Once again, I have the great library district of Alachua County to thank for my latest classic sci-fi book cover post. I was browsing through the library’s website, looking at their most recent e-book purchases, when I stumbled upon this oldie by famed sci-fi author Robert Silverberg. I don’t know how exactly, but I never read Silverberg before. I had heard of him, of course. I knew that he was a famous sci-fi author (he’s actually still with us, at 91, as of this writing), often lumped in with the New Wave that emerged in the 1960s.
Having read one book by him now, I must say that he feels more like a Golden Age writer to me. The Man in the Maze, after all, has not one but two brilliant, highly educated yet macho heroes (alaHeinlein) who live in a Buck-Rogers-style galactic civilization of the future (alaAsimov), where they are very successful with the hot babes of many, far-flung planets.
Still, this book has a lot more character depth and thematic complexity then the average sci-fi tale, then or now. In fact, it’s clever as hell. I mean, how many other sci-fi works are based on an ancient Greek play? Specifically, this one is a retelling of Sophocles’ drama Philoctetes, in which the titular hero, a great archer and warrior of the Achaeans, is wounded early in the Trojan war. His wound is of a supernatural origin—literally a curse from the Gods—and will not heal. It also stinks to high-heaven, so much so that the other Achaean Greeks dump him on an island called Lemnos, where he stews in his own self-pity and growing hatred of all humankind.
Silverberg cleverly transposes the tail to a far-future civilization, where interplanetary diplomat Dick Muller is similarly afflicted after completing a mission to a newly discovered planet, Beta Hydri IV. During his visit, the Beta Hydrians bestow upon him the “gift” of telepathy. Unfortunately, the kind they give him only works one way, outward. When he returns to human-occupied space, he is horrified to learn that his innermost and darkest thoughts, fears, and impulses are constantly transmitted to those around, to the point that people literally run away.
Basically, he stinks. In despair, he exiles himself to a bizarre planet (called Lemnos, naturally) which was abandoned millions of years earlier by a highly intelligent but now extinct race. All that remains of their civilization is a huge, diabolical maze, filled with automated traps and snares that kill virtually everyone who goes into it. Except Mueller, that is, who finds his way to the center and takes up residence there.
All this occurs before the main action of the novel, when, as in the original Sophocles drama, Muller’s old friends soon realize that they desperately need the forsaken man to save them from a new crisis. In the play, the Achaeans learn via prophecy that only Philoctetes, with his awesome archery skills, can secure the final victory over Troy. In the novel, Muller’s old friend, Charles Boardman (the guy who sent him to Beta Hydri IV) seeks his help in dealing with yet another alien civilization, this one threatening to enslave all humanity.
I really like this cover from the 1987 Avon edition because it feels like a great, archetype 1980s cover. Done by master illustrator Jim Burns, it has the photorealistic, industrial style that was typical of that era, the age before digital art was even a dream. (It feels a lot like a Syd Mead work actually.) It’s also got a strangely muted scene, with a rugged-looking man—Charles Boardman, presumably—sitting in the cockpit of a starship while a younger comrade—Ned Rawlins, presumably, whom Boardman convinces to venture into the maze and befriend Muller, in hopes of gulling him into coming with them back to civilization. And behind Rawlins, of course, is the insane, sci-fi maze of Lemnos.
It’s a really fun book. Kind of a precursor to The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner and lots of other, later yarns. Check it out…
A couple of weeks ago I reposted an old essay of mine called The Anti-Heroes of American Cinema: A Tribute. Ever since then, I’ve been thinking that there is a counterpart to the anti-hero—the anti-villain. Whereas anti-heroes often display characters that seem to contradict the classical definition of a hero, such as occasional selfishness, comical cowardice, and foolishness, anti-villains often run counter to the classical definition of a villain. That is, they can be courageous, charming, and even noble (albeit in a misguided fashion).
Ironically, it is classic literature itself, I think, that gives the first, prototypical anti-villain: Hector, the Trojan prince who flummoxes the Greeks in The Ilyad. Hector is, in many ways, more compelling and even sympathetic than the nominal “hero” of the work, Achilles, who spends most of his time sulking in his tent. Hector, whose moniker is “the breaker of horses,” is determined to defend his country from the invading Greeks, which makes him far more relatable than the glory-hound Achilles. He is also shown to be a devoted family man, gentle to his wife and infant child, as well as being a loving son and older brother.
In the same way, the very best films of American cinema often have a great “villain” who is actually more of an “anti-villain.” In John McTiernan’s Die Hard, for instance, Alan Rickman gave a career-making performance as the hissable Hans Gruber. Hans isn’t just smart. He’s resourceful, courageous, and disciplined. When he accidentally gets cornered by John, he fakes a brilliant American accent that we can understand how someone would fall for it.
But what really makes Hans such a compelling character is that, in some ways, Hans seems to be struggling almost as much as the hero, John McClane. We sense that Hans really needs this heist to work. That, despite all his bravado and (yes) cruelty, he’s really just a guy trying to make his mark while there is still time. “You’re just a common thief,” Holly says to him, to which he replies, “I am an exceptional thief.” And we have to agree. He is exceptional.
