~ by Rebecca Fisher

If any film could be accurately described as containing everything but the kitchen sink, I’d stake my money on Time Bandits. You could describe it as a zanier episode of Doctor Who, or a slightly more child-friendly offering from Monty Python, or a mash-up of Roald Dahl and Douglas Adams – but its combination of dark comedy, time-travelling adventure and tongue-in-cheek musings on the nature of God and Evil make it truly unique.

Kevin is a young history buff with two parents that couldn’t care less, being glued every night to the television set and discussing the neighbours instead of paying the slightest bit of attention to their son. As a result, Kevin is more delighted than terrified when a band of dwarfs tumble out of his wardrobe, calling themselves “time bandits” and explaining they’ve got a map that leads them through time itself.

By leaping through time holes, they’re able to pull off heists without the slightest chance of being apprehended, greedily accumulating a fortune for themselves. The movie initially plays out like a series of vignettes, with Kevin and the dwarfs journeying to places such as Ancient Greece, Sherwood Forest and the Titanic, meeting the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, Robin Hood and King Agamemnon along the way.

Kevin in a brief moment of happiness with King Agamemnon

But there’s a catch. The dwarfs are the one-time servants of the Supreme Being, Creator of the Universe, who isn’t too impressed with what the runaways are up to. What’s more, a sinister figure known only as the Evil Genius watches the time-travellers from afar, coveting the map they carry so that he might remake the universe according to his own design.

Evil and his minions watch the progress of Kevin and the Time Bandits

Written by Terry Gillam and Michael Palin (with the former directing and the latter in a small cameo) Time Bandits is an odd duck of a movie. As you’d expect from the writers, there’s a heavy dose of black humour and irreverence at work, with some dizzying questions raised only to be casually brushed aside. (On being asked why he created evil, the Supreme Being shrugs and says: “I think it’s something to do with free will.”)

As such it’s hard to know what to make of Time Bandits, or who exactly it’s for. Though the protagonist is a likeable child, the story has enough sharp edges to make younger viewers uneasy. There is no warm affection built up between Kevin and the dwarfs; he consistently disapproves of what they’re doing, and is resentful when they drag him away from a happy life as King Agamemnon’s adopted son. Neither is there any sort of reconciliation with Kevin’s parents: they ignore him at the start of the film, and they’re still ignoring him at its end. And though Kevin may desire an escape from his mundane life, his grand time-travelling adventure isn’t that much fun either.

The Time Bandits pose with their ill-gotten gains.

Like Alice in Wonderland, it’s all a bit arbitrary at times, with the film’s main strength to be found in its imagery and set-pieces: Kevin’s bedroom wall extending into an ever-lengthening hallway, or the dwarfs escaping a hanging cage through an elaborate series of swinging ropes.

Ultimately it’s a surprisingly unsettling movie with an ambiguous message. Is Kevin better off for having had his adventures? Was there any point to them at all? What’s he going to do at the end of the film, left with no parents and a burnt-down home? And should what is ostensibly a children’s movie even be asking these questions of its audience?

This more than anything makes it a film worth the watching.
.

Next Time:

We continue to move away from the strict definition of “fantasy films” with Highlander, which today’s more expansive terminology might classify as a time-slip urban fantasy adventure. Conner MacLeod is an immortal, caught up in a centuries-long competition with others like him that can only end with one left standing. As the tagline says: “there can be only one.”
.

About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her They’re All Fictional blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on:

Big Worlds On Small Screens

Rebecca won the 2015 Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Fan Writer, for writing that included Big Worlds On Small Screens.

Blown from the west
Fallen leaves gather
In the east.

– Yosa Buson, 1716 – 1784

—

Oh yes, autumn has decidedly arrived at last. And as I said last week, since any poetic celebration of the season would not be complete without haiku, today I bring you another from one of the great haiku masters, Yosa Buson.

Los Nefilim is the series title for three linked and chronologically sequential novellas by my friend and fellow author, Teresa Frohock. The three individual titles are:

• In Midnight’s Silence 
• Without Light or Guide
• The Second Death

I am not quite sure how to tag this series in genre terms. In many ways it’s paranormal urban fantasy, except the urban environment is Barcelona and the year is 1931, on the eve of the Spanish Civil War. So in that sense it’s historical fantasy, where Spain’s descent into Civil War forms the backdrop to a conflict between angels and demons in which the nephilim — the hybrid offspring of human pairings with the supernatural beings — serve as foot soldiers in the war between the higher powers.

Are you already fascinated? Well, I can only say that if you like urban fantasy’s juxtaposition of the real and the paranormal, or the interweaving of real history with a parallel fantastic story, then I suspect you will enjoy Los Nefilim.

