Movies I Loved as a Kid: “Soylent Green”

**SPOILERS**

For a time in the 1950s and 60s, Hollywood legend Charlton Heston was best known for his leading roles in Biblical epics—namely, The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur. But for nerdy kids who grew up in the 1970s and 80s, he was the uncontested king of B-Movie sci-fi, having appeared in three of the coolest, most nerd-tastic sci-fi flicks ever made: 1968’s Planet of the Apes, 1971’s The Omega Man, and 1973’s Soylent Green.

Of this trifecta, the only one that hasn’t gotten a remake (or two, or six) is Soylent Green, a snub that seems especially unfair considering the film is, in many ways, the best. Certainly the most prescient. Set in the near-future of 2022 (50 years after the film’s release), it imagines a dystopian world where overpopulation, global warming, wealth inequality, and environmental destruction have turned even America into a third-world hellscape of poverty and crime. New York City has a population of 40 million, whose threadbare, unwashed masses live in stairwells, under highways, or on the street. Fresh fruit and vegetables are luxury items that only the city’s richest citizens—safely ensconced in heavily guarded, high-rise apartment buildings—can afford. Life is cheap, and basic human rights (especially women’s rights) have been abolished. Many beautiful women serve as “furniture”—i.e., live-in mistresses that come with those same high-rise apartments, to be enjoyed by their rich, male occupants.

Crazy, huh? So far-fetched! I mean, the U.S.A. could never end up like that! Not unless a few crazy billionaires stole all the money, installed right-wing puppets in the government, and pillaged the planet’s resources, all while poisoning the atmosphere in the process.

And that could never happen, right? RIGHT?

I state that the film was highly prescient even though many critics, then and now, have condemned it as being a silly, alarmist fever-dream of the environmental left. Specifically, many considered its vision of an over-populated earth to be an artifact of Paul Erhlich’s 1968 non-fiction book The Population Bomb, which predicted a Malthusian nightmare of famine and poverty.

Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson

Clearly, Erhlich’s book was incorrect. Earth’s population is expected to stabilize at 10 billion in the 2080s and then begin to decline. Yet, while the movie might have gotten that one particular detail wrong, its overall vision seems all too plausible. After all, we now have cities around the world bulging with immigrants, many of whom are fleeing the consequences of global warming (which the movie does accurately predict). The rise of the far-right in America under Donald Trump was based, primarily, on popular fears of such an apocalyptic immigration surge overwhelming the U.S. The same kind of thing is happening in Europe.

And Soylent Green’s depiction of a civilization ravaged by end-stage capitalism seems dead-n, too, especially in a time when Elon Musk can buy elections and, on a whim, cause the starvation of 700,000 people in Africa. 

But what really makes Soylent Green a classic is, of course, its premise. Like 1992’s The Crying Game, Soylent Green was marketed as a movie with a shocking “secret” (one that most people already knew going into the theater but wanted to see revealed anyway). In keeping with this “secret,” the film is structured like a noir detective mystery. Soylent Green begins with a murder. A rich executive named Simonson sits in his luxurious apartment and watches as an assassin breaks in. Instead of running or calling the police, Simonson merely greets the assassin and waits to die.

Afterward, NYPD homicide detective Robert Thorn comes to investigate, interviewing Simonson’s bodyguard (Western-movie veteran Chuck Connors in a great, villainous turn) as well as his “furniture,” the beautiful Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young), all the while looting various goodies from Simonson’s apartment. Thorn takes the stolen goods (soap, fruit, vegetables, etc.) home to share with his roommate and research assistant Roth (Edward G. Robinson in his last role). Apparently, all senior police officers have such an assistant—called a “Book”—and Roth soon helps Thorn untangle the mystery.

Leigh Taylor-Young as “furniture” mistress Shirl

The trail leads inexorably to the Soylent Corporation, on whose board Simonson served. The corporation manufactures the only reliable food sources left in America, factory-processed crackers that come in different colors: Soylent Red, Soylent Blue, Soylent Yellow, and (the newest, tastiest product), Soylent Green. Supposedly, the crackers are made out of sea plankton, and they are a staple of everyone’s diet (including Thorn’s).

