Friday, September 21, 2007
After my last post eulogising Escape Pod, they seemed to go, for me anyway, into a bit of a slump. We had several weeks of off-beat stories that really didn't do anything for me, leaving my short-term memory almost as soon as they arrived.
I did enjoy The Sundial Brigade by James Trimarco, in which humanity struggles for freedom when the Earth is run by alien museum curators rather than megacorps or fascistic politicians. It's one of those stories that I wish were longer so that some of the more interesting throwaway ideas could be more fully investigated, like the idea that bad behaviour by the humans is punished by their being given negative personality traits, like being made smokers or alcoholics. On the other hand, if these traits are investigated you get the novel length version of Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, so maybe the short stories are best left alone.
On the train to work this morning I listened to Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane by Jonathon Sullivan. Set during WW2, the war of choice for a country so reluctant to take part in it at the time, it's one of those stories that mingles fact and fiction as it tells of the escape of Danish Jews, including Bohr, through the eyes of a young boy, torn between the competing demands of his rabbi Father and his desire to follow in Bohr's scientific footsteps. I can't really mention the fantasy element without blowing the whole story, but while it's true to say that it's fundamentally a traditional story, I think a number of the plot points won't be surprising anyone, it's notable for the strong relationship Sullivan evokes between father and son, so much so that I'm glad I was busy navigating around the London Underground towards the end of the story and so was occupied at the emotional high points of the story.
On a tangentially connected note, I only recently read Maus and was similarly moved by the relationship between author/artist Art Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, pumping him for the story of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe and the death-camps, while finding him so difficult to deal with in the present as he tries to survive in the modern-day USA. The relationship between children and parents seems to be a touchy one for me at the moment, probably the first stirrings of middle-aged angst .
While I'm currently single and don't want a relationship or kids, at the same time there's something buzzing at the back of my head to remind me that by my age my Dad was married with two young children and a mortgage. It's funny how part of me seems to want to measure myself against standards that I feel I've consciously rejected. But I wonder if that conflict is what, at the moment, makes me look for parent-child relationships in stories and resonates with them.
There are more stories at Escape Pod, for sci-fi, Pseudopod for horror and I'm also looking forward to their new show, Podcastle, which will be starting soon to spin off the more fantasy based stories.
I did enjoy The Sundial Brigade by James Trimarco, in which humanity struggles for freedom when the Earth is run by alien museum curators rather than megacorps or fascistic politicians. It's one of those stories that I wish were longer so that some of the more interesting throwaway ideas could be more fully investigated, like the idea that bad behaviour by the humans is punished by their being given negative personality traits, like being made smokers or alcoholics. On the other hand, if these traits are investigated you get the novel length version of Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, so maybe the short stories are best left alone.
On the train to work this morning I listened to Niels Bohr and the Sleeping Dane by Jonathon Sullivan. Set during WW2, the war of choice for a country so reluctant to take part in it at the time, it's one of those stories that mingles fact and fiction as it tells of the escape of Danish Jews, including Bohr, through the eyes of a young boy, torn between the competing demands of his rabbi Father and his desire to follow in Bohr's scientific footsteps. I can't really mention the fantasy element without blowing the whole story, but while it's true to say that it's fundamentally a traditional story, I think a number of the plot points won't be surprising anyone, it's notable for the strong relationship Sullivan evokes between father and son, so much so that I'm glad I was busy navigating around the London Underground towards the end of the story and so was occupied at the emotional high points of the story.
On a tangentially connected note, I only recently read Maus and was similarly moved by the relationship between author/artist Art Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, pumping him for the story of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe and the death-camps, while finding him so difficult to deal with in the present as he tries to survive in the modern-day USA. The relationship between children and parents seems to be a touchy one for me at the moment, probably the first stirrings of middle-aged angst .
While I'm currently single and don't want a relationship or kids, at the same time there's something buzzing at the back of my head to remind me that by my age my Dad was married with two young children and a mortgage. It's funny how part of me seems to want to measure myself against standards that I feel I've consciously rejected. But I wonder if that conflict is what, at the moment, makes me look for parent-child relationships in stories and resonates with them.
There are more stories at Escape Pod, for sci-fi, Pseudopod for horror and I'm also looking forward to their new show, Podcastle, which will be starting soon to spin off the more fantasy based stories.
Labels: books, personal history, podcasts, science fiction
