Doctor Who: whoooo!

Being an absolute Doctor Who fanboy means that I greet any official (and plenty of semi and non) addition with sheer joy, so I was pretty high on the hog Saturday evening when I sat down to watch the continuation of the Matt Smith's second season, "Let's Kill Hitler."

The title ended up being one of many red herrings in Stephen Mofffat's script. After newly introduced Amy/Rory "best friend" Mels makes that declaration (with a gun to the Doctor's head no less) they do just about everything but kill Hitler. Instead, the Nazi leader ends up locked in a cupboard by Rory a few minutes in, never to be seen again.

That's not the real plot. Instead, Mels is shot and then does the golden-sparkly regeneration thing - and turns into River Song. Or at least, into Alex Kingston. It seem whatever programming that was done to her between the time we last saw baby Melody and now kicks in, and River has it in for the Doctor.

And she succeeds. The Doctor is poisoned, given 30 minutes to find a solution and save his own life.

Oh yeah.

Like most of the modern run of Doctor Who, it's a sprint to the finish from here, as Amy and Rory chase River across Berlin and the Doctor desperately searches for a solution. Oh, and there are mini time-traveling agents of justice inhabiting a human-sized robot thing that are after River as well.

The script twists and turns in the way Moffat excels at, though I don't think we'll feel the final resolution of all of this until the season finale. There are lots of nice touches along the way, like polite-but-murderous robot antibodies in the otherwise absolutely daft robot thingy full of little people.

Matt Smith continues to do remarkable work as the Doctor (who, despite the efforts of his companions, learns the date of his death here). He's still a wild soul, but we're seeing more and more of the weight of 900-plus years of life, love and heartbreak in his performance. It's becoming clear that Smith may be the best pure actor to take on the role. Whether or not he becomes one of the best interpretations of the character (which has a lot of other factors built in beyond talent) is yet to be seen.

And next week we get a creepy looking Mark Gatiss script, who hopefully can make a return to form following last season's disappointing "Victory of the Daleks."

Sometimes, it's the little things the break the deal

Like writing your book in second person, such as Charles Stross has done with his latest book, Rule 34. Stross is an author who runs hot and cold with me, so it may be more than just the unusual choice in narrative voice.

Rule 34 follows up on Halting Space, and looks to explore the same near-future head space (current computer technology and online culture) through the eyes of, well, as it's in second person, my eyes taking on whoever the character is in that chapter. I understand where Stross is coming from here, as virtual worlds are supposed to put me in the digital shoes of another person.

But I've always hated second person narratives (and there are reasons why it's used rarely). At the end of the day, I am not the one in the story, and if I were, who is to say I would make the same decisions that the "you" in the narrative would? Instead of making the fictional world richer, it just creates an additional barrier for the oft-busy reader to fight through while absorbing the book.

And while I managed to make it through the first book, Rule 34 left me completely cold after only a few pages. I looked at the shelves heavy with unread books and decided to send the Stross back to the library unfinished.

Is this fair? Probably not, but I've only got so much time to read and forcing myself to read a book with only marginal interest to me isn't high on my priorities. That also has to do with the author. I've enjoyed some of Stross' books considerably (the Lovecraft/IT Laundry books come to mind), but others just haven't tripped any of my triggers. That's all part of the mysterious thing called "personal taste," which may or may not be completed tied to anything rational (see my love of Brian Lumley) but drive anyone's interactions with books, movies and every other kind of art.

'The Fly-By-Nights,' Brian Lumley

In a kind of literary whiplash, I went from directly from Ted Chiang's highly regarded The Lifecycle of Software Objects (both a Hugo and Nebula nominee) into Brian Lumley's latest creation. Literally, from the sublime to the ridiculous, as Lumley revisits one of his favorite topics, vampires, for a post-apocalyptic adventure tale full of manly men, shrieking women and guns that jam at inopportune moments.

