Music and Magic: The Harry Potter Soundtrack Retrospective — Part 7 of 10: The Half-Blood Prince

This is the seventh article in a ten-part retrospective of the Harry Potter soundtracks. You may wish to refer to the previous entries in the series for more information.

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After the — in my opinion — lackluster step backward that was the soundtrack for Order of the Phoenix, I was greatly disappointed to learn that Nicholas Hooper would be scoring Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The book remains my least-favorite in the series (only narrowly edged-out by Deathly Hallows), and the fact that a composer I didn’t really like the last time he got a shot at the series was doing it again only added to my personal conviction that I wouldn’t like the film.

Fortunately, Hooper redeemed himself with the soundtrack for Prince, and I think it’s much better than his last outing.

Prince begins immediately with “Opening”, a track that gives us themes we hear several times through the film. I’ll call them “pensive”, “reverse Hedwig”, and “quick”, and I’ll be referring to them as I discuss this soundtrack. In this case, Hooper immediately rectifies, at least in my mind, the major issue I had with his previous soundtrack: that there was no really clear theme tying everything together. So that’s a plus. I mean, in this one, even Slughorn gets his own theme, and you actually hear it in all the scenes he’s the major player in.

Other standout tracks include:

  • “The Story Begins” — Right away we get the “quick” theme woven through this track, which deals with the introduction of Slughorn. See, Mr. Hooper? You can tie everything together!
  • “Ginny” — “Pensive” theme, “Hedwig’s Theme”, and even a riff on “Hedwig’s Theme” that manages to keep us in the mood despite the “quick” theme running in the background.
  • “Ron’s Victory” — The “quick” theme again, but riffed a bit so that we get the urgency of Ron playing Keeper and actually being, you know, victorious. There’s also a slight touch of “pensive”.
  • “Into the Rushes” — I actually really liked this scene in the film — it wasn’t in the book, but the screenwriter made a good choice in adding it to give a little more action during a slow part of the story. Hooper chose to reuse his “Death of Sirius” theme over the “quick” theme of this film. Plus we get another listen to “reverse Hedwig”, which hits in a big way later on.
  • “Dumbledore’s Farewell” — An excellent use of “reverse Hedwig” mixed with “pensive” (though mostly “pensive”). Hooper didn’t have to do much with this part, as the director handled it well with the wands-up-and-blow-away-the-Dark-Mark sequence.
  • “The Friends” — By this point in the film, we know that nothing will ever be the same and that Harry is going to go off by himself to find the horcruxes and kill Voldemort. In the books, it works very well as an Empire Strikes Back ending, but unfortunately someone made the decision that we had to have, if not a happy ending to Prince, at least one that wasn’t either totally depressing or directly leading into a sequel (think Back to the Future II). Hooper handles this well, although he doesn’t hit any of the main themes other than a heavily-disguised rework of “pensive” (well, three notes of it, anyway).

The sequence of Harry and Dumbledore going to the cave and finding the horcrux is also tied together by all three themes as well as by mood, and there are callbacks to other tracks like “Into the Rushes” and even “Dumbledore’s Foreboding”. After re-listening, I thought of it as more of a single piece of music with three movements — arrival (“Journey to the Cave”), Harry’s part, and Dumbledore’s part. The digitized, strobed voices in “The Drink of Despair” weren’t, to my mind, the best choice, but the “pensive” theme is used to great effect as Harry forces Dumbledore to drink the drink. Then, with “Inferi in the Firestorm”, other than the (to my mind) rather unnecessary use of a chorus and Khan-putting-Ceti-eels-in-Chekov’s-ear violin stylings, we get the “pensive” theme in full force, similar to “Finale” in Azkaban as Dumbledore destroys the inferi.

The Biography special about the music of Harry Potter took a few minutes to talk about Nicholas Hooper’s musical decisions in “Harry and Hermione” and “When Ginny Kissed Harry” — played mostly on classical guitar, which Hooper seems to be pretty adept at, I found them to be much more subdued than Patrick Doyle’s “Harry Potter’s Love”, although somewhat out-of-character with the rest of the film despite their use of all three themes. “When Ginny Kissed Harry” has a particularly touching musical phrase that’s repeated several times, and it does stick with you. Throughout the film, Hooper makes interesting instrumentation choices such as the classical guitar — we hear fiddles, jazz beats, pianos, and other instruments, all in the forefront in unexpected ways. It doesn’t always work for the mood of the film (see “Farewell Aragog”), but there’s 28 tracks. Dude’s got to stretch his wings somehow, right?

