Book Review: The Singer's Gun. Emily St. John Mandel (2009).

The author of The Singer’s Gun, Emily St. John Mandel, is a Canadian author best known for her bestselling dystopian novel of a global plague and community in the post-apocalyptic aftermath, Station Eleven (reviewed here).  That novel was also turned into a popular mini-series on Max (formerly HBO).

 

I really enjoyed Station Eleven, and was very impressed with it, but I’ve been less enthusiastic about a couple of her more recent novels. Despite that, I discovered The Singer’s Gun, her second novel, on a bookshelf recently, and decided to give it a try. I’m very glad I did, because it has been one of the surprise treats of my fiction reading this spring.

 

And I do mean surprise, because it’s a little difficult to categorize what sort of novel this is. I didn’t know that much about it when I picked it up, but despite that it continued to intrigue and surprise me all the way through -- I never knew quite what to expect as I read along.

 

The book has been described as “noir”, and it definitely is that in terms of its mood, but it’s not a conventional murder mystery. It has aspects of a crime novel, and of a spy thriller, with a little dystopian flavor added from the realistic surveillance technology and lack of individual privacy which plays a part in the plot, and is recognizably creepy yet very true to contemporary life. Reading it, you immediately feel that the story, personalities and situations are believable, even as you pray you never find yourself in any situations like those of the main characters.

 

The hero of the story is Anton, an up-and-coming young professional in New York with a problem. Actually, he has several problems. One of them is Sophie, the girlfriend he is trying to marry, who has already cancelled their wedding once, and may or may not do it again, and really, he’s not even sure he loves her. But his biggest problem is that he has secrets from his early life growing up in a family of criminals. He very much wants to leave his own life of crime and dishonesty behind, but his family has issues with that, especially his sister, who is involved in something sinister, and is determined to get him to do one last job for her.

 

Meanwhile, there’s also Elena, a young Canadian woman who’s been Anton’s personal assistant at work for the past several years. She has her own set of problems, including her own spouse Caleb, who doesn’t seem to be a great fit for her, and a set of false papers for immigration she bought from Anton.

 

Into this situation of two basically nice and decent young people trapped by the lies and crimes of their past, and the bad choices they’ve made in their love lives, comes Broden, an investigator, leading an Orwellian investigation that slowly but inexorably pulls them each into its orbit. As the investigation deepens, and Anton’s final job for his criminal sister is repeatedly postponed, things begin to fall apart for both of them, and their desperation grows as each of their individual options for survival and freedom narrow.           

 

The author does a wonderful job of developing her characters, and slowly but steadily ratcheting up the fear and tension as events move to their unexpected conclusion. I have to admit that I was so wrapped up in all their immediate problems as they unfolded, and their attempts to avoid the consequences of their past bad decisions, that I didn’t see the final dramatic developments coming. That just made the end of the story that much more satisfying and compelling.

 

I won’t say more about the plot details, but this is a very entertaining, suspenseful and romantic novel with some thought-provoking social commentary embedded. It would be a fun book for a book club to discuss, and would definitely make for an exciting movie plot if anyone ever made one from it! Great summer beach reading too. Highly recommended.

Movie Review: Civil War (2024)

I’ve been waiting for this movie to move to streaming platforms (to watch it for free), but recently decided that given the current political environment we’re living in, it might be worth paying more to view it now. I’m very glad I did, because this is one of the most powerful, disturbing and relevant films I’ve seen recently.

As you might know, the basic story of this film is that the United States in the near future has descended into a series of secession attempts and civil war. A small group of veteran foreign war correspondents, led by a legendary war photographer (Kirsten Dunst), set out to travel from New York city to Washington, D.C. by car to try to interview the President of the United States (Nick Offerman), as the main secessionist army closes in on the capital.

 

My off-hand impression is that this movie hasn’t done very well with the critics, and isn’t that popular with audiences either. It’s easy to see why, too, because it is horrific, and hard to watch in many parts due to the violence and brutality it depicts. I don’t typically want to watch that kind of movie anymore either – I outgrew enjoying watching violent war movies a long time ago. But in this case, the things that would otherwise make this film repellent are totally the point. The point it seems to make is: be careful what you wish for.

 

The other night, I watched a segment on the TV news cataloging what MAGA world’s leaders are intending if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election, less than five months from now. It can be summarized as this: violent revenge, vindictive prosecution, and murder and mayhem against leaders and well-known figures in every influential segment of our society, including the  legislative, judicial and administrative branches of government, law enforcement, entertainment, health care, the news media and academia.

 

Trump himself has made these kinds of threats of terror throughout this campaign. Both he and Steve Bannon unleashed a torrent of this fascistic vitriol at the Turning Point Action right-wing convention last weekend. It was clear, hateful, explicit, and terrifying, and we know by now that when they say things like this, they really mean them, and we must take them seriously.

