Alien, Jaws, The Thing and other living nightmares

 

The lesser you see, the better the fear effect...

    In all of these outstanding movies, the main theme and powerful engine of the plot is the nightmare monster. Yes, this sort of monster only the dreamer might encounter for real in the deep of his slumber. As a matter of fact, this is primarily a haunted creature for the children’s bad dreams but I don’t exclude that it might also appear in some grown-up’s nightmares. This monster is the scariest of all imaginable monsters because of its ubiquity, its invulnerability and its unadulterated thirst of destruction (in particular human destruction). This monster is always waiting in your back whatever clever schemes you can think of, whatever your physical feats for escaping it. In the end, the dreamer is always the loser. His only way of survive is to wake up.

In the real world, I mean, in the real world of dreams (when you are sleeping), there is no need of a rationale for the presence of this kind of surnatural monster ; the dreamer, especially when young, believes wholeheartidly in it. But that’s another story when you address grown-up and teenager audience, movie-goers for instance. You have to convince them of the reality of the beast. That’s why this genre can only succeed when all the appearances of reality surrounding the creature are proved. Well, in hindsight, the proof turns to be as faked as the monster but for a spectator’s mind and for the time being plunged in the dark room, it is enough. This is why the harsh and grim and rusted Nostromo as a setting is so efficient and why the rude or down-to-earth crew is perfect for this show (when I speak of Alien, it is always the first one by Ridley Scott I consider, the sequels being weaker by an order of magnitude and even by several orders for the very last avatar). When you think of it in retrospect, you can easily spot the phony science that you were given by the wily scenarists but it’s too late, the magic has made its trick ! For instance, still in Alien, there is no way that the face-hugger can pierce the visor of the too curious and too naive astronaut. This kind of visor, for obvious reasons, is almost indestructible and certainly not by some throws of acid. By the way, the sulphuric acid-like-blood is an absolute absurdity, biologically speaking. Is it important ? No. This is a science-fiction film and in science-fiction, the only important word is the latter. All of the features of the monster are uniquely conceived to persuade the viewers of its plausibility, that they are not watching a stupid fantasy story, a children nigtmare. But in reality, this is it, just a children nigthmare thinly disguised in a real serious story. Is it a weakness or a critic ? No, it’s just fine but it’s better if you know it.

In the real world of dreams, these inescapable monsters are, in my knowledge, generally almost indescribable. They are dark, changing, without a clear face. At least, they seem like that in the awakening. If someone asks the dreamer or if the dreamer asks himself what the nightmare monster lookliked, he can only answer with some lovecraftian adjectives of his liking like sinister, atrocious, dreadful, vile, nameless, unspeakable and often slimy. Therefore, a rule of this genre, if we want to succeed, is to hide the monster in the shades of the background the longer you can. That was brought to perfection in Alien since you never see the somewhat disappointing snake-humanoïd creature in its entirety before the last shots, when the film comes to an end (in fact there is another good reason to drown the monster in darkness : hide the puppet’s strings and other special effects). Another rule to add a "turn of the screw" is to set in the plot in the most cloistered scenery. A space ship in the outer space is the absolute cloistering thing, a base in Antarctica is slightly inferior in term of confinement but still very good (in an aside, submarines, bathyscaphes and undersea stations are almost as perfect as space ships in term of confinement but I can’t find a memorable film with a nightmare monster in this context ; well, I gave a cheap tip for future scenarists). Therefore for all these reasons, in my sense, Alien is the ultimate film of nightmare monsters.

In spite of the appearances, Jaws follows the same pattern in its broad lines (I only consider the Spielberg’s film here). The undersea serves as a cover of darkness for the monster, even while it’s hot and sunny everywhere else (of course, the scenery is a seaside resort during the summer season). The contrast between the casual sunny background, the happy vacationners and the unquenchable bloody monster is nevertheless a small feature of originality in this dark genre (now become usual but never as well crafted as in the original). The end departs of the rule of the genre because the monster should never be destructed once and for all : that’s its weakest point. I repeat, in these nightmare monster films, you should only escape of the creature when the dream stops, that is, when the lights come back in the dark room. In this regard, The Thing has the most powerful ending : everybody dies or will soon die. And that’s right : you can’t hope for survival against this sort of monster.

Why ? Why you can’t have a glimmer of hope in this genre ? Because the monster is both a symbol and a reminder. It is the symbol of death, under another disguise than the grim reaper with the black houppelande. And you can’t escape death : this is a fact. Now, I wish to propose my theory on the subject, for the sake of entertainment. As I said, the real root of this genre is the nigtmare monster which populates our dreams, especially when we are young. I believe that some dreams have a powerful function of warning on the dreamer. What’s the warning in this case ? Very simple. The children and the youth in general have the unshakable belief that they will live forever, that they are immortal. And they have this strong conviction because they still know without knowing that they know it that the spirit in them is immortal. The spirit, yes, but not their soul. So it is cautious and advisable for young people to have periodically this sort of brutal reminder.