Similar kinds of tale-spinning, although otherwise very different stories, would include Constantine and the Sookie Stackhouse novels. (That’s True Blood, for all those who have only seen the TV series.) Not to mention Teresa’s own Miserere, which you may recall that I really enjoyed, awa’ back in 2013. For me, there is more than a little dash of detective/thriller noir in the storytelling mix as well, perhaps derived from the 1930s era, perhaps from the urban setting, perhaps simply from the kind of mystery-action-supernatural story Teresa has chosen to tell. Yet for whatever reasons, the mix of storytelling influences worked for me.

In the three sequential stories that comprise Los Nefilim, Diego Alvarez, his son Rafael, and lover Miquel, are — like Barcelona in 1931 —caught up in a brewing war: not between the angels and demons, as might have been expected, but a civil war between different factions within the angel ranks. A subtext is that the leader of Los Nefilim, Guillermo, is trying to secure their independence in the strife about to break loose.

The thing that I most enjoyed was Teresa’s deft interweaving of the historical setting and the paranormal conflict and mystery to be resolved, with the very personal stories of Diego, Rafael, and Miquel, but also Guillermo. Because as the story unfolds, the reader realises that the nefilim are also reincarnated souls and that characters such as Diego and Guillermo have a past-lives backstory. Los Nefilim is also an intergenerational story, with Diego’s relationship with his father, as well as with his own son, Rafael, forming the heart of the linked tale.

As with all great storytelling (imho) it is these personal stories and interactions that make Los Nefilim rock — as well as the daimon-nefilim confrontations and the politics and fallout between different angelic and nefilim factions, including those from Germany… (Because this story mirrors 1930s Europe as well as Spain.)

However, another aspect of the three novellas that I really enjoyed was their accessibility. I read each novella in one to two sessions and although collectively they added up to a short novel, individually I didn’t feel I was having to make the same reading commitment as I would have if I’d picked up a typical epic fantasy, for example.

The “down” side of this was that when I got to the end of each novella I always wanted moar. In this sense, I suppose, a novella is like nouvelle cuisine — delicious but you may still be hungry at the end of it, which is fine so long as the next novella is there to be read… However, it is very satisfying to be able to actually finish a story even if I still very much wanted more Los Nefilim at the end of the concluding novella, The Second Death.

Another strong aspect of Teresa’s storytelling is that she managed to make the characters real and engaging despite the limited scope, word count-wise, of a novella. She also managed to integrate a considerable cast of characters, making them all seem well-drawn and credible, even if the main character was unquestionably Diego. His secondary relationships with Rafael, his newly discovered son, and friendship with Guillermo, the leader of Barcelona’s nefilim, both evolved through the three novellas, providing additional depth.

So if you’re looking for a well-written, historical-urban-paranormal fantasy that deftly traverses both supernatural and human story elements and is character driven, then the three stories that comprise Los Nefilim may well be for you. Being novellas, they also add up to a relatively easy read, which is a potential bonus for busy readers.

The Los Nefilim novella are available in e-format now; the collected paperback edition will be out in mid-June and is now available for preorder.

*Disclosure Statement:  I purchased my copies of Los Nefilim, but as I've stated upfront, 
Teresa Frohock is a friend.

“There are people in every time and every land who want to  stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past, which in fact never existed.”

~ Robert Kennedy, 1925 – 1968

—

I’ve referred to my recent conversation with Mary Victoria several times recently, but Mary and I are both good friends and on the same wavelength so our chats tend to be wide-ranging. 🙂

The comment that sparked this post and the link to the Robert Kennedy quote was my observation (responding to one by Mary) that: “…I believe there is plenty of evidence to suggest that history was by no means as monolithic as some writers would have us believe, even in relation to the status of women.”

Yes, even that! Certainly, wherever I have scratched the surface of historical research there is plenty of evidence to suggest that relationships between women and men were by no means locked into one conforming pattern.

Just for example:

• pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read lived swashbuckling and violent lives outside the square of mainstream society;
• William Morris is alleged to have effectively assigned rural Kelmscott Manor to his wife Jane (nee Burden) so she could conduct her long-term affair with painter Gabriel Dante Rossetti out of the public eye — writingto her  that he hoped she could now “be happy.”
• One of the reasons Claude Monet is said to have moved to Giverny was to better support Alice Hoschede, who together with her six children, had left her husband to be with him (or was left by him: history not being monolithic, it can be hard to be sure) — although initially Monet was still married to his ailing first wife Camille. Alice nursed Camille until her death three years later and the move to Giverny with their belnded families happened after this.

