Vatican blasts Golden Compass as Godless and hopeless

The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film “The Golden Compass,” which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.

In a long editorial, the Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano, also slammed Philip Pullman, the bestselling author of the book on which the family fantasy movie is based.

It was the Vatican’s most stinging broadside against an author and a film since it roundly condemned “The Da Vinci Code” in 2005 and 2006.

“In Pullman’s world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events,” the editorial said.

In addition to the part where the books are teh awesome!!1!11!!1 (and only mouthbreathing ijits actually think they’re anti-god (they’re gnostic at the core, and anti-dogma and anti-formal structure. “god” is a nice dude with a bitchass major domo)… where was I? Oh yeah, anything that has Dobson, Robertson, and Popeferatu against is a must-experience. Must.

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Terry Pratchett has early onset Alzheimers

AN EMBUGGERANCE
Folks,

I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.

We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet :o)

PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think - it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

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Just when you thought it was safe to come out of the water.

Tor Books announced today that novelist Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish the final novel in Robert Jordan’s bestselling Wheel of Time fantasy series. Robert Jordan, one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, died September 16th

Robert Jordan may be dead, but this craptacular series will. go. on. forEVAH.

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Following Henry’s following of Jim Henley’s following of Adrienne Aldredge’s meme:

What authors have you given up on for good? And why?

Now, we’ve got two people saying Dan Simmons so I can’t use him. Which is unfortunate, since he certainly deserves to be on the list, both because of the GWOT malarkey and his horrible second-novels in each series he’s done. So… here’s my list of authors that started off great. Our relationship was perfect and my love for them burned brighter than two suns … only to fizzle when they kept publishing past their expiration date. These authors are dead to me, our love a dry, barren, scorched earth of place where only the unlikeliest of seeds may take root henceforth:

Chuck Palahniuk. Invisible Monsters, Fight Club, and Survivor were fantastic. Choke was good. But Diary, Lullaby, and Haunted were all empty nothings that lacked the energy, vision, and genius of his earlier work. I was pretty sure I was done after Diary, but I’m certain I’m done after Haunted.

Neal Stephenson. There, I’ve said it. Quicksilver was such an awful book that it overwhelmed the truly awe-inspiring works of Snow Crash and Diamond Age. and I liked the Big U, Zodiac, and Cryptonomicron as well. Interface… not so much (it was a long way to go just to get a black woman as president). Visionary, meth-and-death-metal fueled genius… toppled under it’s own weight and affectation of writing three massive tomes longhand.

Orson Scott Card. Three of his works were fantastic - Ender’s Game, Seventh Son, and Red Prophet. Some were pretty good (like the first two in the Homecoming series), but every book after the second in each of his series was just awful. The returning to former glories with Ender’s Shadow and the like is just pathetic. The well is dry, Orson. That and the freaking incessant pounding of the Mormon mythology drums just gets tiresome.

On the bubble: Neil Gaiman, Greg Bear, George R. R. Martin, Jim Butcher, Stephen King
Definitely on the list, but too trite to mention: J.K. Rowling, Robert Jordan, Michael Moore, Anne Rice

Update: Just found out about OS Card’s warporn book. Feeling very secure with my pick there.

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Hey, did you know that Terry Pratchett as a new book out? Because he does. It’s called Wintersmith. And the Nac Mac Feegle are in it too!

FSM, I love the Nac Mac Feegle (what are they good for? Drinkin’! Drinkin’ and what? Drinkin’ and fightin’! Drinkin and fightin and what? Drinkin’ and fightin’ and stealin’!). Don’t know who Terry Pratchett is? Why, he’s only the wittiest, funniest, satirical writer in like… ever. His most famous and successful construct is a fictional universe called Discworld. It’s a flat planet that sits on top of four giant elephants who stand on the shell of the great space turtle A’Tuin. The series is inspired storytelling and genius disguised as satire. I’m such a fanboi, I’ve even reviewed and provided capsule summaries of all 30-something Discworld books, feel free to peruse at your leisure. But comment so I can feel some lurve.

Anyway, books are always cool gifts and Pratchett is good fun for the whole family. So he’s going on my wishlist as well as the Deals n’ Gifts list. Pratchett and Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Gracie Adieu are the books I’m most looking forward to these days. Well, that and the next 3 from Steven Erikson.

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Much like being a red shirt in Star Trek or having sex in a slasher film, being mentioned on the first page of a Dan Brown novel is a surefire sign of your impending demise. One can only hope Brown will mention his literary career in the first sentence of his next doorstop piece of shit work.

The recent literary analysis reminded me that I still need to unpack my review trapped in the old phpNuke db… no, wait, I’ll do it now. Here it is. It’s not as rage-fuelled as I remember it. Damn that reasonableness thing!

Davinci Code - 2/5
You’ve probably seen this book around, goodness knows I sure did. It was everywhere, in every store. I figured it was one of those Oprah book club things, so I didn’t pay much attention. Then there was a glowing review in my forums and my wife just happened to buy it for me a couple days later. So I thought I would read it.

