author – Page 5 – Triple Take

Nebula Project: Rendezvous with Rama

The Nebula Project returns from hiatus with a guest panelist (K’s husband Bob, able to, among other things, provide a male perspective) and a discussion of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.

In the 22nd century, humans have spread out all over the Solar System, colonizing everywhere from Mercury to the moons of the gas giants. But in spite of their expansion, the fabled ‘space drive’ has still eluded scientists and many believe it’s not even possible to construct. All is thrown into question by the appearance of a strange object which enters the Solar System on a course to swing around the sun. The object is clearly artificial — the work of another race. The spaceship Endeavour is the only ship within range of its projected path and thus its crew is given the task of making contact with the object, now named “Rama”, and attempting to collect as much information as possible before its path goes too close to the sun for humans to follow. Though the collective governments of the various human settlements are excited by this unprecedented arrival, they are also quite nervous: is Rama a threat? The Endeavour crew will need to try and discover that as well.

J: I’d read some Arthur C. Clarke when I was a teenager. I thought Rendezvous with Rama would be easy to read and interesting. But.. not so much. My overall impression after having read it is that it would’ve made a far more interesting short story.

B: I could certainly see this being adapted to a short story form, although it would mean cutting some things out. And you could probably cut out things like the lengthy explanations of the politics of the situation, or some of the background technologies that could have just been left for granted. But I actually kind of appreciate having them there, even it means the story progresses at a glacial pace.

K: It definitely does progress at a glacial pace. But I actually did like that: I agree with J that the story could easily have been shortened, but it would have ended up a much different story in that case. It was clear that Clarke had given a lot of thought to what technologies might be found in this environment and why and he wanted to get across very clearly the issues that humans were going to encounter when attempting to understand a completely alien species with nothing but a single (very large) artifact from which to draw conclusions. So I felt like the pace was justified, and I didn’t find it too boring. Slow, but not boring. Though I also had a hard time shaking a feeling of forboding; it really really read in parts like a horror novel, and I couldn’t help but keep waiting for something inexplicably awful to happen.

J: If the characters had been.. actual characters, I wouldn’t have minded so much. I guess I’m just not into the ‘explore this strange thing’ as the main driving point of a novel.

B: The characters were fairly generic, I will give you that. They did not go far beyond the archetypes they were modeled after, other than little personal touches like the captain’s multiple families, that engineer guy’s religious background, and so forth. But expanding on K’s point, not only did Clarke go to great lengths to write about the challenges of exploring an alien environment, he also spent a lot of time on the background challenges as well — getting the approval of governments, getting funding, maintaining public support… I cannot think of many examples of stories that go that far into the depth of the situation. It comes at the expense of interesting characters, certainly, but if you can get past that, there is a lot there that is still interesting.

K: Yes, the characters were absolutely generic. Even though there were some passing efforts made at establishing a backstory for them, they didn’t add much, if anything, to the story. Things were just stated about them – such as the random existence of plural marriage – without explanation or context. I didn’t exactly want an infodump on the socioeconomic status of the Solar System, but if you’re going to bring up interesting social points, you shouldn’t just lob them out there and let them thunk on the ground without further attention. It was distracting. I spent a good amount of time trying to figure out things about the various planetary/colonial societies when that was neither the focus nor the purpose of the book.

J: I was definitely hoping to see these wives of the captain. Why they married him, since he’s such a jerk about it, writing them generic letters. And that, yea, I think it’s _one_ mention of these other two guys who are together and have a wife/girlfriend back home. Instead the guy who seems to get the most attention and screentime is the guy who flies around.

B: Well, Jimmy (of course his name was Jimmy) was just about the only character who saw any actual action. Everyone else mostly climbed up and down stairs, looked through telescopes, or cut into things. (Alright, I’m oversimplifying a little — there was a lot of background activity — but almost none of it was anything I would call action.) Also, until the very end, he is the only one who actually discovered anything concrete about Rama. It was his trip that really provided the most clues, by a large margin, about what Rama was actually doing out in space.Getting back to the sociopolitical info-dump for a second though, I think that was Arthur C. Clarke, Futurist, seeping through into the story. I read a bunch of other essays of his with much of the same kind of thing — in the future, there will be fewer social restrictions, buildings will be way sturdier, people will stop wearing clothing, etc. As far as what goes on in the story, though, you can pretty much ignore all of it.

K: That is interesting. I’ve not really read a great deal of his writing, so I just had this to go on, and I found it very difficult to pin down his views from here. (On social issues, that is.) On the one hand, societies which allow a man to have more than one wife are typically regressive and patriarchal. But here we also have the suggestion that women can have more than one husband — though he then sort of negates that by suggesting the guys may have come up with the idea and that they’re also bi. (Progressive in and of itself, but it doesn’t speak toward the status of women.) So there was progressiveness, but it wasn’t pervasive in all aspects of life. Judging just from this book alone, I can’t say I’m impressed with his future thoughts on the place of women in society. Yes, they are there on the ship – there’s even more than one – but their authority is either low or outside the general command structure. And there appears to be only one female scientist on the big Alien Encounter Council they convene (though for a few minutes I thought there would be zero, so at least we avoided that scenario.)