Through a 40-plus year-long career, Lumley has demonstrated that he is not great literary stylist. His writing is clunky (though the exclamation! points seem to have taken a needed rest), his characters have all the dimensions of a back-of-the-issue story from Weird Tales, circa 1935 and nuance doesn't go much beyond "this guy is good, this guy is evil, deal with it."

Oh, but I eat up every one of his books, quickly turning pages to get see what happens. For all his stylistic limitations (even after all these years, Lumley still writes like the military policeman he was when he started) this man can tell a story.

Here, we follow a clan of humans who have scratched and clawed to survive in a post-nuclear wasteland. The bombs fell a century and a half before, leaving small enclaves to fight for life. And they don't just have radiation to deal with either, there are mutated creatures in the wastelands, the Fly-By-Nights, who love nothing more than to make a meal out of the unwary.

The humans security is lost when their water supply is contaminated, so they follow up on half-heard rumors and head north in hope of finding more of their kind. The story focuses on young Garth and his rival, the evil Ned (we know he's evil from the outset, as he argues with the plans of the clan's leader, Big Jon), who is a big bully. They are fighting for the hand of Layla, a coming-of-age woman who, to her good senses, wants nothing to do with Ned.

The conflict grows as they slowly journey north, but it seems to have been solved when Ned gets taken away during a Fly-By-Night attack. Oh, but it is only halfway through the book, and things rarely stay dead for long in Lumley's world.

This is a breezy, old-style narrative, where odd turns of phrase are easily ignored through the sheer weight of the narrative. Lumley has always showcased a vast imagination that enjoys following thoughts to intriguing, and sometimes rather grisly, conclusions. The Fly-By-Nights are a natural extension of the vampires from the Necroscope books, full hatred and hunger - a perfect antidote to the wimpy sparkly vampires that dominate current popular culture.

The end of Miracle Day

Hi Torchwood, we go way back. You know, that episode of Doctor Who where Queen Victoria started you, and then the whole Cyberman/Dalek invasion bit and even those odd seasons on BBC whatever, with Welsh cannibals, space whales and the occasional good episode. Then there was Children of Earth and I was like, "wow, maybe there's something good here."

And then there's Miracle Day, which remained mediocre for the first few episodes, until number 5, when you killed off the only interesting character of the newcomers.

And that's why I'm killing you off as well. No more Miracle Day for you. The central mystery has some intrigue, but the characters around it (apart from the longtimers Jack, Gwen and Rhys) have been so, so awful, but in creation and acting, that it has become nearly impossible to watch. The politics are so blatant as to be laughable, and the attention to detail is absent. (For example, a screen card read "Washington D.C. City Hall" on this episode. It took literally five seconds to find out the actual name of the building, the John A. Wilson building. Details always make a story more believable, especially on a fantasy/SF show like this.)

So, bye bye oddly restrained Capt. Jack and plucky Gwen. I'll read up when the series is over to find out who the bad guys really are, and wait for Aug. 27 when the Doctor is back in business with a showrunner that seems to have an idea about how to craft a show.

Friday morning thoughts

I'm off Fringing all weekend (read my reports in City Pages' Dressing Room blog), but I have time for a few notes.

Happy Birthday, Rifftrax!

Mike Nelson's post Mystery Science Theater 3000 creation has evolved and grown mightily over the past half decade. The business has grown far beyond crafting downloadable podcasts for cinematic travesties (and classics - see their Casablanca riff for that) to doing live shows and unleashing hundreds of short subjects, including epics like The Calendar: How to Use It and the absolutely horrifying At Your Fingertips: Grasses.

To celebrate, the Riffers have crafted a five minute best-of reel.

Wither Torchwood?

OK, I know I'll keep watching it, but Miracle Day is looking more and more like those sloppy, dull episodes from seasons 1 and 2 that made the program such a slog before Children of the Earth. We're deep into conspiracy by numbers, with tone-deaf comments on American politics, the absolutely puzzling edification of a convicted child murderer as a mainstream hero and some, to be nice, uneven acting from the new cast members. Maybe this week will pick up speed. Please?

