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When literary authors slum in genre

2010-08-18T04:14:53Z

There’s a curious phenomenon happening out there in LiteraryLand: The territory of genre fiction is being invaded by the literary camp.

While it could be argued that literary writers have always borrowed from fantasy, science fiction and horror, even stolen genre's best ideas, I think there's a new and significant shift happening in the past few years.

Take Justin Cronin, writer of respectable stories, who recently leaped the chasm to the dystopian, undead-ridden realm of Twilight. With The Passage, his post-apocalyptic, doorstopper of a saga, the author enters a new universe, seemingly snubbing his former life writing “serious books” like Mary and O’Neil and The Summer Guest, which won prizes like Pen/Hemingway Award, the Whiting Writer’s Award and the Stephen Crane Prize. Both books of fiction situate themselves solidly in the camp of literary fiction. They’re set on the planet Earth we know and love. Not so with The Passage, in which mutant vampire-like creatures ravage a post-apocalyptic U.S. of A. Think Cormac McCarthy’s The Road crossed with the movie The Road Warrior, with the psychological tonnage of John Fowles’ The Magus and the “huh?” ofThe Matrix.

Now comes Ricky Moody, whose ironic novels like The Ice Storm andPurple America were solidly in the literary camp, telling us about life in a more-or-less recognizable world. His latest novel, The Four Fingers of Death, is a big departure, blending a B-movie classic with a dark future world. The plot: A doomed U.S. space mission to Mars and a subsequent accidental release of deadly bacteria picked up on the Red Planet results in that astronaut’s severed arm surviving re-entry to earth, and reanimating to embark on a wanton rampage of strangulation.

And there’s probably other examples I’m forgetting at the moment.

So what’s all this forsaking of one’s literary pedigree about?

It began with the flipside of this equation. It used to be that genre writers had to claw their way up the ivory tower in order to be recognized by the literary tastemakers. Clearly, that’s shifted, as more and more fantasy, science fiction, and horror writers have been accepted by the mainstream and given their overdue lit cred. It’s been a hard row to hoe. J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Philip Pullman and others helped blaze the trail to acceptance. Now these authors have been largely accepted into the canon. You can take university courses on fantasy literature and write dissertations on the homoerotic subtext simmering between Frodo and Sam. A whole generation, now of age and in college, grew up reading (or having read to them) the entire oeuvre of Harry Potter. That’s a sea change in the way fantasy will be seen in the future—not as some freaky subculture, but as widespread mass culture.

Yes, Margaret Atwood and Doris Lessing have delved into genre, although their works (A Handmaid's Tale, for example) was always taken as highbrow. Perhaps a better example: Stephen King, considered a hack horror writer for years who began publishing in the New Yorker in 1990. One wonders why the New Yorker finally caved and let him in the doors --- is this an implicit acknowledgement of his popularity? Or had King's writing gotten better. In any case, it's was a shocker when he began racking up impressive literary kudos, like in 2003 when the National Book Awards handed over its annual medal for distinguished contribution to American letters to King. Recently in May, the Los Angeles Public Library gave its Literary Award for his monstrous contribution to literature.

Now, as muggles and Mordor have entered the popular lexicon, the glitterati of literary fiction find themselves “slumming” in the darker, fouler waters of genre. (One reason: It’s probably more fun to write.) But in the end, I think it’s all about call and response. Readers want richer, more complex and more imaginative and immersive stories. Writers want an audience, and that audience increasingly reads genre. Each side—literary and genre—leeches off the other. The two camps have more or less met in the middle.

One wonders who’s going to delve into the dark waters next—Philip Roth? Salman Rushdie? Toni Morrison? Actually, it turns they already (sort of) have --- Roth explores alternative history in The Plot Against America;
Rushdie's "Magical Realism," of Midnight's Children, in which children have superpowers. You might even argue that Morrison's Beloved is a ghost story.

[thanks to readers at Tor.com, where this post originally appeared, for catching some errors and helping me revise this into a better essay]

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, which comes out in paperback in September. Contact him through his website,www.ethangilsdorf.com

Pixels of the Past

2010-08-12T04:45:58Z

Pong, Space Invaders, Galaga, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Joust, Centipede, Tron, Dragon's Lair, and my personal favorite, Robotron 2084.

If you're a 30- or 40-something geek like me, you probably played video games as a kid. Not on the personal computer, which in the 70s and 80s was only in its infancy. I mean the big, hulking, stand-up video arcade machines. The ones that ate your allowance (or cafeteria milk money).

As I write about in the my recent article for the Christian Science Monitor "Video game museum gives arcade classics extra lives" (print edition archived here), these games have had a powerful effect on an entire generation. And now that generation is all grown up, like with a lot of childhood or adolescent hobbies looked back on with the 20-20 hindsight of adulthood, these old school arcade games create nostalgia. We have money, we have desire, and we want our childhoods back. If you have kids of your own, that's another reason to dip into the days of 8-bit pixels and dim, humming, cave-like video arcades. The ones near my hometown were called The Space Center and The Dream Machine. Cool.

When generations reach middle age, there's a curious phenomenon: a nostalgia for the way things were kicks in. For me, the "way" was that pre-Mac, pre-iPhone, pre-iPod, pre-Internet world where people called each other on payphones and left notes in each other's lockers to communicate, made plans ahead of time, and had to meet in public, in person (gasp!) in order to play a video game. None of this hunkering down for hours at a time to immerse oneself in online games; these games of yore, like say Missile Command or cost a quarter or fifty cents, and for me anyway, they lasted about 10 minutes tops. The little Pac-Man or Space Invader was iconic, symbolic, crude. It was like a metaphor for a little you.

The draw of old video games, like old anything, is a desire feel closer to a unspoiled experience. As Henry Lowood says in my article, video game game nostalgia is about "stripping away the surface layers associated with modern games gives them the feeling of being closer to something we might call core game-play." Modern games are inordinately complex and require the mastery of bunches of buttons. The arcade game had maybe two or three buttons and a joystick. Sometimes just a joystick ---- a cave man bone tool compared to games like Gears of War or World of Warcraft.