My point being, none of these stories fit with the very conventional view of historical relationships between men and women that some today hark back to, speaking with longing of “the rules” which everyone once  followed — or in fact not, as these stories would suggest.

It’s not just relations between men and women, however: whether the nostalgia is social, cultural, economic or religious, Robert Kennedy was quite right — we love to yearn for a golden age of idealogical and behavioural security and comfort that never really existed.

As promised last week, here are a few more pics from inside Middle Earth — and inside m’holiday. 😉

I’m a keen walker, so the holiday was always going to include some hiking:

And perhaps because it’s a national park, there’s art as well as nature — this is a waka (traditional Maori canoe) paddle, marking the beginning of a bridge. Nice, huh?

But this is my favourite —  a shot from where the track through the bush (forest) traverses a headland with cliff, clear aquamarine sea, and reflection immediately below. Love it!

And yep, there’s still more to come: watch this space. 🙂

UK/AU/NZ

Yesterday I discussed the mystery and magic of the hidden story — the themes and subtexts that can imbue a work without the author consciously realising they’re there.

I concluded that this phenomenon arose from the evolution of the story, rather than the author’s upfront intention. Which is all well and good — very good even, as I hope some of yesterday’s examples suggest. 🙂

But what about when the author intends to include the hidden story, which can also be known as the subtext or theme of a book? (Note: there can be several subtexts or themes, by the way.)

So harking back to my recent conversation with Mary Victoria: although I may have never tagged “unshakeable moral core” against Myr in Daughter of Blood, it was absolutely my intention to juxtapose her personality with that of the Wall series’ Malian, Asantir, and Jehane Mor, for example, in order to explore different ideas of what constitutes “strength” in a character.

USA

But as I also noted when talking with Mary, The Wall of Night series is heroic fantasy. This means that as the author I’m intentionally focusing on heroes and what makes a hero (whether female or male.) In that sense, Daughter of Blood is absolutely a tale about moral cores and since Myr is one of the book’s main characters, this was always going to affect her development.

Like most things, therefore, the hidden story within the tale being told will in part reflect the author’s conscious intention and partly evolve through the natural development of the book, i.e the subtext and themes that emerge may equally well be from the subconscious as well as the conscious mind.

UK/AU/NZ

USA

Recently, in an interview conversation with my friend and fellow author, Mary Victoria, we talked about the writer’s intention in storytelling and also how stories can evolve independently of that.

We did so chiefly in the context of the recently published Daughter of Blood, but Mary also mentioned the — by and large — matter-of-fact equality between men and women in the Wall of Night series’ Derai society.

She also asked whether I intended portraying “a more or less equal playing field for women, certainly women with martial or magical ability in the Derai world?”

My answer was that I did not start out with that fixed intention, but “it was simply the way the story, the society, and the characters deployed on the page of the first book, i.e. you might say that they wrote themselves that way. To be honest, I wasn’t even conscious of it as a distinguishing feature of my work until The Heir of Night, The Wall of Night Book One, was published and reviewers and readers commented on that aspect of the story.”

UK/AU/NZ

USA

I think of this as the hidden story, a subtext that may be invisible even to the author when she or he is writing the book. It’s certainly not the first time it has happened in The Wall of Night series. For example, when I finally passed over The Gathering of the Lost to my US editor, Kate Nintzel, she commented on how much it was a story about friendship.

As soon as she said so, I realised that it was true — but up until then that particular aspect of the story as theme had been as invisible to me as the matter-of-fact gender equality of Derai society in The Heir of Night.

USA

UK/AU/NZ

Similarly, during the course of our conversation Mary observed that the character of Myr in Daughter of Blood has an “unshakeable moral core.” Although I had fully intended to explore different aspects of what constitutes “strength” through Myr’s arc, Mary’s observation made me think “yes” to an “unshakeable moral core” being a large part of the character’s resilience. But as I pointed out, it was not a tag I had attached to her character from the beginning…

In short, she grew through the telling of the story, but because the process of storytelling is organic, my thinking was centered on the whole character and her natural development/evolution, rather than necessarily consciously breaking that down into component characteristics as I wrote.

Which is how, I believe, the tales we tell can have “hidden stories” that it takes a third party to put their finger on and say, “Ah — it may be about this and this, but it’s also about that.”

Whereupon I, as author, nod and reply: “Yes, of course, it is.”

You may think I am being quite sanguine about this process, but to me it is inevitable that with anything as complex as a book, not only the conscious but also the subconscious mind will be playing a part in its development. The fact that they do and that there can be multiple and potentially hidden layers within a story is all part of the magic of storytelling.

Yes, there will be moar — but first up, yesterday my podcast interview with the Mighty Mur Lafferty aired on her I Should Be Writing site.

