You’ve got to admit, Solomon Kane is a pretty fine name for a puritan avenger. Robert E. Howard, his creator, was good at conjuring up two dimensional characters for the pulps with just a few sinewy words, and in Kane he created a subgenre. Grant Morrison tapped into it with Klarion the Witch-Boy, one of his series for the interconnected Seven Soldiers comics extravaganza. And I have memories of Hammer films drinking from the same bloody well. But, as far as I’m aware, Howard got there first.

And now we have Solomon Kane the movie. Which is a good romp, but sadly does all the obvious things with the source material without adding any particular flair. Pity — but if you’re after a bit of b-movie hokum, you’ll find Solomon Kane thoroughly enjoyable.

Problem is, it’s all a bit formulaic. You’ll have seen bits and pieces of this before, and though the execution is credible it’s lacking the sort of pizzazz that took, say, Evil Dead or the Indiana Jones films to the next level of quality and enjoyment. The state of play is established in the pre-title sequence, set in North Africa, in which Kane is revealed to be a badass fighter whose leadership style boils down to killing his own men before the enemy gets the chance. Some supernatural gubbins goes down, and next thing you know our (anti) hero is being holllered at in a death metal voice by one of Satan’s lackeys, promising that Solomon will be relieved of his soul for his temerity. Only, said lackey doesn’t bank on SK leaping out of the window of the tower where all this is going down, and being swept away by a river. Lackey bellows after SK that his soul is still forfeit, etc.

Anyway, Solomon makes it back to England, where he declares himself a man of peace. And having been expelled by some kindly monks concerned about what diabolical torment they’re due for sheltering the former swordsman, he sets off on foot to find his destiny. Which turns up pronto in the form of Pete Postlethwaite and family, Postlethwaite’s craggy face being ideal for a weatherbeaten pilgrim without recourse to prosthetics.

There are baddies afoot, too, and the family run afoul of them. Refugees from a goth metal promo, the dark warriors are a-collecting slaves, and Postlethwaite’s family will complete the set. Only, they hadn’t banked on Kane being there to protect them — he tries the Mo Mowlam negotiating thing first, but lacking her fright wig has to resort to violence after all of fifty seconds. Which of course condemns him even more surely to lose his soul.

Anyway, you get the gist. Kane sets out to avenge Postlethwaite, who in his dying breath promises that the warrior will be redeemed if he can save his daughter Meredith. And that sets the direction for the rest of the film. All of which is more or less capably executed, but painted sketchily and without some of the connective tissue between scenes that would have made it flow better and engaged the audience more with what’s at stake.

More on the latter point: genre stories often rush the bits where there’s potential for the audience to really get caught up in a character’s plight. Result being, instead of authentic feelings being generated, you get a shorthand version of all that: tropes rather than emotions. See also: James Bond films, where it’s taken as long as the new Casino Royale for the audience to be convinced that Jimmy really does feel something for his lady of the day.

There’s another trap that the film falls into: the belief that the end of the film needs a fight with something that looks like a level boss from a computer game. Really, all this achieves is a lot of expenditure on CGI. See also Hellboy: the clockwork Nazi was infinitely more interesting than the big badass monster. Yawn. And this even after writer-director Michael J. Bassett went to the trouble of establishing a formulaic but workable connection to the evil in the story with Kane’s family: instead of capitalising on that, it devolves into Star Trek: Next Generation style parent/child wibble. Shame.

It’s been an interesting evening. I caught A Single Man with a friend earlier, who told me a tale that continues to make me furious. She’s a playworker, and went with some of her colleagues for an after work drink. As it happens, her line manager is gay, as is another person above her in the hierarchy. A couple of other members of the team, one a volunteer, are not. And the most senior manager present and her girlfriend texted the parents of those junior colleagues to break the news that they’re gay. Because we all know how funny coming out is, and how welcoming families are of news like that.

