One F or two, two

Or The Sorcerers versus Nanny MacPhee.

The other night I had the pleasure of catching The Sorcerers. Barely long enough to count as a feature - how pleasurable given the number of bloated movies dong the rounds - I had the distinct feeling that I'd seen it before, decades ago. Like deja vu all over again.

Wikipedia describes it as science fiction/horror and I'm happy with that, as this post doesn't really work without that premise. And I think we can agree that Nanny MacPhee is fantasy, and children's fantasy at that.

So, they're at the opposite ends of the SFF spectrum.  But, like a Venn diagram, there's a degree of overlap. Primarily, for my purposes, both stories involve mind control; the conceit being the Sorcerers' fulcrum to the plot, whereas it's incidental to Nanny MacPhee, where it's merely used to bring the errant children to heel by turning them on each other, thus demonstrating Ms MacPhee's power.

What makes The Sorcerers science fiction, not fantasy? It seems to come down to the eponymous sorcerers being scientists with a clinical white room full of bank of switches and dials controlling some psychedelic mind-bending headwear that Ian Ogilvy is invited to insert himself into. Quite why he agrees to do so is taken at a gallop by the plot-donkeys, so quickly that you forget to question it. But it's clearly the product of science, a practical demonstration of a scientific hypothesis, that allows them to control Ogilvy's mind. So it's science fiction. QED.

Hold on. Not so fast. We're told their scientists, but we see them carrying out no experiments in a formal sense, recording no data. After locking into Ogilvy's mind through lots of spinning and flashing lights, they control it by sitting around a table, grinning and gurning. The room of shiny boxes may as well be a wand, or Nanny MacPhee's eyebrow, it's just a device to move the story on: do 'A' and 'X' happens. Never has Arthur C Clarke's comment that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" been so unwittingly illustrated.

Consider the wand, the traditional tool of fantasy versus a remote control device, like your TV remote, but one that gave you mind control. That would be a sci-fi trope, right? What if the remote had no buttons, but was voice activated?  Still sci-fi. You want those voice activation commands to be very specific, so as to avoid accidental triggering. Good idea to put them in a special language, like a Hogwarts-stye magic spell.  And what if it were shaped like a simple pointing device, a sort-of stick.  Like a wand. Still sci-fi?

Or what if all the wands in the fantasy storyverse were replaced with black boxes with dials and switches, would all those fantasy tales suddenly become science fiction? Or, if wands could have some backstory explaining their construction - more than just Rowling's Olivander's construction methods - with some pseudo-scientific principles, some fancily-monikered theory? 'It looks like a magician's wand, but it uses Avinder's Principle of Universal Mitigation to rearrange the molecules of the liquid', rather than, kazaam, and the water is turned into wine. Still fantasy?

As for Nanny MacPhee, she doesn't even have a wand. Her mechanism of choice is just an arch of the eyebrow and, presumably, an internally muttered spell, if it can be called a mechanism at all.  Magic reductio'd to its absurdum.

So is it that sci-fi has an explicable mechanism behind its workings, whereas fantasy is all just, well... magic? But, hold on.  The science is utterly pseudo science, pure hokum. Which we're happy to swallow. There's nothing in the wand, but there's nothing in the remote control either, except a storyteller is telling us that we should believe that there is. Perhaps the true difference between fantasy and sci-fi is where the bollocks lies - do you want to believe in magic and fairies, or in science that isn't true?

Is that all there is to it? A pseudo explanation? Choose a funny name out the phone book and put 'Principle' after it? Dress it up in futuristic clothes and avoid tossing any dwarfs and, yes, I think you do have a recipe for turning base fantasy into shiny science fiction.

PS - And don't get me started on where comedy crosses the line into horror - Nanny MacPhee making the kids rub their bruised heads is one thing, but what if she were to make them feel for the ice-pick sticking out of their temple? I think I'll let somebody else examine the blurring of the two...

Hail to the Chief... Do we have to?

First Brexit, then the Columbia referendum, now this...

Well, I always suspected that the fact that we're living in the Matrix would only be revealed through a glitch in the program.