Despite a relatively good soundtrack, we did unfortunately have to deal with such… um… gems… as “In Noctem” — I’ve never, ever been a fan of soundtrack cuts that were just choruses singing with music behind them. “Living Death” was another lead-you-by-the-nose track, but given what was happening on screen at that time, I can forgive it. I can’t forgive it for reusing several themes from Order of the Phoenix in a way that really would’ve worked better in… well… that film instead of this one. But other than that, I didn’t really have a lot of bad things to say about specific tracks, although I will say that Hooper seems to have decided we needed a lot of counterpoint-style high notes (see “Snape and the Unbreakable Vow”) to offset the heavy, moody nature that many of the tracks required. And, speaking of heavy and moody, I was pretty disappointed by “The Killing of Dumbledore”* — it was mostly just “build, build build build build BUILD faaaaaaaaaaaaaaade”. Of course, it wasn’t a really great interpretation of the pitched battle in the novel, but when the director and screenwriter don’t give you much to work with, you do the best you can.

I also want to mention that there was only one use of “Hedwig’s Theme”, although the rest of the soundtrack, as with Doyle’s Goblet, made up for it in such a way that I really didn’t notice.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention “Wizard Wheezes” and “The Weasley Stomp”, which were pretty cool, but… well, they sounded more like what Michael Giacchino did in The Incredibles and really didn’t fit the mood of the film or its soundtrack**. Think “The Knight Bus” in Prisoner of Azkaban. “The Slug Party” was a more subtle version of the same musical style (though much more jazzy), so I have less of an issue with it than with the other two.

Overall, I think the Half-Blood Prince soundtrack was by far the better of Hooper’s two outings into the Potterverse. While I didn’t like the film almost at all — I’d put Deathly Hallows 1 at the bottom of the list, and this film just above it — I definitely got some enjoyment out of the soundtrack. It’s a solid piece of art, despite its overuse of bells and choruses, and it provides what I felt to be an excellent companion character to the film.

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* And what is it with this guy naming tracks after the deaths of major characters during climactic moments?

** I also didn’t like the choice to put “The Weasley Stomp” at the end of the soundtrack. It really detracts from the feeling Hooper engenders with “The Friends”.

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Escape Pod 310: Flash Extravaganza

Escape Pod 310: Flash Extravaganza is an Escape Pod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:06 — 22.3MB)

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Jenna’s Clocks

By T. F. Davenport

Narrated by Jean Hilde-Fulghum

Wetware Woes

By J. J. DeBenedictis

Narrated by Mur Lafferty

End of the World or Not, I Still Have Feelings

By Daniel Morris

Narrated by Barry Haworth

The Best Cover Band in the Universe

By Andrew Fazzari

Narrated by John Anealio

Honorable Mention for the Escape Pod 2010 Flash Contest!

Music and Magic: The Harry Potter Soundtrack Retrospective — Part 6 of 10: The Order of the Phoenix

This is the sixth article in a ten-part retrospective of the Harry Potter soundtracks. You may wish to refer to the previous entries in the series for more information.

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Explain something to me, if you would: how does a soundtrack with some truly cool pieces of music that even to this day I find myself humming or whistling fail to end up even in the top half of the soundtracks for the Harry Potter films? At least, on my list?

Because it’s not a complete work of art.

After the excellence of Patrick Doyle’s Goblet of Fire soundtrack, I was really looking forward to what he had to give us on the next film. Instead, we got Nicholas Hooper, who, other than the two Harry Potter films he scored, hasn’t really done any scores I recognize (according to Wikipedia). Maybe that means something.

In any case, Nicholas Hooper scored Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, my least favorite of the eight Harry Potter soundtracks. Unlike Goblet or Chamber, Order really is nothing more than a collection of individual themes and cues without, to my mind, any real attempt at creating an organized theme throughout. Contrast that with the previous two soundtracks, which, as I noted, really felt like complete works of art with a beginning, middle, and end.

I did catch a very slight attempt to tie everything together, but it was really done with moods instead of cues and musical phrases. I guess you could say the “Professor Umbridge” cue was used for that, but it’s not really replicated or played with enough for me to consider it as the film’s overarching theme or musical phrase — it doesn’t appear in enough tracks, especially the big ones. Not my favorite style. Also, the soundtrack itself isn’t presented in the order in which the tracks play in the film, which makes it difficult to mentally play the film as you listen. (Or, at least, as I listen.) Also, this soundtrack felt to me like a return to the original John Williams score, which really tried to lead you around by the nose and make you feel things, instead of making the music its own character in the film.