All of which emphasises why A Single Man is set in 1962, at a time when homosexuality really was the love that daren’t speak its name, and lives could be blighted by the suspicion of it. Colin Firth has never been better than he is here as George Falconer, an English professor at a middling college whose male lover has just died. Only, who can he open up to about his feelings? Does he even have access to them himself, having constructed a life that scrupulously avoids any kind of emotional connection? It’s more than a conundrum, it’s a desperately lonely position he inhabits, one that’s hard for most people — even, I suspect, many modern gay people — to identify with.

We follow George as he goes about his business, an affable if somewhat distant man. He’s polite to his neighbours, flirtatious with the departmental secretaries, tangentially addresses issues around gayness with his students. And he even has a female confidante, and ex lover, in the form of the divine Julianne Moore as fellow English pal Charlie, who delights in her femininity and wonders what would have happened if she and George had been an item long term. Only Charlie doesn’t ‘get’ George any more than anyone else, George included.

The friend I saw the film with said she found the pace of the film slow, but when we discussed it realised that the story is packed with incident. As well as the business already alluded to, George has a close encounter with a Spanish James Dean wannabe, skirts round picking a guy up at a bar, and brings back one of his students home with him. Also, he has a groovy dance with Charlie that serves the same purpose as a sex scene would in most films, showing the two characters becoming closer through physical intimacy. Oh, and he puts a loaded gun in his mouth, and takes quite a while working out how to shoot himself in such a way that he causes minimum bother to his cleaner.

In other words, there’s plenty happening. But part of Tom Ford’s remarkable skill as director in this, his first film, is the way he segues from one scene to another in a very natural way. There’s an ease to it all, and that ease also encompasses the flashbacks and fantasy sequences within the story. Between the confidence of the direction and the strength of the performances, this really is a remarkable film.

As well as directing, Tom Ford co-produced and co-wrote the script with David Scearce, an adaptation of a Christopher Isherwood story. For the most part it’s a very capable script, though there were a few moments when it seemed too on the nose. Those nasal beats are few and far between, and maybe only perceptible to a curmudgeon such as myself.

Kudos too for music which complements the mood of the story to perfection: Abel Korzeniowski provided the bulk of the original score, and there’s skilful use made of period albums for good measure. In all, it’s as truly beautiful film and one that will stay with me for some time. And while it’s probably not fair to think about it in the light of my friend’s crass colleagues and the way they abused their power in a social context, it inevitably makes me wonder just how society has moved on from the era depicted here.

Bloody marvellous. Like scientists haven’t got enough useful things to be doing, they’re now encroaching on the territory occupied by filmmakers. Physics professor Sidney Percowitz of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is behind a plan that is all about allowing Hollywood creators just one departure from scientific thinking. After that, it’s a slippery slope — and there are real world penalties for shoddy thinking in blockbusters, reckons Percowitz:

“I am not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film. You can have things move faster than the speed of light if you want. But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way.”

“If you violate that you are in trouble. The chances are that the public will pick it up and that is what matters to Hollywood. The Core did not make money because people understood the science was so out to lunch,” he added.

(quotes from today’s Guardian)

Right, so The Core was a box office failure because of poorly thought out science? And not because it was a shockingly dull concept with poor execution? If anything, it would have been more likely to succeed had the science been worse, and those venturing to the planet’s centre encountered dinosaurs and women in fur bikinis, as is traditional for the genre.

Anyway, let’s give this concept some thinking through. Call it a thought experiment. Superhero films are in a mess, for a start. Superman might be able to fly, but if that’s all he can do he’s not going to be of much use against stray dogs, never mind laser-toting alien warriors. Or maybe superheroes should live with the consequences of their difference: Wolverine can have claws, but they rust, and he’s suffering from metal poisoning, and because he’s got just the one power so much for a healing factor to sort out his resistance as adamantium particles clog his arteries. Hmm, not much fun now is it, bub?

