false 54 134 121 true 5626249 read 0 true 2093667 currently-reading 13 true 2093666 to-read 37 false 2093699 cultural-studies 26 false 2093841 horror 23 false 2093997 modern-european 21 false 2094010 esoteric 20 false 3419910 -------five-star- 19 false 3771030 north-american 15 false 2573964 history 14 false 2093866 sexuality-erotica 12 false 2093720 science-fiction 11 false 3769220 religion-spiritual 11 false 2093784 alternative-histories 10 false 2574195 art 10 false 2574209 psychology 10 false 2574198 history-of-art 9 false 7158118 popular-culture 9 false 2573960 history-of-philosophy 7 false 2094019 crime 7 false 3599881 graphic-novels 7 false 2093940 thriller 7 false 3992425 public-policy 6 false 3584844 literature-general 6 false 3426525 political-philosophy 6 false 2093878 classics 6 false 2574284 decadent 5 false 2574075 pr-propaganda 4 false 5560384 mythology 4 false 4373418 feminism 4 false 2230683 history-of-science 4 false 3183387 business 4 false 2573957 biography 4 false 3725009 east-asian 3 false 2093772 heroic-fantasy 3 false 5376585 eighteenth-century 2 false 7061217 philosophy 2 false 4026300 economics 2 false 3419915 x---don-t-bother--one-star- 2 false 2574021 black-comedy 2 false 8417509 film---television 2 false 4004348 espionage 1 false 3584831 london-guides http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/79279989 to: The Secret History of Lucifer: Evil Angel or the Secret of Life Itself? (Hardcover) by Lynn Picknett
bookshelves: alternative-histories, cultural-studies, esoteric, feminism, mythology, popular-culture, religion-spiritual, sexuality-erotica
I would read this as entertainment because it sure ain't coherent history. It is part of a peculiar genre that mixes an author's ideological commitment to seeing the world in a different and subversive way with elaborate and largely unsustainable claims about history.

This is a shame because the subversive intent is not a bad idea. Unfortunately, the technique of piling up notes from entirely separate incidents in history into a narrative with a weak evidential basis merely discredits the intent. The book offers some catharsis for the powerless (especially women) and no doubt is moderately profitable for the author but it is no call for action and little to understanding.

The central early claim of this potboiler appears to be that power struggles within the very early Christian Church were lost, by a sexually open spiritual tradition, to the sexually repressed Pauline Church. The original practice of Christ was a form of sexual spirituality led by St. John the Baptist who was nothing like the picture presented by the Church in subsequent centuries.

The book then meanders into the highways and byways of history until it ends with praise of Lucifer and a condemnation of those who dabble with the Satanic. This, of course, refers to Lucifer the Light-Bringer, who must definitely not be confused with Satan, positioned as the positive force behind science, sexual freedom, tolerance and the Enlightenment.

The meandering takes us from ancient times through the usual tales of ancient spirituality, Cathar-Templar suffering, witch-burning, John Dee and Edward Kelley (why? we ask, as we are reading it), masonic lore, gobbets from the history of spiritualism and, of course, Crowley and LaVey to become yet another chapter in the attempt to create an alternative historical reality. There is certainly no necessary connection between one tale and the next - or even between components within each narrative.

As entertainment this is all is amusing enough but as a factual basis for understanding history, forget it. A cursory reading of the useful Wikipedia entries on the persecution of 'witches' and the Inquisition, studied alongside the relevant chapter in the book, will tell you that it is not wholly reliable. The book is riddled with polemic, selective facts, lots of 'mays' and 'could it be thats', odd etymologies, conflation of events from different times and circumstances and extremely doubtful 'evidence' (though we have no doubt this is due to weak judgement rather than malice aforethought).

The claims about the Johannite tradition in the West and the 'secret' messages in the art of a subversive Leonardo Da Vinci may excite Dan Brown enthusiasts - and may even be 'true' up to a point - but they are not adequately evidenced or contextualised here.

We, who do believe that 'resistance' to elites and prevailing culture has been much more widespread in the past than we have been allowed to believe, must, nevertheless, accept the fact that the victors write the history of past times. But, just because no evidence exists of our 'resistance proposition', this does not mean that we can make something up out of the gaps or make massive deductive leaps from what does exist.

The best approach is deep scepticism about all authorities' claims about the past rather than to make attempts to prove our own expectations. Better, perhaps we should decide not to make any claims for liberation in or on the past but just concentrate our demands on the present (our current condition) and on the future (how we believe we should be allowed to live our lives).

Yes, the book is footnoted. Yes, the authors have read widely. No, the sources are not considered contextually or critically. This is a shame because the passion in the polemic does hit its target sometimes.

