Rebellions Are Built on Hope: Andor S2E8

In "Who are you?", the best episode of season two—and a top-tier moment in television generally—, we bear witness to the Ghorman Massacre. 

Content Warning: Discussion of domestic violence, violence against protesters.

As Cassian is preparing for his assassination of Dedra Meero, the plaza is opened and the Ghorman Front immediately starts to rally people. In a surprising moment of clarity, the leader of the Ghorman Front, Carro Rylanz, points out the danger of gathering, but his rebels refuse to listen to him. Meanwhile, Dedra speaks to her supervisor, Major Partagaz about the plan. “The only story that matters is Ghorman aggression,” he says. “The threats, the inexplicable resistance to imperial norms.” He points the success of their propaganda and media, revealed in the board meeting during episode one: “Our struggles with Ghorman are well documented at this point.” 

In a great piece of cinematic storytelling, a few minutes later as Syril walks through the memorial plaza, a news reporter repeats Partagaz’s lines about resistance to imperial norms. The propaganda plans have fully taken over the media, demonstrating there is no help for the Ghor from the story being recorded by traditional media sources. They are fully part of the Imperial machine.

As Syril makes his way to ask Dedra what’s going on, he’s confronted by Carro Rylanz as people file by, chanting: “We are the Ghor! The galaxy is watching.” Rylanz tells Syril about the mining equipment that’s been witnessed on different parts of the plant, which Syril still tries to deny, but at this point, Rylanz knows Syril must have been helping the Empire and says: “What kind of being are you?” Syril has no response, and Rylanz demands to know: “What’s in our ground? What is it you’ve been sent to steal from us?” Like Rylanz, though, Syril has no knowledge of the mining as Dedra has kept it from him. 

He tries to see Dedra, but he’s blocked by other Imperial officers as things become more volatile during the protest. When he is finally brought in to see her, she reveals the plan he has already guessed. In this moment, Syril finally finds his agency, even though it’s through an exertion of power via domestic violence. In true fascist fashion, he can’t express himself except through domination (as opposed to being dominated by the other women in his life who dictated his agency, such as his mother or Dedra). He chokes her while asking about the mining. His shock seems to have two layers—the destruction of the planet and people he’s come to admire to some degree and the fact his girlfriend kept the information from him. He rushes out to join the crowd.

While Syril’s capability of violence has been demonstrated in season one when he tried to find Cassian, this intimate partner violence demonstrates a shift in his character. Throughout season two, Syril has received much of what he’s wanted. His partner is an officer in ISB, his mother is finally respecting him, and he’s on a special mission for the Empire. Importantly, much of these “successes” haven’t happened due to his choices. In a brilliantly acted scene early in the season, Dedra tells his mother, Eedy (Kathryn Hunter), that she will control how much Syril sees his mother and that contact will be dictated by if Eedy can behave. Syril trades one domineering relationship for another. While it does seem like Dedra cares for him in her own way—both of their abilities to care dictated by their lack of empathy—Syril is also controllable, which is why he’s the perfect person to infiltrate the Ghor, because Dedra knows she can control him. 

As Syril realizes he’s been used by his partner, he watches the breakdown of the protest in the plaza as the new recruits from the previous episode are sent out to clear a path to the memorial. While their commanding officer says that’s a bad idea, the officer in charge of the operation sends them out anyway.  

In an intensely powerful moment, Lezine starts singing the Ghorman national anthem. The crowd picks it up, and soon the whole plaza is singing, united in this moment of oppositional nationalism. As they sing, the green recruits go out to clear a path to the memorial, and the crowd grows angry, harassing them while stormtroopers blocking off the plaza observe the situation. Above the plaza, a sniper watches while TIE fighters fly over. 

Partagaz orders Dedra to continue the plan: a sniper takes out one of the young recruits, which prompts the imperial forces to open fire, including the stormtroopers. What had been a crowd singing the Ghorman national anthem becomes stormtroopers and imperial officers shooting into a plaza. A few of the Ghorman Front have blasters, but most of them are unarmed civilians. The sniper continues to take out people from the rooftop.

In the panic, Syril watches the stormtroopers kill people he had been working with, murder the citizens he’d walked past every day, and destroy the plaza his office had overlooked. In a series of slow moments, the camera focuses on Syril standing still in all this violence. 

Several commentators have suggested that Syril might have had some sort of awakening in these moments, and Disney’s official episode guide seems to support that reading as the episode summary states: “[Syril] comes to the realization that he’s been a pawn for the Empire’s machinations.” It’s easy to want to look for redemption for Syril. While he’s not a sympathetic character, we do come to know him intimately over the course of two seasons, from seeing the inside of his bedroom and how his mother treats him to the manipulation from his partner, Dedra. But, he’s always been an active part of the Empire. He wasn’t swept up into it out of necessity or drafted into the stormtroopers or even just passively involved. One of the first introductions to Syril is while he attempts to create an even more stringent sense of law and order on Ferrix. It’s his dream to be recruited by Dedra to be a spy, even if the reason for his spying is at first a lie. To me, what makes Syril such a compelling and well-written character is not this moment where he perhaps regrets his actions but because he is as dedicated to the cause as Cassian or Luthen. Cassian also has moments where he questions their tactics, but he still has resolve. So does Syril as his opposite.

Meanwhile, as Syril is having these confrontations, Cassian is quick to recognize the gathering in the plaza is a bad idea and will end in violence. As he hurries to check out of the hotel, the bellhop, Thela, tells Cassian, “Don’t worry, you were never here. Didn’t log you in.” This moment demonstrates some of the brilliance of the storytelling in Andor—and I want to point out a similar moment in the next episode. Gilroy and his team take careful pains to show how one resists. The tools are documented, and this moment is one of them. Thela breaks a small rule in order to make sure Cassian remains undetected. When Cassian responds that he hopes everything works out, Thela says: “Rebellions are built on hope.” By giving this key line to Thela, it emphasizes even more that it’s not the great leaders like Cassian, Bix, Vel, and Luthen who make the rebellion work, it’s the small acts of resistance that create great opportunities. As Nemik from season one says in his manifesto: “Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward.”

Cassian joins the Ghorman protest outside, trying to find Wilmon, as they both realize the stormtroopers are prepared to “kettle” the Ghorman, cutting off their escape in a great visualization of tactics currently being used against protestors in L.A. these past few weeks. Much like Thela’s small act of resistance, Gilroy and his team also show the tactics of empire to disrupt protest. The stormtroopers contain the protestors, fly intimidating TIE fighters over the crowds, and, most importantly, they start the violence by killing one of their own people to then pin on the protestors. K2 units are released on the crowd, and their efficient violence and nearly impenetrable armor makes them horrific enemies as they are able to crush people to death. 

In the violent chaos, Cassian still tries to complete his mission of assassinating Dedra, and as he is about to take the shot, Syril finally sees him in the crowd. Syril reacts with an intensity of violence that we nearly saw when he threatened to kill his partner. Now, he turns all that anger onto Cassian, the man he’d hunted and had caused him to lose his job. It’s a brutal fight as they both go for the soft parts—the eyes, mouths—and use whatever weapons are at hand as the Imperial forces continue to massacre the Ghorman. 

Syril is relentless, dragging himself upright after an explosion that Cassian thinks has taken him out. He finds a gun and has Cassian in his sights. With desperation in his voice, Cassian asks: “Who are you?” Cassian’s lack of awareness of Syril’s existence makes Syril hesitate. It’s easy to imagine what might be going through his mind, that the only reason Syril is standing in that plaza, a contributor to a massacre, is because of Cassian, the man he became obsessed with. In that moment of hesitation, Syril is shot through the head by Rylanz.

In interviews, Gilroy and Diego Luna have talked about how they had to fight to keep the line “Who are you?” in the episode, which seems wild. The moment provides so much clarity for Syril’s character—all that hatred for a person who doesn’t even know him. As a piece of anti-fascist media, this moment feels important to the broader message. A necessary tool of fascism is an “other” that can be blamed for the ills of the world. On an interpersonal level, Cassian represents that “other” for Syril (and from a casting perspective, Diego Luna and Kyle Soller replicate the current fascist othering happening in the U.S. right now). This question from Cassian dramatizes how all that hate from Syril is a one-way street and not representative of reality. Rather, Syril was trying to turn something he'd imagined into reality.