And where do we even begin with The Matrix? There’s the business of suspending pretty much the entire human population in a virtual reality, for one thing. What kind of computing power would be needed to make that happen? More importantly, the story is essentially a Gnostic allegory about how people live in a half-life identified with the trinkets dangled in front of them rather than anything of real consequence. Is Percowitz going to ban films that use science as a metaphor unless the metaphor confirms to scientific facts as known?

Besides, what happens when science changes? Which it does. Right now, there are scientists talking about parallel dimensions and suggesting that the universe is best understood as a hologram of which individual consciousness is but a fractal. Man. So does that make Sliders and Quantum Leap ok, despite being a bit pony?

And what of Dumbo’s ears? Did they really aid his flight? Doubtful, but the pachyderm’s zest for achievement has inspired generations of kids to find the courage to make their dreams come true. Best put a stop to that then, if fundamental physical laws are contravened.

All of which is to say that science and stories utilise different forms of logic. And that Prof Percowitz has precious little idea of what a symbol is unless it’s one used in science papers. * sigh * Is it really necessary to overhaul Terminator films to keep diehard rationalists happy at the expense of an audience captivated by a cautionary tale about what happens when machines take over from man? I think not.

If anything, let’s celebrate the extent to which the creative imagination fuels scientific progress. Real life researchers have been inspired by growing up in front of Star Trek. Einstein’s methodology for coming up with the theory of relativity was pretty whacked out, consisting of Albert imagining what would happen if he himself were to travel at light speed, and formulated in part through thought experiments involving steam trains. There’s an interesting ongoing dialogue between science and the creative arts, but it helps neither camp for one to police the activities of the other.

The idea of graphic novel as polemic is an unusual one. Most comics have nothing much to communicate beyond a certain level of visceral hit from striking graphics. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But the medium is capable of literally anything. And writer Warren Ellis is one of the minority of authors working in the comics mainstream with a real commitment to expanding its boundaries.

Fascinated by the possible futures that science presents, Ellis has a particular interest in the space programme. That obsession combines with his rabblerousing tendencies in the Vertigo graphic novel Orbiter, a collaboration with artist Colleen Doran published in 2003. The date is important: Orbiter was written just before the space shuttle Columbia was lost, and seven crew with it. Orbiter was always intended to have a propagandist element: that tragic coincidence gives it an added significance, making the graphic novel a clarion call for the resumption of manned space flight.

The story is simple at heart. A space shuttle believed lost returns after ten years. But of its original crew, only one person remains. And at first sight he seems to be crazy. On top of which, there’s the business of the shuttle’s transformation. What set out as a creation of metal and circuitry has returned with a layer of flesh covering it, and dust from the surface of Mars. And the more the scientists examining the shuttle come across, the less relation its journey has with the laws of physics as they’re accepted.

It’s time to think weird, then. To explore alternative ways of thinking that will help explain what’s happened to the shuttle and its crew. There’s a danger at this point of Ellis losing his readers in semi-digested technobabble, but I managed to keep up with it well enough for it to seem sort of feasible. What wasn’t so convincing was the psychologist managing to connect with the pilot — we’re told that she’s clever, but I wasn’t dazzled by their interaction. The ending was a bit abrupt for my tastes, too, though I can see exactly why Ellis brought things to a halt at that point.

That’s a minor quibble though — overall Orbiter is a successful story. Colleen Doran’s contributions are an important part of that impact — she’s as much a NASA geek as Ellis, making this a script she was destined to draw. Apparently it’s helped her career, too: many editors were blinded by her gender and she was often given supposedly female-friendly material to draw. No more: this hard edged science fiction tale opened the eyes of many in the industry.

Seven years since it was published, Orbiter seems just as timely. Obama’s suspension of America’s space programme gives Ellis and Doran’s creation a new relevance. And I’d like to see more work in comic form that has a didactic purpose: the medium is underutilised at this point, and it would be good to see a graphic novel as powerful in its effect as the 1960s television play Cathy Come Home, which led to the formation of the homeless charity Shelter.

