Reviews

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A well written novel quenches my thirst for a good story. In hunting high and low for tales of adventure and intrigue, I stumbled upon a mind-bending sci-fi saga. The Hyperion Cantos features challenging ideas about society, culture, and the future. It spans four novels over 2,000 plus pages. Recently, I read the first novel, Hyperion.

Written by Dan Simmons and published in 1989, Hyperion won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Hyperion weaves six novellas together to tell a larger narrative. In that way, Hyperion takes a note from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.

800 years in the future, society consists of a network of hundreds of planets called the Hegemony of Man. Artificial intelligence has evolved into its own society called the TechnoCore. Mutated humans called the Ousters are at war with the Hegemony. The TechnoCore and the Hegemony live in an unstable symbiosis. One world that’s outside the network, Hyperion, has strange temporal qualities. There, edifices called Time Tombs run backwards in time. An atemporal monster called the Shrike guards the Tombs. All three factions want to use the Time Tombs for different ends. Seven pilgrims make a one-way trip to the Time Tombs, each to make a request of the Shrike. As they make their way, each tells his or her story about why he or she has decided to make such a risky journey.

A priest tells the first tale. He wants to return to Hyperion because a parasite causes him tremendous pain. The further he gets from Hyperion, the more he hurts. A soldier tells the second tale. He desires to return to Hyperion to kill the Shrike. The Shrike seduced him, manipulated him, and almost used him to cause an interstellar war. A poet tells the third tale. He wants to return to Hyperion so that he can finish his magnum opus–the Shrike is his muse. A professor tells the fourth tale. He desires to go to Hyperion because his daughter had an accident there and she’s aging backwards. The professor holds his infant daughter in his arms throughout the novel. A private investigator tells the fifth tale. She goes to Hyperion because the Shrike Church offered her asylum to do so. She’s also pregnant with the cybrid offspring of John Keats, the poet (Weird, right?). A politician tells the last tale. He wants to go to Hyperion because his ancestors fought against the Hegemony, and he is a spy.

The strength of Hyperion is its world building. Humankind left Old Earth becuase someone opened a small black hole there. Oops. Familiar sci-fi tropes like wormholes and time debt get a fresh treatment. The wealthy, for example, have mansions with rooms on many worlds. Time debt is inevitable in space travel. Traveling at light speed creates a shorter relative time frame for the traveler. What if the traveler was a sailor and came to port every 11 years? And to the sailor, that 11 years was only a few months? Fresh context creates fresh story.

Hyperion makes relevant social commentary as well. What are the implications for Christianity and Judaism in an interstellar society? What happens if artificial intelligence maxes out? Is connectedness true progress?

The two weaknesses of Hyperion are more practical concerns than story issues. Would seven people be this chatty when traveling to face certain doom? Probably not. And then, the novel just sort of ends without resolving the overarching narrative. But then again, there are three other novels in the series. In that light, Hyperion serves as a prelude of a larger story.

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Back in the 90s, one of my favorite things to do when visiting a friend’s house was checking out their CD collection. I’d see what’s new, what’s gone, and what’s worn. Visiting a well curated CD collection was also my main way of discovering music that was new to me. Often, among Phish and Grateful Dead collections, I’d spot Astral Weeks by Van Morrison. I’ve always found it odd that Astral Weeks was usually the only Van Morrison album in these collections–no debut album with “Brown Eyed Girl,” no Tupelo Honey, only Astral Weeks with its introspective album cover. Recently I set out to discover why this particular Van Morrison album often stands alone.

Astral Weeks is Van Morrison’s second solo album. It was produced by Lewis Merenstein and released on November 29, 1968. Before going solo, Morrison fronted the Belfast rock band Them for a few years. Them turned out remarkable hits like “Gloria,” “Here Comes the Night,” and “Baby, Please Don’t Go.” By comparison, Astral Weeks contained no notable singles. Yet, even though the album only attained gold status in the U.S., it remains a favorite among critics and artists. 