The underlying message of the book is about the intrinsic evil of institutionalised religion in its effects on Western culture over nearly two thousand years (Picknett is not alone in this and a better book in this respect might be Reay Tannahill's 'Sex in History' also reviewed on this website). This proposition bears serious consideration in the year when the Church of Rome in Ireland finally was forced to admit not only that child abuse was rampant in its organisation but that successive prelates had covered it up deliberately in order to protect the reputation of their morally questionable institution.

There is a genuine and righteous anger in the book about how the human race can develop a collective will to malice, often manipulated by sick psychopaths under cover of religion. I like her for this. It makes her somewhat more worthy as passionate myth-spreader than the dry truth-telling academic who refuses to take a moral stand and who seeks to objectify us out of our anger by suggesting that 'that was then'. We must not look on past crimes as if they mean nothing in judging the conduct today of modern successor organisations, whether Crown or Church.

Picknett is also trying to make an important point about the sexual oppression of women (as a sex-positive feminist, no doubt) - not by men in general (as less sex-positive feminists try to do) but by the institutions of men who oppress all equally. Here, she is pushing at an open door with this reader.

It is quite possible that she will drive many women to righteous anger not only at 'authority' but at a culture that denies full female sexual expression - but what a shame that this matter cannot be argued on its merits based on a considered assessment of the facts rather than through a mythic narrative that is no more reliable than the nonsense perpetrated by her opponents. A war of myths is not what we need at this time in our history.

But, unless you just want an entertainment from within this now widely published genre (and, why not, if it whiles away a train journey or two without lasting harm), don't bother ... just say to yourself that you don't need to be told how to run your life by anyone and, if you are one of those people who like to spiritualise your sexuality, don't get angry about how people were treated in the past, just go do it today. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/1016626-tim-pendry Tim made a comment on Tim Pendry's profile:

I am indeed. You are nicely chatty - GoodReads people seem to be very introvert. You might almost be on Facebook :-) So what do you like to read ... ? ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77756746 to: A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films (Paperback) by Sinclair McKay
bookshelves: cultural-studies, film---television, horror, modern-european, popular-culture
Hammer Films may have been founded in 1935 but it only produced anything of consequence, other than the first of its Quatermass series in 1955, when Peter Cushing emerged as Baron Frankenstein in 'The Curse of Frankenstein' (1957).

Until its final demise as film maker in 1979 (although its story really ends in 1974 to all intents and purposes), it became known for a peculiarly English Gothic take on themes originally developed by Universal Studios in the 1930s but derived from English literary models.

There was Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy as well as a homegrown Quatermass series and Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard and Dennis Wheatley adaptations ('Hound of the Baskervilles', 'She' and 'The Devil Rides Out' respectively). Highly variable in quality, its keynote stars were Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee with Ingrid Pitt as perhaps the best known female star in the vampire series.

Sinclair McKay's book is readable, as it should be from someone who was Deputy Features Editor of a major newspaper, but only in a workmanlike way. There are few complaints to be had about his general judgements, his occasional gossip is amusing and the brief accounts of key films and the useful context in the cinema of the period or (with perhaps less usefulness) the wider culture and politics of the period are well judged. The photographs are also largely new and capture the day-to-day work of the studio well.

His weaknesses are an excess of repetition - 'embonpoint' appears to be a favourite word and he might have done with a thesaurus to hand on a few occasions - and he has a somewhat jumpy attitude to chronology. As with all jobbing journalists, deep analysis is not his strong point. His matey jokiness can also pall on occasions. His attempt to defend the studio's films against the charge of sexism is noble but it is a bit forced - although it is true that strong women characters did start to appear in the mid-period.

But why quibble? - it is an enjoyable and nostalgic read and it does allow one to place the key films where they should be in the story. The picture he paints is an affectionate and practical one - of a business first and foremost based on trying to give the public what they wanted at the lowest possible cost. They lucked out on a talented team of actors, designers, composers, directors and writers who could churn out some low cost art from little more than the producers' tried and tested method of producing the poster first and worrying about the product afterwards - and using the same sets over and over again as if they were a touring repertory company.

Hidden within the text is a bigger story of national economic decline that McKay constantly alludes to but never quite develops as an analysis. This studio was artistically British in every respect but it had a colonial relationship to its backers. The financing was largely American and its product was dictated to a considerable degree by the expectations and requirements of the bigger American market, that is, when it was not being forced into the straitjacket of producing homegrown rubbish like 'On the Buses' (1971-1973) to grab that brief moment between there being a television in every home and the arrival of colour.

The American public wanted Christopher Lee so this very fine actor was stuck into a role, the near-monosyllabic red-eyed Dracula, that was way below his level of talent. Fortunately, for his long term career, the non-Hammer roles of Scaramanga in a Bond movie and, for his long run reputation, in the 'Wicker Man' (as well as a few more interesting roles at Hammer such as the Duc de Richelieu in 'The Devil Rides Out') made sure that he did not suffer the fates of Bela Lugosi and of Boris Karloff as the eternally typecast B-movie horror actor. Alongside the American Vincent Price, Cushing and Lee are respected as actors and as persons in a way that eluded the Universal generation.