Even so, supplies are limited, and food riots often break out at the distribution points. One of the film’s most memorable scenes centers around one such riot, in which the police deploy huge shovel-trucks to come and scoop up the rioters to take them away to who-knows-where. All cops are activated during such riots, so Thorn is helping-out when he is attacked by the same assassin who killed Simonson. Thorn narrowly escapes when the assassin is crushed by a scooper-shovel.

Knowing he is hot on the trail of something big, Thorn doggedly pursues the mystery, even as he begins a blissful affair with Shirl. Meanwhile, Roth is doing his own digging. He soon discovers the “secret” of the movie—a revelation so devastating that he goes to a public euthanasia center to be injected with a fatal drug. Thorn reaches him in his last moments, and Roth whispers the secret into Thorn’s ear. The viewer doesn’t hear what he says, but we know from Thorn’s expression that it must be something really, really horrible.

Indeed, it is. After Roth dies, Thorn stows away on the garbage truck that collects the centers’ corpses. The truck takes the bodies to—guess where—the main factory of the Soylent Corporation. There, Thorn witnesses the cadavers being dumped into vats and then processed into Soylent Green!

Thus is the secret of the film revealed: cannibalism, on an industrial scale.

Throughout the history of literature from Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs, cannibalism has always represented the ultimate evil. The final breakdown of civilization. I suspect this is because cannibalism—in Western cultures, at least—is the only taboo on a level with incest and matricide. Even more importantly, it suggests a failed society. Afterall, culture that eats its own is doomed.

Yes, even in our jaded culture, the concept of cannibalism still manages to horrify us. That’s why the last line of the movie—though often parodied—still packs something of a punch. After Thorn makes his gruesome discovery, he is pursued by Soylent agents. During the chase, he is punched, stabbed, bludgeoned, and shot. Thorn survives, however, and as medics take him away on a stretcher, he reaches one bloody hand into the air and yells, “Soylent Green is people!”

People. Not “human flesh.” Not “corpses.” People. Human beings, who have been reduced to abjection—an industrial product, churned out of a factory. And that’s the real secret horror of the movie. In the future, unless things get a lot better and fast, we might all be reduced to Soylent Green, or something very much like it. Food for the proles, who serve the rich and wait to die.

Soylent Green is a very dated movie—it often looks and feels rather like a 1970s TV show—but it’s still a fine one. Luckily for us, a new 4K Bluray version has been released by Arrow Video. Check it out.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Driven to Tears”

If people are familiar with The Police at all, it’s probably from a mega-hit like “Every Breath You Take,” or some other song off their classic concept album Synchronicity. That work marked both the apex of the band’s popularity as well as their demise. But most people don’t realize that, way back in the early 80s, The Police were primarly a reggae band. (Or were they a punk band? Or maybe jazz…?)

As far as I can tell, almost every great work of art is actually a synthesis of two or more styles that were previously opposed to each other. In “Driven to Tears,” we have those three disparate influences: reggae, punk, and jazz. More importantly, it is perhaps the band’s ultimate song in that is shows-off the talents of all three muscians so well. Andy Summers’s guitar is elegant yet soaring; Stewart Copeland’s drumming is at its frenetic, polyrythmic peak; and Sting’s singing and bass-playing are the core of the song.

And there’s the libretto, of course. “Too many cameras, not enough food.” It’s a line as heartbreakingly true today as it was in 1980. Maybe more so.

Rock on…!

Two Quasars Walk into a Bar…

As you might have noticed by now, I love writing about science. And about physics especially, even though I can barely do basic math. Last year, I enjoyed writing a post called The Coolest Discovery You’ve Never Heard Of. It’s about Bell’s Theorem, which is such a fascinating subject that I considered writing a non-fiction book about it. (Wisely, I gave up.) Henry Stapp called it “the most profound discovery of science,” and I tried to explain it (to the best of my very limited understanding) using pairs of black or white socks and cardboard boxes.