Everyone's a hero in their own story (again)

I appreciate that many of these posts are about how story works, why story works, and why it sometimes doesn't, which is as applicable to any genre as science fiction.  But I'm pretty much going to carry on until somebody tells me to stop.

A few days ago our nuclear family unit caught up with a film (fantasy, rather than sci-fi) that's been out since the summer, so forgive me if all this has been written before - there still seems to be room on the internet.  As, unlike, say, meat, films don't go off I rarely feel the need to see a movie when it first appears, being happy to catch up with the cheaper rep performances.  Or even when it appears on TV.  I refuse to be in thrall to marketing wallahs telling me something is 'must-see' here and now.  There's simply too much stuff out there and too few hours in a day.

I've always subscribed to the view that a performance (film, book, TV show, whatever) should make you laugh, cry, scared, come, whatever - any reaction is better than none.  So I suppose the fact that I felt utterly uncomfortable for large parts of this movie - as uncomfortable as I've felt watching any film since The Hunger Games or even the appalling Life is Beautiful - is a form of praise.

However, given that I was feeling uncomfortable over the romanticising of the kidnapping and (non-sexual) grooming of a child, I'm not sure how far that praise can stretch.  Any sense of victim and perpetrator was swept under the carpet, with the kid in question foregoing the desire to escape for befriending her captor like a stray puppy.  Yes, kids, we're talking full-blown Stockholm Syndrome kicking in pretty much before hunger and thirst in a way that I found genuinely creepy.

And the name of the movie?  Steven Spielberg's 'BFG'.

On the way back to the car my twelve-year old and I had a couple of robust discussions.  (One of the best pieces of advice about writing I've seen recently came from a Charlie Brooker article in a recent Guardian interview where he said that Russell T Davies had advised him that conversations tend to be two monologues clashing.  It was that kind of discussion.)  One was about my 'theory' that what we had just watched was Stockholm Syndrome.  The other was about comedy.

As a syndrome is defined as a set of symptoms, I disagreed that I was proposing a theory.  If you have spots and I say you have spots, that's observation.  If I say you have measles, that's a theory.  I was just bundling up what I had seen on screen under a convenient and appropriate umbrella term.  Neither was I saying that either Dahl or Spielberg had set out to make a story about Stockholm Syndrome - that would have been a theory.  What I was saying was that what we saw and heard added up to Patty Hearst-lite.

Indeed, I'm pretty sure that neither Dahl nor Spielberg would agree with my reading, and would probably be slightly appalled.  But, like the Hunger Games before, for me, it all comes down to the lead character's reactions to events failing to convince.  Does she react how you'd expect a kidnap victim to react?  Does she try to escape?  (Well, actually, yes, but half-heartedly.)  Is she terrified?  Fears for her life?  Not sure that comes across.  I wasn't expecting The Disappearance of Alice Creed, but at least I was convinced that Alice Creed was at least inconvenienced.

For me, that's it in a nutshell.  I'm happy to believe in the BFG.  But I'm not happy to believe in a human child reacting like that to the BFG.  And if you lose faith in the hero, who is your stand-in in the story, then you're lost, period.  (It's also why I'm probably the only person in the universe who thinks Divergent is a better story than The Hunger Games whose name isn't listed in the credits; the premise may be even sillier, but at least I can go along with how the characters react to their predicament).

And, again's the pity, that the story could have been easily fixed.  Show me that the orphanage is a horrible place (maybe it goes without saying, but this one seems fairly neglect-free), and it's better to be out of the frying pan and into the fire.  Or put the BFG in a position where he absolutely has to kidnap Sophie, possibly to save her from the murderous giants, where his options reduce to one, and one he takes reluctantly.  But that doesn't happen.  A friendly giant would trust her not to talk, or be believed if she did, and only take her when she blubbed.  In other words, if Sophie forced him into kidnapping her.  All those would work dramatically, but not this.  Perhaps Spielberg was in thrall to Dahl's original?

All this raises two moral side-questions, which I'll ask and then fail to answer.  Firstly, is it alright to be kidnapped by somebody who can offer you a more interesting life than the one you've got?  And, secondly, is it alright to kidnap somebody in order to save them from a worse fate, such as abuse or murder?  I suspect the second is easier than the first.  Feel free to theme a story around those.  Yours for free.