Lest you think I abhor this soundtrack, here are some cuts I enjoyed:

  • “Fireworks” — More or less the Weasley theme, this is a rocking jig that is most enjoyable.
  • “Professor Umbridge” — The string hits in the song actually seem to be saying “Professor Umbridge”. Clever.
  • “Dumbledore’s Army” — A worthy successor to the “wizards doing wizard stuff” cue heard in the first two John Williams soundtracks. I wish it had been used more.
  • “The Sirius Deception” — The ending really redeems what was, up until about 1:30, a pretty lackluster track. Again, there’s a series of cues that would have been better served as more of a unifying theme for the soundtrack.
  • “Death of Sirius” — First of all, you can’t put the major climactic twist of the film into the song title. That’s just dumb. Now, for the actual music itself, I was pretty impressed — for a Boss Fight, it was pretty darn good, though again it would have benefited from being somehow tied into any of the other themes.

I’d like to also call special attention to two tracks that I really loved on this soundtrack, though I think you’ll find an underlying theme to my commentary:

  • “Flight of the Order of the Phoenix” — Possibly the best cut on the album, this is the song that played as Harry and the Order flew through London. It’s only a minute and a half long, and I so very wish there was an extended version because it’s really, really good. Skip ahead to about 30 seconds in.
  • “The Ministry of Magic” — We’ve heard about the Ministry for several films, but only now do we get to actually see it. Hooper gives it a grand theme with this track, although again I wish the actual good part was longer.

As for “Hedwig’s Theme” — the very theme of Harry Potter himself — I was only able to catch it clearly in two tracks. The first is “Another Story”, which isn’t even the first song on the album (although it is the first cut in the film). It pops up for just a moment in “A Journey to Hogwarts”, but really, that’s it except for vague snippets here and there. A disappointment.

Other tracks I didn’t really care for:

  • “Dementors in the Underpass” — The chorus sounded way too electronic. It was distracting.
  • “The Hall of Prophecies” — Poorly placed in the track list. Also, the first half is too quiet and moody, while the second is fairly standard “enemies chasing heroes” music, with quick-tempo strings and lots of large drums.
  • “Possession” — More choruses, more strings, and an attempt to evoke the feeling of “Finale” in Chamber that never really panned out.
  • “The Room of Requirement” — Despite a really catchy theme, I just did not appreciate the repetitiveness of this track. It was quite a long montage that it had to cover in the film — Malfoy, Filch, and the others trying to get in — and it was another one that leads you along by the nose instead of complementing what’s on the screen.
  • “The Kiss” — Aural wallpaper that gets a little overblown toward the end.
  • “A Journey to Hogwarts” — The beginning of this track was really, really promising, and I think that Hooper could have made what he did with “Hedwig’s Theme” into a true theme for the film. But I was left disappointed. The track is almost redeemed at the end, but there’s sort of a “French romantic comedy” feel to it that didn’t do it for me.
  • “Loved Ones and Leaving” — Again, a track with a lot of promise and a lot of potential for overarching themes, but almost none of them were used earlier in the film. Plus, I wasn’t a huge fan of the flute used in the crescendo. It seemed unnecessary and a little trite.

Overall, I think Nicholas Hooper is a talented composer, and I found several tracks I was able to enjoy as singular pieces of music. However, I thought the soundtrack of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was a step backward in terms of soundtrack-as-character and soundtrack-as-complete-work-of-art. There was a lot of promise shown, and it was shown in may of the tracks, but I just didn’t feel like Hooper delivered on it. That’s why I say it’s my least-favorite of the Potter soundtracks, and why I was disappointed again that Hooper was chosen to compose the music for the sixth film. But, as you’ll soon see, my worries… well, they were pretty short-lived.

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Escape Pod 309: The Insurance Agent

First appeared in Interzone, 2010

Rated inappropriate for seventeen and younger due to language and violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:35 — 25.2MB)

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The Insurance Agent

By Lavie Tidhar

The bar was packed and everyone was watching the Nixon-Reagan match. The fighters were reflected off the bar’s grainy wood countertop and the tables’ gleaming surfaces and seemed to melt as they flickered down the legs of the scattered chairs. The bar was called the Godhead, which had a lot to do with why I was there. It was a bit of an unfair fight as Reagan was young, pre-presidency, circa-World War Two, while Nixon was heavy-set, older: people were exchanging odds and betting with the bar’s internal gaming system and the general opinion seemed to be that though Reagan was in better shape Nixon was meaner.

