Lee's Blog

In the comments to the previous post, macaroni observes

Maybe Jack is a little afraid of his ability to defeat the “Black Wind” and believes he could win many smaller battles against evil in the future and that it would better serve “mankind” in that way. He just needed something to prod him off his logical thinking. Smile. He who runs away lives to fight another day….. No “Charge of The Light Brigade” for Jack.

That makes sense, but there are three points that argue against it.

First, Glaeken has survived for 15,000 years battling against the Adversary. He isn’t into the “Charge of The Light Brigade”. Granted, he’s telling Jack to act instead of doing it himself, but Jack is his Heir — the one who will take over the defense of the world when he is gone. Glaeken would never tell Jack to charge to his death. He told Jack to perform a physically demanding task that he himself is no longer up to, that’s all. And in fact, as it turns out, there really isn’t any physical danger; the important thing is to keep moving as fast as possible so as to kill the focus of the Black Wind before the mental effect (feelings of depression and futility) is able to stop you.

Second, even if this were a situation where Jack had to leave tens of thousands — maybe hundreds of thousands — to die because he had to live to fight another day (which is a situation that Glaeken might really have found himself in), he should have felt regret. Indeed, if he were not a narcissistic sociopath, he would reasonably have been calling Glaeken names because Glaeken ordered him to leave those people to die. This actually happens sometimes with firefighters and the like, I am told — they know that they cannot save people, but it tears them up not to try.

There is no possibility that Jack would react like the firefighters, however. He made that absolutely clear in a previous book, Harbingers, where he stated that, if Vicky and Gia died, he would leave everyone else in the world, including his supposed friends Abe and Julio, and his beloved sister’s children, to die horribly, and that he would not lift a finger to save any of them. Instead, in that book, he sadistically trapped and killed four of the firefighters who were carrying on the fight that he explicitly refused to join.

Third, there is still the fact that Jack called Glaeken a name because Glaeken pointed out that the people that Jack “loves” — in his stunted, narcissistic fashion — will also die if he does nothing.

Think of this in purely realistic terms. Imagine that Glaeken and Jack are in an apartment building late at night, and they observe a man pouring liquid all around the building. Glaeken says that the man is a known arsonist and that the liquid smells like gasoline, so he must be planning to burn the building with everyone sleeping inside. Glaeken tells Jack to stop the man from lighting the gas, because Glaeken is not able to limp down there and stop him in time. Jack says no, trying to save all those people would endanger his own valuable hide. Glaeken says, “Vicky is at a sleepover in this building.”

Is the natural reaction to call Glaeken a bastard for pointing out to him that Vicky is in danger too? Or to thank him for preventing Jack from making a horrible mistake — leaving Vicky to die with all those others?

I would understand Jack’s reaction (not sympathize or agree, but understand) if Glaeken had said, “Some of those who will die are nine-year-old girls just like your Vicky, just as cute, just as well-loved, with just as much potential that will be wiped away through your refusal to save them.” That really would be emotional manipulation, trying to reach whatever fragment of conscience Jack may possess, trying to show him that there is something going on that he “cannot abide in his sight”.

But Glaeken’s statement simply brought to his attention that Vicky and Gia really were in danger. How could that warrant calling him names? Unless, of course, in Jack’s mind, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because it forces him to actually live up to his claim that he loves Vicky and Gia more than life itself. To him, Glaeken’s statement counts as emotional manipulation because he would rather walk away and let all those people die including Vicky and Gia, and after they were dead he would just shrug and say, “Well, that’s not my fault because Glaeken didn’t explicitly warn me that they were in danger, but now that they’re dead, I don’t ever have to lift a finger against the Adversary.”

So, with all due respect to macaroni, no, I don’t think Jack’s actions are explicable by his thinking this is a “Charge of The Light Brigade” situation.

There are times when I really, sincerely, despise Repairman Jack and wonder why I even read the books. Case in point: “By the Sword”.

At the beginning of this book, Jack is “fund-raising” by enticing muggers in Central Park to try to rob him, then incapacitating them and taking their ill-gotten gains, which he will donate to the Little League. As he leaves the park, he sees a thug about to attack an old man, and he decides to intervene because there are certain things that “I will not abide in my sight”, such as beating up a defenseless old man. The old man in question is Glaeken (the Sentinel who’s been defending the Earth and humanity for 15,000 years), so he handily dispatches the thug by himself, but we’re supposed to think that Jack is an honorable person.