A true nightmare, in French.

The masters of nightmare : Hodgson and Lovecraft (in French)

A different type of nightmare through madness by Gene Wolfe (in English).

There Are Doors by Gene Wolfe: a dark story but a good therapy (and vice versa)

For this topic, I feel obliged to return to my home-made English because I suspect there are little more than zero French speaking readers of this novel, which is a pity but not really a surprise. So sorry for the couple of folks who may disprove my assumption.

At the outset, I must advise you that it should be wiser to read this article after rather than before reading the novel if you intend to give it a try, of course. In short, spoilers ahead.

There Are Doors is a very underrated book by a very underrated writer named Gene Wolfe. As a matter of fact, it seems the greatest fan of TAD was Wolfe himself (he said in an interview that this book was his favorite with Peace). On this particular point, I perfectly understand his feeling which is not shared by his readers, even among his handful of fans. Not only I understand but I know the reason why. You are usually told that fictions are some tools for writers to get a special catharsis. But usually, it’s just a lie, or if you are kinder than me, an urban legend.

It is not the case, here. TAD is a true catharsis and I am going to show you how and why.

 

I read for the first time TAD in my youth, indeed one of the first Wolfe’s books I read in my life. I liked it very much. In this time, I didn’t care of the deeper meanings of this story, I only appreciated the characters and the stunning cascade of strange events. I read it a bit like a sad Alice travelling underground, trying to catch up the white rabbit, in spite of all the crazy things that happen to her. Here, the rabbit is a woman named in our world Lora Masterman whom Green—the sad Alice—does believe to be a goddess. The sadness of the main character didn’t bother me much because of the remarkably poetic imagination of his adventures. It was for me like a Kafka’s story where the darkness is overwhelmed by the humoristic, poetic or comic tone. Naturally, like any reader of this story, I thought the hero or rather the anti-hero was mad. And to be sure, he is mad as a hatter, or more precisely, as a march hare (the story begins in march). The only thing I regretted in this novel was the end which seems to me very desperate, very dark, without fair-play for the protagonist as well as the reader. As Lautréamont said about a famous poet, we see here a man who happily rolls down the slope to nothingness (in French: l’écrivain qui roule vers l’abîme en poussant de petits cris joyeux).

Recently, I reread the book. My first impression remains the same: TAD is one of the best novels written by this author, thus one of the best novels published at the end of the last century. The change is that I’m a little more reflexive than then and like any reflexive person, I like to understand what I read, especially if I liked it much. So I made some extra efforts to perceive the meaning hidden behind the scene. Also, I have a better knowledge of Wolfe’s work and I know he is the kind of fictionists who usually prefers to hide the deeper meaning of his stories in some dark places, or even in plain sight but it amounts to the same thing: generally you don’t see it at the first reading. And I succeeded in this. I do believe I succeeded.

First, it is plain that the events happening in the other world, Overwood or whatever its name, only happen in Green’s head. The book is written in the third person but tightly and only through Green’s eyes. So, it’s not very different from a first person narrative. What is the interest of writing a fiction whose every event, every character may be a forgery or an illusion? None. There would be no sense at all. But Wolfe, this hugely talented storyteller, doesn’t make this great mistake as you can guess. There are real events and real characters, but more or less (rather more than less) distorted by Green. The periods when Green is back to C One, the real world, our world, inform us that he is back in his good sense and in these periods, what he sees is very close to reality. He is not healed but he seems in good way to recover. So, Lora Masterman, his doctor with buck teeth, the old woman who buys the desk, the manager of the store, by instance, are real persons. You have no reason to doubt it. In fact you have to believe it or you should better stop reading. Conversely, the moments when Green enters the other world, Overwood, where mating means death for males and where there is a goddess named Lara Morgan, you know Green is going full crazy. I suspect Green, as a great story teller, is perfectly able to make up all the characters and events and scenes which we are told in Overwood from films, dreams, remembrances or actual persons he meets. In particular, it seems very clear that North is a complete forgery. Because North is his perfect antagonist, his opposite pole: he is tall, strong, rude, harsh, violent, arrogant, smug, very active and very manly in addition to be mad; he is the archetype of what the woke libels as toxic masculinity. Green is short, passive, kind, weak, emotive, with no self-assurance. There is evidence in the text of this split personality: at their first meeting, North is sleeping and murmurs “mama” in his dream. A man like North is very unlikely to say this sort of thing, even in his sleep. But Green is. Green is still a mama's boy. Green projects himself through North because of his manliness, and more deeply because he thinks a (super)woman like Lara wants a (super)man like North. So, North is Green, a super Green.