I wasn’t there for the match.

The Godhead was on Pulau Sepanggar, one of the satellite islands off Borneo, hence nominally under Malaysian federal authority but in practice in a free zone that had stronger ties to the Brunei Sultanate. It was a convenient place to meet, providing easy access to the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, Singapore, which resented the island’s role as a growing business centre yet found it useful at the same time.

She wore a smart business suit and a smart communication system that looked like what it was, which was a custom-made gold bracelet on her left arm. She wore smart shades and I was taking a bet that she wasn’t watching the fight. She was drinking a generic Cola but there was nothing generic about her. I slid into a chair beside her and waited for her shades to turn transparent and notice me.

‘Drink, Mr. Turner?’

(Continue Reading…)

Music and Magic: The Harry Potter Soundtrack Retrospective — Part 5 of 10: The Goblet of Fire

This is the fifth article in a ten-part retrospective of the Harry Potter soundtracks. You may wish to refer to the previous entries in the series for more information.

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After John Williams’s work on the first three Harry Potter films, who would the studio get to step up and take on the mantle of the fourth, and longest, and biggest-in-scope: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?

Well, I for one had never heard of Patrick Doyle — though apparently he had done films I’d seen, including Dead Again, Exit to Eden, and Gosford Park. Most recently, he’s scored Kenneth Brannagh’s Thor and the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Apparently the guy had the chops to be considered.

And he pulled off what I think is the best of the eight Potter soundtracks.

From the very beginning — “The Story Continues” — we’re told that this film is going to be darker and scarier than any of the others, despite what we know to be several action sequences and Harry’s first foray into romance. Astute listeners who are also fans of Family Guy will hear that the main “sinister” theme of the film sounds a lot like the phrase in the show opening that goes “lucky there’s a Fam-i-ly Guy…” It’s also heard again very prominently in horn form in “The Dark Mark”, which incorporates it along with some cues that sound very similar to ones heard in Star Trek: Nemesis.

I’m going to go ahead and call it the “Family Guy” theme from here on out.

Other standouts include:

  • “The Quidditch World Cup” — Ireland and Bulgaria get their own themes, with the latter to become Krum’s theme when he reappears at Hogwarts. The Bulgaria theme is particularly good at making you think all the Bulgarians (and therefore Krum) are evil.
  • “Foreign Visitors Arrive” — All three schools arriving: Hogwarts, then Beaubaxtons, then Durmstrang. Beaubaxtons has a theme that is particularly well-suited to them, but it also sounds like “oh, these characters are going to be completely useless in the finale”. It does, though, very neatly segue to the appearance of the Durmstrang ship.
  • “The Goblet of Fire” — Doyle weaves together three distinct versions of the same theme for the choosing of the names.
  • “Golden Egg” — I cover this a bit later, but this track gives us the first instance of the film’s “triumphant” music cue, and in similar fashion to other techniques Doyle has used to this point, he’s still weaving in the main theme of the film — “Family Guy” again. I was slightly disappointed that there wasn’t anything of “Hedwig’s Theme” in it, but I can forgive it. The same theme is repeated in slightly-less-bombastic form in “The Black Lake”.
  • “Cedric” — Although the music behind Amos Diggory as he realizes Cedric is dead is a little too overblown, it does the work that the film couldn’t do (but the book did) in making you care about Cedric enough to react to his death the way the author wanted you to.
  • “Another Year Ends” — A sweeping melody that really encapsulates the friendship of the Golden Trio. It’s a bit too positive, given that war has just begun, but I guess the point is to show you that, hey, despite all this ugly stuff going on, love still prevails — which, as we all know, is Dumbledore’s main point throughout the books (the importance of love).

I was a little less impressed with the “Hogwarts March” and “Hogwarts Hymn” — both had their place in the film, but they seemed to break up the soundtrack a little more than I personally would’ve liked. There were also the waltzes — Neville’s and Harry’s — which were completely in-place in the film, but when listening to the soundtrack they do make me put my head on one side just a bit. They’re placed in the soundtrack when they occur in the film, but they also provide a little break from some pretty heavy musical numbers.

