CONTORTED PASTA

We figure out WHY that is, through Lords and Ladies, and through Maskerade and especially and above all through Carpe Jugulum: it’s because she’s always been bad at people, at liking and interacting with people, and she’s lonely, and afraid of her own power, and afraid not only that people dislike her and hold her in contempt but (and this is the worst part) that they’re RIGHT to do so, and she’s never allowed herself to rely on or connect with anybody and she doesn’t TRUST anybody to have her back.

From this surprisingly excellent* Tumblr thread which starts off examining the Vimes/Carrot relationship and then Goes Places. Anyway for those wondering how my identification with Granny Weatherwax could be a negative thing, there you go, an objective perspective.

I am going to add at least a few of the Witches books to my reading list (not quite YA, but I think I can handle them) as I've had a yen for Maskerade for months now, and a professional interest in Witches Abroad. It had always been my least favourite Discworld subseries, not because of any intrinsic fault but just because I didn't really get them, the same way as the others; I think I am old enough now, and British enough, to find a way in that was closed to me before.

*Only surprising because it's on Tumblr; Discworld fans are reliably excellent anywhere they go.

I've been sick this week. It's the third cold in as many months, which is very frustrating, but what can you do? Turns out the answer is sleep. I have slept for about four days. I guess I needed it.

When I came home with a bad cold last year, I discovered the tremendous practical use of television: It is sufficiently interesting to keep me in bed doing nothing, i.e. resting, without requiring as much cognitive effort as reading, which is often beyond my decongestant-fogged brain. Last year I imbibed The Terror; this year I indulged the opportunity to catch up on the BBC's new rendition of the first part of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials.

I remember when the first book came out. It was at the crest of the wave of post-Harry Potter YA Fantasy. I listened to the audiobook back in those days when I had a tape deck at my desk but not a computer. It wasn't notably satisfying and left me a bit hollow, but was a fun dark adventure that kept me on task, and was better than a lot of the YA fantasy audiobooks I was listening to around that time. Eventually I consumed the other two in the series, but the last one put me off. Pullman was the YA Fantasy representative of the secular humanist cabal making a lot of noise post-9/11 (Richard Dawkins being the loudest) and his books were blatantly trying to be the anti-Narnia for a new, enlightened, Godless generation. This was fine as a premise for the series, but by the third book he had managed to get more evangelical than C.S. Lewis ever was. The preachiness of the last book rather soured my taste for the whole series and I didn't read (or listen to) it again.

My curiosity was piqued by the new TV adaptation, which aired shortly after I left for my Antarctic adventure. I was pleased to find it was still available on the iPlayer when I got back to the UK, so I watched it between naps as I tried to sleep off this cold. It has been probably fifteen years since I was familiar with the books, so I cannot comment as to the faithfulness of the adaptation, but it held on to what little I remember both in storyline and atmosphere, and it was a thoroughly admirable production on all fronts even if the approach to polar architecture broke my suspension of disbelief. Despite the excellent performances and wonderfully executed production, though, I was still left with that empty feeling – it was a grand adventure, but nothing much stayed with me, and in marked contrast to The Terror, even in my susceptible state I didn't much care about any of the characters. Why was such an obstensibly philosophical story so devoid of lasting impact?

It seems to have percolated a bit in my sleep since finishing it, and I woke this morning feeling like I'd figured something out.

In order to understand what I'm getting at, you need to be at least passingly familiar with the premise and basic storyline of The Northern Lights, first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy:

( A Story Rundown with Necessary Spoilers )

( And so, what I think is missing ...  )

So once again I find I have been spoiled by Terry Pratchett, who is much better both at storytelling and proselytising for secular humanism, in part because he knows how to show, not tell, and abstains from lecturing the reader. Pullman can't even make the defence that he's writing for children, because one of Pratchett's best deconstructions of organised religion is the Bromeliad trilogy, which is openly aimed at younger readers. The sneaky thing about Terry Pratchett is that, in the midst of tearing down codified belief systems, he nevertheless provides worldly wisdom and teaches the reader how to be a better person, something Philip Pullman leaves hanging. Will there ever be a high-value TV miniseries adaptation of a Pratchett book, that takes itself as seriously as His Dark Materials? There have been a few attempts, but the essence tends to get lost in translation. Someday, maybe. We can but hope.

Someone on Tumblr asked me if I'd listened to the recent radio dramatisation of Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. I have – the first episode at least – and if you wish to do so you'd better hurry up because it expires tomorrow evening (UK time): Episode 1 / Episode 2

Le Guin's own story is intriguing, what little I know if it, and the trails for the drama sounded interesting; the promotional image was of two people manhauling across a frozen waste, so with that and it being a drama on Radio 4 I was as a moth to the flame.