After Syril’s death, Cassian and Wilmon escape the plaza. Wilmon chooses to stay on Ghorman to help his girlfriend, a member of the Ghorman Front. In the final shots, Wilmon’s girlfriend Dreena (Ella Pellegrini), attempts to broadcast what happened during the massacre. Wilmon also charges Cassian to spread the story. 

A long shot shows Cassian’s face as he escapes and Dreena's message plays as narration: “We are under siege. We are being slaughtered…” This message contrasts with the news media, which shares the Imperial narrative that the Ghor started the violence and that the dead imperial officers are martyrs (including Syril). 

What makes this episode, and the following episode “Welcome to the Rebellion,” so important is the familiarity of it all. Videos on TikTok juxtapose shots from these episodes with protests actively happening across the country as I write. Someone graffitied an ad for Andor, adding a speech bubble to Luthen’s mouth condemning ICE. Like the best revolutionary media, Andor has captured our current moment. While Gilroy has stated in interviews that this season wasn’t meant to be predictive, the prescience is still uncanny and speaks to Gilroy and his team’s understanding of fascism.

In a recent video post, resistance scholar Dr. Tad Stoermer points out that Andor is “practically an instruction manual” and sums up what he sees as the takeaway: “Resistance, to have any hope of success, requires regular people…to risk, to sacrifice, to lose with no force on their side other than their own will. […] What are you …willing to risk…for a better world you might never live to see?”

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POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.

Book Review: City in Chains

A well-executed fantasy story that is fighting yesterday's battles

I am going to be up front with the reader here and now: I cannot ever be fully objective about the oeuvre of Harry Turtledove. When I was an impressionable fourteen year old, I learned of his WorldWar series. For the unaware, that is his eight book series about an alien invasion that happens to land in the particularly eventful year of 1942. I inhaled those books, and then the eleven books of his Southern Victory (also called ‘Timeline-191’ or ‘TL191’ among online alternate history fans due to its point of divergence revolving around special order 191) series beginning with How Few Remain. I have read over forty of his books, as of writing, and he is the writer that gave me my enduring love of the alternate history genre. He is in a sense what I aspire to be as a writer, with several different speculative genres coexisting with a solid historical bedrock under all of them. I would not be the writer or indeed the man I am today without the hours and hours I spent reading his books, getting lost in his worlds. Not for nothing, his books consistently come with the blurb calling him “the master of alternate history.”

In the alternate history circles I frequent, the man’s work has something of a mixed reception. They say he relies too much on historical parallelism, such as his Southern Victory series quite clearly reenacting European history in the first half of the twentieth century in an American setting, or his Atlantis trilogy reenacting the early history of the United States on a landmass that consists of our world’s Nova Scotia to Florida, having drifted off of the mainland in prehistory. The man has had some deeply bizarre sex scenes in his work, some involving real people (although I will argue that Robert Conroy’s sex scenes are leaps and bounds worse). His work at points has had some very repetitive characterization (such as how often Sam Carsten is sunburned), as well as a few stock turns of phrase (“he said it with inevitability, like the sun will rise tomorrow”). As I have grown from an impressionable fourteen year old to a jaded twenty-eight year old, his books from the 2000s come off to me like the Star Wars prequels; with hindsight, I can see all the myriad flaws that others have pointed out, and many things could have been done better, but I still find myself enjoying the experience, and in awe of the worlds they opened up to me.

Much of the weaknesses of his big series are often connected to the fact that he had to pay for the college educations of his three daughters in quick succession, and writing is his sole source of income. He had to churn a lot out, and quickly, to give his children a future, and I can’t be mad at him for that. His work since then has been leaner, less dependent on well-trod periods of history, and with less bizarre weirdness (but plenty of fascinating weirdness). His book Three Miles Down (reviewed on this site by Arturo Serrano) is easily his most personal book, being a look at the Los Angeles the man himself grew up in, with plenty of wistfulness and added aliens. His Alpha and Omega is delightfully weird. Now, dear reader, I shall get to the point: his most recent novel, City in Chains.

This is one of Turtledove’s straight fantasy novels, with no direct textual reference to our history. However, those with familiarity with the periods that he likes to write about will see the inspiration, as the novel is rather clearly a pastiche of occupied Paris during World War II. The city is Lutesse (no relation to certain peculiar characters in the Bioshock series) in the Kingdom of Quimper, a name which it shares with a city in Brittany (mention is also made of a battle at a place called Carentan, which is also real, and I learned from the mission in the original Company of Heroes). This city, and this kingdom, are under the occupation of the villainous Chleuh, and the quotidian cruelties have become part of the fabric of life.

The exact aesthetic of this whole shebang is a little bit confused, or so I thought. There are trains, but the occupying forces are primarily still using crossbows. As such, the novel feels like an odd mishmash of the Middle Ages and the 19th century with some tropes of World War II fiction thrown in. Of the latter, the most obvious of these is a sort of magically-infused crystal that occupies the role of radio in the historical fiction that inspired this novel. Nighttime bombing raids are in this world nighttime dragon raids; there is a brief plotline where a dragon rider, having been shot down, is secreted away in the basement of one of the main characters and later handed off to the organized resistance (a plotline which, sadly, is ultimately underdeveloped). The whole thing is a mishmash, one with a lot going for it, but overall Turtledove neglects to really describe what this city looks like, smells like, sounds like. The entire project feels more than a little threadbare, abstract even, rather than something concrete.

The book does shine, however, in its two main characters. One of them is Malk Malkovici, a junkman of the minority Old Faith sect who is a refugee from persecution in another country now occupied by the Chleuh. The Old Faith is the target of genocidal persecution by the occupiers, who are sending them to vaguely described but clearly ominous camps in the east, territory occupied by the Chleuh and conquered (albeit apparently temporarily) from a strange monarchy that believes that the gods have declared that wealth needs to be shared. It becomes clear quite early on that Malk is a member of the group that is this world’s analogue for Jewish people under Nazi occupation.

What makes life more complicated for Malk is that his services as a collector of junk, including various types of metal, is in high demand by the occupiers who hate him and, on an ideological level, want to kill him. He and his family are complicit in the occupation and from there the mass murder and the genocide. He has rapport with officers who come to buy his wares, as well as a collaborating policeman whose beat is his neighborhood, and tries not to advertise his religious beliefs. He is wracked by the knowledge that he is, however indirectly and however reluctantly, complicit in evil, but he knows there is a huge price to pay if he were to stand up for himself.

The other main character is Guisa Sachry, a rich man, a great actor, the head of his own theater troupe, and the greatest star of the Lutesse theater scene. He has a much younger wife (his third) and had planned to keep his head down throughout the occupation with inoffensive slice-of-life plays until an officer of the Chleuh military came knocking, ‘asking’ him to appear as one of the Lutesse luminaries at a parade honoring the city’s new rulers. Knowing he stands to lose a lot, perhaps even his life, if he says no, he goes along with it. He is then asked by the occupation to write a play glorifying the occupation and demonizing the resistance. He does so, reluctantly (and the solution he devises to this is a very clever one on Turtledove’s part, one that he is capable of creating because he knows how people interact with the historical and cultural context in which they live), and from there is pulled head first down the vortex of collaboration.

Guisa Sachry is not a good man, and the narrative correctly emphasizes that fact again and again. He hires a dancing girl from another company on the condition that she have sex with him. He is deeply and profoundly unpleasant to his wife, with whom it is clear he doesn’t really love, and the feeling is mutual. He is ruthless to his underlings and sycophantic to the men who pay him off. But it is with that sycophancy that the novel really furnishes its theme, that of complicitness.

Both Malk and Guisa are men who are constrained by structural factors from acting free of the occupation. Malk dislikes working with the Chleuh out of his religious beliefs and his own moral principles. Guisa, on the other hand, has no principles whatsoever, and his own naked self-interest is what compels him to comply; even if he is the ethnic majority in Lutesse, the Chleuh would still make an example if he were to fall out of line. Both don’t want to collaborate, but both are forced into collaboration, their distinct characters and distinct paths nevertheless reaching the same destination.

As a longtime reader of Turtledove’s work, Guisa Sachry as a character reminded me strongly of another one of his characters: William Shakespeare, as portrayed in his novel Ruled Britannia. That novel is set in a world where the Spanish Armada succeeds, and England is under the cruel yoke of Philip II. This version of Shakespeare is a covert sympathizer with the English resistance who is coerced by the Spanish to write a play glorifying Philip, while simultaneously writing a play about Boudica, the ancient queen of the Iceni people who lead a failed rebellion against the Romans, and a thinly-veiled diatribe against the Spanish. Shakespeare, as portrayed by Turtledove, is a man with a strong moral conscience who is forced into collaboration, but takes covert action to resist. Guisa Sachry, on the other hand, is a man with no moral conscience at all, and his arc is almost that of a foil to Shakespeare’s in the earlier novel.

