A Case of Conscience (1958)

This short novel by James Blish confirms a couple of things for me. First, I don’t really like religion getting mixed up with science fiction. “Few science fiction stories of the time attempted religious themes,” according to Wikipedia, “and still fewer did this with Catholicism.” That may be so, but The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (1996, so perhaps not “of the time”) and the 1959 A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. (which maybe I need to try again) both fit that bill too well. Second, my misgivings about fix-up novels—also called “mosaic” novels in an attempt to dignify them—proved out again. I did not notice this as a fix-up novel while reading it, but I did note a severe drop in quality after the first part, which was the original 1953 novella that won a Retrospective Hugo Award in 2004. The basic idea here is not bad. There’s a planet, Lithia, with an intelligent dominant reptile species. Four human scientists, including a Jesuit priest who is also a biologist, are visiting to determine whether it should be opened to human diplomacy. One of the four says no because it has a huge amount of materials that can be used to create weapons. The Lithian society appears to be harmonious and peaceful. But the priest keeps looking at it through his frame of religious ideas. He sees it as pre-Edenic, still innocent, with no fall from grace, and thus feels it should be respected as such and not interfered with. But then he decides it could be the work of “the Adversary” (i.e., Satan), offering a temptation to believe, or something. I thought it was muddled but I was already souring on it by then. The middle has a logic that is hard to follow. The ending is admittedly powerful, but I’m not sure I agree that the priest is a hero. So I had a hard time with this, my first time reading Blish. I’m open to reading more by him, just not necessarily the After Such Knowledge series, for which this is the first novel. A Case of Conscience won a Hugo for Blish but he is more famous (per Wikipedia) for a Cities in Flight series and for Star Trek novelizations he worked on with his wife, J.A. Lawrence. The biology in Conscience is often thoughtful and intriguing, but the physics is more lacking. Faster-than-light travel, for example, is just a thing that needs no explanation. I think that’s fairly common for a lot of 20th-century SF, but Blish absurdly ignores time dilation too. In a key scene near the end, in fact, our heroes are witnessing real-time developments on Lithia, which is 50 light-years away. It was distractingly hard to believe.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)

Live at the Apollo (1963)

[2010 review here]

I see via Wikipedia this is still considered one of the greatest live albums of all time. I don’t hear it that way—although I was more in thrall to it in 2010, I remember it still as one of my great disappointments when I finally got to it, finding it one day in the 1980s in a cutout bin. There’s definitely a “you had to be there” case to be made here, and I say that as someone who saw James Brown over 15 years later, in 1979, and count it as one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. It did not matter that Brown was actually on stage no more than 40 minutes. But the brevity of this album—31 and a half minutes all up—made me suspect at the time that I must have bought some defective product being moved through the cutout networks. But no, it’s actually little more than half an hour. There’s a long introduction and a few instrumental vamps between songs. Due to the excitement of the moment, I presume, most songs have rushed tempos and last little more than two minutes apiece, including a medley of eight songs that goes six minutes. “Lost Someone” kind of saves the set, with a groove that runs to more than 10 minutes, a harbinger of things to come beyond 1963. Brown would get pretty good with grooves that went 10 minutes or longer. I understand the historical importance here. The album sold like crazy and DJs reportedly played it like a double-sided 45, playing one side then flipping it and playing the other—in response to requests from listeners. Then there’s the weirdly haunting date of the show, October 24, 1962, at approximately the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when nuclear anxiety was reaching one of its highest and most intense points. I’ll tell you what: I like a book Douglas Wolk wrote about this album for the 33-1/3 series more than I like the album. And as fine as that book is, breaking down the show minute by minute, second by second, I like even more the later prizes of James Brown’s work and career (Roots of a Revolution, Foundations of Funk: A Brand New Bag, Make It Funky: The Big Payback, and the Star Time box). At this point, Live at the Apollo exists mostly as historical artifact with only modest levels of interest.

“The Man in the Black Suit” (1994)