J: Yup. And his wives are both at (separate) homes taking care of the kids. Just a very typical arrangement, especially for a ship captain. He just happens to have two of them. Along with women, the society or societies if you want to call all the other planets/colonies that seemed also very white American/European. Despite calling it Rama, which we can discuss by itself, I only saw like one or two character names that could’ve been Indian or Asian. Even though it would’ve been dead simple to throw in names from all over. And for character descriptions, I don’t think he ever bothered to specify what race people were. At least for the most part.. my memory may be iffy here.

B: This book certainly does not come off as a shining example of progressive thinking, but it’s definitely farther than it could have been. If it were rewritten now, the captain would probably have been a woman with multiple husbands, and there would have been a greater diversity of ethnicities, genders and ages. Then again, he leaves so much to the imagination as far as the characters go, they really could have been any ethnicity, if not for their names. (Come to think of it, Jimmy’s last name, according to my five minutes of internet research to refresh my memory, is “Pak” — so his ethnicity could be debatable.) On the other hand, we are talking about a book from almost 40 years ago, so the progressive movement wasn’t as far along as it is now, so I’ll give him at least some credit there.

K: I definitely read Jimmy as of Asian ancestry of some sort. Perhaps because of the last name, or maybe it was even stated, I’m not sure. In any case, I think it’s true that most of the characters have so little information provided that there’s no reason they had to be white, though one might get the impression Clarke imagined them to be so. But I don’t think there’s any real proof either way. He was definitely far more interested in the thought experiment of the aliens.

J: Clarke had been living in Sri Lanka for more than 10 years by that point. Which makes me think he could’ve done a better job of making things appear global. From what little I know/remember of his other work, he is big on aliens. And on aliens that are more advanced than us. And the way those machines were eating things, it’s very easy to visualize this as an anime.

B: I definitely agree there: this is a story about humanity exploring an alien landscape. The actual representatives of humanity in the story are generic and forgettable — you can basically replace any of them with someone else and not affect the story in any significant way, as long as their actions are the same. But it’s all about human curiosity and the drive to investigate and understand everything trumping all of the forces that hold us back, like fear of the unknown, or fear of investing resources into pure science with no guarantee of a practical return. Really, the explorers in the story got nothing actually useful out of Rama — they didn’t bring back any new technologies, didn’t gain any really useful scientific knowledge — but the overall feeling from the story was that the trip was worth taking anyway.

K: Didn’t gain any immediate insights or scientific knowledge. I think it’s important to keep in mind that they didn’t expect to make any big breakthroughs while they were there; they weren’t equipped for it or trained. They were just collecting samples and data. And they did collect quite a bit of that. Of course, the book ends with the setup for the sequel, so I don’t know whether or not we get to see there scentific progress based on the fact that scientists now -know- this space drive is possible; that three legged creatures are a viable evolutionary branch; that organic machines are a way to achieve long-term space flight etc. etc.

J: It was surprising to me that the.. I think it was a xenoanthropologist? He just decided in the middle of the exploration that there wasn’t going to be anything of interest and wandered off to do whatever he usually did. Teach grad students or whatever. It wasn’t worth his time to sit and watch the exploration recordings and talk to his colleagues! Dude, just because there doesn’t appear to be any living sentient creatures doesn’t mean there isn’t things to study once it was clear it wasn’t a natural object. But anyway, at least some of the people thought they should be investigating it as a potential threat. And we humans love to investigate potential threats. We’ll commit all sorts of resources to that. Especially if it’s a potential imminent threat, and Rama was moving pretty quick.

B: Or assume that it is a threat, and try to blow it up — the good old 1% doctrine. Anyway, yeah, I guess I wasn’t thinking through all of the potential scientific benefits of the investigation, including the not-to-be-underestimated boost in support for science when people see what it is capable of when it is allowed to advance. That kind of goes along with other things I remember from the essays I read — how, for example, many inventions and technologies people use in their everyday lives came directly from technologies developed by NASA for the space program. The implication in the story was that if humanity had not been as active in space as it had been, there was no way we could have made it to Rama.

K: Or even been able to get a very good look at it from afar.

K: I did find it interesting that he spent a good bit of time during the first portion of the book talking about near-space collisions with asteroids and kind of attempting to justify why they might be looking for objects like Rama. Because scientists do that all the time nowadays, don’t they? It’s always in the news that some comet might have hit Earth but its trajectory will take it past without any issue. Was that started up after this book? Was it started because of this book?

J: I wouldn’t be surprised if Clarke was behind that somehow, if not this book in particular. It’s nice to think we’ll have the capability of blowing stuff up if we need to. Which I don’t think we currently do at the moment. So we’re watching for stuff, but we can’t do anything about it except shout ‘Duck!’.

B: I actually think I may have read something about near-earth objects in one of those essays as well, or I may just be imagining it, but I also wouldn’t surprised at all if Clarke was influential in getting that program going, at least by drawing attention to the need to have it. And of course, if you listen to scientists, they will tell you it is not a question of *if* we will one day have to contend with an actual planet-killing asteroid headed our way, but when. Not that listening to scientists is fashionable these days. But that is one of the reasons stories like this are good to have — because it’s one thing to say, “Science says we should be doing this,” but it’s another to create an interesting narrative that actually gives reasons why.

