Matthew Cook's Blog, page 3

Interzone #235 - First Review!

A review of all stories in Interzone #235 is up at:
http://johnsreading.blogspot.com/2011/07/interzone-235-jul-aug-2011.html
Money quote:
"The stories open with the best of the bunch in my opinion, 'Insha'Allah' from Matthew Cook and if it opens feeling rather derivative of current events in North Africa and Afghanistan, Cook eschews a story based on a science fictiony peace-keeping mission with high tech kick-assery, dwelling instead on the effects the conflict's having on the local population"
What's interesting is that I wrote the story almost two years ago, well in advance of the current struggle in Libya/Egypt, etc. But I agree that I did certainly want to tell a different version of this sort of "Enemy Mine" type story, using themes based on our current overseas... ah... "adventurism". Whether I was successful or not is, as always, in the eyes of the reader.
More details on "Insha'Allah" and the other great stories in Interzone #235 are at the linked URL.
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Interzone #235 Details and Lineup

The lineup for issue #235 of Interzone is up with illustrations - see HERE for details.
I'm thrilled to be sharing this edition with Jon Wallace, Gareth L. Powell, Al Robertson, and reader-favorite Mercurio D. Rivera. There are also details on the page about where to buy the issue in the US, as well as information on how to take out a subscription (annual or even lifetime).
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Insha'Allah Illustration - Interzone #235

TTA Press has the first page and illustration from my short story on their Facebook page... If anyone can tell me how to link to the bigger version, please let me know -since this is on Facebook, the full-size version doesn't seem to be right-clickable to access the "Copy Image Address" menu choice.
Graphic by Richard Wagner, who also, I'm told, also did the cool, retro-pulp cover (thanks, Richard!)
I'd link you to Richard's website but I'm having trouble locating it this is a rough morning for me for some reason, sorry... If you know Richard's web site address, please post it in the Comments section.
Thanks!

Insha'Allah in Interzone #235

If you're on Facebook, check out TTA Press's page for news on the summer issue (#235) - my short story, "Insha'Allah" will appear in there soon.
Although I'm not mentioned in the article, a partial lineup can be found over on Jim Steel's blog: Panglossian Hubris. Jim's the book review editor over at the magazine... not sure why he didn't think to mention me... Hmmmmm. But hey - check out that name placement - top billing this time!
Anyway. I'm thrilled to once more appear in Interzone - my first short story there, "The Shoe Factory", was very well received and made various long lists for assorted awards. I hope you'll enjoy "Insha'Allah" even more.
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The Lettered Curmudgeon Reviews: Welcome To Bordertown

Welcome to another exciting eposide of my ongoing series: The Lettered Curmugeon. Here, you'll find reviews on books, movies, TV shows and games, all told from a writer's perspective. In this installment, I'll be taking a look at a new series, set to debut in May: the contemporary fantasy anthology: Welcome To Bordertown.

1986 was an exciting year for geeks. Movies like Aliens, Big Trouble in Little China, Labyrinth, and Highlander were in the theaters. William Gibson's Count Zero hit the shelves that year, and Orson Scot Card's Ender's Game won the Hugo, while Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Moore's Watchmen changed comic books forever.

It was also a good year for anthologies. 1986 marked the debut of an ambitious "shared world" anthology created by Terri Windling and Mark Allen Arnold: Bordertown.

The original collection was a slender volume: four short stories filled with spell-powered motorcycles and rock-and-roll bands fronted by elven frontmen, set in a city on the edge of our world and the realm of faerie. Both magic and technology blended together in Bordertown, working sporadically, if at all, creating a place where curses turned runaway human boys into werewolves (sort of), and where the red waters of the Mad River, flowing out of faerie, were as addictive as unfulfilled dreams. It was, in many ways, the birthplace of "urban fantasy", a sub-genre where traditional fairy-tales were updated for a modern audience through the amazing storytelling of Charles de Lint, Terri Windling, Emma Bull, and countless others.

