Jim Taylor

A ponderer with delusions of grandeur...

Meet the new Doctor….

Aug 042013
 

The wait is over!  After all the speculation and anticipation following Matt Smith’s announcement that he would be leaving Doctor Who after this year’s Christmas special, the new Doctor has finally been unveiled, and it is….

PETER CAPALDI!

He’s an interesting choice for the role, as since the series’ return to our screens in 2005 the eponymous timelord has been portrayed by increasingly younger actors.  In fact, at 55, he’s the same age that first Doctor William Hartnell was when he took on the role back in 1963, and Calpaldi’s appointment might perhaps mark a return to the Doctor being more of a fatherly authority figure, rather than the borderline sex symbol that David Tennant in particular made him.  So how do we feel about Capaldi’s casting?

Peter Capaldi is a terrific actor, and while he’s perhaps best known as foul-mouthed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker in the BBC’s acclaimed political comedy The Thick of It, he’s taken on a wide variety of roles in the past, spanning both film and TV.  He’s not without sci-fi experience, too; he appeared as the Angel Islington in the 1996 Neil Gaiman-penned TV miniseries Neverwhere, and starred as Angus Flint in the 1988 Ken Russell film The Lair of the White Worm.  This is in addition to his previous Whoniverse guest roles in Torchwood: Children of Earth and the Doctor Who episode Fires of Pompeii.  Viewers who only know him from The Thick of It and its film spin-off In the Loop might be skeptical about his acting range, but a look at his wider oeuvre shows that Capaldi can do funny, sad, angry, crazy and strange with ease, all the traits he’ll need to exhibit as the 12th Doctor.  That said, it remains to be seen exactly what sort of Doctor number 12 will prove to be, and it’ll be fascinating to see what Moffat and Capaldi come up with over the coming months.  Will he have Hartnell’s sternness, Tom Baker’s weirdness, McCoy’s manipulative streak, Tennant’s exuberance or some combination of them all?  Might he even bring something completely new to the Doctor, 50 years since the character first appeared on TV screens?  Only time will tell, but with an actor of Capaldi’s calibre, the Doctor’s future is in good hands.   

The Doctor Who 50th anniversary special will air on 23rd November on BBC1.  Peter Capaldi’s first appearance in the role will be during the 2013 Christmas special.

GAME REVIEW: ‘Mercenary Kings’

Jul 312013
 

Jonny discovers that a retro 2D shooter he backed on Kickstarter was well worth supporting….

Homage indie games are 10-a-penny on Kickstarter, so it was with trepidation that I chose to back Mercenary Kings in August 2012.  The project was looking for $75,000 to fund a classic 2D shooter in the style of Megaman and Contra.  The big draw Tribute Games were promising was that you could customise your guns completely, to choose the exact combination of pieces with which to blow your enemies away.  Paired with this, they had in their team several of the artists who worked on Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game which I’ve never played, but remembered for its brilliant graphics.

Mercenary Kings was released on Steam in late July, and thanks to reaching over $100,000 with their Kickstarter project they were able to listen to fans and add in an additional playable character, as well as 4-player co-op mode.

As the game’s still in Early Access mode (essentially somewhere between Beta and full release) some things still need to be polished off, and there are frequent patches to fix known bugs.  But even now this is a vastly enjoyable, fast-paced shooter.  The artwork is slick and gory, and packs more life into a few dozen pixels than I’d have thought possible.  Everything about the gameplay screams Megaman, but there’s certainly a dash of Ruff ‘N’ Tumble and even Chaos Engine thrown in there too.

The weapon customisation works wonderfully, with enemies dropping the materials you need to build parts for your arsenal.  Fabric, Iron and Steel are easy to come by, as you cut through swathes of foot soldiers, but remembering where you found that Nitrogen will require some effort. This gives good reason to replay earlier missions and find those last few ingredients you need for a new gun barrel.

