Book Review: Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

I’ll be honest and say that I grabbed this book and read it due to Denis Villeneuve announcing that he is now attached to turn the work into a film and with his brilliant versions of Blade Runner 2049 , Arrival, and Dune as well the non Science Fiction but still brilliant Sicario and Prisoners among others, I knew I needed to read the source material. The fact that Rendezvous is written by one of the masters of SciFi that I really only knew from watching 2001 and 2010 only solidified my desire to read it.

I shouldn’t have waited so long.

Its a fantastic work of real (meaning “hard”) scifi. There is no attempt to shoehorn quasi-fantasy stuff in here or silly tangents that seem to scratch the itch of the author, publisher, editor, or audience’s bias or flavor of the day. Yes, that means that character exposition takes a REAL distant backseat as many critics point out. The astronauts that carry the action here are given only the thinnest of backgrounds and descriptions. One is essentially interchangeable with another and any one of them could be a “red shirt” at any time and the reader wouldn’t care.

That said, the lack of character development ends up being one of the strengths of the book. Because of this the reader can put themselves behind the eyeballs of any character and drop themselves right into the middle of any action. It is the READER who is gazing in awe and Rama…it is the READER who is discovering Rama’s secrets and viewing the biots and trying to figure out just what is going on.

This is so effective in part because Clarke is able to convey the truly “awesome” and unknowable craft that is Rama. I was reminded most often of works like Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness as Clarke’s characters look out across the plains of Rama or the Circular Sea…It was the same sort of experience there as it was for Lovecraft’s…The human mind and experience is just not equipped to see and know these things as they are so far outside our limited comprehension. The old “technology sufficiently advanced from existing experience will seem undistinguishable from magic” saying comes to mind here and Clarke is a master of describing in concrete terms, the unknowable or incomprehensible.

The book on its own provides no answers, resolves few questions and leaves the reader just as dumbfounded as its characters. It creates a sense of wonder and questioning and impresses upon the reader just how small humanity is and how little we actually know. We are a small, inconsequential race on a small, inconsequential rock, floating in an unknown sea. Reading Rama is like staring up an endless night sky and feeling a sense of vulnerabilty we don’t commonly encounter…and any work able to generate such sefl reflection is worth my time.

Book Review: The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

The second in McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy” series, “The Crossing” finds itself in an odd position of being a “sequel” that is better than its progenitor but also far less well known.

Much of that has to do with the poorly received “All the Pretty Horses” film. Still, “The Crossing” is the better of the two works. More complex than ATPH it shifts between three distinct stories, each connected to the protagonist’s three trips across the border into Mexico. The most remarked upon is the first of these three in an attempt by the young man to return a wolf to its supposed native mountains across the border. The book ends with that same character’s efforts to discover and return his siblings bones to the United States.

What occurs in between are numerous highs, lows, quasi-mystical conversations, horrific violence (of course), descriptions of nature worthy of a naturalist poet, and an adherence to an outmoded sense of honor. Like ATPH this work is headed by a young male who encounters events and people constantly at odds with his view of life. At every turn life is set against him only to fail in grinding him beneath its boot. Yes, Billy Parnham, like John Grady Cole in ATPH is a husk of himself by the end but…its a husk that is still upright and holds to his ideals.

Be forewarned...the book is hard, as all McCarthy’s are for one reason or another…Here it is McCarthy’s lack of English translations for speech between characters conversing in Spanish. No help is given to the reader in translating these sections were are very significant. Some contextual cues surround these passages but it is largely left up to the reader to either understand it or not. It gives the book a feeling like much of McCarthy’s works—that you are missing something. That there is something just under the surface that you are missing that might help you understand what stands behind the passages but just out of your grasp. That’s not a bad thing.

Book Review: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

I always seem to have an issue starting Cormac McCarthy works. The lack of punctuation, capitalization, and other structure devices throws me for a loop to start and makes me wonder if I really want to continue with the novel. It truly does get you to reframe how you read and how you interpret what are the thoughts or descriptions of the author vs. statements and viewpoints of the character.

I always continue however simply because the content is just so damn good. Yes its violent and highly masculine in nature. Yes it borrows from Hemingway and other “male” authors. Yes, it is highly likely to be “cancelled” along with his other works in the near future as being a last vestige of an older world version of what is quality writing. There is no magic-realism, there are traditional male/female roles presented, violence is a way of getting things done, now discarded ideas of independence, stoicism, honor, objective truth, and so on are seen as valuable. In short? Your modern high school teacher having been “educated” at Smith or Marist or other Liberal Arts junk factories will not only hate it but seek to eliminate it from acknowledgement.

Now, as for All the Pretty Horses itself, its by far the most “enjoyable” of McCarthy’s works I’ve read so far (others being Blood Meridian and Outer Dark) but still tells the tale of a doomed protagonist. From the beginning, no matter how pleasant the scenario (and maybe this is just from knowing McCarthy’s tendencies) the reader can feel the guillotine hanging over the characters, readying its fall at any moment. None escape the impact of seemingly inconsequential actions and associations.

