Books: The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde (2003)

In the third Thursday Next novel, we see that our favorite LiraTech –still longing for her eradicated husband, all while being pursued by Hades sister, Aornis - is taking a much-needed vacation inside Caversham Heights, a never-published detective novel inside the Well of Lost Plots. It is also a good place to be while waiting for her child to be born. As a cover, she must pretend to be the character she is replacing. In the book, she encounters two Generics, students of St Tabularasa's, who have yet to be assigned to a book, and DCI Jack Spratt, a detective who partners with her in investigating a murder. Stil under the apprenticeship with Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, Thursday continues her struggle Yorrick Kaine - a fictional character (from Lost in a Good Book) - loose in real world, but another person from the real world has entered the BookWorld and is working with Kaine that could destroy the entire Well of Lost Plots.

While perhaps the weakest of the three so far, the book is still a fairly brilliant parody of book publishing, about reading and writing. It also takes a swipe at readers who seem to enjoy reading the same formulaic plot over and over again (the “works” of James Patterson come to mind, along with every romance novel ever written). And like the first two, Fforde leaves a lot of character development out, with the exception of Thursday of course, in favor of clever puns, bad jokes and silly humor. And as any longtime reader would enjoy, the idea of interacting with the characters of your favorite books is an altogether brilliant idea.

Its Fforde’s unrelenting creativity that drives these books, and I look forward to see what is up his sleeve, hoping that the novels don’t get as formulaic as he makes fun of in this volume.

Books: The Passage by Justin Cronin (2010)

For me, the biggest issue I had with Justin Cronin’s apocalyptic novel, The Passage, was I could not get emotionally attached to any of the characters. He starts out with a good idea, and spends 250 pages setting it all up, and then just as the novel appears to really kick in, it falls off a massive cliff and only recovers –somewhat - towards the latter half. What’s in between is nothing but bland, undefined characters –mostly like the red shirt security guards on the original run of Star Trek – who you really can feel nothing for.

The Passage begins around 2018, and lays the ground work for what later would be a post-apocalyptic world that is overrun by vampire-like beings that are infected by a highly contagious virus. What begins as a project (NOAH, one the many Bible references throughout the novel) to develop a new immunity-boosting drug based on a virus carried by an unnamed species of bat in South America eventually becomes the virus that transforms the world. Then the novel jumps ahead more than ninety years later as colonies of humans attempt to live in a world filled with superhuman creatures who are continually on the hunt for fresh blood.

One of the reasons I stopped reading Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series was due to the 50 million characters he introduced (well that, and the I got bored). And like Jordan’s characters, most, if not all of the ones featured here, are one dimensional at best, and at times, I could not tell one from the other. The all seemed…so disposable.

The only potentially interesting character is Amy, yet she is strangely underused here (but that may change, as I’ve learned this is the first book in a proposed trilogy). And while I tried to like the characters, like teenage Caleb, I never felt any emotional attachment to him (which is unusual for me). And as for the colony –which resembles in structure Brian Matthews 2005 novel New Wilderness – Cronin seems to go out of his way to make it the most boring thing.

The novel is also about 400 pages too long, and is filled with a bunch of needless, often pointless scenes. I suppose, maybe, Cronin needs this stuff, cause it might pop up in books 2 and three (due, apparently, in 2012 and 2014), but right now, it all seems just filler between the first 250 pages, and the last 100 or so.

As I write this, I scratch my head and search my brain to figure out why this book was so hugely popular last summer when it came out in hard cover and why it appeared on so many Top 10 lists for 2010. It’s not well written, and nowhere near approaches the classic end-of-the-world novels like The Stand, On the Beach, or The Road. It fails to scare and, what I consider its biggest flaw, it fails for the reader to care about anyone.

Doctor Who back for a 7th season/series; just when will they air?

After initially picking up Doctor Who for a seventh (or series) season, the BBC has let it know that the show will either take a break in 2012, with limited number of episodes (possibly mirroring 2009's set-up), or not return at all until 2013, which will be the long-running franchises 50th Anniversary year.

Michael Hinman, who runs Airlock Alpha, wrote that "The economy has wreaked havoc on television, especially those that depend on government-style assessments like the BBC. Because of that, there was a lot of speculation that the BBC would take a year off, like it did in 2009, airing 'Doctor Who' specials instead of a full season."