So, you can imagine my excitement when I stumbled upon this Youtube video from Nova explaining how, in 2018, physicists figured out a way to close one of the potential loopholes that might invalidate the previous, successful tests of Bell’s Theorem. Namely, that you cannot absolutely positively rule-out the existence of some hidden (local) variable that is secretly affecting which tests Alice and Bob use in the experiment (sock length or sock color, in my analogy). An international team of physicists and astronomers gathered at an observatory on the Canary Islands and used the light from two distant quasars as a kind of light-based coin-flip for Bob and Alice, thus ruling out any kind of weird, as-yet-unknown force that could flummox the test.

And—lo and behold—it worked. Bell’s Theorem was confirmed. Again.

Of course, there is still one outstanding loophole in the test, one which might never be closed. It’s the concept of superdeterminism, the idea that everything in the experiment above (everything in the entire universe, actually), including Alice’s and Bob’s choice of tests, is pre-determined. But that possibility—with its implied invalidation of human free will—is just too depressing to entertain, don’t you think? I believe the universe has a much more interesting role for us.

The video is embedded above. (You can ignore the title—it’s really about the cosmic Bell test.) Enjoy!

What I’m Reading: “Soon” (Repost)

Happy Halloween, everyone! In the spirit of the holiday, I am reposting a short review of one of my favorite horror novels, Soon. (And it’s not even an oldie; the book is from 2019!) Enjoy! The review is spoiler-free.

I have a theory about horror novels. The secret to a good horror novel, I think, is not gore, or violence, or even suspense. The secret is empathy. The empathy we, as readers, form for the main characters, and the empathy the main characters feel for each other.

This should be obvious, but it’s not. I have read (well, started) many celebrated horror novels, some of them very well written, only to set them aside after a chapter two because I didn’t care about any of the characters. Contrast this with the very best horror fiction from masters like Stephen King. King is famous for creating main characters who are kind, decent, spirited people with whom the reader instantly connects (and worries about). King’s characters also tend to be underdogs and outcasts. Nerds. Geeks. Handicapped kids. Fat kids. Gay kids. Such types are the most vulnerable in our society, and therefore most vulnerable to whatever monster Kings pits them against. Their underdog status makes them even more sypathetic to readers, and makes their courage even more admirable.

This is not to say that protagonists of horror novels should be all good. Far from it. In fact, King often presents the reader with deeply flawed, erratic main characters who must discover their own inner resilience and courage to face the evil that confronts them. 

Recently, I found myself thinking about such matters as I read Lois Murphy’s excellent novel Soon from 2019. Like many great horror books (or many great books of any kind), Soon stays with you long after you finish the last page. It’s got some genuinely creepy stuff in it. Most of all, though, it has a likable, sympathetic, and funny main character named Pete.

Pete is a retired cop who lives in the tiny town of Nebulah in rural Australia. Nebulah is a new twist on the concept of a “ghost town” in that its inhabitants are literally tormented by ghosts. Rather, by a strange, evil entity called The Mist that descends upon the town every evening. From this vapor, a hellish gallery of semi-corporeal spirits attacks any person foolish or unlucky enough to be caught outside after sundown. The victims suffer grisly, violent deaths,  but their bodies are never found. (Their remains dissolve mysteriously in the mist soon after being discovered.)

Not surprisingly, the town’s population rapidly dwindles from a few hundred to a few dozen, and then down to just eleven. Most people leave. The rest are picked off one by one. Pete is one of the de facto leaders of this tiny remnant of hard-core town folk, most of whom are too poor or feckless or otherwise attached to the place to ever leave. Pete is neither poor, nor attached, nor feckless, but he stays anyway, mainly to protect his friends. These survivors meet each night at one of their homes and spend the night together, trying to hear the demonic wailings and thrashings coming from outside the windows and doors. (The Mist, rather like vampires, can’t cross the solid threshold of a home unless there is some gap that would let it in.) 

