This Is How It Starts...

I wrote this journal entry at the beginning of April after a brief trip to do some groceries. 

A time ago I wrote many songs and zines about life in Western Sydney. They were pieces of hyperbole, filled with cynicism and invective, and presented a world on the precipice of armageddon. Now, in light of the exponential spread of COVID-19 and the impact this is having on society, those days seem unexpectedly idyllic by contrast.

Like the steadily-climbing whine of a bomb dropping from far above, the past few days have inched by for me with accumulating anxiety. I've been home with the flu, and the realisation that we lacked defrosted meat for tonight's dinner led me out to Coles to do a quick shop.

The car park was fine. The store looked fine.

But inside is a different story. The penny drops when I walk into the chicken aisle and the freezers are nearly completely empty. People come rushing after the staffmember as he unloads precisely eight lots of chicken breast onto the shelf, the only ones available, and there is a quick and silent scramble. As I move through further aisles I note further absences... no rice, no pasta, no noodles, no eggs, no long-life milk, no toilet paper, no tissues, no chips, no pies.

I stop to listen to the cursing opposite me.

"There's no fucking pasta."

Another voice, louder, "Mate, watch your mouth. There's kids around."

The first man, tall and of scowling angular head, raises his own voice, "I don't fucking care. There's no bloody pasta."

Louder still, the smaller bloke, "Watch your mouth, there's kids around!"

"You want a piece of me?"

The two are suddenly standing staunchly against one another. Everyone in the aisle freezes where they are, necks twisted, faces bemused. The loudspeaker issues a request for security to Aisle 6.

As I move through the rest of the increasingly spartan store I notice that everyone is warily watching each other. A woman at the self-serve checkout pushes her jaw unnervingly close to the cashier who's come to see why she is making a commotion, "What are you gonna do? C'mon then!" And outside, a man leans into the window of a car and jabs his finger at the driver while yelling something unintelligible.

During my journey across the store, I see an older guy in a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt lecture at least three different staff members (in different parts of the store), telling them that everyone is inevitably going to catch the Coronavirus and we should all stop worrying. He tracks his way back and forth across the store, seemingly not there to actually buy anything, like a New York sidewalk preacher-bum with an 'End is Nigh' sign strapped to his chest.

I clutch my bags close and make a straight line to my car.

The Obscure and Forgotten - Speculative TV Fiction

Our TV in the 1980s didn't quite look like this but was similar in several ways - it had push-buttons for each channel, stood on four legs, and had a brown faux-wood finish. Up until the late '90s TVs and other entertainment appliances were often referred to in the retail sector as 'browngoods' due to this plastic-wood trend.

I love television. You probably love it too, right? I have a longstanding committed relationship with the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, which originates with a childhood obsession with Doctor Who that was facilitated by the television. My love for Doctor Who will never die but over the years it has also broadened to encompass a lot of other stuff.

In the 21st century Sci-Fi and Fantasy fans are pretty much spoilt for choice. Star Trek and Star Wars have become huge franchises. Doctor Who has been rebooted to become a BBC flagship series. And then there's the Marvel and DC universes, which are this whole other thing. There are second tier telefantasies as well (remember the term 'telefantasy'? No? Just me?) - The X Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Red Dwarf, Babylon 5, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Game of Thrones, and all the stuff that's found on the SyFy network.

What I find endlessly fascinating though are the 20th century diversions that explored the genre for relatively brief spans of time. The TV series that were weird and wonderful, that failed because the market they were tapping into weren't interested in another X Files ripoff, or the shows that continue to command a cult following. How many of these do you remember?

British Telefantasy

The Prisoner

Did you ever see The Simpsons episode where Homer starts a website under the name 'Mr. X' and begins exposing Springfield conspiracies? He ends up on an island with a guy called Number 6, and gets chased by a giant sentient ball when he escapes by sea. This whole bit is lifted straight from The Prisoner, with the actor Patrick McGoohan (perhaps best known to more modern audiences as the evil English king from Braveheart) basically reprising his role as Number 6 from the original TV series.  

