The Halloween List: The Lobster and The Killing of the Sacred Deer

Jump Back To: Office, Unfriended: Dark Web, and Calibre

Finally I’ve gotten around to seeing the works of Yorgos Lanthimos! I’ve heard about the Greek director for what feels like a decade, but never got my hands on his movies. Today we’re taking in a double feature of his two most recent works from A24: The Lobster and The Killing of the Sacred Deer. They manage to feel strongly like they have to be A24 movies, while also not being quite comparable to any other A24 movies. My biggest takeaway was a need to see a third Lanthimos movie just to get a grasp on his style.

The Lobster (2015)

In the midst of a dystopia, people who don’t love anyone are shipped in droves to hotel-like centers for re-education. They are given 45 days to fall in love or else they will become animals. For more than half the movie we don’t know what the outside world is like, and wonder if the entire planet is a series of dystopic hotels like this, split up by farms of former humans.

Readercon Wrap Up

I wanted to do a Readercon post earlier but was wiped from my trip. It was a miracle I didn't fall asleep as soon as I plopped into the car, but I didn't. The convention was a wonderful success and I'm glad to report my health held up nearly the entire time. The new medication seems to be taking to my system. The ability to think through the pain and enjoy so much good company made this feel like another world from the last two months.

If you're in the New England area, I strongly recommend Readercon. It's an excellent small-scale convention with a fiction focus that attracts an impressive number of accomplished and excellent panelists. Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear are regulars though had to miss this year; this year saw the premiere of Max Gladstone. There was at least one rep from Crossed Genres and a significant presence of Strange Horizons folk, as well as Tor's Ellen Datlow. It was easy to bump into Kameron Hurley and Peter Straub in the lobby and simply chat with them. You don't get that kind of access and informality with such guests at most cons.

It also led to many fine panels, my favorite being back-to-back discussions of Magic: "Difference Between Magic and Science" and "When the Magic Returns," which contrasted magic and science, and then explored narratives of magic brought into the modern world. Lev Grossman and Max Gladstone were on both line-ups as their incomparably erudite selves, digging into the differences in how we experience our world and expect the magical. Even the greatest technology can feel clunky and exclusionary, whereas magic, with its precious commodity of being fictional, can meet a spiritual need the real world can't.

Julia Sidorova was the most impressive of anyone here for me, a Russian writer positing that technologies like a cell phone are "a science experiment anyone can perform," unifying us as experimenters, and soon openly disagreeing with the guest of honor about our place in evolution. Can you imagine the intelligence and confidence it takes to argue with a guest of honor about the nature of the universe in front of a crowd in a second language? Her approach to science has me hunting for her debut novel.

But the main draw of Readercon was face-time with friends. I skipped several panels simply to hang out in the bar with authors and Viable Paradise graduates, and when I could get up early enough, spent time in the lobby chatting with con-goers. It was a completely different experience from last year's Readercon where I knew few people; knowing folks enables conversations that rapidly expand into clusters. The sad point of this is when other con-goers linger nearby, looking and listening, but can't jump the social hurdle into joining. I know I'm awful at inserting myself into other people's conversations, and you never want to be intrusive. When I could, I'd reach out to such folks. As con-communities, I'm still looking for ways to systematically open us up to more low-key exchanges. Otakon, with its younger demo and enormous attendance, seems more natural at this.

And seeing friends after the crap of the last two months was worth every penny and midnight muscle spasm attack. Mostly I fraternized with Viable Paradise graduates, the first time I've seen several of them since the workshop itself. David Twiddy even organized a massive dinner for professors and grads on Saturday. What a mensch. Events like those enabled my personal highlights, as there's nothing better than getting smart people you like to double over laughing. Jokes about Christ Chex and dinosaur fellatio... well, clearly some of the old me is still around.

There are some sweet photos of highlights, like catching one of my writing mentors in the middle of a magic trick, but this laptop doesn't have an SD card reader. So perhaps another time. For now, I've got to catch up on sleep.