The book is thus servicable but is not great - a reasonably sound and entertaining guide to a cultural phenomenon. In 1957, the humourless Tribune complained that 'Curse of Frankenstein' was 'depressing and degrading for anyone who loves the cinema'. By 1973, it was being outgrossed (in horror as well as cash) by 'The Exorcist'. Cinematic horror moved inexorably back to Hollywood where, with occasional brilliant outings from the UK such as the recent '28 Days' series, it has broadly stayed. with only periodic challenges from East Asia.

As so often, and especially in matters of sex, music and violence, the United Kingdom was a research laboratory for Anglo-Saxon cultural experimentation, usually on a shoestring budget, until big American money felt confident about throwing significant dollops of its capital at better produced and resourced productions of its own back home. The renaissance of American horror starts in the 1970s and parallels the collapse of independent British horror which, in turn, had arisen as the run of Universal and later science fiction films from the 1930s to the 1950s tailed off.

Once a product had been tried and tested in its smaller English-speaking market, the original small creative sources could be happily abandoned, the best talent attracted to America and the British left to pick up the pieces. Even today, UK Government policy towards the creative industries appears to pander to this Atlantic model, throwing educational resources into creativity in a race against time to see how much global capital can be attracted to London (in particular) before the talent gets pulled overseas again. Never was the 'creative destruction' of capitalism more clearly represented than in British film-making of the 1970s.

The story of Hammer is thus a minor tragedy of national decline and not one restricted to the 1970s. McKay documents how freebooting US studios became more strictly capitalist enterprises and how creative decisions worked through uncomprehending Committees. American executives could not understand the amused English interest in devil worship and had no context for Quatermass. We were lucky that 'Devil Rides Out' and 'Quatermass and the Pit', two of the finest horror films of the period, slipped through the net.

In the end, the studio lost its way - neither able to push the boundaries as did the smaller end of the native market (in films such as the brilliantly dark and sadistic 'Witchfinder General' or the perversely misunderstood 'The Wicker Man') nor invest in the production values and new thinking that might have created a new range of horror or adventure products (or take the studio into new creative territory altogether). It was the American funders who kept pushing the studio back into churning out variable versions of the old Gothic classics.

A sign of decline was the decision to create a Kung Fu Dracula movie ('The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires' (1974)) in a vain attempt build up an East Asian funding base out of Hong Kong. The film is not that bad but it is not that good either. After a tired Dennis Wheatley retread and a tolerable attempt to re-make a Hitchcock with American stars, the studio was dead five years later.

As for Hammer, there has been a recent attempt to revive the brand as an internet horror series (with some creative but not much commercial success) to attract traffic into MySpace. It seems not to have worked and MySpace appears to be having little success against the pretensions of the new kids on the block, Facebook and Twitter. But the original films (or rather a few of them) are now classics that stand with the Universal horrors as icons of popular culture, watchable over and over again as comfort food and, for the British, alongside the 'Carry On' series, as proof that, indeed, the past is another country.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77082467 to: The World of Sex (Oneworld Classics Gift) by Henry Miller
bookshelves: cultural-studies, literature-general, north-american, sexuality-erotica
Henry Miller wrote the original draft of this long essay when he was about to turn 50, somewhat of a turning point for any redblooded male, but the text was substantially revised for a secondary publication in 1957 when he was nearing 70.

This is a relevant set of facts. This is not a male view of sex so much as that of a highly sexualised male past his powers and frustrated at a world that had always failed to accept him publicly for what he was.

He would not have been alone in that frustration - America 're-moralised' itself in the wake of the Great Depression and the Second World War. The 1950s, even in California where he revised his text, was the high point of an age of sexual repression with few outlets for public discussion of the themes that were close to Miller's heart.

This is why this text is confusing and is going to be of limited interest to all but specialists in cultural or literary studies. It is one third deep wisdom about the human condition (of which more in a moment), one third confused and confusing memoire that clearly has meaning to him but little to us and one third apocalyptic rant against American culture and its in-built propensity to violence.

The rant is violent in its attack on violence and there are layers of meaning here that are quite Reichian (though Reich is never mentioned) but this component does not stand up to much intellectual scrutiny. Given that this essay was really for the few who already knew of Miller and his views (there is a touch of 'Apologia Pro Vita Sua' in all this), it nevertheless gives us an insight into the rage and frustration of a certain proportion of males under the grey moralism of American public culture of the day.

To his credit, and against the portentous style of the public intellectual of his day, whether liberal or Marxist, Miller does not say that all men should be as he is but only that society would be better if it allowed space for the free expression of his attitude to love and sex - and, of course, since then, our culture has given more of that space and some of us do indeed think the world is, if not actually then potentially, a better place as a result.

