Let's hear it for Johny Maxwell

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=Tamar

Lieutenant
May 20, 2012
11,961
2,900
#21
Aquamarine said:
Very weird books, but still pretty good. My favourite is Johnny and the Dead, especially when the ghosts start exploring the world around them, and when Johnny interrupts the sale of the graveyard. The other two are good, but their premises and how they're handled makes them feel so "out there" it's slightly alienating.
Johnny and the Dead is the most ordinary of his three adventures, since it doesn't seem to involve extradimensional travel or time travel for Johnny himself, just for the ghosts. I would have thought it was also the easiest to understand but I read one online review in which the reviewer seemed to get the story 100% backwards.
There's a wide range of tastes. I like a certain degree of weirdness in fiction.
 
Feb 4, 2013
56
2,150
#22
Re: Let\'s hear it for Johny Maxwell

=Tamar said:
Aquamarine said:
Very weird books, but still pretty good. My favourite is Johnny and the Dead, especially when the ghosts start exploring the world around them, and when Johnny interrupts the sale of the graveyard. The other two are good, but their premises and how they're handled makes them feel so "out there" it's slightly alienating.
Johnny and the Dead is the most ordinary of his three adventures, since it doesn't seem to involve extradimensional travel or time travel for Johnny himself, just for the ghosts. I would have thought it was also the easiest to understand but I read one online review in which the reviewer seemed to get the story 100% backwards.
There's a wide range of tastes. I like a certain degree of weirdness in fiction.
Oops! I'm embarrassed that I made such an obvious mix-up! Oh, me and my fallible memory.

I do still stand by my contention that Johnny and the Dead is the best of the three, at the very least in part because of what you say. However, Johnny and the Bomb has some fantastic scenes and a strong throughline, and I will always admire the ambition of the piece in showing the spectacle and urgency of what in context was a minor side note in the greater war (i.e. the bombing of one little street).

Trouble is that I always feel creeped out by the ending because it suggests he ended up in a completely different Trouser of Time, effectively lost to his original timeline and therefore his family and community. Maybe I'm overthinking it, but there seemed to be some pretty uncomfortable implications there, and that held the book back. (Well, that and Kirsty can be a real annoyance half the time and doesn't get interesting until later when she tones it down a bit or puts it to good use).

I haven't reread Only You Can Save Mankind yet, but I honestly don't remember being particularly impressed by it.
 

=Tamar

Lieutenant
May 20, 2012
11,961
2,900
#23
Re: Let\'s hear it for Johny Maxwell

I had the opposite impression, that it wasn't a Trousers of Time story, but rather a "you can make changes in your own timeline" story. So the changes that happened were all in his own timeline. The result was that his grandfather's life was changed by making him a hero instead of someone who had tried his best and failed, and that had knock-on results for his family's life - not enough to prevent the divorce, but enough to make his grandfather a much happier man, or at least less depressed. The community of course also had greatly changed lives, since the people of that street survived.
 
Feb 4, 2013
56
2,150
#25
Re: Let\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

I've reread Only You Can Save Mankind, as well as the other two books in the series. You know what? I'm going to take back what I said earlier about them being "pretty good". I'd go so far as to say that, were they not overshadowed by the rest of his output, these would collectively earn Terry Pratchett his high reputation. They are spectacular. Great works. Any less prolific author would be privileged to have written at the level these books reach.

(True, they're not perfect, and I daresay there are Discworld books that are much better. But even so, they're much better - as obscure side projects of Pratchett - than many front-and-centre works from other great authors.)

He mixes so many concepts together in thoroughly unexpected and deep ways. In the first book, it's comparing the computer game mentality with the distancing effects of electronic media on an actual war. In the second book, it's showing the complicated relationship the living have with the cemetery, and how the dead learn to keep up with the night and reinvent themselves in the process ("the living must remember and the dead must forget"). In the third book, it's how the time travel plot leads to all kinds of psychological observations: the distancing effects of history, Wobbler's hypocritical complaints that his grandfather didn't take his life-saving advice, and how attitudes have changed within fifty years.

The breadth of the books is impressive, too. Within a few pages: mentions, jokes, character notes, and observations can be made about computers, the run-down side of society, relativity, racism, cliches and cliche-bending, horrors and sobering facts about life and death, modern consumer life, family disputes, and the elderly.

What holds it all together is Johnny himself, who's bewildered but simultaneously has a strong moral compass. This means he's uniquely suited to dealing with what may be delusions and what may be the fantastic side of reality, simply by cutting to the most important moral points. It's also easy to identify with him too, given that his bewilderment is often a reflection of humanity's general cluelessness too, especially in the face of the bizarre, the improbable, and the inexplicable. He may muddle his way through the story, but he simultaneously tries his best to take it very seriously, the best kind of balance between being an anchor and being a reflection.

And, of course, the characters are pretty fun too, though not exactly Pratchett's deepest. But even when, say, Yo-Less is being used for yet another anti-stereotype joke or Wobbler's prowess with computers fluctuates from book to book, their conversations are still full of humour and come across as how a bunch of kids might (sometimes stupidly, sometimes fatuously, sometimes uselessly) try to wrap their heads around something strange and unexpected (or even ordinary and tedious).

The only disappointing things about the books are largely external: up against the rest of Pratchett's oeuvre, they're hopelessly overlooked. Considering they contain a huge dose of the humanistic and penetrating psychological insight Pratchett had in abundance, this seems distinctly unfair. And there were only three ever written. The series was so open-ended and creative that it feels like it could have gone on for several more books, covering all kinds of fantastic topics (imagine a Johnny Maxwell book about omnipresent phones and communication networks, or about religious stories in the modern secular world, or about the relationship between one's earliest childhood and one's older self in a "child is father to the man" sense).

These books absolutely warrant more popular distribution and recognition, even celebration. I strongly recommend them!
 

Mixa

Sergeant
Jan 1, 2014
1,017
2,750
Barcelona, Catalonia
#26
Re: Let\\\\\\\'s hear it for Johny Maxwell

Phew!! My heart stopped for a second when I read you were taking back the books were “pretty good”… Please don’t do that again, Aquamarine! XD

After reading your review I feel like wanting to reread them. I remember thinking the “Only You Can Save Mankind” plot was genial, but I can hardly recall the other two. I had a blast but I felt a bit confused every time the story became too philosophical and peculiar.

I definitely must give them a second chance!!

By the way, which is your favourite book from the trilogy? I believe I enjoyed “Johnny and the Death” a bit more than the rest.

Mx
 

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