I quickly discarded the starting pistol, and fashioned a preposterously powerful 2-shot behemoth, with the body of a shotgun and all of the trappings of a sniper rifle: maximum range and damage, but with constant reloads.  This worked wonderfully, cutting down most chumps in a single shot, which was fine until I had to bring back an enemy alive by weakening and capturing him.  After accidentally killing him in one shot, it was with delight that I ran to the work bench and started building a weaker submachine gun to fulfil that specific task.

Unfortunately when I tried joining a co-op game, the server crashed; a risk of early access, I suppose.  The gameplay is so perfectly simple that it may get a little stale in single-player, much like Borderlands or Dead Island, but as with these games, I suspect everything will come together when played with friends.  A couple of you with spray-and-pray assault rifles, one loaded up on incendiary ammo and someone swearing by their trusty knife.

Mercenary Kings has hit the nail on the head with the charm and simplicity of classic shooters, alongside the crafting options and multiplayer capability of recent successes. I’ll be eagerly awaiting expansions in the future, and dishing out copies to friends for birthdays and Christmases.

Jonny West

Mercenary Kings is available to buy now from Steam.

Q & A with ‘The Vengeance Path’ author Andrew Jamieson

Jul 292013
 

New_cover_small

The Vengeance Path is an epic tale of war, politics and (of course) revenge that was released as a Kindle eBook on Amazon.co.uk at the beginning of July, by Edinburgh-based e-publisher Thistle In The Kiss.  Since then it has been a regular presence in the Kindle top 100 Steampunk Bestseller list.

Blending high fantasy with a steampunk aesthetic, the book is the first volume in a larger series, The Chronicles of Edenos, which promises to be a spellbinding saga of truly epic proportions.  So detailed is this exquisitely-rendered world of steam-powered sky-ships, exiled warrior monks and feuding imperial houses that it seems hard to believe it’s all the work of just one mind, but author Andrew Jamieson is the sole creator responsible for the world of Edenos and its many strange inhabitants.  Geekzine UK caught up with him to ask a few questions about the book, and although Andy is actually the founder of the Geekzine itself, we promised not to go easy on him!

Geekzine: In The Vengeance Path, you’ve created a incredibly detailed world, with a fully-developed geography and political system.  What came first in your creative process, the world or the story set within it?

Andrew Jamieson: It was an intertwined genesis, really, whereby one idea for the world would infuse a plot idea, for example. And likewise in reverse. Most noticeably, this is evident in the history of the various races; I needed to know a rough kind of background for each one so that the relevant characters in the story had some sort of gravitas and motivation. The Nuscanni, for example, are near-extinct, and the Azanarii and the Nazvishii have almost annihilated the other in ancient wars way before The Vengeance Path begins. Take the character of Gorthrel; he has quite a complex backstory that involves mixed heritage, a corrupt order of elite knights, and a period of exile. Also, creating the various aristocratic family Houses was an enjoyable process, and I wrote pages of character names and backstories in preparation for The Vengeance Path. All invaluable stuff. I think with any good fantasy ‘epic’ there is a sense that you, the reader, are getting a glimpse inside a much larger world.

GZ:  So-called fantasy literature, from Tolkien to George R.R. Martin, usually takes as its setting an analogue of medieval Europe.  Was your decision to give the story more of a steampunk flavour a conscious move away from the conventions of the genre?

AJ: My biggest gripe (and it’s not that big really) against the genre of fantasy, which I love deeply, is that it seems to be the accepted norm to have said yarn set in an anywhere kind of limbo, Westeros, for example, or the Forgotten Realms, or any number of fantasy locales. I think it is very rare to see heroic fantasy stories that have a fixed, grounded setting. Robert E. Howard’s Hyborean Age (Conan’s backdrop) comes to mind, Tolkien’s Middle Earth slightly less so. With The Vengeance Path I was adamant that it would be set in our timeline, albeit far in the future on an alien world, and that there would be some sort of backstory to explain humanity’s presence on the planet of Edenos. The steampunk element evolved over the course of the book, from when I settled upon the timeframe setting (1861 – no accidental date, history lovers) which ultimately decided and infused the weaponry and technology that would be available in the society of the Hattavahn Empire.