We want to be connected to that time when things were, yep, simpler. When we didn't have all these fancy 3D computer animation technologies that produced photorealistic environments. When you could register your initials on the top score list of your favorite game, and enjoy a moment of fame ... until the next person came along to knock you off the leader board.

Real-Life Role-Playing

2010-07-15T05:09:03Z

Real-Life Role-Playing

By Ethan Gilsdorf

When Max Delaney came to rural Maine 13 years ago, his itinerant family moved from town to town, school to school. With few social connections, he felt isolated. Like an outsider.

"It was hard for me to find people," says Mr. Delaney, now 21. "I was searching for a community." His academic performance suffered, and he didn't get along with his teachers. "I did not do well with authority in school."

Then, the year his family arrived in Belfast, a coastal town of some 6,300 on Penobscot Bay, he discovered The Game Loft and finally found his tribe.

Similar to other youth-development organizations such as Outward Bound or Scouting, The Game Loft also fosters risk-taking, leadership, and camarad erie. But for kids who find the football gridiron to be a foreign world, The Game Loft immerses them in a different sort of team sport.

Via table-top role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), Game Loft members play characters armed not with football padding and hockey sticks but chain mail, broadswords, light sabers, and magic spells. Working together, they charge onto battlefields and explore underground dungeons, seeking valor in these imaginary realms.

"I took to [role-playing] immediately," Delaney says. He joined as a member of The Game Loft, then started volunteering as a staff member, and finally became an employee. Along the way, the games he played built up his character in the real world.

"Killing dragons is a challenge," says Ray Esta brook, The Game Loft's codirector and cofounder. His center connects dragon-slaying to the challenges life throws at you. Via gaming, kids test out "roles," but in a safe, nonschool environment, in order to become functioning adults in society – connected, compassionate, and caring. "Good things happen to kids who game," he says.

Cofounder Ray Estabrook (standing) leads gamers in playing '1968: Gone but Not Forgotten,' a game he and his wife and co-founder Patricia created.

After opening a game shop, All About Games, in the heart of Belfast in 1996, the husband-and-wife team of Ray and Patricia Estabrook, lifelong gamers, realized their store had become an ad hoc gathering place for youths who wanted to learn and play games. In 1998, they founded their community center in the shop's attic. Twelve years later, the innovative hangout – and the only gaming-focused youth center in the country – is going strong, changing the lives of individuals like Delaney.

"I was [at The Game Loft] to socialize with kids who had mutual interest not only in games but conversation," Delaney says. "It was a place to channel a lot of curiosity." Moreover, he was able to interact with kids of all ages, as well as adults, who treated him as an equal. "The level of respect we got at The Game Loft was different than [at] school."

The Game Loft addresses another concern: the proliferation of video games. In an age when parents worry about the potentially isolating and addictive effects of computer and console-based games such as World of Warcraft and Halo, The Game Loft offers an antidote. No electronic games are allowed within its doors. Rather, kids play games
like D&D and Star Wars Miniatures face to face, with pencils and paper and plastic figurines, not with pixels and high-bandwidth Internet connections. A role-playing game is participatory, not passive. The kids don't absorb prefab plots from movies, books, or video games, but tell their own stories of their characters' exploits. Players around a
gaming table interact, completing quests and, yes, killing monsters who stand between them and their booty. In their imaginations, they are linked to humankind's narrativemaking past of heroic ballads and campfire tales of derring-do.

Each weekday at about 2 p.m., between 15 and 35 kids ages 6 to 18 (about one-quarter of them girls) break down the front door, pour up the stairs, and burst into The Game Loft's "Great Hall." The adjacent kitchen serves up hot food, sometimes the only nutritionally sound meal kids might get all day. They grab a brownie or bowl of chicken soup, separate into small groups (usually fewer than eight players) and head to the various rooms that host the game sessions. Once settled and fed, the kids quickly get down to the business of role-playing as elves and wizards, or plotting strategy as Jedi knights and military commanders.

But an unsupervised, free-for-all role-playing game can be just as cruel as a playground game of dodgeball. That's why game moderators like Tom Foster structure "intentional games" with outcomes that reinforce the center's principles such as fair play and cooperation.

In one room, called "The Savage Room" and decorated with maps and a suit of armor, Mr. Foster, who has been playing D&D since the 1970s, ran a multiweek, modified D&D game. He schooled his 12-to-15-year-old protégés in surviving the elaborate dungeon he'd designed and stocked with traps and monsters.

But when the adventuring party – "a group of misfits," as Foster affectionately called them – stepped on a tripwire, a cage opened that unleashed a bloodthirsty rhino.

Hands shot up, offering solutions. "I'm going to hide!" one girl shouted. "I've got an epic plan!" blurted another. "I want to jump on its back!" said another, whose character, inexplicably, took his clothes off and, via magic, turned invisible.

"Hold it, everyone! Focus," Foster said. "You've got a very large animal with three horns after you and you're arguing among yourselves." Eventually, they tricked the rhino into running into a vault and slammed the door. Success.

"Here, the idea is to get them from playing a game to solving problems," Foster later says. "To integrate."

Still, parents can be skeptical of the pedagogical goals. Some think their kids are just goofing off, says Kali Rocheleau, director of volunteers and membership. "But once we get them in the door, they have that 'aha' moment."

Sian Evans, whose two sons are Game Loft regulars, was one of those leery parents. She was no fan of video games, either, and wondered if fantasy games were too violent. But once she observed her sons in action, she noticed them begin to pass not only Pokémon cards back and forth across the gaming table, but also concepts.

"When you're playing D&D, you're talking about ideas," Ms. Evans says. "It's not games, it's life skills." She recalls a time that Taran, her 11-year-old, came home bubbling with enthusiasm about what had happened that day in the game: "Oh Mom, I got turned into a dwarf!"

"This is so special to him because he's active, he's part of the story," Evans says. "[Taran] would like to put a bunk bed in and live [at the Loft]."