I won’t get into the exact details, many of which you may know if you have watched the generally detested film version of this novel that came out in 2000 and which I’ll now have to go back and rewatch simply to make my own comparison after having read the book as I originally viewed it some decade or more ago and do not remember any feelings on it one way or another.

The core of the novel takes place in the ranchland and deserts of Northern Mexico though does venture into the towns and a prison of that same area in the just post WWII period. We often think of films and works like The Wild Bunch and others as showing the true end of the American West as being something taking place in the late 1800s or at the latest, very early 1900s, but McCarthy has drawn the closing of the American West forward some 50-80 years to the mid 20th century. In truth, McCarthy is pointing out that these issues, these cultures, these landscapes and the “hardness” that they demand, never go away. The independence and self reliance that is seen as an outdated characteristic associated with the white, American, cowboy, never really go away just because times change—thus the reason why McCarthy has moved his same motifs into very current periods with No Country for Old Men and his flashier pop-spinoffs like Taylor Sheridan have put forth works like Sicario and Yellowstone.

Backing all of McCarthy’s prose is his clearly deep love of the terrain and environment itself. His descriptions of the brush, dirt, dust, animals, vegetation, landscapes are near without equal (Edward Abbey perhaps?) in my various readings. This is not a novel written by someone who has a cursory knowledge of the hardscrabble lives of those living on the Western edges of our country (whether that is US or Mexico) but someone who has lived it first hand. The phrase “write what you know” comes to mind and McCarthy knows the depths of both man and nature better than almost anyone else I have read.

Film Review: They Shall Not Grow Old

If this film is showing anywhere near you at this point in time you must go see it.

I included the trailer here but the trailer really does it no justice in terms of its visual impact.

I have never, until seeing this film, heard an entire audience audibly gasp at a film and its presentation as they did here. I hate 3D films. It was a gimmick that grew in popularity a few years ago largely for kids films and other popcorn material and has largely begun to fade away thankfully. I also don’t like the colorization of old black and white films. The colors are always off—particularly skin tones…and so I had reservations here.

Trust me…go see it in the manner Peter Jackson (he of Lord of the Rings fame) intended and see a 3D version (you will find some theaters showing 2D versions). The work done by Jackson and his staff of New Zealand artists in restoring and enhancing the 100 year old film is nothing short of a miracle. Also stay past the credits to see a 1/2 hour addition to the film that shows some of the painstaking work they went through to do the restoration. You will be amazed at the detail and improvements (not alterations) they were able to make.

So to the film itself. Its a documentary regarding WWI. It doesn’t cover the whole war and in fact only covers a “generalized” group of British men from their time joining up through their return to Britain after the war. Its real footage of the war is impressive enough on its own but its not the draw. The draw is the looks in the eyes of the boys (for the 14-17 year olds that often largely populated these armies are just boys) doing the fighting. Having never seen a film camera before they don’t understand that they can move while being filmed (vs. static cameras) and so stare at the film camera allowing you to see into I dare say their souls.

At moments heartbreaking in scenes of piles of broken and torn boys to images of disgust at rats feeding on the corpses of horses and humans to moments of humor and play in the trenches the film lays bare many of the horrors of war while also reflecting why many members who serve look back at such times with fondness longing for the close relationships that are only developed under fire.

Go see it. Its in limited release and not everywhere but where its showing the theaters are busy due to word of mouth. It won’t be around long in this format and won’t be nearly as impressive at home. You owe it to yourself to see it in this format. You will be awed at what Jackson has achieved.

Film Review: The Way Back

Well…if I’m being political…there certainly is a reason this film has gone unnoticed.

You couldn’t find a more anti-communist film in today’s Hollywood. From beginning to end the Communist system and officials are endlessly demonized—and appropriately so. While part of Russia was busy trying to beat back Hitler, Stalin was also busy rounding up hundreds of thousands and shipping them off to Siberia where many would die simply for being an intellectual or merely suspected of having an opinion outside the Communist party line.

Over and over the film hammers home the removal of individual freedom in the Russian system. Over and over you are struck with the cruelty of the Communist system and its supporters.

The film itself was directed by a top notch filmmaker in Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Year of Living Dangerously, Dead Poets Society, Witness, Truman Show, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, etc.) and it has A-list actors in Ed Harris, Colin Farrell and Jim Sturgess. All do solid work in their roles as Polish and Russian escapees from a Siberian gulag. Their foot based journey over 4000 km from Siberia to India is covered in detail taking them from snowy forests in Russia to caves and deserts of Mongolia. Never leaving their side though is the horror of being returned to the Communist system…and its that fear, less than that of the harsh prison that hangs over everyone. A system that turns wife against husband, brother against brother…one that strips individuals of all free will that is the bigger horror than any environmental danger.

This one likely goes on all “young conservatives” list of films to watch from the past 10 years. Its faults, and it has a few, is its length (at over two hours you FEEL the length of their journey) and externalization of danger as almost all conflict is vs. nature itself or vs. the Communist system. There is no person or object against which the characters really struggle…they just move from one poor environmental condition to the next, which makes for some pretty scenes on film but not overly thrilling.

Worth a watch. Might want to sit Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez down for a watch as well…