The Prisoner went for just 17 episodes and dealt with a British secret agent who wakes up in a mysterious village by the sea after he attempts to retire from the business. Each episode 'Number 6' would attempt to escape from the Village and enter a duel of wits with Number 2 (a rotating roster of characters who work as administrators of the bizarre prison). It was kept ambiguous as to whether the Village was controlled by the Russians or the British, and Number 6 would contend with all manner of Cold War Sci-Fi delights - hallucinatory drugs, identity theft, mind control, and Rover (the surreal giant ball that prevented escape via sea). A true one-of-a-kind series.

The Tripods

I only caught The Tripods occasionally. This was a 1980s British TV series that ran for two years and was based on a trilogy of books by John Christopher (he later wrote a fourth and final prequel book in 1987 after the TV series finished). In this series the human race has been enslaved by aliens who pilot giant three-legged machines (the Tripods of the title), society has regressed to a medieval state, and a human resistance force secretly plots the destruction of their alien masters. Primarily marketed towards a kids' audience and featuring teenage protagonists, The Tripods is something I've been meaning to revisit because I've been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic kick at the moment.

Survivors

There's this writer called Terry Nation who wrote the second ever Doctor Who story and due to this he's officially credited as creating the series' most famous monster, the Daleks. The rights to the Daleks have remained with Nation's family ever since and the writer even briefly took them away from Doctor Who for a few years in the late 1960s so that he could use them in their own spinoff series. This never eventuated but Nation would use his Dalek-profile to create other science fiction TV series for the BBC in the 1970s. One of these was Survivors, a post-apocalyptic series about a Cold War bio-engineered virus escaping from its lab and wiping out the majority of humanity. For three years, Survivors tracked the ongoing efforts of a small group of surviving Britons as they navigated their way through a lawless post-virus landscape. I watched this on and off when I was a teenager and there was always something about it that was both unsettling and compelling.

Blake's 7

After Survivors wound down, Terry Nation went on to create a more popular series, Blakes 7, which he pitched as 'the Dirty Dozen in Space'. In this show a political subversive named Roj Blake is arrested by the totalitarian Terran Federation and deported to an offworld penal colony. Blake manages to escape with his own ship, assembling a motley crew of seven, and begins a campaign of interplanetary harassment against Earth's authoritarian government. What sets Blakes 7 apart from its most similar contemporary, Star Trek, is its gloomy dystopian themes and cast of roguish antiheroes. Whereas Star Trek presented a utopian view of a future human civilisation focused on exploring the stars, Blakes 7 depicts a brutal and exploitative regime that must be fought against by its own oppressed citizens. And whereas Star Trek's characters were idealistic and of generally sound morals, Blake's crew of criminals are often outright immoral or - at the least - incredibly bitchy towards each other. If you can get past the very British 1970s production values this is a great antithesis to Star Trek with some fun, memorable, and highly quotable characters.

Ultraviolet

Back in 1998 there was a single series UK television show in 1998 called Ultraviolet, a show about vampires that quietly came and went before the market became completely oversaturated with vampire fiction in the 2000s. This six episode police procedural took a sleek, technological view of vampires - never once referring to the undead by the 'v' word but instead calling them 'Code Fives'. It's a creepy, well put-together time capsule of 1990s genre television, hybridising the crime and horror genres and featuring early turns from Idris Elba and Jack Davenport as the stressed out detectives who find themselves increasingly out of their element. Ultraviolet is a welcome and stylish diversion in an age when original takes on vampires have become increasingly hard to come by.

American Telefantasy

Alien Nation

Starting as a 1988 movie set in the 'future' of 1991, Alien Nation was a buddy cop/science fiction film that paired up a veteran police officer with a rookie 'Newcomer' cop. The Newcomers are a race of alien refugees who have integrated into American society, and the film generated enough interest to be spun off into a TV series - albeit one that lasted for only one season and a couple of TV movies. It's basically a police procedural show with an added sci-fi element used to explore themes related to xenophobia, migrant narratives, multiculturalism, etc. It's a decent concept and the culture and biology of the Newcomers is explored enough to warrant the sci-fi tag, even if the rest of the framework remains firmly rooted in the lighthearted tone of an early 1990s buddy cop show.