The Nigh-Infinite Serpent - #fridayflash

It’s hard to believe we ever wanted to kill the Nigh-Infinite Serpent. I mean, I don’t know how you do that, and neither did the Ancients, since every bomb they invented never even sloughed its old skins. But I’ve got fat books full of stories of great knights and cyclopes who braved the mountains of the world trying to kill the Nigh-Infinite Serpent. Their bravery made for great tragedies, even if these days they only get adapted as comedies.

You have to be very brave to fight something that can and frequently does encircle the continent. Every Winter the nights get longer, not because we’re tilting from the sun, but because it’s shifting in the sky trying to warm up. You might as well try to arm wrestle an earthquake. Also, fighting it caused a lot of earthquakes, which is why the Moderns outlawed fighting it.

There was this one whole crusade that climbed up to the Nigh-Infinite Serpent’s mouth, using a combination of apatosauruses and gryphons for travel, just to die bravely and go to Ten Heavens. This was in the second dynasty of the Moderns, who dispatched one thousand runners to chase them and hand of the writs of cease-and-desist. It was bound to be an epic, and an epic against the serpent would probably wreck the entire continent for us.

So the crusade had to turn around, because if they broke the law then their dead souls would never get into Ten Heavens. Except they were so high up that they had to march down the Nigh-Infinite Serpent’s spine – there was no easier way. And marching around up there, the crusaders found there really was no more convenient way to get anywhere on the continent than by walking on the serpent. It was lying about so much of the world that some of them even visited islands cartographers had deemed lost and mythical by hopping off its tail.

You can tell which regions were the first to bribe the Nigh-Infinite Serpent into playing highway because they’re still rich as cake today. Ornithologists were conscribed to trick flocks of rocs and gryphons into straying past the Nigh-Infinite Serpent’s mouth, giving it ample sustenance, and for every load it would contort its amazing body, a length becoming a new bridge or tunnel, sometimes running two or three highways on top of each other if the bribe was plentiful enough. When the Moderns factored in the reduction in wars with nature and no longer needing to construct or pave highways, they considered bribing the beast to be an exceptional savings.

Nowadays it actually gets angry if people aren’t traveling on its hide, which is why it attacks so many aircrafts. The best we can tell is it’s used to all the traffic as a sort of back massage. I work in automobile manufacturing, so I don’t mind the anti-aircraft strikes, but the delays on the highway are miserable whenever the beast sheds.

Lit Corner: Where John's Been

Welcome to the last month of my life.

December came with several goals. With better health than November and a few weeks before family returned for the holidays, I decided to finish and submit at least four short stories. It was easy to pick the four, especially the first two: a tiny piece for Apex’s Christmas Flash contest, and a succubus Comedy I brewed up in August. I guarantee if you like my all-dialogue flashes, the succubus story will get you going. It’s the closest thing to Alligators By Twitter that I’ve written in a couple years. Ridiculousness is just in my nature, or too deep in my nurture to dig out.

Both of those stories are already out to markets. The third story is the longest, technically a novelette, and an idea I’ve been struggling to write a good version of for at least five years. There are so many flawed drafts, rewrites and blank slate works alike, that I’ve probably spent more energy word-for-word on this than any of my novels. It wasn't until reading Zelazny's Lord of Light that I hit on the style that really suited the story, but that gave me a white heat and about 14,000 words in one sitting - which I've since cut drastically. It’s a bit of an epilogue to the Magical Girl genre, and a testament to the many ways I’ve felt uncomfortable being so fond of the genre, which I’m calling, “Remember When I Saved the World?”

Thank God the beta readers liked it. It may truly be done. This is the first post-VP piece that my peers have gone over, and they’re a blessing of a group.

This story also got me to watch Madoka Magica, which is a fine piece of trope subversion. I'm thinking of doing a post on my wacky reactions to it, since I was the series-virgin this time, as opposed to our unnamed subject who went blindly into Evangelion. Is that of interest to you, internet?