GZ:  Presumably such an epic story has been years in the making.  How long would you say that you’d been working on the book prior to publication, and did you make any major revisions of the story in that time?

AJ: I finished the first draft in the summer of 2009. I first started making notes on it back in the late nineties whilst at university. It was and is my dream project – but it took me a long time to feel confident to actually take it on. I wrote another book first, which was essentially my way of proving to myself that I could actually write a whole novel, as opposed to just starting various ideas and then abandoning them. That first novel is a lot of cobblers for the most part, but has enough that I like about it for me to want to revisit it at some point. I began work proper on The Vengeance Path in the summer of 2008. Throughout 2009 to 2012 I tinkered with it endlessly, as I continued to send it out to agents and publishers, with no success. Then when Thistle In The Kiss offered me a contract in August 2012, The Vengeance Path, with some rather excellent suggested edits by my publisher, underwent another massive edit, with a whole new beginning. So, on and off, it took about 13 to 15 years to finish The Vengeance Path – and it was only really about three years of consistent writing on the book itself, for the rest of that time it was a case of collating notes and ideas as they came to me, as well as working on lots of other projects that never came to anything.

GZ:  The Vengeance Path has quite a complex narrative, featuring many different characters and locations.  Did you find it challenging to keep track of where the story was going?

AJ: YES. But it was a fun challenge. The framework developed as I went along. There are approximately three plot strands; that of young hero, Kern Yulano, that of his exiled uncle, warrior-monk, Nessan Yulano, and another strand that encompasses various supporting characters involved in the major workings of the plot. It took a while for me to get a handle on the structure to optimise the effectiveness of these three strands, and I have to thank my publisher in some part for helping with this.

GZ:  There are many weird and wonderful names featured in the book, such as Learto Rigortan and Nessan Yulano.  Did you model the names of places and people on any particular language or languages?

AJ: I wanted to give the impression that the world of Edenos was a melting pot of culture and history. I was very clear that I wanted the natives of Edenos (being the Azanarii, Nazvishii, Nuscanni, Tynisians, and Morichredians) to be very distinctly different from the human ‘immigrants’. As such, with the human characters, I aimed to give them a smattering of mixed ethnicity; taking liberally from European and Asian names, for example, but giving them a twist. I wanted to create interesting ‘sounds’ with the names throughout the book, that would intrigue a reader. I love names and the art of naming, and I think this shines through.

EdenosRaces

The various races of the world of Edenos

GZ: Who or what would you say are the biggest influences on your writing?  Do some of your influences come from other media, like film or art?

AJ: Gosh. Well, how does one go about wanting to become a writer? It is quite simply the urge to tell stories, to use your imagination in an artistic way. I was a voracious reader from an early age (I have fond memories of trips to Mickleover Village Library) and had a go at writing stories throughout my school years. In my teens I thought I wanted to be a visual artist in some way, and trained and worked as an animator very briefly before returning back to the idea of being a writer in my late teens. I take inspiration and influence from lots of areas; history (particularly ancient and medieval), art, language, religion, music, film, TV, and so on. The world is so rich with cool stuff that it cannot fail to spark the hungry mind.

More directly, the fantasy writers I loved reading when I was a youngster, varying from classics like Tolkien’s works (I used to be obsessed with The Hobbit and Lord Of The Rings as a nerdy kid), and Greek myths and legends, through to the more pulpy Ian Livingstone/Steve Jackson variety (the Fighting Fantasy choose-your-own-adventure books), and RA Salvatore (the Forgotten Realms stalwart, of the Icewind Dale Trilogy fame), fired up my love of fantasy. As a developing writer throughout my late teens and twenties, I really enjoyed the books of Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker – two incredibly inventive writers who reinvigorated the notion of fantasy literature. American Gods and Weaveworld stand as two of the greatest books ever written. I think I am a very visual writer and film and TV inspires me very much. My favourite film is the Japanese anime, Laputa: The Castle In The Sky, the first official Studio Ghibli film from director Hayao Miyazaki. He is one of my creative heroes, a truly remarkable artist. David Lynch’s Dune is my next favourite film, and from there I discovered Frank Herbert’s original novel, which is wonderfully rich in depth. Herbert really infused my love of the concept of a family ‘House’, a continuation of that very tribal instinct that possesses humans, that spans back throughout history; the House of Lancaster, for example.