Over the years, I've purchased thousands of books, but only a few stand out so strongly that I remember exactly where I was when I bought them. Bordertown is one such volume, one of the rare few. To say the anthology and the ones that followed (two other short story collections and a handful of novels) were influential on my own writing is an understatement. To say that I was excited when I learned that the Bordertown series was being resurrected for a modern audience equally so.

At 2010's World Fantasy Convention, I was handed a copy of Welcome To Bordertown, the latest collection by the series' current editors Ellen Kushner and Holly Black. It's a massive collection: twelve new short stories from accomplished authors Cory Doctorow, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Tim Pratt, and Charles de Lint, as well as from relative newcomers such as Annette Curtis Klause, Janni Lee Simner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Nalo Hopkinson. The volume also includes poems by Neil Gaiman, Patricia A. McKillip, Delia Sherman, Jane Yolen, as well as a short, illustrated comic by Sara Ryan & Dylan Meconis. But does this latest incarnation of the beloved franchise not only capture the "where magic meets rock-and-roll" wonder of the original series (hey, the 80's were a long time ago) while adding something new and fresh for the current generation of urban fantasy readers?

I'm happy to report that it does. In spades.

In this latest collection, Black and Kushner have resurrected the series, updating the setting and providing a fertile playground for a new generation of writers, all while preserving much of the nostalgic feelings of old. It's a good trick, accomplished via a clever explanation of the city's disappearance from the world we know. During this period, Bordertown skipped across time, like a stone tossed on a still pond, re-emerging over a decade later, a period its inhabitants experienced not as thirteen years, but as thirteen days. For that time, the roads leading back to the human world were closed.

Once re-opened, a new crop of miscreants and runaways find their way to the City Beside The Border. These misplaced dreamers, however, are different than the ones who came before: wired teens armed not with guitars, but with cell phones and Facebook feeds; girls with daydreams of darkly romantic vampires and smoldering werewolves; entrepreneurial network geeks driven by visions of sending data packets across the forbidden border into faerie.

No story uses the "lost in time" mechanism better than Alaya Dawn Johnson's "A Prince of Thirteen Days". It's a poignant coming-of-age tale, populated by haunted statues, a wise and kindly Grandmother, and a family torn apart by space and time. In Johnson's tale, star-crossed lovers pass messages across impossible borders, using art as their medium, leading to a resolution that, for all its inevitability, still manages to set its melancholy hook.

Other tales, such as Nalo Hopkinson's "Ours Is The Prettiest", and Cory Doctorow's "Shannon's Law", take the series in fresh, thoroughly unexpected, directions. Hopkin's story adds a refreshing dose of multiculturalism, drawing inspiration not from the traditional European faerie story, but rather the dark magic of New Orleans voodoo. What emerges is a sometimes confusing yet oddly memorable tale, one that lingers on the mind, spicy and sweet, like the taste of etouffee long after the last page is turned. In contrast, Cory Doctorow offers up a tale that could have come out of Silicon Valley, if it had been overrun by myth, where a visionary entrepreneur seeks a novel approach to circumventing the impenetrable border into faerie through high technology. It's a story only Doctorow could have given us, full of inside jokes about web culture and technology. His progatonists are likable, if unlikely, heroes, wrapped in a narrative that seamlessly blends the wonder of our current-day achievements with a healthy respect for the traditional rules of the fairy tale.

Fans of the original series will be pleased by stories such as Emma Bull's "Incunabulum", Holly Black and Cassandra Clare's "The Rowan Gentleman", and Will Shetterly's "The Sages of Elsewhere." All three are classic Bordertown through-and-through, clear nods to what came before, harkening back to the glory days of urban fantasy. All are fun reads, but it's Shetterly's "Sages" that's the stand-out, primarily due to the return of Wolfboy, one of my all-time favorite B'town characters. "Incunabulum" and "Rowan Gentleman" also deliver memorable moments, usually through the interaction of original characters and archetypes with the new-breed of Bordertown runaways. It's culture-clash-as-metaphor, applied with artful skill by Bull, Black and Clare, offered up to the reader's continued delight.