What is most interesting in this small book of 110 pages of script (actually more like 55 in any normal sized paperback) lies not in the ranting which is set firmly in its period (and which we won't even bother to analyse here) but in the first 30 pages where he describes a vision of love and sex which this author could identify with even if he could not identify with the man in his time.

In a better time and place, these thirty pages, with a dash of thoughts from the end, would have been distilled into an opinion piece in a modern newspaper, the sort that Norman Mailer did so well, but the subject matter (and the liberal and determined use of street terms for private parts and acts) would not have permitted it in his day. So he writes for close friends and posterity and we must read this as the latter.

As a result, the essay is self-indulgent. Yet it contains truths, albeit often expressed in that classically elliptical literary form that American essayists can prefer over simple clarity as if being an intellectual demands that some things not be explained further even if it might be easy to do so.

Miller has a vision of sex that might be called sacred-sexual today. He cannot divorce it from the emotion of love. He regards with contempt (as he notices women do) the tough guy obsessed with sexual performance and unable to make a commitment (though Miller is not talking about the commitment of traditional Judaeo-Christian morality).

Indeed, to be a man for Miller is not to bed women (as male culture crudely suggested until quite recently) but to love women and seek out a communion with life. In this sense, there are very few real men in the world - a more startling proposition to the reader then than today when a real man would have been widely seen as an unemotional potential killing machine and home provider. This was, after all, only twelve years on from the Second World War.

He is sharp on the effects of this on women ...

" The American ... oblivious of everything a woman has to offer except her body. He will treat an exceptional woman like a whore and fall madly in love with a nitwit ... What frightens the shit out of him is to give himself body and soul. The American woman, consequently, is frequently a love starved creature, clamouring for the moon. She will make a man work himself to the bone to satisfy her silly whims. Given free rein, she becomes truly insatiable."

Ouch! - does that not capture perfectly the Judaeo-Christian Anglo-Saxon culture of convention that has neither truly happy men or truly happy women in it? Or rather where some who are happy in such an environment have the help of an entire culture in bearing down on a partner, male or female, who is not.

And that is the point. Some men and some women have been oppressed by their brothers and sisters. This is not a system that works exclusively for men against women or women against men but in favour of the conventional and timid against the creative and lively. It is not a gender war but a war between personality types: "For some sex leads to sainthood; for others it is the road to hell."

There is also a tantric quality to his thinking - not in that cod-'namaste' form so beloved of modern thirty-somethings in California and North London but in its true nature as an engagement with the left hand path of darkness, repulsion and the margins. He refers once to Buddhism but only to make the point that desire cannot be eradicated but must be used for self development (though he is not crystal clear on this or, indeed, most points).

This aspect of self development is where I probably come closest to his views - not in the primacy of sex (although sexual, I see it as merely a facet of the diamond and not the diamond itself as does Miller himself) but in the value of sexuality as tool of personal development for oneself and one's partner.

I also share his view, partly Reichian we suspect, that the actual health of a culture and its propensity to violence and brutality does have some connection to the level at which persons with differing sexualities (including the wholly a-sexual) are allowed to be free in their expression without causing harm to others.

Miller goes into a somewhat fantastic riff on the new society that might emerge if this was recognised - this is his one lapse into daft 'public intellectualism' - but his mix of noble savage meets new age is rather silly. There is some 'age of innocence' stuff that really does not stand up to scrutiny at all. He is still a man of his time in believing in exceptional men and great religious leaders, a position scarcely tenable amongst most thinking people today.

Yet his analysis of the culture of his day is not stupid, although, in my view, the process of social improvement through sexual freedom may be possible, it is a long process involving the settling of more material concerns and a determined assault on authority.

Resources are scarce and authority bites back so the good society is a long way off yet. It cannot be hurried. Free spirits would do well to conserve their agenda, protect their freedoms, cut back the ambitions of any future Constantines and assist others in making society prosperous. But still, as Miller puts it, "If there is something wrong about our attitude to sex then there is something wrong with our attitude towards bread, towards money, towards work, towards play, towards everything."

His approach is not only avowedly 'spiritual' but seen in religious terms (I go with the former but not the latter). He also sees women as persons in themselves rather than as objects for use. Indeed, the first thirty pages, though perhaps unsatisfactorily for many modern women, is a determined assault on the idea that men and women should treat each other clinically or as tools.

Beneath his maleness and use of prostitutes and easy sex, a sex-positive feminist is working hard to get out. It is no accident that it is often women who prefer to read Miller (and Anis Nin) nowadays rather than men, who can get meatier fare elsewhere. But, at the end of the day, he is still caught between worlds with no public debate to help hone his thoughts. Even his five marriages testify to ambiguity (the last to a Japanese pop singer nearly fifty years his junior) - the jewel of high sexuality is still being set in the stone of convention.