As a writer, my favourite is Barry Gifford, an American noir writer, made famous by Wild At Heart, adapted by David Lynch into a sexy cult classic of a film. Gifford also collaborated with Lynch on Lost Highway (another fave and an incredibly adventurous enterprise in terms of narrative style). Gifford is an effortlessly good writer in a way I don’t think I am. He does not, and I doubt ever will, write fantasy of the heroic kind, but as a technician, his books have taught me a lot.

GZ:  Two of the story’s protagonists, Kern and Pasea, are teenagers.  Do you think the book (and the series) could be enjoyed by younger readers?

AJ: Yes. I wanted the book to have appeal of the ‘crossover’ variety, without being too obvious. More importantly, I think the best fantasy tales have a young, naive hero at their heart, who as the story develops, evolve into a hero by means of their experiences. Frodo Baggins/Harry Potter/Luke Skywalker etc. The classic hero ‘journey’, if you will. In The Vengeance Path, that is Kern Yulano. I also wanted a strong female character of a similar age to Kern (17). Pasea Michaelis is feisty and plucky but, like Kern, is a character in flux, who will develop further as each book goes on. Characters like Kern and Pasea I see as being a reader’s emotional in-road into the book, whereas the other plot strands navigated by Nessan Yulano, and Emperor Menethran, for example, I feel will give the reader a broader picture of this world I’ve created, and the stakes at play.

GZ: The use of interludes and excerpts from other texts does a lot to round out the world of The Vengeance Path, as does extra content like the short story The Skies of Apocalypse.  Will we be seeing more additional content from the world of Edenos in the future?

AJ: There will be a number of shorter releases throughout the rest of 2013 (one novella plus a few shorts), culminating in book two of the Chronicles next spring, Children of War. My publisher has also created a ‘Vengeance Path App’ for Android, that has an interactive map (zoom in and out! Click on places for info!) plus an appendix of all things historical and cultural for the world of Edenos. This is a very exciting development and one that I think will really enrich a reader’s experience of The Chronicles of Edenos. It is also available FREE on Google Play.

GZ:  What’s next for The Chronicles of Edenos?

AJ: I will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer, which I am very excited to be involved with. I’ll be announcing the release of a top secret extra content Chronicles of Edenos novella at this event, so come along….

Andrew Jamieson will be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Wednesday 14th August at 5pm, alongside fellow steampunk fantasist, Damien M Love.  Tickets are available here.

The Vengeance Path is available now from Amazon.co.uk for £2.40.  

Illustrations courtesy of the brilliant Culprit Tech Art.

Could a Superman/Batman movie actually work?

Jul 272013
 

At the San Diego Comic-Con last weekend, director Zack Snyder revealed that the upcoming sequel to his Superman reboot Man of Steel (reviewed here) will in fact be a Superman/Batman crossover.  Predictably, such a huge announcement immediately triggered a deluge of blogs and articles speculating about the new film’s chances of success, ranging in tone from outright woe to cautious optimism.  Just a few years ago it would have made sense to say that multiple superheroes teaming up in the same film was a concept that would appeal to hardcore fanboys and no-one else, but the phenomenal success of Marvel’s Avengers changed all that.  But while Avengers opened the door it also set a benchmark, and whatever one might think about the film’s shortcomings, it’s hard to deny that director Joss Whedon succeeded elegantly in balancing several major comic book properties in one film without overloading the narrative.  Zack Snyder has yet to display the sort of flair for storytelling which has characterised Whedon’s work since his time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but could he still succeed in bringing two of the world’s most iconic comic book heroes to the screen at the same time?  In short, could he make a Superman/Batman movie that actually works?