At its core, City in Chains is about collaboration. Many Americans in recent months have been beating the drum against collaboration with the new Trump administration, filled to the brim with neo-Nazis, technofascists, and a rogues' gallery of some of the most unpleasant, most boorish, most malevolent, and most stupid people on the planet. We have, rightly, been infuriated with the spinelessness of Democratic Party leaders in not taking a harder line against the wrecking of the federal government or the evisceration of trans rights in this country, to name but two examples (but a part of me thinks that Ta-Nehisi Coates was right in saying that you can’t really expect a party that had no spine to stand up against the genocide in Gaza to have the spine to stand up for democracy). We are in a moment where the moral imperative is not to comply, but to resist. Releasing a book like City in Chains in a time like this is an interesting decision, and one that is revelatory.

Harry Turtledove is an outspoken liberal on his social media; before he decamped from Twitter, his pinned tweet was “I didn’t mean to be topical” repeated several times. He is consistently good and well intentioned, if not radical, on racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights, and is blisteringly critical of the current administration. I remember that, in his novel Alpha and Omega, a novel set mostly in Israel (and released a few years before the current genocide), he states frankly, but does not dwell on, the the second-class status of Palestinians in that country. I do remember one particular interaction I had with him on Bluesky where told upcoming writers to share their new works, and I shared Broken Olive Branches, the anthology in which I have a story raising money for refugee relief in Gaza (and discussed on this blog here). He liked and boosted the anthology, for which I am grateful to him. In terms of his historical interests, he has been blisteringly critical of neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates.

But the man is not without his blind spots. His portrayal of race is very much that of an older white liberal; his novel Guns of the South has been taken to task by multiple critics in recent years, such as by Monroe Templeton on the Sea Lion Press blog (which, for full disclosure, I have written many articles for in previous years). As an Asian-American (half Filipino through my mother), I was more than a little irritated by the fact that his Hot War trilogy, a series about World War III breaking out over Korea, has no Asian viewpoint character; the only Korean character is the plucky sidekick of a white American soldier.

Ultimately, I think the core of the issue is that Turtledove’s view of World War II is very much that of old war movies, where brave soldiers fight for justice, and innocent civilians bear the brunt of the ultimate evil. The conflict becomes a great moral drama between justice and injustice (in fairness to him, Turtledove has always been frank about American racism both in that period and in other periods). In that regard, he glorifies the resistance fighter and denounces the opportunist, but fundamentally casts the thing that they are resisting as a foreign force, an invader.

This is a view of fascism that has been superseded in the historical literature by a view that situates fascist regimes in the broader context of the imperial world of nineteenth-century Europe. Aimé Cesaire, in 1950, published Discourse on Colonialism, which made the argument that colonialism made Europe a savage continent, one that had come to accept racial hatred and mass murder as de rigueur, a formulation that culminated in Nazism deciding to do those things to other Europeans. Cesaire’s English translator called this a ‘boomerang effect,’ an abstract but effective translation of the original French phrase ‘choc en retour,’ literally ‘return shock.’ Not long after Cesaire, Hannah Arendt argued in her magnum opus Origins of Totalitarianism that Nazism was the confluence of millennia of European antisemitism and the race thinking of imperialism. Hitler himself openly stated that the Nazi plan for Eastern Europe was explicitly modeled on the United States.

Here I shall analyze City in Chains as a critical work, in the manner that Phoebe Wagner on this very blog discusses Andor. In attempting to critique modern fascism, he falls into myths of the original fascism. Contemporary American fascism is not something that was imported from Europe; Trump is not merely the achievement of Russian propaganda, but rather a culmination of centuries of American bigotry. A president who is promising ethnic cleansing cannot be considered a break from a country that systematically expelled its indigenous populations from their homelands. A movement that is backed in no small part by violent militias cannot be considered a break from a country that has enforced slavery, white supremacy, and indigenous dispossession with heavily armed mobs, some of which called themselves militias.

As a narrative device and as abstract philosophy, the theme of complicitness in this novel succeeds. As a description of complicitness in today’s injustices, it falls flat. This novel has a model of the theme that could work perhaps most perfectly for Ukrainians under the Russian jackboot (and Lord knows they need it), but not in America or Western Europe. For the latter, the complicitness we face is different and in some ways more totalizing. Does the company that makes our food give money to pay tribute to Donald Trump? Is the fast food place we go to supporting the IDF as they raze Gaza to the ground? Is our laptop made in a slave labor camp in Uyghurstan? The complicitness we face now is our own convenience, our survival on a very basic level. What we are complicit with is capitalism, and capitalism gives us no choice. This is the essence of the phrase “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.”

That is the sort of question that City in Chains has no answer for, as it is uninterested in probing the broader systemic reasons for why this occupation, this war, this genocide are happening in the first place. We only get broad descriptions of the prewar status quo, and most of that is a pretty clear parallel to interwar Europe. If Quimper is France, as its name will show, there is no Algeria, no Senegal, no Indochina, and from there no equivalent to the American insistence that the first Allied troops to enter a liberated Paris be white. According to this novel, the enemy is foreign, alien even, and it requires of us no introspection, no questioning of basic assumptions. In valorizing resistance to complicitness with a foreign evil, it leaves open the door to complicitness with a domestic evil, letting us be comfortable in satisfaction while continuing to play our own little part in keeping evil alive, be it through our purchases, our tax dollars, our employment, our voting, or our own personal conduct. The parallelism that is one of Turtledove's standard tricks works to the detriment of the broader moral indignation, and as such cannot even really be said to critique contemporary fascism.

As such, the basic narrative scaffolding of City in Chains is perfectly entertaining as fantasy fiction, but as an answer to the current moment it feels woefully out of date. The novel on some level feels like it’s fighting previous battles, not the current battle. Its portrayal of the struggle against fascism is what America of previous decades wanted World War II to be, and what modern white liberals want the struggle against contemporary fascism to be. It is a book that is fascinated by abstract questions of morality in years gone by, while not having much to say about concrete questions of morality in the present. It has nothing whatsoever to say about how the current moment is the compounded result of previous historical moments, and how the problems of today are deeply structural. It is a book I enjoyed very much, and it has some very smart moments, but on the whole the novel reveals the weaknesses of Turtledove’s worldview in an age of resurgent fascism.

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Reference: Turtledove, Harry, City in Chains [Aetheon Books, 2025]

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Rebellions are Built on Hope: Andor S2E1

As some of you know, I’m a big Andor fan, have reviewed season one, written about the show, and have a Cassian quote tattooed on my arm. With season two premiering, I wanted to take a closer look at each episode and some of the politics and modes of resistance—and just plain great storytelling. 

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reviewing each episode. Disney has chosen to release the twelve episodes in four chunks, but I’ve decided to slow down and give each episode it’s due. As I’ve rewatched season one, I continue to be surprised by the nuance of the show, and I’m hoping the same for season two (and so far, it hasn’t disappointed!). I’ll be writing these reviews with the assumption readers have watched season one and watched the episode, so I won’t be tagging spoilers. As readers of my previous Andor content will know, one of my major fascinations with the series is the anti-fascist aspect of the storytelling, so these pieces will lean in that direction. On to season two!

The first episode is titled “One Year Later,” and much like the description, the episode sets up a lot of plot lines: “An undercover mission. A sanctuary threatened. A Chandrilan wedding. A chilling imperial plan.” The hour-long episode sets up these four plotlines, which seem to have a rotating centrality to the season as a whole. 

The episode opens with Niya (Rachelle Diedericks), helping Cassian Andor (with continued excellent acting by Diego Luna) steal an experimental TIE fighter model. She’s new to helping the rebellion, and she’s nervous. Part of this scene shows how Cassian has changed over the past year since he fled the planet Ferrix with his friends Brasso (Joplin Sibtain), Bix (Adria Arjona), and Wilmon Paak (Muhannad Bhaier). Cassian has come into his own and presents a level of leadership more reminiscent of the Cassian Andor from Rogue One. When comforting Niya, we get one of those great, inspiring Andor moments: “The Empire cannot win. You’ll never feel right unless you’re doing what you can to stop them. You’re coming home to yourself.” 

