A Temporary Matter

I started my Sunday by reading an article about Earth Hour, which took place yesterday at 8:00 p.m. around much of the world. In honor of Earth Hour, national landmarks across the globe dimmed their lights. Citizens were encouraged to turn off any non-essential lights, computers, and appliances. People in many countries turned Earth Hour into a celebration. In Greece folks strolled through the streets with candles (that must have been pretty). Australians enjoyed candlelit dinners and beach bonfire parties.

The next thing I picked up to read was "A Temporary Matter," a short story from Jhumpa Lahiri's collection, Interpreter of Maladies. The premise of the story revolved around a scheduled blackout. In order to repair local power lines, a young couple would be without power starting from 8:00 p.m. for exactly one hour. The similarity of the couple's situation to Earth Hour struck me (although unlike Earth Hour, this blackout would be repeated throughout the week until the lines were repaired).

For the characters in "A Temporary Matter," these scheduled hours of darkness were the time when they came to terms with a tragic event that had damaged their relationship. Being alone in the dark together, lighting candles, telling stories, reconnected them. Now, the morning after Earth Hour, we read that the globally scheduled hour of darkness not only represented environmental responsibility and hope for the future, but that it brought people together on both a global and local level.

Why is it so much easier for human beings to connect in the dark, their meeting lit only by flickering candles? Something about the darkness makes us shed just enough of our individual defenses to connect with others. Perhaps our reaction is simply a throwback to our primitive past, huddled in the darkness with only a fire and our companions for warmth. And certainly part of the answer is that when we are cut off from the distractions of our modern lives, and have nothing to pay attention to but the people around us, we suddenly realize that they're there.

Find the lost ring

The ARG, or alternate reality game, is a new interactive way of telling stories that became popular with the I Love Bees ARG promoting the release of Halo2. Now the producer of I Love Bees has set another ARG in motion, this one called The Lost Ring.

A look around The Lost Ring website reminds me of a series of mystery puzzle game books I enjoyed years ago. Those books were filled with photographs of newspaper clippings, theater tickets, bloody handkerchiefs, and other random clues which, with the help of disjoint textual description, the reader had to organize and use to solve the mystery. The Lost Ring site is the HTML version of those old puzzle books- which means that you can zoom in on the photos and scraps of paper, and nearly all the clues are linked to other clues, or to web pages that contain further information. Many of these links take you to "real world" websites, so that an ARG character tells some of his or her story on his blog, Flikr page, or has uploaded You Tube videos related to the game.

But The Lost Ring is more than an evolved You-Solve-It mystery book. The game is well-endowed with ARG hallmarks- a spec fictional story element, timeliness that makes the story feel live and relevant, tied to the time in which it is played, and interactivity that connects players of the game.

A sense of the spec fictional is conveyed through a combination of the mystical-historical with the scientific, an aesthetic you can grasp by the images on the clues (owls, old statues, brain scans). The sense of timeliness was created by linking the story to the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China. This sense of timeliness makes the story experience unique- something that only makes sense to participate in during the spring and summer of 2008.

The element of The Lost Ring that first caught my attention was its use of Esperanto. In the opening video trailer for the game, I noticed a mysterious tattoo that read "Trovu la ringon perditan" (Find the lost ring). Many of the clues are written in Esperanto. In addition, the six main characters in the story speak six different languages! This adds an interesting layer to the interactive element of the game. Since it is unlikely the average participant can speak Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German, French, Portuguese, and English, cooperation between players of different national and linguistic backgrounds is essential to unlocking the mystery.

ARGs already have a history of interactivity- people meeting at phone booths to receive an important clue, participants blogging, creating wikis, and working together to solve the puzzles. The Lost Ring has taken that interactivity one step farther. By encouraging interaction between people of different cultures, The Lost Ring becomes more than a game, more than a story. It's becoming a global event.

Arthur C. Clarke

16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke

The Road Home

A friend loaned us The Road Home (Wo de fu qin mu qin) to watch over the weekend. Spec fiction movie lovers may recognize the film's leading lady, Ziyi Zhang, from her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Don't expect any fantastical fighting in The Road Home- this film isn't speculative, but it is extraordinarily well-made and beautiful. Contrast, in color and in motion, makes The Road Home a memorable and emotional experience.

