Power

On a rather more positive note compared to the earlier post, I managed to finish reading Greg Bear's Songs of Earth and Power this morning. I spent the first half of the book just reading it as a fantasy book, loaned to me by my boss. Around that halfway point, I slowly started to pick up on something strange: The main character was a little bit like me.

It turned out that's why my boss loaned me the book in the first place. Furthermore, it transpired that one of our colleagues (at the time, left shortly after!) was vehemently opposed to my reading such a book. Equally so with Stephen Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. His reasoning was that it was a bad idea for someone like me to read about someone discovering their inner power, or about an outcast who becomes all-powerful.

And to think I once considered that guy a friend, of sorts.

Then again, the same guy mistakenly believed that I should never be made a manager as that was tantamount to 'giving me people to play with'. He might as well have been talking about himself, considering what happened when he was promoted.

It's strange... Certain kinds of people have a habit of seeing themselves when they look at me.

Anyway. The book. I must admit I was rather disappointed by the low-key ending. OK, recreating the world may not exactly be 'low key' by most people's definition... but read it, and tell me it's not. Some of Greg Bear's writing is so subtle, you'd barely notice anything was happening. On the other hand, some of it is exceptionally detailed, clear and thorough... There are times I found myself wondering why he'd gone off on a tangent when surely other things should have been more important, but it all comes together in the end. I'm not sure what to make of the Afterword... on the one hand, I could easily live without it's mysticising of a terrible coincidence. On the one hand, assuming the events occurred as related, it serves to underwrite the message of the novel - that there truly is more to us than most of us see in ourselves, and that we really should look a little deeper. People keep telling me this about myself... And I usually reply that I've looked deep enough... I just don't know what to do with what I see.

On a similar note, I watched the last seven episodes of Beast Machines season one today - some in the morning, the rest in the afternoon - and, while the animation is best categorised as 'disappointing' (it doesn't even attempt to emulate the toys' transformations the way Beast Wars did), the storytelling is excellent. Yes, there's an awful lot of cod-philosophy ("I AM transformed!") and pseudo-intellectual discussion of nature vs science (which gets even better when Rhinox returns)... but the action is there, and it's never black and white, good versus evil. I wasn't very impressed when I first saw the opening episodes (Beast Wars condescends far less), but having seen the whole first season, I've enjoyed it all. Hadn't realised there was another season of this (at least!)... but now, having seen the backstory of how the Maximals got back to Cybertron, I'm wondering if there wasn't more to Beast Wars than I've seen...

Shame the toys were rubbish ;)