skygiants | (no subject)

Samit Basu's Turbulence and Resistance are pretty much giant, affectionate meta-superhero fanfics, which could be a bug but for most people, including Basu, is probably more of a feature.

In Turbulence, a bunch of passengers on a transcontinental flight to Delhi develop superpowers. There is no scientific basis for this as far as anyone can tell. The superpowers are based on the personalities-slash-secret desires of the people involved -- so, like, pretty straightforwardly, the upright fighter pilot becomes a flying superman and the housewife who's disappointed by her life choices finds that she can constantly replicate herself so she can have ALL the choices; less obviously, the wildlife conservationist becomes an angry were-tiger, and a teenager finds that his decisions about what to eat control the weather, FOR REASONS UNCLEAR. Bob's motivations never really get all that deeply explored.

Some people are immediately ready to launch into media-friendly patterns of behavior; genre-savvy Aman, who has internet-manipulation superpowers, is like, "WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO IMPROVE THE WORLD!" ("but you never wanted to improve the world or go into nonprofit work or anything before having superpowers!" "...well it's DIFFERENT NOW!") while Invincible Military Guy (distinct from Fighter Pilot Superman) immediately goes full Magneto and out the other side ("humans are irrelevant now, so I don't want to rule the world, I really just kind of want to conquer it"). On the other end of the spectrum you have Uzma the magically charismatic aspiring actress, who really, really just wants to make it in Bollywood and couldn't care less about superhero hijinks.

Anyway, despite everyone's best efforts to avoid it, everything ends with an enormous knock-down drag-out landmark-destroying superhero fight; the book is not so much trying to avoid cliches as pointing them out, having people complain about them, and then gleefully embracing them anyway. Using blunt and often deeply unethical superpowered instruments to change the world is probably a really bad idea, but, I mean, eh, we have these superpowers so why not, right? WHY NOT.

According to Basu, if Turbulence is the Superman book, Resistance is the Batman book; it picks up eleven years later, when lots more people have increasingly ridiculous superpowers and knock-down drag-out landmark-destroying superhero fights have become wildly commonplace. Some of the people from Resistance are now famous superheroic figures with TV shows about them, some of them have gone off the grid, and some of them have retreated to secret supervillain islands and are relishing every second of it.

Meanwhile, one brave non-superpowered Japanese playboy with a grudge against superheroes is leading a double life, developing superpowered robot armor, and has a scheme to wildly alter the world as we know it!

(Meanwhile meanwhile, some dude with monster-making superpowers known as the Kaiju King is hanging out somewhere near Tokyo and sending a new giant monster to attack the city every month or so. This is all he wants in life. You do you, man. You do you.)

I admire a lot of things about Resistance -- mostly how it just kind of embraces the premise of "superpowers will change the world in WILD, OFTEN TERRIBLE ways!" and just GOES for it 110% -- and other things frustrate me, like the fact that a lot of the plot hinges on the fact that the protagonist refuses to tell anyone his plans even when there is really no point in keeping them secret. Also, even in text form, that level of property damage is hard to read about! Also also, in both Turbulence and Resistance, I am offended on behalf of some of the really incredibly underdeveloped characters. I'm sorry, Anima! In a better world, you could have been three-dimensional!

All the same, overall the books were highly enjoyable. I give them:
+ 10 points for the part when the superpowered mad scientist and the teenage weather controller get into a huge argument about whether comic-book superheroes represent the best aspirations of human ambition or the banalities of US capitalism, and then it turns out that neither of them have read any of them
+ 5 points for "Brucing," a hipster phenomenon in which angry young rich kids go train in martial arts in Tibet in an attempt to retain relevance in a superhero world
+ 20 points for the part when Internet Superpowers Guy, in his efforts to change the world for the better, sets all donation links for conservative parties around the world to redirect to rickroll
+ 30 points for Infinitely Replicable Tia, who is terrifying, and dies like 400 times a book, and nonetheless loves her life so much
+ 50 points for the boring romance that suddenly takes an amazing left turn into SUPERPOWERED NEMESES IN LOVE, aka everything I always want in life

On the other hand, I also give them:
- MINUS A BILLION points for the surprise human centipede reference. THERE WAS NO WARNING SIGNAL. I DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS.

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/413661.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kore

surprise human centipede reference

AUGH

From:

skygiants

shati and I have SPECIFICALLY DEVELOPED a warning signal to use when such a reference might be forthcoming, just so these things don't happen!

From:

kore

What is it, a typed-out Wilhelm scream?

From:

skygiants

No, that's the difficulty, it's a terrified flailing hand signal! Difficult to use in text mediums. :(

From:

rachelmanija

I've been meaning to read these! They sound delightful. Especially Uzma.

From:

skygiants

Uzma is delightful! Sometimes astoundingly unethical. But delightful nonetheless. I'm looking forward to seeing what you think of them!

From:

schneefink

+ 20 points for the part when Internet Superpowers Guy, in his efforts to change the world for the better, sets all donation links for conservative parties around the world to redirect to rickroll

*dreamy sigh*

From:

skygiants

MOMENT OF PURE WISH-FULFILLMENT

From:

luzula

This is so weird: I opened two tabs just now and both of them (including this one) contained the phrase "you do you", which I have never heard before. What does it mean? Has it always been around and I have just never come across it?

From:

skygiants

I think I first started hearing it a few years ago? Basically connoting "well, your choices may be incomprehensible, but they seem to make you happy, so ... sure! Okay!"

From:

luzula

Ah, okay. Thanks!

From:

brownbetty

Can also be used passive-aggressively, like "well you're impossible to argue with, so carry on!"

From:

kalloway

These sound amazing and I just put in a library request for Turbulence.

some dude with monster-making superpowers known as the Kaiju King is hanging out somewhere near Tokyo and sending a new giant monster to attack the city every month or so. This is all he wants in life.

I'm not sure if that would get boring after awhile or if there are enough Godzilla movies to recreate monsters from. After awhile, I imagine he'd have to start coming up with original designs that would trigger some performance anxiety. Imagine if his monster!koala is a complete bust...

From:

sovay

Imagine if his monster!koala is a complete bust...

It doesn't really rampage; it just hangs off the sides of buildings and is surly at people.

From:

kalloway

'But it seemed like such a good idea at the time!'

And then he really outdoes himself just to keep numbers on his YouTube or something.

From:

skygiants

It's worse than that -- his power is that he makes use of basically whatever he finds floating in the ocean, so sometimes this is a giant evil sea turtle or what have you, and sometimes it's, like, a giant evil soda can. SOMEWHAT LESS IMPRESSIVE.

From:

lnhammer

LOL

From:

davidgillon

Imagine if his monster!koala is a complete bust...

Does not compute, Giant Drop-Bear for the win!

From:

sovay

Minus the human centipede reference, these sound really lovely! Am I correct that these are all non-U.S.-centric superheroes, too?

From:

skygiants

Almost all, yes! A significant chunk of Resistance takes place in the US and the superhero team has a Token Manly US Teammate Who Looks Good On the Television Screens, but the main characters are all Indian (like Samit Basu) or British-Pakistani, or, in the second book, Japanese.

From:

sanguinity

No, no, no, PLUS A BILLIONTY POINTS for the surprise human centipede!

From:

skygiants

IF YOU APPRECIATE SURPRISE HUMAN CENTIPEDES YOU CAN HAVE ALL OF THEM.

Edited Date: 2015-05-31 04:48 am (UTC)

From:

sanguinity

ALL MINE YAY HOORAY!

BTW, took some first-timers to Powell's this weekend: one came away with fourteen books, and the other came away with $300 of books. And that was on the first visit.

I repeat myself: you made your saving throw when you came to town. ;-)

From:

lacewood

Upon investigation, apparently the library has Turbulence, but not Resistance. Why would you do this to me, library. WHY.:(

From:

skygiants

Turbulence stands alone, though! No cliffhangers or anything, really. If you wait eleven years to read Resistance, it'll just be deeper story immersion? :D

From:

fiercynn

oh man, these are totally going on my "to check out" list! They sound like a lot of fun!

From:

skygiants

I super enjoyed them! If you read them, will look forward to seeing what you think. :)

From:

bookblather

Aw man I was all excited about how amazingly ridiculous these books sounded and then SURPRISE HUMAN CENTIPEDE REFERENCE. Nobody needs that. Nobody needs that at all.

From:

skygiants

SAMIT BASU BEGS to DIFFER

From:

kalloway

Wandering back in, I finished Turbulence today and am looking forward to requesting Resistance.

(And while I should have expected so much of the obvious in Turbulence, I was hoping for a few more twists, because so much was obvious even when it maybe shouldn't have been...)

From:

skygiants

Yeah, Turbulence is really not going for the surprise factor at all, just screaming 'I AM A SELF-AWARE SUPERHERO NOVEL!' from the rooftops. Resistance is ... somewhat more surprising, but mostly because half the plot twists are wildly randomized. It's an interesting jump, though!