Mur is an author herself, as well as a podcaster, and we had a relatively indepth chat that canvassed not only writing epic fantasy, Daughter of Blood and The Wall of Night series, but also writing process, the realities of writing beyond the first book contract, and advice to aspiring writers—as well as muses, donkeys, and rain forests.

If any of this sounds like you, then the link is here:

You Should Be Writing: Mur Lafferty Interviews Helen Lowe

(If you decide you want to skip to the interview, its about 25 minutes into the podcast.)

Now for that moar — and yes, there is news & other happenings:

Courtney Schafer

I’m heading over to Sydney mid-Queen’s Birthday weekend & the week following & while I’m there I’ll be catching up with my friend and fellow epic fantasy author, Courtney Schafer, plus Sydney-side speculative fiction and bookish folk. I’m particularly looking forward to meeting Courtney in person!

.

A few weeks later, on June 22nd, I’ll be appearing here in Christchurch for the National Flash Fiction Day 2016 event — and although The Wall of Night series is the opposite of “flash” fiction (while still being mighty flash, I hasten to add) I have actually written short short stories in my time so it is great to be invited to be a guest reader.

.

It also seems likely that I will be participating in a panel at this year’s WORD Christchurch festival on 25-28 August, probably on the topic of being  published internationally, so watch this space…

Fun at home and abroad, in fact!

Along this road
where no one else travels —
autumn dusk

– Matsuo Bashō, 1644 – 1694

—

It’s officially autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere, so I’ve been marking the season with poetry — fittingly since the “winter is coming” rain and wind has finally arrived.

As any poetic celebration of the season would not be complete without haiku, today I bring you an offering from the master, Matsuo Bashō.

“I live in New Zealand, which although re-cast as Middle Earth by Sir Peter Jackson, is still very much ‘the far side of the world.’ Arguably the only places further away from world hubs such as New York and London, Paris and Beijing, Berlin and Tokyo, would be Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica—which leaves New Zealanders with two fundamental choices: to turn inward, or look outward to the larger world.

It strikes me that part of the enduring appeal of epic fantasy may be because it offers a similar choice. We all get caught up in the round of our everyday lives: the ups and downs of the job, bills to pay, kids to cart from school to sport, and family stuff. No question, there’s plenty of drama there—a point underlined every time we turn on TV—but focusing on it can feel like looking inward all the time. And sometimes we want to look beyond ourselves, outward to a wider world, and to events and issues that take us beyond the everyday.

I believe part of the enduring appeal of epic fantasy is that it offers us that opportunity. As a genre, it has its roots in the mythic sagas where the protagonists’ struggle between the socio-political forces in their societies, and the codes they hold to be true and right, give power, drama, and tragedy to the narrative—but almost always at the “heroic” rather than the “domestic” level. (It is no accident, I believe, that “heroic fantasy” and “high fantasy” are alternate terms for the epic subgenre.)

The elements of classic epic fantasy also point to a focus on the wider world:  the physical journey that sweeps heroes such as Frodo and Rand Al-Thor, and heroines like Arya Stark and Yeine Darr, away from quiet backwaters into a much larger political arena—usually involving major conflict or outright war—where they will play an important, if not pivotal, role. Often the conflict has its roots in a long ago past reawakening into the world, but almost always speaks to the grander sweep of history.

In this way, epic fantasy allows us to step outside of the everyday and into larger issues and their implications, whether good or bad, noble or profane. This occurs both from the point of view of the central protagonist (or protagonists in works such as The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire series) but also those they must draw around them as allies and friends.

Escapism? Perhaps. But I would also argue that epic fantasy, like the mythic stories that form its roots, is a way of enabling us to engage with worlds and issues that are bigger than ourselves. And sometimes we need to feel part of those things, not just keep our nose to the grindstone of the everyday.

Epic fantasy allows us to have fun with that—to see events and affairs worked out through elves and dragons, trolls and demons, as well as more human characters, and to enjoy portals as well as wormholes, magic swords instead of smart guns. As well as being fun, these elements of epic fantasy also provide a little bit of wonder—all part, I believe, of why epic stories keep “speaking” to us in every generation. It’s human nature, after all. However much we may be lying in the gutter, we keep looking at the stars*.

* “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” 
~ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892

—

Recently, I and many others in the SFF ‘verse bid a find and sorrowful farewell to SF Signal. As part of my personal recognition of the site’s contribution to the speculative fiction conversation, I thought I would — randomly! — re-post some of the articles I contributed over the past six years.

This article posted on da Signal in October 2011 — and essentially still holds up (with only a very few minor tweaks.)