K: I suspect if you talked to the average person about planet-killing asteroids, they’d have more to say about Bruce Willis or Elijah Woods than Arthur C. Clarke.

K: It’s always interesting to me what sorts of bees authors get in their bonnets. Clarke obviously had several here: objects approaching Earth; a realistic scenario for an alien encounter (ie, one without any actual aliens); the way in which humanity may respond to perceived threats. But he also visited another trope none too dear to my heart. Yes, I’m afraid Rendezvous with Rama saw the return of the Perky Space Boobs. What the hell is the fascination with this idea?

J: It’s mandatory for any science fiction novel that takes place partly in space or low gravity. Though curiously you never see it mentioned on coverage of actual space missions. ‘Bill, please tell us what the astronauts are wearing.’ ‘Who cares? Look how perky those boobs are!’

K: It’s ridiculous! First, I sincerely doubt the ‘lift’ would be all that noticeable, and in practical terms most women wear something to keep them in one spot anyway. Seems to me men are far more likely to have something unrestrained to float around. But that never seems to be mentioned.

B: I’m going to refrain from analyzing this one, except to say that personally, I don’t care if this trope lives or dies.

J: I’ll bring it back to the name Rama then. All the Roman and Greek Gods were used up, so they moved to Indian ones. But that’s a living religion. Unless it’s not in the future of this book? I just can’t see people saying ‘Hey, here’s this weird thing coming. We’re up to J on the rotation. Shall we go for Judas or Jesus?’

K: Well, yes. Who do you think named it Jupiter? It wasn’t the Pope! It was the Romans trying to honor their god. So I don’t find the use of Rama incongruous at all.

J: Well, Jupiter is a big planet, which is hanging around. This is more on the order of an asteroid or comet that wandered by. I just think it’d make more sense to me if it was named after someone more minor. Or if it was Hindus doing the naming.

B: Well, since Christianity only has the one god, you wouldn’t want to go naming it Jehovah unless you want the name to have world-ending implications, so the nearest equivalent would be to pick from the names of angels, which would have seemed appropriate enough. But I honestly can’t say I know enough about Indian religions to judge just how appropriate Rama is as a name. My traditional five minutes of internet research when I do not know something has not brought me any closer to figuring it out, so I’m going to have to defer to people who know more about it.

K: I don’t think we’re given any indication that Indian astronomers were not part of the international body that decided on how to start naming these things. Though the Roman names won out for most of the planets, we still use many of the Arabic names for stars; the Chinese and the Indians had their own traditional names for the planets and stars and other visible objects, many of which were, surprise, the names of gods. I just really don’t find it to be disrespectful or outlandish. Maybe a Hindu person would disagree, but I really cannot make that call.

J: So there is a movie planned, right? I guess I’d be interested in seeing it. Though I hope it’s not as dull as 2001! I think I might have to wait for the DVD though. In case it is very dull. I can do something else while I watch it.

K: It might be more impactful on a big screen. Or 3D IMAX. It seems like the kind of movie that would be improved by increasing the sense of size.

B: It definitely has all of the components needed for a good movie. I’m sure it’d get the Hollywood treatment — lots of CGI, romantic subplots, more perky zero-G boobage — but I’d probably still be willing to give it a chance.

Nebula Project: The Gods Themselves

What follows is a spoiler laden discussion of the book The Gods Themselves. Beware if youâ€™re worried about such things.

In the late 21st century, humans were contacted by beings from another universe. These beings provided what looked to be the answer to Earth’s energy problems: an endless source of power with only minimal side-effects. A consequence of this development was the near canonization of the man who happened to be there when the contact was made, and many scientists (more worthy, at least in their own minds) resent this. Thus there is much to be gained by someone who can discover and prove that the “electron pump” is not nearly as perfect as it’s been made out to be.

K: We’ve both just finished The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, the next winner in our Nebula list. Considering Asimov’s relative fame, it’s about time he showed up in the list! As far as I can tell, this book is a stand-alone unrelated to any of the series he worked on. Its plot centers around something called the “Electron Pump”, which has been established recently on Earth as a pretty much limitless source of energy. The book is divided into three sections which all tell parts of the story but which are only pretty loosely tied to one another.

J: Yea, in a way it was like reading 3 short stories. Or maybe novelettes. Not sure how long they all were individually. It felt to me kind of like reading Connie Willis (only more boring), followed by James Tiptree, followed by hrm.. not really Samuel Delany, it wasn’t weird enough by half. In short, they were all quite different in tone, POV, plot, everything.

K: They were definitely longer than short stories. And I can’t really compare them to most of those authors, though I have to disagree with your assessment about their differences. Part 2 was definitely distinctly different, but parts 1 and 3 were very similar, even though they focused on different characters.