Color: Scenes from the modern day portion of the story, in which an elderly woman mourns her recently deceased husband, were shot in black and white. In contrast, the flashback to the courtship of the woman and her husband, blossom into full-blown, gorgeous color. All the hope, youth, joy, and promise of the woman's life are portrayed by her bright red and pink coats, the striking green ribbons tied at the ends of her pigtails, the red banner she weaves, even the vibrant colors of the birch trees in the beautiful autumn countryside. Color remains an important part of the plot, as red becomes the color that first attracts boy to girl. When the love story ends, the viewer is brought back to the present, brought back to black and white.

Motion: Since I don't speak Mandarin, I watched the film subtitled in English- yet I could have almost watched the flashback portion of the film with the sound and subtitles turned off. Ziyi Zhang portrayed most of her character's longing, hope, despair, and joy by running through the village, running through the woods. Whether to catch a glimpse of her would-be lover, to let him catch a glimpse of her red jacket, to bring him food he might or might not eat, The Road Home told much of its story through the act of running motion. This makes the moments when the protagonist stands still heartbreaking and poignant.

Cinema is moving picture, and director Yimou Zhang combines motion and skillful manipulation of colorful image to turn the story of a village woman into a memorable cinematic experience.

Duma Key had me at hello

Several weeks ago when I posted about the Kindle's bestseller lists in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, I mentioned that King held three of the top five places in the list. Now he holds two of the top five (his number five usurped by Scott Smith). But King's latest novel, Duma Key, still holds strong at number one. Duma Key also ranks #2 in horror in Amazon's paper bound bookstore.

There's no doubt King's well-known name helps Duma Key climb bestseller lists. Yet I can't help but wonder whether the extraordinarily strong opening of the book isn't responsible for a lot of those sales. Whether readers downloaded the first sample chapter of the novel on their Kindle, downloaded the free PDF sample from Amazon's product description page, or flipped through the first chapters in a brick and mortar store- there's no doubt that something magical was going on in those first few chapters, and I'll bet readers sensed it. To quote a favorite saying of Melinda, eldest daughter of Duma Key's protagonist, this novel "had me at hello."

I think King's depiction of his damaged protagonist in the opening chapters is some of his best writing. The horror element of those initial pages isn't supernatural in the least- hospital beds, blinding pain, rage, confusion- are all very real. Details, such as the words printed on the seat belt that pressed near the protagonist's face during the accident that ended his "first life," are just as terrible, perhaps more terrible, than the supernatural horror story that follows.

Can such a strong beginning sustain so high a level of quality through nearly 600 hardcover pages? In the case of Duma Key, the answer is no.

As the protagonist began his journey of rebuilding his "second life," King began to use the familiar (and fun) patterns of supernatural fiction writing, and some of the raw energy of the opening was lost. One of the strengths of the body of the novel was repetition of themes embodied through specific details of everyday life. The novel's biggest weakness was a long stretch of "too good to be true" fortune and friendship forging, that bordered on too ideal and too sweet for me, even if King constantly held the threat of ominous mojo coming to ruin it all.

And, though the climax of the novel held my attention and made me hold my breath, I could almost see the bones of the story outline poking through the flesh of the narrative. King brought the story to a satisfying conclusion, but he didn't get the job done with anywhere near the skill and insight that he used to open it.

Although the stunning quality of the opening waned, Duma Key is still one of my supernatural fiction favorites. It was a fun, satisfying read. My criticism is that the superb opening made me expect something more of the middle and the end.

Oh- and I may never be able to face a rag doll again. Especially if its hair is RED.

The King of Kong and the Art of Conflict

I was less than thrilled when my husband announced that our movie night featured a documentary about video games. The documentary would cover two gamers fighting for the record high score in the original arcade classic, Donkey Kong.

The King of Kong turned out to be an engaging and memorable story, one that generated a lot of conversation and speculation after the film, and that days later is still on my mind. Given that I am not a classic video game fanatic, why did I get so excited about this documentary?

The King of Kong used conflict as the combustion engine of its story telling machine. But this conflict was made even more interesting by using three techniques:

1) The makers of the documentary clearly picked a "hero" and a "villain." As a viewer, I was rooting for the newcomer on the arcade gaming scene, Steve Wiebe, to overtake Billy Mitchell's long-standing high score record. Mitchell's machinations to preserve his record and shun Wiebe's acceptance to the arcade gaming community, made me feel that Steve Wiebe was a hard-working, genuinely nice guy, and that Billy Mitchell was a jerk.

2) Although they had clearly sided with Wiebe, the makers of the documentary left one niggling doubt about Wiebe's integrity. They also kept the conflict balanced by demonstrating that Mitchell was an extremely skilled gamer, and by including a sub-plot (coaching an elderly Q*Bert champ), in which Mitchell could show his human side.

