The Death of Genre and the Stagnation of Geek Culture.

This goes on for a lot longer than I intended and may not make a lot of sense, but the thoughts have been rolling around in my head for a few weeks now and I wanted to get them down on paper.

Two books I’ve read over the past couple of weeks have had a major impact on how I’m looking at genre and geek culture. The first tried to stuff dragons; and as many semi-colons; as physically possible; into the Napoleonic wars. The second was a sci-fi love-letter to 80’s pop culture that involved everything from Atari video-games, Dungeons and Dragons, Matthew Broderick movies, Super Giant Japanese battle robots, and a whole lot more into one big glorious ode to geeking the hell out.

The books made me realize three things: 1) genre is officially dead. 2) geek culture has become creatively bankrupt and. 3) authors who abuse semi-colons should be consigned to a special hell where all they do is come up with plots for reality TV-shows.

Have we run out of ideas? The last real development in genre was cyberpunk in the 80’s and since then all it seems we’ve been doing is mashing existing stories together to see if we can come up with anything cool.

Steampunk is arguably the most popular mashed genre going at the moment. Plus you have things like Weird West, Chuthulu is popping up everywhere, zombies are invading everything, gods/clones/monsters in high school and a thousand more examples. These are not bad things and I’m certainly not having a go at mash-ups; Ghostbusters is one of my all time favourite movies of all times and its sci-fi/horror. Mash ups can be awesome and I always like having the possibility of a ray-gun in my D&D campaign.

But even two and three tier mash-ups are getting tired and there are now anything goes, whole-damn-kitchen-sink approach in movies like Spy-Kids; TV shows like Community, Adventure Time and the Mighty Boosh; and in RPGs like RIFTS and GURPS.

In the meantime, nothing truly NEW is being created. When was the last time you’ve been to a movie, read a book or watched a show and truly said, “I’ve never seen that before!”? ‘The Matrix’ maybe? but even then I can say it was beaten by Red Dwarf’s ‘Back to Reality’ episode by seven years.

And whose fault is it? Ours: thirtyish, primarily males (more on that in a moment) who have been submerged in pop-culture since Star Wars and have never come up for air. While we are incredibly good at coming up with variations on a theme, the truly original seems to have eluded us.

Much of what we now hold dear was not created by geeks, but by television execs, movie producers, toy marketers, artists and overworked writers, all of whom were working for a paycheque, not for love.

Getting back to gender for a moment, let me ask you this; not counting Game of Thrones, what were the last three major book (series) to make a real impact in the spec-fic category? Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and (like it nor not) Twilight, and three were all written by women. Maybe because women are exposed to Geek Culture but rarely suffer from the over-exposure suffered by guys like me allows the room for some original, or at least outside ideas to filter into their imagination.

Yes, I am aware than all of the series are just their own variations-on a-theme, but they are variations on a theme that caught the attention of the muggles, which is rare enough to be astonishing.

Which brings me back around to the second book I talked about, ‘Ready Player One’. First, I’d like to state that the book is a LOT of fun and I heartily recommend it to fans of eighties minutia.

However there are two major problems with ‘Ready Player One’. My wife picked up on them almost right away, but took me longer to puzzle out. It may be because she’s just smarter than me, but it may be gender differences coming into play again.

Firstly, in the book, the hero literally shuts himself off from the world to immerse himself completely in the virtual reality of the game. The story does contain a mild warning against that kind of behaviour, but like ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Scarface’ my wife and I believe that the book will be imitated more than heeded.

Nor does the book go too far to in condemning the behaviour. In the end, the hero is richly rewarded for his efforts, but suffers none of the negative side effects that befall Don Michael Corleone or Tony Montana.

Secondly, and to drag this rambling essay back to my main point, RP1 is set thirty years from now, but the characters are essentially all running around inside the head of an eighties obsessed, autistic shut-in (insert St.Elsewhere joke here). The characters spend all their time interacting with Atari Video Games, debating old Matthew Broderick movies (Ladyhawke is AWESOME), playing classic rpg modules, flying Xwings and listening to music that is already thirty years old.

Seriously, has nothing NEW has been created in the coming thirty years to occupy these kids’ inertest? The book revels in its obsession for geek culture from Star Wars to Firefly (1977-2002), and that is absolutely fine in a bubblegum adventure book, but I couldn’t help but close the book and think, ‘Jeez, geek-culture of the future is really sad’.