This leaves me with just one more story to finish, and that project starts today. It is every editor’s least favorite: my totally original take on zombies. Yeah, I can feel Neil Clarke throwing heavy things in my direction already. But it’s an angle on solitude that I don’t see very often and that’s very close to my own life. Besides the zombies and all the Lysol.

Also, at some point I made this.

With those four done, I’ll be able to focus on #bestreads2013 and January. Helene Wecker had to go and write such a magnificent piece of work in The Golem and the Jinni that I’m revising my list of favorite novels, and will probably just let it run long to accommodate. I’m also thinking of doing a separate post about essays and short fiction, as I came across some incredible short pieces this year that don’t feel right to stick next to novels and long comics. What do you say? Maybe “Best Shorts” this Wednesday?

As for January, I have this tradition of starting a new novel every New Years. I’m stuck right now between two possible projects. The first would be rewriting The House That Nobody Built, a task for which my style is now honed enough to handle, and the crits from VP let me know what directions it ought to take.

But the second would be writing more novels in The Last House in the Sky series; those characters were addictive to write about. There’s a certain allure to chasing those thieves across the blown-up world for the rest of my life. Or for the books in the sequence I’ve plotted out. One or the other.

All of this is why the blog has been a little quiet lately. It is, besides shoveling a foot and a half of snow and fending off syndrome tremors, what I’ve been doing with my daily dose of ATP. What have you been up to, internet?

Bathroom Monologue: Strange Drugs

Photo by Stephen Shore.

   This one removes all your fears. It's said they're replaced with a smoky nothingness and a faintly yellow flavor.

   This one replaces all your fears with the fears your parents have for you.

   This one replaces all your fears with identical fears in different orders. Said to be very useful for schizophrenics seeking introspection.

   This one makes you admire clouds more often.

   This one makes clouds admire you more often.

   This one has no clinically proven effect, yet many customers claim to find rainstorms friendlier.

   This one allows you to read, comprehend and discuss philosophy with absolute acumen. You'll go through Kant in an evening. It, however, provides no satisfaction.

   This one provides absolute satisfaction with no application. You'll achieve nothing and be perfectly alright with it until the drug passes.

   This one lets you read, comprehend and discuss the shortcomings of others with absolute acumen. You'll achieve nothing and be perfectly passionate regardless until the drug passes.

   This one makes you taller.

   This one makes you smaller.

   This one stops up rabbit holes.

   This one fills you with the fear of God.

   This one makes you realize you have always been full of the fear of God.

   This one gives you a radically incomplete and yet hardy appreciation for what God fears.

   This one unlocks your full mental and emotional potential.

   This one dulls any anxiety from having realized how meager certain potentials are.

   This one makes you feel exactly like you think you used to feel before all those unfortunate revelations that come with time. You never actually felt this way, but the drug doesn't know better.

‘G’ is for ‘Golems.’

‘G’ is for ‘Golems.’ 

Allegedly invented by servants of the Jade Empress about 270 years ago, they are classified as non-sentient constructs with no internal source of motion or determination. The most common kinds of golems are ‘clay’ and ‘hair,’ though there are allegedly more intricate golems in the Cloud Hills, including legends of gargoyles and walking suits of armor.

In the early period of the Human Age, golems were essential replacements for beasts of burden, in clearing rubble and toxic materials spilled by exploded demons. Even today they are used primarily as sentries and transport, and appear exclusively in the east, serving The Empire of Gold and Jade.

Only human wizards and all-chemists have yet figured out how to construct golems. Three of the four inventors of the original golems were slain by their creations, giving us the popular legend: if a golem consumes the body of its creator, it is granted free will. Not possessing minds of their own, golems tend to go insane upon achieving this free will. The most notorious case was 120 years ago, when The Golem King attempted a revolution against humanity. It and its movement were driven into the World-Ocean and destroyed by the Empire of Gold and Jade (see 'E'). This is considered the first potential apocalypse that the Empire stopped.

