Cimmerian sighting: Twenty five years on, The (original) Terminator remains unstoppable

Listen, and understand! That Terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Kyle Reese, The Terminator

From the previews I’ve seen, Terminator Salvation (which opened today in a theatre near you) looks pretty damned good, at least visually. But it will take one hell of an effort to wrest the title of best Terminator film from the vice-like, cyborg death grip of the original.

I don’t necessarily consider Rotten Tomatoes a bellwether for my own critical appreciation of a film, but it says something that The Terminator (1984) has a perfect, 100% “fresh” rating out of 38 total reviews. I won’t argue with the critics; the first Terminator is still the best in my book. Others argue convincingly for Terminator 2, a fine sequel whose special effects were revolutionary for its time and remain spectacular now. However, in my opinion the first film is better plotted, and more compelling due to its uncompromising ruthlessness and non-stop narrative thrust. T2 is excellent but has a tad too much humor and playfulness injected into the script for my own tastes.

Part of my unabashed love for The Terminator may be nostalgia: I was a kid when I first saw the film and was simultaneously enthralled by the great action and visuals, and haunted by its apocalyptic vision of the future, one which seemed all too plausible—not Skynet or robots, mind you, but nuclear destruction. When The Terminator came out the cold war was still going on and a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union was an all too real possibility. The grim television miniseries The Day After was frightening audiences at the time with the likely impact of a nuclear war, which promised instant annihilation for some, and a prolonged, painful death by radiation poisoning for the less fortunate. The Terminator seized on the fears of the age and a generation growing up with an omnipresent fear of atomic annihilation. I’ll never forget the ominous, mechanical opening theme, and the visceral image of the futuristic tank crushing a mound of skulls under its merciless track.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Tears of the Dragon: How Bruce Dickinson helped rescue heavy metal

The year was 1994. Heavy metal was arguably at its nadir. Iron Maiden and Judas Priest were without their lead singers, Metallica had sold out, and Queensryche released Promised Land (yuck). The pretentious, overrated grunge scene (now deader than a doornail, I gloat with savage glee) had knocked metal from its long-held reign on the music throne. Flannel, hackey-sacks, and greasy hair were king, and denim and black t-shirts were out. I was still a card-carrying member of heavy metal, but my spirits and my optimism for the genre’s future were admittedly at their lowest ebb.

But in the midst of that dreadful year a song arrived to lift my spirits like a winged angel: Bruce Dickinson’s “Tears of the Dragon.” When I first heard this song (on the now-extinct Headbanger’s Ball) it brought a lump to my throat, so majestic and amazing were its power and vocals. Like a razor-sharp broadsword, Dickinson’s unmistakable voice cut straight through the Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Alice in Chains pabulum that the rock stations were shoving down our throats.

This clip from Youtube features Dickinson performing “Tears of the Dragon” in a studio, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. There’s no faking it here, no pop-princess soundboard-smithing of his voice, just raw power and beauty. I encourage you to listen to it.

Alas, the rest of the album on which “Tears of the Dragon” appears (Balls to Picasso) ultimately proved rather weak and largely forgettable, but this song alone made the album worth owning. And “Tears of the Dragon” proved to be a harbinger of several more great solo efforts to come from Dickinson.

For those completely unfamiliar with heavy metal, Dickinson is the lead singer of Iron Maiden. Dickinson has always been an amazing singer and performer. Early in his career he could hit any note, regardless of how long or high. For proof, I offer this early live clip of him singing arguably the greatest heavy metal song ever written, Hallowed be thy Name.

But following some long tours with Maiden Dickinson’s voice seemed to deteriorate. His lowest point was No Prayer for the Dying or perhaps A Real Dead One, two albums on which his pipes sounded rough and strained. Shortly after Maiden released the uninspired Fear of the Dark in 1992, Dickinson left the band. It was a good time for a split by both sides—Bruce needed a break, and the band’s songwriting needed a recharge.

After Balls to Picasso came Skunkworks, another Dickinson solo album for which I’ve never acquired a taste. But then came Accident of Birth, in my opinion a home run. That was followed by The Chemical Wedding, the equivalent of a ninth-inning walk-off grand slam. It’s really that good, one of the best heavy metal albums of the 1990’s.