That other argument?  Simply that, when my twelve-year old heard that Life is Beautiful is a comedy set in a concentration camp, he declared that there were subjects that you should not write comedies about.  I, on the other hand, would defend an artist's right to make a comedy about anything, with the caveat that if and when it goes wrong you risk creating a story that is off the scale in terms of being crass and offensive.  Not sure The BFG was in that territory, but it was certainly ill-thought out.

One F or two?

I've never hidden my preference for science fiction over fantasy.  In fact, I've always found it strange how the two have become cousins, because to me science fiction is a quasi-philosophical activity, social gedankenexperiments that would be impossible in any lab.  And fantasy is, well.. all a bit ridiculous. Like standing in the dock, ready to defend your public protest on points of principle, and turning around to find your fellow accused has a revolving bow-tie and a plastic flower that squirts water.

Granted, science fiction can rapidly find itself embroiled in silliness; basically anything that would have been portrayed on Sixties television with a rubber suit and lots of arm waving, or portentous dialogue spoken whilst holding a weapon made out of plumbing parts. But, if it doesn't leave the Ballard, Gibson and Dick end of the spectrum, it doesn't need to go there. It's just that fantasy starts off in the world of Thring-son-of-Throng-son-of-Thrung-son-of-Thrang-son-of-Threng-of the-Hairybols, and you can't get back to plausibility from there anytime soon.

Yes, I sat through the Lord of the Rings movies ("Nobody tosses a dwarf!"), but mainly because I loved it when I was thirteen. Harry Potter, too, but being a children's book (and a great one) you could enjoy it as such. And that, I thought, was the key issue: fantasy was one of those childish things that you leave behind together with colouring books and 'being a racing car'.

But I think there's a more fundamental issue for me. And it struck home when I saw the following quote, from Jim Kay, brilliant illustrator of a new edition of Potters, which chimed with me like Big Ben chimes with the hours:

"JK Rowling describes the castle as being 'supported by magic' so this gave me the opportunity to bring something different to the architecture. The odd thing is that it becomes habit to draw architecture to look like it should stand up, and it has taken me a while to 'unlearn' common sense physics and embrace the fantasy elements."

The castle in question is, of course, Hogwarts.  But the more general point is that Kay's Hogwarts doesn't stand up, and neither does a great deal of fantasy. It doesn't need to, because you can always get out of your hole with a mirror that talks back to you or an enchantment or a potion. You can cherry pick the rules of the game as you want.  And conveniently forget others - like if the castle stands up without supports, why don't you levitate off the doorstep?

Sure, sci-fi does enough of that. Faster than light travel, portals, and so forth that conveniently drop you in strange worlds. But there's a greater sense of working within a consistent set of rules in sci-fi; no privileged magic-user who has a monopoly on bending the principles of physics.  If the storyverse has FTLT then it's available to everybody with the price of a ticket.

There's something about science fiction that restricts, whereas fantasy allows, and that's not necessarily a good thing. Alec Issigonis, car designer, said something along the lines of anybody can design a large car, but it takes talent to design a small one. And promptly came up with the Mini. And it's the same with science fiction.  It sets you parameters to work within and, in doing so, forces you to think. In sci-fi there's no deus ex machina, no eagle - or bloke in a rubber suit - to grab you by the epaulettes and fly you out of Mordor.

Notes and corrections

Some updates from recent posts:

I'm in two minds about this post
The more I look, the more examples I see, and the more it makes perfect sense: Carl Jung described himself as having two conflicting personalities, no.1 and no.2; and this, in a magazine interview with Gillian Anderson: "Yeah. I am a mix  of normal, safe, quiet, regimented, serious, morally and ethically led – or at least I try to be for the most part.  Then every once in a while – or maybe more than once in a while – there is  a part of me that is incredibly reckless. I think it bubbles underneath all the time..."

I don't want to sound like I'm the only one who can see this, but aren't we all on a spectrum here, guys?  I mean, like, not just the crazies...  We keep being told that there's no 'I' in 'team'.  But there is 'me'.  Or, more to the point, there's a team in me.

Closer to the transom
Following that encouraging response from Asimov's in June I sent off another story.  Which didn't come back in a matter of days.  It's now been with them over three months with complete radio silence.  So I gently prodded to see what's the state of play.  Turns out they're only getting through to stories from May.  My heart sank - it's just queued, circling the drain...

That said, I've looked at the response turnaround times on the Grinder and very few stories get to being more than three months old, so I think I can conclude it's made it past the guardians of the slush pile.  Even then, it's still only a one in twenty hit rate...

Lakeside Circus
Still waiting...

A Slow Meteorite Night

So, last month, on holiday in Brittany I dimly remember the existence of the Perseid meteorite shower.  Through the power of Google I find that peak activity is due that very night.  This doesn't usually happen, does it?  It's normally the night before.  

And not only that, it isn't going to be an ordinary meteor shower.  It isn't even going to be an M&S meteor shower.  It's going to be a meteor outbreak.

So up I get the family, bleary and stumbly, from their beds and out into the mild clear night air (even the meterology is with us).  And we stare.  And stare.

And, yes, there are a few blink-and-you-miss-it smears of light in the sky.  Real shooting stars.  And sometimes you see them.  And sometimes you miss them.  But nothing like what a lifetime watching the ever-developing art and science of special effects, computer-generated or otherwise, has led me to expect.  I wanted to be, you know, within the spray of a galactic angle-grinder whereas it was more like the gods trying to strike slightly damp matches.

Since then we've spent a dusk bat-watching at Berry Head.  Again, nothing like what CGI-heavy horror films had built me up for.  No showers of creatures tangling in your hair.  A few pipistrelles went that way.  Three or four greater horseshoe bats went that way.  Then our guide thanked us for our time.

Two nocturnal activities which have proved slightly flat.  Two bouts of sky-staring that have led to tired necks and not a great deal more.  Two evenings that have left the optimist in me wondering.  Given that I have plans to travel to the States to see the total eclipse next year (yes, appreciate that it isn't an evening thing, but I am expecting the sky to go dark) I'm left wondering... third time lucky, or do things come in threes?

I'm in two minds about this post

Two recent occurrences, unrelated at first, second and even third glance.  Firstly, I've been reading Jonathan Glover's 'I: the Philosophy and Psychology of Personal Identity'.  Struggling with, slightly if truth be told, not through any density on the part of either book or myself.  Being a slightly more academic version of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, it keeps generating story ideas in my brain, which tend to shout their presence over the author's voice until they dominate and I have to put the book aside.

The second event was that I shut my finger in a drawer.

As I said, quite unrelated.

Early on in 'I', the idea of a singularity of consciousness is taken as a starting point, as something obvious.  In other words, that there's only one 'I'.  If not by Glover, at least by some big cheeses in the world of deep thinking.  From Rene Descartes ("The first observation I make at this point is that there is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible") to Erwin Schrodinger ("...the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular... We are not even able to imagine the plurality of consciousness in one mind.  We can pronounce these words all right, but they are not the description of any thinkable experience").

But here's the thing.  When I shut my finger in the drawer I think I experienced exactly that.  On the one hand (literally) I was shutting the drawer; on the other, I was trying to push the trailing end of a sock back in before the drawer shut.  I am sure, for that instant, my mind was working independently, down two separate tracks.  Two streams of thought.  Two 'I's.  Simultaneously.  Each had its objective, and each wasn't going to let the other get in the way.  The drawer pushing won, to the cost of my finger.  Yes, I shut the drawer on my finger, but my contention is that the 'my' doesn't belong to the 'I'.

Schrodinger's take was that this is an unthinkable experience.  As Glover points out, he said that before any classic split brain experiments had been carried out, but even they only claimed to show such phenomena as showing through in exceptional circumstances.  What I'm saying is that we're all doing it every day, all the time.  It's even in our language: 'I'm in two minds'; 'I can't believe I did that' (different 'I's!) 'Sorry I was miles away', meaning somebody else was in my place.

Like a mirror of Breq in Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series, we can be several people in one place, if not one person in several places.  I don't think it's unusual at all and if we wake up and start to look for it we (and here I (we?) really think I (we?) mean 'we', each and every individual 'we') will see it all the time.

I think it explains a lot.