Warren Ellis is sometimes criticised for his appropriation of science in comics stories. But that makes a pleasant change in an industry where one of the main genres — superhero stories — is known primarily for cannibalising previous superhero stories, as a result making many continuing titles near-impenetrable to outsiders. Given the choice between more variations on the theme of Shiny Thong Man and stories which draw on politics, science, or other influences, I know which I’m more interested in. And if Ellis’s continued success riles the more conservative contingent of the comics reading audience, then so much the better.

I’ve been wondering what would have happened had I moved to Manchester at the time that I instead chose to come to Nottingham. Given that Manchester has a strong media economy, with plenty of tv production companies and lots of multimedia happening, there’s every chance I’d be further on now than I actually am. But, being Nottingham based has introduced me to some wonderful people — playwright and writing tutor Jon Wood, without whose encouragement I might not have written the short play that became a treatment I entered in a Times competition which won me a meeting with Working Title’s Tim Bevan. And Andy Tudor, a highly talented illustrator and designer with whom I’m developing a project aimed at children.

It’s this project that I’ve just taken to Manchester, for a workshop organised and partly delivered by Mel Norman of Media-Sauce. The day was all about familiarising a varied group of aspiring media tycoons with the intricacies involved in realising profit from multi media intellectual property. Just what Andy and I need at this point, basically: we’re confident about the quality of what we’re doing creatively, and the feedback from people who’ve seen it is great…but we’re two creative dudes, not high-rolling negotiators.

Fortunately, help was at hand. As well as Mel’s invaluable contributions, there was a great group of fellow students whose input was gratefully received over the course of the day, and whose varied experience of animation, production, collaboration and the general business of Making Stuff Happen was a core part of what I brought home. Plus, there were two guest speakers — Amy Chandler, a multimedia IP expert from Pannone LLP, whose common-sense approach to the nuts and bolts of copyright and trademarks was very welcome. And Andrew Sparrow, acknowledged as one of the heavyweights of IP law and the internet, whose lively and engaging style derives from a wealth of experience in the trenches, and who incorporated questions from the group into his informal and instructive talk.

Mel is very much engaged in what she’s speaking about too, drawing on experience as a producer in tv and film. Her description of the bewildered reaction of former colleagues baffled by her choice to move to this odd little fad called online is a sadly familiar one. I’m sure dinosaurs had similar conversations about the fleet-footed hominids scurrying around them once upon a time. Reality check: every form of media is converging, and sooner or later all will emerge from a portal that transmits 3 minute songs and 90 minute films equally well (regardless of whether you or a recognised name created them), can send them to other people just like that, and the very technology of which mitigates against old-fashioned notions of ownership. That’s the reality of the 21st century, and the legal system is a horse and buggy compared to its sleek supersonic styling. Neither are there definitive business models about how to make a success from this new reality. Which is tremendously exciting.

Have a look online. There’s a world of freaks and geeks out there, and some of them are making a living from being on the internet purely through doing their thing, whatever that may be. Some of them are cartoonists who’ve realised that you can make more money from merchandising your own products than being syndicated in newspapers. Some are experts in one or another domain, and have established an authority that attracts advertisers. Others are selling their artwork to an international audience. Others still have realised that the ubiquity of free content means that, if anything, fans value limited edition versions of their fave creators’ work even more than what’s readily available: supporting a creator this way is the crowdsourced version of having a patron.

Understanding new media possibilities puts creators in a better position to reach old media goals, too. All of which has got me thinking, and looking forward to the next time Andy and I put our heads together, with renewed energy for a project that we want to be as rewarding financially as it is creatively, and to reach the biggest audience possible. Watch this space.