The opening title track sets a pensive, cosmic mood. “Astral Weeks,” the song, runs just over 7 minutes and alternates between two chords for most of that time. Morrison’s voice and lyrics take centerstage. Strings and flutes flow between the strums of his acoustic guitar. Noticeable drums don’t appear until side two. “The Way Young Lovers Do” foreshadows the jazzier sound he’d explore on Moondance. “Slim Slow Slider” winds the album to a mellow end. 

For an album that doesn’t seem too concerned with mass appeal, Astral Weeks has influenced countless artists. It’s difficult to not hear its sway in songs like U2’s “All I Want Is You” and Radiohead’s “Airbag.” Each song on Astral Weeks has its own strength. But each song also contributes to the power of the whole album, as if the whole thing were one long song. 

After hearing Astral Weeks, I’ve enjoyed exploring Van Morrison’s catalog. St. Dominic’s Preview and His Band and the Street Choir surprised me because I had no idea they even existed–such quality, such depth. Although, it’s lost on me why his sixth album, Tupelo Honey, is absent from streaming platforms. 

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“Exposure to great art provides an invitation. It draws us forward and opens the doors of possibility.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

George Lucas has stated in numerous interviews that The Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa was a major influence on Star Wars. I became aware of Kurosawa’s influence on Star Wars in the late 90s, but until recently, I had only seen one Kurosawa film, Rashomon. Recently, I watched The Hidden Fortress to better understand the connection between it and Star Wars.

Released on December 28, 1958 in Japan and produced by Sanezumi Fujimoto and Akira Kurosawa for the Toho Company, The Hidden Fortress was the fourth highest grossing film in Japan that year. The film went on to receive a lukewarm reception in the early 60s in the U.S, but it aged well with critics, who, in subsequent years, warmed up to it considerably. 

The Hidden Fortress is about Tahei and Matashichi, two peasants who sold everything they owned to fight in the war between the Yamana and Akizuki clans, hoping only to make a fortune. The Yamanas capture them, mistake them for Akizukis, and imprison them, forcing them to dig for rumored gold hidden in the Akizuki stronghold. They escape and discover that the Akizuki gold is actually concealed in pieces of wood. Makabe Rokurota, an Akizuki general, befriends Tahei and Matashichi and announces that they must travel to the safe land of Hayakawa. They escort Princess Yuki to Hayakawa, but she pretends to be mute, and Rokurota sends a decoy Princess to be executed so the Yamanas think that the Princess is dead. The band carries the hidden gold on horses. On the way, Rokurota meets his archenemy, Hyoe Tadokoro, and they have a sword fight–Rokurota wins. The group is eventually captured by the Yamanas, but Tadokoro has a change of heart and helps the group flee to safety. In the fray, Tahei and Matashichi find themselves lost in Hayakawa but stumble upon the lost gold. Hayakawa soldiers arrest them for being thieves. When brought before Hayakawa justice, the figures in power are actually Rokurota and Princess Yuki. They give Tahei and Matashichi a bar of gold to share. 

The most striking similarity between The Hidden Fortress and Star Wars is the resemblance between Tahei & Matashichi and C-3PO & R2-D2. Both the Hidden Fortress and Episode IV and VI of Star Wars, open with these two lesser characters bickering and, in so doing, frame the story. However, the characters in each are different in that Tahei & Mataschichi are fatally shortsighted in their choices while C-3PO & R2-D2 are highly intelligent, but treated as lesser sentient beings. A second similarity is the wide, sweeping shots in both films. But Kurosawa’s doesn’t use special effects. A third similarity is the loose analogs between Kenobi and Rokurota, Leia and Kuki, and Vader and Tadokoro. But beyond the simple archetypes, the characters in each are quite different. 

The Hidden Fortress surprised me. I expected it to be some kind of big Death Star-like adventure but it was much more pastoral. The Hidden Fortress resembles Star Wars Episode I more than any of the other Star Wars films, especially the scenes from Naboo. 

