Eisstation Zebra

[bungo]

I must be procrastinating with aplomb, as it has only taken a few weeks to finish Alistair MacLean's[*] Eisstation Zebra. Combine submarines, guns, satellites and, of course, ice, and you're all set for a rivetting thriller, with more murders than an Agatha Christie novel, just waiting to be turned into a movie, that's hardly aged at all[**]. Oh,

Comments

[reverancepavane]

Well, sure, Communism is dead and the Cold War is over. Apart from that, okay?
One thing I find quite amusing is that one of the popular Russian film genres of today is basically the James Bond franchise starring an intrepid FSB agent as the hero. Although with a lot less product placement than the current James Bond films, one must admit. And they are more likely to use mechanical SFX than CGI. Still, it has a lot of resonance with the old Cold War James Bonds. I wonder if it has to do with a similar feeling of "loss of Empire" on the world stage,* that embodies the state's power in one super-agent.
Still, it's definitely a change of place from the normal Russian cinema which tends to be overly surreal. [Nobody, and I mean nobody, does surreal better than the Russians.]
* Well yes, I know that Russia isn't actually a non-entity on the world stage, especially as it controls the fate of most of Europe each winter. But I hold that many felt this way at the time this genre really kicked off (and probably still do, at least as far as

[bungo]

I was thinking about casting the North Koreans as the villains instead of the FSB, for the remake. But the Bond people have already done that, too.

[reverancepavane]

I believe the current official flavour of the month bad guys are still Al Qaeda and the other militant Islamic groups, followed closely by non-militant Islamic groups (although authors of such works are insisting that there is no such thing), closely followed by evil anticapitalist transnational progressives and the socialist liberal death panels. The old standby villain of the various drug cartels seems to have essentially disappeared with the defacto acknowledgement that the War on Drugs has perhaps been lost.
Although the authors of such things have the problem that since all the cited groups are really cowardly terrorists there is no suitable foil for super-agents, so the protagonists just have to go around congratulating themselves for being real heroes, rather than actually doing anything heroic. Faceless bureaucrats do not a good enemy make. Neither do investment bankers for that matter.
Although it's interesting to see the near future US Civil War ("Reds* vs Blues") has been maturing slightly. Again, most of this fiction

[hnpcc]

I have to say the Bond film I've enjoyed the most was the first one with Daniel Craig - it's the only one which felt accurately updated in terms of villains. No super-villain controlling the world with an inexhaustible supply of minions; no world superpowers - just a lot of dodgy arms-dealing middlemen and some "top dogs" from a Godforsaken African bush war that the mainstream West hadn't heard of and didn't care about. It felt a lot more accurate than the one with Robert Carlyle, which was still mentally stuck in the Cold War but had been upgraded to have more than just Russian super-villains. I think. (Was that the one with the stealth boats? Because if not, that also was bad.)

[hnpcc]

Hm, I haven't read Ice Station Zebra for a while, can't remember how much dialogue there was. I do remember people being knocked off left, right and centre though. "Guns of Navarone" had one, very minor female character IIRC whose role was expanded in the film version (gotta have a love interest!) "Where Eagles Dare" had a slightly more major female character, ditto film version.

Hm, I appear to have read far too much Alistair MacLean growing up. I blame op shops.

I would argue Alistair MacLean was the much better written and less stupidly plotted Matthew Reilly of the 1960s. And yes I am basing that judgment solely on the one book of his that I've read and laughed hysterically at.