Many people, human and non-human, are uncomfortable with golems because of their similarities to the gremlins’ mechanical Automatons. Even though golems are magical in nature, the stereotype of the biological-consuming monster persists. The Empire of Gold and Jade has a policy of destroying any golems exhibiting free-will, though there are rumors that some are collected for study at The Lonely Giant, a prison designed to hold and study monsters (see ‘L’).

Bathroom Monologue: Homeless Magician

Skepticism kills jobs. The encroachment of science, obliterating hunger and HIV, left people with no wonder for a man levitating on stage. They thought they saw wires he didn’t need. Infinite kerchiefs from his sleeve paled from Nova’s special on infinite bubble universes. He even caught his beautiful and talented assistant brushing up on Honors Chem; he could have prognosticated the fine career she’d have, but she quit before he could tell her. There was no money left in magic, and soon he had to saw himself in half just to fit inside a friend’s rent controlled closet. He’d be damned if he slept with the rabbits in his hat.

Bathroom Monologue: The Descent of Magic

That an infection could reanimate the dead is preposterous, and it appears more preposterous for every zombie that gets back up and wanders around The Z. How could microbes cause dead cells to not only reactivate, but coordinate movement, digestion, the senses and complex motor abilities?

Because they’re magic microbes. All science has been a cover-up of the obvious and insulting answer that just as life began at the microscopic level, so did the arcane. If you study fossils or present live bacterial cultures, you’ll find they’ve evolved little since the dawn of life. That’s because they mastered it. All they needed was to develop enough magical potential to survive a little better than anyone else. The typical virus either dies out fighting the immune system or dies out when it kills the host. The magic microbe that could magically reanimate its host was much better, and spread its offspring much better, given that zombies shamble around sharing the miracle.

Coincidentally, vampirism is believed to be the work of a more advanced but less photo-resistant microbe. Lycanthropy, though, is just a hoax by guys in hairy suits. All real magic in triclopes, humans and imps can be credited to the plagues that first bred it into us.

Bathroom Monologue: Mana From Heaven

There’s peculiar weather in the most southerly isles. It’s more predictable than the seasons themselves, more predictable than war and politics, more predictable than old milk turning to new smells or young love turning to old disappointments.

One day a year, and on the same day every year, it snows yellow and green flakes across those shores. They’re cold as ice, and they stack and stick and turn into fluffy mounds of odd snow, and they taste something like powdered mango that’s gone off.

Originally the islanders ate such flakes out of poverty, but soon they realized the unique properties of the annual precipitation. It appears anyone who eats these “mana flakes” is given the gift of magic, able to cast spells from the tops of their heads and keep going until they tire themselves out.

Folks fly from island to island, and conjure parades of imaginary creatures, and do the same old card tricks they always do except for this day they’re real. There is something like a two of spades really vanishing rather than going up your sleeve that tickles a certain kind of person. I spent one such frosty afternoon listening to a little girl teach her pet pink elephant how to sing. Never been much of a mana flake eater myself, though I do enjoy watching the tourists frolic in waking dreams. My hotel takes all major credit cards.

Bathroom Monologue: Mancers, OR, An Order of Wizards

Necromancer, Pyromancer, Geomancer – these get too much attention, as though they make up the whole of magic. There is a substantial industry, a veritable economic biosphere, supporting the flashy varieties of magicians. For instance, from whence do all these old fogeys get their durable robes? Macraméncers. It’s difficult work, knitting fabric that has comparable Armor Ratings to chainmail. And every generation sees more wizards, despite all of them being bearded and wrinkled shut-ins. How do they manage to populate so? Romancers, the aetherial dating service for people who hold wands more than hands. Surely you’ve encountered that tragic necromancer who seeks to bring his lady love back from the grave, yet zombie hugs are seldom. There’s even a wizard for that least common form of couples counseling: necroromancers. These, and every other stripe of magical servant you can find in The Yellowed Pages.