you tend to be really stingy with what you tell people.”

“Information control is at the heart of supervillainy, Helix.” Circuit’s tone was the closest I think he’ll ever get to saying, “Duh!”

“Sure, if you say so.” Helix didn’t sound like he was paying much attention. “But I’m guessing you never mentioned to Davis that I could sense heat, as well as manipulate it.”

Understanding dawned on Circuit’s face. “He didn’t insulate the new control throne he created for his pet fusebox. It must be leaking more heat than a server farm with all the power it would take to keep things running.”

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, glancing nervously around the big open space. Helix wasn’t tall enough to be seen over the cubicle walls, and I’d appreciate if he never finds out I said that, while Circuit was always sitting down so that left me feeling like the only groundhog looking out of it’s hole while the hawks were circling. It’s not a fun feeling, let me tell you.

Helix, oblivious to how exposed I was feeling at the moment, pointed across the cubicles and said, “Run that way until you run out of building and you’ll find the place Circuit’s lookalike is hanging out.”

“I hope you don’t want me to actually run out of the building,” I said, “because I’ve had enough of that for one day.” His expression told me he didn’t know what I mean and I didn’t feel like relating my last near-skydiving experience just then. “Never mind. I just run in a straight line? Through the walls and everything?”

“Yes.” Helix scowled. “They’re expecting us to play it by the rules. I’m not really in a mood to give it to them. We go straight to them, we tie them up, we take them to jail. No questions asked. Problems?”

I shook my head and Circuit just grunted. Somehow Helix had wrangled himself back to being in charge, something I had a feeling he was used to doing. Still, I wasn’t going to argue. I’d had to take a basic architecture class or two last year, to help me figure out what not to break, so I knew there weren’t likely to be load bearing walls along the perimeter of a building this size, so going straight forward wasn’t likely to cause structural problems and that was really the only possible reason I could think of not to do what Helix was suggesting. After all that Davis and his cronies had put me through it was time for some payback.

So I turned in the direction Helix pointed in and I went forward. Not as fast as I could, I didn’t want to get too far ahead of Circuit or my boss. Papa always says your can’t be too close, after all. But bursting through walls is kind of a thrill and by the time I was through the second one I was putting on some speed, dashing past or jumping over a barely seen mess of office furniture, computer equipment and fake looking potted plants. At one point I broke out into a hallway again for half a second and I guessed I was at the halfway point of the building. For lack of a better way to keep track I started counting the walls we went through as a way to keep track of how much building was left. I was expecting to burst a dozen before we found the throne Helix was looking for.

In point of fact there were only ten. The last room was really big and, from the looks of the carpet, most of the stuff that had been in it had been dragged outside to make room for the nest of cables and computer equipment that sat in a semicircle around some kind of socket or mounting in the middle of the room. I spotted at least a dozen people in my quick glance around the room, only about half of them looked to be armed in the heavy-duty way of the guards we’d run across so far. It looked like we’d finally found some of the technical types who had to be keeping all this mess running. In the minus column, all the people in the room who did look like guards had apparently figured out what direction we were coming from and turned to face the wall I’d made an entrance through. They weren’t all looking directly at me but most of them had their weapons pointed in the right general direction.

And it turned out Helix was right, we did have to literally run out of building to get Circuit’s lookalike. A hole had been cut in the outside wall sometime during the night – because there was no way that exit was up to building code – and hovering outside it, some seventy-five floors above the ground, was a black throne to do any evil overlord justice. The guy sitting in it was pretty much a carbon copy of all the photos I’d seen of Circuit at the height of his career, stylish suit, scarf wrapped around his face, he had to be sweating to death in the August heat. Maybe Helix had been able to locate him so easily just because they’d put this hole in the building.

Of course, he shattered the illusion almost immediately by pointing at me and yelling, in a voice with none of Circuit’s sense of dignity, “Kill her!”

Which was my cue to scramble for cover.

 

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Avengers Analyzed: Barton and Romanoff

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It’s time to talk about Marvel’s The Avengers once again. We finished with all the superheroes so what’s left to look at? Why, the regular human characters of course!

With four incredibly larger than life characters eating up screen time how are we supposed to relate to anything in this film? Are they even relevant in this story? On the other hand, why do normal people even need superheroes anyways? To help us examine these questions The Avengers gives us Agents Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton, AKA The Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Now before I get into an analysis of these two characters, a quick aside to address the elephants in the room. First, I’m tackling these two characters together because their stories kind of go together and Barton… doesn’t get that much development. The second is the tendency of the fanbase to pair Hawkeye and Widow romantically. I don’t really understand this pairing, I suppose it may have a basis in the comic books but for the most part, in terms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), I don’t see it. These two characters seem to share more the brother and sister relationship of Romanoff and Captain America in The Winter Soldier than serious romantic leanings and I don’t think they would be a good fit. Sure, they share skills and a history but these two things do not a romance make.

Honestly I think the two characters in the MCU that would make a good romantic fit for Romanoff would be Cap or Banner, as their strong moral centers and stable personalities would make a good balance for her shrewd disposition and apparent lack of a strong direction for herself. Barton looks to need someone very assertive and fun, things Nat plays at but don’t appear to be a part of her core personality. I can’t think of an MCU person who fits that mold so I’m not really sure who would make for a good match for him at the moment.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that this is not an analysis of these two characters together in that sense.