So, I’ve been writing a novel. Did 5000 and some words on the first chapter a couple of weekends ago, and now I’m working on the second. Which comes as a surprise, me being a screenwriter and all. Only, it was not always thus. Many years ago, I started out by writing prose, and the first short story I came up with was a runner up for the 1991 Bridport Festival prize. I’ve written a few more short stories too, one of which was published in an anthology by Route Press. I’m particularly proud of that because my contribution straddles the photos of naked people in the centre of the book, which means I stand a greater chance of being encountered by the casual reader than many of the other stories.

So, the novel. It all started last year when I woke up from a dream about a successful book I’d written, and knowing the core situation of that story. Then, a few weeks ago, I was on a train and knew in a flash that I wanted to write novels. Not only that, but I realised who the protagonist of the book I’d dreamed of writing should be — a prose incarnation of a larger than life friend who influenced me in good ways, and who died a few months ago. I also realised that the book in question would be the second one I wrote. Reason being, there’s one that’s more pressing for me to write. Never mind why, save to say it’s the right time for me to be working on this book, and it’ll stand me in good stead for the next one.

This novel writing lark is very different from screenwriting. I’ve intentionally chosen a style that makes it easy for me to write fairly quickly, by dipping into the narrator’s head and indulging myself in all that kind of associative thought that’s pretty much verbotten in developing film scripts. Writing this blog is a big help: I’ve got used to producing a 600-700 word chunk in 40 minutes or less. That realisation goes a long way when you’re tackling something considerably bigger than a screenplay.

I’ve also given myself a break by not having a plot intensive story. Stuff happens, sure. But it doesn’t need wall charts and index cards to keep track of. And, I’m dipping into the same set of experiences that are at the heart of the screenplay I’m also writing — which is a much trickier beast to tame. I’m creating it piece by piece, facing and hopefully conquering challenges I’ve never taken on before, and though progress is slow it’s very rewarding. Where the screenplay is a psychological drama with thriller elements, the novel is a darkly comic satire. Same ingredients — very different dishes.

I’m figuring this is subject matter I never need go near again in my life when these two projects are done with. They relate to periods of mental instability I experienced some years ago, which though traumatic at the time were ultimately regenerative in their effects on me. And that’s part of what I want to get across: there’s enough bleak material out there about people suffering, and I have no intention of adding to the pile. Not without turning that torment into something useful, anyway.

All of which risks making my novel and screenplay sound terribly pompous endeavours, concerned with correcting misconceptions about mental health. Eek: I’d run a mile if I thought I was doing anything along those lines. No, I want to tell entertaining stories influenced by personal experience that I’m confident a mainstream audience will find fascinating: sorrowful pablum is not on the agenda. Promise.

And after that? Well, the second novel is a science fiction satire. No mental trauma at all, other than that which the protagonist inflicts on those who would oppress him. But that’s another story…

One of my favourite fictional characters is Ignatius J. Reilly, the pretentious and preening adolescent narrator of John Kennedy Toole’s tragi-comic novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He’s distinguished by his literary ambitions, and with it a hi-falutin’ vocabulary and lofty self-regard. I bring Ignatius up having seen Youth in Revolt, which treads in its footsteps somewhat, and too has its origins in a novel — one of the same name by C.D. Payne.

The protagonist is Nick Twisp, a teenager similarly affected by notions of being a writer, who has seemingly swallowed a thesaurus, and is burdened by his troublesome virginity. Played to perfection by Michael Cera, who has done the awkward adolescent thing to good effect before in Superbad, and directed by Miguel Agerta, who was responsible for the sublimely uncomfortable Chuck & Buck, it hits the beats you sort of expect an indie comedy to reach for, sometimes with panache.

The story’s twist, the aspect which raises it above the level it starts at, is the protagonist’s realisation that he needs to develop a bad boy persona to attract the delectable Sheeni Saunders. She is a bit of a teenage pseud, like Nick himself, and her idea of a suitable suitor is Belmondo, the archetype of French New Wave cool featured in Truffaut’s Breathless. (Belmondo in turn modeled himself on Humphrey Bogart, but being French adds an extra dimension of cool in Sheeni’s eyes.) Anyway, Nick’s back-up personality pops up to give him advice at opportune moments, all the while smoking a cigarette and sporting a moustache.