What Miller is really doing is trying to create space for 'his' world, as we all do. With some courage, given the period, he calls this world, the 'Land of Fuck'. The cognitive assault here is as sharp now as then but he is not talking about some cold-hearted permanent orgy amongst strangers - quite the opposite. He is struggling towards another vision where emotional engagement is not sanctified as eternal, caught in aspic, but is still recognised as 'true', naturally driven towards its physical expression.

Both parties in a relationship (although he does not state this directly, being a little egotistic as artists often are) should leave the process in better state than when they left it. The biological truth is probably that, for whatever neurochemical reason, Miller needs the process of 'fuck', actually the process of intimate confused engagement with another person, in order to be Henry Miller and that this process of discovery inevitably reaches a natural termination unless renewed positively through consent and understanding (perhaps the private dream of all such men).

In a sense, not truly being a 'swinger' (where emotion is deliberately laid aside from sex) or a 'romantic' (where sex is something inconvenient and perhaps to be avoided as soiling a dream), Miller insists on merging the two - even with prostitutes. He may not love a hooker in quite the same way as a wife but he is determined that she be treated as a person and not an object - a lesson for the drafters of current legislation going through the British Parliament.

Nor does he claim to understand sexuality. He is not interested in understanding it. He is interested in experiencing it. To him (indeed, I share this) it is a component of the 'life force', that which drives us to creativity and becoming. Life is not linear nor is it ordered. Sexual expression, by its very nature, represents the non-linear and disordered nature of being more than do most other expressions of that force.

His vision is existentialist, there is no doubt about that. It is also a life of struggle freely chosen. He points out that there is disconnect between the person he is to those who know him and his writings and that this exists in their minds not his.

His book reeks with frustration at not being understood. He is not the hypocrite. They are blind to his nature. He is not even a proselytiser for sex but for a freedom of which he would be a beneficiary. If we have to bring politics into this, he is an anarchist.

And what he says about 1940 and 1957 could equally apply to 2009 - "Today we seem animated almost exclusively by fear. We fear even that which is good, that which is healthy, that which is joyous." Fear, he appears to suggest, can only be overcome by taking calculated risks or, in the words of others, 'just do it!' And do it with integrity - "If we live like weasels, we fuck like weasels; if we behave like monsters, we die like monsters. Now we eat, sleep, work, play - and even fuck - like automatons. It is the land of nod, with everyone spinning like tops."

He adds: "If we were truly awake we would be stunned by the horror of everyday life. No one in his right senses could possibly do the crazy things which are now demanded of us every moment of the day. We are all victims, whether on top, at the bottom or in the middle. There is no escape, no immunity."

In fact, things are not that bad now. A residual fear is still there but the instincts of the population are increasingly to resist being treated as an object by authority. Sexual expression is still naive and perhaps not overly spiritual but great strides have been made in liberating the creative and the lively without oppressing those who prefer convention.

How less resources and the fight-back of authority will affect this balance has yet to be seen, but we are reaching a point of critical mass, assisted by the internet, for libertarians. People who think like Miller are now easily available as bloggers and twitterers without any attempt at censorship. The rage is subsiding and resistance is growing to an inherited culture of violence, especially state violence. Things could even get better.





]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/76989237 to: The Mammoth Book of the Best Short SF Novels (Paperback) by Gardner R. Dozois
bookshelves: science-fiction
Mammoth is a cultural phenomenon - relatively cheap paperback compendia of genre material that would otherwise be lost in periodicals or never otherwise be published, alongside entertaining encyclopedic tomes covering themes that underpin our popular culture (from true crime to myths and legends).

Gardner Dozois' niche within its ecology is Science Fiction and this volume edited by him brings together thirteen 'novella' from the last two decades in an overview of what may not be the top thirteen by any absolute standards but which is (mostly) representative of Sci Fi at its contemporary best.

The novella is an odd form. It works well when it uses its greater length over a short story to work up an idea to its natural conclusion or to add an incident to an existing universe (as Alastair Reynolds does with his otherwise fairly middle-of-the-road tale of Ultras and Jugglers, 'Turquoise Days').

It works worst when it is clear that the author is angling for a book contract and leaves his or her tale hanging in the air in the expectation that it can be 'worked up' later. This seems to be driven by the genre literature market but it is artistically frustrating to say the least. Three tales irritate for this reason but for entirely different reasons.

The very presence of 'Surfacing' (Walter John Williams) puzzles - it seems to have neither particular literary merit nor a clear message and it ends on a mystery that is rather uninteresting rather than stimulating. There is a sneaking suspicion that it has been included to make some ecological point about whales but I am damned if I can find it. And was it designed to be a solus story or as the basis of a novel? We are not sure and we can't be bothered to check on the internet.

Namcy Kress' 'Beggars in Spain' is already a much-anthologised classic whose story line of genetically manipulated superiority and prejudice will be familiar to a younger generation of X-Men fans. She makes the story end on a reasonably satisfactory note but the writing is not remarkable and the story is so well-known, with a novel easily available and widely read, that its inclusion, too, puzzles.