North is not the only character made up by Green. Walsh, the mad boxing manager is certainly another fantasy (the best clue can be found in the penultimate chapter: see below). I strongly suspect mama Capini to be unreal while “her” restaurant is real. She is a projection of Green’s late mother, the person the most important for him. It is possible that the old woman plays the same part in this story, although we know she is real, because her gift to Green is very fishy. In general, a sane person doesn’t give such a precious thing (three thousands of dollars) to a stranger but a madman may believe it. Thus, I think he dreamed the gift of the ancient desk. It is no more real than Tina, the thinking doll, actually a sort of fairy. So we have maybe the craziest scene of the book: a man who tells a false story of or about the brothers Grimms to an imaginary person named Tina while he is struggling with a non-existent desk. By the way, I remark that Wolfe, without putting it clearly, make a real good story-teller of his main character because we, readers, know that there is not such a tale in this world and he had to make it up. And this is new evidence that the rest of the strange events are also his inventions. So, in this regard, Green is Wolfe, the Great Narrator.

Klamm is a projection of the absent father, a very powerful man like North, but in a different way. Klamm is distant but rather kind and protective with Green. Klamm is caring of him, contrary to Green’s real father who is still alive and had no relation with his son for more than ten years (Green is likely the only child of a divorced mother). However, I think Wolfe made one of the small mistakes of the book in the name of this character. Indeed, we hardly see how a man like Green, who has no book except the few his mother read for him, children books, could have heard of Klamm, the mysterious antagonist of Kafka’s last novel. That’s not at all the same level. But it’s also a new sign that Green is Wolfe in some regards.

The end of the story: it is very sad, very dark indeed, without a hope left. When Green meets again with Lora, the real person, he is struck by lightning in every sense. He realized that the woman will never come back to live with him, that he has never been a real partner in her mind, just a big mistake from her pity to him. So he was left with only one option, he thinks: come back to the other world, where Lara could take him as a dog or a slave at least. And he knows his come-back will be definitive this time. The madness will be complete and irreversible. It is like a suicide. In fact, we have a good piece of evidence it is literally a suicide: the title of the penultimate chapter when North is shot dead by Walsh is justly “Main Event”. So the main event of the novel is the suicide of Green since North is nobody except Green: how to be clearer! Therefore, when the sirens are ringing out in the last lines, it is probably the cops who have been called after the gunshot (I assume here that even an obvious lunatic like Green can get a real gun in the real United States of America).

Now, why is Wolfe so pitiless with his main character? Such a gifted narrator like Wolfe, plus a charitable catholic, could have saved Green, at least his soul from the ugly despair. After all, Green is the good guy in this story. He is kind, we are told, and we are willing to believe it. What’s his crime? His crime is briefly alluded to in the course of the narration, and by no other than himself: he has no pity for others but only for him. He is a much too self-pity man. And self-pity is not a small flaw. Although it doesn’t count among the deadly sins, it should. It is as serious as hubris. North is a bad guy but at least he is a fighter. Life is an almost permanent fight, first and foremost, against oneself. Green refuses the fight. And by refusing the fight, he refuses life. You can say it’s not his fault, he’s sick, he’s a poor lonely man, he’s a blues man with no music. Yes it’s an excuse but that’s not a valuable escape from his fate. There is no escape in real life other than by yourself. Wolfe says: don’t rely on others, on pity, on pills or psychobabbles to save you. In the end, you are the only one who can save yourself. A saying comes to mind: God helps those who help themselves (aide-toi et le Ciel t’aidera in French). Green refused to help himself because of his excess of self-pity. In the view of the writer, he therefore deserves a new circle in Dante’s Hell, one that was not included by the author, regrettably.

I take a step further. In the end, Wolfe kills the Mister Green that is in him. That’s the therapy. And judging by his strong praise pronounced many years after the release of the book, the catharsis has succeeded.

Poor Green. He was the kid offered in sacrifice by Wolfe to God. Sometimes, we have to.

In the end, I come to the conclusion that TAD is in fact a very dark therapy but a very good story, one of the most perfect by Wolfe.

Some other articles I wrote about Wolfe (you can also check the sites entirely dedicated to this author referenced to the left, above):

In English:

About Starwater Srains

About Stories From The Old Hotel

En français:

Sur Le Livre Du Nouveau Soleil

Sur l'auteur

Les Dystopiques de Gene Wolfe

Sur Lovecraft, Borges et Wolfe

 

Terraforming Mars: a matter of dream, not science

My own vision of terraformed Mars... but only in your dreams, young Cathy.