 

I also heard last week that the same right-wing paramilitary groups that brought us the January 6^th uprising in 2021 are organizing for both 2024 election contingencies. If Trump wins, they will help the new administration unleash a reign of terror against their “enemies”, or if Trump loses, they plan to unleash an armed revolution to make sure he takes power anyway. They say they want a war, so they can “win”, and put down forever all the people they hate (meaning the other half of us). As Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito recently said, he and his far right allies believe that certain core issues can’t be compromised on; one side or the other must prevail. That is now apparently their goal, to win by whatever means are necessary and available, including violence.

 

That’s what this movie is really all about. Many critics and viewers have made the reasonable observation that the exact scenario – in which Texas and California (the ultimate red and blue states) combine forces against the U.S. government – doesn’t appear to make much sense, in terms of the political realities and allegiances of those two states as we know them today. But this criticism in my view misses the point entirely, which is that a civil war in the United States in the early 21^st century would not necessarily unfold along neat or predictable lines.

 

Indeed, war does make strange bedfellows, one of the obvious points of this film’s message. It might not be Texas and California leading the charge for insurrection, but it might be some other surprising combination of states or regions. Another important takeaway is the reminder that a plan of battle never survives first contact with the enemy. If you’re eager for civil war, you might think you know how it’s going to turn out, but you don’t. In fact, you don’t have a clue – we found that out the last time. This movie drives home that point, very clearly.

 

I saw a number of other similarly important points raised in this film that have not usually been considered in most of the journalistic and academic discussions of possible civil war that I’ve read over the past couple of years. I believe the people who made this film did a fantastic job of thinking outside the box in developing their plot, and also in comparing and contrasting the last American Civil War (1861-1865) with what one might look like now, in our heavily urbanized 21^st century society.

 

Most analyses I’ve seen of what a contemporary civil war might look like assume there would be localized civilian rebellions popping up, with the U.S. government and its professional military trying to suppress them. The idea of comparably equipped and trained federal forces and secessionist states' high-tech militaries fighting each other in the streets of our own cities, as is graphically portrayed in this movie, hasn’t appeared in any discussion of potential modern civil war I’ve read.

 

What the modern analysts seem to have forgotten is that when the Civil War erupted, a sizable portion of the U.S. Army and Navy essentially defected overnight, taking their leadership, troops, weapons and facilities to the Confederacy. As was true then, the domestic military infrastructure of our country is distributed across much of the continent, in red states and blue states (but now with nuclear arsenals too). It’s not inconceivable that governors might seize control of the forces and facilities of the U.S. military sited in their states, if they suddenly faced a hostile federal government they and most of their states’ people couldn’t abide.

 

It has happened before, here in the United States and elsewhere. When the Soviet Union fell apart in the 1990s, Ukraine ended up with a large portion of the Soviet Union’s military assets, including a nuclear arsenal which it foolishly gave back to Russia. States today might not make that same mistake, given what has happened to Ukraine more recently.

 

Potential MAGA rebels who dream of a 3% uprising by their militias, or maybe even the takeover of the U.S. military by their Dear Leader if he is re-elected, might want to consider the possibility that no matter which side shoots first, or claims dominance and control, it’s unlikely everyone across this country is going to go along quietly and passively with plans for an authoritarian regime. And there is plenty of knowledge, experience and access to the resources for war on both sides of our great political divide, as much as they might doubt that.

 

This movie captures that scenario – not just Texas and California, but other states too respond to the destabilization of the country by using their own local militaries (which in real life could be federal troops in their states, and/or national guard units), along with civilian paramilitaries, to set their own courses to independence. This inevitably leads to a general breakdown of civil order everywhere, and a free-for-all that visually resembles nothing so much as the many foreign hellscapes we’ve witnessed abroad in our lifetimes, in places like Lebanon, Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria.

 

It's not just high-tech urban warfare between two modern hyper-equipped armies in this movie, either. The movie (and basic common sense) suggests it wouldn’t be anywhere near that simple here, because in the meantime, we have this other little national problem (or feature, as some might call it), a heavily-armed civilian population. This movie shows us how that aspect might play out, in all sorts of familiar yet defaced American landscapes: bucolic rural areas, burned-out suburban shopping malls and devastated major cities. 

 

I won’t spoil the impact of all the different situations our embattled journalists encounter by describing them here. Suffice it to say, I found them horrible to contemplate. Just imagine a “war of all against all” in America, a Hobbesian state where any idiot with an AR-15 and a box of ammunition can become godlike in their power to terrorize and kill anyone they don’t like.