Joe Haldeman's 'The Hemingway Hoax' is another, frustrating, kettle of fish altogether. There is no doubt about it - this is a work of flawed genius, brilliantly crafted. No-one else has captured as he has done what the experience of shifting through multiple universes and time travel might be like. He confirms an opinion that Michael Moorcock has been much overrated as a writer when he deals with these same concerns.

But, Haldeman's ending is peremptory and confusing, a burst of confused hysteria after such intensely careful plotting. While I am eternally grateful to have been introduced to the story, I really think something else should be put in its place in a second edition.

So, taking out the 'universe' story and the three with peremptory endings or endings designed for later novel publication, this leaves us with nine stories that can properly be called novella with some integrity.

There are some real gems in here once you have got past the problem with all imaginative science fiction - those first few pages where a new world is introduced in a confusion of sometimes overwrought language and ideas. They certainly serve to alienate.

This works if the alienation is intended to cause some cognitive shift that allows us to see the world in a different way but it does not when the jargon and the ideas take over and all we have is a hard science fantasy. Fortunately, the balance in this collection is towards the former.

Sometimes with a truly great writer, you understand that all the deliberately alienating imagery and lore is being used to get our imaginations working on who we are as persons in the world and, indeed, how the world works, shifting our perceptions radically. Four stories stand out in this respect.

Ursula K. Le Guin's 'Forgiveness Day' (1994) is a story in which love between cultural opposites blossoms from respect earned in crisis. In Frederick Pohl's 'Outnumbering the Dead' (1991) an accidental mortal in a world of immortals finds love in a person and a community in his last moments in a story of remarkable tenderness. Both stories are by modern SciFi masters. Both require a little patience and some education to get to the point where they can capture your full attention. By the end you have been moved deeply.

In addition, there are two stories which have resonances of the 'other' on our own planet that are almost political. The turn to the sociological and the anthropological in science fiction from the mid-1980s is not accidental. It presages (as science fiction often does) changes in the real world - we have now turned our eyes from the stars to planetary management and that means management of the people who live on it.

Stories of psychological manipulation, long embedded in the American science fiction tradition, have been joined by stories first of genetic manipulation (as in Nancy Kress' tale) and, increasingly, by stories based on the social sciences. As we write, military and government funds are being diverted into these academic communities as great power confrontation is replaced by popular cynicism and dissent and 'empires' are threatened with insurgency and 'terrorism'.

Maureen McHugh's 'The Cost To Be Wise'(1996) is a tragic little tale of a community manipulated and ultimately abandoned by the social scientists who observe it. It is a subtle humanist indictment of the clinical Western mind, a story that never preaches but allows us to draw our own conclusions from the observations of the 'natives' themselves. It is ultimately about the consequences of a lack of a duty of care involved in intervention.

A fourth masterpiece is Ian Mcdonald's 'Tendeleo's Story' (2000) which owes a great deal to the incomparable JG Ballard and the British dystopian tradition but it stands on its own in its depictions successively of Africa, a grey Britain and an alien environment.

This is one story where spoilers must not be permitted but it could stand a detailed critique on its own - suffice it to say that it is, like McHugh's story, subtle, beautifully written and even more directly political than hers. It has an end that may surprise (especially for those with certain expectations of British science fiction) but which already captures the potential for shifts in power globally - ahead of its time.

The remaining stories include another classic, 'Sailing to Byzantium' by Robert Silverberg, the strange, absurdist and vaguely sick but well crafted Freudian fantasy 'Mr Boy' by James Patrick Kelly, the solid Cold War-linked sociological moon base fantasy 'Griffin's Egg' by Michael Swanwick, Greg Egan's wise and thoughtful exploration of the religious mentality and its evolution in 'Oceanic' and a frankly disappointing and rather silly future fantasy written with some rather leaden prose and some scientifically absurd detritus from the generally much better Iain R. Macleod: 'New Light on the Drake Equation'.

Macleod's story was particularly disappointing because I really like his novels but this one was like ploughing through treacle, made worse by the fact that its depiction of a relationship contrasted so sharply with the wisdom and tenderness of Le Guin and Pohl's contributions.

All in all, this is a recommended though not a perfect collection. I would skip Williams and Macleod (without prejudice to their other work) and, if you are short of time, take a deep breath and read Le Guin and Pohl and certainly the much more accessible McHugh and McDonald, maybe Silverberg, Haldeman (though be prepared to be frustrated), Kress (if you want to tick off a minor classic), Egan and (just) Reynolds (but only if you are into his universe). ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/74057659 to: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BFI TV Classics) by Anne Billson
bookshelves: cultural-studies, feminism, film---television, horror, north-american, popular-culture
This is one of a series from the British Film Institute, providing 'critical readings' of TV series. The series follows similar and generally excellent guides to important movies.

