The Hard Switch

 
 
The Hard Switch

by Owen Pomery

Avery Hill

2024 

 

 

The Hard Switch is a graphic novel set at the end of an age of interstellar civilization. We're told that there's a mineral needed to make hyperspace jumps, that it's nearly all used up, and that everywhere in space, people are scrambling to get someplace they want to stay before the mineral runs out for good and each star system becomes isolated from its neighbors. It sounds pretty bleak! But the characters we follow, while not satisfied with where they're currently at, also don't seem to feel any special urgency. The art style and narrative tone both remind me of On a Sunbeam, a comparison that unfortunately doesn't do Hard Switch any favors. This is much slimmer and more slight; it's not fair to hold it to the same standard.
 
We follow two women and a sentient octopus. They have enough of the mineral for a few more jumps, and they're trying to salvage old shipwrecks to find more. Because our viewpoint is such a closeup, and because this trio seems so self-reliant, the mood is less like the apocalyptic closing of all borders and Balkanization of space, and more like some roommates trying to squeeze in a few errands before a storm snows them in for the weekend. I liked what was on the page well enough, but there's a real mismatch between what we're told the stakes are and what they actually seem to be.
 
Pomery favors plot over characterization or worldbuilding, and he keeps the scale of the action quite small. We open with our trio locating a shipwreck and going in to grab the hyperspace mineral. They encounter some peaceful alien salvagers and then a team of violent human mercenaries. They escape unharmed with an object with ancient writing on it. They become convinced it's proof that before the special mineral was discovered, there was some other way to travel faster than lightspeed. Unfortunately, some rich guy recently hauled a huge cache of ancient art offworld.
 
They to track down the art collector and arrange to meet him. Along the way, they stop to help a ship in distress. It's a transport of refugees, but almost everyone has already died. The lone survivor is an alien child. The unscrupulous ship owner took everyone's money, skimped on the oxygen supply, and and left the ship and its passengers adrift halfway to the destination. This is the one place where we get a glimpse of how the coming crisis is making some people desperate and others ruthless. Our viewpoint characters don't seem especially privileged, but they must be. They own a ship, even if it's small, and have enough of the rare mineral to do seemingly everything they want to get done.
 
After that detour, the three go to the mansion of the art collector, and he lets them in to see walls and walls of ancient text, supposedly because he wants to see their fragment to to consider buying it. But it turns out he's also the human trafficker, he knows they've witnessed his crime, and he wants to eliminate them. By all rights, he ought to succeed, but our three protagonists manage to defeat his private security death squad and get away despite being surprised and outnumbered.
 
As they escape into space again, we learn that they got photos of the ancient language, so if there is a secret to FTL travel in there, they may be able to translate it, or send the images to someone who can. For now they jump someplace safe to hide out for awhile, still with enough of the mineral to jump to where they really want to be later, whether or not the translation works out.

Pomery's art style is quite simplified, which works well for the story he's chosen to tell. I thought about what it might take to communicate the scale of the upcoming disaster, and I think it would just take more - a longer book, a broader scope, more characters, more plot threads. I also thought about what the story would be like with no ancient secrets or magic remedies, and I think it would be like a parable for downward mobility. Young adults who grew up thinking they'd be able to go where they want, when they want, realizing they're going to be stuck in one place, and having to accept that because there's no way to avoid it. 

Kissing on the Mouth (2005)

  

Kissing on the Mouth 

directed by Joe Swanberg
written by Kevin Pittman, Kris Rey, and Joe Swanberg
Film1

2005


Kissing on the Mouth is an early mumblecore movie, although it has far more in common with 9 Songs than it does with something like Funny Ha Ha.

 

The plot here is minimal. What's distinctive about the film is its frank portrayal of nudity and 'non-simulated sex acts' and the use of audio recordings of everyday young adults talking about relationships to provide a voiceover soundtrack that runs over most of the movie. The mixture of these non-fictional elements with a naturalistic but fictional narrative and improvised rather than scripted acting is kind of fascinating.

 

Within the film, the recordings are some kind of secret art project of Patrick's, so sometimes the audience hears them because a character in the film is listening to them, sometimes we just hear them as a kind of commentary track. The recordings are about dating, sex, breaking up. They don't directly correspond to anything happening on the screen, although they are generally thematically related to the fictional plot.

 

Ellen and Patrick (played by the director, Joe Swanberg) are roommates, who, as far as I can tell, have never had a sexual relationship. Despite this, Ellen finds herself sneaking around, and Patrick seems weirdly controlling of her relationships. The other two characters are Ellen's ex-boyfriend Chris, who she's recently started hooking up with again, and her friend Laura (played by Swanberg's future wife), who acts as an unreliable confidante, and also seduces Patrick while Ellen is away.

  

We watch Ellen and Chris make out, strip, then fuck, several times. That really is the appropriate verb here. We get two different scenes of Ellen grooming her pubic hair, once on the toilet, once in the shower. Patrick (that is, Swanberg) masturbates to completion in the shower. Laura and Patrick make out in the shower, then fuck.

 

Ellen wants to know about the secret project Patrick is working on. He refuses to tell her. She burns a copy of the recordings to a CD to listen to without his permission. Ellen and Laura talk about sex and desire; Laura gossips about Ellen to Patrick to convince him to have sex with her. Patrick keeps asking Ellen if she's seeing Chris again; she keeps lying and saying no. Eventually he searches her room and finds nude photos Chris took of her.

 

The climax of the film, such as it is, is a fight between Ellen and Patrick where they confront each other over the secrets they've been keeping. Patrick is obviously very jealous. I feel like this scene only makes sense if you think he wants to date Ellen, or maybe that he's been lying to himself and imagining they were a couple, and not just roommates, this entire time. By the end of the film, Ellen has re-established her autonomy. Nothing else is resolved.

  

The graphic content is realistic rather than glamorous. It feels more like we're peeping at people than like they're performing for us, although obviously that's a conceit - everything we see is a performance. The film's editing is interesting, often intercutting two scenes to create an emotional contrast. Most of the action happens without dialogue, leaving space for the voiceovers to fill. The recorded interviews are the most interesting aspect of the movie, and combined with the somewhat experimental visuals, make this probably a bit better than 9 Songs, which uses similarly explicit depictions of sex to track the course of a brief relationship.
 
 

Originally watched February 2023. 

This One Summer

 
This One Summer

by Mariko Tamaki

art by Jillian Tamaki

First Second

2014

 

 

This One Summer is a young adult graphic novel about a memorable vacation at a lake, written and illustrated by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki. It's fiction, but feels very much like a memoir. It's the sort of time an adult author might look back on, the dialogue is naturalistic, and the plotting and characterization both feel very true to life. This is how people talk, this is how they act. The least realistic thing is that life never has this much thematic unity.
 
We follow Rose, a girl on the cusp of puberty, whose family spends two weeks in a cabin by the lake each summer. Each year, Rose hangs out with her best friend Windy, who's a year or two younger. This year that gap translates into an awkward imbalance: Windy is still a kid, but Rose is becoming a teen. They spend the days swimming and hiking in the woods. They talk about what it will be like to grow breasts and get their periods. And they decide to rent grown-up horror movies from the local convenience store. They notice the slashers treat girls different than boys. Probably neither of them is quite ready for what they're watching, but they're both curious, and they both want to be ready.
 
Rose's parents are fighting. She knows they were trying to have another kid, but didn't. Rose doesn't really know what that might mean, or how it might relate to the fact that her mother seems depressed and unwilling to participate in many of the usual fun vacation activities. She probably doesn't understand how her dad being fun and laid back creates an obligation for her mom to be more serious and responsible.
 
The third plot thread is lives of some of the older teens who live in town all year round. Rose and Windy pick up on what's going on only vicariously, as conversations happen around them, or in a few cases thanks to deliberate eavesdropping. 
 
Windy teases Rose that she has a crush on the guy who works at the convenience store, and at first I thought it was just a joke, but it becomes clear that she does feel something for him, and when there's trouble later, she instinctively takes his side, even though she doesn't really know him. There's a running theme of characters saying 'I'm kidding' to try to smooth over the awkwardness after they've said or done something that didn't land. It's one of the things Rose and Windy talk about.
 
The trouble I mentioned is that the guy who works at the convenience store, the guy Rose likes, has a girlfriend who just found out she's pregnant. She understandably anxious to talk to him, and he keeps refusing to answer her calls. Eventually, this leads to a much bigger confrontation that brings all three plot threads together, and shows us (and Rose) a different, more sympathetic side of her mom.
 
Throughout the book, we see Rose learning about and grappling with adult femininity and heterosexuality. What will it be like to have boobs, and how big will they be? Are those older girls really 'sluts'? Is it wrong to call them that? Why are Rose's parents fighting so much? Why doesn't her mom seem to want to have fun? And why isn't it okay for her to vacation at her own pace, in her own way? Why are the convenience store guy and his girlfriend fighting? What does he owe to her? What does Rose actually feel for him? 

  

It's a coming of age story, focused on Rose's growing awareness of sexism, and of her own ability to be wrong. Because Windy is just a little younger, she functions almost like Rose's younger self. She still thinks the way Rose did last year, so when they disagree, it's a measure of how Rose is changing as she grows up.
 
I've praised the writing, but the art is worth mentioning too. Jillian Tamaki's drawings are realistic and expressive. The scenery is especially detailed. The book is printed in purple ink instead of black, with lavender instead of grey. It adds to the feeling of nostalgia. 
 
Reading this reminded me of the vacations my parents took us on with our extended family when I was younger, of the odd, timeless, self-contained quality of a week spent in a place you don't really live around people you only see while traveling. This one is really something special. 

The Shamshine Blind

 
 
The Shamshine Blind

by Paz Pardo

Atria

2023 

 

 

I think alt-historical mystery novels are having a moment. Paz Pardo's The Shamshine Blind is one several recent books that fit that description. I think the first one I read was The Yiddish Policeman's Union, right when it first came out. I doubt it was the first book to fit the description, and it's difficult for me to believe that what's going on right now is connected to Chabon in any straightforward way. Seeing so many examples appearing around the sane time makes it seem like the two genres have a natural affinity, like alternate history worldbuilding and mystery-solving detective stories pair well in a way that allows each to reinforce the other.
 
Pardo also writes The Shamshine Blind with a kind of gonzo approach to the science part of her science fiction that reminds me of Nick Harkaway or Jasper Fforde. Because while the point where her alt history departs real history is relatively straight forward - what if Argentina won the Faulklands War? - but the cause of the departure is like something out of a comic book or cartoon - what if the way they won was by deploying colors that cause emotions as chemical weapons? By the present day of Shamshine, Argentina is the world's superpower, America is a bombed out ruin with an economy decimated by hyperinflation, and 'psychopigments', colors that control how you feel, are both our primary pharmaceuticals and our life-ruining illegal drugs.
 
The mystery is narrated by Curdita, a field in Pigment Enforcement agent nearing the mandatory retirement age of 40, working in the suburbs of an abandoned San Francisco, still dreaming of a promotion to the big time in Iowa City or Boise. Curdita is a Depressive, as are all the other Pigment agents: depression weakens the effect of psychopigments. Neurotypical people are too vulnerable, and can be permanently brain-damaged by a level of exposure that Depressives can (mostly) recover from in a few weeks. 
 
At the start of the book, Curdita is tracking down a shipment of Shamshine, a counterfeit version of Sunshine Yellow, the psychopigment for happiness, which is taken daily in pill form by patients across the country. We hear about at least a dozen other pigments, but a couple of the most important are Deepest Blue, the first psychopigment, which causes memory loss and amnesia, and was Argentina's main weapon in the war, and Slate Gray, which causes ennui and a lack of motivation. 
 
Soon enough, the Shamshine case leads Curdita to a much bigger mystery. Someone is creating a whole new pigment with unknown effects, except that all the human test subjects are getting totally burned out by the strength of it. Once they get it right, whatever it is, they appear to have plans to manipulate the public mood on a national scale, and in the meantime, they're killing or using Deepest Blue to erase the minds of anyone who might be a loose end. Curdita goes all trying to solve this and stop it, spending the back half of the book operating out of a hospital room rather than the police station, and 
 
Pardo interweaves the present day mystery with Curdita's memories of her childhood and her time in the police academy, and a tour of a fallen America, transformed by years of psychopigment warfare and the periphery's love-hate relationship with the new Argentinian core. Americans listen to soap operas on the radio and eat imported hot sauce at every meal; and militant White nationalists dream of reclaiming lost glory. When Curdita gets exposed to Slate or Blue or Magenta Obsession in the course of her pursuit, her emotions are no longer her own, and the past, both hers and the country's, spills out in free association. 
 
Pardo takes her slightly silly premise and treats it seriously. San Francisco getting emptied out by a Magenta attack that disables fifty-thousand people that turns their fandom into true fanaticism is zany, but Pardo keeps an eye on the human cost. Her America is all hinterland, every major city made uninhabitable by Deepest Blue bombings that make them permanent superfund sites. I think that's part of what reminds me of Harkaway's The Gone-Away World or Fforde's Shades of Grey - an absurd apocalypse is still the end of the old world, and however strange the new world might be, people still have to find a way to live there.

Tower Dungeon 2

 
 
Tower Dungeon 2

by Tsutomu Nihei

Kodansha

2025 

 

 

In the first volume of Tower Dungeon, super-strong farmboy Yuva got conscripted into the royal army to rescue the princess, who's been kidnapped by a necromancer and taken to the mountainous Dragon Tower. Yuva helped defeat a slime monster and recovered a gem that the necromancer says he's willing to trade for the princess. Then many of the royal guards were recalled to the capital, leaving Yuva with a straitlaced master archer and a bratty woman who knows fire magic.
 
Now in volume 2, the trio continues to explore for a safe (-ish) route up to level 100 where they can trade for the princess. Enriquo the archer leads them very cautiously. With their familiar staircase now guarded by giant suits of armor, he insists they map a new route. We learn that the dungeon is circular and 3 kilometers in diameter, which must make it like 15 or 18 km tall, given its proportions. Each level has numbered support pillars and is exactly 10 meters tall, though it seems that the very regularized main structure also holds more irregular and less well-built secondary features, perhaps later additions by less-skilled builders than the originals.
 
The trio gets lost in some repetitive, identical looking sections, then comes close to dying of thirst. Their equipment is stolen while they're sleeping, but when they give chase, they learn that the primordial human dungeon dwellers only wanted their salt (a precaution against another slime monster) for cooking. Yuva and his friends get back the rest of their stuff, plus some treasure, and the location of a water source and a secret staircase.
 
Back outside the fort, a boom town has sprung up to supply the soldiers going in. Besides Yuva's group, we meet a team of badass women adventurers who look like a roller derby team and all carry hammers, and a cat woman who wears a suit of armor. Fire mage Lilicen is eager to go back in the dungeon to beat out the new competitors. Yuva's sister has arrived from the village to work at the inn. She gets attacked by a 10 foot tall nobleman who can turn into a dragon, but the cat-lady knight protects her. Apparently everyone in the royal family is like 10 feet tall and a 'dracomorph', presumably including the princess.
 
Nihei seems to be drawing on tropes from both Dungeons & Dragons and dungeon crawling computer games like Rogue. The appearance of the stair guardians feels like a classic dungeon restocking procedure, and confusing architecture that trips you up as you make your own map is a staple of megadungeons as a genre. The sheer size of the place, and the identical superstructure of each level, is more like a video game though. Lilicen also shows Yuva you can break clay jars to find minor treasures, which is straight out of the Zelda games.
 
Yuva is our viewpoint character. He's from a small village and knows little of the outside world, so he needs Enriquo and Lilicen to explain how dungeons work to him. Along with us, he goggles at the noble cat woman and at the news that the kingdom's royalty are all giant shapeshifters. Yuva is kindhearted, which is why he talked to the salt thieves instead of fighting them. So far, his incredible strength has only been used for carrying heavy packs and breaking through a weakened wall into a secret passageway, but presumably he'll eventually use it for fighting, too. Yuva treats Enriquo like a boss and Lilicen like a sister, much to her annoyance.
 
The world Nihei is building here seems rough, crude, and brutal in a way that matches the style of his linework. The monsters are dangerous and strange in a way that borders on horror. The royal family is monstrous and inhuman, and at least one member is a Bluebeard-type who wants to cannibalize Yuva's actual little sister to prolong his life. Enriquo got a bladder infection when they ran out of water. The details add up to a world that's harsh and uncaring, where only people of incredible skill can survive.

Invisible Things

 
 
Invisible Things

by Andy Pizza and Sophie Miller

Chronicle Books

2023 

 

 

Invisible Things is a children's picture book that illustrates things that can't be seen - experiences from our other senses and our emotions. 

 

The book is a kind of guided meditation for kids, first walking through things we might hear, smell, taste, or feel, and then asking the reader to close their eyes and take some time to identify the invisible sensations around themselves. And then this is repeated for emotions, with a bit of extra attention given to reassuring kids that sadness and fear are normal, but also not permanent. 

 

The illustrations use cute little personifications to depict each invible thing. The song stuck in your head is a guitar with feet and googly eyes; the heebie jeebies is a hollow tree stump with little eyes peeking out of it. I think the idea is that making each sensation or emotion into a tiny monster makes them easier to think about and imagine.

The Bathysphere Book

 
The Bathysphere Book
Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths
by Brad Fox
Astra

2023 
 
 
I think there's some value in allowing your friends' interests to influence you. At one time, my sister was very interested in oceanography, so I still like to read about it from time to time. The Bathysphere Book is a history of the first really successful deep-sea diving vehicle, the bathysphere, and a biography of the explorer who rode in it, William Beebe.
 
The bathysphere was built by Otis Barton. When the door was screwed on, it was a hermetically sealed metal sphere, with only three quartz windows to see out. It was raised and lowed by a metal cable, and this was paired with a phone line so Beebe could report what he saw up to his research partner (and girlfriend) Gloria Hollister for transcription. The bathysphere carried its own compressed oxygen, had internal air conditioning, and used a chemical reactant to neutralize the carbon dioxide its occupants exhaled. It was only used a few times, mainly in 1933 and 1934, and Hollister never got to go on a real dive. Bebee and seasick Barton dove together each time, with Barton not even looking out, just monitoring the machines.
 
The purpose of the dives was to find out what the ocean was actually like, below the depths you could reach in diving helmet. As you descend, more and more light is absorbed by the water above you, first reds and oranges, then yellows and greens. Before it becomes black, the ocean glows blue-violet. Many of the deep sea creatures are also partially bioluminescent. There is more life down there than scientists had believed possible before Beebe's dives.
 
The other famous collaborator on this project was artist Else Bostelmann. She also never dove in the bathysphere, and based all her paintings on Hollister's transcripts and direct conversation with Beebe. I actually got this book because I'd seen some of Bostelmann's fantastically dark, haunting watercolors before. My favorite anecdote is that on a few occasions, she donned a diving helmet, dropped a canvas and a metal music stand, and was actually able to oil paint fish and coral, from life, at a depth of 20 or 30 feet.
 

Previously Unknown Dragonfish Circling the Bathysphere 
- Else Bostlemann, 1934

 
There are some things from the past that I guess I assumed were more widespread than they actually were. When I watched the film The Automat, I was genuinely surprised to learn there were really only ever in New York and Philadelphia. The bathysphere was unique, not the name for a general type of craft, and outside of Beebe's handful of deep dives in the early 30s, was really only used for test dives and exhibitions.
 
Fox writes in very short chapters that each relay a single thought or incident. His narratives of Beebe's life and the story of the bathysphere dives are interwoven with Bostelmann's sketches and paintings, photos of the expeditions, excerpts from Beebe's and Hollister's diaries, excerpts from the transcripts of the dives and descriptions of the undersea sightings, accounts of what else was going on historically at the same time, and then lots and lots of short biographical sketches of other people tangentially (often very tenuously) connected to Beebe and the dives. So we learn about the famous racist Beebe dedicated one of his books to, but also about Beebe's neighbor's doctor. Who indeed sounds like a fascinating fellow! The proliferation of chapters about people with only the thinnest of connections to the dives is probably meant to help provide context, but also kind of made it feel like Fox didn't really have enough material to fill a book and was padding it out.