Commercial Break

Cowboy Angels has just been published in paperback, retaining the lovely and evocative cover of the trade paperback/hardback. The publishing group (Hachette Livre UK) that owns the imprint that publishes my stuff (Gollancz) is currently in dispute with amazon.co.uk because the latter want to keep an even higher percentage of the retail price. I’m on the side of my publisher on this one: all publishers have already shaved their margins to the bone, major retailers like Amazon already get more than 50% of the retail price, and cutting the percentage the publishers make on the sale of each book even further would ultimately cut the diversity of titles they could publish. Amazon has been removing sales buttons from some Hachette titles and ‘delinking’ some titles from features like ‘Perfect Partner’ but so far Cowboy Angels hasn’t been affected by these strong-arm tactics. Like many authors I use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com by default to point you to where you can buy my stuff online, but there are plenty of other places, such as the Guardian shop (the Guardian just gave the paperback a nice capsule review).

Over at Locus, Graham Sleight reviews all eight titles of Gollancz’s ‘Future Classics’ series, including Fairyland. That particular edition has gone out of print and because the lovely, prizewinning covers are very expensive to produce, none of the titles in the series will be reprinted. Which nicely but unfortunately illustrates my point about publishers’ margins . . . Although Fairyland is no longer available at Amazon, some bookshops still have a few copies, and I hope to have some good news about a new edition soon.

Rock And Roll

I’m old enough to remember when the physics of 2-D chunks of space junk colliding and splitting into smaller fragments in the primeval video game Asteroids seemed genuinely cutting edge. Now, it seems that something like that may be occurring in Saturn’s F-Ring, whose rapid changes may be created by colliding chunks of rock. Yet again, you just can’t make it up.

Talking of old video games, I highly recommend Seth Gordon’s documentary The King of Kong, a classic new kid/old gunslinger contest involving Donkey Kong and the Screen of Death.

It Isn't Easy Being Green

Down through the early morning heat into the centre of London to see a preview of The Incredible Hulk. More of a correction to rather than a sequel of Ang Lee’s outing with the angry green giant, the second of Marvel Studio’s productions isn’t actively bad, but it’s a disappointing follow-up to the flawed but feisty Iron Man. Still, it starts out well. The creation myth that occupied much of Ang Lee’s movie is recapitulated under the opening credits, efficiently showing how a laboratory accident cursed nuclear physicist Bruce Banner with a monstrous alter ego, the Hulk. The story opens with Banner in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, hiding out from General Thaddeus ‘Thunderbolt’ Ross, who considers him property of the US Army, attempting to learn how to control the anger and stress levels that cause him to transform into the Hulk if they rise to high, and making a connection with the mysterious Mr Blue, who promises a cure. After evading an attempt to snatch him, Banner ends up back in America, on the run with former sweetheart Dr Betty Ross (Liv Tyler), heading to New York and a rendezvous with Mr Blue, who turns out to be cell biologist Professor Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake). Meanwhile, an experienced soldier (Tim Roth) detailed to capture Bruce Banner is first treated with Super Soldier serum, and when that doesn’t satisfy his thirst for power forces Professor Sterns to give him the full Hulk treatment . . .

Like its protagonist, the movie is divided into two, and the preliminary hide-and-seek between the US Army and Bruce Banner in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro is a lot more exciting and engaging than the blockbuster CGI fest of the second half. A bigger problem is that the human characters aren’t much more appealing than the CGI creatures. Throughout, Edward Norton plays Bruce Banner much as he played ‘John Smith’ at the beginning of Fight Club: mousily quiet and severely repressed. It’s a good take on Banner’s predicament and works well in the opening sequence, but doesn’t develop into anything interesting and lacks Fight Club’s knowing irony. Partly, this is because the nature of the beast means that the lead actor always disappears when the action starts, but in between CGI rampages Banner remains an enigma, and although he’s a scientist, he shows little interest in what it means or feels like to become the Hulk; although Betsy Ross’s new flame is psychiatrist Leonard (who in the comic books was briefly Banner’s psychiatrist, before a dose of Hulk serum transformed him into Doc Samson), the movie misses the chance of a meaningful conversation between him and Banner.

Some nice moments hint at the bones of a better film underlying the blockbuster flab: Banner and Betsy Ross start to make love but can’t follow through because Banner’s arousal might trigger the Hulk; a brief, punchy scene ends with Betsy Ross letting rip at a crazy New York taxi driver, something Banner can’t allow himself to do; a Beauty and the Beast idyll between Betsy Ross and the Hulk references both Frankenstein and King Kong. But these are few and far between, and although there are enough nods to the myth to satisfy fans, and director Louis Leterrier (who scored a hit with The Transporter) gives the action scenes a gritty and visceral feel, especially in a chase through the alleys and rooftops of the favelas, the plot, like one of the episodes of the '70s TV series, doesn’t really have anywhere to go. Instead, a couple of moments that have nothing to do with the movie’s story, including a brief walk-on by another Marvel character, aim us towards the next in the series. Let’s hope it’s a lot meatier than this.