This evening I’ll be heading out with a pack of my friends to watch the fifth Harry Potter movie: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As a certifiable geek, I have the feeling that I should be more excited about this, but that’s just not happening. For stuff that actually excites me, I’m a midnight-showing type of geek, willing to stay up into the wee hours of the morning to see the next highly-anticipated visual feast of speculative fiction. But I wouldn’t even be seeing Order of the Phoenix on opening day if it wasn’t for one of my friends putting together the plans.

And the problem here isn’t Harry Potter. I’m already planning for an afternoon siesta on July 20th and am in the middle of re-reading the entire series in anticipation of picking up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows at a midnight release party and then devouring it before collapsing into bed late on Saturday.

The problem are the Harry Potter movies, which I have not, as a general rule, truly enjoyed. And nothing about Order of the Phoenix has raised my expectations in the slightest. Like Goblet of Fire, they are attempting to cram a rather lengthy novel into a relatively short running time. And they have hired an essentially completely unknown director whose career consists of six feature films directed over the course of nearly two decades and a handful of BBC mini-series. I’m not going to judge David Yates sight-unseen, but his resume is hardly something designed to get the blood pumping. (On the other hand, if he knocks this film out of the park then I will be anticipating Half-Blood Prince, since he’s already been contracted to direct that one.)

(And, actually, I need to slightly revise this statement: Having just checked IMDB for David Yates’ credits, I finally noticed that the author of the screenplay has changed for this film. Although IMDB claims that Steve Kloves, who adapted the first four books, will be returning for the next two, this particular film is credited to Michael Goldenberg. Goldenberg has a very short list of credits, but they include the 2003 Peter Pan and Contact, both of which were really great adaptations. So now I have at least some small glimmer of hope for this film.)

But why have I not enjoyed the previous Harry Potter films? Although their flaws have been varied, not one of these films has truly raised itself above the level of mediocrity.

HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE: Where Chris Columbus succeeded with this film was in his absolutely pitch-perfect ability to capture individual scenes, settings, and characters. The film was not only visually gorgeous, but showed such fidelity to the books that any fan could instantly pick out and appreciate their favorite scenes. The casting not only assembled an admirable cadre of child stars, but packed the film full of the most extraordinary talents imaginable while still finding the absolute perfect fits for essentially every character. The film may not always match the images my own imagination conjures forth while reading the book (such a task, of course, being impossible), but there is not a single moment where it is untrue to the book.

The problem, unfortunately, is that while the film captures every individual scenes with near-perfection, the individual scenes don’t necessarily tie together with the same careful, precise plotting which is one of Rowling’s primary strength as an author. As a book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a truly masterful mystery story. Harry, Hermione, and Ron are surrounded by numerous enigmas, which they attempt to unravel with the true curiosity of children through a haze of clues, red herrings, and deductions both false and true. In the end, all of these enigmas resolve themselves into a single, masterful solution.

As a movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is a collection of favorite scenes, featuring characters who stumble from one favorite scene to the next with little in the way of the connecting tissue which constitutes the actual plot. As such, it ends up being something of a visual Cliff Notes.

Now, all of that being said, I like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I love the books, and watching such beautiful visual renditions of some of my favorite scenes is an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours — much like looking through a book of Alan Lee Lord of the Rings paintings. But there is a fundamental failure here insofar as the film should be a film in its own right, not merely a visual Best Of list.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS: My opinion of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is essentially identical to my opinion of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Chris Columbus brings the same strengths and weaknesses to the table for this film as he did for the first.

In some ways, though, watching Chamber of Secrets is more frustrating for me because, in this case, they came so agonizingly close to restoring those ligaments of the plot which were missing. To take one isolated example, the film actually shows Hagrid holding a dead rooster. Later there is a completely bungled piece of editing in which an insert shot focuses on the rooster-hating properties of basilisks, but then has Harry repeat the same piece of information he had mentioned less than a minute before. An extra thirty seconds of film (which was almost certainly shot) could have fundamentally restored that most important property of mystery stories: The weaving together of multiple clues to reach a singular conclusion.

Chamber of Secrets also has another key bungle: When Harry first hears the murderous voice of the basilisk in the film, the first thing he does is press his ear up against the wall to hear it more clearly. In the book, the realization that Harry is not hearing a disembodied voice, but rather a voice traveling through the walls, is one of the key insights which allows Hermione to solve the mystery. By ham-handedly revealing this piece of information almost instantaneously, the film not only disrupts its own narrative structure, but removes some of the mystery surrounding the voice.

On the other hand, the film does make one significant alteration which fixes what I consider to be a bungling by Rowling herself.

When I first read the books, Chamber of Secrets was probably my least favorite of the series. This was in large part due to what I considered the entirely unsatisfactory nature of the book’s conclusion, which goes something like this:

–Harry, bitten by the basilisk in its death throes, is dying from its poison.

TOM RIDDLE: Ha, ha! You’re dying Harry! I shall stand hear and gloat! Even your phoenix is crying for you!

–The phoenix’s tears heal Harry’s wound.

TOM RIDDLE: Oh yeah, phoenix tears heal wounds. I’ve suddenly gone from being a cunning villain to being an ignorant prat. Well, allow me to monologue some more about how doomed you are, Harry Potter! You are doomed! Doomed! Doom– Hey, what are you doing?

–Harry stabs the diary. Tom Riddle dies.

There is a game called Before I Kill Your, Mister Bond… which makes fun of the propensity for Bond villains to monologue about their evil plans just long enough for James Bond to escape and destroy them. If you’ve seen the first Austin Powers movie, you’ll see the same joke.

Now, villainous monologuing can certainly work if its handled properly. Rowling herself does a masterful job of it when Voldemort returns in Goblet of Fire: Voldemort not only needs to destroy Harry, he needs his followers to see him destroy and ridicule Harry. He’s trying to eliminate any doubt that Harry was ever a true threat to him, and re-establish the fear and awe which are the foundations of his power. The plan, of course, backfires when Harry survives. But the result is a strongly-motivated and powerful scene.