Quantum Leap

Unlike most of the other series in this list Quantum Leap is one that mum, dad, and the grandparents can enjoy due to the lack of obvious science fiction elements like aliens, spaceships, or lasers. For five seasons Scott Bakula played physicist Sam Beckett, a man who becomes unstuck in time and 'leaps' into the bodies of different people throughout the 20th century. In order to move on from each time zone Sam must 'correct' something that went wrong in this period of history. It's a great show and, as mentioned, it tends to have wider appeal than most sci-fi due to its focus on social commentary and drama rather than predominantly science fiction conceits.

Earth 2

Earth 2 was a one-series wonder that aired in 1995. Ambitious in scope, Earth 2 is set in the 22nd century when Earth has become uninhabitable and humans live mostly on space stations. A small group of colonists escape their space station to start the colony of New Pacifica on a planet with Earth-like conditions and, after becoming marooned and scattered across the new world's surface, they begin to pioneer a new beginning. There are a lot of good ideas in Earth 2 and enough angles to build a solid mythology that could have given the series longevity and depth - the colonists find themselves contending with two indigenous races, an Earth government resistant to the idea of the colony, shifting dynamics within the colonist group, and the planet's legacy as a secret penal settlement. At times the series could be a bit hokey and a little too American but I have to admit that I was quite bummed out when it was prematurely cancelled as it promised to explore some pretty interesting territory.

Dark Skies and American Gothic

Remember the mid-'90s when The X Files was a huge hit and the world seemed gripped by Muldermania? There was an X Files soundtrack with a secret track hidden at the start of the CD, a movie released at the show's height of popularity, and two spinoff series (Millennium, The Lone Gunmen). But perhaps the most interesting impact of the show was how it shaped a new wave of American television series. The X Files dealt with two completely separate strands of speculative fiction loosely aligned under the catch-all term 'paranormal': one being aliens and the other being supernatural events. Few shows seem able to explore both the fantasy and science fiction genres with as much balance and success so it was inevitable that the various imitation shows would opt to choose one or the other.  

Dark Skies was a science fiction series developed by a rival network as a direct competitor to the The X Files. Set during the 1960s, Dark Skies explored the idea that an alien race known as the Hive had infiltrated the American government and were manipulating human history in order to pave the way for invasion. It was basically like all the story arc episodes of The X Files but tied into real life events from the recent past, and it only lasted one season.

American Gothic was another series developed by a rival network in the mid-'90s, also only ran for one season, and leaned into the Americana-based horror aspects of The X Files. It focused on the evil machinations of Lucas Buck, a small-town sheriff with supernatural powers whose hobbies included rape and murder. I remember watching a few episodes of this show when I was 15 and felt very creeped out by it.

Space: Above and Beyond

Another mid-'90s one season effort, Space: Above and Beyond was created by two regular writers from The X Files but has more in common with Star Trek and Starship Troopers than the paranormal. Set about 70 years into the future, this series presented an early Earth Empire coming into conflict with a more experienced space-faring alien race called the Chigs. The writers had a plan to unfold their narrative over five seasons, with various subplots put into motion throughout these first 23 episodes. Fans were understandably frustrated when the show was cancelled before it had a proper chance to get going, however, I can't say I was ever particular enamoured with this one. Being a '90s show created by the same production team as The X Files, the lighting was incredibly dark and shadowy, and the militaristic aspect of the storyline gets kind of old when it takes 21 episodes to get around to even showing the audience what the aliens look like.

seaQuest DSV

Marketed as 'Steven Spielberg's seaQuest DSV' (though he had little to do with it other than chucking some money at it), this series basically became an underwater version of Star Trek despite initial intentions to do something a bit different. 

I don't know what it was about the 1990s but there was this brief moment when everyone in Hollywood seemed to forget how expensive it is to film on water. Waterworld and Cutthroat Island were two films from 1995 that blew out their budgets due to the difficulties involved with water-filming and seaQuest was reported to be quite expensive for a television series too. That said, it managed to stay afloat (sorry) for three seasons. Roy Scheider signed on as the lead but became angry when the focus of the show shifted from realistic near-future science fiction in Season 1 to things like aliens, water monsters, and psychic powers in Season 2. The third season limped along with new cast members and further efforts to 'retool' things with a new lead actor, Michael Ironside, who stipulated in his contract that his character would never be seen talking to Darwin, the ships' talking dolphin. I watched seaQuest on and off when I was a teenager and even back then I could see that the show was a mess; unable to settle on a consistent tone or purpose.

