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Reflections on a Five-Sided Brain

Reflections on a Five-Sided Brain

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The Pentagon's BrainI sat down to read Annie Jacobsen’s 2015 book The Pentagon’s Brain — subtitled An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency — thinking I’d get a new perspective on the development of the American military-industrial complex. And a new angle on the history of science in the 1950s and 1960s and beyond. Also that I’d learn a bit about the development of the internet, and who the people were who came up with it, and why they did, and what they were thinking. I got all of that. But I also found a new angle on science fiction, and the way SF shapes the world for better or for worse.

Jacobsen’s book opens with the first test of the hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll in 1954, and describes the subsequent development of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (later the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). She follows DARPA through arguments over arms control treaties, through experiments during the Vietnam War, through the 80s and into the first Gulf War, then to projects it undertook for this century’s American wars. Of course she runs into some difficulty in these parts of the book; a lot of what DARPA does is classified. Still, Jacobsen puts together a lot of material that has previously been made public, and has information she’s gathered herself. Crucially, even where there are gaps in the record, she keeps the overall thrust of events clear.

I’d say that clarity is one of the book’s real strengths. Jacobsen’s dealing both with the labyrinthine world of intelligence and with the world of bleeding-edge science, but her book makes all this matter easily understandable. And it hints at more meaning; at what cannot yet be revealed. As well as contemplating the weird twilight between science and fiction, where one becomes another.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Pair of Holmeses Named Alan

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Pair of Holmeses Named Alan

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Napier_Napier2In 1937, Holmes made his first appearance on American television in The National Broadcasting Corps’ rendition of The Three Garridebs, starring Louis Hector. Regular television service from NBC hadn’t even begun yet when this test show was transmitted and it’s likely few people saw it. Sadly, I’m only aware of one picture taken from a television screen, though I believe someone in the industry once told me there are other stills in the archives. There’s certainly no belief an actual recording of the broadcast exists!

In 1949, CBS aired a series of 30-minute literary adaptations in the Your Show Time program. The tenth episode was The Speckled Band, starring Alan Napier as Holmes. Napier was certainly a stuffy, stiff detective, with a bit of Raymond Massey (Holmes in a 1931 film of the same story) and Leonard Nimoy in his look.

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Fellowship of the Pathfinders: The Importance of Party Dynamic in Fantasy Adventure

Fellowship of the Pathfinders: The Importance of Party Dynamic in Fantasy Adventure

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illustration by Eric Belisle
illustration by Eric Belisle

I bought my first Pathfinder novel after reading about it here in a New Treasures post. Howard Andrew Jones’s Stalking the Beast just looked like a lot of fun. Hunting down a big scary monster? Okay, cool. And I’m a sucker for half-orcs. The potential dynamic of a half-elven ranger and a half-orc barbarian working together grabbed me — in fact, I don’t think I ever ran a D&D campaign that didn’t have something like that combination in the mix.

As I described in my review here at Black Gate, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun the book was — I found myself not wanting to put it down: an experience I was not primed to expect from previous RPG adaptations I’ve read. It delivered the sort of entertainment I am hoping for when I crack open an RPG-themed book, and it was very well written just in general terms as a fantasy novel. Well plotted; good world building; but most importantly, great characters. The dialogue was just as entertaining to read as the action set-pieces.

I subsequently read two of Tim Pratt’s books for Paizo Publishing, and then I went back to Jones’s first contribution to the series. All four of the books impressed me, which left me wondering: is it just because I’m a fan of Jones and Pratt? I mean, these are good writers (a critic more dismissive of “tie-in” literature might have uncharitably suggested they were just “slumming,” writing for a game publisher’s bi-monthly novel line). Were these books the exception, or are Pathfinder novels routinely this level of quality?