“Rita Skeeter” kind of harkened back to the John Williams days in its leading-you-by-the-nose orchestration of “yes, this character is mean, but she’s also the comic relief, and she’s not really evil”, which to me made it a weaker track. “Sirius Fire” went a bit too heavy on the mood music, especially with the violins around 1:30. But the compositions themselves are good. And, for a 9:40 cut that’s supposed to underscore the graveyard fight with the Final Boss, “Voldemort” comes off pretty uninspired for the first few minutes — it fits with the theme and mood of the rest of the soundtrack, but coming right on the heels of “The Maze”, it was almost like there was too much mood, as if Doyle was trying to hammer into your head that “HOLY CRAP VOLDEMORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!” was about to occur. (At 4:20, there’s a nice musical phrase that I enjoyed based off the “Family Guy” theme, but by far the best part is about 8:00 in, when Priori Incantatem occurs and we hit the sad-triumphant theme which I found to be really well-done.)

Doyle’s strength with this soundtrack was to create a series of cues and themes — the “Family Guy” theme, the music and mood he used for the Voldemort sequences, the waltzes and love themes — that feels, for the first time, like a complete piece of art. He also “teases” upcoming tracks, such as the shift from “Harry Sees Dragons” to “Golden Egg”, which I find to be a really cool technique — basically priming you to hear more of what you just heard without thinking “oh, hey, here’s a new gigantic bombastic piece of music you’re totally unprepared for”. It happens again with “Neville’s Waltz” and the repeated themes from it heard in “Harry Potter’s Love” — a wonderful love theme and one that I occasionally find myself humming when I’m not paying attention. And then they both come together for “Potter Waltz”.

Though there are a few songs peppered in here and there that I personally didn’t care for, for the first time in the series, we’ve got a start-to-finish soundtrack that I can sit back and enjoy without occasionally asking myself what just happened. I was extremely disappointed that Doyle wasn’t brought back to score more of the films, but I’ve yet to be disappointed by any of his work, and this soundtrack is part of what makes Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire such a great film.

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In addition to the orchestrated part of the soundtrack, a band was created to perform three songs under the name “Weird Sisters”. It featured members of Pulp, Radiohead, All Seeing I, and Add N to (X), and was fronted by Jarvis Cocker. The three songs they performed, including the one that ran during the credits, are at the end of the soundtrack. I’m not going to review them, except to say… they’re okay. Nothing good or bad to say about any of them.

Book Review: “The Magician King” by Lev Grossman

Please note: this review contains spoilers for Lev Grossman’s previous novel, The Magicians.

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In The Magicians, Lev Grossman introduced us to Quentin Coldwater, an intelligent, callous, callow youth who was picked for the entrance exam to Brakebills, a secret magical academy in upstate New York. Because this is a fantasy novel, I think we all knew he’d make it in. He spent several years learning magic, and learning that it was nothing like Harry Potter. But what made Quentin different is that he also believed in Fillory, a Narnia-like world created by an English novelist. He never expected to actually find it.

Now, a couple of years later, Quentin is one of the two Kings of Fillory. Joined by his Brakebills cohorts Eliot and Janet, and his high school friend Julia, the four of them rule the strange, magical kingdom. But Quentin is getting bored, and what do kings do when they get bored?

They go on quests. And Quentin’s quest takes him right back to where he started: Brakebills. Among other places. Along the way he meets up with his friend Josh and Josh’s new cohort, a dragon-ologist named Poppy. Then Quentin meets a dragon and he learns that his quest might affect the future of magic as he — and everyone in all the worlds — knows it.

As with many sequels, it took me a few chapters to really start enjoying The Magician King. The sense of wonder and discovery from the first novel isn’t quite as evident, although Quentin’s bone-dry sarcasm and asshat-like behavior certainly are. However, the discovery returned when Grossman started layering in flashbacks to Julia’s life — for Julia, unlike the other three rulers of Fillory, did not come up through Brakebills. No, her journey to magic was much rougher, much more “street” — think of those annoying teen films where the from-the-streets dancer has to fit in with the classically-trained ballerinas — and while nothing really new happened, it was still interesting to learn how the other half of witchcraft lives. And judging from what Julia went through at the hands of a trickster god, perhaps it would be better to not have learned magic at all.

But Julia’s journey does introduce us to some interestingly-named characters, such as Pouncy Silverkitten and Failstaff, even if parts of it are quite cliche and technologically silly-sounding (especially the bits with the text-to-speech forum reading software). And, as each layer of Julia’s journey is revealed, so too do we get a little closer to figuring out why Julia acts the way she does in Fillory.