Dickinson’s voice alone does not explain his success. Other singers are as gifted or nearly as gifted as the Air Raid Siren. Rather, it’s his ability to weave powerful lyrics and themes that cut to the soul. The Chemical Wedding’s "Jerusalem" and its title track, Accident of Birth’s "Darkside of Aquarius" and "Man of Sorrows", and Tyranny of Souls’ "Kill Devil Hill" and title track are amazingly well-sung and well-written. If you’re a heavy metal fan and you don’t own these albums, buy them now. Heck, if you don’t like metal but can appreciate great singing, hunt them down on Youtube and listen/see for yourself.

When you combine an ability to write great music with a voice from the angels—or perhaps more accurately, ripped from the throat of a screaming banshee—you have a recipe for greatness. Pardon my man-gushing, but Dickinson really is, in my opinion, heavy metal’s greatest talent. Did I mention he's also a published author, licensed airplane pilot, and a one-time world-class fencer? What can't the man do?

Dickinson returned to Iron Maiden in 1999 for the Ed Hunter tour (I saw them in the small Orpheum Theatre in Boston that year and will never forget the show, which featured great music and heatstroke-inducing 100-plus degree temperatures). In 2000 Maiden released its first album with Dickinson back as lead singer, Brave New World. It was a great return to form for both he and the band. After another Maiden album in 2003 (Dance of Death), Dickinson released his sixth and most recent solo effort, Tyranny of Souls, in 2005.

Heavy metal, Iron Maiden, and Bruce Dickinson are back and better than ever. While I hope Maiden keeps cranking out the albums (A Matter of Life and Death is a great one), here’s hoping that the man who helped rescue metal from a dark age brings us more great solo efforts in the coming decade.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Still funny after all these years, and better than ever on audio

Humor is arguably the most difficult genre of writing to pull off. Hampered by the limitations of the print medium, humor writers must ply their craft without the benefit of a number of tools commonly used in live comedy and in film—visual gags, voice inflections, timing, and so on. This inherent difficulty is why good comedy writers like Dave Barry are a scarce commodity, and worth reading when you can find them.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is one of those rare examples of written comedy that actually works. When I last read this book back in middle school (it seemed like every dorky, D&D and Atari-playing kid like me was toting it around at the time), I enjoyed it very much. But I was in for an even more pleasant surprise when I recently returned to this book via the audio format. This was actually the first comedy I’ve listened to on CD, and I now believe that this genre might benefit the most from audio treatment. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a first-rate example of what a talented narrator/actor can do with funny, well-written material. English actor/comedian Stephen Fry takes The Hitchhiker’s Guide to new comedic heights, and on a few occasions I found myself laughing out loud during my commute to work. Fry literally turns the text into a running Monty Python skit.

The plot of the book is as follows: Arthur Dent, a nondescript Englishman, is about to lose his house to a construction crew in the name of progress (an overpass is scheduled to run through Dent’s property). Simultaneously, an alien race called the Vogrons has scheduled the vaporization of earth to clear the way for a hyperspatial express route. Dent is saved from destruction at the last second by his friend Ford Prefect, a roving alien researcher on the earth to complete an entry for a galactic encyclopedia called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Prefect and Dent later hook up with Zaphod Beeblebrox, Galactic President and rogue ship-thief, and his two crewmates (an annoying robot stricken with depression and ennui named Marvin, and Trillian, a female and earth’s only other survivor). Beeblebrox has stolen a cutting-edge spaceship called the Heart of Gold and is on a mission to find the lost planet of Magrathea, rumored to hold riches beyond imagining, as well as the answers to the mystery of life, the universe, and everything.

To appreciate The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you must like Monty Python (author Douglas Adams has writing credits in an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and appeared in two others, and his British comedy influences are plain). Here’s an example of the type of humor you’ll find:

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, in the destruction of the planet Earth.

Although The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is ostensibly mere over-the-top comedy, part of the reason (I believe) for its enduring appeal are its pithy insights about the nature of humanity and the universe and mankind’s raison d’etre. Overall it’s well worth reading and/or listening to.