This moment builds to Cassian confidently entering the TIE fighter, starting it, and—absolutely messing up. Even though his prominence as a pilot was a major point of season one, he cannot figure out how to fly the fighter, and his quiet exit becomes a serious action sequence before he finally escape. But this escape is only the beginning of his problems. 

Enter the Maya Pei. When Cassian lands to meet his Rebellion contact, a group of guerrilla fighters capture him instead. He realizes they are the Maya Pei, a group that the Rebellion has even supported in the past, but they refuse to believe he isn’t what he looks like—an Imperial pilot. The Maya Pei are clearly part of the rebellion in terms of their hatred of the Empire, but they seem totally inept and infighting quickly divides the group.

In episode one, Cassian’s storyline is the least political, but also the most fascinating as it seems off kilter to the seriousness of the other plotlines. The Maya Pei are hilariously bad at being guerrilla fighters. Right now, their depiction lacks some nuance since guerrilla warfare has been very successful against many authoritarian regimes, so this clownish depiction seems at odds with the serious and thoughtful analysis of empire and revolt of the previous season. I currently have two ideas. First, I think the Maya Pei will return in the season to bring some of that nuance. Second, this season seems to be speaking to the problems of leftist responses to empire, especially the early stages of rebellion (which may feel familiar to U.S. viewers). I’m curious how this thread will continue or not. 

Turning to the other three storylines, the Empire’s plotline held the most fascination for me. I loved how Andor season one made the Empire feel like an empire down to making it clear the people who support it are just weird, dangerous, isolated people (like all Fascists are). The Empire in Andor is rarely, if ever, cool but rather banal and bureaucratic, which doesn't mean they aren't dangerous. Dedra Meero (with an amazing performance by Denise Gough) is invited to join a top secret project led by Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). I assumed Krennic would be a much later reveal as a major returning character from Rogue One, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him revealed in episode one. 

The imperial project is a mining operation on the planet Ghorman. The Ghorman people are set up as a somewhat powerful entity—at least one that won’t go quietly—and in order to be able to mine the planet, they will have to be subdued. The Empire has already worked to undermine the Ghorman reputation through propaganda. In a move that feels so relevant to the social media misinformation of today, two hired propagandists explain how certain stereotypes of the Ghorman people were started by their propaganda.

This chilling boardroom sequence discussing how the Empire intends to destroy a people, culture, and planet for a mining operation felt particularly poignant when paralleled with the third storyline—visas. While Cassian is running missions for the Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård), his Rebellion contact from season one, his friends Bix, Brasso, and Wilmon are living as undocumented agricultural workers on Mina-Rau. Over the past year, they’ve settled in, with Brasso in a long-term relationship with a citizen and Wilmon dating a citizen, which is causing problems with her parents because he doesn’t have a visa. 

In the U.S., it’s impossible not to feel the poignancy of one of our most popular franchises showing the struggles of undocumented people. This moment is paralleled with the boardroom scene as Krennic and other members of the fascist Empire work to dispossess another people of their planet, thus turning them into refugees—if they survive. 

Much like season one, the first episode of season two is a slow burn (though the next two episodes build quickly). Yet, these four storylines (I’ll talk about Mon Mothma and Chandril in the next episode review), set up the gritty realism of a fascist Empire—and the real fight against it—that I have come to expect in Andor. 

As such a big fan of the first season, I was deeply worried about season two. Writer Tony Gilroy could still disappoint, but I, once again, feel like I’m in careful hands. 

POSTED BY: Phoebe Wagner (she/they) is an author, editor, and academic writing and living at the intersection of speculative fiction and environmentalism.

Review: Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right

Jordan Carroll uncomfortably probes the connections between the field and the right wing of America

Jordan Carroll’s academic book Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right sets out to do what it says on the tin. His thesis is that the alt-right, as constituted, has undeniable links to the science fiction field, which go back to its earliest eras, and whose consequences and ties remain to this day. He explores how the alt-right’s antisemitism, racism, sexism, queerphobia and other toxic beliefs have manifested, been encouraged, and grown in the soil of science fiction from its inception.

His thesis:

Science fiction serves as more than just a pop culture reference in fascist discourse
[...] the alt-right has interpreted science fiction to say that a fascist world is possible.

It was unfortunately inevitable. Some of the same impulses, ideas, beliefs and interests in the early part of the 20th century bore fruit in a number of, as it turns out, rather interconnected loci. The interest in space exploration (and colonization) bore fruit not only in the stories shepherded by Hugo Gernsback and, more importantly, John C. Campbell, but in the whole strain of the work of Wernher von Braun and his rocket program, first for Nazi Germany, and later, for the United States.

This interchange of conscious and subconscious ideas has had consequences for science fiction as a field, and that is what Carroll examines here. He varies between the historical perspective and that of more recent events. He leans on Alec Nevala-Lee’s book on John C. Campbell (Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction) to show how Campbellian science fiction has had some of these toxic themes and ideas right from the start, and that the alt-right has been looking at science fiction for models of a fascist future for a long time.

As Carroll notes, this pervasive toxicity has led to some very strange results. He notes The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad, an out-and-out satire and a strike against the technocratic fascist impulses of science fiction that, quite frankly, probably wouldn’t get a publisher today. The book is not subtle with its points (or even in its cover). And yet, as Carroll points out, there are those on the right who take it as a model to emulate. Carroll also brings up authors like Pournelle and Niven, focusing on Lucifer’s Hammer and its rather lurid racial politics (just as one prominent example, the PoC cannibal army) as mainstreaming the ideas of the alt-right, all the worse because of its blockbuster bestseller status. The darker connections of racial and eugenic politics in science fiction (again, Campbell, but not just Campbell, that’s the point of this book) were kickstarted and encouraged by books like this.

And so, yes, he also naturally tackles Dune. Dune probably could have an entire book written on just its role in politics and science fiction—positive, negative, and neutral. Carroll focuses on how, despite Herbert’s attempt to show the horror and hell of Paul’s life and his role, the whole idea of a “God-Emperor” has been enthusiastically taken up as a role model by elements of the alt-right. They ignore the non-Western elements of the culture of Paul’s society (from the Emperor all the way to the Fremen) and delight in the power of Paul as God-Emperor with his Führerprinzip as something to wish for. And yes, Carroll drags in Warhammer 40K and how, for all that it is overtly a criticism of this grimdark future, like Dune, it is seen as an aspirational future by the alt-right.

Naturally, he also goes on to tackle The Turner Diaries, which is perhaps the most poisonous science fiction or science-fiction-adjacent book of them all. With its explicitly racist and fascist politics, Caroll calls it as a Bible of the white nationalist movement, and I think he’s absolutely right. This is the future the alt-right has always wanted. It’s a manifesto of the darkest order. I am myself reminded of “From my Nightmare 1995 to my Utopian 2050” by William S Lind as being absolutely in this terrible tradition. There is a whole strain of post-apocalyptic novels and stories that Carroll could have gone into that could come in for criticism or at least discussion in interrogating these ideas. Consider the underground city society of A Boy and His Dog and how the girls (and some of the men as well) all wear heavy white makeup.

In the more modern and recent context, Carroll looks at people like Richard Spencer, and also at people like Theodore Beale (a.k.a. Vox Day) and the whole saga of the Rabid and Sad Puppies (once again, relying on an excellent source, this time Camestros Felapton) to show how, in more recent times, this mixture of far-right politics and science fiction has been wrapped around each other. In this era, we don’t just get odious books by authors such as Tom Kratman; we get political action and activity in a direct fashion.

It’s not all doom and gloom, as he highlights authors such as N. K. Jemisin and her award-winning Broken Earth trilogy as countervailing reactions to the alt-right’s attempts to go from simmering beneath the surface to fuller control of science fiction. But in that, I think that Carroll missed a few tricks. The Rabid and Sad Puppies were a fulmination, a fungal bloom of these right, alt-right, far-right movements. But while that tide, as of the writing of the book, and as of the writing of this review, has receded, there is still a strain of writers and authors who attempt to, to various degrees, mainstream reactionary politics. Yes, I could drag Baen Books here, and I already mentioned Kratman, but there are less odious authors who are not quite as overt in these fascist-friendly futures, or futures that the alt-right can wish for.