The problem in Chamber of Secrets is that Tom Riddle never stops monologuing. His first session of monologuing, which actually takes place before the basilisk fight, makes sense: He’s revealing his true nature to Harry, but he’s doing it because he wants to understand how Harry was responsible for Voldemort’s destruction (so that he can avoid repeating the same mistakes). Once he’s got that information, he immediately unleashes the basilisk to kill Harry. (Which, if we assume Tom Riddle does not yet know the killing-curse, is probably the quickest and most expedient way of killing Harry.)

But after the basilisk fight, Tom Riddle returns to his villainous monologuing not once, but twice.

VILLAIN: Before I kill you, Mr. Bond, allow me to explain my entire nefarious scheme for conquering–

–James Bond escapes and destroys half of the villain’s base before being recaptured.

VILLAIN: Now that I have recaptured you, Mr. Bond, allow me to explain my entire nefarious scheme for conquering–

–James Bond escapes again and destroys the other half of the villain’s base.

The problem is that it makes Tom Riddle look like a complete schmuck. And, since he forgets a basic property of phoenix tears, it makes him look like a stupid and completely ineffectual schmuck.

Long story short (too late), it makes for an entirely unsatisfactory conclusion to the book. (Particularly with the deus ex machina of Fawkes, the Sorting Hat, and Gryffindor’s sword.) And, in combination with the relative ease with which Voldemort was dispatched in the first book, did much to reduce Riddle’s status as a Dark Lord. (He came across as the type of “Dark Lord” that actual Dark Lords like to make fun of.) It’s to Rowling’s credit that she has thoroughly managed to rehabilitate him over the course of the subsequent books.

Which brings me, ultimately, back to the film which does a brilliant job of fixing this sequence. In the film we get:

–Harry, bitten by the basilisk in its death throes, is dying from its poison.

TOM RIDDLE: Ha, ha! You’re dying Harry! I shall stand hear and gloat!

–As a final, valiant act, Harry stabs the diary and Tom Riddle dies.

–Ginny wakes up and Harry, in a heart-touching moment, tries to get her to leave him so that she doesn’t watch him die.

–The phoenix flies to Harry and her tears heal Harry’s wound.

Brilliant. Tom Riddle gloating over a helpless and dying Harry is perfectly in keeping with his character. Simply failing to anticipate Harry using the basilisk fang as a weapon against the diary is a very different and much more acceptable type of error compared to Riddle literally providing the exposition of his own stupidity when it comes to the healing properties of phoenix tears. And, on top of that, you get a truly brilliant, albeit brief, scene between Harry and Ginny.

So, on the strength of that correction, I think I shall say that I prefer Chamber of Secrets to Sorcerer’s Stone, although it’s a close thing.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN: The third Harry Potter film was, of course, a departure from the previous two, featuring the talents of Alfonso Cuarón (more lately of Children of Men fame). This is, in my opinion, the strongest of the Harry Potter films to date because, in short, it is the only film which actually succeeds as a film. Most notably it features a plot with not only a true beginning, middle, and end, but with the complications and rich texturing which make a plot something more than simply “A happens and then B happens and then C happens”.

On the other hand, Prisoner of Azkaban fails to evoke the same visual beauty and fidelity of the first two films. Instead of capturing the heart of Rowling’s work, Cuarón brought his own sensibilities to the tale. This is not necessarily the worst thing for a director to do when adapting a book to the screen, but in an ideal world I would prefer to see Columbus’ ability to capture the spirit of Rowling’s work paired with Azkaban’s willingness to restructure the plot in order to make the story truly work on the big screen.

I’m also faced with minor frustrations in Prisoner of Azkaban, much like I was in Chamber of Secrets, in places where I can see that spending an extra 30 seconds could have much improved the structure of the film. The thing that stands out most clearly in my mind is the failure to explain the meaning of “Moony, Padfoot, Prongs, and Wormtail”. Less than 30 seconds of dialogue explaining that could have tied together the Marauder’s Map, revealed important elements of the backstory (not only for this film, but for later films), and explained the significance of Harry’s patronus.

On the balance, I enjoy Prisoner of Azkaban, though. As I said, it’s probably my favorite of the films to date. So why do I still describe it as, ultimately, a mediocrity? Well, simply compare it to Cuarón’s Children of Men or The Fellowship of the Rings. It’s an enjoyable film, but if it wasn’t a Harry Potter film we would scarcely remember it at three years distance.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE: This film is a complete disaster.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is actually one of my motivations for writing out this lengthy essay. I saw the film once in the theater and was completely turned off by its complete, utter, and unmitigated failure: It failed as an adaptation. It failed as a film. It failed as entertainment. It just… failed.

Nonetheless, driven by my completist collectorism, I ended up picking up a cheap used copy at Blockbuster a couple of months ago. Last night, in anticipation of Order of the Phoenix, I decided to rewatch it. I only got halfway through it before shutting off the DVD player, and I had only endured that long because there was some intellectual curiosity to be satisfied in picking apart the film’s many failings. It’s been a long time since I was subjected to such utter drek.

Even more than the first two films, Goblet of Fire assumes that you have already read the books. The film is essentially gobbledygook to anyone who doesn’t already know what’s going on.

For example, early in the film the director pans across a large field and ends on a lingering glory short of a moldy old boot while the music crescendos in a cascade of awe. The shot is completely meaningless unless you’ve read the book and already know that the boot is a portkey (and, even then, the awe in which this particular portkey is held is bizarrely inexplicable). A little later, after building up to the Quidditch World Cup, the film inexplicably skips the entire match in a jarring jump-cut.

These are just two small examples, but the entire film is done in essentially the same manner: The director shouts, “REMEMBER THIS BIT? DO YOU? DO YOU?! DO YOU?!?!” And then jump-cuts to the next bit.

Nor can one simply enjoy the film as an eclectic collection of the Best Bits From the Book because the film is filled with endless and pointless alterations. Now, I’m not a purist about such things. As the rest of this essay suggests, I actually want a film to make changes to the material it’s adapting so that it can become an effective film in its own right. (As another example, I thought Jackson’s handling of Arwen in The Fellowship of the Ring was a masterful example of how to handle an insightful, yet faithful, adaptation.)