Alongside the collection's stories are poems and song lyrics, written by past Bordertown alums and leading voices in the fantasy genre. The editors have stated that it is their desire for the Bordertown community to take these words and set them to their own music, creating new and original works. How this will work is still up in the air, however it is my understanding that space will be provided on the new Bordertown website (http://bordertownseries.com/) for these new creations, a move that promises to leverage the power of social media for the series' newest fans.

That said, as poems the works spoke less to me than the short stories, despite their strong imagery and varied styles. Maybe when set to music they'll truly come alive. I certainly can't wait to hear what musicians will do with such strong and diverse source material.

Reading this latest Bordertown collection, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of readers the editors hoped to target. Aging fantasy fans like me, who think "de Lint and Bull", not "Meyers and Hamilton", when they hear the words "urban fantasy"? Teens and YA readers who came up on tales of Jacob, and Edward, and Anita Blake? The answer, of course, is both, a tricky proposition, but one that Kushner and Black manage, somehow, to pull off. Reading Welcome to Bordertown, I couldn't help but wonder what's next… what other stories might spring from the minds of writers established and new, inspired by the fruit of their dedication and hard work.

Personally, I can't wait.

"Insha'Allah" Goes To Interzone!

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Just learned that my short story, "Insha'Allah" sold to Interzone Magazine. No word yet what issue it will appear in, but given the 'Zone's schedule, I suspect it will be a month or two. As soon as I know more, I'll post the news here.
As always, I want to thank the fine, fine people of Columbus Writeshop, my long-time writer's group. I critiqued the story through them a few months' back, and got boatloads of good suggestions on how to improve it. Thanks as well to the people who read it for me and shared your ideas about what worked (and didn't), including: Grafton; Amy; Jack W.; and others I'm sure I'm forgetting (sorry!)
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The Lettered Curmudgeon Reviews: Sucker Punch

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Welcome to my new blog feature: The Lettered Curmudgeon. Here I'll attempt to provide my take on of recent movies, television shows and video games, as told from a writer/storyteller's perspective. This month, I'll be reviewing Zach Synder's visually-impressive-yet-tragically-flawed magnum opus: Sucker Punch.

If you've seen the previews for this film (if not, check them out here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978764/videogallery), your expectations were likely similar to mine: big, over the top special effects set-pieces, full of explosions and sword fighting, served up with a healthy dose of overarching "tough chikz with gunz" sensibility. Likely, you really wouldn't be expecting much in the way of story, or characterization, or anything approaching nuance. I certainly wasn't, and was surprised to find something actually approaching a workable tale of sacrifice, sorrow and regret (as flawed as it eventually turned out to be—more on that in a bit) wrapped around Snyder's highly-stylized visuals.

Sucker Punch is the story of Baby Doll (played by the fetching Emily Browning), a pig-tailed blonde who, through a series of unfortunate circumstances following the death of her mother and the accidental death of her sister, finds herself committed to a mental asylum by her abusive step-father. Daddy Dearest, you see, has a taste both for his stepdaughters' forbidden fruit, as well for their inheritance. Baby Doll finds herself in the clutches of Blue, a corrupt hospital guard (Oscar Isaac), who has arranged for the orphaned waif to be lobotomized in five days by a visiting brain surgeon (played by Mad Men alum Jon Hamm). With Baby Doll's memories wiped clean, Daddy-Dearest will, we assume, be left in sole control of the family fortune while she rots away, a mindless vegetable.

To escape this fate, she must enlist the help of her fellow inmates (Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung… ninja vixens, all) as well as avoid the well-meaning-yet-creepy ministrations of the staff psychologist, Dr. Gorski (played by Carla Gugono, 2009's Silk Spectre from Snyder's previous effort: Watchmen).

It's here, after the film's first 20-or-so minutes, that the narration abruptly shifts gears. The dreary hospital changes, transmogrifying into a posh night club-slash-bordello. Baby Doll's fellow inmates are transformed from dirty, belligerent lunatics into sleek, well-fed showgirls. Each has a story to tell (or so we are told—never, unfortunately shown) via personal dances, oft-practiced (again, we are told) and performed for the pleasure of the club's male "clients" (again … oh, you get the drift).

