Review: "Weapons Grade Snake Oil"

It's been a few weeks since I read this book, and time constraints have not allowed me to write this review any sooner.

For this reason, some of the specific things I may have wished to comment upon while reading the book may have slipped my mind.  Nonetheless, here are my thoughts on the book as a whole.

The Faction Paradox universe has fostered some truly wonderful pieces of fiction.  In fact, the quality level is so high for the series that when I label "Weapons Grade Snake Oil" as middle-of-the-pack for this property, it is in no way a dismissal.

If this book is more "Head of State"/"Warring States" than "Newtons Sleep"/"Brakespeare Voyage" it only means that it is a very good book and doesn't quite hit the heights of those in the Faction Paradox universe that I feel are among the best novels I have ever read.

Like the best Faction fiction, it is full of ideas.  Possibly too many, in that there are so many notions tossed out that I wish would be explored more fully and I often found myself wanting the book to be about some of those ideas rather than the story we were getting.

But then the next great idea would happen, and I'd want to follow that one.  And so on, and so on.

Somewhat unusually for the Faction (though hardly unprecedented) this book focuses mainly on fun.  It is in nature a 'heist' story, though a unique take on one.  Rebellious Faction member Father Christémas has a plan to steal a relic of the time before the anchoring of the thread - an item called the "2nd Second".

To do this, he puts together an unlikely team that includes Faction runaway Sojourner Hooper-Agogo, his own servant Cousin Chaz, and the Time LordHouseworlder called The Hussar with his own assistant Anne Bonny.  There's a lot of double-crossing and conflicting agendas at play, which allows for some very nice character interplay that doesn't unfold as you might expect.

The neatest ideas are not the vaguely-defined concepts like the 2nd Second or Blue Praxis, but concepts behind entire cultures like the cymbiotes [sic - and for a reason] where Sojo comes from, or the gambling society of the Chance Coteries.

My favorites, though, are related to The Hussar and his assistant, real-life pirate Anne Bonny.  This
estranged Houseworlder has gone through elective semantectomy to have his given name removed - leaving only the title of The Hussar.  The implications for the series which Faction Paradox spun off of are quite intriguing.

Also, his relationship with his timeship, the Kraken, is... interesting.  Sadly Anne Bonny isn't as good as the red-headed historical character from another Faction novel (the incomparable "Newtons Sleep") but she is interesting enough in her own way.  She certainly doesn't get as much exposure as Aphra Behn did in the other book, as she is not as central a character.

Each (short) chapter is given a "Dune"-style quotation at the beginning.  Some of these are fascinating; some have the feel of later "Dune" books where Frank Herbert was clearly long grown weary of the necessity he had given himself of coming up with this stuff every few pages.  As there are even some real excerpts among the fake ones (I think?) it lends a real authenticity to the world(s) being created.

If there's a particular failure with the book then it is sadly with the heist plot itself - which is central to the book's narrative.  The rules are vague, the destination unclear, and the resolution abrupt and deliberately confusing.

I get that this is Faction Paradox and there are things we simply will not understand.  But the way it plays out is unsatisfying, underwhelming, and as far as I can tell, not actually set up in any way.  (Though I'm happy to be proven wrong on this in subsequent rereads.)

That this bathetic resolution does not damage the book as a whole is a testament to the fact that everything else is not only done well, but is engaging enough that the plot basically is of little interest anyway.  I do dearly wish we could have spent some more time with the Bankside crew.  I haven't even talked here about Cousin Haribeaux (whose cybernetic nature and nomenclature could lead one to associate him with the Kandyman!) or Cousin Rupert and what they get up to together.

Nor the politics of the Eleven Day Empire, and what Godmother Antigone has planned for Father Christémas.  For that matter, Sojo herself and the future of her society would be enough for a complex and satisfactory novel.

All of this stuff being lumped in together means that none of it gets developed fully, but feels instead like existing realities we get a mere taste of before necessarily moving on.  "Weapons Grade Snake Oil" is a cruise ship where we barely go on shore before it's time for the next leg of the trip.  Sure, we miss the exciting locale we just visited, but there's something just as inviting around the bend.

And I loved all of it.

(3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 if we ignore the distracting typos throughout)

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Book review: "The Black Archive 6: Ghost Light"

I have decided to occasionally do some reviews of indie or small-press books on this blog.  I will probably only post positive ones, as I see no need to spread the word about bad or mediocre books.

This is Obverse Books' sixth in the series of novella-length analyses of Doctor Who stories.  All of them so far (I haven't yet read Simon Bucher-Jones' "Image of the Fendahl" since I haven't seen the TV story) have been excellent, and Jon Dennis' look at "Ghost Light" is no exception.

Now, it has been about a month or so since I read this book (my life has been busy with other things in the interim, as seen on the blog you are currently visiting) so I can't be as detailed in my review as I would like to be.  A great many of the things I would have commented on after reading have simply been forgotten.

So this review will be a rough overview rather than a blow-by-blow dissection of the book.  I really wanted to get this written sooner, but other events took priority.

