Similarly, I’ve frequently seen Frank Herbert’s classic Dune dismissed by fresh readers with such comments as, ‘It’s okay, but hugely over-rated.’ No it isn’t. Dune is merely of another age, when its vividness and grand scale were unparalleled. How can any reader discovering the book today appreciate that? Yes, they might accept the point intellectually, but they will never feel its truth as those of us who first read the book in proper temporal context can.
Anything that’s new, different and successful is going to be copied, and, quite possibly, bettered. The latter is particularly true of cinema, where the technology involved advances so rapidly. In a sense, therefore, greatness can be viewed as transient; only our memory of greatness persists, to be questioned (and rightly so) by future generations who never had a chance to experience that greatness when it was fresh and relevant. Avatar is a case in point. Yes, the film is flawed, but what isn’t? Thankfully it has many, many more good points, and even great points, than weak ones. True, the plot contains nothing radical, but nor is it bad. This is good solid SF, a planetary romance, with elements that any long-term science fiction fan will have encountered, yes, but they’re presented in a manner that none of us have ever seen before, and that manner dazzles in so many ways.
The film’s plot has been dissected and argued over ad nauseum; I’ve no intention of rehashing it here. Suffice to say that humanity is cast as the villain, the bully, while humans are the heroes, helping the wondrous but fragile native culture resist the greed-driven aggressors. What makes Avatar special is the way that story unfolds and the beauty of the canvas on which it is presented.
The film impresses from the opening shot: a view down a corridor of caskets in which every detail is depicted in convincing 3D, contrasting with the preceding trailers for forthcoming films which seemed to feature 2D characters standing proud of a flat background, akin to some child’s pop-up story book. Immediately, you can see where the money’s gone, and that’s before we’ve even arrived at the world of Pandora. This is one of the film’s greatest strengths: attention to detail. Any science fiction story relies to a degree on the suspension of disbelief, and one way of achieving this is to produce a wholly convincing setting. Hard enough at the best of times, let alone when much of that setting is CGI, yet Avatar doesn’t merely manage this, it triumphs at it. The simulated jungles of Pandora were painstakingly developed by an almost organic process, so that when they feature in shot far more is going on than is ever seen. Myriad insects hidden beneath leaves and plants which will never come into view are all there in the programming, just as they would be in the real world.
Nor does this meticulous approach end with the flora and fauna. The giant blue-skinned Pandorans and the human animated avatars that mimic them are just as convincing as the setting, so that in scenes where they feature alongside the human cast you forget that one is CGI whilst the other isn’t. Avatar combines CGI and the real world seamlessly, and this opens the way to breathtaking scenes. From Roger Dean’s sky-floating islands (which adorned the covers of so many Yes albums in the 1970s), now realised in stunning 3D, to Pern-like dragons (albeit with an extra set of wings) that can be fought and tamed and ridden, this film delivers a sense of wonder that SF cinema has never seen before. Needless to say, the fight scenes which come thick and fast in the film’s latter stages are truly spectacular.
Yet none of this would be enough without something to engage the emotions, and that’s provided by the plight of the Pandorans, in particular the N’avi tribe. The avatars are initially tasked with persuading these proud people to abandon their sacred tree and lands, but later end up fighting beside them. Along the way there is tragedy, injustice, renewed hope, betrayal, noble deeds and even love.
Avatar is special. It delivers on all fronts and has everything a good film should have plus more visual impact than anything the cinema has witnessed before. Recently I’ve been to see a number of films which I enjoyed without their dazzling me – the new Star Trek, Sherlock Holmes, etc – Avatar did. It left me wanting to tell everyone to go and see it.
Over the years, many SF films have wowed me – Forbidden Planet, Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, Dark City… But are any of these my favourite? They were then. Right now it’s Avatar. I’ve no idea how long that will last, but I can’t wait to see the film that usurps it.