And to that point, unaddressed and undiscussed in this book (it’s a slim volume, to be fair), some of those currents are present in a greater total mass as subtext (perhaps, to be fair, probably subconsciously) in much more mainstream science fiction. Carroll doesn’t consider or interrogate the problems that this subtext has had in the main run of science fiction. The emphasis on technocracy über alles, the devaluing (or just not even a consideration) of the importance and power of labor, a general rightward bent to the prevailing politics of societies, the overwhelming white-maleness of characters, even today, are all echoing consequences of the Speculative Whiteness. Admittedly, again, to dive into the vast pool of science fiction and try and disentangle even one of these particular fruits would make the book many times its size, and perhaps Carroll did not want to handwave in that particular direction without going into a deep dive. But even as he says that his book is a historical study, I think that not talking about this is precisely part of the problem. I spoke earlier of the soil of science fiction leading to alt-right science fiction blooming, but really, the soil itself has a taint in it. It takes effort for writers to try and detoxify their own work as best they can.¹

That said, and returning to a more positive bent, this is a slim, powerful, and sometimes rather damning look at science fiction and the poisonous and destructive politics of the alt-right. I’ve been aware of these issues for a long time, in a sometimes direct fashion (cf. my own small speaking role in the Sad and Rabid Puppies drama) and an indirect fashion (cf. my engagement and reengagement with Heinlein, Pournelle, Niven, Anderson, et cetera, as well as reading the aforementioned book by Nevala-Lee). This academic work puts it all together, and then some, and presents it with the receipts, as it were.

This is an important book (and I don’t use that phrase lightly). Is it going on my Hugo nomination ballot this year for Best Related Work? Unquestionably yes. And even if you aren't the Hugo-nominating type, if you are at all interested in the field of science fiction and want to experience a more critical analysis of how it has proven to be a fertile soil for the alt-right and their fascist dreams, I strongly recommend Carroll's work.

Reference: Carroll, Jordan. Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right [University of Minnesota Press, 2024].

¹ To give one example: take a look at the Expanse novels by James S. A. Corey... but then look at the TV adaptation, which took visible pains to address some of the problems of the novels. In many ways, it is superior to the source material for the changes and detoxification that it has done. Is it perfect? No. Is it better than the books? Yes. But it takes a lot of capital (in all senses) to not only recognize the problem, but even try to address it.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin

Book Review: The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

A stunning science fantasy novel with a strong theme and timely and resonant message underpinning a strong character study. 

Science fantasy seems to be having a moment again. The peanut butter and chocolate of the two main halves of speculative fiction are once again meeting in the middle with novels that combine the technological speculation of science fiction with the social structures, and sometimes outright magic and the unexplainable elements of fantasy. Gary K. Wolfe considers science fantasy as an SFF story that you can read as a science fiction story, a fantasy story, or both at the same time, which is as good a definition of science fantasy as you can get. 

So it is with Samantha Mills The Wings Upon Her Back, Mills' first full length novel. If you have read Mills before, it is probably the story "Rabbit Test". This is rather different and shows her range. Here, Mills sets us up in the city state of Radezhda, where all of our action takes place. Long ago, five deities visited the city and uplifted the civilization of the city, ancient aliens style. The power and technology they have given the city are not completely comprehended by the residents but it is enough for them to assert their independence and defense from the rest of the world. Those gods are mostly sleeping now, leaving their mortal Voices to commune with them, occasionally get news or judgments, and contribute to the welfare of the city. 

Our main character is Zenya. Although born under the auspices of the god dedicated to learning and knowledge, she has always dreamed of flying, of being a warrior. We start the novel, then, with her showing a dissident a small act of mercy, for which as a reward for her years of loyal service, both to the warriors and personally to their leader Vodaya, with being stripped of her biomechanical wings, and left to die. It's when she is found by the real revolutionaries that the plot really kicks off, as Zenya has a painful coming to terms of who she is, what she has done.

This comes to us in a narrative set in the present day, following the events of her being cast out, and in a parallel narrative, we get to see how Zenya became Winged Zemolai. Mills cleverly uses the flashback sequences in a threefold sense. First and foremost, we get the full character arc of Zenya, how and why she became the woman she was, who is both a fearless warrior with wings, and yet someone who showed that act of mercy. Second, we get to see how and why the city has strayed and moved from a path of five representatives of the various gods cooperating into the brutal authoritarian rule of Vodaya. This strand of the novel is frankly an out and out blueprint of how fascist and authoritarian societies emerge from innocuous beginnings. And third, mixing the two, we see how the toxic relationship between Zenya and Vodaya came to be, growing and flourishing in its poisonousness. This also serves as a character study of Vodaya herself, showing how a fascist leader can emerge and take power, but also, it shows just how seductive and alluring such a leader and their ideology and methods can be, especially to a young and impressionable youth such as Zenya. Seeing Vodaya use and manipulate the young Zenya is a horrifying masterclass in such psychological techniques. 

The novel can be relentless at times, because in the present day narrative, Zenya has fallen with true and real revolutionaries who are seeking to stop the authoritarian tyranny that Vodaya has instituted. These are not protesters hanging up signs, this is a movement with cells, goals, and that can and will use violence to achieve their ends. Zenya really has gone from the frying pan of being the hand of Vodaya to falling in with a group that trusts her not at all but is willing to to kill and do damage in order to oppose the tyrannical rule, as well as torture, and also manipulate prisoners and those not trusted, including of course, Zenya. 

But I want to go back to the science fantasy nature of this novel and explore briefly, how it fits into that context.

How can one read this in both modes? A city-state where technology-as-magic allows for biomechanical wings, and five sleeping gods whose worshipers squabble and try and interpret what their gods want to do and why, and feeling lost and forgotten, is definitely a fantasy setting if I ever heard one. The novel fits my medium stakes and "city-state fantasy" paradigm rather well - if you read the novel in a fantasy mode.

And yet this is also a science fiction novel. The technobabble of the wings refers to "ports" and there are flying boats, bombs, and even (although not really named as such) an EMP device. There is very heretical thought that the gods aren't gods at all, but rather are ancient aliens who came, gave some technology to the people of the city, but mostly now for reasons unknown, are asleep and not generally reachable on a regular basis. 

There is an additional piece within the novel, a plot point/MacGuffin that becomes extremely important to the unfolding of the plot. I don't want to give it away because it becomes such an important hinge later in the novel, but the fact that it can be read either as technology or as something in a fantasy mode helps solidly that science fantasy is indeed the axis that this novel very deliberately spins around.

In the end, the world of the novel is a world where both sides do very dirty things, and neither side's hands are clean. The Wings Upon Her Back, though, grounds this all in Zenya, and thanks to the dual narratives, we slowly close the loop and fully understand Zenya. Why would she find service to the mecha god instead of "her" scholar god in the first place, how her brutal training, physically and psychologically molded her to be Vodaya's creature, and how the seeds of her (at first) mild disillusionment came to be in the first place. 

But even with Zenya in the rebellion and opposing Vodaya, her toxic and disturbing relationship to her old life and her relationship with Vodaya always comes to the for, and Vodaya, besides Zenya, has staying power as the most memorable and darkly compelling aspect of the novel. Vodaya has spent years molding Zenya, and this novel could be read as a story of deprogramming. The deprogramming is twofold, first of all Zenya herself from Vodaya and her toxic methods, and the deprogramming of an entire society which has been molded to be brutal, uncompromising, fascist, and authoritarian. The novel shows that it is a painful and not easy process, and there are no simple magic bullets or answers for either. I felt strongly for Zenya especially in the flashback scenes, as Mills makes what Vodaya is doing to her plain and unmistakable. 

And again, given the rise of authoritarianism around the world, and those it impacts, what Vodaya goes through feels timely and relevant.

The last part of the book, then, has in the flashback sequences Zenya taking her first flight with her wings, showing her joy at the pinnacle of her triumph as a youth, and in the present, Zenya recreating that journey, without wings, older, wiser, and irrevocably changed by her experiences. It's a potent and strong ending to a potent and strong novel. The novel is complete in one volume and there really isn't, as far as I can see, need or room for a sequel hook. 

--

The Math

Highlights:

• A potent and important story of authoritarianism and what it does to a society and people
• A strong science fantasy hybrid
• An unflinching look at a protagonist and the character who manipulates and molds her

You can read more about the book, and Samantha Mills, in my Six Books interview about her.

Reference: Mills, Samantha, The Wings Upon her Back [Tachyon, 2024]

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Film Review: The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

When Germans delve and Britons span, who was then the gentleman?