J: Oh, they were definitely fairly similar. But they didn’t fit the same pattern. Part 1 was ‘scientists blather on about something’. Part 3 was ‘living on the moon is weird’. It actually surprised me when they were on the moon. Was there any hint in part 1 that there were people living on the moon?

K: See, that’s not how I read part 1’s pattern. To me, part 1 was ‘academic infighting’. And part 3 was ‘academic infighting on the moon’. So they were the same, just the scenery was different. I can’t say as I had picked up in part 1 that there was a lunar colony, though, no.

J: Should we take this in sections and talk about part 1 first?

K: Let’s. So part 1 we have a young scientist who has managed to tick off Dr. Hallam, who has managed to accrue all of the credit for ‘inventing’ the “Electron Pump”. As a result he has enormous influence and can easily ruin careers. The young guy is understandably annoyed at this so decides he’s going to try and find a flaw in the Electron Pump and bring down Hallam.

J: If you say so. No, I mean, I followed the plot okay. It was just so dull. It was a lot of talking heads. Except once I think someone pulled an orange out of his pocket to eat it. And while it wasn’t quite ever ‘as you know, Bob’, it was darned close to that for most of the first few sections. And the only woman in the whole section was a ‘graduate student’. So, yay for being a graduate student. But she was only mentioned as someone’s date. And we never see her or anything. It briefly got interesting when they were talking to people on the other side of the pump, but I was quite ready to speed read my way through the rest of the book if it was going to go on like that. It seemed to be all idea and no substance.

K: I agree it was not interesting as presented. I thought the idea of the pump was interesting, and I had to read it a few times before I had that settled in my head, but the characters were indistinguishable from one another. Completely. Pete and Myron and Bill and Bob and whatever. In my head they were all nerds in white shirts with ties and pocket protectors. I was both annoyed and disappointed to see that Asimov’s imagination couldn’t stretch far enough to include any women among the scientists at all — I just skimmed through and couldn’t spot the graduate reference, but my feeling is she wasn’t a scientist at all but some kind of humanities student. But that’s it. The senator? A dude. The environmental activist? A dude.

J: I don’t think what she’s a graduate student in is ever stated or implied. So yea, I definitely wouldn’t give him any credit for making her a science student. He only gets points for not calling her a ‘coed’. And I had a hard time telling everyone apart too. Their characters were entirely defined by their relationship to this Pump idea. The scientific underpinnings of which I didn’t think about too hard. I trust Asimov to know his physics better than me. And if I wasn’t going to pick apart the science, then no reason to think about it too much. ;)

K: I suppose not. There’s plenty to pick apart otherwise. This whole section is meandering and unfocused; it seems to have two or three or even more primary purposes: One, to establish the history of the Electron Pump and how Dr. Hallam opportunistically came to power in scientific circles. Two, to float the possibility there may be soemthing wrong with the idea. Three, to engage in a confusing philosophical discussion of whether or not the entities in the para-Universe are smarter than humans or simply more technologically advanced. Four, to randomly talk about linguistic challenges. Five, to make you fall asleep. There were a lot of ideas packed in here which weren’t really given a chance to flourish — instead, they were all treated in the most cursory and boring way possible.

J: He did a good job on Five then! I have to say that Part 1, if it had been the entirety of the book, would’ve made me seriously question what the SFWA members were thinking when they nominated it, let alone voted it to win.

K: I’d have to agree with you there! Are you ready to move on to section 2?

J: Yup. Part 2 was just soooo much better. Not that it didn’t have things I take issue with. But at least it was interesting!

K: Part 2 was a big surprise for me, considering part 1. In part 2 we shift entirely to the para-universe and it suddenly starts feeling like a science fiction novel instead of something set in amongst present-day whiny scientists. There were definitely some issues I had with this section, but it fired the imagination in a way that neither part 1 nor part 3 did for me.

J: Yea, exactly. It was different. And that part of why it was different was it was doing interesting sex and gender stuff only helped make it interesting to me personally. As a bonus, I could like the characters.

K: I’m not sure if the characters were really three dimensional enough for me to like them, though I definitely was interested in them, and what they were going to do. I was also interested in their world, their species, and everything that was going on there. I liked the way Asimov tried to come up with a species that had three genders required for reproduction rather than just two; a lot of times authors will just throw the fact out there without actually explaining it. For me, that doesn’t work, because I have a difficult time imagining it. Here, we don’t have a lot of details, but enough to let you grasp the concept.

J: Not that I could adequately envision what they even looked like… Translucent blobs is the best I can come up with. I do take objection to which of the sexes he chose a male pronoun for and which the female. :P

K: That’s about what I came up with, though initially I had been confused by Asimov’s references to the ‘surface’ into thinking that they were living in water – hence my conflating them with jellyfish. By the end, it sounded more like they were living underground in some caves filled with air, but I still wasn’t positive. And, in fact, it didn’t really matter much. I think translucent, amorphus blob is enough.

K: And I also was annoyed by his assignment of genders. Even though he made up for it a little by having the ‘female’ be smart and brave, she was clearly depicted as being unusual; in fact the narrative makes a point of noting that the vast majority of “Emotionals”, as the females are called, are completely uninterested in anything useful beyond chattering and gossip.