But if you’re going to change something, there had better be a reason for changing it. In other words, the change should make for a better film than if you hadn’t made the change. If it doesn’t, why are you making the change?

Perhaps the most inexplicable change in Goblet of Fire is the constant rewriting of the dialogue. Rowling’s dialogue is repeatedly replaced with trite, banal, cliche-ridden filler. And even when Rowling’s words are preserved, they are often shuffled in a seemingly random fashion until they’ve been rendered into utter nonsense.

For example, there’s a point where Professor Moody says to Neville that “Professor Sprout tells me your quite good at Herbology”. In the book, Moody is saying this specifically to reassure Neville after has been shaken by seeing the cruciatus curse in class. In the movie, however, this line of dialogue is nonsensically and jarringly moved to a much earlier point in the conversation, before the curse has even been performed. As a result, it serves no purpose at all — its just Moody saying something completely at random.

And the film’s failure as an adaptation only scratches the surface here. The director, Mike Newell, is a complete hack in this film. (Which I found surprising, given how much I enjoyed his work on Donnie Brasco.) The camera spins and twirls and rushes about with wild abandon, but it never seems to find a compelling visual frame. And every so often, Newell will pan quite randomly off the main action in order to show us a secondary character sitting or standing nearby… doing absolutely nothing and, frequently, barely reacting to what’s happening. Newell particularly likes to end scenes this way, which only contributes to the herky-jerky feeling of the film, with scene after scene ending on an awkward and inexplicable visual note.

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX: So, when it comes to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, my hopes are not high. None of the films have truly excelled, and Goblet of Fire — with which Order of the Phoenix has the most in common (long book to short film, unproven director, and so forth) — was a complete train wreck.

But, ultimately, I’ve got my fingers crossed. Because, like I say, if I enjoy Order of the Phoenix there’s a strong chance that Half-Blood Prince will be good, as well. On the other hand, if Order of the Phoenix is a disaster, there’s little chance that I’ll see Half-Blood Prince at all.

Go to My Review of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I have just now returned from seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End for the second time. I am struck by how similar my reaction to the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy is to my reaction to The Matrix Trilogy, and how dissimilar my reaction was compared to other people.

THE SHORT VERSION: In both cases, of course, I thought the first films were fantastic. I’m sure there are some who may disagree, but for me both were high-water marks among my cinematic experiences. Both movies were pure fun. With both movies, I left the theater with a giant grin spread across my face.

SECOND FILM: I was shocked to discover, after ecstatically watching The Matrix Reloaded at a midnight showing, to discover that a large number of people hadn’t liked the film. And I was equally shocked, after watching Dead Man’s Chest, to discover the same thing. (I’m even more puzzled, in the latter case, by people who say they prefer At World’s End to Dead Man’s Chest.)

For me, the success of both The Matrix Reloaded and Dead Man’s Chest lay on two pillars:

First, the films expanded the breadth and depth of the mythology. I loved learning about rebellious programs like the Merovingian, fragmented remnants of previous iterations of the Matrix, the Architect, and the true purpose of the Prophecy. I loved Davy Jones and the revelation of Jack’s bargain.

Second, the films delivered some really fantastic action sequences. For The Matrix Reloaded, the piece de resistance was undoubtedly the car chase sequence. For Dead Man’s Chest, it was the brilliantly counter-pointed swordfight at the end — with Jack, Will, and Norrington fighting in the waterwheel while Elizabeth and the two pirates had to share just two swords between the three of them.

Ironically, these are both things which I have heard other strongly criticize, much to my confusion. For example, I’ve heard a surprising number of people complain about “all the kung fu” in The Matrix Reloaded because, in their opinion, the end of the first movie suggested that Neo should have moved beyond the need for physical combat. (These are people who have, essentially, pre-written the sequel they wanted and, when the filmmakers didn’t miraculously read their minds and deliver that film, they were disappointed.)

Similarly, a lot of the people who dislike Dead Man’s Chest talk about how the movie was “suddenly” filled with magical ships and mythological creatures. At least some of these complainants have the self-awareness to realize this sounds a trifle odd when the first film featured undead pirates and gold cursed by Aztec gods, but they justify their complaint because, essentially, they’ll accept one magical departure from our world, but not two.

This bugs me because, essentially, they’re saying that all they wanted the sequel to do was redo the first film while shuffling the pieces around. I’ve never understood that approach to sequel-making and I’ve been very glad to see Hollywood moving away from it recent years: If I just wanted to re-watch the first film, I’d pop the DVD in and watch it. With a sequel I want to see familiar characters in a tale told along the same vein, but I want something new. I want the new film to take me places the old film didn’t.

And, for me, The Matrix Reloaded and Dead Man’s Chest both delivered that.

THIRD FILM: But what really draws a parallel between the two trilogies in my mind is not their successes, but their shared failure. For me, in both cases, the sequels were fantastic… right up to their conclusions.

In the case of The Matrix Revolutions, I felt that the Wachowski brothers put the entire dramatic weight of the trilogy onto Hugo Weaving’s shoulders and said, “Okay, this monologue is the culmination of the entire trilogy. Land it like Keri Strug and we can all go home.” And then, much to my surprise, Hugo Weaving blew it. Maybe the script contributed, and certainly the editing didn’t do much to help. But, ultimately, I felt the moment, the necessary elements were there, and yet… they didn’t quite carry it off, for reasons I can’t quite put my thumb on.

In the case of At World’s End, the problem can be much more succinctly targeted: The entire plot of the movie was centered around getting all the pirates in the world together so that they could fight back against the armada of the East India Company. And they get all the pirates in the world together. And what do all the pirates in the world do? Absolutely nothing. And what does the armada do? Absolutely nothing. The film then compounds the problem by having Cutler Beckett act completely out of character not once, but twice: First by putting himself in danger (when he literally has an entire fleet of flunkies he could send to finish off the Black Pearl) and then again when he suddenly seizes up at a moment of crisis (despite the fact that we’ve seen him act cool and collected under pressure on countless occasions).