Seeing this alternate self, named Francois Dillinger, egg Nick Wisp on to acts of daring and trouble making is one of the chief pleasures of this very likeable film. A lot of the glee is down to Cera’s strong performances as Nick and Francois — the two are clearly delineated. Other roles are equally well cast: Nick’s dad is an interestingly cast Steve Buscemi, and Sheeni’s brother and parents are strong too.

So, if we’ve got good actors in a comedy with a novel element, how come I don’t like Youth in Revolt more than I do? I suspect the answers are in the source material — perhaps a firmer hand could have been taken with Gustin Nash’s screenplay. For instance, having shifted location from Berkeley to a backwoods town where his mum’s lowlife lover has access to a mobile home, we then shift again when Sheeni is despatched to a school where it’s all French all the time. That sort of thing works better on paper than on screen: location is part of a film’s lifeblood, and to suddenly shift seems irksome. The director tries to make light of the fact by doing the journey to the school in animated form, and it’s kind of cute, but to me emphasises structural failings.

There’s another issue too. It’s not just Nick Wisp and Sheeni that have an affected manner. Pretty much all the younger characters do, and it’s a routine that wears thin, all of them talking in a stilted fashion and having similar issues. Sure, adolescents have a lot in common — but one of those things is a desire to be perceived as individual, and these kids all come from the same mould. It’s a pretty old mould at that, revolving around dreams of travelling to Europe, arthouse cinema, and cult vinyl — likely the stuff of C.D. Payne’s youth, but not credibly that of teenagers in today’s world, with which they seem to have no reference points. No, I’m not asking for topicality, but some recognition of contemporary youth styles and issues would have been welcome.

Really though, these are small quibbles about a film that is largely very satisfying. I’m not sure that I’ll ever read the book that it’s based on, but if it’s reminded me of A Confederacy of Dunces then it’s performed a useful service regardless.

Smelly heck, adventure fans, have I got something for you. Whether you think of yourself as a comics fan or not, I’d strongly recommend you check out the online escapades contained in Valentine, a comic for the online age set in another one entirely. It’s the tale of Valentine Renaud and his friend Oscar, caught up in Napoleon’s doomed Russian escapade of 1812…or that’s how it starts anyway. Pretty soon, things kick off in a more fantastic direction, broadening the arena of the story and bringing even more fabulous pulp and mythical goodness into the equation.

Bringing this fun and excitement to readers are writer Alex de Campi and artist Christine Larsen. I’d come across de Campi through her excellent collaboration with artist Igor Kordey, Smoke, an espionage thriller featuring an albino protagonist. Hmm, shades of Elric maybe. And the doomed Melnibonean once again comes to mind as Valentine Renaud is entrusted with carting a magical sword about by a French general. Hey, Michael Moorcock has influenced many and worse writers than de Campi — like Oscar said, “Talent borrows, genius steals.”

Valentine is a steal in more than one way. It wears its influences on its floppy white sleeve, bringing to mind everything from Three Musketeers to The Flashing Blade, and it’s done with such joy and style that the familiarity is fine. Besides, coupled with Larsen’s art the whole has a fresh feel — this is fluid artwork that delivers the goods in terms of depicting character, place, and action, which is pretty much what’s required in a comic. Plus, some of the colour work is spooky: the bad guys’ red eyes really pop out on a screen against the prevailing tones.

Fast paced and urgent, the story moves along at a rate of knots, a new twist coming along every few panels. The use of digital technology is inspired: you’re never lost as you read the story, and there are some lovely subtle touches making maximum use of the new medium’s possibilities. In which regard, you might want to note that Valentine is available on Kindle, iPhone, and phones running Android. Not only that, but de Campi has made sure it’s available in 14 languages: not bad for a one-woman (plus pals) operation. It’ll also soon be available to read online thanks to Comixology, and a dead tree edition should be with us for the autumn.