J: And flirting/preening. I think the literal definition of female is the one who provides the egg. Which there didn’t seem to even be. Unless it was the Rational’s ‘seed’ that was the egg. In which case he should be the female. Either that or the incubator should’ve been the female. I don’t see how the catalyst or whatever she is would make her female. And yet.. that the two ‘males’ got together first and were flirting and whatnot was very appealing. So I would hate to have that go away by getting the pronouns more accurate.

K: Maybe, but I think here was very definitely a place where some new pronouns might have done some good. Since the assignment of ‘male’ and ‘female’ seemed otherwise arbitrary (Asimov does get points for giving the ‘Parental’ unit a male pronoun) and unrelated to our concepts of ‘male’ and ‘female’. Did he think he was being daring by having Dua, the female, essentially be the heroine of this section of the story? Would it have been different if Odeen, the intellectual male, had been an intellectual female instead, and Dua had been a male?

J: Definitely would’ve been different. Better, I dunno. There is at least one scene where Odeen’s telling her something about the para-universes and stuff and I’m thinking.. here we go again. Instead of ‘as you know, Bob’, it’s more of.. let me deliberately set someone up as the person who needs things explained to her. The role of the sidekick or lab assistant in many things. Like Robin in the 60’s Batman.

K: Yes, very convenient, that. But if you’re going to do an infodump of that nature, you really almost have to set it up that way, somehow. Because otherwise it’s just one char pontificating and all the others telling him/her to shut up, a la Brainy Smurf. I’m willing to cut a lot of slack for section 2, in spite of its defects, because I was really fascinated.

J: Yea. I was left very disappointed when we never hear about them again! Grr!

K: That was… pretty strange. It definitely contributed to the disconnected feeling between the three sections. I fully expected that after we got the backstory on the messages from the para-Universe we’d return to Earth where Lamont and that other guy were attempting to communicate with the aliens. But that’s not at all what we got.

J: Yea. We didn’t really get anything wrapped up at all. At least in my view. So in regards part 3, suddenly we’re back in our universe, but on the moon. And we get another girl! Who’s a tour guide. Sigh. Which means she gets to do a bunch of explaining about how people live on the moon. But then that gets flipped and Mr. Earthman gets to explain about the para-universes and stuff to her. And actually in this section, I do have things to say about the science. Or, at least about the science fiction.

K: Bra-less tour guide. Because everything’s more perky on the moon! And the moon people are naked, because uh, everything’s more perky on the moon? Rebelling against the (earth)man? It’s not really explained why to me. And don’t even get me started on her being named Selene. She even notes how lame it is to be named that in the text! So why do it?

J: Because the name is sex-ay. It’ll be interesting to see at what point in history we stop getting societies who like wandering around naked. Yea, no, just because your environment is pleasant doesn’t mean being naked is A) practical and B) something society is really dying to do given the first chance. As for her boobs, they are mentioned in nearly every, single, freaking scene. She brushes lint off one at some point! Why? Because… because she has boobs! Moon boobs!

K: And again, we have a girl who has been apparently bred to be magic somehow. But instead of lucky like in Ringworld, Selene’s superpower is intuition. But it’s a secret! So she has to stay a tour guide. ’cause some guy told her to. She couldn’t possibly become a scientist on her own and discover things.

J: Oh yea, that really ticked me off. And I made the same comparison to luck girl from Ringworld. Only now with the added bonus of intuition being a typically female trait already.

K: I was really puzzled by Dr. Neville, our lunar physicist. He was just so incredibly arrogant and snotty for no apparent reason. Egotistical with no justification, because he certainly wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. We’re given no reason at all to understand why Selene would listen to such a person, let alone sleep with him.

J: Yea. And then seemingly out of nowhere, we learn he wants to take the moon out into space.

K: I have to admit, I was pretty amused when the two Earth guys are all ‘yeah, so what?’

J: I can’t say as I was amused. I was boggling. Here I was trusting Asimov to have his science right and.. he didn’t foresee any problems to Earth with not having a moon suddenly? That’s sort of the whole plot to at least one series of books! Susan Beth Pfeffer’s books. And I’m pretty sure there’s a crappy sci-fi TV movie or miniseries with that as its focus too. Yea, no, I think we likes the moon right where it is. Preciousss.

K: Obviously there would be repercussions if the moon left, but in terms of what was being talked about here it was a moot point. In any case, I never felt that they really thought he was going to get to do it — they called his bluff, because really, he would never have been permitted to do it. By the Lunarites on the one hand, and frankly, by the Earth governments. We don’t really see much of government or the military in this book; there are vague references to some kind of crisis that killed 2/3rds of humanity, but we never find out what happened. Still, they surely exist and would step in if needed.

J: It was a world-wide war over who got tenure. Yea.. I dunno. I felt like this last part rambled more than the other ones. Did we need to see the gymnastics routine? No. Though I guess it’s better than people talking in offices.

K: I got the impression that, aside from the central section, which was very well structured and had development, that the beginning and the end just were kind of rambling onto whatever topic he thought might be interesting to discuss. The difficulty in speaking to a completely alien species? Sure. The effects of moon gravity on the human female form? Sure. The effects of gravity on sports and athletics? Sure. Jackassery in academia? Sure. But it was all very loosely tied together.