3) Walter Day, the arbiter of the conflict (who was shown throughout most of the documentary in a black and white referee costume), faced trying to balance fairness to Wiebe and loyalty to Mitchell. Day's difficult emotional journey showed that successful resolution of the conflict was vital to more than just the contestants.

These techniques kept me engaged in the conflict and rooting for the hero. At the same time, I was intrigued by the possibility that Mitchell might have some honest (or at least not so blatantly self-serving) motivation for shunning Wiebe. I was also intrigued to watch Day's journey, as he made mistakes, agonized, then tried to live up to his pledge of integrity.

Invincible Banana fails to say it all

My husband was sorting through the flotsam of papers on my desk in search of scratch paper. He picked up one of the scraps, read it, then asked,

"What does invincible banana mean?"

I remembered writing Invincible Banana on a sheet of paper one night shortly before bed. It was one of those flashes of story ideas that hold a lot of promise when I first think of them. Usually I jot the idea down somewhere, think about it for awhile, and decide if I can develop it into something exciting. I know I had some pretty concrete ideas about a story I would title "Invincible Banana." Unfortunately, other than the title and the memory of my own excitement, I remember nothing useful about the story- like the plot, situation, characters.

I learned several things from this experience: 1) clean my desk more often, 2) don't leave crazy stuff around where my husband can read it and laugh at me 3) make more detailed notes even if I have a mouthful of toothpaste, and 4) "Invincible Banana" was probably not a good story title, because the title tells me (and the reader) nothing about the story.

I blogged earlier this week about a story called "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell. The title encapsulates the magical realism element of the story (something normal, something fantastic), describes the setting (St. Lucy's Home), describes primary characters in the story (girls raised by wolves), and even hints at the story's main conflict (civilization vs. the wild life). Wow, now that is a title that would make sense unearthed from scraps of grocery store receipts and junk mail- and, by the way, it would also make a lot of sense to a reader about to embark on the story.

Listening to T.C. Boyle read Tobias Wolffe's "Bullet in the Brain" in a New Yorker Fiction podcast, I was struck by the story's title. "Bullet in the Brain" is a very short story, and approximately half the drama happens before the critical event of the bullet entering the protagonist's brain. So I asked myself: wasn't Wolffe cutting the tension of the drama by telling us what was going to happen before we even started the story? Well, having heard "Bullet in the Brain" read out loud, my response was that the "giveaway" title didn't do anything to destroy the drama. Why? Part of the answer is that the heart of the story occurs after the bullet has breached the skull of the protagonist's brain. But there is also an element of tragicomedy present in the first half of the story, that makes the tension of the moments before the bullet is fired worse, because we know (or strongly suspect) what's going to happen. Since readers know the protagonist is going to get shot in the head, we're biting our nails as the protagonist goads the gunman. If the reader believed the protagonist might somehow escape his fate, the tension would be lessened.

As much as I enjoy the koan-like sense of wonder evoked by the two word titles of J-Pop bands like Swinging Popsicle, Crispy Park, Berry Roll, Browny Circus, I have my doubts about this kind of ambiguous , two-word title for a short story. What makes these band names cool (at least for me) is that they open up my mind in the attempt to figure out what the heck they mean. But in a short story every word counts. In most cases, something as important as the first words should focus the reader's mind, or do something to help the reader grasp the context or content of the story. And in instances like "Bullet in the Brain," the title can manipulate building tension in the plot.

Of course, I'm sure there are great short stories out there with intriguingly vague titles. I'd like hear about some of your favorites.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Listening to a recent PRI Selected Shorts podcast I encountered a delightful example of magical realism. The short story's title, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" practically defines magical realism: a fantastic premise treated as casually as any normal part of life.

The premise for the story is classic spec fiction stuff, and could easily produce a fantasy, science fiction, or even supernatural or horror tale. But instead of spinning the speculative premise into fictional world, Russell inserted the fantastic premise into the real world- then made it squirm to fit in. The conflict of the story becomes whether or not these weird, wild little girls will be tamed by the sisters of St. Lucy's, and eventually be able to adapt to normal life.

Strengths of the story include the use of concrete detail to make the girls raised by wolves and St. Lucy's Home seem equally real. And a liberal use of humor endears the protagonist and her sisters to the reader through her innocent, and often funny candor. But I think what really makes the story tick is that magical realism is so central to its conflict. The bizarre isn't simply present in the real world- the bizarre world and the normal world actually vie for the girls' fates. I'm interested to read some further magical realism, and to see whether this conflict between the real and the fantastic is a core convention of magical realism.