CONTRIBUTORS’ NOTES
GUY ADAMS trained and worked as an actor for twelve years before becoming a full-time writer. He mugged someone on Emmerdale, performed a dance routine as Hitler, and spent eighteen months touring his own comedy material around clubs and theatres. He is the author of the best-selling Rules of Modern Policing: 1973 Edition, a spoof police manual ‘written by’ DCI Gene Hunt of Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes fame. Guy has also written a two-volume series companion to Life On Mars; The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes, a fictional facsimile of a scrapbook kept by Doctor John Watson; and several novels, including More Than This, Deadbeat: Dogs of Waugh, Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger, Torchwood: The House That Jack Built and – from Angry Robot – The World House and its forthcoming sequel, Restoration.
TONY BALLANTYNE grew up in County Durham and now lives in Oldham with his wife and two children. His first SF sale was The Sixth VNM, which appeared in issue 138 of Interzone. Since then his short stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies worldwide. He has also written romantic fiction and satirical pieces for various non-SF magazines. His first novel, Recursion, was published by Tor in 2004. This was followed by Capacity (2005) and Divergence (2007), completing the ‘Recursion’ trilogy. In 2009 Twisted Metal, the first of Tony’s ‘Robot Wars’ novels, was published, and was followed in 2010 with the second in the series, Blood and Iron.
JAMES BARCLAY was born in Felixstowe, Suffolk, in 1965 and is the third of four children. He gained a BA (Hons) in Communication Studies in Sheffield before heading to London to train as an actor. With acting roles in short supply, he worked in marketing and advertising until 2004 when he became a full time author. James is the creator of the two Raven trilogies: Chronicles of The Raven and Legends of The Raven, and the epic fantasy duology, The Ascendants of Estorea. He has written two novellas, Light Stealer and Vault of Deeds. His latest published work is the seventh and last Raven novel, Ravensoul. He is currently working on a new fantasy trilogy, the first of which, Once Walked With Gods is due out in 2010. Away from fantasy, James is writing contemporary young adult fiction and a very British screenplay. James has recently begun acting again and has a role in a gritty Brit-pic called The Estate. Beyond writing and acting, James spends as much time as possible with his son, Oscar, his wife, Clare, and Mollie the Hungarian Vizsla. That’s a dog to anyone not in the know. They all live in Teddington, Middlesex.
MICHAEL BISHOP was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1945. His younger years were spent as what is commonly referred to as the life of an ‘air force brat’. His memories of a year in Japan at the age of four were vivid enough in his later years to help write Under Heaven’s Bridge, a collaboration with Ian Watson. His first fiction sale was Piñon Fall published in Galaxy in 1969, and within a few years his stories had been published in all of the major genre magazines. In 1974 he left his teaching position at the University of Georgia and became a full-time writer. A year later, his first novel, A Funeral For the Eyes of Fire, was published, and was the first of what could be termed ‘the anthropological novels’, a group which would also include Stolen Faces and Transfigurations. Even though later novels, such as the Nebula Award-winning No Enemy But Time and Ancient of Days, would also examine anthropological issues, their Earthly settings would set them apart from the earlier ‘space operas’. For many years Michael and his family have lived in the small West Georgia town of Pine Mountain. This region is the setting for many short stories and the novels Who Made Stevie Crye?, the aforementioned Ancient of Days, The Secret Ascension, and 1994’s Brittle Innings, which Mike describes as his ‘Southern Gothic World War Two Baseball Novel’.
GARY A. BRAUN
BECK is a prolific author who writes mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mainstream literature. He is the author of nineteen books, and nearly 200 of his short stories have appeared in various publications. He was born in Newark, Ohio; the city that serves as the model for the fictitious Cedar Hill in many of his stories. The Cedar Hill stories are collected in Graveyard People and Home Before Dark. His fiction has received several awards, including the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction in 2003 for Duty and in 2005 for We Now Pause for Station Identification. His collection Destinations Unknown won a Stoker in 2006. His novella Kiss of the Mudman received the International Horror Guild Award for Long Fiction in 2005. As an editor, Gary completed the latest instalment of the Masques anthology series created by Jerry Williamson, Masques V, after Jerry became too ill to continue. He also served a term as president of the Horror Writers Association. He is married to Lucy Snyder, a science fiction/fantasy writer, and they reside in Columbus, Ohio.