Sliders

Finally a TV series about tiny burgers. The impact of Sliders on fast food cuisine shouldn't be underestimated.

As usual with these sort of things the above list is by no means complete. Other shows I've heard of but never had a chance to watch include: The Last Train, Space: 1999. Star Cops, Tomorrow People, Doomwatch, Sapphire & Steel, V, UFO... at one point these shows felt like points of interest and were just a little bit lesser known than the more popular ones but, as time marches on, some of them seem to be becoming increasingly obscure and less spoken about.

Which is inevitable. But also sad.

Book Journeys: A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle of Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic novel, albeit one with very little in common with other books I've read in the genre. Starting in the 26th century and ending about 1200 years later, Walter M. Miller Jr. depicts the gradual return to civilisation that takes place after world wide nuclear war has reduced America to a medieval state. This fascinating reconstruction of society in the blasted feudal deserts of the American Southwest takes place from the perspective of an order of Catholic monks who seek to canonize a 'Saint Leibowitz', a Jewish electrical engineer from the U.S. Army who hid with said monks and preserved 20th century knowledge through the clandestine art of 'booklegging'. 

Walter M. Miller Jr. was predominantly known for writing science fiction short stories. A Canticle for Leibowitz is a fixup of three such interrelated short stories into one narrative, and also the only novel that Miller Jr. had published in his lifetime. In some circles, A Canticle for Leibowitz is considered 'Christian Science Fiction', being that it presents a sympathetic view of the Church as a preserver of knowledge in a world gone mad. Another common perspective is that the novel is a crossover text of sorts, being that its message extends far into the realm of secular interests, and that the role of the Church in this future 'Dark Age' is a echo of the role that various orders of monks played throughout the original Middle Ages in preserving knowledge and pioneering innovations. The novel is deep in scope but never becomes esoteric or lofty, with Miller Jr. keeping his story firmly grounded in relatable human characters.

I was attracted to this novel because I love the American Southwest, and I love post-apocalyptic novels. The post-apocalyptic genre portrays possible scenarios that might arise from our overriding need to survive, which is a theme that will always resonate with readers. A Canticle for Leibowitz is also a good example of the little-discussed 'feudalpunk' subgenre, where science fiction and medieval technology intertwine, which also provides fertile ground for discussing the patterns of history as we know it.

I'm also found myself drawn to this novel because of its tragic backstory. On one level A Canticle for Leibowitz, published in 1959 and projecting a future created from the ashes of nuclear armageddon, is very much reflective of a Cold War context. On a more personal level, however, it's a novel that grew out of the author's own trauma. Walter M. Miller Jr. served as part of the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II and was involved in the aerial bombing of an ancient Benedictine Monastery in Italy, which would continue to haunt him for the rest of his life. He came to idolise the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War and, by the 1990s, he was a recluse suffering from debilitating depression, disallowing even his own literary agent to ever meet him. 

Sadly, the author committed suicide in 1996, two years after the death of his wife. He had been working on a sequel to his novel for at least 15 years but ultimately decided that he was unable to finish it for psychological reasons. A deal was made for another writer, Terry Bisson, to complete the book. The presumption at the time was that Miller Jr. hadn't managed to make it work and that this was why he abandoned it, but surprisingly, Bisson found that Miller Jr. had written nearly 600 pages and had a very clear outline of how the novel should end. I haven't read Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman and, to be honest, I'm not sure that I ever will. I enjoyed A Canticle for Leibowitz so much that I wouldn't want to besmirch its memory in any way.

Book Journeys: Gormenghast

The adjective 'Gormenghastian' has been used by writers to allude to things "Resembling or pertaining to the fictional Gormenghast, an enormous sprawling Gothic castle mired in inexplicable traditions" (Wiktionary)

The Gormenghast trilogy is both peerless and tragically underrated. The writing style alone is enough to recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading and/or writing in general. The author Mervyn Peake was a British poet, artist, illustrator, writer. In other words, he was a bit of a modern renaissance man, and the Gormenghast trilogy is his magnum opus. Conceived as a chronicle of the life of the fictitious character Titus Groan, the three books that make up this trilogy follow Titus from birth to young adulthood. It was Peake's intention to follow his hero from birth to death but unfortunately his own death from dementia prevented this and so we are instead left with just the trilogy; Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), and Titus Alone (1959).