I was excited to see a story by Stephen King in The Weird. I didn’t think editors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer could leave him out but I guess I forgot about him by the time the chronologically ordered anthology got to Clive Barker in the ‘80s. This story is an interesting choice—a self-conscious reimagining by King of the kind of 19th-century American Puritan horror practiced by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. The story takes place in the deep woods of New England where a boy has gone fishing. He encounters the figure in the title, who is there to steal his soul or some such. It’s all pretty traditional business in many ways. Not much is particularly original but some of the details are good. The man’s eyes are described as red and orange, for example, windows into his burning soul. The story was published originally in the New Yorker, which speaks to the status of King’s career in 1994. He would win some kind of lifetime honor from some reputable literary group circa 2002 or 2003, which I always think of as the moment when he was accepted and embraced by the literary mainstream. With this story from the New Yorker he was on his way to that fuller, wider recognition. It does feel like King might be trying a little too hard here. He comes by his New England bona fides honestly enough—born and raised there—but he has never felt remotely part of Puritan traditions. Well, maybe remotely. But his style is all 20th-century contemporary and his horror is catholic, my feeble pun indicating his stuff is all over the place in terms of its sources. The woods and soul-stealing do as well for King as sacred Indian burial grounds, cosmic horror, vampires, werewolves, and/or zombies. And more. The guy is so prolific he almost couldn’t help having tried everything by the mid-‘90s. I used to find him insanely readable and wish now I’d read more of him then. Or maybe I reached my point of exhaustion after a few thousand pages (still only a fraction, I know). At any rate, I respect what I understand he’s doing here—getting the Puritan phobias about woods and the devil into the mix. Hey, that’s horror pure as much as anything else, up to and including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The Weird, ed. Ann & Jeff VanderMeer
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Galaxie 500, “Tugboat” (1988)

[listen up!]

Even as metaphor I’m not sure at all what this song is about, so I take it at face value. The singer doesn’t want to be at your party, he doesn’t want to talk to your friends, he doesn’t want to vote for your president. He just wants to be your tugboat captain. It’s a place he’d like to be, x12. It’s a place he’d be happy, x4. The internet tells me it’s all a reference to the Velvet Underground’s guitarist, Sterling Morrison, who worked on and captained tugboats in Houston in the ‘70s and ‘80s, while studying for his PhD in medieval literature, specializing in the work of the 9th-century poet Cynewulf. Maybe—1988 was a certain peak time to glorify the VU. But now we have gone well afield of this mystifying and strangely alluring Galaxie 500 track. The singer’s words make little sense, but they flash with feeling. He really seems to mean it. Pressure from a souring relationship? That has usually been when I don’t want to be at their party, talk with their friends, vote for their president. At nearly four minutes “Tugboat” affords room for the meditative noise the Galaxie 500 trio specialized in. The second-half jam may be the part of the song to pay the most attention to. It’s certainly one to drift through. From a softly strummed acoustic guitar to the plaintive and beautiful notes picked out of an electric guitar and then the yelping, “Tugboat” sets out on the oceanic currents of its own creation. Dean Wareham’s lead guitar steps away from the melodic hook, withdrawing into its own thoughts as the volume level slowly rises and the mush of the gentle noise envelops us, with the moody singer’s quixotic declarations still ringing figuratively in our ears.

Black Mirror, s7 (2025)

It’s possible that Black Mirror creator, chief writer, and showrunner Charlie Brooker’s well is running dry, but I thought s7 was an improvement and even something of a return to form over s6, which leaned way too hard for me into easy horror. The show still feels a little tired, but priorities are back in order. The familiar sardonic view of corporate absolute control was sharp as ever in the first episode, “Common People.” It involves a miracle pharmaceutical that upgrades brain function against tumors and disease. The problem is that it’s expensive and only getting more so as tiered “membership” levels come available. To defray costs, lower-tier users serve as advertising media, involuntarily dropping product pitches into everyday random conversation, with predictably loony (and intense) results. Other episodes, creaking slightly as they may, take on the multidimensional lifestyle in a competitive work environment, immersive AI in a unique type of film restoration, and the usual world-ending levels of computer hackery. Perhaps the most interesting development here—perhaps a sign of where Brooker’s imagination is drifting—is a kind of sequel to the USS Callister storyline from s4. I say sequel, but the relation between them is more like the first was a pilot for a TV show and now this redux is the first episode of the first season. It’s a parody of Star Trek, a good one that rivals even Galaxy Quest, focused more on the original series (“TOS”) than The Next Generation or anything that followed. Jesse Plemons plays the Captain Kirk character—he is as interested as James T. Kirk in getting laid but a far more unbalanced and cruel person. In real life he is Robert Daly, a software developer and creator of a successful immersive space opera computer game. A DNA replicator enables him to bring coworkers into his private version of the game. At least a couple of familiar points are here. One is the little electronic nubbin you affix to your temple which enables so much technology in Black Mirror. The other is the idea that “digital cloning” brings an essential element of consciousness into the software and/or device or game. Digital clones are not just some kind of empty replicant but bear essential sentience and self-awareness in their own right. Both USS Callister scripts shade their characters to appear different from different angles. Daly at first appears to be a harmless dweeb, but when he keeps calling himself “a nice guy” in conversations with women we start to get the picture he’s more of a petulant incel. As the captain of a spaceship, he is a monster. But I suspect Brooker is having so much fun with his Star Trek universe that I wonder if he wouldn’t like to dedicate a whole season to boldly going around in it.

