INTERZONE 254 SEPT-OCT 2014 (19 page)

A KILL IN THE MORNING

Graeme Shimmin

Bantam Press pb, 384pp, £12.99

Ian Sales

It is 1955. World War II ended in 1941 when Britain signed a peace treaty with Rudolf Hess, and now the Nazis control Europe… If there are two well-populated, perhaps even over-populated, worlds in our alternate histories, it’s Hitler victorious and the South winning the American Civil War. So any novel settling in either of those lands needs to be special if it’s to stand above the competition. Shimmin’s approach is to throw Ian Fleming and Nazi occult science into the pot.

At first glance, James Bond and a Nazi-controlled Europe feels like a good fit – just swap in the Germans for the Russians, and the Cold War remains essentially unchanged (although, interestingly, it would make the British ideologically and politically closer to the “enemy” than was the case in the real world). But doing so does seem somewhat pointless – such an easy alteration begs the question, why bother doing it? Which is where the Nazi occult science plays a part. In the seventy years since the end of World War II an entire mythology has grown up around the fringe science the desperate Germans allegedly turned to in the latter days of the war – flying saucers, Feuerball missiles, secret bases in the Antarctic, atomic bombs, Repulsine engines, the Bell… Not to mention the actual documented stuff they
did
do, like the V-1, V-2, Natter, Me 163, all the aerodynamic work on delta platforms and flying wings by Horten and Lippisch…

A Kill in the Morning
opens with the unnamed narrator – though presented like Harry Palmer, he is very much modelled on James Bond – assisting with the destruction of a death camp, and the rescue of some of its inmates. But not all of them. In fact, there’s a curious lack of affect, a blithe callousness to the lives of people, throughout this book. So far, so humdrum.

And then a Fairey Rotodyne flies out of the night sky to pick up the protagonist and the released prisoners.

However, rather than signal an interesting use of Cold War technology, the Rotodyne is merely evidence of Shimmin’s haphazard approach to world-building, which features several jets that could not possibly have been flying in 1955 (and are even less likely to have existed if World War II ended in 1941). Even more bizarrely, the Rotodyne is operated by the Royal Israeli Air Force. Because Israel is a British overseas possession.

If Shimmin’s alternate twentieth century is somewhat peculiar, his story is built from all too familiar patterns. The Nazis are evil, the Israelis are good, the Arabs are bad, the British upper classes are perfidious, the women are beautiful… It’s not so much that Shimmin writes in broad brush-strokes, but that he draws everything in cartoon colours. Take those women: every time a woman appears in the narrative, we’re treated to a description of her appearance and clothing. Not so for the men. The women are also referred to in the prose by their first names, the men by their surnames. It’s the twenty-first century – we should be doing better than this everyday sexism in our fictions.

The plot somewhat redeems these flaws. When the Old Man of the British secret service is assassinated, the unnamed protagonist is prompted to seek revenge on SS Reichsführer Heydrich, and so he inadvertently learns of the existence of a secret cabal of British aristocrats who have reached an accommodation with the Nazis, along with Heydrich’s own completely out-of-left-field plan to use the Bell to travel back in time to ensure global Nazi domination. This latter leads to the climax of the novel, and it’s pure hokum, on a par with the ending of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
; a finale better suited to Cubby Broccoli’s James Bond than it is Ian Fleming’s.

Shimmin’s decision to write his novel in first-person present tense, and to keep his protagonist anonymous throughout, can’t disguise the fact that
A Kill in the Morning
is pure commercial fiction. It’s a fast read and, despite a number of interesting pieces of alternate history furniture, it manages to make use of every cliché associated both with the National Socialists and alternate history. Read as adventure fiction, it’s an enjoyable enough romp, albeit about thirty years out of date in its sensibilities.

LASER FODDER

TONY LEE

AFTER THE DARK

THE ZERO THEOREM

THE DOUBLE

DIVERGENT

LAST DAYS ON MARS

THE CHANGES

THE BOY FROM SPACE

MINDSCAPE

TRANSCENDENCE

ASHENS AND THE QUEST FOR THE GAMECHILD

RPG – REAL PLAYING GAME

HK: FORBIDDEN SUPERHERO

I’m A Published Poet…Get Me Out Of Here!
AFTER THE DARK
(DVD, 21 July) by John Huddles is a philosophy class struggle about who deserves a place in the bunker to survive a nuclear apocalypse. It’s a thought-experiment series presented as drama-doc. Set in a Jakarta school for international students, where instructor Zimit (British export James D’Arcy,
Cloud Atlas
, Anthony Perkins in
Hitchcock
) challenges his new graduates to confront gene-pool variables and cultural/societal prejudices in divisive scenarios that pit logic against emotion.

Never mind the thorny ethical concerns of testing kids on life-and-death issues before their brains have fully matured, this is a somewhat lackadaisical sci-fi fantasy that starts promisingly enough, but then it loses any focus on intellectual discussions and dissolves into what amounts to a string of theoretical teeny-romantic episodes. It demos the genre reach of a scissor-lift or a cherry-picker but not a rocket launch.
ATD
explores sundry moral dilemmas, and questions the survivalist mindset, but elements like the recurring black-comedy skit about the uselessness of poetry in post-holocaust worlds, and the pressures of existing relationships between students, undermine any potential suspense and the group tensions of each supposedly enlightening situation.

Huddles’ movie is rarely less than watchable, but too often it feels like a game scenario and an SF stageplay have been roughly shoehorned into a screenplay format; one that works on-screen, crudely, only because of the visual impact of its CGI work.

What is the meaning of life? Monty Python’s already-familiar pursuit of the ultimate knowledge receives a fresh perspective in Terry Gilliam’s
THE ZERO THEOREM
(DVD/Blu-ray, 21 July), a sublime tragedy of disillusionment while staying at home.

Qohen (Christoph Waltz, Richelieu in Anderson’s
Three Musketeers
remake) is a hacker set on the trail of cyber entities, while striving to solve equations in virtuality that should provide Management (Matt Damon, in some amusingly weird camouflage suits) with illuminating answers to definitive questions about humanity’s place in the universe. However, our bald, reclusive hero lives in a disused church, and is troubled by nagging beliefs as he waits for an important and long overdue call. What a fool he is…expecting enlightenment via his telephone, while employed to work on high-level number-crunching.

Gilliam finds exactly the right balance of uneasy comedy (David Thewlis makes a terrific job supervisor) and heartbreak in this future of corporate brainwashing and philosophical ennui, where colourful street furniture masks cod-Orwellian commerce. The fearlessly optimistic Qohen meets his match in a femme fatale, Bainsley (Mélanie Thierry,
Babylon A.D.
), who is not simply the distracting sexpot that she first appears in frolics on a VR beach where the Sun never sets. She might offer salvation for finally despondent Q, if he chooses to emerge from a denial-of-hiding in his secret head-trip. Tilda Swinton is good fun as Q’s unhelpful interactive Dr Shrink program: “I couldn’t help but notice this young lady’s pathological attempt to project upon you her daddy issues of abandonment.”

In the end,
TZT
winds down into a morbid whimsy, typical of Gilliam’s artistic leanings, but at least it steers away from a poetic descent into the galactic-doomsday black hole. Despite everything, the grace note is one of renewed hope, not oblivion.

“Put him down as a ‘maybe’.” Richard Ayoade conjures up some fabulous imagery for
THE DOUBLE
(DVD/Blu-ray, 4 August), a black-comedy updating of Dostoevsky’s 150-year-old novella. In a dingy, spooky otherworld, office worker Simon (rising star Jesse Eisenberg,
Zombieland
,
Social Network
,
Now You See Me
, and soon-to-be Lex Luthor in
Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice
) acquires a doppelganger – James – after witnessing a suicidal jumper. Although introverted Simon can only spy on and clumsily approach neighbour Hannah (Mia Wasikowska,
Alice in Wonderland
,
Only Lovers Left Alive
), manipulative extrovert James finds usurping poor Simon’s entire life an easy game of charismatic one-upmanship and mischievous karma.

With a photocopying leitmotif in this clerical/business universe of disposable non-people, the identity crisis prompted by nice simple Simon’s alter-ego-plus plays like an inspired Kafkaesque version of
Shatterday
, while the shifting mood and time-warped identikit-period trappings are a designer tribute to Gilliam’s evocative
Brazil
.

Eisenberg does well in his dual role, while duelling verbally with his escalating fetch (“I’d like to think I’m pretty unique.” We all would!), and the varied supporting cast – including veteran Wallace Shawn – bring plenty of balancing joviality to what might have been a suffocatingly bleak outlook. In the end, as its genre themes solidify from the nightmarish despair of quantum paradox into homicidal reality, and the amusing oddities evaporate into strong-measurement finality, this is a psychological thriller of a captivating style over familiar rom-com content. Thankfully it’s not too predictable, but
The Double
’s drama of oppositional personality and body-snatcher takeover has a lurking sense that Ayoade is a haunted director who is still struggling to fully outgrow his creative influences.