Then I remembered that this year we're seeing the release of yet even more Alien, Spiderman and Batman movies. Maybe it isn't just the future that looks sad.

One of my martial arts instructors told me once not to worry if it felt like I’d plateaued in my training. That was when I was truly internalizing the techniques and when that happened, I would naturally progress to the next level.

I think we’ve seriously plateaued. The question is, do we have what it takes to make it to the next level?

Question, Comments, Complaints?

Here be Dragons

Tonight I crack the spine of the fifth book of a 'Song of Ice and Fire'. After getting bogged down in 'A Storm of Swords' I breezed through 'A Feast for Crows' relatively quickly.

AFfC is going to present an interesting challenge for HBO methinks. There is very little action and almost all of the major characters are dead(ish) or abscent. The world has become a bit bogged down in its own weight and the major impression I was left with was the endless listing of knights and lordlings (that I am sorry to say I skimmed the bulked of). We get a short but tantalizing glimpse of Arya's future, a long and mainly pointless search from Brienne and the continuation of Jaime's redemption. In the place of the characters we have spent years getting to know and care about, we get major diversions into the Iron Isles, Dorne and a fascinating glimpse into what makes Cersei tick (anyone else think she 'helped' her childhood companion into that well?), but she never becomes sympathetic the way Jaime has. Given that GRRM has had five years and a butload of (well earned) cash from HBO, I'm dearly hoping that these threads start to weave together soon.

Given the fickle finger of the viewing public (fantasy is hot right now, but if they keep producing drek like Camelot, it won't be for long) and the series makes it that far, could HBO keep the muggles interested with a TV season without so much as a hint of Tyrion, Jon or Dany? My bet is that they blend the two books.

Arrested Westros

If you don't get the joke, you should watch better TV shows

In lue of content, a few comments on what I am reading...

Once again I have opened the well worn pages of my copy of 'The Game of Thrones' and what has really taken me by surprise is just how re-readable the book is. Reading the series over again at the release of every new book to remember who is who and why, seems to be a ritual every GoT fan go through and I had honestly had expected it to be a bit of a chore this time, but I'm delighted at just how strongly it is holding up, for now. There are some plots I'm remembering, like Dany's struggle with the Dorthaki(sp?) crones, which I remember were a bif of a slog even the first time through.

I'm curious to read the GoT RPG now, because while the series is fantastic, I am unsure that it would translate into a traditional roleplaying setting. There is almost no magic and very few monsters or dungeons to explore in Westeros (though they do exist), but most of your foes would be people and a heavy dose of politics. It would certainly make for an interesting game for players like myself who are used to a more Tolkenesque or Gygaxian world.


On a somewhat related note, I've also recently finished 'I Shall Wear Midnight' by T.Pratchett which offers a much different view of humanity. I've noticed that humans are rarely the 'evil' on Discworld. Bad people certainly do exist there, but more often than not, they either scared, stupid or just mean enough to be used, guided or preyed upon by an outside force. The book opens with a fairly horrific scene involving some pretty graphic domestic violence. However, by the end of the book, the perpetrator involved gets at least a modicum of redemtion without having to face any real consequences for his actions. He seems to feel guilty for everything he has done and is going to try to do better in future. Is that really enough for the years of terror and pain he put his wife and daughter through?

Actually, the whole subplot involving Amber, her family and her powers starts off strong yet ends up dangleing. It gets replaced by Tiffany fighting off yet another faceless threat. This girl defeated WINTER in the previous book, I never seriously felt she was in any danger from a mere ghost, and unfortunately the book doesn't seem to think that she's in all that much trouble either.

This is by no means a critism (I practically worship at the feet of Sir Terry), but I think I would have had tied the two plots together by having the ghost posess Amber's father and have him rile up all the people of the Downs against Tiffany. This would have meant that instead of a horror in the body of a homicidal maniac, she would have had to face the very people she's helped over the years, but who also turned an old woman out of her home and let freeze to death in the dark. Maybe that would have been a proper challenge for the girl who took the Hiver through the Black Door.

Gameraid!
The Rabbit Pendant
"the hare runs into the fire"
This is a gold, rabbit-shaped pendant. When held up to the light, it always looks like it is reflecting fire light or flames. When worn, it protects the wearer (and anyone touching them) from all forms of fire and heat, so long as the weater is running. If the wearer stops running, even for an instant, they will begin to take damage as normal.