Right now, the BBC has been tight-lipped on what exactly will happen with the 14 episodes they've ordered. Could they skip what has now become an annual Christmas Special? While story line dictated this years episode split, could the BBC air 6 or 7 episodes in 2012 (or less), and broadcast the rest in 2013? Or, because 2013 is the shows Golden Anniversary, could they be planning an expanded season?

All of this, or course, is speculation. Until the BBC says something, we'll all have to except the fact that beyond this current season, 14 more episodes will be made with Matt Smith at the helm as the Doctor.

Books: Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (2002)

In the second adventure of literary detective Thursday Next, author Jasper Fforde expands his alternate universe of 1985 by laying another reality within it, the Jurisfiction. Housed in the Great Library, the Jurisfiction organization fights against everything from vicious creatures that eat vocabulary, to rowdy groups, who travel through fiction trying to eliminate obscenity and profanity from it.

Off her triumph of defeating Hades, and making the ending of Jane Erye better for most people, she becomes a celebrity. Of course, The Goliath Corporation rules with an iron fist, and it becomes clear that Thursday cannot tell the truth. She also finds out that someone is trying to kill her by using a string of coincidences. When a new Shakespeare play, long thought lost, pops up, which causes all sorts of political maneuvering due to an election that is up coming, Thursday’s life becomes even more complicated, as someone within Goliath has eradicated her husband, Landen. And then, of course, her ChronoGuard father informs her that the world will end on Thursday afternoon.

So, in the end, all her other issues become moot because of this.

Like the first book, Lost in a Good Book is a triumph of prose and imagery over character, thus a lot of the characters are not that well drawn out, with the exception of Thursday and the hoot of woman Mrs. Havisham from Charles Dickens classic novel Great Expectations. The concept of “book jumping” is clever, and allows fictional characters to interact with real people. Thus when Mrs. Havisham gets into a car, it’s a delight to read an 18^th century spinster becoming a hazard to other citizens.

There are a lot of great notions in this world, which is great on one hand, but it’s at the cost of characterization of the other people. They do -these people - interesting things, but are not interesting people. Does that make sense?

Books: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (2001)

In an alternate verison of 1985 England, we meet Thursday Next, a LiteraTec ("literary detective") and the hero of Jasper Fforde’s entertaining, often funny The Eyre Affair.

In this alternate universe, literature and art are everything. There are gang wars between followers of surrealism and impressionism, and where Baconians fight an endless war to prove Shakespeare never wrote a letter, let alone some of the greatest plays the world of literature has ever seen.

Also, speaking of wars, the Crimean War continues into its 131st year -even though over that time, maybe only 8 or 9 was any actual battle going. Thursday’s brother Anton died during one of those years, which colors her relationship with an old boyfriend who was with her brother when he died, and who sort of sold him out during an inquiry.

And time-travelers routinely play havoc with history, one who includes Thursday's father.

Anyways, a former tutor of Thursday, one Acheron Hades, has become a monstrous super-villain, who would not be out of place with James Bond’s notorious Ernst Blofeld or Doctor Who’s The Master. So Hades has stolen the original manuscript of Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, and in this universe, they can alter books by adding new story elements or taking characters out of the book.

But when Hades learns that Thursday’s uncle has created a Prose Portal, a device similar (I guess) to Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodeck, the larger-than-life villain sets his sights on the heroine of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Erye.

While marketed as mainstream literature, Fforde’s novel is more sci fi/fantasy along the lines of Douglas Adams, with a lot of Monty Python added to keep the comedy from getting too sophisticated. The Eyre Affair is chock-full of literary references and in-jokes, though I assume even though reading Jane Eyre is not required, it might be useful to have read it.

In the end, though, its an entertaining romp, even if its not original. Fforde’s prose is sparse, and this does, at times, cause a confusion when trying to keep the large cast of characters in order, but its smart comedy for people who love literature, but not too deep that fans of popular fiction would turned off by it.

Pennywise Lives

Books: A Dark Matter by Peter Straub (2010)

While Stephen King and Peter Straub write completely different styles of horror, they are obsessed with growing up in the 50s and the 1960s. Both me have written many books set in that period, or have stories set in the present, but have many roots in those halcyon years. Straub admitted the idea for A Dark Matter came out of the turbulent 1960s, set in the college town of Madison, Wisconsin (Straub was raised in Milwaukee).