It’s hard not to see DC/Warner’s production of a Superman/Batman crossover movie (henceforth referred to as SuBats) as an act of desperation, at least to some degree.  While Marvel’s self-perpetuating cinematic behemoth rolls ever on (another five films are due in the next two years), raking in billions of dollars in ticket revenue and associated merchandising, DC’s only major commercial success remains Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy (while Man of Steel made a tidy profit, its box office performance fell far short of both Marvel’s recent hits and Nolan’s last two Batman movies).  Superhero team-ups have long been a money-spinning tactic in the comic book world, and are a frequent source of debate for aficionados everywhere; I vividly remember being at an event with Scottish writer Mark Millar (Civil War, The Ultimates, Kick-Ass) where he was inundated with audience questions about which comic book characters would triumph in a range of hypothetical face-offs.  Being the world’s two most popular superheroes has meant that Superman and Batman are regular fixtures of such discussions, and their on-page partnership has a long history in the form of the World’s Finest and Justice League of America comics stretching back to the 1940s.  The two heroes have occasionally been rivals as well, most notably in Frank Miller’s gritty masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns.  Snyder has suggested that Miller’s work will be a source of inspiration for the new film, implying that the dark knight and the man of steel will be enemies for at least part of the running time.  This offers some interesting storytelling possibilities for Snyder and (screenwriter) David S. Goyer to exploit, but there are still plenty of ways in which such an intriguing premise could be poorly executed.

Even if SuBats is a project born of desperation, it could still be a decent movie in its own right.  But the potential pitfalls of bringing such a film to the big screen are legion, and there are a great many ways – creatively speaking – in which Snyder and Goyer might fail in the attempt.  So, what obstacles will they have to overcome to make SuBats a successful superhero movie?

1. Batman and Superman are very different characters

And not just in terms of aesthetics.  Superman possesses almost godlike power, whereas Batman has only his martial arts and his intellect.  If they’re meeting as enemies in SuBats, it’ll be a preposterously one-sided battle.  Granted, Batman came out on top in The Dark Knight Returns, but only thanks to some high-tech body armour and a kryptonite arrow.  Batman may be smarter, but for there to be any sort of contest Superman would have to be substantially weakened in some way.

There’s also the question of tone.  While the comics have varied from campy sci-fi action to bleak neo-noir, Batman’s recent cinematic outings have been emphatically dark and (relatively) realistic.  Christopher Nolan’s trilogy is a long way from the neon nightmare of Joel Schumacher, and it’s a shift in tone that feels fitting for a 21st century Batman.  Conversely, Superman doesn’t work so well with such a drained palette and cynical worldview.  One of the problems with Man of Steel was its attempt to drag Superman into a grittier, darker style more akin to Nolan’s Batman; the character only thrives when realised as a mythic, technicolor demigod somewhat removed from humdrum reality (Grant Morrison has written extensively about this very issue in his superb book Supergods).  To do Superman justice in the next film, Snyder and co need to let a little more light and colour into his world, and this will present them with a problem if Batman is along for the ride.  It could thus be quite a tonal balancing act to put both heroes onscreen at the same time, lightening up the man of steel whilst retaining Batman’s darkness.

2.  Do we need another origin story?

At what stage of his crime-fighting career will the Batman of SuBats be?  Although Mark Millar’s Red Son toyed with the interesting idea of Batman’s creation being a reaction to Superman’s presence, we’ve had far too many superhero origin stories on film in recent years.  Everyone now knows how Bruce Wayne becomes Batman, just like everyone knows how Peter Parker becomes Spider-Man, thus rendering the first half hour of The Amazing Spider-Man completely redundant.  It would be nice if Batman could already exist as a fully-formed character in the world of SuBats, one who might perceive a super-powered alien in a cape as a possible threat….

3. Don’t pander to the fanboys

They might want to see specific storylines acted out or extended sequences of batarangs vs heat-rays, but the rest of us just want a damn good story that makes sense!

