Pantophobia

I flogged one of my books to a lad I know at work, who has limited interest in my soap opera style epic fantasy, but has a missus who loves the stuff. She's a big Dave Eddings fan, and as my book has some similarity to the linear fantasy of the Belgeriad, I hoped she'd enjoy it.

I bumped into him the other day and asked how she was getting along with it. He said she was really get into it, but had to stop reading it one evening as a scene was terrifying her. I was a little taken aback- after all I chanced my 10 yr old lad reading it, and he wasn't fussed about the occasionally visceral scene or two, and he certainly wasn't scared (well I couldn't hear him scream whilst I watched telly downstairs).

It would seem it was an early scene where a Dark-mage chases the heroine Emelia through dark cobbled streets, and corners her in an alley. So, yeah, creepy... but, enough to make you stop reading?? Admittedly it may have just been her excuse, and she thinks it is a bobbins book....

It got me thinking about the nature of fears. It's a topic that comes up a lot in our house; after all, fear is a salient aspect of childhood. There's a commonality to fear with my two older kids, and then a divergence which typifies their personalities. Both had the separation fear, and the fear of loss that all kids have. That's something that lurks inside all of us, I think, that terror of isolation, of loneliness. They had a common fear of me and the wife splitting up. That stemmed (logically) from an abrupt swathe of people we knew separating. So every time me and t'wife get the arse on with each other about pointless stuff (I didn't tidy up, usually) the kids were wailing like drunken banshees about us not loving one another etc etc. All rational thus far.

But it's the differences which fascinate me. Charlie, with his vivid imagination, his heart on his sleeve, has fantastical fears. His fears were of the mythical and supernatural. I can recall him being scared witless by a kids spooky story where a boy gets turned into a doll. And that Dr Who episode where the girl traps a boy in a drawing. He was really freaked by it (actually I get that fear... I was disturbed by it too!!!). His has always been the monsters and the vampires and the ghosts.

Evelyn, ever pragmatic, was first scared of dangerous beasts. Sharks in the sea in Devon; box jellyfish in the English Channel; snakes, lions, venomous spiders in Yorkshire... She's moved on now to disease, after an ill-advised trip to Thackray's medical museum in Leeds. Now I'm continually questioned on a range of dire pathologies by her, whether small-pox is coming back, and how worried she needs to be about anthrax. It's like having a mixture of House and Jack Bauer inside an eight year old.

I think back to my childhood, and my fears were no less rational. I had the standard (for my generation) Dr Who scared moments (the Ruton in Horror of Fang Rock; the robot ventriloquists dummy in Talons of Weing Chiang... in fact anything involving Robert Holmes and his love of Gothic horror on Saturday tea-times). The ghosts and ghouls less so, but I recall one episode of the sci-fi series Sapphire and Steel, wherein people from photographs came to life... and this soldier had no face. I was terrified for weeks after that...

The only fear that remains is one of loss, and I suppose by extension of that the fear of death. These are the common fears of most. As you grow old you become afraid for others-- afraid my kids will run into problems, get hurt, get knocked over, and this eases your own somewhat. But every now and then you get a wrench in your gut about something...

So with all that lingering in the rear of our minds, why do we seek fear for entertainment? Why do we like to be scared? There's a huge market for horror, and by that I don't mean paranormal sparkly vampires, I mean good old fill your pants and spill your drink TERROR. And every weekend people jump off perfectly safe bridges with elastic bands on their back, just to get the feeling of hurtling towards a river four hundred feet below and not dying. We invite fear back into our lives quite readily. Why?

I suppose fear shares the same physiological response as any adrenaline surge: extreme excitement, preparing for battle, fighting, running for your life. But the situations we create now are sanitised, they are safe fear, far more than our ancestors ever could. The invisible spirit on Paranormal Activity isn't going to come out of the TV and drag you across the floor. The bungie rope is going to hold. The parachute will open. The free fall rollercoaster style ride won't splat you all across the bored queue below. And with any buzz, repetition equals less thrill. You can see as a society we seek more and more thrill, more condensed controlled terror, to sate our needs. Everything now is 'extreme.'

Yet,ironically, the fears we carry from our early days never really leave. The fear of loss, the fear of passing away perhaps before you have had time to do what you want or say what you need to. Is there a way of facing these fears, these anxieties, in a sanitised way? I'm not sure there's a way of making it cuddly, or disposable, or easy--but I think that by sharing fears with others, by accepting we all have those basic anxieties in common, we can learn to live with them a lot better.

Hang on... there's a scratching on the window....

(yeah, yeah, Salem's Lot joke... couldn't leave you on too much of a downer

 

Stainless Steel Style

My first exposure to Harry Harrison's writing was actually via an adaptation of his work for the UK sci-fi comic 2000AD. The Stainless Steel Rat appeared in issues in the late seventies early eighties, written by Gosnall and drawn by Carlos Ezquerra (who drew Jim like James Couburn). It was quite different to a lot of 2000AD stories, as it captured the irreverent humour of Harrison well, and I loved the idea of a space-age thief (because let's face it we all wanted to be Han Solo, not Luke Skywalker).
A few years later, when I started to read a bit more sci-fi (mainly Heinlein) I decided to try the SSR books, and from there got into Deathworld, Bill the Galactic Hero, and the Eden books.
Harrison was a skilled writer. His style was easy to devour, avoiding the pomposity of many sci-fi writers and he managed to write humour without deriding the genre. I found it interesting that Harrison's origins were in the comics field- he was an illustrator and a writer of syndicated comic strips in the 1950s.