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: How George Raft Made Bogie a Star

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: How George Raft Made Bogie a Star

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Raft_BogaratLast week, we talked a lot about Humphrey Bogart as we roamed around The Maltese Falcon. And I had already done a post on Bogie’s only horror-sci fi film, The Return of Doctor X. Today, I’m going to talk about one of my favorite aspects of Bogart’s career. In the annals of Hollywood, never has one actor so torpedoed his own career, while making another actor a star at the same time. Let’s take a look, shall we?

George Raft grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, where he was a childhood friend of Owney Madden, who would become a powerful mobster in the days of Prohibition. Raft toyed with being a boxer and then taught himself to dance, hitting it big in Vaudeville in the early twenties. At the same time, he hung out with professional gangsters, gaining access to them through his friendship with Downey. He studied how they walked and talked, and mastered the ability to imitate them.

After appearing in a few films as a dancer, Raft broke through in 1932. Long before Rod Steiger and Al Pacino played Capone roles, Paul Muni made a classic gangster film: Scarface – Shame of a Nation. Raft had a part as Rinaldo, a coin-flipping gunman. Emulating the men he knew, he received strong reviews for his performance.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff That Dreams are Made of

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Stuff That Dreams are Made of

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Much of my hard boiled knowledge came from Black Lizard's editions of the classics.Last week marked the 86th anniversary of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon in book form. It had been serialized the year before in the pages of Black Mask Magazine. Hammett gets my vote for best writer of the hard-boiled genre. And I am quite the fan of Red Harvest (the uncredited source for Bruce Willis’ under-appreciated gangster film, Last Man Standing) and of the Continental Op stories (well worth reading). But I happen to think that The Maltese Falcon is the best private eye novel yet to be written. Period.

Sam Spade (who looked like a blonde Satan) also appeared in three short stories, which I wrote about in a prior post here at Black Gate. Sadly, they aren’t particularly memorable and definitely aren’t in the upper half of Hammett’s works. In 2009, Joe Gores wrote Spade and Archer, an authorized prequel. I love Gores’ Daniel Kearney Associates series of books, but I’m still saving this Sam Spade gem for a future read.

A great deal has been written about Hammett’s novel and about Spade himself, including William Maynard’s post here. It’s certainly worthy of a post all by itself. But I’m going to focus on the media Falcon: specifically the third of three filmed versions. It’s far and away the best known and I’m guessing that many people who haven’t actually read the book have seen the movie.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dr Watson, Doormat

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dr Watson, Doormat

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WatsonDoormat_IntellectSherlock Holmes was rather a jerk. His people skills needed some serious work. It’s blatantly obvious in Benedict Cumberbatch’s over-the-top obnoxiousness in BBC’s Sherlock, but it’s all over the Canon as well. I wrote about his unwarranted negative attitude towards Dr. Watson’s detective work in a previous post. And the Canon is replete with snide comments and remarks at Watson’s expense: to say nothing of the official police force’s!

“Come at once if convenient – if inconvenient come all the same.”

Thus does Sherlock Holmes summon Watson in “The Adventure of the Creeping Man.” And Watson obeys. We get a sample of Holmes’ imperious attitude from this quote. But Watson’s response is also rather telling.

When Grimesby Roylott of Stoke Moran confronted Holmes, he referred to the detective as a “meddler, a busybody and a Scotland Yard jack-in-office.” One has to wonder if some villain or policeman in the Canon didn’t refer to Watson as Holmes’ lapdog, lackey or errand boy?

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Writerly Lessons from Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum

Writerly Lessons from Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum

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WalkingDrum
…this literary failure is still a heroic one.

I read Louis L’Amour’s medieval adventure novel The Walking Drum so you don’t have to (link).

A thorough edit  would fix the expository intrusions (L’Amour keeps taking out his research and waving it around). However, this would not have fixed the structural problem (there was no structure).

Even so, this literary failure is still a heroic one. The book not only displays the craft of a veteran adventure writer, it is also an object lesson in career strategy.