J: Yea. Which leaves me coming back to.. why did it win? But I guess we’ve had worse. Or at least books on par with it.

K: I dunno. I’d like to say it won for section 2, but who knows. People could have been really enthused by the idea of the energy pumps.

J: Or the boobs. Oh yea.. do you know why they couldn’t have sex? I couldn’t quite work it out. Was it because he’d be uncoordinated in low gravity or because her bones would break too easily under his superior Earth muscles?

K: I think it was a combination of both. That he would overcompensate because he was used to having sex in higher gravity and she would get broken. Plus he’s way older than her and all saggy, though that doesn’t seem to enter into it.

J: Now you’ve got me picturing the saggy, baggy elephant. :)

K: Hahaha.

J: I wish I could say something optimistic about our next one, but it’s Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Which just makes me fear some sort of mix between Ringworld and The Gods Themselves. But with any luck, nobody will be naked.

Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer + Bonus Hardy Boys (Stefan Petrucha et al.)

The Plot
When Nancy, Bess and George meet the pale and creepy Gregor Coffson one night in the graveyard, they might be excused for wondering if he might be a vampire. Especially when, as time goes on, the evidence continues to mount in favor of that conclusion. But Nancy Drew is not so superstitious as that, and she’s determined to figure out what’s the real secret that Gregor is hiding. In the meantime, Bess, George and Nancy’s increasingly jealous boyfriend Ned attempt to protect Nancy from the dangerous vampire threat.

My Thoughts
Several years ago, when the first Nancy Drew graphic novel arrived, I was quite excited. While the literary value of Nancy Drew has been debated, the books have always been brisk and entertaining no matter what their incarnation. (Though I’ll be upfront: if forced to choose, my preference is for the original originals, the long form versions of 1-34.) Unfortunately, the quality of the first graphic novel was poor and, disappointed, I avoided them after that. But when we discovered there was an apparent relaunch of the graphic novels with the intriguing title of Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer it was impossible to pass up.

It seemed we were the only ones who felt that way, however, as the volumes proved extremely difficult to acquire through ILL — only one or two libraries in the state would even admit to having a copy, and in the end we weren’t able to borrow volume 2 at all. So I ended up buying them, and in the process discovered that while Vampire Slayer 1+2 provided a “complete” story there was an even more complete story comprised of five total graphic novels: the aforementioned Vampire Slayer 1-2, Hardy Boys relaunch volumes 1-2, and Nancy Drew volume 3, which was a Hardy Boys crossover and promised to tie up all of the plotlines. Immediately, my completist compulsion kicked in and I ended up with all 5 of the volumes.

First impressions were not great: the volumes themselves are disappointingly slender, with most of the money apparently gone to glossy full-color pages when it would be better spent on a longer script with black and white line drawings (because let’s face it, the crowd they’re trying to attract is fans of manga, not American comics). Nancy Drew 1 and 2 were written and illustrated by the same team responsible for the initial line of Nancy Drew graphic novels, a fact which immediately put me on alert.

Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer opens with Nancy and her friends Bess and George on their way to a movie, all three of them in costume for the ticket discount they’ll get. George, always described as a tomboy, is nicely androgynous and ungirlified (she’s even dressed up as a teen wolf to start with) in contrast with her cousin Bess, who’s always been the girly girl of the bunch. Unfortunately, Bess’s other defining trait — her weight (by no means fat, she’s definitely not supposed to be really slender) — is not conveyed in the drawings well at all, as she appeared to me about the same size as Nancy. But then, the Sho Murase’s art overall was fairly uneven; the characters’ body shapes and faces often elongated or altered depending on the panel.

Our trio soon finds themselves being chased by a vampire, or at least a boy with fangs which are never adequately explained. But then, in a shocking twist, it turns out he’s not actually chasing them but fleeing from Nancy’s dog who we never see or hear of again. The boy’s socially-awkward and odd behavior cause Nancy’s mystery-sense to tingle, and by the time the three of them have finished watching the movie, she’s worked herself up to fever pitch.

Her fever is not relieved when the ‘vampire’ approaches the girls after the movie and introduces himself as Gregor Coffson. His secretive behavior only drives Nancy wild with curiosity and she’s soon devoting all of her time to cultivating him in the hopes he’ll spill the beans. Bess and George and Nancy’s boyfriend Ned, left pretty much completely out of the loop, are thus left to their own devices as they spin ever more ridiculous theories as to what Gregor’s secret might be.

The editing in these two volumes is truly horrid, as evidenced by the fact that no one managed to catch the fact that “Garina” is identified by name several pages before her identity was supposed to be revealed. But even a good editor couldn’t rescue a plot this lame. It reads like something I wrote in the seventh grade.