Unfortunately, the editorial guidelines have encourage the authors to see these series in the context of their 'personal response', a dangerous licence to self-indulgence especially as the film-related booklets benefited from offering in-depth research on their subjects, albeit from different perspectives, without constant use of the 'I' word.

Anne Billson is not too bad in her judgements. Given the iconic status of Buffy in promoting contemporary 'girl power', it is useful to have a woman outline her responses to the series as it unfolded. She can be tiresome every now and then (especially in her opinionated position on one or two of the supporting cast) but it usually reads right if unimaginatively.

Unfortunately, given the amount of space devoted to recapping the series Season by Season and reminding us of key moments and personalities, the 'experiential' aspect of the book crowds out the information that we might have had on its cultural context and the broader public response.

For Buffy fans, it is a good value 'aide memoire' with a useful selection of websites at the back but, in the end, it is not much more than that. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73427060 to: The World of Perception (Hardcover) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty
bookshelves: history-of-philosophy, modern-european, philosophy
Mid-twentieth century revolutions in thought have overturned much of the basis for any easy acceptance of Descartes and later Kant as guides to life, with Kierkegaard and Nietzche as early pioneers in unravelling the presumptions of essentialism.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is a very significant figure in this context, not merely within modern continental philosophy but in preparing the ground for what looks likely to be seen as a much wider and consequent cultural revolution, one derived from the extension of the insights of the existentialist, phenomenological and hermeneutic schools, first into art and culture and increasingly into society and politics.

This slim volume represents seven radio lectures given by Merleau-Ponty in 1948. The form should warn you about the content. They are slight, an attempt to popularise complex thoughts and ideas, equivalent to the sort of 'Brains Trust'-type talks given by intellectuals like Bertrand Russell or JB Priestley in Britain (as well as the Brains Trust itself) around the same time.

They are of their place and time. Some of the ideas will seem oddly obvious to a later generation but the lectures were bringing ideas that were reasonably well understood at the leading edge of the French intelligenstia to the educated French middle classes.

Radio was an essential medium of public education at this time and Merleau-Ponty appears to be doing a reasonable job here of boilinmg down complex and radical thought to the level of a reasonably educated member of the French general public.

But the book could be slimmer. Thomas Baldwin's introductory notes add little to appreciation of material that stands on its own merits and his determination to put his own critique of Merleau-Ponty's claims is irritating when what we really want is an explication of what Merleau-Ponty was trying to get across to a mass audience - and why.

Similarly, the first four lectures are scene-setting potboilers. Complex research and thought is boiled down to short gobbets of information that are not always entirely clear.

The lectures only come alive, to become a useful summary of his ideas, in the last three: a sensitive critique of Cartesianism from what is clearly an existentialist point of view; how art must be seen as distinct from reality; and a powerful, short and, in my view, important critique of the assumptions of the Enlightenment.

To be honest, this book is for completists in French philosophy or for those interested in how philosophy was communicated to the French public in the vibrant 1940s. Merleau-Ponty's views are probably best investigated through more substantal works or through one of the very many general works on existentialism - even perhaps from Wikipedia.

Where the book is useful is in providing unusually succinct (for a working philosopher) expressions of his position. This reader is wholly persuaded by his approach. Merleau-Ponty seems to be describing not how educated people should think (as was the case in the 1940s) but how educated people actually think today, sixty years on.

This shows the extent of a revolution that marks out the wiser part of the liberal West today both from its ideological rivals overseas and from the fundamentalist version of liberal thinking that is fighting its own rear-guard action to preserve the dominance of its absolute values in a changing society.

Merleau-Ponty's legacy is the challenge being undertaken, as I write, to sustain in place some of the rigidities and essentialisms that were the consensus in 1948. These still hold sway in the elites of the West (though not necessarily in the general population) and are the basis of all the 'grand projets' that are so damaging within Western politics - from the American Empire through Israel to the European Union.

In essence, Merleau-Ponty's project is an extended critique of classical rationalism (though not, it should be said, a call for the rule of unreason).

For Merleau-Ponty, the rule of pure reason is neither possible nor truly human because we are, as human beings, embedded in our perceptions. We must be seen in the context of our history and of social reality and its history - as well as of the constant negotiation of our position with our own drives and with other persons.

This is the middle ground between matter and intellect where we actually live. As he puts it, rather than accepting the Cartesian dualism of their being, here, a mind and, there, a body, we should see ourselves and others as minds with bodies - "a being who can only get to the truth of things because its body is, as it were, embedded in those things." Let the man speak for himself:

Lecture 5

" Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals, a community of thinkers, each of whom is guaranteed from the outset to be able to reach agreement with the others because all participate in the same thinking essence. Nor, of course, is it a single Being ... humanity is precarious: each person can only believe what he recognises to be true internally, and, at the same time, nobody thinks or makes up his mind without already being caught up in certain relationships with others, which leads him to opt for a particular set of opinions. Everyone is alone and yet nobody can do without other people ... there is no 'inner' life that is not a first attempt to relate to another person, In this ambiguous position, which has been forced on us because we have a body and a history (both personally and collectively), we can never know complete rest. We are continually obliged to work on our differences, to explain things that we have said that have not been properly understood, to reveal what is hidden within us and to perceive other people."