CHRISTOPHER BURNS is a novelist and short-story writer with a special interest in early cinema. He lives in Cumbria.
PAT CADIGAN’s work is often described as being part of the ‘cyberpunk’ movement, in that many of her novels and short stories explore the relationship between the human mind and technology. Her first novel, Mindplayers, was published in 1987. Her following two novels, Synners and Fools, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in their respective years, and were followed by Tea From An Empty Cup and Dervish Is Digital. Pat’s short fiction has been collected in Patterns, Dirty Work, Home By The Sea and Letters From Home, and she has also written various media tie-in novels and novelisations, including Lost In Space: Promised Land, Cellular, Jason X and Jason X: The Experiment.
MICHAEL COBLEY sold his first professional short story, Waltz In Flexitime, to Robert Holdstock and Chris Evans for the anthology Other Edens II, in 1988. Since then his short fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Interzone, FOCUS, Dream, Back Brain Recluse, Albedo I and Roadworks, and is collected in Iron Mosaic. His first novel, Shadowkings, volume one of the ‘Shadowkings Trilogy’, was published in 2002, and was followed by Shadowgod and Shadowmasque. Seeds of Earth, volume one of the ‘Humanity’s Fire’ trilogy, was published in 2009 and was followed by The Orphaned Worlds. The final book in the trilogy, The Ascendant Stars, will be released in 2011.
JOHN CONNOLLY was born in Dublin in 1968 and has, at various points, worked as a journalist, a barman, a local government official, a waiter and a dogsbody at Harrods in London. His first novel, Every Dead Thing, was published in 1999, and introduced the character of Charlie Parker, a former policeman hunting the killer of his wife and daughter. Further Charlie Parker novels, Dark Hollow, The Killing Kind and The White Road followed, and then in 2003 John published his fifth novel – and first stand-alone book – Bad Men. In 2004 came Nocturnes, a collection of novellas and short stories, and 2005 saw the publication of the fifth Charlie Parker novel, The Black Angel. John’s seventh novel, The Book of Lost Things, a story about fairy stories and the power that books have to shape our world and our imaginations, was published in 2006, since when there have been four more Charlie Parker novels – The Unquiet (2007), The Reapers (2008), The Lovers (2009) and The Whisperers (2010). John’s first YA novel, The Gates, was published in 2009.
PAUL CORNELL is a writer of SF and fantasy for prose, comics andtelevision. He has written three episodes of Doctor Who, Captain Britain and MI-13 for Marvel, and is now the writer of Action Comics for DC. He has a pilot for a medical horror series on BBC3 called Pulse. His novels are Something More and British Summertime, and he will have a new book out from Tor next year.
JOOLZ DENBY is a poet, novelist, artist, spoken-word artist, tattooist, band manager, photographer and curator. She is author of the novels Billie Morgan, Borrowed Light, Stone Baby and Corazon, and several collections of poetry, including Pray For Us Sinners. Her short fiction has recently appeared in the anthologies Punk Fiction and London Noir: Capital Crime Fiction. She has won and been short-listed for several literary awards, including The Orange Prize For Literature. She has also won the US Earphone Award for her spoken-word work.
STEVEN ERIKSON is an archaeologist and anthropologist and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is best known for his ‘Malazan Book of the Fallen’ series – Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, House of Chains, Midnight Tides, The Bonehunters, Reaper’s Gale, Toll the Hounds, Dust of Dreams and the forthcoming The Crippled God. He has also written a series of stories and novellas featuring Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, the famed necromancers from the ‘Malazan Book of the Fallen’ series – Blood Follows, The Healthy Dead, The Lees of Laughter’s End and Crack’d Pot Trail – as well as several stand-alone novellas, such as Fishin’ with Grandma Matchie, The Devil Delivered and Revolvo.