The problem with writing

is that it is an inherently solitary pursuit, and nowadays I don’t seem to get all that much time to be solitary. Even now, with my wife just out the door for an evening shift, there is a litany of things I should be doing including, but not limited to, mowing the lawn, cleaning the car, scooping the poop, setting up the cat house, vacuuming, washing the floor making dinner, tidying up, finding that lost prescription, get caught up on work emails and generally taking care of the two cats and two huskies currently clamouring for my attention.

I have no idea how my friends who have families still find time to play video games or do their hobbies. I don’t even have kids, besides the fuzzy ones, and I barely have time to read anymore. Being a grown up sucks.

My wife bought me ‘I Shall Wear Midnight” by Terry Pratchett for Xmus of last year, and it is only come to the top of my to-read pile recently. I quickly buzzed through the first three books in the Tiffany Aching series (‘Wee Free Men’, ‘Hat Full of Sky’ and ‘Wintersmith’) and had forgotten how solid the series is overall. Yes, it is suppost to be a young reader’s series, but it is a highly mature one. ‘I Shall Wear Midnight’ starts out with some of the darkest stuff I have ever read in a “Kids’” book, and I am not talking about fairy tale dark like cannibalistic witches or the devil taking a soul, this is real life, horrific stuff. The other theme that runs through the series is the loss of self or loss of memory, which given Sir Pratchett's battle with Alzeimers is absolutely hearbreaking.
My wife also picked up “A Dance with Dragons’ because she works in a book store and the hard cover has dropped to 30% off, which meant I had to load in the complete Game of Thrones into my e-reader and start getting caught up all over again. I was surprised at how reluctant I was start into the series again since I must have read it at least three or four times in the past and I still genuinely love it, but I think I’m getting a little gun shy over the sprawling plot and multiple threads.
I know that the series had gotten away from Martin a bit (my original copy of ‘Game of Thrones’ has the series as a ‘coming soon’ trilogy), and I sincerely hope that he has taken these five years to hammer out a conclusion to the series that lives up to the build up. I dread another “The Wheel of Time”, or a television series like ‘Lost’, “Battlestar Galactica” or even “The X-Files” where the series become almost impossible to watch over again because you know the ultimate finales are such a let down.In my heart, LOST ended like this

When I have time I also go skimming through Netflix for old Doctor Who and MST3K and as I write this “Doctor Who and the Aztecs” is on in the background. This is an adventure with the first Doctor and it is interesting to see how much, and how little the series has changed. The Doctor is a cantankerous old bastard with a mischievous gleam in his eye and is generally smarter than everyone else around him, but he does make some serious mistakes. His companions are often more of a nuisance than help, and sometimes treated with outright contempt, and he obviously plays favourites, treating Susan, his Granddaughter with more care than his human companions who are more or less just along for the ride. The issue of the Doctor’s family is one that comes up from time to time and it is known that he has a cloned daughter and Susan, who by all accounts is his natural Granddaughter, both running around through time and space somewhere. I’d like to see this addressed at some point (both where some of my first guesses for River Song), but I’ll live if they aren’t. Sometimes a little mystery is a good thing.

What is interesting about ‘Doctor Who and the Aztecs’ is that is just the Aztecs. Modern Doctor Who has conditioned me to look for the aliens, but this series comes from a time when Doctor Who was also a history show and the ones where he went back in time where meant to introduce kids to history without having to throw in an alien monster and a lot of running. It’s a little refreshing actually.

The plot is fairly simple, The Tardis appears inside an Aztec temple and Susan and her teacher Barbara wander out first, marvelling at the artefacts and finding a hidden door. They are followed shortly by the Doctor and Ian to find that Barbara has been deemed a goddess and the rest of them her servants because only gods can come OUT of the temple. The problem is that the door is one way, and they know have to find a way back to the Tardis before a treacherous priest discovers that Barbara is not a god and sacrifices them all.

There is some of the silly, ‘oh, look at the colourful primitives who don’t know any better’ stuff here, especially from Susan’s teachers, but it is actually countered by the fact that every time Barbara tries to "improve" things she makes things worse and and by the Doctor, who lectures her and Iam on trying to interfere or alter the past.

The appearance from the temple would make a good hook to introduce characters to a setting like Talislanta or Tekumel.