It's probably somewhat false to refer to it as 'The Gormenghast Trilogy' as it's neither precisely about Gormenghast castle (where the first two books take place), nor was the overall story intended to end with the third book. In fact, whilst Titus Groan and Titus Alone link directly with the second book, Gormenghast, there is little in common between the first and third books themselves. And whilst this trilogy will most likely be found in the fantasy section of your local bookstore (though it's more likely you'd have to order it in), it doesn't really involve any of the usual elements of the fantasy genre... there is no magic, no monsters, etc.

Titus Groan introduces us to the Groan family - a decaying dynasty of ruling nobles who reside in the sprawling and near-endless castle of Gormenghast. The story starts with the birth of Titus Groan, heir to the Earlship, and ends with his first birthday. Curiously, despite sharing the novel's name, Titus is not really a major character here - the protagonist is instead Steerpike, a runaway Cook's Apprentice who slowly ingratiates himself with the Groans in his hungry quest for power.

The second novel, Gormenghast, picks up the story a few years down the track and follows Titus Groan through his adolescence as he grows both physically and mentally in preparation for facing off against the Machiavellian Steerpike. This book is on par with the first one.

Titus Alone, the most idiosyncratic of the three novels, doesn't even take place in Gormenghast castle. It's about half the length of the other novels and is about Titus' travels throughout the world outside of Gormenghast - a world that is strangely futuristic and seems to have very little in common with the medieval world Titus has come from. This book is pretty much only about Titus (hence the title) and is, sadly, of inferior quality due to the health problems experienced by the author while he was writing it.

The previous three paragraphs are only very brief synopses of the books. It would actually be unfair to judge these books via any synopsis you find on them as they are about much, much more than just plot. The mechanics of the narrative seem to be ultimately secondary as far as Peake is concerned as he primarily concentrates instead on atmosphere and characterisation. He draws on surrealism, the Gothic, and an almost Dickensian-tradition of the macabre, bizarre, and grotesque. Each character is a ruffling delight of descriptive language and eccentricity - each is written as if they are the protagonist of the story, and it makes for surprising reading as you're never sure where Peake is taking these characters (indeed - it is said that Peake had no real concerns for plotting when he wrote these books, his only rule was to write whatever he felt like writing, and not to get bogged down in silly things like story outlines!)

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy would have to go down as one of the true classics of the fantasy genre and of literature in general.

I would recommend the first two novels but maybe not the third... it's all too apparent that Peake was losing his faculties when he wrote it if you compare the level of description, characterisation, and length of the book to the previous two. The tone of Titus Alone feels all wrong, everything from the first two books disappears and it all moves in a different direction. I'm not saying it's not interesting or unwarranted, but it's only because of Titus Alone that the series feels very much unfinished - Peake wanted to continue the story of Titus with books called Titus Awake and Gormenghast Revisited but he never got there, so it leaves Titus Alone as a proto-steampunk oddity.

Read Titus Groan and Gormenghast as a self-contained pair of linked novels and you won't be disappointed. They form two halves of a great narrative regarding Steerpike's journey to villainy under the reign of the Groans and there's an amazing host of interesting supporting characters. Get it and get lost in the prose, it's wonderful, and experience firsthand a master of language's love for world-building.  

Stand-Alone Lesson: Parents Just Don't Understand

The last few weeks have been challenging for just about everyone. As Term 1 wound down, and the era of COVID-19 descended upon education, teachers found themselves needing to adapt to online learning platforms as a substitute for face-to-face teaching.

I don't have enough time, space, or inclination to go into my experiences in moving to Google Classroom during the last three weeks. There have been some failures, some ongoing challenges, and (I hope) some small successes. I'm still feeling my way through it all and learning about what I do and don't like, what I think might work, and how I might force things to work.

Suffice to say, this is still a teething stage. As it is for many teachers.

During the transition stage at the end of Term 1 I created the following Junior lesson in order to test a few things out. It may or may not be useful in your context if you need to fill a lesson separate to your current scope and sequence.

Firstly, students will need to watch the following music video. This was chosen in response to some Year 8 students who love rap/hip-hop... do you know how difficult it is to find family-friendly rap music? Luckily Will Smith was on hand to help me out. 

As it's a music video it would be remiss to only cover the lyrical content so I provided the students with a worksheet that covered their comprehension in terms of both written and visual literacy. The use of the table format to project questions alongside the relevant parts of the text is an adaptation of the Cornell note-taking method and is part an ongoing effort I've been making to get my Year 8 and Year 9 students to internalise the annotation process.

There are two versions of the worksheet - one for Stage 4 and one for Stage 5.

Parents Just Don't Understand - Stage 4 (Year 8 version)

Parents Just Don't Understand - Stage 5 (Year 9 version)

Note that the Year 9 version includes a question comparing this song to a previous song the class had studied. This can be adapted to suit your context.

Book Journeys: Freddy Lombard

For as long as I can remember I have the loved the ligne claire comic genre or, at least, certainly loved it a lot longer than I have known the term 'ligne claire'. Like a lot of other youngsters in the 20th century my love was primarily fixated on Herge's immortal Tintin comics. The term 'ligne claire' translates to 'clear line' and refers to the un-shaded style of illustrating comics that was invented by Herge. As such, it's a genre defined by look more than anything else, though the popularity of the Tintin comics has infused the genre with other conventions related to storytelling, characterisation, setting, common motifs, etc.  

As I've grown older (and matured like the dried-out husk of a cactus that refuses to die) I've sought out other comics in this style - Yoko Tsuno, Julian Chancer, Blake and Mortimer. Each of these have their own charms but, truth be told, none holds a candle to Herge's ageless and intrepid reporter. There is, however, a series called Freddy Lombard that has accolades of its own. I'd always seen the cover of the single-volume Freddy Lombard collection and been put off by the protagonist's Tintin-esque look. I mean, he just looks like a shameless imitation. Eventually though, propelled by the many favourable reviews this series attracts, I caved and checked it out.

Freddy Lombard is perhaps the closest thing to Tintin's equal within the ligne claire genre. Although, in saying that, I do both texts a disservice as their similarities are purely superficial.
 
There are five volumes of adventures for Freddy Lombard and his friends Dina and Sweep and the tragedy is that there will never be any more, owing to the untimely death of author/illustrator Yves Chaland in a car accident at the age of 33. Written in the 1980s, the Freddy Lombard series starts in goof-ish, good-natured fashion before maturing exponentially with each subsequent volume. The content of the later volumes decidedly break from the child-friendly realm of Tintin with content increasingly adult in nature; sophisticated storytelling that hinges on the psychological, the political, and even the disturbing.

There's something cinematic about the way Chaland stages the elements within each frame. The top extreme wide shot displays a character on the far right in miniscule (denoting his vulnerability to the open sky outside) as a sliver of light cracks across the cargo hold of the plane, then - frame by frame - the light washes over him and he moves up into the centre of the frame to meet it, conveying the moment that his mind seems to snap in the face of danger.

A quick overview of the stories within the collection:

The Will of Godfrey of Bouillon (First published in 1981, when Chaland was 24)

The most 'throwaway' of Freddy Lombard's adventures and not the best introduction to the series. Freddy and his friends, seemingly a trio of travelling hobos, assist a rich alcoholic in trying to locate a treasure in a medieval castle. The treasure-search is actually a framing device and most of this comic focuses on a comedic dream sequence where Freddy imagines himself back in the middle ages. 

An African Adventure (Released in 1984, when Chaland was 27)

The gang travel to Africa to hunt for a unique photographic plate on behalf of a collector. Chaland, whilst unfortunately leaning on visual stereotypes for the African characters, explores and deconstructs certain themes tied to colonialism. In this tale the reader is shown where Freddy and his friends live, a run-down building in 1930s Paris where they must huddle-together against the elements and are constantly on the lookout for either food or money. 