ANNE GAY is the author of four adult SF novels, including the highly-acclaimed Mindsail and Brooch of Azure Midnight. She has also published four young adult SF novels and was the editor of LineOne’s Science Fiction Zone, which regularly attracted a readership of around 125,000 over its life. Married to author Stan Nicholls, she now concentrates more on psychotherapy, being the author of two self-help books which have been published on four continents in languages from Swedish to Chinese. As Anne Nicholls she worked as an expert consultant for the UK government’s Parentscentre website, and is the agony aunt for ISP TalkTalk.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, bestselling author of such novels as The Myth Hunters, Wildwood Road, The Boys Are Back in Town, The Ferryman, Strangewood, Of Saints and Shadows and (with Tim Lebbon) The Map of Moments. He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Poison Ink, Soulless and the YA thriller series, Body of Evidence. Upcoming teen fiction includes a new series of fantasy novels co-authored with Tim Lebbon, entitled The Secret Journeys of Jack London. A life-long fan of the ‘team-up’, Chris frequently collaborates with other writers on books, comics and scripts. He co-authored the lavishly illustrated novel, Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola. With Thomas E Sniegoski, he is the co-author of multiple novels, as well as comic book miniseries such as Talent and The Sisterhood, both currently in development as feature films. With Amber Benson, Chris co-created the online animated series, Ghosts of Albion, and co-wrote the book series of the same name. He is editor, or co-editor, of the anthologies, The New Dead and British Invasion, and has also written and co-written comic books, video games, screenplays and a network television pilot. He is also known for his many media tie-in works, in the worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Hellboy and X-Men, among others.
STEPHEN GREGORY’s first book The Cormorant won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1987 and was made into a BBC movie starring Ralph Fiennes. The Woodwitch and The Blood of Angels completed a trilogy of novels set in the mountains of Snowdonia. A fourth novel, The Perils and Dangers of This Night, was published in 2009. William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist and The French Connection) hired him to work on a project at Paramount Studios, and for a year he lived in Hollywood. He now lives and works in Borneo, but he hopes that one day he and his wife Chris and their dogs will be able to move either to their ancient dilapidated farmhouse in France or their daughter-in-law’s farm in rural Thailand.
SIMON GUERRIER is a novelist, short story writer and dramatist, most closely associated with the universe of Doctor Who and its various spin-offs. He is the author of three Doctor Who novels – The Time Travellers, The Pirate Loop and The Slitheen Excursion, many Doctor Who short stories, all of which have appeared in the popular Short Trips series of anthologies published by Big Finish, several Doctor Who comic strips and a number of Doctor Who audio dramas, including The Settling, The Judgement of Isskar and Home Truths. He is also author of the novels Primeval: Fire and Water and Being Human: The Road, and has written audio dramas based on other popular TV series, such as Sapphire and Steel, Blake’s 7 and Robin Hood.
STEVEN
HALL was born in Greater Manchester in 1975 and grew up in Glossop, Derbyshire. His first novel, The Raw Shark Texts, was published by Canongate in the UK. The Raw Shark Texts won the Borders Original Voices Award 2007, the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. The book has been translated into thirty languages and a film adaptation is currently in development. Steven’s work has also appeared in Granta Magazine, New Writing 13, and on BBC Radio 3 and the BBC World Service. In 2008, his audio drama The Word Lord was one of the four stories to feature on Forty-Five, a Big Finish Productions release celebrating 45 years of Doctor Who. Steven is currently working on his second novel, amongst other things. He lives in Preston with his girlfriend and a Dalek.
PETER F. HAMILTON was born in Rutland in 1960. He sold his first story to Fear magazine in 1988, and his short fiction has also been published in Interzone and the anthologies In Dreams and New Worlds. His first novel was Mindstar Rising, published in 1993, since when he has had a further eleven novels published – A Quantum Murder, The Nano Flower, The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, The Naked God, Misspent Youth, Pandora’s Star, Judas Unchained, The Dreaming Void, The Temporal Void and Fallen Dragon. The third book in the ‘Void Trilogy’, The Evolutionary Void, is due to be published in August 2010.
Cinema Futura (edited by Mark Morris) Page 25