Babel Clash

Strange title for a blog post I know, but let me explain.

When I first saw STAR WARS, I was hypnotized. Going to the movies back then was a major family event which would be planned days ahead, and my younger brother and I would sit there in silence, completely transfixed, soaking up every second of what was happening on screen.

Things changed. Over the next ten years or so, media rapidly became more accessible with the advent of home video and multi-channel TV. Fast forward another twenty years and the Internet, smartphones, and any number of other technological revolutions have dramatically changed the way we consume books, movies and TV, with many of these different channels subsequently converging.

What does this have to do with one particular Stormtrooper?

There was a gap of a couple of years between my first and second viewings of Star Wars, but once I had my own copy (on Betamax, taped off TV – that’s how old I am!), I watched it on repeat until the tape had almost worn through. During one of my many viewings, I realised that as I’d already watched Han and Luke doing their thing so many times, I’d started to watch what was going on in the background on the Death Star a little more closely. I remember watching one particular Stormtrooper walk around a corner and disappear off-screen, and I wondered where he was going. Was he off to his bunk for some rest after a long shift? Was he heading to the Death Star café? (thanks to Eddie Izzard for that – click here). A bathroom break? Had he just quit? It occurred to me that we were only seeing a fraction (albeit the most important fraction) of what was going on in the Star Wars universe. (I guess you could argue that George Lucas has shown us a little too much now with endless special editions, prequels, cartoons, Lego, 3D etc., and then there’s the ‘expanded universe’ books and comics, but I hope you see what I’m getting at.)

I started to think more about the stories behind the story, and not just with Star Wars. My attention shifted towards horror…

Last week Jonathan mentioned James Herbert’s RATS series, and I talked about the third book, DOMAIN, as having had a particular impact on me. Peppered throughout that novel are a number of little asides – brief, chapter long sketches of characters who have no direct bearing on the plot, but who meet interesting and, more often than not, gruesome deaths, courtesy of the titular rats. Herbert used these incidental characters to great effect to flesh out his story and to add real depth and substance to the nightmarish, post-nuclear holocaust world he’d created.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Whilst I was writing PURIFICATION – the third book in my AUTUMN series, I started having familiar, Stormtrooper- and rat-related feelings again. I found myself introducing new characters to the story, and wondering where they’d been since the beginning of book one (where were you when the world ended?). It occurred to me that having killed 99% of the world’s population on page one of AUTUMN, I had a stack of additional stories set in the same universe to tell. And that’s what happened. A handful of stories became a collection of almost fifty – some little more than brief character sketches, others short stories and novellas, all of them revealing more about my dead world, its handful of desperate survivors, and its millions of walking corpses!

You can read some of my free fiction (about half the stories are online at present, the rest will be up by mid-2012), along with some awesome accompanying artwork over at www.lastoftheliving.net.

Artwork from www.lastoftheliving.net (by Antony White and Craig Paton)

But this blog post wasn’t just intended to be one long advert for my site.

As I said at the beginning, the way we access our media has changed hugely since 1977, and all these channels means that authors, publishers and film-makers can tap different resources to pull us deeper into their worlds. Just last week, JK Rowling announced the release of Harry Potter ebooks along with additional content, and all manner of movies and other forthcoming releases are now teased with free short stories, webisodes, motion comics etc. My question is this: does all this stuff enhance your enjoyment of said films and books, or could we live without it?

When Lev Grossman visited Babel Clash, we discussed the most powerful wizards in modern fantasy literature.  Who would win the great wizard fight?

Looking back at that conversation, the names mentioned included:  Gandalf, Quentin Coldwater, Harry Potter, Raistlin Majere, Richard Rahl, Bayaz, Dr. Strange, Doctor Fate, Pug, Belgarath and Rand al’Thor.  All guys.

Where are the women?  Who is the paragon of magical might among female characters?

Before we kill all the elves, let’s reflect.  Here are 9 great stories featuring them.  If you had to add a 10th story to this Top 10 list, what would you add?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
The King of Elfland’s Daughter, by Lord Dunsany
The Drizzt Do’Urden novels, by R. A. Salvatore
Elfstones of Shannara, by Terry Brooks
The Harry Potter novels, by J. K. Rowling
Lords and Ladies, by Terry Pratchett
Keeping It Real, by Justina Robson
Elvenbane, by Andre Norton & Mercedes Lackey
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, by Guillermo Del Toro

I got to looking at what’s coming this summer, and though I think Trasformers is going to make a bang, I really think that Harry Potter is going to be the big earner here.  Dudes, I’m living with a 50+ HP fan who has got all the movies on BlueRay.  You know we’re going to see it.  Live it.  (grin)  But what’s not to love here.  We’ve watched little Harry grow up, and I’m ready to see him kick some Mr. V butt.   –Kim