A Brace of Dystopias

This week, I have mostly inhabited dystopian visions of the future as I have been reading Alan Moore's “V for Vendetta” and “Gun, With Occasional Music” by Jonathan Lethem. It was a combination that gave me nightmares and resulted in my occasionally getting my dystopias confused. Let's do the classic graphic novel that is “V for Vendetta” first:

V for Vendetta – Alan Moore
Britain has become a fascist state following a nuclear winter and the breakdown of law and order. The oppressed citizens are constantly surveyed by CCTV cameras (Oh, the prescience!) and controlled by ruthless secret police. Gays, lesbians, political campaigners and anyone who isn't white have been rounded up and sent to extermination camps. The only person left fighting against the government is a lone anarchist who wears a Guy Fawkes outfit and uses the codename “V”. Although it is established early on that V has superhuman speed and strength after being the victim of secret government experiments, he doesn't really seem to make much use of them. I would suggest that what really sets him apart from the rest of humanity is that he has The Power Of Not Giving A Shit. It is not caring what happens to him or what he has to do to anybody else that makes him such an effective terrorist.

I must admit that I find anarchy completely unappealing as a political cause. It is my belief that government is necessary because people are fundamentally bad and would probably start eating one another if left to their own devices. In the book, V nobly bows out right as he is winning and thus avoids the fate of every real-life successful rebel, namely becoming the next dictator.

Although I really enjoyed the story, the style of the illustration meant I had trouble telling some of the characters apart. Various government agents seemed pretty interchangeable. And the Fascist leader's name is Mr Susan! I can't be afraid of a Mr Susan. What kind of name is that for a villain? It sounds like a character from The Mighty Boosh*.

V for Vendetta was written in the ‘80s when there were 3 million unemployed, and riots in the inner cities both largely caused by Thatcherism. Today we have lost our right to demonstration, to free speech and armed policemen have shot random civilians and what is Mr Moore doing now? Pornography, that’s what! I guess maybe this is part of the ageing process; we all start out full of revolutionary fire, but finally prefer a bit of self-gratification to armed struggle any day. Nevertheless, Mr Moore remains my all-time favourite Rasputine look-alike.

*after further thought there was indeed a Mr Susan in series 1. He lived in the Mirrorworld and was made entirely from dusters.



Gun, With Occasional Music – Jonathan Lethem

Conrad Metcalf is a down-at-heel private eye, struggling to make a living in a future where asking questions is illegal. The news has been replaced with a musical interpretation of the day’s events and the citizens are allowed free access to government supplied drugs (heavy on the forgettol) which they use to make their lives bearable.

The book is written in the style of Raymond Chandler, complete with unusual metaphors and the hero wise-cracking at the expense of the cops and the gangsters, both of whom then dutifully rough him up a bit and turf him out onto the street. I rather like this aspect as the humour prevents the book from just being unremittingly bleak. And it’s full of amusing ideas, like science fiction ought to be. There are evolved versions of animals who don’t quite qualify for full human rights, which means that one of the suspects can take a sheep as a lover and the hero can be pursued by a kangaroo-thug. I also liked the made-up, futuristic surnames like “Phoneblum” and “Teleprompter”. I think this is a book that I will not be recommending, but forcibly lending instead.

I find a dystopian USA a lot easier to take than dystopian Britain. I think this is cos the States strikes me as probably qualifying for dystopia already. When I visited Texas in 2000, both independent thought and decent cheese seemed to have been made illegal and of the two, I missed cheese the most. Mind you, that’s the thing about dystopias; they’re not really warnings about the future so much as comment on what we’re already living with. Another thing that occurs to me after reading this book, is that although I’ve now read several books which were “in the style of Raymond Chandler”, I’ve never read any actual Raymond Chandler. Surely this ought to be remedied!