The bordello set-up, while intriguing, creates a separate, secondary frame for the narrative, slowing down the already-sedate pace of the film even further. We are introduced to all the primary characters a second time, this time in their more flamboyant alternate personas. Blue goes from weasel-like orderly to mustachioed pimp; Dr. Gorsky goes from psychiatrist to the club's resident choreographer, etc.

It's here that the film really starts going off the rails. Baby Doll we are told (again… not shown) is to be saved for the special attention of the "High Roller", Hamm's alter-ego in bordello-world, who is to appear in 5 days. She's told (again… see a pattern here?) that her only weapon will be her dance, which she must learn to use as a weapon.

When Baby Doll practices her moves in the club's mirrored dance studio, the scene shifts yet again, this time to a series of bizarre fantasy vignettes, each more otherworldly and visually striking than the last. This is where the Snyder's visual signature shines best: sword battles against 15 foot-tall robot samurai armed with chain guns… zombie Dough Boys fighting in WWI trenches against mecha battlesuits straight out of Japanese anime… B-17 bombers vs. flame-spewing dragons, dog-fighting over courtyards full of orcs and knights in armor… the action just gets more and more insane, with eras and genres blended with luscious abandon.

It's wild, and confusing, and chaotic, and (if you've managed to stay awake through not one but two set-ups, remember) really needs no explanation: this is pure fantasy, as experienced in Baby Doll's fevered (likely medicated) brain. A last-ditch attempt to save herself from a fate literally worse than death. It's a powerful metaphor, expertly crafted for maximum visual punch.

So why, then, does Snyder feel the need to explain himself and the story, as he does literally at every opportunity? Each time Baby Doll and her rag-tag team of uber-hotties are sent into another mission (each time Baby Doll dances, I mean… Snyder's sure to show us the set-up every time without fail… more needless explaination) we're treated to a mission briefing by the Wise Man (played by Scott Glenn), a craggy Gandalf stand-in who Snyder uses to explain the patently obvious.

"Your mission is to sneak in and kill the baby dragon… Oh, and don't wake up Mama!" No shit, Sherlock… like I couldn't see that just by looking out the effing window. Glenn, despite a solid, likable performance, really adds nothing whatsoever to the film—honestly, it felt like the entire character was created as a result of some retarded focus-group session with a bunch of pro wrestling fans: "Um… I don' unnerstand why pretty blonde lady is fighting them there Japanese guys… Wuzzn't she jus' in, like, a cathouse or sumthin'? My head hurrrrrrts!"

One of the first things any good writer learns is the almost magical power of not explaining. Of showing the reader (or, in this case, the viewer) the scene, and letting it speak for itself. Certainly Snyder's visuals (did I mention they're jaw-droopingly amazing? They really, really are… definitely one for my Blu-Ray want list) make things perfectly clear; having Baby Doll's sensei/commanding officer/babysitter tell me the patently-obvious really doesn't help. All it really does is annoy me. Over and over.

One of the hazards of spending so much time thinking about the "craft" of writing is that I find it directly lowers my enjoyment of most movies. The writing in many films (likely due to the committee-based approach of crafting story arcs via the marketing department's need for Happy Meal and action-figure product placement opportunities) tends to create a method of storytelling that seems to feel the need to explain any challenging thought, no matter how banal it actually is, and which, in almost every instance, degrades even stories with a solid core to mere pandering.

In the end, despite all the goodwill Snyder earned for me via his powerful visual style and willingness to take ballsey chances, I was left quite literally squirming in my seat with embarrassment by midway through Sucker Punch, wondering when it would finally be over. Too bad nobody in Marketing thought to shell out a few bucks for dinner and drinks with a slush-pile first reader from even a modest genre magazine or publishing house--they would have whipped the script into shape with a few well-placed strokes of their mighty red pens.

"Stop explaining!" I fantasize they would have written in the margins. "Story begins in the wrong place!" "Prologues are boring, no matter how well written (or beautifully shot) - get to the action!" "Did I mention STOP EXPLAINING??!?!?"

Good advice, whether you're a humble genre writer, or a mighty Hollywood director.

Better luck next time, Zach… At least I'll buy the Blu-Ray. Damn you.

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