In contrast to Nancy’s inane outings, where we take two entire volumes to meander through Gregor’s amazing secrets, the two associated Hardy Boys volumes (Crawling with Zombies and Break-up!) are not completely awful. Written by Gerry Conway (famous as the killer of Gwen Stacy) and drawn by Paulo Henrique, the main weaknesses here seem to result from a lack of pages: more space would have given more time to develop character motivations which must necessarily remain very shallow. I again think the series would benefit from a more manga-esque treatment, meaning a longer B&W book instead of a short color one.

Each of the Hardy Boys volumes contains a complete adventure tied together with several underlying plot threads — the shady person or persons behind both schemes, and the growing frustration with one another that’s causing the unravelling of Joe and Frank Hardy’s relationship. Though the plots are simple, I found them better executed, and the artwork was far more consistent (and thus less distracting). Henrique’s artwork appeared to me heavily influenced by a combination of shonen manga and video games. There were several panels I felt might have come straight out of Dragonball Z or Double Dragon. My only complaint was a very weird continuity error introduced by the artwork in the volume Break-Up: Joe and Frank are knocked out and captured wearing one outfit and then when they next appear, they’re wearing something completely different. Are we supposed to believe that the kidnapper took the time to remove their clothing and redress them like a pair of Ken-dolls? If we are, that opens up a whole new can of creepy worms that’s not actually addressed anywhere by the script.

Naturally, the Hardy Boys soon discover that the only clue as to the criminal mastermind behind the rash of Bayport happenings is a phone number in River Heights. Coincidentally the home of Nancy Drew. So the boys head off to meet up with her in Nancy Drew Together With the Hardy Boys. This volume is pegged as Nancy Drew: The New Case Files #3, though I have to wonder if it’s also serving in that capacity for the Hardy Boys series. It’s not clear. The script for this volume was penned not by the Nancy Drew regulars, but by Gerry Conway, which gives it a tone far more in keeping with the Hardy Boys books than the Nancy Drews. Unfortunately, Conway is saddled with the ludicrous plot introduced in the two Vampire Slayer volumes, so after some random happenings in River Heights, everyone heads off to Romania — because, of course, Ned has fled the country in the wake of his supposed ‘breakup’ with Nancy and is now in need of rescue.

In the end, my biggest disappointment with the “New Case Files” series was perhaps the discovery that it wasn’t really new at all: even though the books are starting again at #1, they’re actually a direct continuation of the initial graphic novel lines and frequently reference previously established graphic novel canon. It’s not clear to me why the decision was made to return to #1; perhaps there was just a hope that more people will buy something labelled #1 as opposed to #21. Because this is the case, the “New Case Files” have all the same weaknesses and flaws that were inherent in the graphic novels before – no efforts have been made to improve the product – so they’re just as lousy.

It’s unfortunate, because there was a real opportunity here to reboot Nancy into the 21st century. Giving George and Bess some real skills to make them helpful to Nancy was also wise. But like the “Nancy Drew Case Files” series from the 80s, there were some missteps. For instance, in Nancy Drew Together With the Hardy Boys, Nancy loses her temper with the sniping Frank and Joe and tries to remind them how good they are together as a pair. But really, she is angsting about her breakup with Ned, and concludes by equating “Nancy and Ned” with “Frank and Joe”. Which is just patently ridiculous. Ned is and always has been a sidekick – not even the most important one – and nothing more. Mysteries come first with her, not him.

In Short
The Nancy Drew graphic novel series continues to disappoint with the latest installments, which have been labelled as “New Case Files” and marketed as #1 and #2 of a series. But actually they’re just a direct continuation of the previous graphic novel line, which favors gloss and show over actually taking the time and effort to tell a coherent and reasonable story. Take a pass and reread The Secret of the Old Clock which is infinitely better in either incarnation.

J’s Take on Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer

It turns out Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer didn’t mean Nancy Drew was taking on the role of a vampire slayer. It’s just that the so-called mystery involved a vampire slayer. This is a two-part graphic novel story about Nancy Drew, which turns out to be ridiculously difficult to get through interlibrary loan. You’d think Nancy Drew + vampires + graphic novel would’ve been a definite library buy.

Not that I can recommend it to any library book selectors, because it’s pretty bad.

Nancy Drew has two friends, Bess and George. I was a little surprised to learn George was a girl, as two girl sidekicks is a little unusual. By the middle of the second volume, I was fantasizing they were a couple, just because it would’ve made things a little more interesting. And believe me, it needed all the help it could get.

Nancy also has a boyfriend, Ned. And she likes finding mysteries to solve. Even when none exist. In this story, she befriends a pale dude whom everyone thinks is a vampire. He’s being stalked by a vampire slayer even.

Let’s start with the artwork, because that’ll be quick and easy. It struck me as uninteresting, uninspired, uncreative. It just was sort of there.

Characters:
Nancy — Man, is she annoying. Mostly because of all the narration. A lot of narration. Excessive narration. Superfluous narration. And do people really refer to their friends as ‘pals’? Like, repeatedly?

Bess and George — Of course one of them, I already forget which, is like a computer hacker. Because every detective needs one of those if they aren’t one themselves. But mostly they just hang out and be girly and get themselves into trouble.