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“Exposure to great art provides an invitation. It draws us forward and opens the doors of possibility.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

Whenever I have considered the top of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Best Albums of All Time list, Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks has always struck me as being ranked way too high. As of 2020, the album clocked in at #9. Its production always sounded dated to me and the songs, while good, seemed to have been performed too fast, like the musicians were all in a hurry. Strong reactions to art are often signs that one should pay closer attention. So, a few weeks ago, I forced myself to listen to Blood on the Tracks on repeat until I reached some kind of epiphany as to why I felt so strongly against the album being ranked so high. Around listen 11, I concluded that the merit of the album is in its lyrics and soon after came to an agreement with the consensus.

Produced by Bob Dylan and David Zimmerman and released on January 20, 1975, Blood on the Tracks is Bob Dylan’s 15th album. The album marked the beginning of Dylan’s return to popularity in the 1970s, after a string of stark departures from the folk style for which he is most well known. Blood on the Tracks has sold close to 3 million copies worldwide and is certified double platinum in the United States. 

Dylan’s albums up until Blood on the Tracks often contained a song or two about relationships, but they almost always skewed more towards social commentary, activism, or even humor. Blood on the Tracks seems to be completely about the demise of Bob Dylan’s marriage to Sara Lownds. The songs are all downers, totally introspective, and completely brilliant. The reason, it seems, the album is ranked so high is because it’s Dylan’s take on the universal theme of heartache and he tells his side of the story exceedingly well. 

In 2016, Dylan received a Nobel Prize for his song craft. Therein lies the genius of Blood on the Tracks. “Tangled Up in Blue” finishes each of its stanzas with its title line and, each time the line repeats, it casts a new light on the verses that came before it. None of the chord voicings or arrangements on Blood on the Tracks is too elaborate. However, the higher level meanings, far beyond the surface, inspire insights into human nature, sometimes several during a single listening. All of the songs on Blood on the Tracks are like this. The production has a mid-70s am radio sound, which, while not bad, doesn’t seem entirely necessary. Thankfully, there is a Bob Dylan Bootleg Series that, in Vol. 14, offers the original, stripped down versions of the songs. I prefer the Bootleg version of the album to the official release.

Exploring this master work changed me by turning my attention to the maxim less is more. Sometimes you don’t need drums on a track to make it more impactful. A song should speak for itself with just a voice and simple accompaniment. The production on Blood on the Tracks may have drawn immediate commercial attention to its songs, but, as the Bootlegs show, such attention was probably unnecessary. Blood on the Tracks, both the original version and the Bootleg, also invited my attention to other Bob Dylan albums I hadn’t yet heard. Of late, I’ve enjoyed Street-Legal, Infidels, Oh Mercy, Time Out of Mind, Love & Theft, and Tempest.

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Up until last Monday, whenever I heard Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” I imagined some kind of medieval battle scape with swords and dragons. But then I read Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the same name, arrived at Chapter 27, and everything changed.

It’s not like the inspiration for Metallica’s opus had been a big secret or even in question, really. Songfacts.com states that the “lyrics are based on the 1940 Ernest Hemingway novel of the same name.” True. Although from that statement alone, one could easily conclude that Hemingway’s title and basic theme was just a mere spark that, perhaps, lightly influenced Metallica’s lyrics. To the contrary, the song tracks fairly closely to Hemingway’s prose.

Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Chapter 27
“Make his fight, on the hill, in the early day. Constant chill deep inside.”“El Sordo was making his fight on a hilltop. . . . There had still been snow then, the snow that had ruined them . . . “
“Shouting gun, on they run, through the endless grey.”
“. . . the automatic rifle heavy on his back, the horse laboring, barrel heaving between his thighs, the sack of grenades swinging against one side, the sack of automatic rifle pans banging against the other, and Joaquín and Ignacio halting and firing, halting and firing to give him time to get the gun in place.”
“On they fight, for their right, yes, but who’s to say?”In chapter 26, the protagonist, Robert Jordan, contemplates war’s inherent moral conundrum.
“For a hill, men would kill — Why? They do not know. Stiffened wounds test their pride. Men of five, still alive, through the raging glow. Gone insane from the pain that they surely know.”“Of the five men who had reached the hilltop three were wounded. Sordo was wounded in the calf of his leg and in two places in his left arm. He was very thirsty, his wounds had stiffened, and one of the wounds in his left arm was very painful.”
“Take a look to the sky just before you die. It’s the last time you will.”“His head hurt very much and his arm was stiffening so that the pain of moving it was almost unbearable. He looked up at the bright, high, blue early summer sky as he raised the leather wine bottle with his good arm. He was fifty-two years old and he was sure this was the last time he would see that sky.”
“Blackened roar, massive roar, fills the crumbling sky. Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry.”“The planes came back three times and bombed the hilltop but no one on the hilltop knew it. Then the planes machine-gunned the hilltop and went away.”
“Stranger now are his eyes to this mystery. Hears the silence so loud.”“Then there were the hammering explosions past his ears and the gun barrel hot against his shoulder. It was hammering now again and his ears were deafened by the muzzle blast. Ignacio was pulling down hard on the tripod and the barrel was burning his back.”
Bonus: Horsey style wah-wah guitar solo at the end of the song. El Sordo shoots his horse.