(My suspicion is that the writers and director originally intended to give us a huge sea battle between the armada and the pirate fleet, but they ran out of both time and money: The film was nearly 3 hours long and cost $300 million to produce even without the sea battle. Both those figures would have only ended up being even larger if a 10-15 minute sea battle, with all the requisite special effects, had been filmed.)

IN CONCLUSION: I have no grand statement or conclusion to draw from all this. I’m simply struck by the way in which both of these trilogies ended up, to at least some extent, squandering what could have been a triumphant crescendo on lackluster endings that didn’t quite close the deal.

Of course, endings are not always an easy thing to carry off. Look at Neal Stephenson, for example.

But, on the other hand, look at Terry Pratchett. Pratchett consistently delivers endings which are not only satisfying, but frequently elevate the entire work to a new level.

Imagine for a moment that you have been made aware of a novel with a reputation which places it on the same lofty plateau as the Foundation Trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, or Dune. Its author has carefully crafted an entire culture and society, complete with a language so detailed that many have learned to speak it fluently. Its plot is epic in its scope. Its quality is attested to by a legion of dedicated fans, multimedia adaptations, and widespread acclaim.

In short, it is reputed to be a masterpiece. And you have never read it.

So you go looking for it, but are frustrated to discover that it cannot be had. You are literally unable to discover a single copy of it. But the more you learn about it, the more it sounds exactly like the type of book you want to read.

And then you get some wonderful news: It’s being reprinted! You’ll finally be able to get a copy! Frabjuous day!

So the day finally comes when you hold a copy of the newly reprinted masterpiece in your hands. You crack the cover…

… and discover that the new publishers have decided to not only abridge the book, they’ve also decided to rewrite it as a juvenile.

Imagine, if you will, that you had spent several years searching and hoping to find a copy of the Lord of the Rings or Dune or the Foundation Trilogy. And then, when you thought you finally had a copy, it turned out to be a novelization of the movie which was based on the book.

The emotion you’d be feeling at that moment is roughly akin to the emotion I felt when I finally managed to get my hands on the Crest of the Stars, a space opera masterpiece by Hiroyuki Morioka.

The original novel was written in Japanese. For many years it has been known in English only through the anime and manga adaptations. Starting last year, however, Tokyopop began releasing translated versions of the novel. As is typical for the Japanese market, the book was serialized into three volumes. Tokyopop kept the same format and released it as a trilogy: Princess of the Empire, A Modest War, and Return to a Strange World.

The novel was translated by Sue Shambaugh. And, unfortunately, the decision was made to release the novel as part of Tokyopop’s juvenile line. The work was minorly abridged, but this was almost a minor sin compared to a translation which fundamentally kiddified the work and stripped out its complexities. The glimmering remannts of Hiroyuki Morioka’s brilliant world-building which shine through in these botched translations is utterly eclipsed by the incessant need to make the characters sound “hip” and “current” (in that utterly artificial way which only a thoroughly dreary adult can achieve when trying to copy “the way kids speak these days”).

Imagine, if you will, an edition of the Lord of the Rings in which Theoden would say things like: “Fine, spoilsport! Oh jeez! I really don’t want to go fight Saruman’s orcs!”

Perhaps you’d prefer it if Frodo’s hair was described using an analogy to a chocolate pudding pop?

Do you feel the pain?

Then you can imagine my pain.

I’d really love to encourage people to go out and experience this wonderful story. But, realistically, you have to be willing to squint your eyes and try to read between the lines to recreate Hiroyuki Morioka’s masterpiece from the wreckage of Tokyopop’s hamfisted translation.

NITPICKING TOKYOPOP’S EFFORTS

(1) The first words of Crest of the Stars consist of a quote from a fictional text. This quote begins: “This crest depicts the Gaftonash. The grotesque eight-headed dragon was long lost to the ages — forgotten, alive only in myth. Resurrected on an Imperial crest, the Gaftonash became infamous…”

When you flip open the book to the very first page you’ll discover a large rendition of the Imperial crest described. Count the heads: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7…

Yup. That’s right. The eight-headed Imperial crest has been rendered with only seven heads. This same image is then reused in miniature throughout the volume to break up the text.

You can literally say that Tokyopop screwed it up starting right on page one.

(2) One of the unique things about the original Japanese publication of Crest of the Stars was the way in which Hiroyuki Morioka worked the fictional language of Baronh into the story. As Tokyopop describes it: “In the original Japanese version, all the text is in kanji, and then above those Japanese characters are the Abh language words (called Baronh) in rubi (a smaller, phonetic alphabet).”

Fascinating. How could you duplicate this experience in an English-language edition?

Well, you could duplicate it precisely: Print the book in double-space print and insert the Baronh words on the interleaving lines. This would be awkward, but I’ve got an edition of Caesar’s Gallic Wars that does essentially this (printing a line of Latin and then the matching line in English and using two different colors to make them easily distinguishable).

You could also use footnotes. Or you could put the notes on the facing page (like the Folger’s Library editions of Shakespeare). Or you could consistently put the Baronh words in parantheses.

Or you could do what Tokyopop did: The first time a Baronh term is referenced the English version is written with the Baronh term appearing in parentheses immediately afterwards. So far so good… But then the English term is never used again. Only the Baronh term is used.

This might have worked if only a few select terms had been selected. For example, if the book refers to the “Imperial Emperor (Spunej)”, I’d have a pretty good chance of remembering that Spunej is the Abh title for Emperor.

But it becomes ridiculous when someone talks about taking a shower (guzas), and forever after the word “shower” is never used again. To the extent where you feel like you’re learning key phrases in a foreign tongue, its fun. But when the latter half of the book becomes an increasingly frustrating exercise in referring to the glossary at the back of the book to parse simple sentences, something has gone wrong.

(3) Making the ubiquitous use of Baronh terms even more painful is that, for reasons beyond comprehending, Tokyopop decided to Capitalize Every Single Baronh Word. It makes Everything look like a Proper Noun, and it makes Parsing sentences difficult even When You understand the Baronh Words to begin with.