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

Ransom Riggs' debut novel is, like plenty of debut novels, a mixed bag. While he gets full marks for a unique approach (many of the characters and situations are inspired by found photographs that often detail bizarre, unlikely and impossible things), the novel relies too much on "the seemingly unremarkable boy who has Amazing Powers" trope to be fully successful.

The aforementioned boy, Jacob, has dealt the traumatic loss of his somewhat mysterious grandfather. Grandpa filled Jacob's head with impossible stories from his time at a children's home in Wales in the years after he escaped from the Nazis and his volunteering to fight against his foe. At Miss Peregrine's home there were folks with remarkable powers, from being invisible to being able to start fires with their minds.

After his grandfather's death, Jacob spirals in a deep depression, the back of his mind tickled by thought that maybe all of those stories were true. To finally settle it, Jacob and his somewhat dazed father head to a small Welsh island. There, the youth finally finds the fabled home, hidden from all to see in a time loop on one particular day during World War II. The children haven't aged physically, but have lived through the last 70 years, all under the watchful eye of their mistress.

The plot, and Jacob's own abilities, grow out of this. There's a decadent group that loves to feast on the essence of those with special talents (though any old human or animal will do in a pinch) that has forced our heroes into these hidden loops. It's pretty clear that one of these is on the island in modern times, will it find its way behind the scenes and into the succulent flesh of our heroes?

The photographs, such as a girl levitating a few inches off the ground, are all presented as found, and provide the sense of eeriness that drives the first half of the book. Once we get into the time-looped home, things move away from that into more familiar, "child hero saving us all" territory. Jacob is a good, complex and rather unlikable protagonist, but a lot of the others seem to come from either 1) quirky Welsh or 2) X-Men reject central casting. Riggs is a talented writer and I'm sure I'll at least give the inevitable sequel (this volume ends on a bit of a cliffhanger) a read, but I think it could have been so much more than what we get here.

Mortality Bridge, By Steven R. Boyett

Steven R. Boyett (Ariel, The Architects of Sleep, Elegy Beach) took his time in writing Mortality Bridge, a thrilling mix of rock 'n' roll, B-movie chases, Dante and the Orpheus story. A long time, in fact, as he started work on the novel in the middle 1980s and finally saw it in print earlier this summer (in a limited edition from the fine folks at Subterranean Press).

The book follows Niko, a world-famous rock guitarist who, as happens from time to time, made a deal with the devil, trading his soul for success. Niko didn't read the fine print, discovering too late that the contract extended to those he loved as well. After his longtime lover dies, Niko makes a mad dash into the depths of Hell in a desperate attempt to bring her back.

The scenes in Hell could have been drawn from any number of death-metal album jackets, with rivers of blood and massive, bewinged demons, but Boyett's vision of a mad Disneyland sticks with the reader, as does Niko's intense drive to finally do something right in his life, even if that is only shepherding his wife's soul from the underworld to heaven.

In recounting the book's long gestation process on John Scalzi's Whatever blog, Boyett writes of crafting dozens of complete drafts of the book over a two and a half decade span. The issue wasn't writing something publishable - an author of Boyett's skill certainly had that the first time out - but of coming up with a book that completely satisfied him.

This brings to mind the brohahahaha over George R.R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons, which took several years longer than anyone (especially Martin) expected. Fans got hot under the collar, wondering how hard could it be to write a quarter-million-word extension of a complex sequence of books to the satisfaction of the most important person in the equation, the author.

That's right. We, as readers, are an important part of the equation, but it's the author's duty to produce work that satisfies themselves above all else. Boyett (or Martin, or Neil Gaiman with the later issues of Sandman or Alan Moore at the tail end of Miracleman) could have published this book back in the late 1980s. It would have probably found an audience, but readers would also probably note that something was missing. The book, no matter how well written, would have felt incomplete.

It doesn't feel incomplete now.