Background 

Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton are Agents of SHIELD, one of Marvel’s many, many organizations with somewhat forced acronyms for names. Neither one has been the central character of a movie, in fact both have been peripheral characters in previous appearances. Romanoff was assigned to help SHIELD keep an eye on Tony Stark after his first outing as Iron Man, Barton helped Phil Coulson sort out what was going on with Thor during his first trip to earth. Unfortunately, both characters got little development beyond highly trained spy characters.

Conflict 

Here’s why I think Romanoff and Barton belong together for analysis. I think they share the same conflict – characters vs. god. The personal conflict these two have is against a force utterly beyond their ability to oppose. Even with all their incredible training, equipment and personal willpower neither Barton or Romanoff score a clear win over Loki before joining up with the rest of the Avengers. In this way, these two characters show Earth’s need for the superhero team and at the same time affirm that regular people have a place on that team.

Barton’s Introduction 

Clint Barton is an expert marksman. He specializes in dealing with problems from far away and he frequently does so in a very lethal fashion. He has a distant personality that matches his skills and we see this by the way he distances himself from those around him at the beginning of the movie. We first see him standing on top of a catwalk far away from the rest of the people at the facility he’s tasked with guarding.

Barton doesn’t really fit in with other people but that may be appropriate given rather ghastly nature of what snipers are capable of with modern weaponry. The fact that he says he’s more comfortable watching things from far off only adds to the image of a man who would rather stay at a distance than get too involved in what’s going on. A simple introduction for a pretty simple character. But simple doesn’t mean ineffective.

Barton vs. Loki 

Barton is one of the first characters to confront Loki in The Avengers and he looses. Badly. This creates what is known as the Worf Effect, Hawkeye’s defeat and subsequent loss of free will establishes Loki’s menace in two ways – first, he defeats a highly trained SHIELD agent handily and second he robs that agent of free will as a consequence. In the first five minutes of the movie Clint Barton goes from one of SHIELD’s trump cards to a pawn in the service of the enemy. Not fun times.

Romanoff’s Introduction 

Where Barton is introduced as a loner, distant from all those around him, Natasha is introduced as the center of attention. It’s just not good attention.

Black Widow’s projecting weakness to manipulate those she meets and subsequent defeat of several large men via hand to hand combat skill establish that she is also a formidable individual. She’s also the opposite of Barton, working best up close and indirectly, rather than at a distance and in violent opposition.

I’ve already talked about her first encounter with Bruce Banner at length in Banner’s post, there are a few things we learn about her through this exchange. First, she has great personal courage. She goes to meet the Hulk even though he clearly scares her. Second, she can’t seem to set aside her lies and tricks. Even when Banner proves he sees through her by saying why she’s there – SHIELD does want the Hulk and Romanoff did bring a full team with her – she sticks to her story until Banner forces her hand. Third, while Romanoff is good at lying she’s not always so good at seeing through them.

After all, Banner’s a rank amateur in comparison and she fell for one of his bluffs.

First Bridge 

Most of what Barton and Romanoff do in the first half of the movie, besides playing of the four superheroes at the center of things, is show their skills by taking care of things the superhumans can’t. Romanoff flies Captain America to the confrontation in Stuttgart, Barton finds stuff for Loki and plans how to steal it.

These demonstrations serve to reinforce both how skilled these characters are and how little they seem able to accomplish against Loki. For all his skills Barton didn’t even make him break stride and Romanoff relies on the superior firepower of the Quinnjet during the Stuttgart battle. Things don’t really get much better once Loki is captured.

Romanoff vs Loki 

Much like Tony, Romanoff confronts Loki in a way that’s not directly adversarial. When he’s locked up in the Helicarrier she goes to try and get information out of him and she does so in her usual way. She plays him, pretending to want to know where Hawkeye is, pretending to be guilt ridden, pretending to be weak and vulnerable, all to find out what, exactly, it is he wants on the Helicarrier.

Most people assume that Romanoff wins this confrontation because Loki mentions the Hulk, Romanoff seizes on this fact and then the Hulk proceeds to go wild in the Helicarrier. This assessment is a little weird. Loki is so good at deception that he’s considered an embodiment of it and we never get any indications that he was on the Helicarrier for the Hulk. In point of fact, Loki’s play wasn’t the Hulk at all. His entire purpose on the Helicarrier was to keep the Avenger’s attention focused on him while his mind controlled minions seized control of Stark Tower and prepared to summon the Chituari.

In other words, while Romanoff is a good liar she’s not very good at picking them out and this, combined with the fact that Loki hits three nerves all in one conversation (Barton, Widow’s past and the Hulk), keeps Natasha from noticing she’s being played even as she tries to play Loki herself. Of course, Loki’s intent was not to focus Romanoff’s attention on the Hulk or anything else, but rather to keep her attention squarely on him and not on what others were doing. That’s fitting, since he is a master trickster, and his success in doing so only serves to reinforce how regular humans, even those who are very good at what they do, are ill suited to fight Loki and his minions.

Second Bridge

We enter the third act of the film with the Helicarrier brawl and it’s at this point that Barton is finally broken free of Loki’s mind control. Romanoff helps him get his bearings again and the two agree that they’ll make up for the slip-ups they’ve caused by going out and pounding Loki like the red-headed stepchild he is (metaphorically speaking, of course). Don’t miss the significance of it being Captain America who shows up at the end of the scene and calls them to action, however. These two are going to action again but this time not just as a pair of SHIELD agents but as members of the Avengers.

