The greatest anthologies of science fiction

The Best of the Best: Volume 1
The Best of the Best: Volume 2
Modern Classics of Science Fiction
The Good Old Stuff
The Secret History of Science Fiction
The Oxford Book of Science Fiction
The Norton Book of Science Fiction
The World Treasury of Science Fiction
The Science Fiction Century
The Science Fiction Omnibus
The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction
Eclipse 3
21st Century Science Fiction
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volumes 2 A and B
Dangerous Visions
The Best of Universe
Adventures in Time and Space
The Locus Anthology
The Best of Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy Volumes 1 and 2

Crepe Redux

I'm not fond of travelling. Neither am I a 'foodie'. I like both, but I'm not 'fond' of them, in the same way that I'm fond of reading, or listening to music. If you ask me why, I think I'd bring it down to an inability at having fun, without thinking myself into a knot in the process. Again, travelling and eating and cooking can be enormously thought intensive; it's just that I wouldn't do them to think. I'd do them to not think. It's been a while since I've enjoyed things in that vein.

Which is why America came as a surprise. The first dream I had on my first night there was of Barbeque. I actually liked heading out all by myself and discovering the streets. I didn't do as much of that as I should have, but I surprised myself nevertheless. When my sister and her fiancé , who also happens to be one of my best friends, decided to take me travelling to San Francisco and California, I didn't balk. I did balk somewhat upon finding myself in yet another city. I don't like cities. And while San Francisco, with its colorful people and undulating roads and bus rides was fun, it really didn't compare with the mountains and sea of California Bay. I think my inner child was resurrected at the sight of the mountains, and died again from them in joy.

Among my most cherished memories in America is that of a wharf in San Francisco, where sea lions sunbathed and lay around sleeping on wooden stands. We went for a steam boat ride with the surf spraying us in the face, with blaring rock music, then came back to dine at one of the numerous restaurants dotting the wharf. And I happened to have a crepe there, at a creperie, which took me by surprise. It shouldn't have. For all I know, it should have been predictable as anything else that involved whipped cream and this creamy batter and nutella, but I went a little mad inside at how it tasted. It also had bananas in it. Yes, I actually asked the cook to include bananas. Me.

Fast forward five months from then, and I was invited over by Upasana to her place, and she made me a crepe because I'd said I liked it so much. And I think I've never been happier at food before. It was amazing, even better than the one I had by the wharf, in spite of it not being Nutella that she used. I can't believe I'm writing a blog post on it now, but here I am. She's an awesome cook, Upasana is, and she's a deft hand at cooking loads of things, mushrooms especially among them, but this. This took me by surprise like very few things had of late. I could smell the surf and the sea lions. Okay, I hadn't smelt sea lions even at San Francisco but you get the picture. And what was astounding was how I wasn't thinking anymore. For a change, the crepe, the idea of the crepe, what it did to me, and how it tasted, and the memories associated with it, and this pretty girl having made it for me was one whole thing, much like the crepe itself. And things came full circle. Here I am uploading a photograph.

It's a very alien thing for me to be this happy about food. It doesn't happen everyday. And it takes something truly special, and someone truly lovely, to make me feel this way. I think this is one story for the ages when it comes to my personal mythology.

Oh, and here's my culprit, and hero.

Interstellar, with a generous sprinkling of Gravity.

After hearing a lot about  Gravity, I had settled down late one night prepared for a film that I thought would be about 'to infinity and beyond', vast swathes of space, a heady cocktail of adventure and exploration. What I had not expected was claustrophobia. Or dread, stark and unrelenting. Gravity was space exploration at its realest I have yet come across (which is actually very little), all the fear and silence and constriction that drives home the immeasurable odds stacked up against human survival in such inhospitable conditions.
Perhaps inhospitable is not the right word. Is a behemoth inhospitable for not noticing that a squirrel might be trying to settle into the space between its legs? Uncaring might be a better choice. Uncaring then.
I could not sit through the entire film. It was good, however much I had watched was enough to convince me of that. Pared-down, honest, brutal. In a little while, I found my head swimming at merely the visualisation of the lack of motor control, the endless drifting, the still more endless silence, broken only by the distorted crackle of voices over the transmitter.

I did sit through Interstellar today. I don't know yet quite what to think of it. Where there was restraint in Gravity, there is spillage in Interstellar. Everything is underlined: close-up shots and momentous music-in case you miss it otherwise. Believe me, I am not one to complain about a movie being emotional. In every film I am the sappy fool hoping that every 'nice' character makes it out of the film healthy and happy. But while I dutifully tear up during the first watch, I do resent it in hindsight when a director pokes me in the eye with a cue that something is significant. I'll figure it out on my own, thank you. I'd like the chance, at any rate. I remember Sandra Bullock's character in Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone, speaking over the transmitter in a winded, exhausted voice about her daughter's death after being rescued by a fellow astronaut from spinning around wildly in space, unharnessed. In some ways, I think, my reaction to that felt more authentic.

Here in Interstellar were top-notch actors being made to ham like there's no tomorrow. Michael Caine's Dr. Brand Sr. clearly loves Dylan Thomas' 'Do not go gentle into that good night'. While I love that poem (and the first use in the film against stunning visuals), him choking out the words on his deathbed was a bit much. And Cooper in the fifth dimension, screaming and overturning books was an example of a good moment stretched too, too far. Good visualisation, but really? 'It was you, you were my ghost?'!
But despite these things, here is what I loved about Interstellar. I loved that the mind-boggling expanse of space exploration was offset by the all-too-short lifespan of their loved ones back on earth. These daughters and fathers and families were living, breathing and aging, not merely existing in some shadowy realm of memory. I loved the section where Cooper comes back to find 23 years' worth of messages. Matthew McConaughey is gorgeous in the scene. Laughing, crying, shaking at all the missed moments and milestones. I like that Tom, his son, having believed for too long, ends up a little damaged; and that Murph, the daughter, who learnt to doubt, copes a little better. These I thought were masterstrokes in thinking about human relationships. Relativity has never been as heartbreaking. As magnificent as the first shot of Saturn was, and it was magnificent, I like that we had shots of these brilliant men and women feeling queasy and afraid at being thrust into the middle of the great unknown. And most of all I loved the languid introduction, slow and unyielding despair at how badly we have damaged this home of ours.

I think Interstellar will be a film that will revisit me in sudden slices. Moments that made my stomach drop or my heart soar. I think it was more because of these moments that I felt angry about the film not having been able to sustain its brilliance throughout.But well, I suppose this is one instance where, 'There's always next time' works.

A rant, if you will.

Back when I had started college, the terms Central Perk or Ross-&-Rachel would have drawn a blank stare from me, I would have thought that The Simpsons was something in the line of The Cranberries or The Beatles, and I would have been horrified at the idea of concentrating, let alone enjoying, anything that had a ‘laugh track’ as an integral part of it.

Five years later, I am a convert. I am still not a TV show junkie, but I will happily take these (generally) easily digested pellets of humour and suspense and romance and heartbreak when I get hold of them in between spurts of work and study, thank you very much. They go down well with boredom or weepiness or my quick meals. That’s not to say that TV shows don’t deal with serious matter in a serious manner. There have been shows on medical riddles and prison politics and the World Wars to go by a few mainstream examples off the top of my head (and I’m sure there are many more as, or more, nuanced), it’s just that my personal taste has veered towards the comic variety. 

And it is a particular trend in a kind of comedy show that has increasingly been catching my eye. The shows I will talk about, now that I think about it—can be thought of as a subset of comedy. The comedy around the ‘institution’. The show generally centers around a group of quirky at best, dysfunctional at worst individuals, brought together by a workplace or a government department or an educational institution. 

Let’s take The Office, for example. It’s set in a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It tries to be ‘real’, and thus has people looking pretty or tired or cranky or mutinous by terms, but hardly ever glamorous. Up to a point, it succeeds. Michael Scott, the infuriating boss and the selling point of the show—is a perpetual foot-in-the-mouth bumbler. The central pair, Jim and Pam, have a rather lovely understated chemistry. Once you get used to the secondhand embarrassment that Michael causes, you may just learn to sit back and enjoy these characters stumble around each other.

I did. Till I got to the Toby bits.

Toby Flenderson is the HR representative, soft-spoken, divorced, and bullied incessantly by Michael. There’s a flimsy veneer of logic attempted by the fact that Toby is the only one in the office that Michael Scott has no real control over, given that he is from the Human Resources department. But no one, ever, at least in the first 6 seasons that I watched, stood up for him. And here's a sampler of the kind of things that is said to him:   

Toby Flenderson: We should really have the office's air quality tested. I mean, we have radon coming from below. We have asbestos in the ceilings. These are silent killers.
Michael Scott: You are the silent killer. Go back to the annex.  

............................

Michael: Toby is in HR which technically means he works for Corporate. So he's really not a part of our family. Also he's divorced so he's really not a part of his family. 

............................

[Handing Toby a present at his farewell]
Toby Flenderson: Wow, thanks, Michael, I didn't expect you...
Michael Scott: [cuts him off] Can I just say that of all the idiots in all the idiot villages in all the idiot worlds, you stand alone, my friend.  

............................

Yes.

So Michael is insensitive, insecure, heart-in-the-right-place but perpetually annoying and intrusive. So he does not know or care that he is bullying a co-worker. What makes me intensely uncomfortable is the one that out of all these people in the office, no one else seems to find this wrong enough to protest.  

Then there's the obvious choice to follow The Office, Parks and Recreation.

Set in the, what else, the Parks and Recreation department in a town, the star of the show is the quirky, driven, workaholic, chatterbox Leslie Knope. 

You know why this is great?

Because it promotes a positive self-image for someone who might talk a little too much, love her job a little too violently, be a little too bouncy and assertive about what she likes and wants for her town to pass quietly over. I love that Leslie is not chill about life and that is okay in the scheme of the show.

What I hate however is that in this positive work environment-there's Jerry.

Jerry is overweight, likes his food, in his later middle age, and seems to be of a happy disposition that tries to please everyone even though he might not always be in the loop any more.

These are a few things that are said about Jerry in the show:

  

And when it is discovered that Jerry seems to be enjoying this picture-perfect family life with a gorgeous wife and three beautiful daughters-the reaction across the board is of blank disbelief.

Because someone who is routinely bullied in office and thus sometimes a tad awkward must be a failure in every possible sphere in his life.

This infuriates me. This is like a vicious progression, with no rhyme or reason or humour whatsoever to recommend itself to me. Really, am I missing something? These character arcs are not funny, they don't achieve one single bit of story progression and growth, and there is not even an attempt at motivation or justification offered. It seems to be set forth as a given that these men will have misbehaviour meted out to them. In fact, in P-&-R, it is not just one person like in The Office but the entire cast who seem to scoff at this man, whether it's on his farewell or he breaks his arm or his sleeve catches fire.

I hate it. If this is a TV trope which we are supposed to get I hope that it dies and a quick and painful death soon. If this is an innovation then I hope the creators get it into their heads that not every office needs a Toby or a Jerry and it does not make the show more real to include a token office scapegoat. If you can be bold enough to talk about real people-unprinked, unmanicured, and unexciting-here's hoping that you don't need to pick one of them out to vent all the pent-up gags.