There’s not much more to say about Valentine itself, except why on Earth aren’t comics publishers producing work of this calibre already? Superhero comics are moribund for the most part, and there are some decent crime comics being published, but when was the last time you read a good piece of pulp fantasy in comic form? I’m aware of Mouse Guard, but something inside me squeaks when presented with anthropomorphic characters unless they’re in Krazy Kat.

If anything — and it’d be interesting to know what de Campi makes of the comparison — Valentine has something of the early days of Sim and Gerhard’s Cerebus about it. Not the weirdass monotheistic stuff that brought the series to a much-needed end, but the liberating fun of the aardvark’s early days. (And yes, I know that I’m kind of confusing my own argument about animal protagonists here: contradictory opinions are all part of the service.)

Valentine has already and deservedly made a name for itself, and hopefully de Campi and Larsen will make oodles of money out of their project. Help them, and yourself — pop over here to find out how and where to purchase the story. Unlike printed comics, digital ones don’t go out of print — you can start whenever you like and read as much as you like, and I urge you to do exactly that if you’re at all enamored of the camaraderie of men on horseback, swordplay, and the interplay of history and legend.

What draws audiences into a film, book, or play is engagement with the story it communicates. Everything else is secondary to that. Unless I’m engaged by story in some form, I’m out of there. Inventiveness about how that story is delivered is welcome, as long as it enhances that immersion in the story and doesn’t detract from it. Which is why the formal inventiveness of the graphic novel Asterios Polyp gets in the way of me liking it, where the creativity John Pham brings to the pages of Sublife makes me warm to his comics work all the more. Asterios Polyp’s creator David Mazzuchelli deconstructs the story he’s telling before your very eyes, drawing attention to the methods he’s using to get it across. Pham, conversely, uses experimental art techniques in the service of story, embracing cubist and other methods to get across the effect of travelling through space beyond light speed on the crew.

It all comes back to character. And that works for pretty much any narrative I’ve enjoyed as a film, comic, book or play. Character and plot need to advance together, or the effect is lost. I read a Jeffrey Archer novel once just to see what got so many people to buy the things. It was very well plotted, but there was zero sense of the characters as living beings. Stuff happened to them, some of it pretty grim, but they carried on regardless, remorsely making their way from one plot point to another like robots. At the other extreme, there’s Tarantino’s Death Proof, where his well known penchant for dialogue heavy writing runs away with him and there’s a disconnect between the verbose exchanges of the characters and the action of the film. They’re talking for the sake of it, which can be enjoyable, but without it being bound to story beats comes across as self indulgent.

Perhaps no surprise then, that some of my favourite stories are those which move the plot forward, have three dimensional characters, and good dialogue — and where the writer’s intelligence is firmly in the service of story. That’s very much the case with one of my favourite screenwriters, David Mamet. And it’s true in a different way for novelist Lee Child, whose Jack Reacher thrillers are masterclasses in creating apparently effortless stories. See also Carla Speed McNeil’s ‘aboriginal sf’ comic Finder, where every line — written or drawn — counts for something in depicting character and situation.

Effectively, stories are a kind of trance, and I don’t like to see that trance interrupted. Not unless it’s done within the context of the artwork itself, rather than to remind you that it is indeed a confection. Yawn: that stuff has very low appeal to me. That said, I do find some metafictions appealing. It’s all about the spirit in which it’s done. Cartoon characters have been finding out that they’re animated since the birth of the medium, in playful ways. But somehow my hackles rise when presented with a Jasper fforde book — there’s an overwhelming smugness about the enterprise that seems to be about a clever chappie telling me what books he’s read. Compare with the delicious experience of Steven Hall’s novel The Raw Shark Texts, which is postmodern and all the rest of it, but keeps you engaged with the story and characters throughout — a sheer delight.