Lecture 6

" The meaning 'table' will only interest me insofar as it arises out of all the 'details' which embody its present mode of being. If I accept the tutelage of perception, I find I am ready to understand the work of art. For it too is a totality of flesh in which meaning is not free, so to speak, but bound, a prisoner of all the signs, or details, which reveal it to me. Thus the work of art resembles the object of perception: its nature is to be seen or heard and no attempt to define or analyse it, however valuable that may be as a way of taking stock of this experience, can ever stand in place of the direct perceptual experience."

Lecture 7

" In modernity, it is not only works of art that are unfinished: the world they express is like a work which lacks a conclusion."

" ... absolutely objective historical knowledge is inconceivable, because the act of interpreting the past and placing it in perspective is conditioned by the moral and political choices which the historian has made in his own life ... Trapped in this circle, human existence can never abstract from itself in order to gain access to the naked truth: it merely has the capacity to progress towards the objective and does not possess objectivity in fully-fledged form."

" ... if ambiguity and incompletion are ... written into the very fabric of our collective existence rather than just the works of intellectuals, then to seek the restoration of reason ... would be a derisory response ... liberal regimes should not be taken at their word ... noble ideologies can sometimes be convenient excuses."

Merleau-Ponty's message in these lectures is optimistic, far from the doom-and-gloom often ascribed to those moving in existentialist circles at this time.

Contestability and ambiguity are not becessarily bad things to Merleau-Ponty because they permit self- and social creation that accords with our complex natures. He stands in opposition to rationalist and intellectual models that bend humanity into fixed shapes.

Not only God but Reason are 'dead'. This is to be embraced but not from a position of reactionary conservatism. On the contrary, while clearly highly critical of the Soviet model, he is equally critical of Liberal nostrums (as he should be). The strong implication is that we can change things for us personally and for society in a progressive way through embracing uncertainty and making humane judgements for which we must take personal responsibility.

Of course, it is hard not to see this as part of the same movement that embraced Sartre, De Beauvoir, Camus and Arendt and so it is - but Merleau-Ponty should, I believe, be considered differently. His humane phenomenological approach leads him to existentialist conclusions but it does not lock him into its 'system' (such as it is) or ideology.

His ideological approach is, in fact, anti-ideological. He is sensibly respectful of science and is determined not to be led by the nose by Sartre whose genius and ego may place him amongst the 'greats' of Western philosophy but who must always be taken with a pinch of salt as a guide to life. For Merleau-Ponty, life need not be 'absurd' if we do not wish it to be. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73423815 to: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home (Season 8, Vol. 1) by Joss Whedon
bookshelves: graphic-novels, north-american, popular-culture
Unengaging graphic sequel - apparently the first 'episodes' in a notional Season 8 - to the TV Series, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'. It misses the point - the Buffy series was fantasy, sure, but it was also about the psychological development of, and the tensions within, its Scooby Gang.

'Season 8' (at least based on reading this first volume) is filled with stereotypes and seems a forced attempt to drive the 'girl power' message of the last minutes of the final show of Season 7 to ridiculous lengths. Much of this comic is just silly, portentous and disconnected.

It also gives us a clue as to why Joss Whedon literally lost the plot with Firefly, less so with Serenity, when he tried to paint on a much bigger canvas. The point was that Buffy was not such a big canvas in time and space when you got down to it.

It was a small town living under the shadow of many dimensions and, as HP Lovecraft and Stephen King have both shown us, a relatively tight 'real' universe can often be more effective at making us believe in cosmic horrors than a world of limitless fantasy ... perhaps Whedon should leave big fantasy to the top graphic design 'auteurs' like Alan Moore and Mike Mignola who can create characters and situations that are limitless from the start.

The novel is also ridiculously expensive for what it is. There is something irritating about a marketing mentality that hooks kids on a product and then prises £11.99 of their pocket money for something so unstimulating. It feels like exploitation.

Perhaps it gets much better in Volume 2 (and afterwards) but I am not going to bother to find out. I don't believe in completism for its own sake.

If Whedon cannot continue the story on the small screen in episodic form, then I, for one, will be happy to close the mythos with the Scooby Gang (minus Anya) standing by their commandeered school bus, looking down into the gaping hole that was Sunnydale and the (presumed) vapourised grave of the redeemed Spike. And so it goes .... ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73280994 to: Dead Men's Boots (Felix Castor, #3) by Mike Carey
bookshelves: horror
See - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66309... ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/73280933 to: Vicious Circle (Felix Castor, #2) by Mike Carey
bookshelves: horror
See - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66309... ]]>