My overall summation is that this is a great book that does a fabulous job at analyzing and deconstructing the final piece of 20th century Doctor Who to be shot: "Ghost Light".  However, it is somewhat less of a revelation than other books in this "Black Archive" have been, due only to the fact that so much has been written about the serial in the intervening 27 years that Jon Dennis (despite having many new things to say) must in part be treading well-traveled ground.

One of the things that pleased me about the analysis in this book is that Dennis largely avoids the most common topic of discussion these days when it comes to this serial.  The DVD release revealed that according to the writer and script editor, the exact nature of Josiah and 'Control' was supposed to be that of a biological experiment.  Josiah was the 'Survey' and 'Control' was...  Well, yeah.

Much of the debate about the confusing nature of "Ghost Light" as a televisual story revolves around exactly how clear this fact was to the audience at the time.  ('Not at all' being the correct answer.)  Wisely, Jon Dennis says little or nothing about this, because he seems to recognize that it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the story being told; it is backstory, pure and simple.

That is to say, whether one comprehends the biological or physical function of these characters is irrelevant; we understand their story function completely.  We see that Josiah evolves into what he considers to be the dominant lifeform on the planet, and we see Control (once she is let out of her captivity) follow a similar evolutionary path.

(Yes, I know this is not how evolution works,  It's a story - a metaphor - and I am merely using the terminology presented on screen.)

Because this is almost the only topic debated these days on the subject of "Ghost Light", Jon Dennis avoids it and barely if ever mentions it.  Very wise move.

Onto the first chapter, then: "I Wanted to See How it Works 1: Angels in the Architecture".

This chapter is a very insightful look at how "Ghost Light" (again, the last story to be recorded for many a year on Doctor Who) evolved (sorry) with the times, both in relation to the series itself and cinema as a whole.  Dennis shows his working in hypothesizing that this serial is an excellent piece of evidence to show that modern Doctor Who would have wound up more or less the same as it is whether or not it had been taken off the air for 16 years.

Along the way, it takes in the basic inspiration behind this particular serial - even addressing the novel "Lungbarrow" (which ardent Who fans will know is very closely related to this story).

A great introduction for the book, with some intriguing things to say.

"Talent Borrows, Genius Steals: Sampling and Remix Culture" is the second chapter, basically dedicated to exploring the inspirations behind every aspect of "Ghost Light".  It examines the way (and the reasons why) we incorporate existing ideas and works into our current creative output, and is an interesting look at the story's roots.  (Even if it can get a bit listy.)

Chapter 3 is "The Secret Origin of a Haunted House".  It discusses the history of haunted house stories in (and out of) Doctor Who and attempts to analyze what exactly makes a 'haunted house story'.

Dennis then shows the ways "Ghost Light" uses, abuses, and eschews the conventions of the haunted house tale, and what effect the serial appears to be going for.  In general it is a very thought-provoking chapter that might make you look at certain Doctor Who serials in a different way.

Where would fiction be without the old 'mind control' device?  That is the subject of Chapter 4: "Where is My Mind?: Moral Culpability and Mind Control".

It's a nice examination of the reasons why fiction writers (and Doctor Who writers in particular) choose to include the element of mind control in their stories - and the problems that arise in general and in "Ghost Light" specifically.  But it is the research and explanation about real-life mind control that I found most illuminating.

That's not to denigrate the point of the chapter, however, where Jon Dennis has some great insights about the mind control trope which anyone who has an interest in either writing or literary analysis ought to find intriguing.

Chapter 5 ("I Wanted to See How It Works 2: "So Where Precisely is Java?") is basically an examination of one particular plot inconsistency in the serial.  There's nowhere near enough here to justify filling out a whole chapter (and indeed it is a very short one) but it requires enough explanation that it couldn't really be just an aside elsewhere in the text.

(I would have made it an Appendix myself, but it could be argued that an appendix is just a chapter put in an unusual place and therefore the distinction here is a moot one.)

The real meat of this book is in Chapter 6: "Scenes From the Class Struggle in Gabriel Chase: Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and Religion".  It is the longest, most detailed, most political, and most meaty chapter in the book.

It is also the most difficult for me to discuss and summarize - not only because of its complexity and the breadth of its topic, but because the details are more hazy at this distance and I don't wish to misrepresent the book by getting any of its ideas or details wrong.

Dennis in this chapter presents the ideas and history of evolution, and of so-called 'social Darwinism', and the ways they are incorporated and represented by the serial "Ghost Light".  It is a fascinating chapter, and a great look at the main subject of this story that for some reason never really gets the attention and analysis it deserves (in favor of nit-picking the presentation of the story instead).

Finishing up with a chapter called "I Wanted to See How it Works 3: God's Away on Business", the writer basically sums up his experiences researching and writing this work, as well as a final thought on audience reaction to the TV serial.

Jon Dennis is a great fiction writer, and his clever brain and witty asides really make this book a success.  Though I would rate the book 4 stars - rather than the 5 stars many feel it deserves - this really is the side effect of "Ghost Light" being a topic discussed to death over the years, giving it none of the freshness that a monograph on "Rose", "The Massacre" or "The Ambassadors of Death" inherently has.

Strongly recommended for anyone with the slightest intellectual interest in Doctor Who and critical analysis.

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