Man Of Indestructonium

I saw the new Superman film the other day.

OK, so it would be very easy to criticise the fact that it had almost as many flashbacks as Rocky V and the camera that did not stay still for even a single moment, even when people were sitting down quietly talking, and the fact that the force of Superman punching Zod was not sufficient to collapse his skull but the force of him twisting his head was enough to break his neck [spoiler alert, y'all!], but I won't, because what I want to talk about was where on earth the drama comes from when your protagonist is invincible and morally unimpeachable and has no character flaws. Because this is a far more fundamental criticism of the film than simply stomach-turning cinematography and a narrative timeline with ADHD and a frankly cavalier attitude towards physics.

In Man Of Steel, Superman's unique quality - and his downfall in this film - is that he is all-powerful and essentially perfect in every way. He never hits anyone when they rile him up. He's always kind and altruistic, never selfish or greedy or jealous or proud or human in any other way (I know, I know, he's not actually human, but we the audience are human and so we need our protagonists to exhibit human characteristics in order for us to empathise with them). And he can't be hurt. By anything.

Read that back: you have a protagonist who always does the right thing, never does anything bad and can't be hurt.

So where's the drama?

Sure, in most films we understand that the protagonist probably isn't going to die, and that he or she is probably going to achieve his or her primary goal, but we go along with it because what's interesting are the challenges that the protagonist faces and overcomes, and the personal growth that he or she undergoes. Even superheroes like Batman and Spiderman, who we expect to win in the end, have to make sacrifices or are damaged by their experiences in some way (either physically or emotionally); their victories are often Pyhrric. Until now I have never seen a film in which the protagonist is already perfect (so has nothing to learn and no way in which to grow as a person), in which he has to make no difficult choices and in which there isn't even a pretence that he is in any danger.

For example, the climactic fight with Zod involved two invincible superbeings taking turns at propelling each other through buildings over and over again via the application of knuckle to face, and at no point did either of them appear to be in any danger. In one instance Superman punched Zod so hard in the face that he flew backwards through the air, then flew after him and repeatedly propelled him forward with his fist for mile after mile until Zod simply dodged or blocked the next punch (I honestly can't remember what happened) and then just carried on fighting as though nothing had happened. The only point at which Superman seemed in any way vulnerable, when his powers were diminished, was when he was trapped beneath the terraforming tripod, and at that point he simply clenched his teeth, deepened his frown and somehow got his powers back.

Where a character is invulnerable there can still be drama, however; it can come from the choices that they make, or are forced to make, and the emotions that they experience. But here, too, I struggle. I don't see how I can empathise with someone whose moral code is as bullet-proof as his chest and whose most taxing dilemma is "face or groin?" in terms of where on the victim's body the knuckles should be repeatedly applied.

As a result I didn't really care about Superman. Why should I? He's definitely going to win, he's not going to get hurt, he's going to be on the moral high ground from the start and remain on it until the end, and he's not anything like me. The characters that I care about are flawed and vulnerable and make bad decisions and change their minds and sometimes do bad things for good reasons and sometimes do good things for bad reasons. In short, they're human. Even Zod was more human than Superman - he was confined by an accident of birth into a role in society that meant that he had to do a bad thing (destroy all humans) for a good reason (to save his people), and he didn't really give any indication that he was particularly happy about it. Right up until he went cardboard ("Now that you've foiled my plan I'm going to kill everyone on this planet ha ha ha ha ha ha!") I think I liked Zod more than I liked Superman.

When I spoke to a friend about this they said to me oh but have you read the comics it's all in the comics in the comics he's really deep and he's got like this really complex moral code that he can't ever ever break and it makes much more sense if you've read the comics and. I don't care about what's in the comics, I'm talking about the film. I don't expect to have to read 200,000 words of context in order to enjoy what is being presented as a stand-alone narrative. That'd be like going to a restaurant and having to eat a million potatoes beforehand in order for their chips to taste good.

So although Superman is exactly the person I'd like to find standing next to me if a leather-and-denim-clad motorbike gang from a 1980s film jumped me under a railway bridge on my way to jazzercise, in Man Of Steel he's just boring. Give me a bat-obsessed billionaire vigilante clearly suffering the harrowing psychological effects of post-traumatic stress disorder any day.

PS Man Of Steel wasn't all bad. I liked the part when Superman and Zod were fighting and Zod said "This can only end one way" and then described the two ways that it could end. Also, the surprising girth of Laurence Fishburne is always entertaining. What happened to you, Furious?

Ebooks for Africa

I just received an e-mail from Kindle All-Star supremo and general nice guy Bernard Schaffer to say that he has been approached by the Worldreader charity to see if we'd mind supplying the second Kindle All-Stars short story collection, Carnival of Cryptids, for inclusion in their projects.

Worldreader supplies e-readers and digital books to children in Africa in a bid to increase literacy.

Of course, we've all said yes.

Here's some information from the charity about what they do and how our short stories would be used:

Our team did a recent e-reader launch in conjunction with the Nelson Mandela African Institute for Science & Technology (located in the Tenguru community of Arusha). 300 e-readers were placed in two neighbouring primary public schools: Nganana & Nambala. The two schools have a combined enrollment of 800-1,000 pupils. Prior to the launch the two schools had fewer than 50 copies of all the essential text books; last week we increased that capacity to 30,000 e-books (with many Tanzania-approved textbooks).

 

This launch has received a lot of political attention, most notably from the Prime Minister of Tanzania who not only attended the launch, but also met with us to discuss a massive roll-out of e-readers in this country (particularly in his own school). The Prime Minster spoke for over 30 minutes about his enthusiasm for the programme. At a personal level he announced he would rather put e-books into the school that he is funding than build a library, and at a national level he has asked Minister Mbarawa to give the government's full support. With a whole nation focused on the mass failures in the Form IV Certificate of Secondary Education examinations results of this year, the Prime Minister declared that 'We can afford the burden of purchasing e-readers, but we can't afford the burden of an illiterate society."

So on the one hand I'm delighted that something that I've written will be made available as part of a literacy programme, and on the other I am slightly taken aback by the idea that we have reached a stage where a government would rather buy e-readers than build a library in a school. We are clearly living in the future.

Beating the UK's former most senior openly gay police officer

Without realising it, and without really trying to, last month I sold my 1,000th copy of my horror novella The Slender Man.

That means that I've sold more copies than Line Of Fire, the autobiography of Brian Paddick, formerly the UK's most senior openly gay police officer.

I know!

I understand that selling 1,000 copies isn't that big a deal really - I'm far from being the next Dan Brown - but nonetheless it feels quite gratifying. For one thing I haven't really been promoting the book, so the implication is that people are finding it without my help and they are picking it up based on the reviews.

Talking about reviews, I haven't looked at any for The Slender Man since about December. I know that a lot of people like actors and directors and comedians and musicians and spree murderers often say that they don't read reviews, and I always thought that they were simply being disingenuous (or, to put it bluntly, lying), but now I suspect that at least some of them were telling the truth.

The reason I've stopped reading reviews is that I've realised that a lot of the time they don't really make a lot of sense. I'll give you some examples: one person gave my book a five star review based on the five-page excerpt that you can read for free on Amazon, and one person marked my book down because he claimed I'd written something in the present tense by mistake and missed it during the editing process, but was apparently oblivious to the fact that the entire book is written in the present tense.

See? The majority of people don't review books with the care and attention that most many some authors take to write them (and why would they?). So that, coupled with the fact that all reviews are utterly subjective (as I have discussed previously), means that my sanity and confidence are far better served by not taking them to heart.

NB Obviously if you review my book and say that you like it then that's a different matter entirely and you are objectively correct.

Beard Slender Review

Fellow writer J. A. Beard has interviewed me about my horror novella The Slender Man over at his wonderfully named blog J. A. Beard's Unnecessary Musings. Read the interview by clicking here and then moving your eyes from left to right across and then down the page.

Carnival of Cryptids - Jeff Provine

Here's the second of my clumsy pseudo-interviews to mark the launch of Carnival of Cryptids, the second Kindle All-Stars short story anthology. As with Matt Posner, I asked Jeff Provine to tell me what was his favourite and least favourite cryptid. Here's what he said:

Favorite cryptid:  Plesiosaur

I've always had a soft spot for Nessie, whereas I distinctly remember as a kid being so scared by Bigfoot on Unsolved Mysteries that I couldn't go even into dark rooms.  The idea of an ancient creature living beneath murky waters is so appealing: why not?  Who can say it's not there without extensive scientific research?  The coelacanth was believed to be extinct these millions of years until a fisherman caught one off the coast of Madagascar in 1938.  Why not long-necked, finned dinos, too?  And there's certainly no shortage of supposed lake monsters: Nessie, Champ, Ogopogo, you name it.

Least favorite cryptid:  Bigfoot Hunter

I've seen these usually tall and burly creatures recorded on television, but I've never seen solid evidence of one myself.  They are argued to be hominid, perhaps even living among us, and that they can be distinguished by wild manes of hair or strange headgear, often both.  Most distinguishable is their fascination with Bigfoot, whom they pursue and attempt to prove through whatever nonscientific means available.  They are not to be confused with the actual Bigfoot researcher using systematic science to determine the existence of the bipedal ape and can be best discovered at their agitation following any questions.  "See those orange peels?  That's proof Bigfoot was here.  Bigfoot loves oranges." "How do you know it's not just some camper?" "Because those are oranges, and we're hunting Bigfoot!  Clearly there wouldn't be oranges if we weren't on the trail of Bigfoot!"

You can read more about Jeff on his Amazon Author's Page.

Interview with Ia Uaro

Ia Uaro has conducted an interview with me about my short story The Cage, which appears in Carnival Of Cryptids...

Meet Simon John Cox, Author Of The Cage - Ia Uaro

Carnival of Cryptids - Matt Posner

To mark the launch of Carnival of Cryptids, the second Kindle All-Stars short story anthology to benefit the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, I asked the authors to tell me what were their favourite and least favourite cryptid, and why.

Here's what Matt Posner, who contributed the short story The Paring Knife, said:

What's my favorite cryptid? This yarn should explain.

Young people used to go out and park by the abandoned factory, where they could grope each other and engage in other sorts of parentally disapproved caresses.

They used to do that. Then it came.

It was seven, eight, nine feet tall. Scarecrow lean. Eyes that shone like pale blood. A shock of wings that snapped out like a glider.

It went from perfect stillness into an airborne lunge. Could trail, overtake, or even dive-bomb cars.

It was a combination of a costume-shop vampire kit and an antique chthonic horror more at home in the black fantasies of Lovecraft than in the stillness of a West Virginia town hemmed in by old-growth trees.

Mothman, haunter and tormenter of young lovers and isolated motorists. Mothman, stalker between leaden clouds. Mothman, blood-eyed starkly staring maker of madness.

Coolest crytozoological nightmare of all time? With such sensational options out there, who knows? The bigfoot outside the tent on a rainy night; the sea serpent pacing the fleeing bark; the blood-drinking fanged rodent chupacabras rending the tender throats of livestock...So many legends to enjoy. But the malevolent menace of Mothman moves me the most.

Least favorite cryptid? Fur-bearing trout. Boooooring.

About Matt: 

Matt Posner is the author of the School of the Ages series of novels and stories about a magic school located in New York City, and the co-author (with Jess C. Scott) of Teen Guide to Sex and Relationships. A two-time Kindle All-Star, Matt appears here to promote the release of Bernard Schaffer's Carnival of Cryptids charity anthology.

Matt's books are available for Kindle and Nook. School of the Ages is sold in India exclusively by Times Group Books.

http://schooloftheages.webs.com

http://teenguideqna.wordpress.com

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