Painting by Isaac Fryxelius for Young's article

(This piece of mine originally published on Quillette was directly intended as an answer to the very upbeat article of Cathy Young. Please, take a look at her essay over here and dream for a moment about such wonders before reading my short and quick comeback.)

 

Well, it seems that Santa Claus is gone, I can become horrible and nasty again. Poor young Cathy, I’m going to ruin your sweet dream.

All this nice stories of red, green or blue Mars is just fine if you’re ten years old or less. So I supposed, Cathy, you are about ten. But I have to tell you this, young Cathy: your article is pure fiction, Walt Disney stuff, Hollywood fantasies, perfect for an Elon Musk’s rave party. Even the painting looks like California or maybe Colorado. There are not a chance in a billion, no, a trillion, that you can see this bucolic picture on your martian TV by 2050, 2100 (the end of Earth, I remind you, according to the best of our great scientists), 2200, 220000, 220000000. At best, you’ll have a couple or two of poor chaps (not even a girl, alas for them) send by the most modern flying casket to the most depressive place for one year or more, plus the travelling time, in order to collect some ashes to prove that life, that is, some sort of fossilized blob, is appeared on another planet. And they’ll go back home… in the best-case scenario. Naturally, the hypothesis in which they find some interesting discoveries is the most optimistic. More likely, as usual, as for the moon missions for instance, they’ll find nothing valuable to bring back. Because if there is something of interest on Mars—why not?—automatic missions with robots will find it long before and for a much cheaper price. Terraformation, you say, young Cathy? What a joke! If you want to terraform something, terraform the Antarctic first: that’s nearer, cheaper, a little bit hotter and infinitely more fit for human life or any blob-like form. And why on earth should you spend billions of billions, no trillions of trillions, to establish a colony in the most depressive place? A colony like you are dreaming of, dear Cathy, is not an easy task: it takes huge quantities of liquid water, materials of all sorts, energy, preferably petroleum : that’s the best compromise you can imagine, by far, as a handy, powerful and space-saving form of energy. And you know what? There’s not a single drop of petroleum in this place. Because there never were forests full of life, no green, red, black or white men over there. To have a colony like you want, you must have local plants, factories, many factories, roads and power-lines to rely plants and factories and colonies (I suppose you don’t want to put dangerous plants and factories within the sweet and clean but fragile domes of your colony). And you must have green plants too, many many plants, not to produce oxygen (silly idea) but to eat and give to cattle if you want have some meat, sometimes, in your menu. Bad luck, plants don’t grow without bacteria or/and fungi, mushrooms, etc. And guess what, there is not a single living bacteria or mushroom in the martian soil. So, in short, you’ll have to transfer all the wealth of Earth to Mars to have only a couple of domes like you dream of and you’ll still not be able to have a good Belgian beer after work.

To conclude, if terraforming the red planet is only a dream, don’t bother too much with martian politics, economics or education systems: as a matter of fact, that will be just a very sad story of a small band of castaways on a desert and depressive island with no happy ending.

D'autres merveilles (en français).

 

At The Mountains Of Madness

      I don't care much about the Lovecraftian folklore but I always loved his titles.

    Another dark painting (but not completely devoid of hues) for a book to come soon: Fenêtres Sur Un Autre Monde. here, I see submarine mountains with mouths of fire. The starry sky is not what it seems after all. Although some of our submarine creatures are very weird, I definitely don't think we are on Earth.

Storeys From The Old Hotel by Gene Wolfe : a review

   His best collection of short stories in my opinion. As the title hints, there are often, maybe always, more than one storey in these stories. And often, it is quite hard to categorize them between sci-fi, fantasy, historical romance or none of the three.

   Let's take a quick look at some of the best stories of this collection.

   Slaves Of Silver and Rubber Band (1971, 1974): two mystery stories with the famous Sherlock Holmes, but it takes place in a far future and his Watson is a bot (still somewhat stupid). Both are excellent, but even better the last one. Wolfe is a terrific mimicker. Because, of course, he's not only mimicking; he gives much more than he has to.

   Westwind (1973): a moving quest story. Emotion is rare enough, I feel, in Wolfe's work, so it is even more precious. The odd thing with this is his more moving stories are usually led by a female character and not of the young or gorgeous sort.

   The Packerhaus Method (1970): one of his oldest fictions. And one of his very good ones. The plot is really good but pretty sneaky, as often with Wolfe, and will give you a thrilling twist about the end if you contrive to grasp its meaning.

   The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton (1977): a mystery story located in a kind of ancient germanic kingdom. Just... marvelous ! Wolfe is almost always successful in making mystery stories but in this case, he is at the top of his craft writing. Inspired of course by the powerfull essai of Edgar Poe : "Maelzel's chess player".

   In Looking-Glass Castle (1980): a story taking place in a dystopian version of the USA when womankind is in command and male people are almost gone (their nickname is “pigs”). In those days, Women have clones, several if they are rich enough, have no relation with men, or at risk of being excluded from society, even worse, and engage in pig hunts. Wolfe doesn't say what happened to men. Don't take me wrong : although the gender war may usually seem rude and lacking of nuance, in this case, it's a beautiful, subtle and moving narrative. My best guess : the girl is mad.

   Cherry Jubilee (1982): again a mystery story but this time in a star cruiser. Wonderful tale. I am still not sure of the whodunit but it doesn't matter. A kind of Mystery Of The Yellow Room but here, the killing happens in a coffin launched in the outer space.

   A Solar Labyrinth (1983) : a huge masterpiece, and yet a miniature. There are so many levels in this tale of a maze maker that we could write a library about it. In a way, it is the Book of The New Sun condensed within three pages, perfect achievement in addition. Wolfe could indeed entitle his short story : Shadows of the (New) Sun.

   Death Of The Island Doctor (1983): the fourth and last of the variations around these three words : island, doctor and death. The simpler, the lighter, the shorter and the more touching of the four.

   The Choice Of The Black Goddess (1986) : a very entertaining quest story about a treasure hunt. It takes place in a desert island and features sailors and comedians... and a goddess? Good characters and very interesting plot.

   There are other big stories in this book and I think all of them are worth reading. As you could see, another interest is that the collection covers a wide range of time, from the very first, Trip-Trap (1967) to In the Old Hotel (1988), which is also the range of time when Wolfe was at his best.

This collection is not necessarily better than his first, The Island Of Doctor Death And Other Stories And Other Stories, but this one is definitely more touching.

Storeys From The Old Hotel

Another of my home-made English articles about Wolfe: here.

Gene Wolfe's Starwater Strains : a review

In my opinion (humble or not), Wolfe is a marvelous story teller and one of the four or five greatest writers of the age, in genre or out.
Starwater Strains is his last collection of short stories until now and the last I read, and, more unfortunately, it is perhaps the least too.
First, it is read on the cover that it's a "New Science Fiction Stories" collection; here is a double misstatement : in fact, there are some SF stories, indeed, and some fantasy stories and at least one story which is neither SF nor fantasy story, as far as I can see. Besides, there are some old stories. But it's not the point.
Here is the point.
In Starwater Strains, there are, as usual, a lot of inscrutable stories (Wolfe's favorite saying seems to be why make it easy when you can make it hard): among these, some are good, like “Games In The Pope's Head”, some are less good like "The Fat Magician".
There are some exercises in style, some in the best English like “In Glory Like Their Star” but a little boring for my taste, some in sort of funny dialects like “The dog of The Drops” (this one seems to be a game where you have to replace the wrong or missing letters).
There are some investigation stories where the investigator is a Doctor in religion and folklore (Does this really exist in the US ?) like in “Lord of The Land” or an (exo)archaeologist like in “The Seraph from its sepulcher”.
There is one story it is said to be a SF post-apocalyptic story though it is actually a pretty good fantasy story (“Mute”) and one story, a good one also, it is never said to be a SF post-apocalyptic story but it is (“Petting Zoo”).
There is a couple of stories which could feature in some Best Short Stories of Gene Wolfe, like “Pulp cover” or “The Seraph...” and more stories which could feature in some Wolfe's Worst.
Now, I read all his collections of short stories, with some novellas in there, and I can give a verdict : Starwater Strains is the weakest of his collections, not really bad, but this is definitively not the book to start with if you are to discover Wolfe. I would rather advise a new and genuine reader who prefers short stories (and novellas) like I do to look for his first collection “The island of doctor Death and other stories and other stories” or this other one, by far my favorite (but not necessarily better), “Storeys from the old hotel”.

Starwater Strains
Another of my home-made English articles about Wolfe: here.
Malheureusement, le recueil dont il est question, ainsi que le dernier cité ne sont disponibles qu'en version originale, d'où la chronique en anglais. Si vous êtes intéressé par Gene Wolfe, voici un ou deux liens utiles, en anglais : 
http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Contents
et en français :
http://jeanlevant.blogspot.fr/2014/08/une-lignee-fantastique-lovecraft-borges.html