Ulff Lehmann's Blog: Blogging Lot - Posts Tagged "setting"
Setting or people?
Currently, although it is not listed here, I am reading a novel by Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata of Eldritch Palmer. It's part of a collection of Dick's novels I got for my birthday a number of years ago.
Maybe it's the age difference, maybe to appreciate the novel, much like Man in the High Castle, I must have been born at a time closer to the novel's release. I don't know. As with High Castle, the concept, the idea behind the novel, is amazing. And just like High Castle, characterization is minimal. Frankly, I am not really interested in the people, and therein, to me, lies the problem.
I need people I can relate to, no matter the brilliance of the setting, maybe that's why Lord of the Rings never managed to hold my interest for long. Stigmata takes place in a future where due to a significant rise in temperature and unabated, I assume, boinking of humans, people are being shipped to colonies within the Solar system. Life there can be called so only by the farthest stretch of the imagination... and that is to be taken quite literally. A psychotropic drug called Can-D allows the user to inhabit a doll in a so-called layout, some diorama with lifelike and working miniatures that basically simulate life on Earth a couple centuries ago. That idea alone is amazing... A whole bunch of addicts who primarily lead a beyond dreary existence which is only brightened by the time they can take Can-D and enter the virtual world of the diorama. There's only 2 dolls/characters that can be "inhabited" a man and a woman, and multiple people can inhabit the same doll, read 3 men in the man-doll and 3 women in the woman doll. The idea alone is utterly out there, like, damn!
My inner storyteller goes nuts for this shit, the possibilities... we have an Earth that is literally heating up to unbearable temperatures in New York etc, colonists in shitty hovels around the Solar System, a recreational drug linked to a diorama culture that is only useful with the drug, aaaand a medical process that allows humans to evolve any number of years, with major and minor side effects. That alone is pure gold.
But instead of digging into the world there and then, Dick introduces Eldritch Palmer, a genius who has been absent from the Sol System for a decade now, he returns from Proxima Centauri with a new drug that allows each user to create their own reality within their minds which then can be shared by other users... think Minecraft only that instead of spending hours in a drug stupor, time basically stands still for the body while the user's mind is in whatever universe it created or joined... the drug seems to be part of a plot by the Proxis (the natives of Proxima) to take over the Sol System... I haven't gotten that far yet...
Oh, there is one more thing that seems to be of importance, tho with Minority Report having precogs is not that unusual...
So, we have this insane future with so many different facets that each by themselves has incredible story potential. And Dick takes more time to explore these elements than the possible conflicts... it reads almost as pages from a history book with dialogues sprinkled in. No, that is not quite correct, but it comes close. I know, the book was written 50 or more years ago, and the style was different then. Still, it bugs the hell out of me.
Man, the possibilities lost. But from what I know of Dick he was primarily a world builder, taking the most insane concepts and just going with them...
To me, if the folks through whose eyes I experience the story and the world (yes, in that order) are lacking dimension and personality, a part of my interest wanders elsewhere. Which is probably the reason why it took me a few years after High Castle to continue with Stigmata, and while I do not want to compare Dick's work to a D&D sourcebook, the similarities are there. High Castle had no plot, no real climax, nothing, and while I know that Dick experimented with IChing at that time, letting the oracle sticks determine the story's plot, I still say he should have started with the setting and then got to the people, the meat of the story... as such it is more a collage of stories that do not end satisfactory in one way or another.
Or I need to start with recreational drugs and mayhap then see what's what.
Kidding!
A story, to me, is always people. We can relate to stuff characters go through, we can laugh and love and cry and weep with them. Through people we connect with the story on a much deeper level.
At least that is my opinion. I can see why Hollywood is gobbling up Dick stories, they have insane ideas and the stuff I have read so far (granted, a pittance to the man's output) allows for such a width of shoehorning other stuff into these worlds that, yes, they make tasty treats for studios...
Maybe it's the age difference, maybe to appreciate the novel, much like Man in the High Castle, I must have been born at a time closer to the novel's release. I don't know. As with High Castle, the concept, the idea behind the novel, is amazing. And just like High Castle, characterization is minimal. Frankly, I am not really interested in the people, and therein, to me, lies the problem.
I need people I can relate to, no matter the brilliance of the setting, maybe that's why Lord of the Rings never managed to hold my interest for long. Stigmata takes place in a future where due to a significant rise in temperature and unabated, I assume, boinking of humans, people are being shipped to colonies within the Solar system. Life there can be called so only by the farthest stretch of the imagination... and that is to be taken quite literally. A psychotropic drug called Can-D allows the user to inhabit a doll in a so-called layout, some diorama with lifelike and working miniatures that basically simulate life on Earth a couple centuries ago. That idea alone is amazing... A whole bunch of addicts who primarily lead a beyond dreary existence which is only brightened by the time they can take Can-D and enter the virtual world of the diorama. There's only 2 dolls/characters that can be "inhabited" a man and a woman, and multiple people can inhabit the same doll, read 3 men in the man-doll and 3 women in the woman doll. The idea alone is utterly out there, like, damn!
My inner storyteller goes nuts for this shit, the possibilities... we have an Earth that is literally heating up to unbearable temperatures in New York etc, colonists in shitty hovels around the Solar System, a recreational drug linked to a diorama culture that is only useful with the drug, aaaand a medical process that allows humans to evolve any number of years, with major and minor side effects. That alone is pure gold.
But instead of digging into the world there and then, Dick introduces Eldritch Palmer, a genius who has been absent from the Sol System for a decade now, he returns from Proxima Centauri with a new drug that allows each user to create their own reality within their minds which then can be shared by other users... think Minecraft only that instead of spending hours in a drug stupor, time basically stands still for the body while the user's mind is in whatever universe it created or joined... the drug seems to be part of a plot by the Proxis (the natives of Proxima) to take over the Sol System... I haven't gotten that far yet...
Oh, there is one more thing that seems to be of importance, tho with Minority Report having precogs is not that unusual...
So, we have this insane future with so many different facets that each by themselves has incredible story potential. And Dick takes more time to explore these elements than the possible conflicts... it reads almost as pages from a history book with dialogues sprinkled in. No, that is not quite correct, but it comes close. I know, the book was written 50 or more years ago, and the style was different then. Still, it bugs the hell out of me.
Man, the possibilities lost. But from what I know of Dick he was primarily a world builder, taking the most insane concepts and just going with them...
To me, if the folks through whose eyes I experience the story and the world (yes, in that order) are lacking dimension and personality, a part of my interest wanders elsewhere. Which is probably the reason why it took me a few years after High Castle to continue with Stigmata, and while I do not want to compare Dick's work to a D&D sourcebook, the similarities are there. High Castle had no plot, no real climax, nothing, and while I know that Dick experimented with IChing at that time, letting the oracle sticks determine the story's plot, I still say he should have started with the setting and then got to the people, the meat of the story... as such it is more a collage of stories that do not end satisfactory in one way or another.
Or I need to start with recreational drugs and mayhap then see what's what.
Kidding!
A story, to me, is always people. We can relate to stuff characters go through, we can laugh and love and cry and weep with them. Through people we connect with the story on a much deeper level.
At least that is my opinion. I can see why Hollywood is gobbling up Dick stories, they have insane ideas and the stuff I have read so far (granted, a pittance to the man's output) allows for such a width of shoehorning other stuff into these worlds that, yes, they make tasty treats for studios...
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