The song, in its own right, is a work of genius. And now that I see what inspired it, I like it even more. “For Whom the Bells Tolls” is a perfect summary of this particular chapter of Hemingway’s novel. And yet it’s wholly original in its approach, tone, and execution. At first glance, Metallica and Ernest Hemingway don’t seem like they would play well together. But, after a closer look, they paint very similar pictures.

Please note: at no time am I suggesting that Metallica copied Hemingway. Rather, I feel like this is an excellent example of how creativity is a dialog. One person’s art goes on to influence another’s. After all, both draw on Devotions (1623) by John Donne:

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

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During the roulette game that decided my higher ed reading curriculum, the ball did not land on The Great Gatsby. Nowadays, my reading list includes several masterworks I have overlooked. How I failed to notice F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece for this long puzzles me.  A terse, scathing portrait of the American Dream, The Great Gatsby is as relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.

Published in 1925, The Great Gatsby consists of only 47,094 words, which, by modern standards, is more of a novella than a novel. Critics and audiences dismissed Gatsby upon its release, but the novel found a revival during World War II when it circulated among soldiers serving abroad. After the war, Gatsby earned greater scrutiny by scholars and critics. Today, the literary community considers The Great Gatsby “The Great American Novel” because it embodies the development, character, and identity of the American experience, at least partially anyway.

Nick Carraway narrates Gatsby by telling the story of the summer he worked as a bond trader in New York City. He lived in West Egg, the new money area of Long Island, and his cousin, Daisy, lived in East Egg, the old money neighborhood. Daisy’s husband, Tom, is a brooding ex-footballer who’s best days are behind him. Jay Gatsby lives in a mansion next door to Nick’s modest accommodations. Gatsby is in love with Daisy and throws grand parties where strangers stay drunk for weeks. Tom is having an affair with Myrtle Wilson, the spouse of a mechanic who lives in the Valley of Ashes–the wasteland between Long Island and Manhattan. One day, Daisy accidentally runs over Myrtle with Gatsby’s car. Mr. Wilson thinks Gatsby killed Myrtle so he hunts Gatsby down. Labeled a tragedy, the story ends on a down note.

Without Carraway’s descriptive, poignant narration, the simple summary in the preceding paragraph reads like an episode of Dynasty. Fitzgerald compresses and foreshadows throughout the novel. I particularly liked his placement of the car wreck at the end of chapter three both as a foreshadowing device and as an overall commentary on the American Dream. The wreck, where one of the drunks from one of Gatsby’s opulent parties throws his car into a ditch and loses a wheel, hints at the big wreck later in the novel but also seems to say that the idea that anyone can ascend in society if they just work hard enough is false. Even if someone is able to rise in class, chances are, he or she won’t know how to act and will inevitably meet a disastrous end.

Critics found Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 film adaptation of The Great Gatsby challenging, but audiences seemed to enjoy it. The film grossed over $300 million and won a couple Oscars for design. I look forward to watching it.

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Even though the events of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars take place in a fictional 2020s, where we had landed on Mars already, Robinson’s vision of what colonizing Mars eventually might look like is quite convincing. He bases his inferences about the future on a deep understanding of human nature and probable scientific advancements. Simultaneously fictional and prescient, Red Mars fascinated me at every turn.

Published in September of 1992, Red Mars won the British Science Fiction Association award and the Nebula Award a year later in 1993.  Red Mars is the first in a trilogy of novels, followed by Green Mars in 1993 and Blue Mars in 1996. A short story collection, The Martian,  released in 1999, complements the collection.

As for the plot . . .many years into the colonization of Mars, Frank Chalmers assassinates John Boone. Then, in flashback, we come understand how Chalmers and Boone developed opposing ideologies as to how Mars should be developed. Chalmers holds a Machiavellian view while Boone had more of an egalitarian position. During that flashback, we learn of the First Hundred, the original colonists of Mars and how they struggled to arrive at and eventually settle on an adverse planet. Eventually, terraforming begins while some of the First Hundred break away and form an underground colony. The middle of the novel turns into a mystery of sorts as John searches for the arch-saboteur of the terraforming project. Meanwhile, Martian scientists discover a way to extend life indefinitely, which accelerates emigration from Earth. Once the Martian space elevator is complete and Frank Chalmers finalizes his political machinations, revolution breaks out and throws Mars into chaos.

Red Mars succeeds through Robinson’s brilliant scientific foresight. It never occurred to me that a space elevator wouldn’t ever really need to be built from the ground up, like a Tower of Babel, but rather, it would only need to descend to the ground from an orbiting anchor. And, if a space elevator were to fail and, say, crash, the cabling could conceivably wrap around the planet several times and cause tremendous destruction in its wake.  I also enjoyed the hard science that Robinson boiled into the pages.  For example, a Mars year is twice as long as an Earth year. Seasons in the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere span different lengths because of an uneven orbit. These realities influence the narrative.

Because Green Mars was published a year after Red Mars and because Red Mars ends with the beginning of revolution, it seems possible that Robinson may have written both Red Mars and Green Mars as one larger story that the publisher split up in order to avoid trying to sell a 1300 page tome. I’d be good for it, though. I love long books, especially when they immerse you in a probable future.

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The critic Harold Bloom considered One Hundred Years of Solitude to be a dense work: “There are no wasted sentences, no mere transitions, in this novel, and you must notice everything at the moment you read it.” Being the first of several novels in a career that would culminate in author Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, One Hundred Years of Solitude is so highly regarded that some have said that it, along with the Book of Genesis, should be required reading for the entire human race.

Published in 1967 in Spanish and translated into English in 1970, One Hundred Years of Solitude has sold over 50 million copies worldwide. The novel is a prime example of magical realism, a style where supernatural elements take on the mundane, and vice versa. While the story addresses political and social realities of Columbia in the early 20th century, the book’s most profound observation concerns human pride and how we, as humans, make the same mistakes over and over and over again.

One Hundred Years of Solitude has been on my reading list for about thirty years. I recall, as early as my senior year in high school, people talking about how good the book was. Honestly, I didn’t catch on to what was really going on in the book until the last chapter. Most of the men are named either Jose Arcadio or Aureliano and there’s a gypsy named Melquiades who keeps showing up even long after he dies. I won’t ruin to book for you, but once everything comes together in the very last sentence, One Hundred Years of Solitude achieves that thing that deep literature does–it gives you a glimpse into a truth otherwise unseen.

My favorite image in the book is the Spanish Galleon that somehow ran aground miles from the ocean. I imagined that, over a hundred years, flowers would have grown all around it. Or, perhaps when the patriarch of the novel, Jose Arcadio Buendia, died and it rained yellow flowers, maybe that storm reached as far as the Galleon. I made a vector drawing of how I imagined it.

With One Hundred Years of Solitude being so well regarded and influential, I was amused to identify some of my favorite songs as probable allusions to the novel. Were “I Come from the Water” by the Toadies and “Banana Co.” by Radiohead inspired by One Hundred Years of Solitude? Maybe. I can’t hear those songs now without thinking of Melquiades and the Banana Plague.

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Do you like scary movies? I do. I especially like to watch them in October as the leaves are changing and as Halloween approaches.

This year, I scheduled a set of five horror films to be watched each Saturday in October. I’ve also enjoyed creating my own vector art posters as a way of reflecting on the films.

My posters and brief synopses of the first two films are below.

The Birds (1963) directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Melanie Daniels meets heartthrob lawyer Mitch Brenner in a pet store one afternoon. She follows him out to Bodega Bay, but her lover’s game of cat and mouse takes a bizarre turn when a sea gull dive bombs her in the forehead. As romantic tension builds between Daniels and Brenner, the birds of Bodega Bay turn violent. First the birds attack a group of school children and then the public at large. Daniels and Brenner find safety at the Brenner house, but will they survive the night?

An American Werewolf in London (1981) directed by John Landis

NYU undergrads David and Jack begin a three month backpacking trip through Europe, but on their first night on the moors of Yorkshire, they are attacked by a werewolf. Jack dies. David wakes up in a London hospital three weeks later with newly healed wounds. Jack’s ghost appears to David and warns him of the coming full moon. As David settles in London to further recover, he wonders if he’s losing his mind, what with the bad dreams and seeing ghosts. As the full moon approaches, what will become of David?

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@aaronking asks, What are your 5 favorite songs from the last 5-10 years and why do you like them?

This is a difficult question to answer. When appreciating music, my ears are often tuned to the sounds of the 70s or the 80s. But in looking back on the recent music I’ve enjoyed, the following five tracks are my favorite songs from the past decade, 2011 – 2020.

5. “White Limo” by Foo Fighters from Wasting Light (2011)

The early Foo Fighters albums had a rawness that I enjoyed. Songs like “Beanie Weenie” and “Wattershed,” from their debut album, or “Enough Space,” from their second album, are pure, unrestrained rock’n’roll at its best. As the Foo Fighters evolved into a melodic, chart topping band, their gritty sound of old appeared less and less on their albums. “White Limo” unearths the unflinching Foo from the late 90s. The video with Lemmy is a nice touch, too. Rest in peace, Lemmy.

4. “Silver Lining” by Kacey Musgraves from Same Trailer, Different Park (2013)

I don’t dislike Country music. However, having peeked behind the curtain to see what really goes on in songwriting sessions, expensive recording studios, and the unscrupulous music industry in general, it’s difficult for me to listen to anything labeled as Country without a veil of guarded skepticism. One recent Country artist that has pierced that veil for me is Kacey Musgraves. Something about her work invites honesty. My favorite song of hers is “Silver Lining.”

3. “Killing Strangers” by Marilyn Manson from The Pale Emperor (2015)

From the very first note he sung in the early 90s, Marilyn Manson took George Bernard Shaw’s quote to heart—“The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.” But if you took away his antichrist status or his penchant for spectacle or even his Bowie-esque personae, you’d still have one of the best rock singers in the game. I first heard “Killing Strangers” while watching John Wick for the first time. “That’s a cool groove,” I said out loud to the TV. Then, Manson starting singing and I said “That’s Manson.” After a bit of inquiry, I learned that Manson had quietly made The Pale Emperor with producer Tyler Bates, a record that was likely done off the cuff. Manson purportedly channelled Jim Morrison and Muddy Waters on this record and it shows.

2. “Nikes” by Frank Ocean from Blond (2016)

If post-hip hop ever becomes a thing, one of its originators will likely be Frank Ocean. “Nikes” is one of those songs that pulls me in every time I hear it. Ocean’s voice is pitched up, almost in the style of Prince’s Camille. But, in stead of a gender statement, Ocean’s presentation seems like it’s more about distorted reality and disconnectedness. While Ocean is edgy and provocative with “Nikes,” it’s the creative production and unpredictability of the song I appreciate most.

  1. “Hot Traveler” by Failure from The Heart Is a Monster (2015)

Of all the bands I liked from the 90s, the last I expected to reunite was Failure. What’s even more remarkable about Failure’s reunion is the quality of its recent work. When bands of old get back together to make new music, the result is often disastrous. But The Heart Is a Monster picks up where Fantastic Planet left off, both figuratively and literally. Here, Failure succeeds in creating something new while staying firm in its identity. “Hot Traveler” embodies this notable return to form.