Fast forward to a later scene. The sole surviving member of a murderous cult has just invoked the “Black Wind”, which was demonstrated earlier as capable of killing absolutely every living thing within a very wide distance. The earlier usage was in an uninhabited area and only five people died. This time it is in New York City. Jack and Glaeken are watching from the roof of the next building.

Glaeken describes the action of the cloud, says “more than three thousand will die tonight …. Imagine the terror. Imagine the Adversary’s joy. You’ve got to stop that [person].” Jack whines that he can’t just shoot the guy because it’s too far. “Then you’ll have to go over there.” “Swell.” Jack is unenthusiastic because “Jack didn’t feature entering that place and fighting his way to the roof for nothing.”

Well, you know, Glaeken is 15,000 years old. He’s seen quite a lot in that time. He has senses that perhaps the rest of us lack. He says the guy has to be killed to save thousands of lives. Perhaps Jack should listen to him. But no, Jack continues to whine and ask for explanations as the Black Wind grows. Finally Glaeken points out that the Black Wind may last “long enough for the winds to reach Sutton Square and beyond.” Sutton Square is where Jack’s girlfriend lives.

Jack responds, “”You’re a bastard, you know that.”

No, Jack, Glaeken is perfectly justified in calling you names, but not vice-versa. Jack can’t “abide in his sight” an old man being beat up, but he’s perfectly cool with standing by and watching thousands murdered — thousands of defenseless old men and women, helpless children, the pregnant teenage girl that he believes to be in the basement of the building currently being engulfed by the Black Wind. And he calls Glaeken names? If I used that sort of language, I’d call him a lot worse.

In fact, my only criticism of Glaeken is that, if I’d been writing the book, he would have said, “I’m an old man and I’ve fought the Adversary for fifteen thousand long years. I doubt I can stop this Black Wind but I cannot and will not run from it. I will take the sword and try to stop it. You run away, little Heir, and prepare yourself to be the Sentinel after my death, but run far and run fast, because the Adversary will know I’m dead, and he will be looking for you and yours.”

Why should Glaeken even argue with this utterly selfish, utterly useless “Heir” in an attempt to get him to recognize the need to risk — not necessarily lose but merely risk — his own life to save tens or even hundreds of thousands of innocents. Maybe shaming him would do some good, though I doubt it. He’s too selfish to even worry about losing the favor of the most ancient living being in the world. He’s too selfish to think that he should “give back” a bit to a man who has suffered and sacrificed for him and his loved ones for thousands of years.

Unfortunately, I already know the end of Nightworld. Jack survives.

So, I got F. Paul Wilson’s latest, Ground Zero, on my Kindle, of course. This is part of a continuing series, and is definitely not recommended for anyone but a fan who has read the previous books. Also, it ends with: “Excited, he hurried after the One to tell him.” Only a fan would want to wait until fall for the rest.

Anyway, back to Anya Mundy. So, here’s the setup. Imagine you’re a supernatural being as old as life on Earth. For thousands of years, you have been harried from pillar to post by the Otherness, which is now gaining power at a rapid rate. You have recently been severely injured by the Otherness. If you are destroyed, everyone and everything on Earth will die, slowly and horribly. You have been told that the Otherness has come up with some new ghastly thing, which you cannot detect because sometimes you can’t detect things of the Otherness, although human beings can. One of your human allies has gone to investigate. All clear so far?

So, your human ally comes running back, screaming at you to run, get away. He seems to be striking at something invisible — striking and even shooting at it. You ask what he’s doing, and another human ally says he’s attacking a man. A man. That both of them can see clearly, and you can’t. Hmm. Kind of like those Otherness things that humans can see clearly and you can’t, don’t you think?

Now both of your human allies are screaming at you to run. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to, like, run? Just run before the Otherness thing (whatever it is — who cares?) gets to you?

Only an idiot would hang around and ask them to explain. They can explain later! Grab the dog, transform yourself into a teenage girl, strong, long-legged, and — especially — fleet of foot; tell the dog to transform into a greyhound, and run! Or, given that the spirit of the world probably doesn’t need to travel by the same means as human beings, go check out the weather in Antarctica.

