Review: Time's Black Lagoon

The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Time's Black Lagoon (DH Press, first published 2006)
by Paul Di Filippo

Book Review by Robert Hood

The 1954 film Creature from the Black Lagoon is, without a doubt, one of the best of the classic Universal Pictures monster movies. Director Jack Arnold brings his wilderness sensibilities to bear (this time to create a primeval jungle setting rather than his more iconic desert landscapes), but invests his titular creature with a strong identity that has made it a fan favourite for decades. Its superb design (courtesy of uncredited creature designer Milicent Patrick) and the excellent cinematography of William E. Snyder have ensured the monster's place in the company of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, the Phantom of the Opera and the Invisible Man. Two decent sequels -- the second of which played some nasty tricks with the franchise -- solidified the popularity of the Creature. When in 2006 DH Press (a division of Dark Horse Comics) decided to produce a range of media tie-in novels based on the Universal Monsters, it was inevitable that the Creature would be an upfront choice.

The resulting novel, Time's Black Lagoon, has a lot going for it, not the least of which is its author, Paul Di Filippo. Known for his somewhat gonzo approach to science fiction, and in particular for assorted inventive steampunk and cyberpunk tales, Di Filippo might not seem like the obvious choice to pen a lost-jungle monster story -- but the fact that his name appears on the cover does rather ensure that whatever else you might have expected of a Creature from the Black Lagoon tie-in novel, this one should be interestingly different.

What it isn't is a simple re-telling of the Creature movies. Di Filippo's world is one in which the events of the film are pre-supposed, though the truth of the 1954 discovery of a primeval humanoid amphibian creature is considered scientifically dubious at best and the tales of its capture and subsequent escape an "urban legend". The novel is set in 2015. The main protagonist, Brice Chalefant, is a scientist researching the evolutionary consequences for humanity of global climate change, whose career is damaged by his claims that the only hope for human survival into the future is for Man to deliberately adapt himself to the changing environment, specifically through the acquisition of amphibian characteristics. When he learns of possible "proof" of the reality of the Gill-man of the 1950s, he sees in such a creature a chance to study the applicability of its nature to human needs and to find guidance in the kind of adaptation that humanity might need to survive. What begins as a dead-end obsession, however, soon opens out considerably when he acquires a top-secret time machine and realises that with it he may be able to study the Gill-men in their original Devonian environment. Perhaps he could even bring one back.

The time machine, built by his brilliant but eccentric friend Webley Stimm, is not a typical piece of trans-temporal technology. Appropriate to the times perhaps, Web has foregone building his machine into a DeLorean and instead has constructed it from an iPod. Di Filippo very adroitly works out the logistics of this, and of the time-hopping that subsequently takes place, introducing believable limitations that help contain the infinite difficulties faced by time travel stories. His scenario is both very hip and very clever, and if there are holes in his logic he obscures them fairly well with some well-contrived pseudo-scientific rationalisation.

So Brice and his girlfriend Cody step through a time-space portal into the Devonian Era, having first located a group of the Gill-men. That's where things get complicated. What they find is not the savage Creature of the films, but an intelligent, communal, telepathically endowed alien species which, in the course of the following few million years, are doomed to be attacked by a virulent infection that de-evolves them into Coarsened Ones -- a bestial, savage version of themselves that is more like that of the Creature we know from the movies. Brice and Cody then set out to save the Gill-men from this fate, only to open the door to a new, apocalyptic future in their own time…

This imaginative extension of the story theoretically makes for an unusual and engrossing novel set within a pre-existing context -- yet somehow it didn't quite work as effectively as it might have done. It's hard to say why. The elements are all in place and no one would quibble with the imaginative spark of Di Filippo's storyline. For me, however, its execution never really carries a lot of conviction. Most of the way through (though significantly not at key points of action) the novel's tone feels slightly stilted and unfocused, the language veering from the bland to the expressive without much sense of tautness and narrative control. Whether it’s the simplistic and uncomplicated dramatis personae, who come over as typical '50s uni-dimensional B-film characters simply updated to the present, or the relative ease with which rather monumental events are undertaken or resolved, the novel never fully escapes from its B-film heritage. It reads like a tie-in novel. This doesn't have to be the case. There are instances of media tie-in novels that work perfectly as independent novels -- a great example being Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman's Aurealis-Award-winning Dr Who novel, Fallen Gods, which signals its integrity from page one and never asks the reader to make allowances for its populist origins. Time's Black Lagoon had all the potential to do likewise, but it never manages it. As you read, you're always conscious of its limitations in this respect.

Structurally, too, it stumbles, and this adds to the reader's awareness of its limitations. Its slow, character-oriented first third -- which lacks the complexity of characterisation needed to make such a build compelling -- tends to drag, and it takes far too long to get to the meat of the thing -- the Gill-man society itself. When we get to it, it is too ordered, generous and welcoming to be either believable or compelling, and Di Filippo's grasp on it seems rather under-cooked. The last third of the book, with its apocalyptic dangers, is an exciting read, with lots of intriguing issues thrown up for our consideration -- but the climax is fast, furious and in the end too quickly resolved.

The whole scenario somehow seems simply too relaxed. Brice and Cody might be venturing through time to the distant primeval past, but they continually act as though they're off on a picnic, despite the occasional (often over-discursive) moments of anxious introspection. What do you do when you've just undertaken mankind's first trans-temporal journey into the Devonian past and you're surrounded by primeval jungle and unknown dangers? You have sex, of course. Nice if you can get it, but would such cosy closeness -- which gives little sense of being driven by the aphrodisiac of danger and excitement or some other rationale -- be all that high a priority in such a circumstance? Especially when you're a scientist obsessed with your pet theories? Well, maybe it would be, but the prevalence of such cosiness in the novel rather dilutes the sense of tension that should drive the plot.

Throughout, even Di Filippo's language seems way too cosy and at ease. Perhaps he never really came to terms with writing a media tie-in, or time restrains hindered him from fully refining the draft. Whatever the reason, the confused tone and some awkward dialogue seem to support this and it's a pity, because Time's Black Lagoon isn't all that bad. I think, generally speaking, those likely to want to read a Creature from the Black Lagoon tie-in novel will be more than happy with it. Those who want to read a Paul Di Filippo novel, however, may be less content, despite moments of brilliance and some excellent conceptualisation.