Ned — Dude sports a collared shirt and a sweater! I mean, probably this is a hangover from the original books.. that’s the only reason I can think he’d be dressed like that. Unless he’s on his way to prep school. He also gets totally jealous of Nancy hanging out with this vampire, but never actually talks to her about it in any useful way.

Vampire — This is going to be a total spoiler and ruin the mystery for you!!!! Okay, you’ve been warned. He has porpheria which means he can’t handle light and is totally obsessed with his homemade vegetable juice chock full of beta carotene. To the extent that he doesn’t seem to actually eat anything. Also, he’s rich. And he totally faints for some reason. And he’s a recluse, for some reason, so he doesn’t know how to socialize with people. And Nancy feels all protective and ‘poor guy’ because of his illness and his inability to socialize and just ugh, ugh, ugh. I was given no reason at all to like this guy. Towards the end I was hoping he really was a vampire and the whole porpheria thing was a lie, because then it wouldn’t have been so totally lame!

Yea, I won’t even bother to go into the whole… twin thing.

The mystery, was no mystery. The plot, was totally contrived. (Ohnoes, we’re trapped in the house with a vampire slayer. And I have no idea my plucky pals are right outside spying on us through the security cameras.)

Nancy’s girlfriends (ah, if only they were her girlfriends and not just friends who are girls) are obsessed with this vampire movie, “Dielight”. Which I thought was silly.. why not just name the movie you’re really thinking of? Or create a completely different movie they’re obsessed with, like “My Creepy Stalker is a Vampire” or, y’know, something. But I was willing to let that pass without comment until there was a reference to Myfacespace or.. something like that. It just gets ridiculous.

I did have to look at book 1 again to doublecheck, but nope, not a single person of color in either volume. Not even in the audience in the movie theatre. The characters come in just two shades: white and whiter.

Finally, protip — it’s spelled straitjacket, not straight jacket, ‘k? Thnx.

Also, did you know Nancy was in this vampire’s house before? In a previous graphic novel adventure starring a magician? What? You didn’t? Good thing they mention it at least three times in this one! Otherwise you’d miss out on running out to purchase it to find out what happened before in this house!!

Did I mention I hate footnotes that try to sell you other books by the same author/publisher? It’s like… let me just jar you out of the story for a minute for a commercial.

In short: Save yourself time and money and skip this.

Nancy Drew: The New Case Files, Vols. 1-2

By Stefan Petrucha, Sarah Kinney, and Sho Murase | Published by Papercutz

You might wonder why I read a couple of Nancy Drew graphic novels, but when I tell you that these volumes comprise parts one and two of an arc called â€œVampire Slayer,â€ perhaps you will understand. It was the unlikely union of Nancy Drew and Buffyâ€”and yes, said show is specifically referenced in the endnotesâ€”that compelled me and my compatriots at Triple Take to make this our pick for this month. I admit I didn’t expect to like this very much, but the story turned out to be even more blah than I was anticipating.

Here’s the premise: Nancy and friends Bess and George are on their way to see the hot new movie, Dielight. If they arrive in costume, they get a discount, so when they are chased by a pointy-toothed guy in the cemetery (is it supposed to be a fun twist when it’s revealed that he’s actually running from Nancy’s dog?) they assume he’s headed there, as well. He doesn’t show up for the film, but Nancy spots a mysterious-looking cloaked figure lurking alone in the back of the theatre.

Afterwards, tooth dude pops up again and introduces himself as Gregor Coffson. He is super intrigued by the fact that Nancy is a detective and asks her out, prompting this oh-so-hilarious exchange:

Nancy: Thanks… I’m flattered, but I already have a Ned… I mean… boyfriend.

Gregor: So?

Ned: Hi. I’m boyfriend. I mean Ned.

Gregor: Oh.

Oh boy am I ever rolling on the floor now. *eyeroll*

Anyway, things don’t improve very much from here. Gregor indicates that he has a secret, but he won’t divulge it until he is sure that he can trust Nancy. And because Nancy is a big nosypants, she ends up hanging out with him all the time, oblivious to Ned’s growing jealousy. At first I was pleased that Ned was confident that Nancy would not cheat on him, but that doesn’t last long and he soon begins throwing jealous hissy fits. Gregor’s secret turns out to be totally lameâ€”someone’s stalking him because they think he’s a vampireâ€”and so does the resolution of the story.

Ultimately, the adjective that most comes to mind when describing this story is “lazy.” In addition to the fact that Gregor’s secret is a letdown and Ned’s reaction predictable, there are other signs of shoddy craftsmanship. Gregor claims not to have a cell phone, but then how is he receiving threatening text messages from his stalker? The big reveal (spoilers, if you care) that the stalker is actually Gregor’s long-lost sister Garina is torpedoed when Nancy refers to the girl as Garina several pages before the existence of Gregor’s twin even comes up. And I’d swear that one scene of Gregor and Nancy sitting at a table was simply copied and pasted from one place to another, with only a slight adjustment of Gregor’s arm and the application of some green tint to Nancy’s shirt to differentiate them.

Probably they thought that only kids would read this and no one would notice, but kids deserve effort and originality, too. About the best thing I can say about this is that Nancy’s friend, George, is appealingly androgynous. She should get her own series.