 

Imagine what the polarization of our current toxic political environment might engender in a nation where all our trusted guardrails for ensuring civil order, decency to our fellow citizens, democratic self-government and stability have been removed, keeping also in mind the personal arsenals available to civilians and in play here.

 

I would guess many people who might see this movie would react by denying it could ever get this bad. And they are probably right – I certainly hope so. But I do have concerns about this common optimistic reaction to what lies ahead, for the following reason.

 

Since 2016 we’ve seen a continuously streaming news feed of shocking, unexpected and unprecedented  events in our country and our political life. Many of these events seem to lie far outside the mainstream of our history as a democracy, and our longstanding political norms. It happens so often now, many of us have become numb to it. I really want to scream every time I hear one more TV news host say “we’re in uncharted territory here”. Do ya think? So given this unstable state of affairs, what puts all-out civil war of the kind we’ve seen elsewhere around the world out of the realm of possibility?

 

I read a great book recently, The Demon of Unrest, Erik Larson’s new history of the lead-up to the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter. One of the points he captured brilliantly in the book was the extent to which neither side – North or South – had very much insight into the mental state of their opponent. For that reason, both sides were dumbfounded when the shooting began. But the point is, these misunderstandings do happen sometimes in human history. And they could happen here and now too, even if we don’t want to believe that.

 

Anyone who has studied the history of the major wars in the last two centuries knows there is also a  consistent theme running through many of them. When these wars began, one or both sides looked forward to a fast, easy and total victory. One or both sides believed their forces would be overwhelmingly superior, and would cover themselves in glory, while quickly vanquishing the hated and obviously inferior foe. It happened in the American Civil War, in Europe at the start of World War I, in Germany in World War II, and most recently in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. It happens over and over throughout history, whenever the desire for glory, revenge and conquest leads to a mass delusion that a war will not exact a terrible price on all the participants, but only on the other side. 

 

The end result of each of those conflicts was disaster, mayhem, chaos and barbarism on a grand scale. Even where there were victors, the victories came at terrible costs in lost lives, destroyed societies, and ongoing political challenges, created by the unresolved hatreds and problems that continued to be passed down through succeeding generations. We know this is true, because in a very real way, we’re still paying as a society for the mistakes of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, more than 150 years later. Indeed, some of the same issues and pathologies from that time are at the heart of our current crisis. 

 

So for those in the MAGA world who see opportunities for glory and revenge right ahead in the near future, through imagined martial feats, glorious revolution and acts of vengeance, they might want to watch this movie, and think once more about where all this might be headed. The rest of us should see the movie too, to challenge our complacent preconceptions about just how limited a modern civil war or insurrection might remain, and to consider some worst case scenarios for the months ahead.

 

Be careful what you wish for, and remember, the enemy always gets a vote. But in the end, everyone loses.

 

Civil War (the movie). Very highly recommended.

TV Review: For All Mankind (Seasons 1-4). On Apple TV+.

A couple of weeks ago, I read a comment somewhere by an entertainment reviewer who mentioned that “of course” she had immediately started bingeing the latest season of the science fiction space exploration series For All Mankind on Apple TV+. That caught my attention, since for some reason I had been avoiding checking it out, even though I am currently in an Apple TV-watching phase (like many of us, I began economizing by turning my various streaming subscriptions on and off in turn several years ago).

 

Perhaps I was avoiding it because I’ve never been much of a fan of alternate history stories, particularly when they focus on the period of time I’ve lived in. And fictionally riffing on realistic space flight and real space science, rather than the fantastic and magical worlds of most science fiction, somehow sounded kind of dull to me.

 

I was so mistaken. I don’t remember the last television show I’ve watched that has so immediately grabbed my attention and refused to let go. This is an amazing, incredibly exciting piece of television. It works on so many different levels, and explores a vast range of human, social, technological and political topics on (and off) our own world. I’ve been bingeing it for the past several weeks, which is a large project, given that there are currently four seasons of ten episodes apiece, with each episode an hour and a half long. I’m only finishing season 3 now.

 

The basic concept for the series is this: the story begins in the summer of 1969 with the dramatic announcement of the successful landing of the “first man on the Moon”, which as we all know was accomplished (in our version of history) by Neil Armstrong on the Apollo 11 mission. But in the show’s altered version, the Russian space program gets there a month before the U.S., and not only that, the first person on the moon is a woman – a female cosmonaut.

 

This shocking pair of twists kicks off a frantic escalation of the space race, where human exploration of the moon and Mars are not abandoned for the next fifty years (as they have been in our reality), and where women get an earlier and more prominent role in the U.S. space program than they actually did in the version of reality we have lived through.  