One of the better points of The Magicians was that the book attempted to subvert most of the common tropes of magic-school fiction — either that, or hang such a hugely-kitschy lampshade on them that readers can’t help but wonder how they ever worked in other books. The Magician King does some of the same with Fillory — the random kids who just show up and become kings, the silly-named islands that are actually pretty boring, the constant references to Fillory’s peculiar moon. The seagoing parts of the book directly draw from CS Lewis’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader — as I said before, all of Fillory draws from Narnia — although here again Grossman hangs massive lampshades upon pretty much everything, at least until the story gets serious.

Since the world of Fillory is intended to be Narnia-esque, the author pretty much has to depend upon characterization to fulfill my personal “must have good worldbuilding and interesting characters” requirement. Quentin, while interesting, is quite annoying in his world-weary way; at least Eliot is a little less hipster-mage in this book. He really bugged me in The Magicians. The main characters, though certainly well-rounded, are in their own way fantasy tropes, but again Grossman’s subversion and lampshading of the standard fantasy fiction toolbox makes them worth getting to know. From Benedict the emo-cartographer to Bingle the extra-awesome swordsman, from the talking sloth who won’t shut up to the holier-than-thou of Penny, even from the irrepressible sidekick humor of Josh to the let’s-see-it-through-her-eyes characterization of Poppy, the people (and animals) who populate this book are exactly where they should be.

The overarching plot of the novel felt a bit forced to me — “complete this quest or all magic will go away” — but Grossman manages to pull it off by keeping Quentin’s character consistent. Though Quentin does change as a result of what he goes through, he’s still the same old ennui-filled Quentin. Also, the whole “the hero pays the price” angle didn’t seem like much of a price to me. Still, I enjoyed reading the book, and there were a lot of clever and funny things to keep me interested until I got to the next plot point. And, unlike the first book, The Magician King clearly sets up another sequel. I’m not sure how much longer Grossman can keep up this particular style of storytelling, but I’m on board for book three.

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Note to Parents: This book contains adult language, violence, adult situations, and sexual situations — one of them very violent. I would not recommend it to any but the most mature teens. Of course, you should use your own discretion when it comes to your children.

The Soundproof Escape Pod #11

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You can download the ePub version here.

Greetings dear listeners!

I just returned from WorldCon where I met several listeners, thanks to everyone who came by to say hi! I was able to solicit stories from some pros and talk to some authors about their upcoming work – we’ve got an original piece from James Patrick Kelly coming up that I’m utterly thrilled about. But more on that another month…

The Hugo awards were given out on Saturday, August 20, and the ceremony was a blast. Jay Lake and Ken Scholes brought their clever rapport to the stage and gave a good show with minimal hiccups (to my eyes, anyway. On Jay’s blog he talks about how frantic it was when script pages went missing, etc.) Extra special congrats to Mary Robinette Kowal, who took the prize for Best Short Story (remember you can find “For Want of a Nail” at https://escapepod.org/2011/06/09/ep296-for-want-of-a-nail/ ) and Clarkesworld, the Best Semi-Pro winner that allowed us to use Kate Baker’s fantastic narrations in our Hugo month! You can see the other winners at Escape Pod’s home page.

Awards always serve to split people. While people covet awards, they still manage to convince themselves that the system is rigged, or undeserving works win, or people band behind their friends to skew the voting. I’ve read flat-out boring Hugo winners. I’ve wondered why fantastic stories didn’t make even a nomination. I’ve seen fandom get frothing at the mouth angry over things like websites and podcasts edging into their territory (SF fans afraid of technology and the future. Mind boggling….)

This year the business part of WorldCon featured people that were so mad at last year’s Starship Sofa win (and nomination this year, not to mention the excellent Writing Excuses got a nod for Best Related Work) that they decided to create a new category called Best FanCast. While this does show that they are accepting that the podcast is a medium that will not go away, it’s somewhat sad that some people are now asking “are there enough podcasts to qualify?”

Head, meet desk.

What really worries me is that all podcasts will be pushed into Best Fancast just because of the medium. Escape Pod publishes stories and is a paying market (qualifying for Best Semi-pro Zine). Starship Sofa publishes stories and nonfic commentary/essays and qualifies (or qualified) for Best Fanzine. James Patrick Kelly’s podcast novella Burn is a Nebula winner. Writing Excuses talks about writing and the SF craft, and it’s done entirely by pro writers. Would all of these be pushed into the same category because of the podcast element? Why not put Blackout/All Clear, Asimov’s, and Chicks Dig Time Lords in the same category because they’re all on paper?