Let me summarize my review before continuing: this book is a craptastic exercise in total schlock, and unremarkable even by those low standards. The DaVinci Code is drivel, but it didn’t make me want to hurl it across the room so it gets two stars rather than one. The book is a modern Hardy Boys mystery, but nothing more.

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I’ve been remiss with my reviews, so I thought I’d play a little catch-up.

Kings of Infinite Space - 3/5.
Starts off well, fades badly. Goes from creepy Lovecraftian/Wellsian to Carroll-esque plus cheese.

The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman - 4/5.
Excellent surrealish British fantasy/adolescent novel. There are two more in the series, which I hear turns more into some Manichean religious end times type deal, but the first book was just fine. The Golden Compass is a charming book, though not nearly so excellent as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (admittedly, they are aiming at different audiences), which I link in my head because they both have that indefinable fantasy Britishosity, or at least what I consider to be the archetypical examples of such.

Memories of Ice - Steven Erikson - 5/5.
With this book, Erikson passes George Martin as the best hard fantasy series ever. A world so detailed, so incredibly well envisioned by the author that it requires no extemporaneous explanations. Erikson (a pseudonym) is the Salman Rushdie of the fantasy authors - complex, rich works that require investment on the part of the reader to complete, but are well worth it nonetheless. Like Rushdie, you need a break after one of these novels before you can go on to his next one

The Little Sister - Raymond Chandler - 3/5.
My first Chandler book. The misogyny that comes through so well in the movies is definitely present, but the movies miss the misanthropy, alienation, dissociation, and depression of the novels. It’s a good, quick read with lots of active verbs and not a lot of fluff in the prose… but the plot is as disjointed and jumpy as the worst of the movies, like say The Big Sleep. You want deus ex machina and massive leaps of logic? Chandler’s your guy. On the plus side, he doesn’t laboriously paint every step in the ladder, which is a nice change of pace.

Amnesia Moon - Jonathan Lethem - 3/5.
I loved Lethem’s Gun with Occasional Music, and this was his followup novel. They are completely unrelated. Amnesia Moon deals with the subjective nature of reality, dreams, human society, and forms of dominance. It feels incomplete.

Blood Music - Greg Bear - 3/5.
Greg Bear’s first book, and you can see why he became a successful author and one of my favorites (at least up until Dinosaur Summer, but there are at least 4 of his early works that I call great without hesitation). This one is the biological version of the nanotech nightmare of a grey goo planet. It feels somewhat like a bastard child of To Marry Medusa with an update written in the 80’s by a scientist.

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I never knew the Smoking Gun did investigative work, but apparently they did here. Interestingly enough, it looks like Oprah got snookered again.

Three months ago, in what the talk show host termed a “radical departure,” Winfrey announced that “A Million Little Pieces,” author James Frey’s nonfiction memoir of his vomit-caked years as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal, was her latest selection for the world’s most powerful book club.
…
Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey’s book. The 36-year-old author, these documents and interviews show, wholly fabricated or wildly embellished details of his purported criminal career, jail terms, and status as an outlaw “wanted in three states.”

I’m glad she’s got a book club and that she pushes books she thinks are worthwhile. Even if most are middlebrow-at-best warm family homily pablum with a redemptive ending, it’s better than endorsing manufactured products or exercise equipment. Dont’ get me wrong, Oprah’s still an insensitive wealthy alien idiot prone to blaming things on racism, but I’m all for reading.

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Eragon - 1/5 … but only because I don’t give zeroes.

Literature is not like the Special Olympics. You don’t get points just for trying and not everybody is a winner.

This is true for everyone except, apparently, Christopher Paolini. He is a winner in the same way that Dan Brown is a My Pet Rock winner for fad o’ the nonce, or the Lemony Snickets are for the Must Find the Next Potter land grab.

The backstory behind Eragon is a whole lot more interesting than the book itself. Paolini wrote the book as a 15 year old. Apparently the “good job kid” pat on the head turned into massive number of book orders by a desperate publisher. Too bad they didn’t choose a book worth publishing.

Want to know how bad it is? Here’s the first sentence:

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world.

That’s right, people, a scent is going to change the world. Only it turns out not to be the scent that changes the world at all. Shocking misdirection or amateur hour at the word processor, you make the call.

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I’ll probably end up seeing it, but hate myself for it. Enough with the xian mythology, already. I’m going to fight against paying to see it, but given the tyrrany of les infants in our culture, I think that’s a fight that’s doomed to failure.

‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion’

Children won’t get the Christian subtext, but unbelievers should keep a sickbag handy during Disney’s new epic, writes Polly Toynbee

I admit, when I read the series I had no idea there were religious overtones to it. I think it was third grade and all I really remember is that I learned that a “wireless” in England was called a “radio” by me and my kind. Oh, and in one of the later books, I learned about the lisping thing to do at night when you’re scouting or about to attack or need to hide, because the sibilance of esses carries. I remember mothballs too. Maybe I only remember the first couple chapters of the first book because that was the only thing that motivated me.