 

These alterations to our familiar history trigger an astonishing new version, peopled by a large ensemble cast of characters that changes over time, as heroes die or move on, characters age, and new players arrive on the scene. The casting and acting is consistently excellent, the scripts and plots are superb, the drama is intense and riveting, and new challenges and dangers are constantly introduced, as individuals and nations vie for power and dominance in space.

 

The structure of the series is essentially this: each season tells the story of the ongoing space race in successive decades. Season 1 takes place in the early 1970s, Season 2 moves the story into the mid-1980s, Season 3 is set in the mid-1990s, and so on. Apparently there are plans to continue out through seven seasons, which would put us somewhere near our own real time (in the 2020s) at the end of the series.

 

Even though there are many characters, there is a core group at the center of the story over time, made up of a few individuals on their own, and several families whose members all have their own individual and familial relationship stories. There are even some characters who are based on real people from our space program, like Deke Slayton and Sally Ride, as well as real major political figures and other celebrities we recognize.

 

At the beginning of For All Mankind, in the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Season 1, many of the important characters seem to be taken almost straight out of Tom Wolfe's book (and the movie) The Right Stuff. They’re macho, driven, daring military test pilots (from which the original NASA astronaut corps was built), along with their long-suffering wives and children. As in real life, the family members have to balance the pressures of instant fame, constant press scrutiny, and rigid role expectations as public figures in the American space program, with the recurring terror of waiting for their husbands and fathers to come back from their space training and missions, or perhaps dying on the job.

 

As a group of American women pilots is hastily recruited to compete with the Russian female cosmonauts and their role in the Soviet space program, though, new social and political elements enter the story. With each new plot development, familiar human and social conflicts from our era appear, slowly changing not only the space program, but the society and the course of the altered history itself, as issues like feminism, equal rights for women, gay rights, the civil rights struggle, and many other social pressures interact with the diverging reality and timelines created by the show’s accelerating space race.

 

The show does a terrific job of depicting the lived experience of the people who have built our actual space program, as well as the fictional accelerated version we see in the story. We witness the whole range of emotions, behaviors and plots among the characters: love, ambition, jealousy, loyalty, bravery, heroism, self-sacrifice, selfishness, irrationality, sex, infidelity, addiction and betrayal – really, anything you can imagine in a human drama shows up somewhere in an episode.

 

There’s an important point being made thereby, which is this: no matter what astonishing new worlds humans may visit or inhabit, and what brilliant technologies we invent to get there, we will take our essential natures and problems with us. Humanity and our societies will not be perfected or cleansed of our imperfections by finding new worlds to live on.

 

Another thing I wanted to mention is that this show, more than most science fiction, is steeped in the science and engineering of human space flight and space travel as we understand it. There are no warp drives, death rays or light sabers. It’s telling that several of the most important characters are engineers and scientists.

 

We see them at work in NASA’s Mission Control and Johnson Space Center, and later in private industry, trying to design the equipment the astronauts must use to survive in the hostile environments of space, and often responding to emergency situations reminiscent of our real Apollo 13 mission, where accidents and equipment failures in space have to be remedied in a hurry by NASA Mission Control and the astronauts working together, using whatever materials are at hand.

 

These aspects of the story are made more powerful by the impact of the outstanding visual storytelling throughout the series. We watch as the equipment, the interiors and the backgrounds on Earth slowly change with the technologies and fashions we recognize from each passing decade (along with some new inventions we've never seen before). The producers have done all this with wonderful attention to historical period detail and authenticity.

 

Did I mention that since this is essentially a Cold War story, we’ll also encounter all the familiar dramatic plot lines that come with that genre too? With the U.S.-Soviet competition in space, we also naturally get espionage plots, domestic political conflict, nuclear brinkmanship, and even the threat of battles and war in space. Just in case there aren’t enough tensions and dangers in space exploration itself to keep the story lively . . .   

Another truly impressive feature of the series is how convincing and lifelike the landscapes of the Moon and Mars appear, with astronauts trying to live and work in their primitive habitats on those distant worlds, and inside their tiny spacecraft on the way. It all looks so real, just like the video and pictures we’ve seen taken by our space program’s astronauts and remote rovers.

 

There are apparently extensive podcasts that accompany this entire series, which delve into the science behind each episode and its plot developments. I haven’t had a chance to listen to any of those yet, but it seems to me it might be a further bonanza for anyone who is interested in learning more about space exploration, and the challenges humanity faces in trying to survive off this planet, traveling in deep space and on at least to our nearest planetary neighbors.

 

For All Mankind is simply brilliant television, a compelling, entertaining and vast epic about humanity’s quest for the stars, as well as an exploration of our own society, our world and recent times from the perspective of a subtly altered reality. Very highly recommended.