I’m not a strong arguer, I admit. It’s not in my nature. But I believe I’m going to have to hit the business meetings next year in order to speak up for podcasts, else we’ll all be shoved to the kids’ table, the one with the rickety leg, just because of our medium instead of our content.

See you in Chicago next year, and at DragonCon this weekend!

—Mur

Book Review: Fade to Black by Josh Pryor

I imagine that it can be difficult to sell big-idea hard-science-fiction books. How do you elevator-pitch a story about the virus that may have been the catalyst to turn humanity from people living in caves to the society we know today?

If you’re author Josh Pryor, you do it by adding a trip to Antarctica, a little cannibalism, some commandos who do CSI, and a whole cast of unsympathetic (or, at least, unlikeable) characters.

In Pryor’s Fade to Black, the story shifts back and forth between the two main characters: Ethan Hatcher, who commissioned a research mission to Antarctica to study hydrothermal vents, and Claire Matthews, a community college science professor with a whole host of psychiatric issues and a rather novel theory on the disease that killed a Russian expedition almost 30 years ago. Oh, and the two of them used to sleep together, just to add a little extra tension.

Ethan and Claire, along with a team of the military’s finest CSI guys and a couple of civilian contractors, are sent to Antarctica to figure out what happened to the rest of Ethan’s team. What they find horrifies even the hardiest of men — and Ethan definitely isn’t one of those. It’s the disease Claire’s based her publications on..

And it’s spreading.

Outside of the big science ideas, the early section with Alan and his team, and some of the The Abyss-like expedition sequences (albeit on the ice shelves of Antarctica instead of hundreds of fathoms deep), I had a lot of trouble liking Fade to Black. While the main characters were extremely well-rounded, they seemed to me to be almost too detailed — we learned literally everything about Ethan and Claire in a series of infodumps that really turned me off to the characters. Ethan was supposed to be unsympathetic, but to my surprise, I really disliked Claire as well. I think that’s because there were too many “damaged female character” tropes crammed into this one person. It allowed her to have internal monologues full of fretting and fear, but those monologues just kept… on… going. Even through the climax of the book.

Meanwhile, the military team seemed a bit too caricature-y for me — they each had one or two distinguishing characteristics, and seen through Claire’s eyes we got a very Anita Blake-esque rundown of their physical features, but in the end I was again seeing a bunch of smart, capable military guys that were pretty much interchangeable. The same with the Russians — and the trope was taken one step further by having their base be kind of a dump while the American base was neat and tidy. But of course Ethan was boinking the one woman on the Russian crew, just to cement his status (established earlier) as the kind of guy who does that sort of thing. We did get Sergeant Price, who was the best-written of all the secondary characters, but even with that his behavior seemed a little too forced, as if to keep telling us that he’s super-studly-soldier-guy.

Fade to Black is a short book — my reader put it at 248 pages, including cover, copyright, and whatever you call those blank pages at the end — but it’s densely packed with descriptions, science, and internal monologues. I definitely got a feel for the locations where the action took place, and the frozen hell of Antarctica was quite capably written, with the right amount of mood and reaction. But the characters were either too full of tropes or too full of details that I really could’ve lived without, and the hero of the book was someone I just didn’t like. Not that I absolutely need to like the hero/protagonist, but I was actively disgusted by a lot of her characteristics and all of her whining. Look, I understand a lot of bad stuff happened to her and she’s reacting to that, but I don’t know that we needed her to have that much stuff in her past. The problems with her parents (together and separate), the history with Ethan, the issues with Eric… it was just too much.

And speaking of Eric, the last time he appeared in the book, I was completely stymied as to exactly what had happened, even though I went back and read it three or four times.

I will say that the book ends in the best tradition of “the surviving good guys are rescued from a bad situation, but then *dramatic musical sting!!!!!!!*”, although to me it felt a tad abrupt.

If you like science, CSI, stories that take place in Antarctica, or lots-of-people-crammed-into-a-small-space-slowly-going-mad, then you’ll enjoy Fade to Black. Those really aren’t my preferred genres, though (except for the science part), and I felt there were too many other issues with the book — most notably the unsympathetically-annoying main character that we were all supposed to like — for me to say I really enjoyed it. I could have overlooked one or two, but not all of them.

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Special thanks to Red Hen Press, the novel’s publisher, for providing a review copy.

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Escape Pod 308: Kill Me

First appeared in Helix, 2007

Rated inappropriate for seventeen and younger due to language and violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 47:37 — 32.8MB)

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Show Notes

Note- we do not have the ebook rights, but you can read it at Transcriptase!