4. Casting the right Batman

Christian Bale’s definitely not up for it, and that’s a good thing, since it’ll maintain the (necessary) division between Nolan’s Batman universe and this new pan-DC movie universe.  That means that Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s out, too, which is no bad thing as far as I’m concerned.  He’s a great actor, but was never meant to be seen as Batman onscreen – that’s the whole point of the ending of The Dark Knight Rises.  Snyder et al are going to need to select their new Batman very carefully, and shouldn’t (in line with point 2 above) go too young.  Henry Cavill has the makings of a good Superman, and they’ll need a similarly suitable actor in the opposite role.  Suggestions in the comments section, please….

Well that’s simple, then.  They only need to figure out how to evenly match two characters of wildly different power-levels, walk a tonal tightrope, avoid fan-pleasing gimmicks and get their casting for Batman spot-on.  In short, it’ll be an uphill struggle if they’re going to pull this off.  The very idea of a Superman/Batman movie seems faintly ludicrous, so Snyder and co will have to tread extremely carefully if they’re to produce a decent film featuring the two characters.  With Christopher Nolan’s steadying hand further removed from SuBats (his role has been reduced from producer to executive producer on the new film), it could be all too easy for Snyder to revert to bad habits, and spend two hours blowing things up in slow motion rather than telling a coherent story.  But let’s not write him off just yet.  There’s always a chance that SuBats could be the new Avengers, even if it’s a slim one.

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Runemarks’ by Joanne Harris

Jul 252013
 

Hannah takes a look at renowned author Joanne Harris’ first foray into the fantasy genre….

Now, I’m not much of a fantasy/sci-fi reader, but having read several of Joanne Harris’ other novels (Chocolat etc), I was curious to see how she handled a different genre, and if she could persuade me to give it a go, too.

Runemarks is tailored towards the young adult audience, but don’t let that put you off.  Many gems of novels can be found in this area, including a rather uncomfortable glimpse of a possible future in The Hunger Games, Gone (what would happen if adults disappeared and mutations appeared?), and of course the many wonderful works of Neil Gaiman.  But I digress.  This first novel in Harris’ fantasy series is a great introduction to this genre for both teens and people such as myself who have not really ventured down this route of reading before.  Harris creates a world that is easy to understand, and although the runes mentioned might be a little tough to get your head around at first, she includes a handy guide at the beginning of the book, as well as a rundown of the different characters and a number of maps.  Personally I’m a big fan of maps in fictional novels; it really helps the reader to visualise the world being described, and makes the whole experience much more engaging.

Maddy Smith, the protagonist of Runemarks, is a classic misfit in possession of powers she doesn’t fully understand.  Most teenagers can relate to these sort of feelings, which would help them in turn to relate to Maddy.  She’s a determined girl, and at times quite daring, which is fun to witness as you’re dragged into her adventures, which begin with a bit of a scuffle with goblins within the first few paragraphs.  Although this part is rather fun, Maddy’s encounters start to get scarier and more serious as time goes on and she realises just who she is.

Harris gently introduces more and more characters to the story, careful not to bombard the reader with too much at once.  She weaves each new event into the story as if creating a rich tapestry that after the first book is only going to get bigger, if the maps at the start are anything to go by.  I was certainly given the impression in the final chapter that this book was merely the start of something bigger and better to come.

Overall, I rather enjoyed Harris’ first voyage into the land of fantasy writing. I was as captured by this as I was by the chocolatier in Chocolat and the entrance of its owners in a mysterious wind.  However, for the more hardcore fans among us, it was perhaps a little tame in comparison to the likes of, say, Terry Pratchett, but maybe the best is yet to come.…

Hannah Nock

‘Pacific Rim’ and the Gateway in fantastic fiction

Jul 212013
 

Pacific Rim is a hugely enjoyable (if flawed) film which does a better job than Michael Bay of putting giant robots on the big screen, while at the same time paying homage to Japanese monster movies and manga/anime series like Neon Genesis Evangelion.  Although dominated by the awesome spectacle of towering machine men waging war against colossal sea-monsters, the film is also a good example of a subgenre of sci-fi/fantasy which I like to refer to as “gateway” fiction.  In Pacific Rim, the monstrous Kaiju enter our universe through a portal deep under the Pacific ocean (hence the film’s title), a plot point which makes it the latest in a long line of fictitious works where the story revolves around a portal or gateway to another world.  The notion of a magical/technological doorway which leads to unknown realms both beautiful and terrifying seems to fascinate us, so much so that it has been a recurring trope in our stories for thousands of years.  But why should this be?