I find myself admiring much of Ms. Murphy’s writing, especially in the way she renders the character of Pete. The plot also has some genuinely surprising twists and interludes, such as when Pete goes to visit his estranged daughter in a distant city.

Most of all, I liked the psychological realism of the book. Everyone left in Nebulah has some damned good, practical reasons for not leaving (just ask them), but none of these seems greater than what we suspect is a fundamental weakness in their character. Some are afraid of being poor in a new place. Others are reluctant to give up the homesteads they have labored to improve over the years. Some are just too tired.

Others, like Pete himself, have some secret sin to atone for, and a guilt that keeps them from leaving. 

Soon is a cool book. Check it out…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Heal It Up”

Tomorrow is Halloween, so I thought I would feature one of the greatest goth rock songs of all time. It’s by the band Concrete Blonde, whom I’ve loved since the first time I heard their song “Joey” way back in the early 1990s. (I was driving at the time, and I liked the song so much I pulled over to listen to it.) Lead singer Johnette Napolitano might not be as famous as Grace Slick, Ann Wilson, Alanis Morissette, or Patty Smythe, but she can hang with all of them (or any guy hard-rock singer, for that matter).

Rock on…

R.I.P. Tom Skerritt

Tom Skerritt in “Alien”

Almost any sci-fi film nerd will already know the story about why the death of Captain Dallas in Ridley Scott’s landmark 1979 film, Alien, is not shown on-screen. Rather, the alien xenomorph rears up before him, and then the camera cuts away to a shot of Ripley, listening in on a radio to her captain’s apparent “death.”

In the original script, however, Ripley finds Dallas still alive near the end of the film. He’s bound in some kind of partial cocoon as a new alien specimen gestates in his body. As an act of mercy, she kills him with her flame-thrower, then makes her final escape. The scene was actually shot and is, I believe, included on some special editions of the film. But it was cut from the original release, presumably for reasons of pacing. But I believe Scott might also have chosen to leave it out for another, more subtle reason—people didn’t want to see Tom Skerritt die. Not on-screen, anyway. They just liked him too much.

How could they not? He was an actor who exuded an unusual mixture of masculinity and vulnerability, strength and warmth. Handsome but not overly so, he usually played soft-spoken, stalwart, working-class characters, of which Dallas is perhaps the best example. In David Cronenburg’s The Dead Zone, he played a noble, small-town sheriff who is desperate to stop a serial killer. And in Tony Scott’s Top Gun, he played Tom Cruise’s wise, gruff mentor and surrogate father-figure.

Fame came late to him. He was forty-five when he played Dallas in Alien. But once it came, it never let up. He remained one of the most successful character actors in Hollywood. His roles were frequent but not terribly diverse. Very seldom did he get a chance to play the leading man. (CBS’s show Picket Fences was an exception, a role for which he received an Emmy.) And even more rarely did he play a villain. (The self-serving, opportunistic Nasa bureaucrat in Contact was about as close as he ever got.)

But in every part played, and in every movie in which he appeared, he was one of the highlights. A stand-out.

Godspeed, Mr. Skerritt!

What I’m Reading: “Bogie and Bacall”

So many good books have already been written about Hollywood legend Humphrey Bogart that even a biographer as talented as William J. Mann must have felt the need to find a new twist. A new gimmick. And with Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood’s Greatest Love Affair, Mann found one—a combined biography of Bogart and his famous wife, Lauren Bacall. It makes sense. After all, in the last years of his life, Bogie found himself as half of the first great celebrity couple. Long before Bennifer or The Beckhams or even Taylor/Burton, Bogie-and-Bacall entranced the public with both their movies and their marriage, never mind the fact that the public image of their relationship was largely fabricated by studio hacks.