Deathworld was Harrison's first SF novel. It was originally serialised, as were many of the fantasy and SF books of that era. Its hero, Jason dinAlt, is a typical Harrison rogue--he is a gambler with some psychic ability--and he meets and accompanies Kerk Pyrrus to the planet Pyrrus (the Deathworld of the title). When I read the book first time I was blown away by the mixture of action and humour that typifies Harrison's work. Harrison wrote three Deathworld books in the sixties, but it was the Stainless Steel rat series that produced the greatest output.

After discovering them in 2000AD I read the first seven books through the 1980s, four of which had been written when i got into the series, and three after (SSR for President, SSR is Born and SSR gets Drafted). The decision to write SSR books about Jim's youth was a great idea, in my opinion, as the series was turning into a little of a family affair by the fourth book.

Jim DiGris was a perfect anti-hero. He was a moralistic thief and con-man who abhorred killing, justified his thievery by saying it provided the galaxy with something to talk about, and was dedicated to his missus and kids. His love, Angelina, has less compunctions about bumping people off. The concept of the Special Corps (a group of largely ex-criminals who now fight crime) formed the basis for the early books, and highlights Harrison's love for the rogue in SF.

Harrison lived until 87, which is fair going, and its hard to be too sad about his passing as he leaves an astonishing catalogue of work behind. I'm planning to catch up on the SSR books that I never read, and indeed the Bill, Galactic Hero sequels. There are so many books and so little time!

Quaequam Blag! How 2000AD shaped my life...

I'm still into comics, although not to the degree I was as a lad, rooting around the Merrion Centre market looking for the missing issues of Jon Byrne's Fantastic Four. I did the collector thing for a while, buying first editions before Marvel cottoned onto it and brought out fifty covers of the same issue. In fact Sandman number 1 is probably the only valuable comic I still have (other than an early Lee-Kirby FF with the best letters page ever).

Tastes have matured over the years. My first 'mature' comic was probably Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright books, possibly Watchmen (collected) or maybe even V for Vendetta or Sandman, I'm not sure. I still buy a mix now- I enjoy the regular Marvel titles like New Avengers/ Secret Avengers/ FF/ Captain America as much as the 'mature' ones like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Boys, The Filth, Neonomicon etc.

Now some of that has been enhanced by son #1 getting into comics. I started him off on the Essential series (reprinting all those issues we used to get in Pocketbooks) then moved to the latest Marvel titles. Seemed good. They have a rating system now- the 'A' rating is kind of the same as PG and the 'T+' like a 12-ish. Thought, well he watches 12 at the cinema, so same applies- off you go.

Then we had a bit of a run of violent scenes in one or two comics that got me fretting. The Secret Invasion; New Avengers had a bit of skrull heads exploding off (green, but still obviously heads exploding) and then Sentry ripped Ares in half, viscera and all in Seige, and I thought... shit, this might be a bit full-on.

So I hit that parent quandary. It's the angst about what and when to let them see stuff, or do stuff, and you start to reference your own upbringing and your own dislike of censorship. Its a nightmare being a softy liberal type. As a teen I'd gravitate to records that said 'fuck' in them, now I synchronise my turning the care stereo down to them. I'd listened to all sorts of stuff as I grew up and Parent Advisory Records didn't make me go shoot up MacDonalds.

Am I fretting needlessly? The staple of lads comics when I was son#1's age were war comics (like Battle). The violence in those was in your face, mixed with a healthy dose of anti-German insults (Fritz, Adolf, Krauty etc).

But the pinnacle of violent comics of my childhood has to be 2000AD. I came into the comic when it merged with Starlord, which I read at primary school (and starred Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters). Me and my brother read it ad-hoc for most of the early progs, with faves being ABC Warriors, Flesh, Invasion, Inferno and of course Judge Dredd. It was really taking off in the early 200s and I think around then we started getting it weekly and stayed with it way past prog 400. Those were seminal years in the comic- Alan Moore and Grant Morrison both wrote stuff, as well as Mills, Wagner and Grant. I loved Slaine, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Dredd, DR & Quinch, Nemesis the Warlock, Robo-Hunter... the list is endless. The future shocks and the time twisters stick surprisingly in the mind. There was no doubt the sheer quality of the writing and pace of the material had a massive impact on me and my writing, and also in my playing Role Playing Games (the Judge Dredd RPG was superb).

And the violence? Well I got hold of some of the reprint editions that Rebellion published (The Case Files). Bloody Hell- no messing! Head shots, knives, perps minced up, incinerated, chopped- you name it. And that was without reading Flesh (which I bought my brother Dan, and he's hidden from the kids). It's unapologetically violent, ridiculously funny (especially Ro-Busters and Strontium Dog... Mek-Quake's 'Big Jobs?' anyone?) and politically incorrect (I still chuckle about the League of Fatties and their belly-wheels). Did the violence screw me up for life? Ha, not yet. I wonder now what ratings some of the 2000AD stuff form the early 80s would pull in? I suppose now its all in shiny red technicolour so it seems more visceral.

So I felt reassured and did the only responsible thing. I let son#1 read the Dredd comics. He loved them. Who wouldn't? Dredd is the ultimate security figure for a child (in the early days at least). He is the personification of boundary setting, what every child secretly seeks for reassurance. Dredd is hard but fair, and the early comics very noble and heroic (he hasn't got to the later more facistic ones, where he nukes the Sov-block with a Carlos Ezquerra 'Request denied!' shot). I think when I buy them he'll love the Strontium Dog even more (The Styx Brothers...sigh...genius...'Heart shot, I loose, but so does Alpha...' and Middenface McNulty....great stuff, lost on kids!!!).

I hold many of the US comics I read when i was younger in high esteem and with great nostalgic affection. But they pale when I think of the buzz of reading 2000AD weekly--original, funny, violent and a massive prompt for creativity in me.

"Splundig Vur Thrigg," as Tharg would say before eating a polystyrene cup and battling the thrill-suckers.