I do remember not being very excited about the series after the first one. It just kept dragging on, and on, and on…. like a sermon.

This new Disney film is a remarkably faithful rendition of the book - faithful in both senses. It is beautiful to look at and wonderfully acted. The four English children and their world are all authentically CS Lewis olde England. But from its opening scenes of the bombing of their Finchley home in the blitz and the tear-jerking evacuation from their mother in a (spotlessly clean) steam train, there is an emotional undertow to this film that tugs on the heart-strings from the first frames. By the end, it feels profoundly manipulative, as Disney usually does. But then, that is also deeply faithful to the book’s own arm-twisting emotional call to believers.

But, hey, maybe it’s just a great good v. evil thing, right? Some gland, glorious epic, only without elvish or booger-flavored beans, right?

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A Feast for Crows - George R. R. Martin - 3/5

A Feast for Crows is like Middle School - it’s that uncomfortable bridge between the two better bookends of your primary education. You have to muddle through it, but it’s not very fun while you’re in it, and you are unlikely to look back upon the time fondly.

It’s hard to like a bridging novel, and the loftiest role A Feast for Crows could hope to fill would be that of bridging novel. You see, it’s not really a novel, it’s a novel that’s been cut in half. It shows. There’s no arc, very little tension, and even less action. Much of the interesting bits that I really want to know about (such as Ser Loras’ assault on _____ (don’t want to spoil it)), or characters I am interested in (such as the Onion Knight), happens off-page and you just read the summary after the fact. It’s still Martin, so it’s interesting and a good read, but… nothing much happens. The other half of the unified novel - A Dance of Dragons - will hopefully make up for all of this waiting and buildup.

A Feast for Crows feels like it was a tough novel to write, like Martin was sweating and fighting through every page. The lack of ease shows and strains what little goodness there is in this book. All of which is not to say that I’m any less enthralled with the series; I’m still eager for A Dance of Dragons. Quite eager. Hurry it up, Martin! Chop chop!

For the Martinologists, here’s what you can expect from A Feast for Crows:
Jaime, Cersei, Brienne (lots and lots of Jaime, Cersei, and Brienne), two Sansa chapters, two Arya chapters, some Samwell, some Iron Men, and some Dornish bits

… and here’s what you don’t get:
Tyrion, Danaerys, Jon Snow (except for a tiny portion in Samwell’s chapter), Stannis, Melissandre

Oh, and the ending? Is excruciating. It’s almost like a mid-sentence stop. An interrupted kiss. A yawn half-finished. Quite jarring and, worst of all, not a cliffhanger. George! You’ve got to have a cliffhaaaaangeeerrrr!

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Today’s the last day of national novel writing month. I’d better get cracking, seeing as how my page count for the month is… zero.

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Crooked Timber is hosting a seminar about one of my favorite books of the last decade (PDF version is here). Academic study and discussion of charming English fantasy novels? Sign me up.

Susanna Clarke’s novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell has been extraordinarily successful, and for good reason. It’s won both the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards, but has also won a vast readership among people who don’t usually care for fantasy. On the one hand, Neil Gaiman describes it as “unquestionably the finest English novel of the fantastic written in the last seventy years” (with the emphasis on the adjective “English”; see more below), on the other, Charles Palliser, author of the wonderful historical novel, The Quincunx, describes it as “absolutely compelling” and “an astonishing achievement.” We’ve been fans at Crooked Timber since the book came out - not least because it has funny, voluminous and digressive footnotes which seem near-perfectly calculated to appeal to a certain kind of academic….

Oh, and if you haven’t read JS & Mr. N, you’re missing out.

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The book signing I was going to go to tonight… was yesterday.

Dammit!

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It was an unscientific survey, but the results were fairly interesting.

1. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World — Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer — William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune — Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot — Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation — Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic — Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs — Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson 37% (37)
12. Watchmen — Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon — Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas — Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land — Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods — Neil Gaiman 31% (29)
18. The Diamond Age — Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy — Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham 21% (19)

I consider myself a fair expert on geek novels, so I have tons of quibbles with the list. First, 1984, Brave New World, and American Gods aren’t geek novels, at least not by my definition. From the books that I know on the list, apparently, “geek” only means scifi, which rules out a ton of books that would have displaced others here on the list. American Gods is a vastly inferior novel to Gaiman’s own Neverwhere. I’m assuming The Color of Magic is meant to represent the whole of Discworld, since it is not the strongest entrant in that series by a long shot. Microserfs is a geek novel, sure, but in my not humble opinion… it sucked major donkey balls. It’s like listening to a 15 year old talk about their self-obsessed life and how hard they have everything. Oh, and I’m assuming the I, Robot votors are doing a name recognition thing, since it’s really a collection of short stories and not overly compelling short stories at that.

20 is a lot to come up with, but my personal geek list - and here, I’m defining geek as the non-pop-culture normative societal misfit geek. So… fantasy as well as tech. Also, only one entry per author, will note if I mean for the entry to stand for the author’s whole ouvre or that series.

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