So what does she do? Hang around and ask them to explain, until the Otherness thing gets her.

Idiot.

In Repairman Jack: a new identity, I described four candidates for Jack’s new identity: Richard Westphalen (my personal favorite candidate), Lew Ehler, Miles Kenway, and Jim Zaleski. In mentioning the latter three, I was working from memory since the book was out of print and my copy was in Oklahoma. However, the book has since come back into print and I have a copy.

Miles Kenway is out — he’s too old. It’s a pity he died, as I really liked him.

Jim Zaleski is out — he has a brother. I didn’t greatly regret his death, as he was a jerk.

Lew Ehler remains a candidate, as he stated that he had no close relatives and his age appears to be right.

Again, what bothers me is that Jack never even considered any of these guys, especially Richard. Every time he would moan about the difficulties of finding a new identity, I would mutter “Richard! Richard!” between gritted teeth.

It happens that I am a fan of the Repairman Jack series. Since a new book is coming out in October, I am rereading the existing series. I don’t know anyone else who reads this series, so I can’t comment on it to anyone in person. But I’ll comment here.

Sometimes Jack drives me nuts with his obtuseness. For instance, in The Haunted Air, his problem is that his girlfriend is pregnant, and in order to marry her and be a real father to the child, he needs to “come up from underground” — become a full member of society. But he can’t do that using his own actual identity, because if he did that the IRS and all other authorities would wonder where he’d been for fifteen years and why he hasn’t filed any tax returns in that time.

So he needs a new identity. Here are the requirements for the new identity:

• Male
• White
• Within ten years either way of Jack’s age
• Sincerely and deeply dead, but death is unknown to the authorities and will never be discovered by them
• No inconvenient friends or family that will come looking for him

Here are some nice-to-haves:

• Native English speaker (since Jack doesn’t speak any other languages)
• U.S. citizen
• Paid his taxes until his (recent) death

Let’s think long and hard. Do we know anyone in the Repairman Jack universe who fits these requirements? I can think of at least one, possibly as many as four.

Let’s start with (drumroll please) Richard Westphalen.

• Richard is certainly male (he fathered a child).
• He appears to be white, since Gia is white (she’s a blond of Italian descent) and there is no mention that he or Vicky is racially different from her.
• There is no mention that either Jack or Richard is dramatically different in age from Gia, so presumably they are both close to her age and therefore to each other’s ages.
• He is sincerely and deeply dead, but the authorities don’t know that and they will not find his body as he was eaten by rakoshi.
• His only living relatives were his aunts and Vicky; Kusum killed his aunts, Vicky won’t go looking for him, and he appears to have had no actual friends who cared about him (he offered his current girlfriend’s life to Kusum in trade for his own).
• He was English and a native English speaker.
• He became a U.S. citizen after marrying Gia.
• Since he became a U.S. citizen in order to pay U.S. taxes instead of U.K. taxes, presumably he actually did pay his taxes.

Taking over Richard’s identity would appear to me to be a simple matter of identity theft (and Jack demonstrated in Crisscross that he could do that) and then smuggling Jack into England. At that point, he could just return to the U.S. using Richard’s passport (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). He could mark time for a few months while using Richard’s money to hire accountants to straighten out the tax situation, then legally change his name to Jack something, making it harder for anyone to notice that Richard Westphalen seems to have … changed. At that point, he could marry Gia and proceed with life.

Assuming he doesn’t want to use Richard’s identity, there are the other possibilities of Lew Ehler, Miles Kenway, and Jim Zaleski, all of whom were eaten by the Otherness in Conspiracies. They are all male, appear to be white and roughly the right age, are certainly dead with no inconvenient bodies, and were native English speakers and U.S. citizens. They may or may not have friends and family, so Jack would have to investigate that before adopting any of their identities.

Since the new identity is supposed to be a major problem for Jack, I can see that the author (F. Paul Wilson) has to prevent him from using such easy solutions. But he doesn’t prevent him — Jack simply never thinks of the possibility even though he has months to do so. Taking over Richard’s identity was the first thing I thought of when the possibility of rejoining the citizenry was mentioned, and it annoys me that Jack never, ever thinks of it, and neither does Abe, who presumably knows something of Richard’s fate.