What makes this even more absurd is that Tokyopop got it right when they used Japanese terms like “kanji” and “rubi” in their foreward: See how I italicized them in the bit I quoted up above? That’s because they’re italicized in the book.

It would have made sense to capitalize titles and ranks (like Spunej) while italicizing common Baronh words (like guzas). It makes no sense to capitalize everything.

Final analysis? I’m glad I finally got a chance to read Crest of the Stars. I’ve been waiting a long time for it.

But I’ll never buy another Tokyopop novel translation.

GRADES:

PRINCESS OF THE EMPIRE: C+ (A)
A MODEST WAR: C+ (A)
RETURN TO A STRANGE WORLD: B- (A)

Hiroyuki Morioka
Published: 2006-2007
Publisher: Tokyopop
Cover Price: $7.99
ISBNs: 1598165755 / 1598165763 / 1598165771
Buy Now!

Roughly speaking, Vernor Vinge’s career as a novelist can be divided into three parts: His earliest novels, written pre-1983; the Across Realtime novels of the mid-1980s; and the award-winning Zones novels of the 1990s.

This reaction covers the first of these. I am planning additional reactions to cover his later novels.

TATJA GRIMM’S WORLD

The novel now known as Tatja Grimm’s World has something of a fractured history. In it’s earliest form, it was published as the short story “Grimm’s Story” in 1968. Damon Knight then asked Vinge to expand “Grimm’s Story” to novel-length, which he did by essentially writing another short story as a sequel to the first and then putting the two together as a patch-up.

The novel, published in 1969 as Grimm’s World, apparently made very little splash and eventually went out of print. In 1986, however, Jim Baen asked Vernor Vinge to expand and revise the novel for a reprint edition. This time Vinge wrote a prequel, which was published separately as “The Barbarian Princess” in Analog and then published as part of the new Tatja Grimm’s World in 1987.

Attempting to read Tatja Grimm’s World as a novel is an unrewarding experience: It’s poorly paced and completely disjointed. There are gaping holes in the individual character arcs and point of view characters disappear mysteriously between the chapter breaks.

Read correctly as a collection of three connected short stories, however, it makes a much stronger impression. I would also say that the addition of “The Barbarian Princess” in 1987 makes a big difference, allowing Vinge to more clearly establish his themes and primary character arc.

That being said, there’s still some awkwardness to be found here. You can tell that the core of this collection/novel is still the work of a young author early in his career.

But that’s not to say that the book doesn’t have a lot of offer, as well:

Tatja Grimm’s World takes place on a world at the cusp of the scientific revolution. But this world lacks metals, has a unique geography, and is possessed of distinctly different cultures. The result is a very different sort of scientific revolution, which Vinge works out in fascinating detail.

As his main character, Vinge chooses the editor of a fantasy and contrivance fiction magazine. (For “contrivance fiction” you can read “science fiction”.) This gives him a rather unique view of the gradual scientific revolution taking root on this alien world, but all of this takes a backseat to the character at the center of this drama: Tatja Grimm. It’s her mystery which forms the backbone of the novel’s plot.

Where this novel succeeds is in its hard SF extrapolation of an alien world in a parallel time of technological change, mixed with a story in which those elements are frequently expressed using the tropes of fantasy. (A mixture which is nicely mirrored in the main character’s fantasy and contrivance fiction magazine.)

Where the novel fails, however, is when it can’t quite make me believe the extrapolation. For example, Vinge posits a sea-based society more technologically and socially advanced than the island-based societies they trade with. This society also endures for at least a millennia with not only seemingly little change, but with a continuity of individual vessels (which are impractically huge). I can’t quite make those pieces, or some of the subsidiary technologies described, really fit together in my mind.

But if you can grab your bootstraps every so often and haul your suspension of disbelief back up where it belongs, I think you’ll find Tatja Grimm’s World to be a pleasant little read… particularly in the context of Vinge’s later writing.

THE WITLING

The Witling, published in 1976, is a deeply flawed novel.

The primary problem here is that the characters come across as flat and lifeless – their actions seemingly forced by authorial fiat. With a little imagination you can see how these character arcs could have been very, very compelling… but they aren’t. Emotions, for example, don’t seem to emerge organically from the characters. Instead they just seem to happen, with the only seeming cause being that the author’s outline said that they should.

This core problem also cascades to certain extent. At first glance, for example, the plots appears to have been padded out from a more proper novella length. But, upon reflection, it would appear that this is simply an aggravated symptom of the character dramas falling with such resounding thuds.

Where the novel succeeds, however, is in its analysis of its central conceit: Teleportation which observes the conservation of momentum. Vinge takes this idea and extrapolates it to at least four levels of depth. To borrow John Campbell’s saying again: Not just the car, but the traffic jam, the interstate system, the oil crisis of the ‘70s, and the search for alternative fuels.

I suspect The Witling’s biggest problem is that it’s narrative structure and tapioca characters would be primarily appealing to the hard SF aficionados who like things like Niven’s Ringworld– where the central conceit and speculation of the story takes center stage and holds your attention and fascination. But the conceit in this case takes the form of psychic teleportation – so those same hard SF aficionados are probably turned off by how “improbable” it is (as opposed to scrith, I suppose).

That being said, Vinge’s detailed extrapolation of the teleportation is, in fact, interesting, rigorous, and detailed enough that The Witling makes for a worthwhile read.

TRUE NAMES

True Names is a little difficult to classify. It’s short enough to technically classify as a novella. However, it’s long enough that it has been published as a stand-alone novel in its own right.

At the moment, the story is only available as part of the volume True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier – which collects the story itself along with a dozen or so essays by other authors discussing the story and its predictions. So, for the sake of argument, I’m going to classify True Names as a novel and discuss it here. (It should be noted, however, that I don’t own the current collection and have not read the essays. So this is a reaction only to True Names itself.)

True Names is probably the specific point at which Vinge went from being “a pretty decent SF author” to “hot shit”. There were a few false steps still to be taken, and it took awhile for the rest of the world to notice, but with True Names Vinge basically arrived. He pulled the lever and he delivered.