Lucking Out (2011)

The title of James Wolcott’s memoir suggests an unexpected quality of humility for a writer who is always interesting, entertaining, and smart, but also—decidedly—with smart-ass neener-neener tendencies. I loved his stuff in the Village Voice, Esquire, and wherever I found it, even when his beat was not a particular area of interest, such as broadcast television. But I had little idea of the full scope of his work and career. He came to the Voice on the recommendation of Norman Mailer, who liked a piece Wolcott wrote about him in Wolcott’s college paper in Maryland. Wolcott was 19, he dropped out of college to move to New York City, and he never looked back. He made friends with Pauline Kael, was perhaps the first writer to champion Patti Smith, haunted CBGB, monitored developments in porn and live sex (from a safe distance), became a student of ballet, and lived the 1970s NYC lifestyle, which meant thoughts (and experience) of street crime violence were never far. He scorns the new Disney-fied present-day Times Square, but allows that the old one was a scary place to be. He writes long twisting sentences that fill page-long paragraphs. Sometimes I got lost in the tangles, but I’ll put that on me, not him. He’s a great natural writer and a plain pleasure to read. I don’t always agree with him. He has no use for Joan Didion, but goes dewy-eyed over Kael more than once. I’m inclined to see it the other way. Wolcott has perhaps aged into a certain model of the egghead critic, preoccupied with culture as such, but that’s nothing to hold against a guy who can maintain high regard for both the Ramones and the New York City Ballet. I love that, and even more I love his witty, jazzing voice. Wolcott’s memoir is essential for anyone interested in New York in the ‘70s (the subtitle is My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in the Seventies) and it’s recommended generally for anyone into an absorbing read. I’m not sure if there’s beef between Wolcott and Voice rock critic Robert Christgau, but it feels like there might be. His passing treatment of Christgau (and Ellen Willis) is dryly hilarious, wielding a scalpel in multiple places.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019)

[2020 review here]

USA / UK / China, 161 minutes

Director/writer: Quentin Tarantino

Photography: Robert Richardson

Music: Quentin Tarantino’s streaming playlists

Editor: Fred Raskin

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Mike Moh, Al Pacino, Lena Dunham, Sydney Sweeney, Kurt Russell, Julia Butters, Rafal Zawierucha, Damian Lewis, Emile Hirsch

I admit I was hard on Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood a few years ago, director and writer Quentin Tarantino’s last feature to date. That’s now going on seven years, his longest gap between features. Previously it was the six years between Jackie Brown and Kill Bill. He turned 60 in 2023 and the drift seems to be that he’s thinking of hanging it up, with possibly one more big one to go. Something about movie critics, the way I’ve heard it. Meanwhile, my write-up did nothing to warn people away. I have since seen Hollywood as high as #2 (after Pulp Fiction) on ranked lists of Tarantino’s pictures. For me, with perspective, the last picture he made that was close to exceeding its flaws was Death Proof. Everything from Inglourious Basterds on has represented increasingly diminishing rewards.

I suspect these are unpopular opinions, but I do think Death Proof is underrated. And that Hollywood is one of his worst, which was unfortunately confirmed for me with a recent second look. It’s better than I gave it credit for in 2020, sure—I was notably in a bad mood then for some reason—but that’s not saying much. It belongs with the second-half messes of Basterds, Django Unchained, and The Hateful Eight, as good, admittedly, as some of their parts can be. Hollywood wallows in a place familiar to Tarantino buffs, nostalgia for the bad movies pumped out then, circa 1969, which showed at B-movie palaces, drive-in theaters, and on TV. Hollywood is so full of clips it sometimes feels like we’re sitting around watching TV and mocking it in some dimly lit stoned haze with Tarantino himself.

Johnny “Guitar” Watson, “Space Guitar” (1954)

[listen up!]