This review also appears on SFFaudio.com .

Cimmerian sighting: To read, or to re-read

I’ve never understood the claim that, once read, a book is bereft of value. I have seen this absurd belief posited on several occasions around the Web, and it continues to puzzle me. You mean to tell me that there’s no value in re-living the wondrous adventures of The Fellowship of the Ring? That it’s possible for someone to pick up every nuance and plot detail of the phonebook-sized A Song of Ice and Fire tomes the first time? That, once you’ve read Red Nails, you’ve sucked it dry of its magic, and you can safely close the cover on the tale of the wild, warring tribes of Xuchotl forever? For me, this one-book, one-read claim smacks of either arrogance (“I can assimilate any text with laser precision the first time, every time. Can’t you?”) or ignorance (“Yes, yes, I already know the One Ring was destroyed. Now I’ve moved on to bigger and better stories like The Sword of Shannara”).

But lately I find myself slightly (very, very slightly) sympathetic to this view, for the sole reason that I’m in the process of building a towering pile of books that I’ve never read, big enough to obscure the old favorites behind it. Here’s a sample from my bookshelf.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian website.

Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: The Battle of Unnumbered Tears

4. The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien
Nirnaeth Arnoediad

Great was the triumph of Morgoth, and his design was accomplished in a manner after his own heart; for Men took the lives of Men, and betrayed the Eldar, and fear and hatred were aroused among those that should have been united against him.

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

As much as I enjoy the Battle of the Pelennor Fields and the Battle of Five Armies, neither can compare in size, pathos, devastation, and sheer magnificence with the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, also known as the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, one of the six major battles of the First Age of Middle Earth. Imagine magnificent elf-lords in gleaming armor and high white helms, doughty dwarves blasted with dragon fire, Balrogs engaging in single combat, a battle of betrayal, of bravery and sacrifice, and of ultimate ruin. That is the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

Though not quite as enormous as the War of Wrath, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears is massive in scope. This Wikipedia entry does a nice job of pulling together an order of battle that estimates 330,000-500,000 orcs in the hosts of Angband, the fortress of the dark lord Morgoth. Opposing them is a force of approximately 85,000-120,000 elves, men, and dwarves.

If these massive armies weren’t enough, Morgoth's forces are reinforced with balrogs, trolls, wolves, and the dragon Glaurung. That’s right—balrogs and a dragon are involved in the battle. The armies of elves, men, and dwarves include several great heroes of their age, such as are rarely seen in the Third Age of Middle Earth (the age in which The Lord of the Rings takes place) and of which songs are still sung.

Such a battle defies description: Even Tolkien, its creator, can’t do it justice. As he writes in The Children of Hurin:

Many songs are yet sung and many tales are yet told by the Elves of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in which Fingon fell and the flower of the Eldar withered. If all were now retold a man’s life would not suffice for the hearing.

I’d be willing to sit at the feet of Tolkien's shade and listen to a full recounting of the battle, but I have only one life to give to the endeavor. Alas, as it now stands, our only description of the battle are eight pages in The Children of Hurin and a brief section of The Silmarillion. Still, what is told and/or hinted at is enough to easily earn the battle a place in my Top 10 Fantasy Fiction Battles.

As befits its name, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears results in perhaps the most devastating loss on the battlefield for the forces of good in J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium—utter defeat of the Noldor elves, the death of Fingon, their king, and the capture and eventual torture of the great human hero Hurin. It’s an antidote for critics who accuse Tolkien of being soft on war, and a teller of easy, child-friendly tales in which the forces of good always prevail. This opinion (and I've seen it espoused in more than one place) is horseshit.

The battle rages for at least six days, from what I can gather from the text, and is like a great, slowly unfolding tragedy. The forces of good are well-prepared, confident, and hold the high ground, and when Turgon and his 10,000-strong army issues uncalled for from Gondolin, Fingon’s heart is filled with hope of final victory. “The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!” he says.