More importantly, he feels like a fully rounded, three-dimensional character. Yeah, he’s still the bad guy, with wicked and even evil motives, but he is still compelling, likeable, and real. Much of this depth, of course, comes from the brilliant script by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza, but is it mainly due to Rickman’s refusal to play the character as a trope, the dimestore villain. As Rickman explained in an early interview: “I’m not playing ‘the villain’. I’m just playing somebody who wants certain things in life—who’s made certain choices—and goes after them.”
To take another great film from the 1980s, Oliver Stone’s Wall Street presented us with one of the great anti-villains of all time, Gordon Gekko, as brilliantly played by Michael Douglas in an Oscar-winning performance. Gekko is whip-smart, ruthless, and willing to play for table-stakes when the circumstances call for it. He also has a bit of an inferiority complex, as he reveals in an early scene when he and the film’s young hero, Bud Fox, play squash. Bud compliments Gekko on the luxury of his health club, to which Gekko responds, “Yeah, not bad for a City College boy. I bought my way in, now all these Ivy league schmucks are sucking my kneecaps.”
Of course, this kind of admission on Gekko’s part—that he comes from humble beginnings, and that he harbors a huge amount of resentment against the American aristocracy—serves to make him more compelling, not less. In other words, he becomes an anti-villain. We can understand how the movie’s young protagonist, Bud Fox, would be in awe of the man’s talent and grit. It’s only later in the film, when Bud figures out the man’s true, reptilian character, that he turns on Gekko and reclaims some of his dignity.
Come to think of it, Oliver Stone’s other great movie from the 80s, Platoon, also has a great anti-villain, who also tempts the movie’s young hero toward the dark side. In Platoon, it is the ruthless Sergeant Barnes (brilliantly played by Tom Berringer in a career-highpoint). Barnes is surely the most capable and lethal soldier in his platoon, displaying enormous courage and self-control in battle. He seems to genuinely care about the well-being of his troops (up to a point) and to harbor an authentic (if perverse) form of patriotism. Unfortunately, he is also a bit of a fascist, set on revenge against the Vietnamese people (both the Viet Cong and the villagers who sometimes aid them). We sense the depth of the trauma he has suffered from his previous war experience (manifested in a symbolic wound, the disfigurement of his face).
An earlier Vietnam movie, Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, presents us with another great anti-villain, the mad Colonel Kurtz (played by Marlon Brando). As we learn from the film’s (anti-)hero, Willard, Kurtz is a former war-hero, a West Point grad whose patriotism and courage led him to achieve high rank at a young age. But then, deep in the existential maw of Vietnam, he suffered a psychic that led him to go rogue, becoming a renegade war-lard in Cambodia, waging his own horrific, private version of the war.
It’s not surprising that Vietnam was such a great source of cinematic anti-heroes (and anti-villains), considering the way moral lines became so blurred in the long, horrific conflict. In the same way, modern military conflicts in the Twenty-First Century also generate their share of vexed, morally complex characters. In fact, one the greatest anti-villains of all time appeared in Dennis Villeneuve’s 2015 thriller, Sicario. In that film, the nominal hero, a young police officer named Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) finds herself entangled in a covert, CIA-run military operation against a Mexican drug cartel. One of the CIA operatives, Alejandro (Benecio del Toro), becomes a kind of demented mentor to her, showing her how to survive in the morally-inverted universe of the U.S. War or Drugs.
Alejandro is such an effective villain because neither the viewer nor Kate realize he is a villain until late in Act III, when we discover that Alejandro is, in fact, an assassin—the “hitman” of the film’s title—whose mission is to kill the cartel’s leader, Fausto Alarcón. The entire plot is then revealed to be an elaborate scheme to secretly insert Alejandro into Mexico, where he breaks into Alarcón’s house and kills him—along with his wife and children—while the family is having dinner.
It’s a shocking moment, one that might sink any other film. But Villeneuve and the screenwriter, Taylor Sheridan (later of Yellowstone fame), have prepared us for it by fully fleshing-out Alejandro’s character to the point that we can understand—almost—his actions. Throughout the movie, he is presented to us unfailingly cheerful yet lethal, fearless yet controlled, protective yet ruthless. We also learn that Alarcón brutally murdered his daughter in the past, which goes a long way to explain his wrath.
Most importantly, in the climactic scene in which Alejandro first sneaks into Alarcón’s house, he is spotted by a kitchen maid. Instead of killing her, though, he lets her go, knowing she won’t warn anybody about his presence. In this way, the film subtly suggests that Alejandro doesn’t necessarily kill the wife and kids out of wrath. Rather, he has to make the assassination look like an inter-cartel hit, so he has to be as brutal as required—but no more so—to maintain that fiction.
It’s a great movie, and it also presages what I’ve seen as growing development in American action cinema. Namely, the blurring together of anti-heros and anti-villains, to the point where they are not only indistinguishable from each other, but they inhabit the same (main) character. What is Walter White of Breaking Bad if not an agglomeration of anti-villain/anti-hero? Or Frank Lucas in American Gangster? Or John Wick?
It’s almost as if Hollywood has entered some kind of time-warp and looped back to the gritty, neo-noir films of the early 1970s. Movies with dark, morally ambiguous protagonists like Point Blank, Charley Varrick, The Mechanic, and even Super Fly. That Vietnam-era when the American cinema goer became more hardened, more cynical toward government and law enforcement and Capitalism and…well…just about everything.
Ash Clifton, Writer 