The scene in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox plays a high school prom in 1955 and stuns the crowd into baffled silence with a Van Halen type of fugue-state guitar solo has its origins in a way with this singular rave-up instrumental by Johnny “Guitar” Watson, later a disco man. “Space Guitar” seemed to come from nowhere in 1954 and it was promptly sent back there, never getting close to any charts. "This could break a few eardrums if it's played too loud,” said the now-famous befuddled Billboard review. “It's unusual, has a sound, and, in a way, it moves.” That’s one way to put it. Watson’s piercing, shredding guitar is on the attack from the jump here, spinning off into the outer space realms promised in the title, stalking the record with heavy reverb cutting in and out, lyrical talking-guitar passages, and a random quote from the well-known theme of the show Dragnet, because why not? Watson’s playing positively throbs and is mostly barely connected to the more conventional R&B band trying to keep up. The alto sax also gets the random reverb-on / reverb-off treatment from producer Ralph Bass but it’s not particularly in the same galaxy as Watson. “Space Guitar” may have sunk out of the market like the proverbial lead balloon, but it did not take long for such luminaries (per Wikipedia) as Bo Diddley, Ike Turner, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Frank Zappa to take notice, advancing the cause for a certain thundering liberation of the electric guitar. It should be noted that, as original as it all is, Watson hardly sprang out of nothing—Texas-born, he sought to emulate the showmanship of T-Bone Walker, perhaps the first to pick an electric guitar with his teeth. “Space Guitar” is now recognized for its wide influence, but it’s still somehow surprising to hear how positively crazy it sounds.

A High Wind in Jamaica (1929)

This novel by Richard Hughes is a great and unsettling adventure story involving seven kids from two families living in Jamaica as colonialists. From the summaries it’s easy to reach the conclusion that this is some kind of YA story. It is decidedly not that. Five of these kids are the children of an English couple there shortly after the British empire emancipation of slaves in 1834. The plantation system with its mansions and slave quarters is still evident, but in a state of ongoing decay. Big things are going on here. First there is an earthquake and then there is a hurricane. The descriptions are vivid and unique, playing to Hughes’s strengths as a writer. The parents decide Jamaica is no safe place for children. They pack off their five, along with two from another family, sending them back to England. The ship, however, is attacked by pirates, who take the children. It’s a decision they soon regret as the kids take over the ship for playing purposes. They are so young they don’t understand their danger, which is real, as a few surprising and even shocking incidents demonstrate. Part of me was surprised the pirates didn’t just throw the kids off the boat, but on another level I can buy it. Even pirates must blanch at killing children. I admit the general premise sounds like it could work as a Disney fantasy type of feel-good movie. But much of what is going on here—by suggestion as well as direct revelation—is not even PG-13 but full on very close to R. The two oldest in the family of five are the main characters. They are about 12 and 9. The tale is great, not a bit sentimental, and Hughes’s writing is impeccable. The descriptions may be his strong suit, but the pacing is just as good—the story never stops plowing relentlessly forward. And it’s full of things you just can’t expect, though they make perfect sense as they go down and wrench the story in new directions. A novel like this is the reason I’m willing to go through the Modern Library’s arguably predictable list of the best novels of the 20th century. I’d heard of this one before, and heard the fulsome praise too, but was inclined to discount it. Don’t make my mistake. Put A High Wind in Jamaica high on your list to read.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

“Some Strange Desire” (1993)

More weird sex: this story by Ian McDonald is another longish, exotic, sexualized (not erotic) fantasy. Something must have been in the air? This one riffs on evolution, gender, and ancient vampire-like secret societies. It was nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the Short Fiction category in 1994. It seems that a mutant form of homo sapiens has lived among us for centuries. They embody both (or all) genders and can physically transform into them at will. And there are humans who get off sexually on them. What could possibly go wrong? The mutants are mostly just surviving, with little interest sexually in humans. Anyone annoyed by confusing pronouns will be annoyed here too, as the mutants are all referred to as “he” even when they are in female form, even as family bonds are referred to as “sister,” “daughter,” and “mother.” I don’t miss that the story was published in 1993, which is reasonably early for the kind of sophisticated LGBTQIA+ discourse given here. So points for vision, though of course Samuel Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin were basically already there and had been for years. The story is dense with concept, giving hurry-up explanation that must be parsed as we go, with a narrative that is perhaps necessarily butt-simple: one of the mutants is dying and unfortunately a human must be sacrificed for it to live. I never managed to get into this story. I understand the difficulty of what it’s trying to do—maybe it should have been a novel? That would have given the ideas here more room to breathe. The ideas are interesting but we are breaking down things like mutant terminology most of the way through, which thwarts narrative momentum. The story has so much concept to pack in that it really shorts character and story value. The concept could well be exactly what people like so much about this story, but I found myself getting impatient quickly with the slow pace and spoon-feeding of the ideas, however necessary. As I say, it probably just should have been longer to do that concept justice. Contrary to popular writing advice, everything doesn’t have to be showing. You can just tell us some things. It’s often quicker and more efficient—part of what the old-fashioned framing stories were doing.

Edited By, ed. Ellen Datlow
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection, ed. Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
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