It wasn’t all fabricated, though. Yes, Bogart and Bacall spent much of their marriage living somewhat separate lives, as one might expect in a pairing where one partner is so much older (and hard-bitten). They often travelled separately, for extended periods. Bogart continued a intermittent affair with his long-time mistress, and Bacall had an intense (and possibly physical) relationship with Frank Sinatra, to whom she was briefly engaged after Bogart’s death. Yet, by all accounts, the love and respect between the world’s most famous couple was genuine and deep. So deep, in fact, that Bogart actually cut down on the booze, at least for a time, after Bacall got sick of him coming home plastered (when he came home at all).

Indeed, in Mann’s telling, the story feels very much like a redemption tale for Bogart. This is especially true since most of the book is devoted to his life story. I would estimate a 70/30 split between words devoted to Bogie and Bacall, respectively—an imbalance that makes sense for a number of reasons. For one, Bogart’s biography began twenty-five years before Bacall’s. And by the time their romance first kindled in 1944 (and the Bogie-and-Bacall legend thus began), Bogart had been a movie star for over a decade and had already made his two greatest films, The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, establishing him as the most important film actor of his (or perhaps any) generation.

So, it’s perhaps inevitable that most of Mann’s book would be devoted to his life story. And, as Mann reveals, most of that story was taken up by his Bogart’s two obsessions—acting and booze. The two pursuits were related, of course; Bogart’s damaged psychological state (he had a sterile, lonely childhood) informed his acting even as it fueled his drinking. A deeply intelligent man, Bogart honed his artistry to a level unseen previously in cinema—he could play heroes and villains with equal prolixity—yet his intellect caused him to hate most of the Hollywood people he met, including himself.

Beginning in his youth, Bogart was known for getting drunk and punching other guys in the face. He took the habit with him to Hollywood, where he struggled for years under the thumb of studio system, grinding out B- and C-grade melodramas for the ruthless Jack Warner. And even as his star began to rise (his breakout role was that of a mesmerizingly evil villain in 1936’s The Petrified Forest, much like Javier Bardem’s in No Country for Old Men), his drinking only intensified.

As often happens with alcoholics, Bogart soon married someone who could match him drink-for-drink. Mayo Methot was a highly regarded actress who starred in many films throughout the 1930s. She was beautiful, intelligent, and deeply troubled. After marrying Bogart, she essentially gave up her already waning film career, and the disappointment and frustration of married life drove her to drink even more. And fight. Humphrey and Mayo soon became known as “The Battling Bogarts” in the tabloid press for their frequent, public rows. One of the most notable of these came while they were on a U.S.O. tour in Italy, entertaining troops fresh off the battlefields of World War II.

[The] Battling Bogarts made at least one appearance. After practically “distilling themselves” drinking with a group of paratroopers, the couple squabbled and Mayo locked her husband out of their room. As Bogie attempted to break in, he was apprehended by a colonel, whom he told to go to hell. As a guest of the army, he was called to account. “I didn’t mean to insult the uniform,” he said during a hearing. Looking at the colonel, he said, “I only meant to insult you.”

Despite their conflicts, Bogart doggedly remained married to Methot. Until, of course, he met a nineteen-year-old beauty named Betty Joan Perske, who went by the stage name Lauren Bacall.

One the most compelling aspects of Mann’s book is the almost unbelievable contrast between Bogart’s long, grueling rise to fame over almost two decades and Bacall’s overnight success. Bacall was doing a bit of acting and modelling work in New York when her photograph was spotted by Nancy Keith, wife of legendary actor Howard Hawks. Keith convinced her husband to give her a call. As if that development weren’t serendipitous enough for the young actress, Hawks’s secretary misunderstood his instructions and sent Bacall a plane ticket to Hollywood for a screen test. After meeting Bacall in person, Hawks was so taken by her beauty, intelligence, and poise that he immediately signed her to a seven-year contract. For her first picture, To Have and Have Not, she had a small part, intended to only give her one or two short scenes with the lead, Humphrey Bogart.

There is a scene in Homer’s Odyssey washes ashore on the island of Phaeacia. Naked and starving, he is discovered the virginal princess Nausicaa, who takes pity on him and saves him. I have heard the moment of their meeting described by one professor as “absolute innocence (Nausicaa) meeting absolute experience (Odysseus).” After all, by this point in the story, Odysseus has been at war for ten years, lost at sea for another seven, survived numerous monsters, witnessed the death of all his men, been held as a captive sex-slave by two powerful women (Circe and Calypso), and even made a short trip to hell (well, Hades).

I thought of all this as I read Mann’s account of the romance that quickly blossomed between the teenaged ingenue Bacall and the forty-five-year-old, world-weary, thrice-married, hard-drinking Bogart. But while Bacall might have been something of a princess (in Hollywood terms, at least), she was not a total innocent. As Mann recounts, she had been single-minded and ruthless in her pursuit of acting career, attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York (where she had a crush on one of her classmates, a young Kirk Douglas). After graduating, she endeared herself to various directors, producers, and writers until she finally got a few breaks, appearing in at least two high-profile productions. And though, according to Mann, she never succumbed to the casting couch, she had no qualms about flirting with older, powerful men to get ahead.

This series of flirtations culminated with Hawks himself, who took Bacall under his wing, sculpting her image and even teaching her how to lower her naturally high-pitched voice. (Yes, Bacall’s famously low, sexy, husky voice, immortalized in an erotic moment in To Have and Have Not, was as fake as Bogart’s toupees.)

Yes, Hawks was clearly grooming her for an eventual affair (perhaps even a marriage), and when he realized that she had become infatuated with Bogart, he was livid. However, to his credit, Hawks cared more about making a good movie than about bedding Bacall. Watching the dailies, he took note of the obvious, crackling chemistry between Bogie and Bacall, and he had the script revised to expand her part, giving them more screen time together. Hawks also featured Bacall heavily in all of the film’s publicity.

In less than a year, Bogart had divorced Methot and married Bacall. Taking over from Hawks, Bogart became Bacall’s mentor as well as her husband, instilling in her his passion for acting at a deep, psychological level years before The Method was even a thing.

Bogie remained her acting teacher. Once, after watching Betty rehearse a scene in which she opened a door, he told her, “You walked out there like a model.” She took his advice and changed her stride. “You must always realize you have come from someplace,” Bogie went on. “What were you doing before? Were you filing your nails? Were you writing a letter?” Every scene must convey an attitude. “That is a very important part of acting, and I never forgot it,” Betty later said.

As I said above, their marriage was initially rocky but soon settled into a mellow, happy rhythm. They lived somewhat separate lives, but were united in their love of acting and also their political causes. (Bogart was what we would now call a liberal, so much so that he was—like so many liberals today—accused of being a communist; Bacall, for her part, was so involved in Democratic politics that she nearly had an affair with Adlai Stevenson.) They also had two children.

Then, after over a decade, the marriage ended when Bogart died of throat cancer. Bacall was, of course, still a young woman (in her thirties), and the last third of Mann’s book covers the rest of her long and surprisingly illustrious life. For while it is clear that Bacall was neither as good an actor as her late husband nor as powerful a cultural influence, she was still pretty damned cool. Having moved back to New York after her leading roles in Hollywood began to dry up, she went on to a long and distinguished career as a stage actress, eventually winning two Tony Awards. She also did the occasional character bit in films, most notably her Oscar-nominated performance in 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces.

That’s another reason I really liked this book. Bacall’s life serves as a kind of bridge between the old Hollywood of Bogart’s day and the New Hollywood of the 1970s, when I got into films as a kid, and then into the modern era. She spanned three worlds, at least, and did so with enormous charm.

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “The Dispossessed”

This installment of my ongoing Classic Sci-Fi Book Covers series is another “modern classic,” dating back only to 1999. But I still really like it. The book itself, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, is quite a bit older, having been published in 1974 when it won the trifecta of sci-fi literary awards—the Hugo, the Locus, and the Nebula. And, yes, it is a classic.

A couple of years ago, Margaret Luongo and I made a couple of YouTube videos about it. I had never read it before, and I really enjoyed it. Indeed, it is now one of my favorite sci-fi books of all time, despite the fact that its premise sounds a bit like an episode of Star Trek. Two diametrically opposed civilizations exist on two adjacent worlds—Urras, a lush, earth-like planet, and Anarres, Urras’s barren, desert moon. While opulent, decadent Urras is run by rival capitalist/fascistic governments, the poor folk of Anarres eke out their existence in a vaguely socialist, anarchistic system. Everybody is free, but poor.

Le Guin’s third-person narrative is told from the point of view of Shevek, a genius physicist from Anarres. Stricken by wanderlust and curiosity, he decides to break an age-old taboo and travel to Urras, whose oligarchic rulers are happy to receive him, hoping to gain his scientific secrets. Half of the story follows his journey to Urras and his subsequent struggle to understand its violent, Machiavellian culture; the other half is told in flashback, revealing his past on Anarres—where he faced a very different set of struggles.

On one level, the book is a great political novel about competing cultures and economic systems. On a much more personal level, it’s a fine coming-of-age story, showing how Shevek gradually becomes disillusioned with the egalitarian but stifling culture of Anarres and thus decides to explore Urras. There, he is disillusioned again, albeit in a much more horrifying, violent way. All the while, Shevek tries to maintain his relationship with another scientist on Anarres, a woman named Takver, with whom he falls in love and has a daughter.

I won’t spoil the ending, but like Le Guin’s other great novel, The Left Hand of Darkness (which is set in the same fictional universe), the plot eventually thickens into that of a taut thriller, with Shevek on the run from his “hosts” on Urras as he flees to a rival state that seems more humane and progressive.

I like this cover by Chris Moore because, while it was done in the early days of the digital age, it still feels like a painting, although an almost photo-realistic one. It features a sun-burned Shevek on Anarres, wearing something that looks very much like a Fremen still-suit from Frank Herbert’s Dune—which makes sense because Anarres is almost as brutal a world as Arrakis. Also, I like how the cover depicts Shevek as a kind of grizzled-yet-optimistic adventurer, ready to explore his neighboring world.

What I’m Reading: “Under the Wave at Waimea” (Repost)

I’ve read many fine coming-of-age novels in my time, but never one about a 62-year-old protagonist. Yet, in Under the Wave at Waimea, that is exactly what Paul Theroux delivers. And it’s a thing of beauty.

Joe Sharkey is a champion big wave surfer in Hawaii. Past his prime but still a hero to younger surfers, Sharkey lives off corporate sponsorships in a beautiful beach-side house, spending his free time on the water and hanging out with his much younger girlfriend, Olive. He lives pretty much as he always has: in the moment. 

But his life turns dark when he accidentally hits and kills a homeless man on the road. Sharkey initially dismisses the incident (the man was “just a homeless guy,” after all, biking in the rain). But Sharkey soon finds himself cursed by mysterious maladies and a sudden, inexplicable fear of the water, culminating in a moment when he almost drowns while surfing on of his trademark big-waves. 

Fortunately, he is rescued—both physically and spiritually—by Olive, who senses that Sharkey’s misfortunes can only be turned around if he performs some kind of penance. This takes the form of a search for the homeless man’s identity. They discover that his name was Max Mulgrave, a one-time Silicon Valley millionaire who somehow found his way to Hawaii and ended up living in a tent. In exploring Max’s life-story—which turns out to have many parallels to Sharkey’s own—Sharkey must confront some of the darker aspects of his own past, and the fraught trajectory of his future.

Theroux is one of those writers whose style always inspires me to try to improve my own. I’ve written before about how much I admire his novels, and this one is no exception. Endlessly smart and brutally honest, Under the Wave at Waimea is both a brilliant character study as well as a fine whodunit (in the best, psychological sense). Check it out.