What is it about story that entices? Well, let’s go back to that notion of trance. We go in and out of trances throughout the day: you could argue that each mood is its own trance, shaping your consciousness and consequent behaviour. Sometimes those trances are accidental, a function of identifying with the situation we’re caught up in — stuck in traffic, waiting in a queue, fantasising about someone we find attractive. And the story trance is one in which we have the opportunity to empathise with someone who’s like us, in some ways, but isn’t us. Who is up against obstacles that are in all likelihood on a mightier scale than the ones in our own lives. And who surmounts those obstacles — in most stories — and in the process tells us something about our emotions, raises questions about morality, points to inner truths. Which, if we’re looking at 90 minutes or so of film, or 250 pages of a book, is a lot to ask. But explains why so many of us relish the experience of story, whatever form it’s presented in.

Once upon a time, I kept up with the news. It was a habit that started when I did a politics degree, which coincided with the Russian state coming down and the IRA trying to blow Thatcher up. I also read Hunter S Thompson, who made following the news into an artform, stories turning up on the mojowire and sending him into a frenzy before spitting back his own incensed and partisan take on matters of the day. But over the years I’ve lost that fascination with information for its own sake. So, in recent years I’m aware of controversy around, say, Bill Clinton without being sure of the details. Ditto any of the more recent Tory leaders. And then there are nouns which surface and have little real hold on my consciousness, though I’m aware they have significance in the wider scheme. Blackwater. Intifada. Enron.

So when a friend said she’d bought us tickets to see a celebrated production of a play about the American electricity-to-everything supplier Enron, I was pleased. My trips to the theatre are rare, and this one was a doozy. Scripted by Lucy Prebble, Enron is a scathing trip into the Looking Glass world that is corporate high finance. Clearly Lucy has done her research, and used it not to present mere reportage, but to conjure the characters and court they inhabit, in which real world cause and effect, action and consequences, are abandoned in favour of a topsy turvy world where profit counts above anything else. As such, it’s a story that has its precedents in the likes of 18th century tulip fever, when fortunes were won and lost on growing and importing Dutch tulip bulbs…when they weren’t eaten by sailors who mistook the bulbs for onions.

Enron is a tale about hubris then, of men and women devising systems to make themselves wealthy in the face of any logic. The company prided itself on thinking outside the box, and in the process abandoned any connection to the sort of economics where actual people create actual goods which are bought and sold. Instead, it jumped wholehearted into the wibbly wobbly world of trading intangibles, such as the predicted cost of electricity at some point in the future. Only, such fancies have unanticipated feedback loops back to the world of matter, in this case leading to black-outs in the state of California. But hey, the lawyers can magic any attending problems away, right?

Not even the laws of physics would stop Enron’s leaders in their tracks. Having decided that they were going to offer video-on-demand to consumers, the realisation that bandwidth at the time couldn’t cope with the concept was not well received. Instead, it led to Enron trading in bandwidth like it did in other ephemerals.

Such hubris cannot go unpunished, and it was fascinating to see how the play presented the company’s downfall. The key was in hiding debts within companies that it owned 97% of, and redefining the sums of money so they no longer appeared to be debts. Nonsense on stilts, basically, and the massive debts lurking in the backs of the company managers’ minds were presented on stage as suited raptors, darting about the stage with red eyes, which themselves connected to another of the play’s visual metaphors. The effect was powerful and visually striking, and entirely apt to the state of mind of the power-crazed leaders of the company that America took to its heart for a while.

Enron went way beyond reportage into creating a play that is a powerul commentary on the state of contemporary business. The script and performances are moving, funny, scarcely believable while at the same time clearly grounded in truth. There’s no surer way to present satire than to offer a mirror to the world, and that’s precisely what this incisive play does — see if you can book a ticket while it’s still on in London.