But a black night is in store. The Captain of Morgoth sends out heralds with tokens of parley, and bring with them Gelmir, a lord of Nargothrond, an elven lord whom Morgoth had blinded in captivity. The heralds cruelly hew off his arms and legs in plain sight of the elves and leave him to die. As fate would have it, Gelmir’s brother Gwindor sees this act of butchery and charges the heralds in a blind rage, slaughtering them. His forces continue the attack all the way through the gates of Angband, penetrating so far and with such wrath that Morgoth himself, hearing Gwindor and his men beating upon his door, trembles on his throne. But Gwindor is trapped at the doors and captured, and all his folk slain there.

Back on the field, Fingon and the main body of the elves have followed Gwindor onto the battle-plain where they no longer have the advantage of high ground, and there begins the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, “all the sorrow of which no tale can contain,” Tolkien writes. The field is lost when Gothmog, a balrog and high-captain of Angband, meets King Fingon in combat on the field. Fingon fights Gothmog to a standstill until a second balrog comes behind him and casts a throng of steel around him. Gothmog hews Fingon’s white helm with a stroke of his black axe, killing the elven king. “Thus fell the King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces, and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood.” In addition, the Easterlings turn traitor and fall upon the rear of the sons of Feanor, helping to turn the tide of battle in favor of Morgoth.

Fingon’s younger brother Turgon escapes back to Gondolin thanks to a brave, suicidal rear guard action by Hurin and his brother Huor. This is perhaps the most poignant pause in a battle filled with such moments. Says Huor to the elf-lord:

“This I say to you, lord, with the eyes of death: though we part here for ever, and I shall not look on your white walls again, from you and from me a new star shall arise. Farewell!”

The Men of Dol-lomin fight a terrific last stand, affecting Turgon’s escape, but there is no escape for the brothers. Huor falls with a venomed arrow in his eye, all his valiant men are slain about him in a heap, “and the Orcs hewed their heads and piled them as a mound of gold in the sunset.”

Then comes the ultimate end. If this passage doesn’t invoke a chill in your soul, Tolkien will never be for you:

Last of all Hurin stood alone. Then he cast aside his shield, and seized the axe of an orc-captain and wielded it two-handed; and it is sung that the axe smoked in the black blood of the troll-guard of Gothmog until it withered, and each time that he slew Hurin cried aloud: ‘Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!’ Seventy times he uttered that cry; but they took him at last alive, by the command of Morgoth, who thought thus to do him more evil than by death. Therefore the Orcs grappled Hurin with their hands, which clung to him still, though he hewed off their arms; and ever their numbers were renewed, till he fell buried beneath them.

Unfortunately for Hurin, he is taken alive.

The enduring image of the battle is a great mound of corpses of men, elves, and dwarves that can be seen for miles off, and upon which no servant of Morgoth dares to trod. It later grows green and is the only verdant place in the desert of Anfauglith. Wives of the slain later find it and grieve upon it. Artist Ted Nasmith’s wonderful, grim painting “The Hill of the Slain” captures this image beautifully and terribly.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one other amazing sequence of the battle that is not included in The Children of Hurin, but which can be found in The Silmarillion: A battle of dwarves and dragons. Glaurung the dragon and his brood are wreaking havoc upon the Noldor, who break before the fire-spewing wyrm. But standing firm are the Dwarves of Belegost, who wear “great masks in battle hideous to look upon” and are thus able to withstand the flames. The dwarves surround Glaurung and hack at him with their axes. Glaurung in his rage turns and strikes down Azaghal, Lord of Belegost, and crawls over him, but with his dying stroke Azaghal drives a knife into his belly, so wounding him that he flees the field. The grief-stricken dwarves bear away their lord singing a dirge, and none dare to stay them, not even their foes. It’s an amazing image.

Cimmerian sighting: Evaluating Don Herron's hard look at Stephen King

Essayist/raconteur Don Herron is best known ‘round these parts for his outstanding Robert E. Howard criticism, which includes essays and editing duties in seminal works like The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph. Elsewhere he’s also regarded as an expert on the works of renowned mystery and noir writer Dashiell Hammett.