It’s probably not coincidental that True Names is also basically the first time that Vinge puts the Singularity firmly in his sights and pulls the trigger. He comes at it from multiple directions, trying to hem it in and define its outlines… and then he plunges into it, penetrating perhaps as deeply as one can into the fundamentally incomprehensible. Then he pulls back and lets the foundations of his story rest firmly on a human drama.

But, in truth, that’s not the primary focus of the story.

Nor is the primary focus of the story to be found in Vinge’s casual introduction of a fully-realized cyberspace, a trope which has been masticated endlessly in the two and a half decades since.

No, the primary focus of this story lies in the subtle, interwoven theme suggested by the title: The power and meaning of true names. Vinge allows this theme to play itself simultaneously on planes transcendental, digital, and mortal.

True Names is a complicated and subtly worked narrative. Vinge isn’t afraid to keep adding one big idea after another to his pot until it’s almost overflowing, stirring in multi-layered character dramas, spicing the whole thing lightly with thematic elegance, and then bringing the whole thing to a slow boil over a plot of high-stakes thrills.

But what makes True Names even more impressive is that, in the act of reading, you’re scarcely aware of the complexity of the material you’re reading. Somehow Vinge manages to present it all with smooth prose and fast-placed plotting, keeping you fully engaged in his story and turning the pages as if you were reading nothing more substantial than a piece of light adventure fiction. It’s only when you’ve breathlessly flipped the last page and have a moment to reflect that you realize the truth:

This is the reason you read science fiction.

GRADES:

TATJA GRIMM’S WORLD: B
THE WITLING: C+
TRUE NAMES: A+

Vernor Vinge
Published: 1968 / 1976 / 1981
Publisher: Tor
Cover Price: $14.95
ISBNs: 0-76-530885-1 / 0-671-65634-1 / 0-31-286207-5
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Vernor Vinge’s output as an author can be described as almost tepid. Over the span of four decades (from 1965 through 2005), his total output consists of only 25 works: 19 short stories and 6 novels.

That’s a slim opus, indeed, but it’s an opus which has completely transformed the entire genre.

Usually when you say stuff like that you’re speaking hyperbolistically. But not in the case of Vinge: At least half of the significant science fiction authors of the last two decades owe Vinge either a direct or indirect debt of enormous proportions. And, as a result, pretty much everyone else in the field has been influenced by his ideas to one degree or another.

A lot of this importance can be credited to Vinge’s conceptualization of the Singularity, which I’ll discuss at more length as it comes up in his work. But he’s also responsible for the modern vision of cyberspace. That, combined with his anarcho-capitalistic social thought experiments, puts him solidly behind the nascent origins of the cyberpunk movement in the 1980s. He is also arguably responsible for the Neo Space Opera Renaissance of the past decade and his most recent work (represented by “Fast Times at Fairmont High”, “Synthetic Serendipity”, and the forthcoming Rainbows End) would seem tantalizingly poised to shape major genre trends for the decade to come in ways we can perhaps scarcely imagine.

But until recently, I, like many others, had read only Vinge’s two most recent, Hugo Award-winning novels: A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. I had been previously turned away from his earlier works partly because they were frustratingly unavailable and partly because I’d heard that his earlier novels just weren’t of the same quality as his more recent work.

Then, a few weeks ago, I finally cracked open The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. Over the course of the following month I proceeded to devour (or re-devour) every word Vernor Vinge has ever published.

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF VERNOR VINGE

The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge is a very strong testament to the quality and nature of Vinge’s career. At the time it was published in 2001, this was arguably a complete collection of Vinge’s short fiction. It contains less than two dozen stories spread thing across four decades of work, but almost every single story is a masterpiece. The collection contains every word of short fiction published by Vinge, but it reads like another author’s “Best of” collection.

I have to assume that Vinge is essentially a methodical craftsman: Each story painstakingly fashioned like a jewel, with each facet carefully cut to reveal its inner strength and beauty to the utmost. This can create seemingly agonizing waits between the appearance of each work, but it also means that the wait is always worthwhile.

The highlights of this collection include:

“Bookworm, Run!” – This is basically the story of someone who gets Google plugged straight into their brain. A version of Google fully stocked with the mainframes of the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI all rolled into one. The result is the ability to instantaneously access an essentially infinite library of networked information in a fashion almost, but not quite, as if it existed in your own memory.

Lots of science fiction authors have been known to let genies out of bottles: Ideas so powerful that they come to define their careers and create a shockwave which percolates throughout the field or transforms our understanding of the genre. Smith’s space opera. Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. Herbert’s Dune.

But most of these authors don’t reveal their genies until they’ve got a few dozen stories under their belt. By contrast, Vinge, in the very first story he ever sold, whips out his bottle, smashes it to smithereens, and starts interrogating the genie. The result is a revelation which has been haunting his work, and the entire genre, ever since.

What, exactly, are we talking about? The Singularity. In “Bookworm, Run!”, Vinge asks a very simple question: “What happens when human science creates the first truly superhuman intellect?” And Vinge’s answer is evocative, “You get something incomprehensible. You get a point beyond which the merely human is no longer capable of understanding.”

Vinge’s argument, essentially, is that as you begin to grow intelligence, you reach a point at which that growth becomes essentially exponential. For example, in “Bookworm, Run!”, when you reach the point that your natural memories can be supplemented by artificial databases, you don’t get a situation in which intellect gradually improves: You have an explosive, essentially infinite growth in personal knowledge. And that sudden expansion from knowing a few things to knowing everything creates a dynamic which is, essentially, unimaginable – it can only be thought of in the grossest and most imprecise of ways by those of us who have not yet undergone that change.

In “Bookworm, Run!” Vinge saddles his protagonist and his specific technology with some… unique limitations. In this way he sidesteps the essentially incomprehensible nature of his proto-Singularity (since he hadn’t fully developed the concept yet), and instead sidles up to it from the side. But he doesn’t simply ignore the implications, either, as the end of the story reveals.

This reveals the unique problem of dealing with the Singularity in fiction: How do you tell a story about something incomprehensible by its very nature? Trying to meet that unique challenge of storytelling can give rise to some fascinating solutions and some wondrous world-building. In many ways, his many varied solutions to this problem have come to define Vinge’s career.

“Bookworm, Run!” is also quintessentially Vingean, revealing the future contours of his career, for another reason: In addition to the central conceit of the story, Vinge also casually drops a few other bombshells into his world-building which fundamentally transform society even before the story begins. Not only is he not content in running just a single thought-experiment through his story, the entire setting is permeated with detailed extrapolation.

In this case, the most notable change after the proto-Singularity at the centerpoint of the story, is the availability of cheap fusion reactors. Vinge postulates that this prevalence of cheap energy will create an economic depression, requiring the government to impose a period of strict economic controls. His logic here makes no sense to me, but it’s particularly interesting to look at the story as a starting point for Vinge’s experimentation with the economic organization of a high-tech society, a theme he’ll return to time and again in his work.

(Although I find it interesting to note that if you replace the words “cheap fusion reactors” with “self-replicating nano-factories” I probably wouldn’t have had the reaction of, “How do you figure, exactly?” Is that indicative that self-replicating nano-factories are just the latest “utopia gizmo” of science fiction, or is it that science fiction has finally found the utopia gizmo it’s always been looking for?)

“The Ungoverned” – This question of the ways in which technology can restructure an entire economy and, by extension, society is central to Vinge’s world-building in “The Ungoverned”. Basically, Vinge seems to have quickly reached the conclusion that sufficiently advanced technology inevitably breaks down central authority.

“The Ungoverned” is a novella lying between two novels: The Peace War takes place before it; Marooned in Realtime takes place after it. In The Peace War we see the last desperate efforts of a central authority attempting to cling to power by artificially suppressing technology. In Marooned in Realtime, Vinge takes this question to its extreme: What use is a central authority when an individual is an entire economy unto themselves? “The Ungoverned” lies quite literally between; an anarcho-capitalist society in rapid transition.

But all that is just the world-building. It’s the groundwork and the thematic substance which opens up the door for the rip-roaring war story which is the actual meat of the story. It makes for a fascinating reading because, on the one hand, it’s a fast-paced, no-holds-barred action story; but, on the other hand, it doesn’t take much to peel back the surface and see some frightening conclusions being drawn about the future being drawn. What does it really mean when a handful of people are capable of wielding as much power as a 19^th century superpower? Or even a 20^th century superpower?

“Conquest by Default” – This story takes a slightly different approach to Vinge’s vision of technological profligacy leading inevitably to extreme libertarianism. Here we have a system with a central control designed to deflect the monopolistic tendencies within the anarcho-capitalist structure. And if you think that Vinge is whole-heartedly endorsing the anarchic chaos which he appears to believe inevitable, then this is a story which will make you think twice.

“The Peddler’s Apprentice” – This story, which is a collaboration between Vernor Vinge and his ex-wife Joan D. Vinge, highlights several of the ways in which Vinge sidesteps the enigma of the Singularity. Once again we have a centralized authority artificially holding society’s technological progress in check, but we also get to view the Singularity through the eyes of a primitive. We also get to see Vinge’s willingness to dream across incredibly vast scales of time: A vision of civilizations rising and falling; or rising and disappearing into the Singularity; with the vestiges of either being given a chance to rise again over the spans of hundreds of millennia.

“The Science Fair” – Vinge also has a real flair for developing completely alien cultures with a great depth of thought. In reading “The Science Fair” I was reminded of something John Campbell once said: A good science fiction author, writing in 1900, would be able to predict the automobile. A great science fiction author would predict the traffic jam. In similar fashion, Vinge doesn’t just create imaginative and memorable alien races, he follows through on the basic qualities of their nature to logically produce the cultures, societies, and technologies such a species would naturally create.

“Original Sin” – This talent for creating alien races and then extrapolating upon their biological imperatives to create unique and multicultural societies is the foundation which makes “Original Sin” such a classic. The other element which deserves comment here is Vinge’s ability to invest a relatively large cast of character with a lot of individual depth. The result is a multi-faceted character drama which is made even more impressive given that several of those characters are completely alien in their countenance and in Vinge’s ability to create that character drama within the confines of a crisis capable of reshaping the known universe.

“Original Sin” is also notable because it shows Vinge hitting the central thesis of A Mote in God’s Eye several years before Niven and Pournelle.

“The Barbarian Princess” – It’s also interesting to note how most of Vinge’s novels have grown out of his short fiction. “The Barbarian Princess” is part of his pastiche novel Tatja Grimm’s World, which will be dealt with at length in its own reaction.

“The Blabber” – This short story is probably most famous because it’s the genesis point of the Zone universe, which serves as the setting for Vinge’s two best-known works, A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky. But “The Blabber” is a damn fine story in its own right.

The conceit of the Zones universe is a way for Vinge to cheat the exponential growth curve which ends inevitably in the Singularity. Basically, if Vinge is right about the Singularity, humans don’t get to go to space: Long before the industrial trends give us interstellar flight, the informational or biogenetic or artificial intelligence trends result in humanity becoming something transhuman.

So Vinge sidesteps the issue by, basically, waving his authorial hand and saying: “These technologies would surely be nifty… but they just don’t work. Too bad.” Vinge is hardly the only author to do this, but what makes Vinge’s experiment interesting is that he makes his authorial hand-waving explicit to the universe itself AND varies those technological limitations.

The result is a galaxy split into multiple “zones” (hence the name applied to the fictional milieu): In the Unthinking Depths at the galactic core, intelligent thought itself is impossible (or, at least, intelligent thought as we know it). If you and I were to jump on a spaceship and head down towards the galactic core, at some point our brains would simply stop functioning at anything but an animalistic level.

One step up from the Unthinking Depths is the Slow Zone. That’s where we are now: Human-level intelligence is possible, but not much more than that and the limits of physics are already pretty well known to us: FTL and gravity-control systems are impossible, for example.