As an author I benefited from reading this book. Let me tell you why…

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What We Can Learn From a Time Lord: Doctor Who and a New Enlightened Perspective

What We Can Learn From a Time Lord: Doctor Who and a New Enlightened Perspective

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The DoctorsThere’s an underrated benefit to science fiction and fantasy, and it is not dissimilar from a benefit one gains by being a student of history. Since many folks consider speculative fiction and historical scholarship (or “flights of fancy” and “recorded fact”) to be the antithesis of each other, I think this benefit is worth some attention.

The benefit I here have in mind is the gaining of a healthy detached perspective. Detractors of fantasy and sci-fi will immediately object to my use of the word “healthy,” being that they regard such literature as mere escapism. And it often is that, yes. As is golf, and the Super Bowl, and birthday parties, and most fun things that we do when we aren’t engaged in utilitarian labor. But I’m thinking about a different sort of escape: escape from our own temporal status in this particular time and place and culture and society to which we were born. This is a benefit that is greatly under-appreciated, but I believe it holds real power.

The reader of science fiction, like the historian, steps out of his or her own time frame: if you’re a historian, you step back in time; if you’re a sci-fi fan, you become accustomed to stepping ahead into some speculative future. And if we cultivate that mental exercise, it gives us the unique opportunity to look at our own time from that same detached perspective.

When you do this, it can be liberating. We put so much stock in what people say. We are angered, hurt, offended, cut to the core by what we are bombarded with when we turn on the TV or log onto Twitter or get together with family over Thanksgiving dinner. But the power of these viewpoints — and the hostile ways in which they are sometimes expressed — to affect us is really only predicated on the fact that we are alive now and that these are opinions being expressed by our contemporaries.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Barbara Barrett – Painting With Words: The Poetry of REH

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Barbara Barrett – Painting With Words: The Poetry of REH

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REH_PoetryIndexBlack Gate‘s ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series had ranged far and wide across the writings of REH. But we had not yet tackled his poetry. Consider it tackled! Barbara Barrett, who put together the extensively detailed The Wordbook: An Index Guide to the Poetry of Robert E. Howard, is the planet’s resident expert on the poetry of REH. And the author of Conan was quite a poet. Read on!

By the time I discovered Howard’s poetry, Solomon Kane, King Kull, Conan and El Borak were familiar characters. I didn’t think Howard’s writing could get any better than the poetic prose in those stories. At least, until I picked up a copy of Shadow Kingdoms: The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard and read these lines from his poem “The Ride of Falume.”

A league behind the western wind, a mile beyond the moon,

Where the dim seas roar on an unknown shore and the drifting stars lie strewn

I was transported to a place straight out of a Hubble star-strewn space photo where I sat on some unknown seashore, gazing at a moon larger than I had ever seen, and listening to the roaring waves crash against sand and rock. I could see it all clearly.

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Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why)

Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why)

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Harold Lamb
Harold Lamb. Still worth reading.

We love our vintage Historical Adventure, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery/Planet/ Sandal/Wombat etc. Call it Vintage Genre Fiction. This despite the fact that most old stuff is crap.

Seriously.

Listen: We’re on a road trip and my wife — Driver’s Privilege, and bear with me — puts on a retro chart show for 1968. We bop along to The Rolling Stones and some Soul, then on comes a song called MacArthur Park.

Go on, click the link I dare you. You’ll love the maudlin delivery, the lush strings and perky keyboard arrangement. Better yet are the lyrics. Here’s the refrain:

Someone left the cake out in the rain,
I don’t think that I can take it,
‘Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo

At this point the kids and I are howling with pain.

Now if you like 60s music, know about, then right now you’re fighting the urge to dive down to the comments and start explaining why it’s good (please don’t). And it’s true, if you have a specialist interest then your cultural pleasures aren’t always mainstream.

Everybody else is still trying to unhear that song (Someone left the cake out in the rain/ I don’t think that I can take it/ Cause it took so long to bake it…).

And that, my friends, is how most people react to Vintage Genre Fiction.

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