Based on this photo, he also wears a fedora and trenchcoat better than anyone.

But a lesser-known side of Herron’s resume includes his Stephen King criticism. I myself was unaware of Herron’s work as a reviewer of the king of horror until coming across his essay, “King: The Good, the Bad, and the Academic” from Kingdom of Fear: The World of Stephen King (1986, NAL/Plume).

Seeing as how I’m writing for The Cimmerian website, whose now defunct print journal was home for many Herron essays, this next statement may make me seem like a suck-up, but that’s fine, I’ll say it anyway: I think Herron’s essay is perhaps the best in Kingdom of Fear. This is no mean feat, given that some of the other contributors to the volume include horror immortals like Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker, and Harlan Ellison.

Whether or not you agree with that assessment, it’s rather indisputable that Herron’s essay is the most provocative of the lot. I first started typing “equal parts criticism and praise,” but upon further review it’s decidedly tipped in favor of the negative. Considering that Kingdom of Fear was published in 1986—arguably the height of King’s creativity and popularity—Herron’s final analysis of King as a talented but flawed writer is rather ballsy. Herron pulls no punches, neither for King nor his legions of fans and admirers. For example, he rips Douglas Winter’s book Stephen King: The Art of Darkness for containing too much fan-worship and not enough honest appraisal. Writes Herron: “[It] strikes me as remarkable because Winter never once disagrees with a King dictum, he does not suggest that one of the novels under discussion might, just possibly, have a minor flaw or two. In this respect it is typical of most of the new criticism, where the critics, like the audience of teenage girls who buy so many of the King books, find everything to be just wonderful.”

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian website.

The Devil You Know: A review

Maybe if we cry together
Maybe if we cry as one
The tears that fall can kill
the fire
And keep everyone from
Atom and evil

--Heaven and Hell, Atom and Evil

I am one of those rare breeds who prefers the Ronnie James Dio-fronted Black Sabbath to the Ozzy Osbourne years (I acknowledge Black Sabbath's early greatness, but my favorite album remains Heaven and Hell). So it was with great anticipation of another Dio-Tony Iommi collaboration that I bought The Devil You Know.

After a couple play-throughs, The Devil You Know is what I would consider a slow burn--nothing jumps out at you at first listen, but it seems to get better with each subsequent spin. Still, I can't shake the feeling that, after waiting for 14 or so years since the last Black Sabbath album (1995's Cross Purposes), and 17 years since the last Ronnie James Dio-fronted Sabbath album (1992's Dehumanizer), I wanted something that immediately grabbed me by the throat. Sadly, there's no pulse-pounding Neon Knights to be found.

There is at least one bona-fide awesome song on this album, Bible Black. If you've ever heard Sign of the Southern Cross or Children of the Sea, Bible Black is in that same epic vein--a slow, melodic, acoustic intro, followed by an explosion of sound and Dio lauching into the song with his inimitable voice. My other favorites on the album are shaping up to be Atom and Evil (both a biblical allusion and a warning about unchecked nuclear proliferation), Follow the Tears, and Neverwhere.

The rest of the songs are solid if rather unspectacular, though I hope that changes with subsequent listens. As of now, the only ones that I'd rate as sub-par are Rock and Roll Angel and Eating the Cannibals.

Dio's voice doesn't have quite its old range and power anymore, but at 66 years old he's still pretty damned amazing. And if he's lost a little off his fastball he sounds arguably more evil and "metal" than ever, if that makes sense. The guy is a metal god, as is Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler, who pound out some awesome riffs on the album. The sound of the album is dark and bass-heavy, about what you'd expect. Iommi also launches into a couple memorable guitar solos (remember those?)

It's worth noting that the title of album and its artwork are a clever play on words and images--Black Sabbath is of course known for its use of satanic lyrics, but the band itself is the "devil" all metal fans know and love so well. The cover art (see below post) is exceptional, and appears to fuse both traditional Black Sabbath imagery and the Dio Sabbath/solo years. I might be reading into the image too much, but I can't help but feel that the long-horned demon bears more than a passing resemblance to the devil creature on Holy Diver and a handful of Dio's other solo albums.