Gateway fiction has a long and illustrious history, the concept and imagery behind it stretching back at least as far as the biblical Book of Revelation, whose 4th verse describes “a door standing open in heaven”.  A nice flip-side to this heavenly door is the malfunctioning teleporter in classic 1993 game Doom, which opens a portal to Hell itself (an idea recycled in the much underrated 1997 horror film Event Horizon), but there have been myriad other examples of the gateway in fiction across all media.  One of the most famous is the titular piece of furniture in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, but consider also the transdimensional portal in Clark Ashton Smith’s influential 1931 story The City of Singing Flame, the network of interstellar gateways in the Stargate universe, the doorways to children’s bedrooms in Pixar’s Monsters Inc and the mouth of the wormhole which punctures New York’s skyline in Marvel’s recent Avengers movie.  Often the gateway has been represented by a mirror, as in Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Grant Morrison’s meta-epic The Invisibles and John Carpenter’s 1987 film Prince of Darkness.  The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote at length about the unsettling nature of mirrors, showing as they do a reflected universe which can cause the viewer to question whether it is they or their reflection who truly exists (indeed, millions of words have been written about the mirror in fiction, but it is specifically their function as gateways which interests us here).  Whether represented by a ghostly portal, a magic mirror or a simple doorway, the gateway is a device which has been used again and again in fiction throughout the ages, but why is it so popular with authors and film-makers?

Stargate

One has to wonder if the gateway holds a sort of primordial fascination for human beings, the origin of which can found in the darkened cave mouths of our ancestors’ time.  Fanciful though this may seem, it is surely no accident that in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, for example, the heroic John Carter’s interplanetary adventure truly begins when he enters a mysterious cave in the Arizona mountains.  But whatever its origin as a fictional trope, the gateway is, simply put, a short-cut to the unknown.  A world in which such a portal exists is one where terror, adventure, weirdness and wonder are just a few steps away; instead of being on the other side of the galaxy, or in a magical land beyond our understanding, that which is profoundly ‘other’ is in our very midst – simultaneously far beyond our reach and yet right in front of us.  The gateway is an opening in an otherwise impenetrable and invisible barrier between our world and the fantastical, and as such can be both terrifying and alluring to the characters who encounter it.  Most gateway stories thus feature protagonists who are unable to resist the urge to plunge into the unknown, intoxicated as they are by the proximity of the other.

Alice Through the Looking-Glass

The gateway’s presence as a physical object is also significant here.  The solidity of the doorway emphasises that it is a part of our world as well as an entrance to another, thus reinforcing the dissonance caused when the distance between known and unknown is cut down to the depth of the gateway’s threshold.  It reassures us about the mundanity of our own world, while at the same time confirming the existence and mind-bending strangeness of others, and can also operate as a failsafe when things go wrong; if cosmic horrors from a parallel dimension are pouring in through a magic door, the door can usually be closed somehow.  The gateway can thus be a shield as well as a portal, and this offers still more storytelling possibilities for the device.

The gateway has been a common trope in sci-fi and fantasy fiction for centuries, and will doubtless continue to be so.  This is both because of the unique storytelling possibilities it offers as a plot device, and also because of the potential it has to bring the ‘unreal’ crashing into the ‘real’ with unsettling effect.  Pacific Rim is only the latest work of fiction to utilise the gateway, and demonstrates how it can not only provide an easy explanation for the presence of alien monsters, but also effectively suggest a universe more grand and grotesque than we could ever have imagined, lurking menacingly on the other side of the door.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries