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One thing I particularly love in fiction, is heroes who drive recklessly. They don't drive badly - these fictional heroes (they're usually heroes) never get into an accident or cause them. They are usually high-action guys like James Bond.

It doesn't count if they are race or stunt drivers or if they only drive wildly in chase scenes - I don't usually like car-chase scenes. It does count if they are habitually in a hurry, or just like to show off.

I'm thinking of heroes who drive wildly just for the joy of it - Bodie springs to mind, the prime example, squealing around corners and stopping on a dime, once doing so an inch from Doyle's front bumper. Perfect.

Then there's Aral Vorkosigan, flying drunk in his light-flyer through the chasms of Barrayar.1 If I recall correctly, he was drunk enough to fall limply and therefore survive when he crashed. Admittedly, he was somewhat suicidal at the time. This doesn't lessen the appeal.

There's Johnson Johson, driving blind at night in the mountains of Yugoslavia.2

And how happy I am to add Captain Jack Harkness to the list. I was tickled to learn in Torchwood Another Life that Captain Jack doesn't have a driver's license. Of course he doesn't! He's not on record anywhere. Why hadn't I even thought of that? Now I'm reading Torchwood Slow Decay by Andy Lane, and it has some delicious passages about Jack's driving, like this from the beginning of chapter two:
Jack was driving. That was always a bad thing as far as Toshiko was concerned. Especially when she was navigating. He seemed to assume that when she said 'right' or 'left' then that abrogated any responsibility he had to check for other traffic, pedestrians, building, or, in one instance a few minutes ago, the existence of a roundabout which he then went the wrong way around.

A man accustomed to driving a spaceship has probably cultivated the wrong attitude for driving on simple two-dimensional roads. And as for parking:
'...Even if we did have a Torchwood helicopter,' Jack continued, 'where would we land it? SUVs are easier to park.'

'Last time we went out in this vehicle,' Toshiko said quietly, 'you parked it in the foyer of an office block. The time before that, you parked it in the middle of the Taff Bridge. I can't help feeling that finding suitable parking spaces is not high on your list of priorities.'


1 Lois McMaster Bujold. I think this is in Shards of Honour, when Aral thinks he has lost Cordelia and is drinking heavily to dull the pain. Does anyone remember for sure?

2 A reference to Dorothy Dunnett's novel Dolly and the Nanny Bird, or Split Code.


Date: 2007-04-29 03:00 pm (UTC)
ext_6615: (Default)
From: [identity profile] janne-d.livejournal.com
*checks email excitedly* Got it, thanks!

I didn't know it ever appeared in one volume! Have you read it yet? I read the first book and was somewhat underwhelmed; haven't decided whether to read the others

Oh yes, I read them all when I was a child. Though I have to admit that the cover of the book scared me too much to try them for ages! (It has a stained glass window design on it with a skull and some other creepy things).

The first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, I think is by far the weakest - it was written quite a while before the others I believe and isn't as connected to the others, or as intense (it feels like it's for younger readers to me). I think that is why they are starting the film adaptation with the second, The Dark is Rising, which won at least one award for children's literature and is just fabulous - chilling and intense and hard in some of the choices that happen, with old myths woven in beautifully.

The other three are just as good as The Dark is Rising - Over Sea, Under Stone gives a taste and it's good to have read it for things that happen later, but the sequence doesn't really get going until the second book. Susan Cooper is particularly good at building a very unsettling atmosphere and some of the scenes from the later books still stick with me as being very powerful (and creepy, some of them).

This is one reason I postulated that she might be psychic; there's just enough textev to make it plausible, and if gives Jack a good reason for wanting her around.

Yeah, that would work for me though I'm not sure it was what the writers were thinking. I can see Jack wanting someone with some real-world investigation skills to bolster his team of bad-at-social-interaction geeks, someone who can deal with the public and the police for him, and who's trained in procedures and techniques that the others presumably aren't. And Gwen does seem to do some of that for them, but I would think Jack would also want a bit more than that rather than just enticing the first policeperson to catch his eye.

Of course, it could just be that Jack thinks she's cute and sexy

It probably didn't hurt! Maybe Gwen caught his attention, and then he looked her up and decided she had useful qualities... I don't really see how Jack could know that Gwen had psychic abilities at that point.

Though "ordinary" is hardly a word I'd use for Gwen, either. She's a emotion-generator.

"We're running low on empathy again! Hook up the emotion-generator, quick!"

Probably not quite how you meant that phrase, but it did give me a lovely image of Gwen as a kind of smiley device in the Hub that Jack turns on when he thinks everyone is getting too jaded...


Date: 2007-04-29 04:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] fajrdrako.livejournal.com
Got it, thanks!

Great.

It has a stained glass window design on it with a skull and some other creepy things

Neat. I don't recall ever seeing those covers - but I don't recall seeing the books much in stores, and a compendium volume, not at all. Perhaps it wasn't marketed to Canada...?

t feels like it's for younger readers to me

Yes, I thought that, and it seemed fairly superficial to me. Or perhaps the material that was actually there didn't seem to fit with the weightiness that was implied to be there. Thanks for the encouragement about reading the second book.

I would think Jack would also want a bit more than that rather than just enticing the first policeperson to catch his eye.

I think he ought to hire Swanson. He could do it. He could pay her more.

it did give me a lovely image of Gwen as a kind of smiley device in the Hub that Jack turns on when he thinks everyone is getting too jaded...

And then organizes a game of basketball. That's our Gwen.

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