With its fenced-in and stratified post-WW
3
society in Chicago,
DIVERGENT
(DVD/Blu-ray, 11 August) presents a teen fantasy of quasi-dystopia; a retroactive brave new world where citizen graduate Beatrice chooses to join the faction of action instead of her parents’ caregiver bloc. The first rule of fight club is: rules change. Poor re-named Tris finds that being Dauntless is thankless, and not a glamour profession. Like some kind of social polymath, our heroine has no trouble adapting to psych-out 101 testing, but her boyfriend/trainer and her classmates begin to suspect Tris of being different, and that’s not allowed.

As if re-combining DNA themes sampled from his previous genre movies –
The Illusionist
and
Limitless
– director Neil Burger tackles plot elements of romantic social climbing and eclectic individuality versus artificially-maintained conformity, for sci-fi drama about diversity that demonstrates the usefulness of anarchic thinking, without too-eagerly suggesting that outlaw behaviour is necessary.
Divergent
clearly attempts to bridge the demographic gap between
Harry Potter
and
Hunger Games
. But, as it’s a formulaic thriller where arguments are settled with guns, and the production meets the requirements as a typical franchise starter (casting Kate Winslet fulfils the criteria for a British villain), there’s much bitter irony in the movie’s lack of any high ground – as political commentary or genre satire.
Divergent
is no more or less torturously silly, as SF, than that
Hunger Games
malarkey, but it remains horribly sad that the best, if perhaps not the only, way to ensure a modicum of success for an origin story of young and restless rebels against the new orthodoxy has an utterly conventional approach to storytelling and morality that amounts to following a tired, trite Hollywood template.

A sequel,
Insurgent
, directed by Robert Schwentke, is due out in March 2015.

The feature-debut of filmmaker Ruairi Robinson,
LAST DAYS ON MARS
(Blu-ray/DVD, 18 August) suggests that finding fossilised bacteria on the red planet could not/would not provide sufficient entertainment value for any sci-fi drama. This is a movie that respects only a hyperbolic degree of conflict. It is a basic hack of
Alien
DNA with John Carpenter’s
Ghosts of Mars
spliced into its helix for a Martian zombies horror.

Captain Brunel (Elias Koteas) leads the Aurora mission – an international crew of explorers/sample-gatherers ranging from Tantalus base, to discover what is under the ground on Mars. When a microbial life-form infects the least cautious astronauts, Canadian Brunel’s command dissolves with his rapid mutation in the labs, and a loss of humanity becomes the principal focus of this too-earnest drama’s version of cross-genre clichés (such as
The Incredible Melting Man
, 1977).

Despite the astute casting of Briton Olivia Williams as nominal heroine Kim, in a Ripleyesque role, it’s Liev Schreiber’s American hero Campbell who’s destined to be the last man standing for a desperate escape from the surface. Oddly, this movie (co-produced by the BFI with some Irish funding) of undead violence on a world of blood and dust is based on a rather obscure short story, ‘The Animators’ (1975) by Sydney J. Bounds. Although nightfall on Mars helps to generate a palpable atmosphere of dread in the hellish darkness of dust-storms and habitat power-failures, this UK production rejects the hard-SF affect of
Gravity
, opting for overly-emotional scenes that damage the potential for character-based intrigues of what might have been another neat little genre mystery to rival Duncan Jones’ cult favourite
Moon
.

Still, I should not quibble. It’s great to see a homegrown science fiction/horror that is based on an existing (albeit old and forgotten) story instead of just another (
Star Wars
/
Trek
) remake or sequel, wasting enormous budgetary resources on trite action sequences and uselessly revamped 1960s–1970s genre icons. Many more adaptations of SF literature – such as Banks’
Culture
and Asher’s
Polity
– are required urgently for a new space-opera boom, so it’s well worth supporting such efforts as
LDOM
(despite its flaws and overbearingly hysterical tone) to show Hollywood’s bigwigs what’s really welcome. There are thousands of short stories and hundreds of novels to choose from so a radical change of source material for new SF cinema is long overdue. Why are we still waiting?