I think I might have tried reading A Wizard of Earthsea (which has also had a BBC dramatisation) when I was a teenager – I definitely remember trying a few highly recommended fantasy novels at one time and not being able to get into any of them. The memory which stands out most was dropping out after five pages of Dragonriders of Pern when the internal screaming got louder than the words. It's your world's analogue to a year, just call it a year! Why are you capitalising so many random nouns? Most fantasy to me felt like drowning in worldbuilding, a lot to keep track of with nothing to hold onto, no emotional life ring or a foothold on something I knew.

I'm more than twice the age now, have done a lot of reading in the meantime, and have made an effort to try to understand and appreciate the unfamiliar and initially distasteful, so I thought I'd give it another try. Unfortunately the old familiar drowning feeling came right back. I tried to soldier through, appreciating the production and ideas at least, and I think I got all the way to the end, but couldn't make myself go for Episode 2. I'm really sorry.

Of course I had to keep picking at it; I had to figure out why this turned me off so much when it ostensibly has a lot in common with other things I like. An idea I had in college came back to me, that speculative fiction really ought not to be divided into Sci-Fi and Fantasy (the boundary between which is famously subjective) but rather Fantasy With One Foot In Reality (Bipedal Fantasy, for short) and Wholecloth Fantasy, which is an entirely distinct universe with at most a passing nod at our own. Whether it's set in a quasi-medieval Arcadia or a hyperfuturistic space station, a story tends to be either tethered to our own reality or completely free-floating.

All the fantasy I like is Bipedal:
Watership Down is a book about another society, with its own rules, mythology, and vocabulary, but it happens to be made up of ordinary rabbits in ordinary Hampshire (which, admittedly, is a fantasy world to a five-year-old in San Diego) and the familiar pokes through often enough it never feels very foreign.
Redwall is set in another world, but with familiar furniture – it could be the same world as Wind in the Willows, Beatrix Potter, or Disney's Robin Hood – and in the early books at least it is not magical.
Harry Potter is magical, but has one foot planted in our everyday reality; most of the books start at the Dursleys', and Harry comes to the magical world with a relatable Muggle frame of reference. We only start losing the lifeline to our reality when the wizarding world has become a second home, and even that alternate reality plays off what we find ordinary.
The Dark Is Rising is very similar, and while its magical world is less of a riff on the nonmagical one, it keeps one foot in each world much more consistently than Harry Potter does.
Discworld is set in another world, and is magical, but it is plainly our world reflected in a funhouse mirror. Its thematic and satirical aspects are the foot it has in reality, and the characters it uses to illustrate its high-concept side are fully relatable human beings (for a given value of human).
Ray Bradbury's writing also uses its satirical side to ground us in a familiar reality, often the quintessential 1950s suburban ideal or stereotypical mid-century image of The Future.
Fatherland, being Alternate History, depends upon on our knowledge of WWII, but being twenty years down another leg of the Trousers of Time, maintains a certain distance. The power of its ending comes in part from its swinging back around to connect with our reality.

The Left Hand of Darkness' idea of gender-shifting humanoids is fascinating and opens all sort of narrative and philosophic opportunities, but I felt like I got more juice out of the Dwarf Feminism subplot in Discworld, and especially Monstrous Regiment's illustration of 'People are people' – the characters in Left Hand of Darkness seemed to spend more time explaining the implications of gender fluidity and how their society and relationships were structured around it than they did being people. Wouldn't it have been more effective to make us know and love the characters and then find out their species' quirk?

It's personal taste, of course. I know there are lots of people who are over the moon about Le Guin and her ilk, and I can see why if I step far enough back from myself. I wish I had that capacity for falling headlong into Wholecloth Fantasy, but my imagination is, as Professor Trelawney would say, 'hopelessly mundane.' I don't wish to tell them they're wrong, only explain where I'm coming from in a way that makes some systemic sense. Does it?

Oh boy, you guys, you'd better have a lot of busy work to do because I have a bumper basket of radio fun for you!

First, because it is slightly out of date and expiring soon but still worth listening, is Radio 4's Brand* new live orchestral dramatisation of A Christmas Carol! The Hale Centre Theatre's original production of the story was a big part of my childhood Christmases and some of the narration is more Christmas scripture to me than the words of Luke, so it was nice to hear it again, and with such a lush musical setting. It's as relevant now as it was in 1843, so listen with a modern perspective and marvel ...
*get it, because it's the work of Neil Brand, ahaha

Next is the much anticipated dramatisation of Good Omens, a fittingly apocalyptic tale for Christmastime, or the new year as the case may be. Inevitably there are things I'd have done differently, but in contrast to most of the other radio Pratchetts, there were no moments of 'ARGH you have completely missed the point of this character/moment/scenario!' so well done, Dirk Maggs et al.