The tale is about a charismatic and cunning man named Spenser Mallon who is a campus guru in 1966, where he’s attracted the devotion - and sometimes sexual favors- of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body—and the shattered souls of all who were present.

Straub told the FLAMES RISING web site that the book “evolved out of a desire I had to think about the various sages and gurus I had seen pass through Madison. I think there were three altogether; at least, I witnessed the actions and behaviors of three of these gents. They were all articulate, interesting, and predatory. Almost all of what they said was nonsense, but they did get a bunch of kids to look into the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I started to wonder: what might happen if one of these sleazy wisdom-merchants did actually reveal a portion of the Other World, the World Unseen, in the course of a home-made ritual.”

Anyways, years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier.

More psychological thriller than horror of his early (a trend Straub started back in the 80s) works, the novel is also very literate –very unusual in this genre. Still, despite many things that work – a shifting character perspectives, nested flashbacks, a story that spans four decades, and an attractive, if not somewhat charming cast – the novel takes way too long to kick in. Why spend 500 pages talking, investigating and going on and on about a single event and then, somehow, make that event not really matter?

Straub is a rare writer, able to write some great fiction with heart, believable people and layer it with great words that can inspire a reader. So while A Dark Matter is a good read, it falters when it comes to actually being what I had hoped it would be.

Three, two, one

What some "Wizards" do between set-ups

Doctor Who: 6.4: The Doctor's Wife

Writer Neil Gaiman’s long delayed The Doctor’s Wife put the series back on track after last week’s mixed bag of history, pirates and killing off Rory, again.

While not connected to the season arc –though we get some references to it – this episode, none the less, is a shining example of when you put a high caliber writer at the helm. The episode is imaginative, engaging and heart breaking.

The Doctor receives a distress cube from a Time Lord (this is a throwback to the last story Patrick Troughton’s second Doctor had, The War Games), and sets the coordinates to a “bubble” universe where the TARDIS lands on a mysterious planet, a junk pile if you will. Almost immediately, the TARDIS shuts down, its matrix ripped out. Trapped, the Doctor Rory and Amy encounter two humans named Auntie and Uncle and an Ood named Nephew. They also encounter a woman named Idris , who fawns all over the Doctor. While Auntie and Uncle lock Idris up, the Doctor discovers where the Time Lord distress signals are coming from when he encounters a cabinet full of hypercubes; House, the supercomputer that they landed on, has been luring Time Lords into the “bubble” universe for eons.

The Doctor realizes that House ripped out the TARDIS matrix so he could take it over and bring himself into the real universe.

To go on would spoil what has to be one the best episodes in last two seasons of the show, a hugely satisfying “fairy tale,” wrapped in a science fiction plot with all the cast –including a brilliant performance from Suranne Jones – at their height. It's also a valentine to long time fans of the show, and will give new viewers a chance to understand the long mythology that sometimes hinder any long running show.

There is also a prophecy at the end: "The only water in the forest is the river."

Books: Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigation: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. Bennett (2011)

The Department of Temporal Investigations (DTI) exists to keep the timeline secure. Agents Lucsly and Dulmur (characters first introduced in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode Trials and Tribble-ations) have investigated many incidents of time travel and alternate realities within the Federation. But when a series of events threatens their current timeline and someone starts erasing people from history, the DTI agents find themselves up against a future adversary with an unknown agenda.

The novel, which also sometimes reads like a bunch of short stories, details Lucsly and Dulmur’s first meeting and subsequent partnership with in DTI. It also weaves a vast number of known time travel adventures from all of the Star Trek series. I recognized all of these instance, and was rather impressed with the level of detail that went into integrating them into the story.

There’s a lot of temporal physics in this story, and it sometimes can be overwhelming, however, there is still plenty of action, drama and comedy to keep any fan of Star Trek and time travel stories (which I love) turning the page.

It’s fun read, and fun way to see author Christopher Bennett sew 40 plus years of Star Trek TV shows (including the animated series) into a huge (sometimes complex) tapestry. It's also fun to see him close the book, as it were, on the Temporal Cold War that figured in Star Trek: Enterprise's first 2 seasons.