The next step up is the Beyond. Here you can get some pretty sophisticated AI systems and other forms of superhuman intelligence. FTL, gravity-control, and some other amazing, physics-bending technologies are easily achievable. Basically, the Beyond is the realm of classic space opera.

And beyond the Beyond there is the Transcend: Here Vinge’s Singularity is possible. And, in fact, due to the nature of the Zones universe almost inevitable: A High Beyonder civilization has been artificially arrested on the precipice of the Singularity. Take them into a Zone where the Singularity is possible and they practically fall into Transcendance.

The net result is a universe where you, as an author, can literally scale the technology to whatever your current needs are, while also profiting immensely from unique interactions between the Zones. For example, “The Blabber” takes place near a border between the Zones, on a human colony world just far enough within the Slow Zone to be inexorably stuck, but close enough to the Beyond to know what they’re missing out on.

As a story, “The Blabber” begins to show a truly mature Vinge working his craft like a maestro. It mixes crafty and subtle storytelling; a character drama and coming of age story told with touching sincerity; marvelously intricate extrapolation and world-building; a cleverly conceived alien species; and at least a dozen nifty ideas thrown around to create sensawunda on a grand scale.

“Fast Times at Fairmont High” – As “The Blabber” was the genesis point for A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, “Fast Times at Fairmont High” is the genesis point for Vinge’s forthcoming Rainbows End. In this new cycle of stories, Vinge chooses to examine the Singularity by jumping onto the on-ramp and taking us down the gaping maw of the rapid plunge into computer-assisted super-consciousness.

What makes “Fast Times at Fairmont High” so very interesting is that Vinge’s technological predictions are not particularly outrageous. Indeed, what makes this story so utterly compelling, on a level beyond its immediate characterization and plot (which are both sterling), is Vinge’s completely believable extrapolation of the effect that technology scarcely more advanced than our own will have on the daily lives of every man, woman, and child alive.

Indeed, you can begin seeing signs of that change around us even now: The experience that I had in high school in the mid-to-late ‘90s was only tangentially different in the slightest of ways from the high school experience kids had twenty years earlier. Less than ten years later, ubiquitous proliferation of ‘net access, cell phones, wireless devices, online communities, and more have fundamentally changed the high school experience. It’s easy to say “this changes everything” – and it’s so very rarely true – but it’s actually happening right now. These new technologies are fundamentally changing the way you study; it changes the way you learn; it changes the way you socialize – it changes the way in which you live. And when you change the way people live their lives at a societal level, you change the very nature of that society. And it’s not just the change which is notable, it’s the pace of the change: Meaningful generation gaps which begin shrinking into spans of less than a decade.

What gives Vinge’s effort it’s distinction is that he doesn’t simply take a look at current trends, extend the graph lines by a few years, and then present the result. Instead he narrowly looks at the trends in the advance of computer technology and extends those graph lines a few years. Then he imagines what types of applications those technologies will make possible. Then he imagines what people will do with those types of applications. Then he imagines what a whole society of people doing those things would look like; what types of synergies would be created; what other technologies would be pursued. It’s a gestalt; it’s the traffic jam lurking behind the automobile.

OTHER SHORT STORIES

In the four years since The Collected Short Stories were published, Vernor Vinge has published two additional short stories: “Synthetic Serendipity” and “The Cookie Monster”. (These stories are both available legally online — follow the links.)

“Synthetic Serendipity” – This story takes place in the same near-future universe as “Fast Times at Fairmont High”. What I find interesting is that, despite sharing largely the same locales and a similar cast of characters, there is little thematic or content overlap between the two stories. This seems to go back to the discipline which lies behind the austerity of Vinge’s artistic output: He may go back to visit the same settings and even the same characters, but somehow he finds the ability to keep everything *completely* fresh.

I’m reminded by a story that my friend David Kloker told me the other night: The first time he went to New York City he spent the night sleeping on the floor of his friend’s dorm room at NYU and, in the morning, went to an anti-nuclear rally. The second time he went to New York he stayed at a 5-star hotel in Manhattan , supped beneath a glass chandelier, and spent the evening at the opera. The two experiences, though separated by scant miles, seemed to take place in two completely different cities. And, as my friend David says, if you stand on a busy, bustling street corner and reflect upon this, you can be humbled through the understanding that there is a reality which can only be understood through disparate views – at the interstice of diffracted experience.

Similarly, the Fairmont High we see in “Synthetic Serendipity” is the same school as the one we see in “Fast Times”… yet the experience is fundamentally different. And by refusing to hit any of the same beats a second time – by showing a completely fresh facet of his creation – Vinge adds remarkable depth to a setting which has only had a few thousand words dedicated to it.

“The Cookie Monster” – It’s difficult to do a review of this story because any substantive discussion of it would necessarily reveal the central mysteries which Vinge so very skillfully unwraps for you over the course of the story itself.

So let me speak in generalities for a moment: The escalation of the story’s central mystery and the execution of the plot are solid and well-paced. The characters not only have distinct personalities and unique roles, but genuinely make you care for them. The story, as a whole, explores a lot of different dynamics within the situation in a very efficient, entertaining, and creative fashion. There’s essentially no dead air in the story, and Vinge manages to hit a wide thematic range without beating you over the head with any particular message: Slavery. Genocide. Resistance. Freedom. Hope. Despair.

In “The Cookie Monster” I find a summary of Vinge as a whole: He excels at mixing old and new ideas alike, analyzing their implications to an unprecedented depth, twisting them in original ways, combining them in great quantities, accelerating the pace of change, and waiting to see what comes out of the mix. And then, once he’s got all that worked out, he’ll quite casually figure out where the crisis points and character dramas naturally arise and then execute the resulting story in a flawless fashion.

That’s “The Cookie Monster”. That’s Vinge. That’s genius.

GRADES:

COLLECTED STORIES OF VERNOR VINGE: A+
“Synthetic Serendipity”: A
“The Cookie Monster”: A+

Vernor Vinge
Published: 1966-2005
Publisher: Tor
Cover Price: $16.95
ISBN: 0-31-28758-43
Buy Now!