Speaking of Radio Pratchetts, Small Gods is rerunning on R4x. It does have moments of argh, despite Mr Brooks' excellent adaptation, though thankfully none on the part of Mr Prekopp's pitch-perfect Brutha or Mr Jennings' chillingly faithful Vorbis.

It's Prekoppalooza on Radio 4 Extra as they're also rerunning the phenomenal Radio Gormenghast, or as they call it, A History of Titus Groan, in which he plays Steerpike, who could not be less like Brutha. The production design of the TV adaptation is imprinted on my brain and the radio adaptation is much better written and directed, so it's a very rich experience for me – your mileage may vary but I heartily recommend a listen anyway; it is objectively one of the best radio dramas I've heard and they don't rerun it nearly often enough.

And then of course there's CABIN PRESSURE!!

If you are a stranger to it and have been wondering what all the fuss has been about recently, R4x is rerunning it from the top just for you. You can listen to Abu Dhabi to start, and the rest of Series 1 will be turning up weekly, so you can give it a try risk-free for 30 days. I really can't say enough wonderful things about this show, though goodness knows I've given it the old college try this past month or so.

If you do know what the fuss is about and have somehow missed the finale, or want to listen again but lost the link and the ability to Google, or are just easily suggestible, here are Zurich Part 1 and Part 2. If you are one of the above people who have not heard the show yet I do not recommend listening to the finale before you've finished the rest of the shows because it's very much a progression sort of thing.

And if you're in the mood for something more serious, or are fed up with the pitch of reporting on the Charlie Hebdo massacre, today's Any Questions has some really excellent discussion both of Muslims in Europe and freedom of expression.

Mort on Radio 4 Extra

I'm not the biggest fan of the radio Pratchett adaptations – I've blathered about this in the past and will refrain from doing so now – but thanks to so many things I've heard in the meantime, this one is especially hard to get into. MORT! Starring Inspector Xavier March, 'Atch' Atkinson, and every secondary baddie from Bleak Expectations. It's just surreal.

Speaking of Atch, I don't even really imagine him sounding like Carl Prekopp anymore, thanks to indoctrination into 'gruff, monosyllabic' 'canon' Atch and distance from the radio play ... and Carl Prekopp, I don't know if he actually was much younger when they recorded this or if they just sped his voice up a little, but wow does he sound young.

What did I say about blathering?

Anyway, episode one is only valid till Wednesday, and the others drop off sequentially after that, so get on it if you feel like listening ...

I frequently find myself trying to describe the charms of Radio 4 to the poor deprived masses of NPR listeners, and one of the things I frequently land on as an example is this: Radio 4 is the only radio station that has a sitcom ... SET IN HELL.

If you are one of the people I have pitched it to, well, now's your chance to hear what I was talking about:

OLD HARRY'S GAME: SERIES 1
BBC7 (or 'Radio 4 Extra' as the hepcats down at BBCHQ are calling it these days) is rerunning it from Episode 1 – I don't know if they're planning to run through all six existing series but I hope it's a ramp-up to Series 7 starting on 4. New episodes air Fridays at 11pm BST/3pm PDT.

Aside from all its brilliance, this show has forever spoiled The Screwtape Letters for me – I was familiar with it well before reading the book and my greatest impression remains the disappointment that it was not Old Harry's Game. They do much the same thing, especially starting with Series 2 when the motive to the plot is that Hell is overcrowding so Satan has to try to convince (or trick) Humanity to be more virtuous, but Mr Hamilton does it with so much more humour and entertainment value and so much less bludgeoning about the head with a moral plank.

Incidentally, the voice of Satan (Andy Hamilton) is who I would cast as the Great God Om in Small Gods, and Thomas (Jimmy Mulville) is who I hear in my head when I read Moist. It may be best not to think this while listening to the show, though.

We interrupt our non-stop in-your-face high-octane Action Polar Marathon to bring you a delightful new thingy in the world of Discworld fandom:

GLOM OF NIT!
Written and drawn by LJ's very own Raisegrate, it's a web comic about various goings-on at the Post Office counter. There are only three comics so far, but they've all been good, and what's more, there are plans. Yes, plans!

I have maintained Chocolat as my personal (if partial) Going Postal soundtrack for some time now, mostly due to this track being so totally Moist:

Bet you thought you'd never see Discworld drawings from me again! (I admit, I thought it...)



( A Couple Night Watch Doodles )

In completely unrelated news, I also wen to RenFaire! Wooo!

When one is in the middle of reading Night Watch, some images are more unexpected than others.

BBC News: Day in Pictures - find image number two.