Conflict Resolution – The Battle of New York 

Some might argue that the reason Barton and Romanoff failed against Loki because they acted against him alone. Not so. Barton was a part of a group during his confrontation. Some might point out that the agents of SHIELD could have figured out what Loki was up to if they had more time to unpack it. Maybe so, but the problem was they had to work faster than Loki’s timetable. Most people can overcome a given problem if they have unlimited time and resources to work with the key to a good story, particularly an action or adventure story, is to limit both.

The point of these two characters is not that they need help overcoming Loki. If that was all it took then SHIELD was in place already. The world didn’t need just any team, it needed the Avengers.

Thus it’s fitting that the two of them are at the heart of wrapping up the battle of New York. While Tony saved New York from over zealous human intervention it was Widow who actually shut down the portal the Chituari were using to invade. Barton was the one who tracked each threat as it came through and made sure it was contained before it could cause too much damage. The Avengers could not have won without them. Yes, the “super” heroes (except for Hulk, who was special) were each able to draw with Loki in their own encounters with him, none of them were able to win alone and Loki backed by an army is even worse.

The point of Barton and Romanoff in this movie is to show that the existing methods for fighting threats to Earth were not up to the task of stopping Loki. Their inability to fight him personally reflects the depth of his power and the limits of their abilities, serving as a microcosm of the problem at large. Once the Avengers existed as a coherent team the conflict is resolved – superspies alone are not equal to the task but all of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are.

So that’s the end of the analysis, right? All the main characters and conflicts are covered, aren’t they? Well, no. See, even with the Avengers all assembled there has to be someone to lead. Next month, in our final installment, we’ll take a look at the leaders of the Avengers. See you then!

Cool Things: Blue Beetle

Posted by natechen on

Okay, we’re back to our regularly scheduled segment which contains considerably less romance than last month’s installments. This week we’re taking another look at a comic book that tackles the ever-popular (in American comics) superhero genre in a different and refreshing way. Today we’re going to look at the Blue Beetle.

What’s that? Not familiar with the big blue bug? Not surprising. He’s never been an A-list hero and he’s had three different gimmicks over the years. I’m only familiar with his most recent incarnation, Jaime Reyez (pronounced “high-may ray-ez”) who first appeared in the DC event comic Infinite Crisis. I haven’t read Infinite Crisis but Blue eventually got his own series and I have read some of the trade paperbacks collecting his adventures there.

In the form of most superhero books, the Blue Beetle series was not really interested in telling a single overarching story but rather just takes us along from story to story as Jaime tries to balance being a high school student and being the Blue Beetle. Notice that I don’t mention anything about maintaining a secret identity. That’s because Blue doesn’t have one.

Yes, just like Shazam/Billy Batson Jaime makes no real effort to hide his superhero identity from his friends and family (the world at large is in ignorance of his identity). In fact, almost the first thing he does after his first hair-raising superhero adventure is reveal to his family – who haven’t seen him in a year – that he’s the Blue Beetle. No excuses. No hastily constructed lies. A simple explanation that, yes, weirds his family out quite a bit but they also come to accept.

In fact, short term weirdout for long term understanding and cooperation is a theme of Jaime’s career. Both his family and some of his closest friends are in on the secret, helping him spot crime as it happens and running interference to keep the world at large from knowing who he is. Even his girlfriend knows about his other career, in fact she’s a superheroine herself, working the magic angle of things even as Jaime works the technology side.

The upshot of all this is that Blue Beetle reads more like the adventures of a tight knit group of friends with a passion for justice than a single knight suffering through a lonely crusade. It gives the title a warm, energetic feeling missing from many comics these days.

To go with that, the story also has a great sense of humor. Blue announces his victory over thugs by using the power of Science, wears a suit of armor that thinks for itself and believes it’s onboard weaponry has theological implications and faces a giant robot named Thinko! that always spells its name with an exclamation mark. The humor is quirky, charming and fun, never mean-spirited or hostile.

Most of all, the title is nuanced. In one story line Jaime, who lives in El Paso, Texas and is the son of a Mexican immigrant, gets roped into being a kind of figurehead for the border patrol. The story carefully examines the issue, Jaime’s father taking him back to Mexico to see the kind of circumstances that drive people to sneak across the border while Peacemaker, his mentor and trainer in the field of superhero work, points out that even the vigilante boarder guards aren’t really that different from the people who don capes or cowls and go out to protect their communities. And through it all we’re shown that an unsecure border will be exploited by those who seek to profit off of moving things like drugs or guns illegally and such activities often come at the expense of those with more legitimate reasons to want to cross the border.

You don’t get that kind of careful, nuanced, detailed coverage of muddy situations from mainstream newspapers. But this “comic” book? Yeah, it manages to do all of that in spades.

Blue Beetle sadly only ran for a few years before low sales caused the title to be canceled. But what is there is really good and worth your attention, so go check it out. With the New 52 in town enough popularity for an old character like Jaime may even bring him back for another crack at breaking into the market. Or at least so we might hope…

Thunder Clap: Down and Down

Posted by natechen on

Izzy

For most people a hallway with a bunch of guys holding a bunch of guns at one end would be a death trap. For me, there’s no such thing as a manmade wall I can’t break down.