Kill Me

by Vylar Kaftan

I’m sitting cross-legged on a rock in west Texas, somewhere north of El Paso, bleeding into the dirt. The pose feels like a meditation. I’m fascinated with the knife mark on my left thigh, a shallow slash from hip to knee. It’s surrounded by bruise clusters that look like flowers of broken skin. In the silent desert, I hear only the soft clicking of the car cooling down. Then his urine splashes against the rock behind me, and I hear his zipper when he’s done. The night breeze is icy on my back, drying the blood into clots. He did me well, I admit, glancing up at the full desert moon. If my body survived–which it wouldn’t–I would be scarred, possibly disfigured. The welts on my back throb like electricity, and everything–the moon, the desert, the wind–is alive with me.

He walks in front of me. I look up at the man who brought me all the way from Denver. He looks like a black dog, matted and angry, and growls like one too. My eyes travel to the cluster of thick hair springing from his shirt neck. He folds his arms over his chest.

“The night’s almost over,” I remind him.

He scowls. “Get in the trunk.”

I hesitate–he paid me to do the shy-girl act, a popular one–and he grabs my arm. He hauls me over the rear bumper into the trunk of his ’33 Axis. He slaps me once across the face–not as hard as I expected–and crumples me into the tight compartment. He slams the trunk closed, catching my hair in the door. I try to pull free, but it’s no use. I don’t think he meant that part, but he doesn’t seem to notice the long trail of hair hanging out of the trunk. The car door opens and the ignition starts. I tug on my hair once more and then relax, concentrating on where I hurt, where my body throbs with pain.

As many times as I’ve done this, I still try to experience it all. Because it’s not every day you experience death. Only every three months.

Book Review: “River of Gods” by Ian McDonald

River of Gods coverThe average science fiction novel takes one or two interesting ideas from recent history and modern science and extrapolates them forward for fun and enlightenment. In River of Gods, however, Ian McDonald found a place for a little bit of everything in the caldron of India’s future. Artificial intelligence, climate change, extreme body modification, alien artifacts in space, alternate realities, and cyberpunk-flavored digital warfare all have their place in this enthralling work of near-future science fiction.

One hundred years after its founding, the now-Balkanized nation of India is facing both the emergence of superhuman artificial intelligence and a war over water. Being one of the only nations that has not banned advanced AIs, they also find themselves in the unique position to translate the output of an artifact that the Americans have found in outer space. River of Gods covers the events of August 15th, 2047 — the day when these factors (and others) come together and everything explodes.

River of Gods was published in 2004, and has a more action-movie feel than McDonald’s most recent novel, The Dervish House. Like The Dervish House, it tells the same story from the perspectives of many different people — a vicious street criminal, a cybercop, a genderless fashonista, a politician, a lonely housewife, a pair of naive computer programmers, a reporter, a comedian, and a prophet. Through their eyes, McDonald draws a picture of a future India that stands on the edge of a technological revolution, but has not yet finished its struggle with poverty and religious bigotry.

One of McDonald’s thought experiments is the character called Tal. Tal is a neut — short for neuter and neutral, a self-described noncombatant in the war for genetic survival. The description of what Tal went through to achieve this state is simultaneously frightening and fascinating — the ability of an individual to choose that level of body modification could have been the core of its own novel. Instead, McDonald has Tal embody the emotional and social consequences of this technology. In my opinion, McDonald does a masterful job in drawing a character that is neither male nor female, but still human and relatable. Tal’s fall and redemption is one of the most compelling plot arcs in River of Gods.

Seeing the same city in India through ten sets of eyes can be overwhelming for the reader, particularly given McDonald’s dense and image-rich prose. Car chases and judiciously-placed explosions help to hold the reader’s interest. As the book progresses, the cuts between perspectives come faster and faster until they literally converge in an anime-style ball of white light. For me, the end of River of Gods is not as strong as The Dervish House. I felt like the book reaches for a science fictional twist and leaves many of the characters — whom the reader has, by this point, been seduced into loving — spinning off in poorly-defined directions.

Despite my (slight) disappointment at the ending, I do recommend this book. If you, like me, miss the glory days of cyberpunk, you’ll find something to love in River of Gods. If you enjoyed The Dervish House or if you are looking for some high-concept science fiction combined with war robot action sequences, political intrigue, and heart-tearing drama, pick up this book. River of Gods is complex, beautiful, and a lot of fun.