The Game Loft's tools and settings aren't all fantasy. One custom-made game, 1968: Gone but Not Forgotten, re-creates life in a galaxy not so far, far away: Maine. "It's role-playing in an imaginary county, but touching on real history," says Patricia Estabrook.

"Our Maine history game is Dungeons & Dragons without the dungeons or the dragons," Ray Estabrook adds.

Games that let kids inhabit other selves from local history give them a stake in their own community. So do service projects that ask teens to take a break from battling orcs to give back. Townspeople see teens engaged in work like shoveling sidewalks for the elderly, not loitering downtown.

"It's important for youth to be involved in the community, not stuck behind some walled high school perimeter," Ray says.

For those at risk of dropping out of high school, The Game Loft can provide empowerment, accountability, and a way back in. Take Damion Saucier, 17, who felt oppressed by his school's educational system. "Me and school never clicked," Damion says. But at The Game Loft, he found "a big family," learned how to work with others, and also learned the necessity of obeying authority – sometimes. Now he's recommitted to school and volunteering as a game-session leader, teaching next-generation geeks. They look up to him. "You are like a god to them," he says. "It gives you a sense of helping these kids be social, and they're having fun."

The Game Loft has managed to turn the lingering "gaming is antisocial" stereotype on its head.

As for Max Delaney, just this March, after 11 years, he left his job at The Game Loft. The small-town kid moved to the faraway realm of Portland, Maine. He felt a little nervous, but also confident. After all, he knew how to role-play.

"We role-play in all situations in our life. It's unconscious," Delaney says. A job interview is really just role-playing, he notes, and games are a gateway to interaction. "We want to try to be someone else for just a little while, to experiment with it, to see who we can
be and what others are."

Like a character in a D&D game, who outfits himself before an adventure, then gains experience and grows in mastery, Delaney is well prepared for his next adventure – be it a job in social services, teaching, or wherever his quest may take him.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An
Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other
Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, which comes out in paperback in
September. Contact him through his website, www.ethangilsdorf.com

Facing Facebook

2010-07-13T00:01:21Z

Facebook has become, for many, home sweet home on the Web. It has nearly blasted My Space and other social networking sites into obsolescence. When last checked, Facebook was after, Google, the world’s second most visited website.

But more than just market share, Facebook has captured mind share. It’s astounding how, in the mere six years since its founding in February 2004, Facebook has become enmeshed in our daily routines. Get up, make coffee, check Facebook. Time for bed, but not before updating your status one last time. More than half of its 400 million users browse Facebook website each day, a jaw dropping visitor return rate. The average user now spends almost an hour per day there, scrolling news feeds, sending virtual gifts like flowers, and playing games like Farmville and Mafia Wars. Every leisure hour we spend on Facebook is one hour we’re not doing what we used to do with our downtime: reading a book, cooking a decent meal, consuming other media like TV, going for a walk in the woods (or at least to the 7-Eleven). If downtime even exists anymore.

As David Kirkpatrick writes in The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World (Simon & Schuster, 372 pp., illustrated, $26), Facebook has led to ‘‘fundamentally new interpersonal and social effects.’’ That’s some understatement. Facebook has not only triggered semantic shifts like twisting the word “friend” into a verb and coining a new term, “unfriend.” (Personally, I think the friend rejection process should have been called “de-Face.”) It’s also redefined what we mean by friendship. As Kirkpatrick smartly notes, when Facebook was first dreamt up in a Harvard dorm room, it was envisioned as a tool to complement relationships with real world pals, not create ones with people you’d never met in the flesh. Now it’s used as much for self promotion and political activism — think of the Obama campaign’s mastery of the medium — as for networking and tracking down old flames. At last count I had 756 Facebook ‘‘friends,’’ and another 591 ‘‘fans’’ of my book. But how many of these friends or fans could I count on in a time of crisis? In cyberspace, no one can hear you cry (unless you’re Skyping).

The Facebook Effect is actually two books in one. One part is the exhaustively reported story of Facebook’s founding and meteoric rise to near ubiquity; the other is a thoughtful analysis of its impact. We first see Harvard roommates and fellow computer geeks Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes transform two early projects into Thefacebook.com. One was called Course Match, a program that encouraged students to enroll in classes based on who else had signed up; ‘‘[i]f a cute girl sat next to you in Topology, you could look up next semester’s Differential Geometry course to see if she had enrolled in that as well.’’ The other was called Facemash, which took pairs of photos from Harvard’s online dorm facebooks and asked users to choose the ‘‘hotter’’ person. Both were essentially designed for hooking up, not Zuckerberg’s later and more lofty goal of making the world a more open place.

The narrative charts a nearly clichéd story of naive but idealistic college kids renting a house in Palo Alto in the summer of 2004 and immersing themselves in Red Bull-fueled, all-night programming binges. They incorporate their little project, at this point still called “Thefacebook.com” (the “the” gets dropped in 2005). The site experiences staggering membership growth: 5 percent per month. Facebook expands from Harvard to include other colleges, then by the fall of 2006, the rest of the world. Word gets out. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo begin to drool at the incredible value of a community so willing to divulge its personal information. Being a senior editor at Fortune magazine, Kirkpatrick revels in recounting backroom negotiations with these tech companies and venture capitalists, each falling over the other to woo Facebook.

While the Machiavellian wheelings and dealings of Silicon Valley heavyweights might bore some readers, the interpersonal dirt shouldn’t. Kirkpatrick received full cooperation from Zuckerberg and many key players who sat for multiple interviews. We hear about personnel ousters, and lawsuits claiming Zuckerberg stole ideas from other social networking sites. While Kirkpatrick’s coziness with Facebook higher ups could have impaired his ability to be critical, we are thankfully given the occasional unflattering portrait of Zuckerberg. In one recreated scene, the newbie CEO is scolded by a colleague, ‘‘You’d better take CEO lessons, or this isn’t going to work out for you!’’

But far more interesting are the book’s efforts at social and behavioral commentary. Kirkpatrick raises the right questions, even if he doesn’t yet have all the answers. As the social network balloons --- Zuckerberg recently predicted he’d reach one billion worldwide users --- Kirkpatrick wonders if the site might make us not more global, but more tribal; not more individualistic but more conformist and vulnerable to marketing. The decentralization of information, relying on friends not institutions for news, seems like a positive democratic step. But in a world where, as The Facebook Effect observes, ‘‘everyone can be an editor, a content creator, a producer, and a distributor,’’ what is ‘‘news’’? Who are the gatekeepers? Users have already grumbled several times about Facebook’s disclosure of personal information to third parties. As recently as this May, Zuckerberg once again backpedaled for misusing user data, issuing more of an “oops” than an apology: “We just missed the mark,” he wrote. Facebook has since implemented new and clearer privacy settings.

If Facebook is warping our sense of privacy, at least it’s a community based on self-disclosure: You have to reveal the ‘‘real’’ you to join, and your identify is vetted by real friends. Most shenanigans found in anonymous online communities --- behaviors like flaming, griefing, and other anti-social quirks of online games and message boards ---aren’t tolerated. If someone becomes obnoxious, you can always defriend him. Not that there isn’t some degree of role-playing in all those clever status updates. For don't we all want to be seen as clever and ironic, witty and hip? To put our best online foot and face forward? Still, as Facebook increasingly melds with our selves, one can't help but question if it's become too easy to play the roles of voyeur, exhibitionist, and narcissist.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, which comes out in paperback in September. You can reach him and get more information at his website http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.

‘Extra Lives’ asks: What’s in a game?

2010-06-20T04:29:34Z

Must video games remain mere entertainment. Could they provide narratives that books, movies, and other vehicles for story delivery can’t? Might they even aspire to art?

Tom Bissell's new book "Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter" (Pantheon, 240 pp., $22.95) aims a tentative mortar shot at these targets. It comes at the right time. These are potent days for video gamers. The baby steps taken by Pong, Space Invaders, and Doom have become the thundering footfalls of Halo, Gears of War, and Mass Effect.

Production budgets for big games like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft rival those of movies.The industry rakes in billions, turning formerly closeted code monkeys and hackers into minor, Lamborghini-driving celebrities. Popular game sequel release dates have become events unto themselves, inspiring fans to line up at midnight outside their local Game Stops.

The problem is, no one knows how to talk about gaming — these Xbox and PlayStation binges that nervous parents worry could turn their kids into hollow-faced, emotionally-stunted, Dorito-eating dorks.

I'm sort of joking. But it's true: folks worry about the long term effects of kids --- and adults --- who increasingly play these sorts of elaborate, visually-rich and hypnotically immersive games, and not old-school games. Monopoly anyone?

As with any mass movement accelerating into the passing lane of pop culture, gaming requires its own discourse. Yet, the language we use to discuss, evaluate, and dissect this new medium is largely monosyllabic: good, bad, like, no like.

Frustrated by the lack of serious video game criticism, Tom Bissell wrote his own geek-centric inquiry. In “Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter,’’ Bissell sets out to establish his own aesthetics for the medium.

Bissell, author of highbrow books like “God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories’’ and “The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam,’’ makes two startling admissions. 1. He outs himself as a serious, addicted gamer. 2. He finds the pleasures of literature “leftover and familiar.’’ He’s bored with books. “I like fighting aliens and I like driving fast cars,’’ he writes.

His investigation is bedrocked upon personal experience, but “Extra Lives’’ mostly steers clear of memoir. We don’t learn much more about Bissell’s life, other than a few personal details (including a troublesome cocaine habit). But the author’s reflections infuse everything. He doesn’t tell a story; rather, he maps how his favorite games make him feel.

In his quest to elevate video game criticism, Bissell borrows terms from literary and film analysis. He grapples with ideas like “authored drama,’’ “formal constraints,’’ and “narrative progression.’’ Along the way, we also meet game developers at such megaliths as Epic Games, Bio Ware, and Ubisoft.

Thankfully, the book isn’t pure fanboy boosterism. It’s love/hate. Video games can be great, he says, but they can be “big, dumb, loud.’’ Some (like Bissell’s beloved Left 4 Dead) refuse to challenge their players; they merely “restore an unearned, vaguely loathsome form of innocence — an innocence derived of not knowing anything.’’ He calls Call of Duty 4 “war-porn.’’

A master prose stylist, the erudite Bissell is frequently insightful, if only occasionally too clever. (He’s mined needlessly dark corners of his thesaurus for words like “saurian’’ and “dipsomaniacally.’’) “Extra Lives’’ can also be funny. Bissell mockingly laments that he’s “saved’’ so many fictional worlds that he’s “felt a resentful Republicanism creep into my game-playing mind: Can’t these [expletive] people take care of themselves?’’

The aesthetics-in-progress of “Extra Lives’’ reveal a proclivity for games such as Fable II, which present players with tricky moral choices and tempt them to be bad. What’s more, Bissell deplores games that don’t make him feel anything. He even wonders whether first-person shooters “are not violent enough.’’

By book’s end, we’re left with this question for game developers: Now what? The industry has mastered gee-whiz realism, tasty eye-candy, and uber-believable game play. Gamers could demand the deeper emotional pleasures supplied by novels and movies. Or they might not. As indie game developer Jonathan Blow (of Braid fame) says, “We’re not really trying to have important things to say right now.’’

So don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, lock and load. We have plenty of zombies and aliens to blow away.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms. More info at www.ethangilsdorf.com.

Not dead yet: Zombie movies are unalive and well

2010-06-20T04:29:07Z

Not dead yet: Zombie movies are unalive and well

George Romero and Ethan GilsdorfGeorge Romero thinks the zombie genre is here to stay.

“I don’t think it will ever die,’’ said Romero, director of six zombie-themed films, including his latest, “Survival of the Dead,’’ which opens Friday. He was in Boston earlier this month to promote the film.

Of course, Romero is more than a little biased. Over the past 40-plus years, the director has brought us the landmark “Night of the Living Dead’’ (1968), “Dawn of the Dead’’ (1978), and “Day of the Dead’’ (1985), as well as “Creepshow’’ (1982). But ask the man why re-animated, flesh-starved corpses are stumbling and lumbering back into pop culture, hungry for our brains, and he draws a blank.

“Why zombie movies? In Budapest, 3,000 people dress up as zombies. What is that about? I don’t know,’’ said the gangly, avuncular, 70-year-old filmmaker who wears a gray ponytail and white beard. “I half expect a zombie to show up and hang out with the Count on ‘Sesame Street.’ ’’

Like other horror categories — vampire, werewolf, psycho-killer, demon — the zombie film once lay dormant in its grave. But the genre has made a significant comeback, and the uptick of zombie mania has benefited a host of filmmakers, authors, comic book artists, and video-game developers. Romero, who had to wait 20 years between making “Day’’ and 2005’s “Land of the Dead,’’ has churned out three zombie films in five years. (“Diary of the Dead’’ came out in 2007.)

Among the spate of zombie-themed books, there’s The New York Times bestseller “Zombie Survival Guide’’ and “World War Z,’’ and the recent “U.S. Army Zombie Combat Skills,’’ which teaches the techniques needed to take on armies of the undead. Naturally, the Jane Austen-zombie mash-up novel “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’’ also helped drive the resurgence, as have impromptu flash-mob zombie walks, and hit video games like Resident Evil (“Zombies are good targets for first-person shooters,’’ Romero noted).

Last year’s “Zombieland’’ was a hit. With “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies’’ now in development as an A-list movie starring Natalie Portman, and with “E’gad, Zombies!,’’ a film short about 19th-century zombies premiering at Cannes this year (starring Ian McKellen, with plans to expand to feature length), perhaps the genre has finally come of age and gained mass respectability — albeit a tongue-through-cheek one. There’s even a new Ford Fiesta ad touting how the vehicle’s keyless door opener and push-button starter enable a hasty getaway from a zombie attack.

Romero finds the fascination both “ridiculous’’ and “unbelievable.’’ Too many zombies, even for Romero? Perhaps there’s a tinge of jealousy in his voice. After all, it was Romero who toiled for years in the indie movie trenches, struggled to get his projects financed, and more or less single-handedly reinvented the genre. He also tolerated remakes of his movies, like 2004’s “Dawn of the Dead,’’ which was made without his participation.

Romero deserves respect. After all, he codified the rules of the game. Namely, that to kill zombies, “You have to deactivate the brain: shoot it, stab it, stomp it, whatever you got — in the head,’’ said Romero’s working partner and “Survival of the Dead’’ producer Peter Grunwald. It was also Romero who rescued the undead from their quainter origins in such classics as 1932’s “White Zombie,’’ considered to be the first zombie movie. Bela Lugosi plays a voodoo priest who transforms a young woman into a zombie.

In those days, zombies were more like hypnotized puppets than flesh-eating ghouls. “The zombie was born out of Haitian zombie lore,’’ said Glenn Kay, author of “Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide,’’ in a telephone interview. “There was a huge element in the early movies of all these potions and powders, with a zombie master. It’s not so magical any more.’’

Later, in movies like “Plan 9 From Outer Space’’ (1959), zombies served as “muscle for the aliens,’’ Kay said; in “Invisible Invaders’’ (also released in 1959), they were alien occupiers of bodies of the recently deceased. But they had no personalities. “It was hard for filmmakers to figure out what to do with them.’’

That all changed in 1968 — a year of social upheaval on many fronts — with the black-and-white, bargain-basement “Night of the Living Dead.’’ Here radioactive contamination reanimates corpses, and Romero remade zombies — no longer mind-controlled dummies, but autonomous beings with a motivation to feast on flesh. That upped the genre’s dramatic ante. Since Romero, various filmmakers have offered zombie-like plots. “Re-Animator’’ (1985) is more like Frankenstein than Romero, but still features the walking dead. In “28 Days Later’’ (2002), a virus fills people with murderous rage. Fancy a zombie apocalypse comedy? See 2004’s “Shaun of the Dead.’’

The premise of “Survival of the Dead,’’ like all of Romero’s zombie films, pits a band of survivors against the undead. This time around, Sarge (Alan Van Sprang) and his small platoon (we first meet them in “Diary of the Dead’’) head to an island to escape the zombies, where they stumble into clan warfare between two Irish-American families (and more zombies). One, headed by O’Flynn (Kenneth Welsh), thinks the only good zombie is a dead zombie. The other, under Muldoon (Richard Fitzpatrick), hopes his zombie beloved might be cured, so he keeps them alive and chained up. Guess which is the better idea?

This wholesale rise of zombies suggests a metaphorical interpretation. Do they represent our fear of death and disease, or work as a way to accept death (minus the flesh-eating parts)? Are the undead actually proxies for illegal immigrants or terrorists? Or are the undead making fun of our mindless, consumerist, sheep-like tendencies?

Perhaps we identify with zombies because they’re the monsters we most resemble. “We can imagine ourselves as them,’’ said Grunwald. “They’re not giant CG [computer-generated] beasts. They’re like us, like our family, or loved ones.’’ They are us.

As Sarge narrates early on in “Survival,’’ “They were easy enough to kill, except when they were your buddies.’’

Romero refuses to analyze. Actually, he insists his films aren’t about zombies. They’re about the chaos zombies create. In “Survival’’ you will find disgustingly cool new ways to kill a zombie, i.e., fill its head with fire-extinguisher foam, or shoot it with a flare gun then cavalierly light your cigarette off its flaming body. But the subtext of biting social commentary that Romero fans have come to expect is buried not far below the surface.

“All six of them have always been about people, how they screw up,’’ he said. “How they can’t pull together to address the problem. Or they address the problem stupidly. Or they attack the symptom rather than the disease.’’

“Lousy times make lousy people,’’ says the teenage protagonist of “Survival.’’ With its “Lord of the Flies’’ scenario, “Survival’’ is really a disaster movie about human nature and another chapter in Romero’s bleak — yet paradoxically goofy — worldview. It’s not for everyone.

“I think they [his movies] really are an acquired taste,’’ Romero said. “If you have the stamina to acquire the taste.’’

Or the stomach. Take Romero’s iPhone “App of the Dead,’’ launching later this month. You’ll be able to add zombie makeup to snapshots of your friends, then shoot them in the head.

“It’s anchovies, baby.’’

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.’’ He can be reached at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com.

Does Justin Cronin's "The Passage" live up to the hype?

2010-06-20T04:26:59Z

Where the wild things are

In Justin Cronin’s blockbuster hybrid novel, the thriller elements wrestle with the literary, while super vampires maul fleeing humans

Weighing in at 766 pages and 2 pounds 6 ounces, “The Passage’’ is designed to be big. Big plot, big themes, big sweep. And the author, Justin Cronin, landed himself a big advance. After a knock-down, drag-out bidding war, Ballantine paid about $3.75 million for the book plus two sequels in the pipeline. Director Ridley Scott’s production company ponied up $1.75 million for the film rights. “The Passage’’ has become one of those media machine-generated blockbusters, feeding upon the weight of everyone’s expectations. Like a small financial entity unto itself, it’s too big to fail.

Still, “The Passage’’ is a gamble. With this post-apocalyptic, doorstopper of a saga, the author enters a new universe. In his former life, the New England native wrote works of literary fiction, “Mary and O’Neil’’ and “The Summer Guest,’’ which won prizes like the Pen/Hemingway Award. They’re set on the planet Earth we know and love. No undead in sight.

“The Passage’’ is different. It began as a storytelling game with Cronin’s then 9-year-old daughter. She wanted to spin a yarn about “a girl who saves the world.’’ After he started writing, Cronin, an English professor at Rice University in Houston, sensed that, like the virus the plot hinges on, the project was changing him. He noted in one interview, “I knew by the time I’d finished this I would be a different person — and a different kind of writer.’’ He’d given birth to a monster.

And “The Passage’’ is a bastard beast, a literary-thriller hybrid both portentous and predictable. Think Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road’’ crossed with the movie “The Road Warrior,’’ with the psychological tonnage of John Fowles’s “The Magus,’’ and the “huh?’’ of “The Matrix.’’ Mix in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy of fellowships and quests and add Stephen King’s dark, virus-ridden vision in “The Stand.’’

Now comes the $5.5 million dollar question: Does Cronin pull it off?

First, know “The Passage’’ is no bedtime story. Suffice it to say, by the time we reach page 50, we’ve already been introduced to adultery, prostitution, and murder. The premise: A few, unspecified years in the future (where, thankfully, USA Today is still in print), a nasty virus unleashed in the Bolivian jungle gives its victims a kind of immortality. Naturally, this interests the US military, who could sure use this superpower in its endless fight against terrorists who strike at home and abroad.

So, a secret military project begins deep in the Colorado mountains. Those experiments go awry, and the 12 test subjects escape from their glass chambers — why does this always happen? — and begin their fearsome rampage across the nation. With every bite they spread the gift that keeps on giving. The victims become jacked-up killers themselves, glowing vampires on steroids known as “virals.’’

Before you know it, complex plotlines are bulldozed across the landscape and laid down like the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System — plotlines that are broad and clear and fast, and destined to run together. Cronin intercuts the stories of a death row inmate, a nun, a pair of FBI agents, and a desperate mother and her daughter named Amy. Familiar themes emerge: science and the military punished for their hubris; the man who turns on bureaucracy to do what’s right; the child prodigy whose secret powers might save us all. That’s just in part one. The story builds from there, following more than a dozen main characters and unfolding over decades.

Certainly Cronin has fun with his destroyed America, one in which Jenna Bush was governor of Texas, and, in an eerie parallel with today’s headlines, the oil industry is under federal protection. Later, some decades after the initial outbreak, we encounter a whole set of new characters, and they take us through the second half of “The Passage.’’ This ragtag colony survives in a Walden-like castle compound, fighting back the bloodthirsty devils. They also raid the ruined mall — REI, Footlocker, and the Gap — for supplies, stumble upon dusty relics like “Where the Wild Things Are’’ (get it?) and wonder whether anyone else has survived. “Grief was a place . . . where a person went alone,’’ Cronin writes. Life is “a series of mishaps and narrow escapes.’’ In these moments, “The Passage’’ surpasses genre fiction, and approaches existential meditation.

Cronin’s prose is thick and meaty and at times elegant. Texas is described as a “state-sized porkchop of misery’’; 9/11 is called “the money shot of the new millennium.’’ In another passage, Wolgast, the FBI agent with the heart of gold whose fate is tied to Amy’s, takes a nap, and enters “sleep’s antechamber, the place where dreams and memories mingled, telling their strange stories.’’ Indeed, much of “The Passage’’ takes place in the murky minds of its protagonists.

Cronin has a literary novelist’s eye for detail and local color, and an eagerness to create believable characters with feelings. However, this impulse collides with the necessities of the supernatural, sci-fi horror thriller. The collision is not always pretty.

For one thing, Cronin has a lot of ground to cover. That means passages of exposition, some of them lengthy and rammed down the throats of characters. An inventive mix of e-mails, diaries, and documents partially alleviates this need for our heroes to spout off too much. But just as often, the interior voice mumbo-jumbo — nightmares and telepathic messages — leaves the reader scratching her head.

The other trouble is emotional gravitas. Cronin’s roving narrator enters the heads of each character. They’re compelling folk, to be sure, desperate to hope, and afraid to love in the face of their bleak condition. But we’re asked to juggle the detailed back stories and desires of so many characters, it’s hard to know on whom to hang our heart strings. Thankfully, the connective tissue across space and time is Amy, the “Girl from Nowhere,’’ the one we meet on page one who we can guess has a role in the story’s conclusion.

Still, some readers deep into “The Passage’’ will be spellbound. They’ll want to know how it turns out. And they’ll also wonder who will play whom in the movie version. How the stunt people will stage the battles and chases. And how cool it will be for the set designers to build malls and casinos, then blow them up.

Ethan Gilsdorf, author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms,’’ can be reached at ethan@ethangilsdorf.com.

The Robin Hood we deserve, and desire, most

2010-05-13T01:48:49Z

Do we really need another “Robin Hood”?

That's the question begged by Ridley Scott’s new version.

Starring action-lunk-with-acting-gravitas Russell Crowe in the title role, and an A-list supporting cast of Cate Blanchett, William Hurt, and Max von Sydow, the new “Robin Hood” also features a budget and production values on an epic scale. “Men in Tights,” Mel Brooks' 1993 send-up, this is not.

Scott’s “Robin Hood” is the latest of some 50 movie and television adaptations chronicling the life and exploits of our favorite do-gooder thief -- an impressive run that begins with the silent “Robin Hood and His Merry Men” in 1908.

You’d think viewers would be weary of another retelling of this gallant, often green-clothed folk hero who selflessly stands up for the common man. But few other stories have enjoyed such a continuous reworking as good old “RH,” who began appearing orally in legends, ballads, and outlaw stories around the reign of King John (1199-1216) and, in print, in “Piers Plowman” (circa 1377).

Despite its age, Robin Hood remains fresh and relevant. Each iteration reflects its particular times and tribulations. And, sorry, many fans want him NOT to be Kevin Costner's 1991 “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” anymore. And, sorry, many fans want him NOT to be the lightweight, listless Kevin Costner of “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (1991) anymore.

In most versions, Robin is portrayed as a loyal follower of King Richard the Lionheart, driven to outlawry while Richard is away at the Third Crusade and his incompetent and evil brother, John, assumes the throne and drives England into social ruin. But like King Arthur, a single historical Robin Hood probably never lived. Rather, Robyn Hood, Robert Hood, and Robehod were 13th century nicknames for those who had run afoul of the law.

So what if no real Robin Hood existed? It’s the idea that endures: this hope for a savior to restore the balance of power. Even today, he remains a powerful symbol against tyranny, injustice, and over-taxation. This is especially appealing to Tea Party types: Robin Hood is anti-big government, and stealing from the rich to give to the poor is egalitarian.

Egalitarian ... or socialist? If you believe in redistributing the wealth a little, Obama-robin is a force for good; for those who see this nation’s economic policies as troubling, not so much. But this goody two-shoes / bad-boy schizophrenia found in Robin Hood actually fits with the historical legend.

He used to be mean, killed lots of people, even robbed from the clergy. The dashing Robin Hood character doesn’t begin until the Renaissance, when he sheds his cutthroat image and becomes an outlaw with a heart of gold, dispossessed of his property and exiled to Sherwood Forest. Around this time, he also picks up his “girlfriend,” Maid Marian.

In the 1922 silent, stylized version with Douglas Fairbanks, the Robin character is swashbuckling for sure. But he also plays against the backdrop of two wars: the Crusades, and the Great War -- both supposedly "the war to end all wars. Likewise, in 1938, the famous Technicolor version with Errol Flynn was released on the brink of World War II. Again Robin Hood becomes a safe way to engage with the experience of war. Robin Hood films have a habit of surfacing during major conflicts, right up to “Prince of Thieves” during the Gulf War, and the BBC's three-season series debuting shortly after the start of the Iraq War.

As the 20th century progresses past men in tights, Robin Hood becomes less of a fairytale. Robin’s story is grungier, more violent, and more realistic.

One harbinger of the change is the 1976 revisionist tale, “Robin and Marian,” starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn as the couple in their sunset years. Robin is back after 20 years abroad in the Crusades, where he’s seen atrocities and seems lost in a haze of PTSD. Our Hood is a troubled hero. He questions military objectives and his king. Parallels to Vietnam abound. That this version ends in tragedy fits with the pessimistic Seventies.

Then there’s this odd take: Terry Gilliam's comic “Time Bandits” (1981) which includes an imbecilic and condescending Robin Hood played by John Cleese. “The poor? Oh you have to meet them,” he says, and hands out booty to the downtrodden just as an assistant punches them in the face.

Disenfranchisement -- namely, of the Saxons, who are being replaced by the Normans as England’s ruling class -- is the theme of a few Robin Hoods. In director John Irvin’s 1991 movie starring Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman, the Normans are the invading elites and the Saxons are the lower-class peasants. Guess which side Robin fights for? That film also shows realistic bandit life in the forest; the Merry Men live like guerilla fighters in the jungle. We also see Maid Marion’s transformation from wimpy damsel in distress to plucky, independent feminist who likens a marriage against her wishes to torture. "What's the difference?" Uma-as-Marian quips.

More than anything, the appeal of Robin Hood proves we have fairly predictable needs. In these disillusioned days of robber barons and Bernie Madoffs, authority figures take a beating. Where we are powerless, Robin Hood fights in our stead. So it makes sense that, in Ridley Scott’s newest of Hoods, Crowe doesn’t simply steal from the rich and give to the poor. He becomes a Gladiator-like national emancipator, protecting England from civil war and restoring the nation to glory once more. Taking the law into his own hands, he becomes a freedom fighter.

Naturally, the ruling class finds a ragtag hero challenging the status quo an enormous pain the saddle. Especially when the downtrodden mobs cheer for Robin and his Merry Men, and lob rocks and garbage at the Sheriff of Nottingham and his henchmen.

"Have you tried to fight a legend?" complains an underling to an impatient King John in the Connery/Hepburn "Robin and Marian." No easy feat.

For these reasons, the spirit of Robin Hood endures. Perhaps more than ever, we need someone to come to the aid of the common man and woman. That’s the Robin Hood we deserve, and desire, most.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms . He contributes regularly to The Boston Globe, New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, and The Christian Science Monitor.

Dreams Die Hard

2010-05-13T01:47:34Z

As I wrote in a recent review of the book, The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale Of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks , dreams die hard.

The DreamWorks studio --- which went on to make not only live-action movies, but music, video games, websites and cartoons --- was a pipe dream for three of Hollywood's biggest industry giants: director Steven Spielberg; record company mogul and billionaire David Geffen; and Disney animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg. (It was Katzenberg who was the driving force behind the idea to make a new studio from scratch.)

DreamWorks began building on a lofty foundation. At the Oct. 12, 1994, press conference announcing the partnership, Spielberg said, “Together with Jeffrey and David, I want to create a place driven by ideas and the people who have them.’’ The studio was to champion works based on merit, not commercialism. Like the founding of United Artists in 1919 by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith, it was to be an artistic haven amid Tinseltown’s money-grubbing rabble. It was to be different.

The way in which the financial realities eventually poisoned the idealistic dream are instructive. In Nicole LaPorte's book, we watch as the studio’s inroads into video games and music hit dead ends and we wince as the money pit of building a physical studio — what was to be a “giant dose of Ritalin’’ to focus a distracted Spielberg — gets deeper. More than $1 billion in investor capital evaporates. The studio sheds its money losers, shape-shifts from artsy-fartsy to cash cow, gets bought by a studio, and starts making schlock. The initial reverie — “to become that buzz’’ as one DreamWorks executive wanted — takes a back seat to reality. Eventually, DreamWorks has to begin making the very commercial fodder that its founding had hoped to defeat --- or, if not defeat, then at least offer something in opposition, an alternative.

I think the lesson of DreamWorks is not to give up, or revel in failure, or become pessimistic. I think the lesson is that the pursuit of the dream is worthwhile. Yes, dreams get derailed. Reality impinges. Compromises must be made. But, I think as humans, we are a hopeful species. We want to see dreams succeed. So, we root for DreamWorks. We love our dreamers and hate to see hubris bring them down.

Movies have always been a metaphor for ambition. For the idea that we can better ourselves --- be a better person, better lover, make the right decision, be brave enough to fight for your beliefs, to rush into the wedding ceremony at the last possible moment and say, "No, this marriage can't happen, because I love the bride!" Movies are that vehicle for escape to a place where, because the real world has failed us, another possibility awaits. This might be Middle-earth or Gotham City; a galaxy far, far away or a place as familiar as small town Mississippi.

The location doesn't matter. It's the desire to do better next time, to transform ourselves, that Hollywood has always represented. And that applies whether you are a movie mogul, or just an average Joe or Jane, dreaming your dreams and hoping to someday not be a spectator, like in a movie theater, but to live them, inhabit them, be them.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.’’ More info at www.fantasyfreaksbook.com

Are you a compulsive hoarder?

2010-05-13T01:44:07Z

So you save stuff. You like reuse. Be frugal. No problem, right?

Well ... maybe it is.

Collecting Beanie Babies or swizzle sticks is one thing. Amassing piles of, say, old newspapers, yogurt containers, and rusty buckets is another. If you’re unable to discard mountains of what most people would consider random clutter, your collecting bug has crossed into the realm of obsession. You can literally drown in stuff.

Take the case of the Collyer brothers, which kicks off the new book “Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things’’ (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 304 pp., $27.00). Langley and Homer Collyer, two well-heeled brothers living in New York City, packed their mansion over decades with more than 170 tons of debris, including an X-ray machine, a Model T Ford, 14 grand pianos, and thousands more mundane items. In 1947, police received a tip that something was amiss at the home, but they found the door blocked by clutter when they came to investigate. They finally entered the home via a second-floor window and found Homer’s body. It took them three weeks to find the other brother, who had died from suffocation after a tower of baled newspapers crushed him.

A highly readable account of this perplexing impulse that affects as many as 6 million Americans, “Stuff’’ offers a peek into the lives of compulsive shoppers, cat ladies, junk scavengers, even children who hoard things. The authors, Randy O. Frost, a Smith College psychology professor, and Gail Steketee, dean of Boston University’s School of Social Work, have been investigating hoarding for a decade. They’ve developed long-term relationships with hundreds of hoarders whom they’ve treated.

“Stuff’’ isn’t exactly a narrative; it’s a series of case studies. We experience the “awe, the excitement of discovery, and empathy for those caught in the web of hoarding.’’ We accompany the authors as they navigate the “goat paths’’ through the home of one woman, Irene, who is trapped by “a sea of boxes, bags, ski poles, tools, everything imaginable all in a jumble, chest-high.’’ We see Colin, collector of hundreds of articles of free designer clothing. For him, dressing each day is a nearly paralyzing act. We meet Madeline, whose penchant for hoarding drove her husband away, and we watch her grown daughter, Ashley, struggle with her own relationship to material possessions.

The most gripping chapter, “You Haven’t Got a Clue,’’ offers the pleasures of “you are there’’ immersion journalism. The authors arrive with a social worker and cleaning crew to empty a Manhattan condo whose rooms are, effectively, “a solid wall of trash 20 feet deep’’ and infested with cockroaches. Amazingly, a family lives amid the squalor. The account of trying to clean up the health hazard while the hoarder, a man named Daniel, refuses to see any problem, makes for stupefying reading.

The profiles of people save “Stuff’’ from reading like a dry academic conference paper. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, the hoarders explain their rationales. For some, piles of clutter contain endless possibility. Others make nests or private worlds of potential knowledge. Some may be fearful of waste. Some see stories and find meanings in every item. “This outdated coupon seems as important as my grandmother’s picture,’’ Irene says at one point. Later: “If I throw too much away, there’ll be nothing left of me.’’

The irresistible fascination with a book like “Stuff’’ has already been proven by reality TV shows featuring makeovers and weight-loss quests: It’s the lure of oddballs trying to clean up their lives. But the book succeeds beyond mere voyeurism, because “Stuff’’ invites readers to reevaluate their desire for things. Which, as far as things go, is not a bad thing at all.

Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of “Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms.’’