Half the elevator door had come in with me when I broke it down and a quick flick of my foot kicked it down the hall, making Davis and his men duck as I jumped to the left and smashed through the wall. I only heard a spattering of gunfire behind me but I will admit that I wasn’t really listening for it because I had more pressing things on my mind. See, I hadn’t really been paying that much attention to what part of the building we were in and I’d also once again underestimated my jump distance. Neither one of those was bad in and of itself.

When you bust through a wall, straight through the room on the other side and halfway through the windows on the outside of the building? Then it’s more of a problem.

Hanging seventy-plus floors above the city streets with by one hand, fingers scraped raw by the process of burying them two knuckles deep into the concrete wall, was not my ideal outcome for evasive maneuvers. In my defense, it was a really stupid place to put an outside wall. Moving carefully I pulled myself back up and into the building, hoping the concrete I’d grabbed hold of wouldn’t decide to crumble in the middle of the process.

Helix

One of the first things you develop in our line of work is an instinct to run the wrong way when trouble’s brewing. So my first reaction when the shooting started was to try and get down to the shattered doorway and see what was going on. Since I was in an uncomfortable climber’s harness with more voltage than I was comfortable thinking about running through it under the total control of my sometimes-archnemesis I didn’t really get anywhere. I gave Circuit an irritated look and said, “Down.”

“Just a minute,” he muttered, fiddling with something in his chair. It was probably another one of the many miracle gadgets he liked to have at his beck and call but I wasn’t sure how it would help us if Izzy got shot before we got there and I really didn’t care. I just kicked the heat sink up to maximum and let the elevator shaft drop towards freezing at a dizzying rate as the air around me shimmered it’s way towards a plasma state.

“Down, Circuit,” I snapped. “Now.”

His chair made a sharp popping noise and he experimentally gave the wheels a spin. From the looks of things he’d disconnected them from the chair motors. “Okay, get ready.”

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

There wasn’t any more warning than that before we dropped down at a slight angle and landed in the hallway. Half a dozen armed men were clustered around a Izzy sized hole in the wall, some staring out it at something I didn’t have the angle to see, one guy was pointing his weapon at a chunk of concrete the size of my head that was buried in the wall directly opposite the hole. Not his smartest move but if Izzy had put it there I could understand his surprise.

Almost as soon as I hit the hallway the drywall caught like kindling. The whoosh of fire catching alerted the thugs and they spun away from the wall and brought their weapons around and I charged forward, crunching my heat sink down from a ten foot wide aura around me to a condensed ball about a foot across balanced between my two hands. I was really focused on moving fast because in a hallway like this I couldn’t expect much wind to build up to jostle their aim or knock their bullets of course, not that I could really count on that most of the time, and even if there was a slight breeze it would flow straight down the hall and wind up knocking things in my general direction anyway.

What I didn’t know is that when you superheat air, or anything really, to the plasma state it becomes electrically conductive and I was trailing it all the way back to the elevator door.

And while I didn’t know plasma was conductive, Circuit did. Imagine my surprise when the three closest thugs jerked upright as a lighting bolt leapt from my plasma ball to their weapons, into their bodies and out through their feet. I wasn’t as surprised as they were, but it was still a bit of a shock.

Pun intended.

I jumped over Circuit’s victims as the three guys behind them backpedaled, whipping the plasma ball around almost like a yo-yo and melting the barrel and part of the stock of his weapon into slag. The last two turned and dashed down the hallway towards parts unknown only to wind up nearly getting buried under rubble as Izzy broke back into the hallway just ahead of them. Before they could recover enough to react at all she spun on one foot and planted the back of a hand in each of their chests and flicked them up against the wall like a normal person might flick water from their hands.

They slumped against the floor and their weapons slipped from their hands. Izzy quickly mangled the guns into something useless and tossed them aside, taking a moment to straighten out her oddly windblown hair as she asked, “What now?”

“Zip ties, my dear.” Circuit pulled a handful of them from yet another part of his chair. I was starting to think he had everything from kitchen sinks to Jimmy Hoffa in there. “Tie them up and leave them for later.”

She looked at them skeptically. “Uh, I’ve never actually used one of those before.”

I let go of my heat sink and took the zip ties from Circuit then handed half of them to her. “I’ll show you how it’s done. People like using these because they’re simple to use, not tricky.”

We got the six of them tied up and out of the middle of the hall so Circuit could maneuver through in no time at all. As she pushed the last of the goons aside Izzy asked, “Where’s Davis? The stocky guy.”

“I didn’t see him here,” Circuit replied.

“Is it important?” I asked, impatient to just get a move on.

“Probably not,” Izzy admitted. “He just creeps me out. I’d rather have him tied up than on the run from us.”

“A sensible attitude,” Circuit said.

I grunted impatience. “Let’s get a move on.”

“This way.” Circuit led us down the hall and around a few corners until we came to a large corner room that looked a lot like a security center. Circuit immediately wheeled himself over to the consoles on the outside wall, scanning them for his switchboard or whatever it was he was looking for.

I was more bothered by what wasn’t in the room. “Where’s the chair?”

“The what?” Circuit asked absently, moving quickly around the perimeter as he looked for whatever it was he expected to find.

“The guy posing as you sent me a video chat last night. He was sitting in this big chair hooked up to who knows what and had the skyline behind him, like he was playing the overlord. For that matter…” I stepped into the center of the room and slowly pivoted so I could look out each of the windows in turn. “This isn’t the skyline that was behind him when he called.”

“Maybe that was just another red herring?” Izzy suggested.

I looked over at Circuit to see what he thought. To my surprise he had doubled over in his chair and gotten a death grip on the edge of one of the consoles. As I watched he tried to straighten up only to convulse once and double over again. I sprang across the room asking, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s magnetic resonance, Double Helix.” The voice came from the two way radio set by one of the consoles. I didn’t recognize it but from the way Izzy started I was guessing it was Davis. “Project Sumter never did the level of research we did concerning the way a fuse box could perceive and manipulate magnetic fields. Certainly not enough to realize the level of discomfort  something like a simple MRI could cause them. See, while Circuit was spending all his time figuring out how to proof this place against you, I was working out how to turn it on him. Now it’s the end of you both. Simple, don’t you think?”

A trio of canisters, about the size of a fire extinguisher, thudded into the room hissing and surrounded by a cloud of fog. Izzy made a rather undignified “eep” noise and jumped away from them a few feet. I could already tell how incredibly cold the space around the was getting but I thought I’d ask just to be sure.

“Liquid nitrogen?”

“Yes,” Circuit croaked, not bothering to look up. “We used it to cool the superconductors in the empion instillations. Why not save some for you?”

Izzy watched as a fourth canister clanked into the room, ice quickly forming on most of the surfaces around them. “I don’t suppose you can gather up enough heat to get us through that?”

“No. And even if I could they’ve probably got a lot more than that out in the hall. Far more than I could ever hope to boil off.” I shook my head. “They did do a good job of trapping Circuit and I. I guess that leaves you, doesn’t it?”

She swallowed once and nodded. “Circuit, we still need to find the switchboard. Where would it be if not here? Do we need to go up or down?”

“Not. Sure.” It came out through clenched teeth.

I looked back at the windows. Thought about the city skyline. Then smiled. “I know. Take us down.”

“Right.” Izzy gathered herself up and, as a fifth canister of liquid nitrogen clanked into the room spreading icy death a little closer towards us, she stamped down as hard as she could and shattered the floor beneath our feet.

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Genrely Speaking: Historical Fiction

Posted by natechen on

Welcome back to Gernrely Speaking, the part of the show where we crack open a genre and look at what it means when we mention it here. As I’ve mentioned before, the literary classifications we call genres exist as much as an expression of opinions as they do a scientific taxonomy of fiction. So keep in mind that any definition of a genre is as much a subjective idea as it is an ironclad classification, which is one of the reasons this segment’s name is a pun based on the phrase “generally speaking”.

Today we’re going to look at a genre that doesn’t get much press these days: Historical fiction.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of historical fiction? You don’t know what it is or what it looks like? Well then we’d better start there. Historical fiction is an aesthetic genre that generally has:

  1. Real History. Lots and lots and lots of history, the historical kind of history that comes out of history books. “Historical” is in the title because there has to be solid, well researched history serving as the foundation for this story. While some of a historical fiction novel is fiction the broad backdrop for the story has to be historical. This is why a novel series like the Thieftaker can kind of sort of qualify as historical fiction – while the main character, his magic and his close associates are fictional, the backdrop of events he lives in are not.
  2. Encounters with historical characters. Much like with it’s counterpart, alternate history, half the fun of historical fiction is seeing known historical figures in a new light. In this case the new light revolves around whatever scenario the new story adds to the historical record. Murder investigations during the revolution? Sounds like the mind of Ben Franklin might be needed. Stuck behind Confederate lines during the Civil War? Enter General Lee! If you’re a history fanboy then historical fiction is definitely a genre for you.
  3. The ability to pass without trace. The heart and soul of historical fiction is that it is something that could have happened during the known historical events depicted in the narrative. It’s a “what if” but a very specific one. So nothing the fictional characters do can have any outcome on actual historical events. No matter how much those events may grate on those characters, both protagonists and antagonists are going to have to live with the verdict of history as we know it.

What are the weaknesses of historical fiction? The biggest drawback to this genre as a writer is the amount of research you will have to put into writing it. The facts have to be right, or someone in your audience is going to spot your mistake and call you on it. Again, this is historical fiction. It has to actually be historical while still being fiction.

The second big hurdle is all those historical characters. While historical figures from ancient times like Ceaser, Nebuchadnezer or King David have a little wiggle room in how we can expect their character or disposition to be displayed, by the dawn of the age of exploration there’s enough written in enough different sources that a competent, well studied author can make a good stab at knowing what an important person was like day to day. And again, you have to get it right because the kind of people who will read these books are the kind of people who will catch these discrepancies and be upset by them.

The third problem is for readers new to the genre. They might find the careful web of historical facts and important events distracting or confusing, taking away their ability to keep track of a well written yarn.

What are the strengths of historical fiction? If you love history you will geek out over well written historical fiction. They’ll mention all the important things and you will most likely love every minute of it. It’s just like a well written tribute to your favorite movie, novel or comic book character – there will be easter eggs and fanservice just waiting for you to catch it. The fact that all the events and characters were real just adds to the fun.

For people who aren’t into history, good historical fiction is a great chance to learn about historical events in a gripping and exciting way. The works of G. A. Henty, a historian from the 19th century, were intended to teach his readers the history of Britain while entertaining them and exciting their imagination. Other authors may put less (or more!) emphasis on the actual historical narrative in their books but all the good ones will make sure there’s plenty of historical fact there. If you love a good book but never managed to make it through a dry history text in school, this may be exactly what you need to start a lifelong love of the past.

Sense and Sensibility

Posted by natechen on

I still don’t understand how the man who made this film could have gone on to make… every thing else Ang Lee has made. Yes, it’s still romance month here at Nate Chen Publications and we’re wrapping it up with a true classic. This film is fairly old, in fact it turns 20 this year, but it’s based on a story by Jane Austen so it’s less a question of whether it’s aged well and more a question of whether it’s timeless.

Sense and Sensibility is two love stories in one, the first focusing on Ms. Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, a pair of people eminently suited to one another. Both are quiet, serious people of good sense who see in the other admirable qualities and good character. If this sounds kind of boring don’t worry, circumstances and previous history are very much set against them. There’s inheritances, overbearing mothers, previous commitments and general social standing to take into account, after all.

The second romance focuses on Elinor’s younger sister Marianne, a free sprited and sentimentally minded young lady who faces no obstacles to her paramour, John Willoughby, except that of Willoughby’s character itself. He’s a real cad, eventually proving to have gotten another woman pregnant and run from the fact. When he looses his inhertiance over the matter he leaves Marianne and goes looking for a wife who can support him. Marianne eventually winds up married to the kind, generous but reserved Colonel Brandon.

This story contrasts two different ideas of romance. The first is represented by Elinor and Edward, who don’t have a particularly exuberant or emotional connection. That’s not the same as saying they don’t connect, because they do. It’s just not in the big, expressive way most of the people around Elinor can understand. Marianne is even worried about her sister, wondering if she gets what love is. Marianne, on the other hand, falls hard and extravegantly. She practically throws herself at Willoughby (by the standards of the time) and takes not time to build a connection beyond a superficial emotional reaction. She never stops to see where she stands with him, instead building castles of dreams that ultimately prove to have no foundation.

Like all of Austen’s stories, in most of their adaptations, Sense and Sensibility takes a lot of time to look at the characters and how they relate to each other. With Emma Thomson and Kate Winslet staring as the two leading ladies we can see a lot of the contrast between the two characters, with the less expressive Elinor coming across as a woman who says little but feels deeply and the vibrant Marianne practically floating across the screen in most of her scenes. Of course, this is most effective when the romantic couple are together. Both Elinor and Edward and Marianne and Willoughby spend a lot of time in conversation. They manage to avoid boredom while clearly illustrating the character traights and connections that will eventually make Elinor and Edward’s relationship work when Marianne and Willoughby’s will fall through.

What I love the most is how the film manages to stick to a dry tone, rarely taking love entirely seriously but still recognizing that the people it portrays could very well be us. The mixture of humor and sympathy, along with an understanding of the importance in a meeting of characters and minds, as well as hearts, makes this a great romantic film. If you’ve never seen it, now’s the time to go and check it out.

Thunder Clap: Melting And Entering

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Izzy

“You know, whichever one of your minions thought that this would be a good way to get around is going to be put in for extra jail time. You know that, right?”

“What’s your problem with it, Helix? The lack of control or being suspended over seventy floors of empty space with no safety net?”

“Not so much the lack of control as who’s in control.”

If it was still working I would have been recording Helix and Circuit’s bickering on my phone. There was a strong resemblance to couples I’d known in high school right before they broke up and I knew no one from the Project would believe me if I told them about it without evidence. It was weird to say the least.

I grabbed the edge of the elevator shaft and leaned out to catch a glimpse of the two of them hovering several floors up. “I don’t mean to bug you two but are you going to clear the shaft any time soon?”

“Just a moment, Rodriguez.” Circuit held his hands out towards the side of the elevator shaft and there was a sharp popping noise and a flash of light.

“What was that?” Helix asked.

“Quick shock intended to knock out a specific set of countermeasures,” Circuit answered.

“Well why didn’t you just do that before?” I asked, annoyed at the thought of all the time he’d wasted checking for and disarming traps the old fashioned way while we were on our way up the tower earlier.

“I was conserving power in case we had to search a large portion of the top floors one at a time,” he said. “Good work on that interrogation, by the way. I doubt we’d have had time to get any useful information out of those three we caught using any of the other interrogation techniques we had available to us.”

I felt a quick surge of satisfaction that only lasted as long as it took me to remember who was paying the compliment. “So is it safe to go through the door now?”

“No. I never forgot that there were more talents at Sumter’s disposal than just Helix, even if he was the one I expected to see the most.” He reached for the tool compartment on his chair. “There’s a mechanical lock – no electronics at all – on the doors to the floors where command stations might be set up. It was included in the plans in case Project Sumter ever found a fuse box capable of countering my safeguards. You could probably break through it if you had good footing, Agent Rodriguez, but I’d rather not run the risk that you find you can’t in the middle of one of your spectacular jumps.”

I winced at the mental image of my hitting the door and sliding off like a Looney Toons character. “Yeah, there’s limits to how far even a taxman can fall and survive.”

Helix kicked his heels against the far side of the elevator shaft and shot over to the door. His hands seemed to freeze to the door and the metal started to warp. I realized that my hair was standing on end and it was suddenly very cool in the shaft. “Anything I should know about this lock of yours before I melt it?” He asked. “Is it an exotic compound that becomes a toxic aerosol when it melts?”

“Nothing so exotic,” Circuit said dryly. “What’s your hurry?”

By now Helix was up to his elbows in melting door. It was kind of unsettling to see. “Circuit, you take your time before you do anything, am I right? Every scheme of yours is carefully thought out a dozen steps ahead and with contingencies every step along the way.”

“That’s a fair assessment.”

“Well it seems to me that you’ve never really developed an appreciation for the time crunch involved in real law enforcement work. You always take the fastest way because that means you have the best chance of catching the bad guy before he gets away, no matter what obstacles he’s come up with to slow you down.” There was a loud clunk and Helix pulled his hands out of the door, drops of glowing red metal scattering from his hands as he shook them off. “Door’s ready. Let’s go.”

Circuit grunted, I couldn’t tell if he was impressed or just amused, and the two of them moved up the shaft. I gathered my feet under me and made the jump, taking an extra split second to adjust my trajectory as I came in contact with the far wall. I’d gotten the timing and angle for a ten story jump down cold but we’d made our way up the stairs, with me carrying Circuit’s chair, until we got to the seventy-fifth floor, so I was only looking at a three story jump this time and I wanted the timing to be right.

Fortunately there were no problems on that front.

Unfortunately, after I crashed into the hallway beyond the elevator door I found myself staring at six armed men in a line across the far end of the hall with the squarish looking man, who Circuit kept calling Davis, standing behind them. He smiled when he saw me. “Well, it’s our escapee come back to us. Now would be a good time to think about surrendering again.”

“I didn’t surrender last time,” I said, cautiously getting to my feet. “I believe you gassed me.”

The smile quickly changed to something much darker. “Then why don’t we see if we can get you to surrender this time, shall we?”

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Disappointment Deconstructed: Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted by natechen on

So. There was this movie called Guardians of the Galaxy and everyone told me it was fantastic. It was on most of the best movie lists I saw for 2014. It was supposed to be the fun Marvel movie, a romp that would get us out of our seats and moving.

Yeah, I don’t see it.

It’s like this. Guardians of the Galaxy is not a bad film. But it’s not really a good one, either.

Let me start with the things that are good about this movie – and there are some good things in this movie. It looks gorgeous, everything from the starships to the fur on Rocket Racoon is rendered in beautiful CG. In particular, I love the design of the Milano, Peter Quill’s ship. Also, this movie goes the extra mile to build up the Marvel universe’s plotlines, introducing both the character of Thanos and the idea of the Infinity Stones, things that will doubtless be important in films to come.

The casting is good, particularly casting the wrestler David Bautista as Drax. I’m not a wrestling fan and I know nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy outside of what comes from this film, but I can tell that this is the kind of role you definitely want a heavyweight pro wrestler playing. He doesn’t need to emote, he just needs to be tough. On the other hand, Vin Diesel is actually surprisingly expressive as the voice of Groot.

A very few of the jokes in the film worked for me. I thought the reference to the great legend of Footloose and it’s hero, Kevin Bacon, was funny and Drax’s severe literal mindedness is funny, particularly as it leads him to reject each and every attempt to give him a nickname.

The fullscale space/air battle at the end of the film is great. In particular the phalanx formation the fighters use is something that I’ve wanted to see in scifi for a while but no one ever thought to do – probably because it doesn’t make that much sense. But it’s cool, and that’s important too.

Using the tape Peter keeps as his sole tieback to life on Earth to bring his character development full circle is a nice touch and gives the film a little bit of much needed thematic unity.

Since I’m now out of good things I guess I’ll have to move on to the stuff I didn’t like or that waffled. I can basically lump these things into three categories, and I’m just going to list them under those headings in bullet points.

Poor Characterization. 

  • We’re told Gomorrah hates her adoptive father, Thanos, because of all the horrible things he’s made her do and done to her. We never see any of these horrible things. We’re told about a few but we don’t see any of them.
  • We’re told Yondu has been the closest thing to a father to Peter has ever had. We never see him do anything to signify that relationship or any kind of special bond between the two.
  • We’re told the Ravagers wanted to eat Peter when they found him. We never see them try to eat anyone else. Wha?
  • Rocket claims everyone’s calling him a rodent or vermin but we never hear anyone but Gomorrah or Drax use these terms (or if we do it’s only once or twice) – and they’re the most caustic members of the cast so we should expect bad behavior from those two. In fact, no one but Peter, who knows what a raccoon is, ever seems to bat an eye at him and that’s as it should be. He’s just another alien in a galaxy full of aliens to most people. In short, this is a lack of consistency.
  • Why does everyone fear Thanos? We never once see him do anything nasty. Yes, it’s okay to build suspense around a villain but they have to do something villainous or they just come off as pointless – and that’s what Thanos is in this film.
  • What is Nebula’s problem? Explain based on things we see in the movie, not the comic books, please. You can’t do it, can you?
  • Why did we have to hear about Yondu’s collection of bric-a-brac on his pilot’s chair before we saw it? It would have been easy to show us it in passing so we’d know what he was talking about when he mentioned it to the dealer later.

Plot Holes

  • Why could Peter hold on to the Infinity Stone for as long as he did? I know it’s probably because his father was an alien of some sort but he never showed any kind of exceptional energy resistance before. Why is he so good at it now? You could have at least set this up somehow.
  • Why did the combined efforts of four people who were never particularly powerful contain a stone we were shown annihilating a group of much more powerful people earlier in the movie?
  • When did Peter put that little troll doll into that extra containment sphere he had?
  • What ever happened to that bomb Rocket was building? Why didn’t we see that get used before they jumped up to the big gun?
  • If using the Infinity Stone was as simple as sticking it to a hammer or something, why did no one do this before in the HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE?!
  • If the Guardians of the Galaxy could contain the Infinity Stone safely, why didn’t they just hang on to it?
  • How did Rocket know he could grow Groot back from just one twig? Or is that supposed to be a new Groot?

Failed “Fun” Moments

  • After the nifty fight scene with Peter at the beginning and the inventive three-way chase scene that brings Rocket, Groot, Peter and Gomorrah together, the action in this movie goes way south. Most of the action scenes after these two boil down to people spraying bullets around or rather uninspired brawling. In particular, Bautista’s skills as a professional wrestler go woefully underutilized.
  • The music. I get that it’s supposed to be a nostalgic nod to Peter’s past but it doesn’t really do much for me. That’s probably just a personal thing.
  • Most of Peter and Rocket’s banter. I know I’m supposed to be laughing at it but it just never gets beyond the pedantic. I don’t blame the actors here, they were clearly trying hard to make it interesting, I just didn’t see that they had anything to work with.
  • The jailbreak sequence. In particular, the part where Peter thinks he has to get ahold of another inmate’s prosthetic leg could have been comedic gold but we barely see any of it. In stead we get a raccoon trying to hide self-satisfied laughter at hoodwinking Peter. Mixed priorities, missed opportunities.
  • The climactic moment is four people reaching to hold hands. If I wanted to see friendship as magic I’d watch My Little Pony. Yes, I’ve said I like heroes to triumph over villains via moral strength rather than temporal power but this just comes off as cheesy.

Most of Guardians‘ problems come from the film being too rushed. A prison sequence could be the better part of a movie – look at Star Trek VI. Instead we get it rushed into the second half of the first act. Situations, characters and ideas are barely given time to breath before we’re rushed on to the next thing and most of our understanding comes from being told, not shown.

I know that the movie had a lot of source material to draw on and it wanted to cover as much as possible because there was no certainty of another film at the time, but I’m afraid the result was too much being packed into too little time resulting in a movie that had a lot of potential but came out pretty lackluster. I know I’m supposed to be having fun with this film, and I even know where and why… but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m actually having fun.

Marvel may have created a blockbuster but I’m afraid it’s a flashy movie over a pretty mediocre core. I doubt the film will age well – but then, who knows? Maybe that shiny exterior will still be good twenty years from now.

I’m not holding my breath, mind you.

Still, the franchise now has another episode to come back to these ideas and maybe make something of them. Hopefully things will go better with the next film.

The O’Malley Serries

Posted by natechen on

It’s the month of romance so we’re taking a look at a handful of romance stories that I feel really do romance right, avoiding cliches of sentimentality and accidental relationships and instead providing thoughtful, emotionally and intellectually satisfying looks at romance. This is going to be a particularly hurried look because we’re not looking at a single book but rather a series of six. The story goes like this.

Seven orphans meet in a group home in Chicago and start looking out for one another. With time they reach the age of legal adulthood, change their last names to O’Malley and declare themselves a family. The first rule of the O’Malleys is family will always come first. (No, nothing to do with Fight Club. Not anywhere in the rules.)

So far this probably doesn’t sound like much of a romance series, right?

Well, as it turns out the O’Malleys have found themselves a wide and diverse set of careers to work in, the family includes a U.S. Marshal, a hostage negotiator, an EMT, a firefighter, a trauma counselor, a forensic pathologist and a pediatrician. With such a crazy line-up of careers, and the kinds of personalities that tend to get into such careers, the only logical thing to do is try and marry them all off, am I right?

At least, such is the premise of Dee Henderson’s six book series that explores this wacky and unusual family and exactly what it might take to get such people to the alter. There are a lot of things I like about the O’Malley series but probably the biggest is the way the characters look at each other. Most of the couples meet on the job – no matter how crazy the job is, what they do is never a source of tension in the relationship. Way, way too many romance stories try to treat work as this terrible, horrible thing that will only be a barrier between you and the one you love.

What Henderson does in her books is show how the O’Malley family have chosen their paths as a result of the burdens they bear from their time as orphans or abandoned children, a way to fight back against the wrongs they’ve seen and suffered and make the world a better place. What’s more, she shows how the people who come into the lives of the O’Malleys understand the choices they have made. These are not romantic interests with no connection to the callings the O’Malley’s have undertaken, these are romantic interests who understand those callings and share in them.

In point of fact, each and every one of the O’Malley books centers on a situation that demands the unique talents of one of the family. Solving those situations, whether it be the murder of a Federal judge or a string of arsons across the city, brings one member of the family closer to someone they know or meet and sparks of a relationship built not only on feelings but on shared purpose and the promise of a brighter future. At the same time, the O’Malley family itself is drawing closer together, dealing not only with the promise of better futures but the troubles of jobs that are not always forgiving and the specter of hard times in the distance.

That’s probably what I like the most about the stories – aside from the healthy dose of suspense and intrigue next to the romance. They have a healthy emotional equilibrium. While each story has heroes and villains, romance and filial love, they also balance these things against very difficult personal problems that the O’Malleys have to face when dealing with a world that needs professional firefighters and hostage negotiators.

In a way, the O’Malleys themselves embody what makes their stories so great. Their powerful bond exists only because each and every one of them was once without family or friends and they are grateful for it every day and work to make it a continued reality every moment. It’s a good background for romance – one we can all try to cultivate, whether we find romance there or not.