The Elephant's Graveyard (Released alongside 'An African Adventure' in the same volume in 1984)

Another African-themed adventure that explores the ramifications of colonialism for the coloniser and, despite taking a humourous approach to a murder mystery, finishes with a surprisingly poignant and affecting resolution. 

The Comet of Carthage (Published in 1986, when Chaland was 29)

This marks the point where the series takes on a more mature tone, with Freddy and his peers moonlighting by the Mediterranean where Freddy has become obsessed with saving a beautiful Tunisian muse from the artist who paints her. A more meditative and 'adult' piece, calling to mind the sort of European sensibility more often found in Italian New Wave cinema.

Holiday in Budapest (Published in 1988, when Chaland was 31)

Set in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Freddy and his chums find themselves dramatically caught up in events as the country rapidly descends into destruction and potential collapse. Chaland does something quite deft in plotting a character-based quest within such a turbulent historical event, managing to convey a sense of apocalyptic doom, national hope, the Soviet mindset, and outright chaos.

F.52 (Published in 1990, when Chaland was 33)

The crowning glory and true gem of the collection, F.52 sees Freddy, Dina and Sweep working as cabin crew on the first atomic-powered flight from Paris to Melbourne. Claustrophobic and meticulously-plotted, F.52 presents a Hitchcock-esque web of increasingly tangled subplots and builds to a tense denouement that borders on the surreal. 

And then that's it, there's no more. Once I got to the end of this collection I felt a profound sense of sadness for the tragedy of Chaland's early death and the Freddy Lombard stories that were never written. I know I will be revisiting these stories from time to time; they're that special. I guess the bittersweet silver-lining here is that Chaland's genius lives on in this handful of adventures that he left behind.

Book Journeys: Station Eleven

I don't often read new releases and, yes, I count a book printed in 2014 as a relatively new release. I tend to instead spend my time catching up on classics, favourite authors, graphic novels, and the NSW HSC Prescriptions List (No, no, I've never actually claimed to be fun at parties).

Last year I returned to a much-loved hobby, reading while walking. This has led to a strange series of synchronous coincidences in which the weather coincided with my reading experience. In the last four months:

• I read The Shipping News, about life on an island, while walking the coastline of Stanwell Park. 
• Journey to the Stone Country, about the sparse rocky inland of Northern Queensland, read while sweltering in the dry heat of our recent and devastating Australian summer. 
• And then there was Island Home, Tim Winton's nature-inspired memoir of growing up alongside fragile and unsung ecosystems such as the heath-lands of south-west Australia, which I read while walking the semi-developed swamps of Werrington.

Okay, that last one is a stretch, but spare a thought for the romantic in me. 

Less romantic is the COVID-19 pandemic that currently casts a pallid silence over the world. I picked up Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel for no reason other than the fact that I liked the minimalist design of the cover, and metaphorically gasped as I walked my quietening neighbourhood a month ago and came to the realisation that I was reading a post-apocalyptic story that described in scarily accurate detail what the world might look like after a devastating pandemic wipes out the majority of humanity. 

It took me four walks to read Station Eleven from start to finish, and it's the sort of book that made me want to keep on walking. It's a compelling read, with easily-read prose that belies certain complexities. For a start, St. John Mandel (is that the whole last name? I'm never sure) utilises a non-linear structure to encapsulate fifty years of events, four or five protagonists, and layers of meaning that keep you thinking long after the novel has ended. 

In a way this is a book about the importance of art in the face of tragedy and cataclysm. Relevant, huh? In Station Eleven, a single piece of amateur art is used to form the thematic core of the entire narrative; a suggestion that art's relevance is entirely dependent on its significance to the reader. This is further exemplified by the text's equal use of examples from both high culture (Shakespeare, Beethoven) and low culture (the remnants of pop culture that still persist, with the Star Trek: Voyager quote "Survival is insufficient" taking centrestage). The text circles around these ideas and doubles-back in multiple ways, employing dramatic irony ("one day she'll show it to the world and we'll all say we knew her when"), symbolism (the eponymous comic that holds the various threads of the different time periods together), and metatextuality ("You don't have to understand it, it's mine").

It's a beautiful and breathtaking piece of accessible science fiction that asks big questions about religion, survival, art, and humanity. How could anyone say no to that?