There is undoubtedly a certain romance to commandos. The very term originally meant not a single individual, but rather a small group of men sent behind enemy lines to cause havoc. It’s a term originally from the Boer War, a war that saw all sorts of horrors brought to the mainstream European and American presses. But the modern archetype doubtlessly comes from World War II, where Allied commandos doubtlessly fought for the good of the world, even if filtered through their own ideologies. Once the domain of a great many pulp stories, magazines, and films, it has come to feel dated in the public’s mind. But Guy Ritchie has decided to serve us another go at this revered old genre in 2024’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, distributed by Lionsgate Films, with a script written by Ritchie, Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, and Arash Amel.

The film is a not particularly accurate depiction of Operation Postmaster, a British covert operations mission to destroy ships refueling the German submarines that threaten shipping routes in the Atlantic. Those routes carry urgently needed supplies for a Britain that is being pulverized by the Luftwaffe as Hitler tries to starve the country into submission. Even within the halls of Westminster, there are doubts as to whether this war can be won. In an attempt to ease the burden on Britain, Prime Minister Winston Churchill orders the aforementioned team to the place where these ships are docked: the island of Fernando Po, nowadays Bioko, in Equatorial Guinea. Unfortunately for the British, that island is a colonial possession of officially neutral Spain, run by fascists whom Hitler and Mussolini helped bring to power, and certainly favorable towards the Axis.

One of the things that struck me about this film is the cinematography. I couldn’t help but see the influence of Sam Mendes’ 1917 here, with a simulated long shot that Mendes openly admits was influenced by his son’s video games. There’s nothing quite that ambitious here on display, but there are a number of shots that reminded me of real-time strategy games, with the camera hovering above bloody chaos in a manner that feels almost detached. I found it to be an interesting gambit, and one that I think worked.

As I said, the script is not afraid to take liberties, but those feel appropriate. For example, there is a raid that never happened on a prison in the Canaries (ruled, again, by Spain) that never existed, but I am willing to forgive it because that sequence is just fantastic generally. I’m reminded of a review I read many years ago of the real-time strategy game Company of Heroes, set after the Allied invasion of Normandy, that I cannot find anymore, that talked a lot about the actual correctness of every little detail, every bolt and nut and rivet, and the authenticity of how a work feels, and this film passes that test (and may rivet-counters be ever silenced, and learn why normal people actually engage with fiction to begin with).

Walking out of the theater, I concluded that the film that The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare bears the most resemblance to is Inglorious Basterds, albeit without the history-changing ending (the history-changing is instead woven throughout the film, which makes it straight history. I don’t make the rules here). Very much like Sisu, a Finnish film I reviewed on this blog some months ago, this is fundamentally an action movie that happens to be set eighty years ago. There is plenty of humor to go around, mostly of the snarky one-liner variety, but also many moments that arise mainly due to character. There’s a deftness in the script in regards to its characters, many of whom do not conform to the vaunted British stiff upper lip. Some are in prison, and others are fans of making things go boom. Despite all this, there’s that British wryness that pervades their worldview, indeed the film’s worldview, and I’m thankful that the Briton Guy Ritchie got to helm it. I’m not sure an American could have made it as well.

The action here is very good. The historically inaccurate raid on the Canaries has already been mentioned. There’s also a deliciously tense, then gloriously Tarantino-esque shoot-out on a boat that begins the film, which is a masterclass in using the boat’s restricted space to build suspense. There is the Timothy Zahn-esque gambit pileup that builds through the film and erupts in pure chaos in the film’s last act, which involves all sorts of shenanigans with ships, elaborate parties for Germans (with great big band jazz music to boot—and not the boring Nazi-approved stuff), a Jewish secret agent, and a local nightlife impresario who hates fascists.

I do, though, have some unformed thoughts about how this film portrays Africa and Africans. The aforementioned nightlife impresario is a wonderfully sly character, played by Babs Olusanmokun, and is one of the best parts of the film. But I feel like one of the thematic emphases of the film coexists uneasily with its African setting. Much is made of how these commandos are breaking the ‘civilized’ rules of war, and how that is a necessary thing when fighting an enemy as ruthless and loathsome as Hitler. I don’t disagree with that per se, but I know enough about the history of international law to know that there was always a rule of ‘gentlemanly’ warfare between ‘civilized’ white people on the one hand, and unbridled savagery when Europeans fought those whose skin was darker than a lily. It was Hilaire Belloc who described British colonial policy as “whatever happens, we have got / the maxim gun, and they have not.” I am certain the Sudanese who fell at the hideously lopsided Battle of Omdurman, which Churchill witnessed as a war correspondent and soldier, would not have considered British conduct in that engagement ‘gentlemanly.’ Other than a few African characters, the film focuses mostly on the white inhabitants of a colonial society, for better and for worse. I’m not sure what could have been done here, and I don’t really think it’s fair to blame Ritchie and company for it, but I feel like there could have been a better way around it.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is, on the whole, good fun, perfect for those who wanted more like Inglorious Basterds or perhaps the Wolfenstein games, or those who enjoy Ritchie’s filmmaking style, or off-the-hook action in general, or old-fashioned war movies. It has its weak spots, but it makes up for them with good humor, good characters, good cinematography, and just plain old fun. I highly recommend it.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Review: Rebel Moon Part 2: Forgettable Boogaloo

In contrast with the ubiquitous fanfare surrounding the launch of Rebel Moon Part 1 last year, its sequel has come and gone almost unnoticed

Last year, Zack Snyder seemed pretty convinced that his space opera riff on Seven Samurai was going to become an instant classic. The intensity of the marketing reflected that expectation: it was made at a volume and intensity to match that of the movie itself. Such high hopes weren't rewarded: Rebel Moon Part 1 turned out to be an unbearable cacophony of hyperviolence in blurry sepia, exactly what could have been predicted of a project where Snyder had free rein to pull his favorite toys out of the box.

What would have been harder to predict was how much room there still remained for Snyder to out-Snyder himself in Rebel Moon Part 2. With even more gratuitous slow motion, misplaced flashbacks, confused politics, impossibly sculpted abs, unintentionally funny battle cries, and suffocating grandiosity, Part 2 dulls the senses via relentless overstimulation. I noticed, to my horror, that I was witnessing gory death after gory death after gory death—and yet I was feeling nothing. Mayhem erupted on my screen with the chaotic viscerality of putting a gremlin in a blender and it left no impression on me. This is the kind of ultra-derivative art that relies on borrowing the prestige of its influences and doesn't bother trying to appeal to the viewer on is own merits.

There was plenty of material in this story with which to make some powerful statement, if only Snyder had wanted to. Taking the plot of Seven Samurai and replacing the wandering bandits with a galactic dictatorship changes completely the dynamics of the conflict. This isn't a mercenary skirmish in a lawless land; it's now a peasant revolt against the official authorities. Is Snyder subtly equating a rigidly hierarchical government composed of space fascists with a loose band of outlaws? I'm kidding. Snyder doesn't do subtle. Rebel Moon doesn't have space fascists because it has something to say about fascism; it has them because it's what Star Wars did and Rebel Moon wants to be one of the cool kids. It doesn't burn entire minutes of runtime in loving close-ups of wheat harvesting because it's interested in the perspective of vulnerable farmers; it does it because it gives Snyder an excuse to point the camera at sweaty muscles. Rebel Moon takes no stance on its own themes. It's content to let you provide the missing message by remembering it from the movies it alludes to.

In terms of characterization, the team of heroes at the center of Rebel Moon don't get more than the quickest coat of paint to technically make them no longer two-dimensional. As if drawing from a D&D campaign, each of these characters' backgrounds can be summarized as "goons raided my village." To make the whole affair even more unimaginative, the two prominent women in the team, Kora and Nemesis, have a dead child in their respective tragic pasts, possibly revealing a limit to Snyder's ability to imagine women's motivations.

The figuratively moustache-twirling admiral who lands on Kora's village to steal the harvest is even less impactful this time. If in the first movie he was a blank slate whose function in the story was to look generically evil and serve as the vicarious target for the audience's frustrations with neofascism, now he's a bland rehash of his one-hit act. Whereas his first death was at least a satisfying punch-the-Nazi (with a laser gun) moment, the sequel's supposedly climactic showdown feels like a tedious formality before his mandatory second offing. A bloody fistfight in the lopsided deck of an exploding spaceship, with heavy machinery and discount lightsabers flying around, sounds like a set piece impossible to make look boring, but you shouldn't underestimate Snyder's talent for filling the screen with flashy blasts that carry no meaning.

The emotional beats that punctuate the third act repeat a few tropes Snyder can't seem to move on from: the last-minute ally who shows up to prevent someone's imminent death, the hero who deals the killing blow at the cost of his own life. Snyder has found his formula and is comfortable recycling it. He's so confident in the awesomeness of Rebel Moon that he ends Part 2 with the promise of a Part 3 that we can already bet will repeat the same filmmaking tics. But enough is enough. There are only so many ways you can make the screen explode while having nothing to say. Maybe Snyder needs to go back to filming established properties, or find collaborators less willing to go along with his obsessions, but this period of unrestrained self-indulgence needs to stop.

Nerd Coefficient: 2/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: Camp Confidential

Is it worth going to the stars if the launch pad is made of skulls?

At first hunch something feels distinctly wrong about an animated documentary - animation is obviously an abstraction of reality, in one way or another, and documentaries are supposed to capture reality directly, as impossible that can be; even photographs are distortions of reality, for the world is not still. Hence the idea of Netflix’s short documentary Camp Confidential was intriguing to me. It involves a peculiar secret project of the US Army during World War II, directly tied into the tension within the Allies that would spiral into the Cold War.

Camp Confidential is a short, slim documentary, a little over a half hour; it’s easy to watch, and won’t dominate an evening. In a way, the animated format makes it more accessible; not all of us have watched black-and-white footage in documentaries regularly, but most of us have watched cartoons, at least as children (but ever more so as the century goes on, as adult animation is more respected), and so there’s a certain degree of familiarity. The art style feels like a brighter version of an old war comic, lighter than squalid grimness but never becoming openly childish.

When you start the short film, you will quickly see live-action footage of interviews with elderly men who are the last survivors of what this film calls ‘camp confidential,’ a top-secret American military facility outside Washington D.C. By virtue of their experience, their age, and the exalted place to which modern America has elevated their generation (it’s not the ‘greatest generation’ for nothing), they are intimidating figures. You see the tape recorders warming up, the interviewer asking these venerable veterans several questions, first to set the scene, and then to move the story along.

Both of these men are Jewish. Indeed, the men profiled by this documentary were almost all Jewish, many who successfully got out of Europe before Nazism killed them (one says he was on the literal last ship before the war brought trans-Atlantic shipping grinding to a halt). Many members of their respective families were not so lucky (I’m reminded of the Austrian Jews who killed themselves after the Anschluss). These men, having fled to America, enlisted in the US Army, by virtue of revenge or principle or the draft card, were selected for this job for one reason: they all spoke German. One of them is depicted as reciting Goethe to an American officer, who waves him away, to be sent to this nameless place in the woods of Maryland.

It is from that ominous beginning that the true brilliance of the storytelling here begins to shine. The narrative scaffolding comes from the interviews, and the color of the experience, the je ne sais quoi of seeing, of feeling, rather than just reading or hearing, comes from the animation. There is an ultimate verisimilitude that derives from the interviews, of being in the ‘presence’ of such men, with such experiences, that grounds the film, but the animation, as odd as this sounds, makes you feel like you’re there.

It is only after some time that the mission that these young men have been assigned to is revealed: they are ordered to befriend German scientists who have been captured by the Allies to get information out of them. In pure linguistic terms, this makes sense, because they all speak German, but they are all quickly revolted by having to be friendly with the people who have profited off of the cold-blooded murder of their families and co-religionists. What follows is a wild ride, sometimes uproariously funny, but other times absolutely enraging.

It is a saying among some in international relations scholarship that states are not moral entities. They are algorithms, in a sense, pursuing blunt material objectives over any moral code (see how Russia, in Tsarist, Soviet, or Federal guise, has struggled and raged for a warm-water port for which to base its navy). As such, things like ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are in some sense mere propaganda. In any case, there is a question of ends justifying the means; some of these men have fun with the assignment, tormenting the Nazis in their own petty ways, and how this results finding Peenemunde, the German rocket testing range and development facility on the namesake island in the Baltic Sea, and its destruction by Allied bombers. One of the men remarks that this seemed like deserved comeuppance.

But this becomes ever more fraught, as if it weren’t already, by the transformation of their duties from interrogators to ushers: they must make these evil men accepting of America, so that they may aid America in its missile development in its arms race with the Soviet Union. As Germany was divided, as northern Iran and Greece and Korea became flashpoints of a new global order, America was more than happy to look beyond simple things like ‘war crimes’ and ‘genocide’ to exploit German scientists in its weapons development, and to use relatives of victims to ease them into their new role.

One of cleverest part of the documentary, as well as one of its most poignant, is its portrayal of Wernher von Braun, whose amoral dedication to science is commemorated in an amusing Tom Lehrer song. He is introduced as something of a cartoon villain, arriving on a boat on a literal dark and stormy night, complete with suitably sinister black coat and a flash of lightning. This obviously evil, othering portrayal slowly changes over the course of the documentary, mirroring the other Nazis; at first, you are seduced into believing that good, noble America could never bend to these men, but you eventually realize that there are far more commonalities between them. After all, Hitler said that “the Volga shall be our Mississippi,” reflecting an admiration of the vicious reality of America rather than its liberal propaganda; the idea of lebensraum was patterned quite explicitly after Manifest Destiny. It is in this awful convergence, this amoral concordance, that these men have been thrown into without much warning, and not much care for their feelings or well-being.

Camp Confidential is a warning for us in an age of high technology. In little more than half an hour, this film shows you the meaning of my favorite quote from Martin Luther King Jr. (which I confess to have learned from Civilization V):

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”

This film is an investigation into what ends justify what means. Was the space program worth it, if it used the graves of Jewish slave laborers as stepping stones to the stars? The film does not answer this question definitively, but it forces you to see, in excruciating detail, how the sausage was made.

--

The Math:

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10

POSTED BY: Alex Wallace, alternate history buff who reads more than is healthy.

Rebel Moon is the most Snyder that Snyder has ever been

Lucasfilm dodged a glowing, blurry, vaguely yellowish, excessively slowed-down bullet

One could summarize Rebel Moon as "the Zack Snyder of Star Wars," which would sound mean-spirited if it weren't its literal description. Conceived originally as Snyder's pitch for Lucasfilm and eventually rescued by Netflix, Rebel Moon files off the Star Wars serial numbers just enough to prevent lawsuits from the Mouse. As you would expect, it tells the story of a loosely assembled team of impromptu freedom fighters who rise up against a brutal interstellar empire. A tale as old as time, and one that Lucasfilm has kept profitable for nine movies and I forget how many TV shows. But Snyder's version of this formula, stripped of its identifiable markers for legal reasons, becomes a nameless, featureless collection of plot beats and cool poses. If there was ever a time when the infamous itch for canceling everything at Netflix could be used for good, it's now. There's no need for a Rebel Moon Part 2, or for all the multimedia spinoffs Snyder is reportedly preparing. This is not the galaxy you're looking for.

As I've written here before, I'm a fan of neither Star Wars nor Zack Snyder. Their missteps are plain to see to me. But even I was unprepared for the combination of the more generic, people-pleasing bits of the former with the more self-indulgent excesses of the latter. To put it in perspective: the production of the Barbie movie caused a brief scarcity of pink paint. Now that Rebel Moon is available on Netflix, has anyone checked on the world's supply of sepia pixels?

In theory, it should have been fascinating to watch a director's rendition of Star Wars without its distinctive visual identity. It would be a look behind the curtain, a dissection of the inner machinery that makes Star Wars go. Such a unique opportunity would help prove the case that a great portion of the transgenerational appeal of Star Wars has relied more on its art design than on its plotting. What is Star Wars without the double sunsets, the Stormtrooper armors, the outlandish hairstyles, the lightsabers? What is that story actually saying? You won't get that from Snyder's version. Instead of revealing the interior of a story without all the style getting in the way, Rebel Moon is nothing but style. Even worse, being only the first half of a planned duology, it hyperfocuses on character introductions. Far too many introductions, in fact. In a manner that brings to mind the first Suicide Squad movie, each of these heroes gets exactly one scene to look awesome and then dutifully retreats into the background, because this may be an ensemble cast, but the script only really cares for two characters.

Our protagonist, a Mysterious Lady of Mystery trying to keep a low profile in a remote rural planet but unable to keep in check her resting side-eye face, is, of course, more closely connected to the evil empire than she's let on. When a warship pays a visit to demand grain and the soldiers start getting dirty ideas about the local women, she is forced to blow her cover and singlehandedly wallops an entire squad while looking fabulous doing it. Then she runs away with her Designated Romantic Interest, but only because he knows the right people who know the right people who can help them amass forces for when the empire strikes back retaliates. This is the point when the plot turns into a succession of recruitment quests that go on for too long, don't serve to reveal their characters, and don't advance the story. We do get a handful of poster-worthy shots, which is what Snyder actually cares about. Instead of dramatizing the deep human questions that form the substance of the great epics, Rebel Moon is content with just looking epic.

Because filming 300 somehow didn't give Snyder his fill of rock-hard abs in desaturated slow motion, the fight scenes in Rebel Moon double down on all his filmmaking vices. You know how it goes: gory carnage filmed as if it were ballet, smoke and flying debris covering each shot you're trying to watch, and primal screams galore. The scenes that are not fights don't let the viewer have much of a breather, given Snyder's signature obsession with characters musing on a worthy way to die.

A story that consciously inserts itself in the tradition of Star Wars is expected to have something to say about empires. Episodes 4-6 showed how empires are less invincible than they make themselves appear in propaganda; episodes 1-3 showed how dangerously easy it is for a free society to degenerate into an empire; and episodes 7-9 showed how the shadow of the imperial impulse must be fought again in each generation. What say you, Episode Snyder? Empire bad. Empire go pew pew. Goodie need bigger pew pew.

Rebel Moon doesn't have time for its overcrowded cast to explore the themes of domination and exploitation in the context of the 21st century. It resorts to the most elemental trick of shining applause lights on your screen and expecting you to cheer, except these applause lights are full of dynamite. All the characterization that should make you care about these heroes is said to have been reserved for the extended cut, which says enough about Snyder's storytelling priorities. Just thinking of the fact that there is an extended cut makes me shudder with terror. I felt dead inside after spending two hours with this troupe of one-note permascowls, and I can't think of a good reason to add another full hour (and a sequel, and an extended cut of the sequel) to that ordeal.

Nerd Coefficient: 3/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Review: The Betrayals, by Bridget Collins

An intimate exploration of weak, flawed people doing small, right things

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino

We are all familiar with those moments of self-doubt that plague us in the dark of night. Degrees of triviality vary, from Did I have parsley in my teeth all through dinner? to Will the planet be safe for my children? The nature of our worries is as varied as our characters. But for those who have held an academic position—or indeed spent too much time sequestered in the studies of esoterica at college—the moments of self-doubt tend to take a more common form: Does my life mission matter? Does anything I do really matter?

Such concerns are the central theme of Bridget Collins’s novel The Betrayals. It focuses on a school, Montverre, a school whose sole concern is the study, creation, and development of the grand jeu, the national game of an ambiguously French-flavored European country. All the best government officials have a Montverre education; an acceptance at Montverre—either through demonstrated achievement at the grand jeu or family influence—is a ticket to future success. Montverre is a big deal. The grand jeu is a symbol of the nation, and Montverre is the heart of the grand jeu.

Yet the precise nature of the grand jeu is left as vague as the nation’s identity. We don’t learn how to play it, and, indeed, as one Magister at Montverre explains, the first place one goes wrong in playing the grand jeu is in playing it as if it were a game. The truly enlightened know that it is so much more than that. It combines principles of literary analysis, mathematics, and music, in wildly esoteric complexity, such that the Magisters of the school swear oaths of celibacy and dedicate their entire lives to exploring this discipline.

Meanwhile, in the outside world, the nation is turning fascist. Léo Martin is a minister for culture in the government, a loyal Party member, until one day he isn’t—not quite, not enough. A bit too lukewarm in support of Party efforts to maintain cultural purity, it seems, and a bit too zealous in writing memos against them. In short order he is told that he is going to resign his post, effective immediately, and retire to Montverre, to devote himself to the study of the grand jeu, his true passion in life, which he had set aside in a desire to serve his country,¹  but to which he now welcomes the opportunity to return. Such are his instructions. Oh, and Léo, while you’re there, would you be willing to keep in touch with us? Send us letters, let us know how you’re getting on, what’s happening inside Montverre, be a good chap.

Within the walls of the school is Claire Dryden, the Magister Ludi, unique in being the only woman who has been hired as a Magister for the school, due to a short-lived experiment with blind hiring. Everyone is a bit weird about it, not least Léo, who has spent 32 years being a full-throated good old boy. Oddly, she has in her possession Léo’s school diary, which relates the sequence of events in his boyhood that led him to win a gold medal for his second-year game assignment. As we learn, her interest in Léo is not a coincidence: Léo became quite close to a fellow student, Carfax, during this period, and Carfax was her brother. This makes things quite awkward between them, because the year Léo won his gold prize, Carfax committed suicide, under circumstances that have led Claire to blame him. And, indeed, Léo to blame himself.

The Betrayals alternates the past and present, showing us through Léo’s diary the past events that led up to the gold medal and Carfax’s suicide, while tracking the present political developments as the country descends further into fascism. Everything is filtered, remote, because the school is so withdrawn, but it’s impossible to miss the signs. Léo’s girlfriend goes missing, and it’s not clear whether she was disappeared or simply fled because she was Christian. Surely he must have known about her religion, a friend says. Wasn’t her name Christina? (No, Léo says, Chryseïs. As if that matters.) The one Christian boy at the school—the one who has to wear a star on his robes--is summoned by the police, ‘just to check some paperwork’.

There are trains.

Through all this, Léo writes letters to his former colleagues at the Ministry for Culture, just to keep his hand in the game, in case it’s possible for him to return from banishment. Although he tries hard not to say too much about the Magister Ludi (whom he feels quite drawn to, given his past history with her brother), he does give an awful lot of details about the entertaining disputes among the other Magisters. Disputes in which they discuss, for example, politics and government policy. As he eventually learns (to no surprise to the reader), the school’s remote isolation from worldly concerns is not enough to protect it from the political developments of the nation. You can’t hide from fascism.

The particular brilliance of this book is the way it avoids easy moral decisions. Yes, it would be a rousing tale of good against evil if Léo stood up to the government, took a stand, joined a resistance, recruiting from the Magisters and students to turn the grand jeu, that noble national game of this country, into a symbol of all that is good and right. We are not fascism; our game represents FREEDOM. And so on.

But this isn’t that book. The alternate history is only very slightly offset from our own, not enough to make it possible for one brave gang of rebels to defeat the not-quite-Nazis on the rise. This timeline is going to follow the same path our own Europe did. Fascists gonna fash.

And even if it were possible for a plucky gang of rebels to turn the tide of history, the people in this book are not those people. Léo is not a strong or a brave man. As a student he willingly took part in some brutal bullying of Carfax, and only changed his ways when forced, grudgingly, to work with him. Their last interaction before Carfax’s suicide can be read as an act of friendship, but it can equally well be read as a betrayal (see title), which more or less directly led to the tragic outcome.

As an adult, Léo is similarly slow and hesitant to do the right thing. Yes, he stands up to the Prime Minister, but only by writing a memo that he didn’t really believe would spell the end of his career. If he had, he would not have written it. When he has the opportunity to shield a Christian boy from being put on a train, he does it in the smallest, easiest way, that inconveniences him the least. When he writes his letters about the internal workings of Montverre, he shields the Magister Ludi, but he doesn’t even consider what his other statements might do. He always wants to keep his options open. He’s eager to return to government, even having seen from the inside the direction it’s going. (He’s also rather a misogynistic dick.)

So, no, this is not a book about heroes. This is a book about flawed, small people because righteous moral heroes are in short supply. We make compromises to survive, since stiff-necked rigidity can deprive us of friends and allies and comrades. We build connections with the people who are there, because in a growing hellscape, we need those to survive.

Heroes do The Right Thing. But in some circumstances there isn’t The Right Thing to do. There is only a lesser, smaller right thing. And sometimes that’s enough, and sometimes it isn’t. You can’t hide from fascism, and the people in The Betrayals are not the sort of people who can beat it. But by doing enough small right things, maybe they can survive it. 

——

1 Readers of Herman Hesse will recognize a heavy influence of The Glass Bead Game in this novel's conceit.^↩

Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 8/10: Well worth your time and attention.

Highlights:

• Academics being insufferable

• Rising fascism

• Ivory tower angst

References 

Collins, Bridget. The Betrayals. [The Borough Press, 2020].

——

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and a calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative.