The Spiraling Worm

Chaosium achieved a real coup for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game (RPG) in a way that Dungeons & Dragons never did: it put RPGs on equal footing with Lovecraftian literature. Because Chaosium publishes fiction and RPG supplements it presents both as legitimate, best evidenced by the Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, which draws on both sources to round out the Mythos.

So it's a bold move when Chaosium publishes a new modern work without the comforting bosom of the surrounding Mythos to prop it up. Even more daring, the Spiraling Worm is a collection of action stories set in the modern day.

Ignore the cover. The picture of Peel, with his oddly stubby arms and stiff posture, isn't particularly compelling.

David Conyers may be best known for his RPG contributions, but he's equally comfortable in the fiction realm. His protagonist of note, Australian Army military intelligence officer Major Harrison Peel, is a no-nonsense action hero waging war against a cosmic threat he barely understands. John Sunseri's character of choice is NSA agent Jack Dixon, who is a bit less stalwart than his Australian colleague. Rounding out the global trio and connecting the stories is MI6 agent James Figgs, who ranges from cold aloofness in Sunseri's stories to borderline psychopath in Conyers'.

The series starts out with Peel and Figgs in Vietnam in Made of Meat, featuring only a hint of the Mythos in the Tcho-Tcho and their worship of Shub-Niggurath. The conclusion is open-ended and unsatisfying.

To What Green Altar is Dixon's introductory tale, a less satisfying but interesting take on Cthugha, the Tunguska Event, and the Vatican. Unfortunately, the Mythos knowledge possessed by the Church doesn't seem to figure in the other stories.

Impossible Object, more a science fiction tale, is awesome. Peel fights a battle of perception in his native Australia, trying to grapple with a device nobody can truly perceive, much less comprehend. The ending is an awesome cliffhanger, leaving you wondering if the entire universe might implode…

Until you read False Containment, so the universe clearly did not end. It unfortunately saps some of the strength of Impossible Object, but False Containment is so strong that it's easy to forgive. Featuring time travel, body horror, and a gibbering monstrosity that cannot be contained by time or space. False Containment is one of the few stories in this collection that isn't afraid to drive home the insane horror of the Mythos.

Resurgence features two shoggoths gone wild, the inevitable conclusion of a monstrosity that eats everything. Resurgence isn't afraid to escalate tensions to an international level, forcing Peel to sacrifice himself to save his beloved continent…

Until, that is, the events in Weapon Grade. Dixon brings Peel into another mission, this one featuring another dimension and more shoggoths. It's interesting but not as powerful as the other short stories – it feels more like an excuse to keep Peel alive (he's cured of his ailment by the end of it) than anything else.

The title work, The Spiraling Worm, is a filthy, disturbing foray into the heart of the Congo jungle. Dixon, Peel, and Figgs are together again, and the circumstances are unsparingly brutal. This is a story that's not for the faint of heart. It features a suitably climactic showdown between helicopter gunships, Nyarlathotep, and an elder artifact. Unfortunately, the bizarre mask and its rotting cult steal the show. The conclusion is actually a beginning, as Dixon and Peel join forces to launch a secret organization dedicated to eradicating the Mythos…

If this sounds familiar, it's because it's been done already: Delta Green, wherein government agents with little infrastructure support wage a secret war against the Mythos. Chaosium has never quite fully embraced the enormously popular modern take on the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, publishing its own brand of "Cthulhu Now" supplements. In fact, some of the stories in Spiraling Worm were originally meant to be part of Delta Green, but presumably they weren't able to get the rights from Pagan Publishing.

It seems as if the authors are intent on building their own, parallel, government-against-the-mythos series by connecting to Tim Curran's Hive. Which isn't a bad thing. But with the resurgence of Delta Green, I wonder if DG fans will be forced to choose.

The Men Who Stare at Goats

When I discovered a movie was being made about The Men Who Stare at Goats I was excited, until I realized it was a comedic work of fiction. Thing is, The Men Who Stare at Goats isn't funny.

Oh, it's darkly humorous as the author, Jon Ronson, attempts to get to the truth while keeping a straight face. But it's not funny, and the conclusion Ronson reaches by the end of the book, after tracking the noble origins of a twisted, sadistic form of psychological warfare, is a punch in the face. So why was it made into a comedy?

Fortunately, comedy is too broad a stroke for the movie. It's actually a gonzo buddy journalism movie, where the actors play everything utterly straight. The humor is in what isn't said.

For example: When Ewan McGregor's journalist character Bob Wilton, he of Obi-Wan fame, asks "What's a Jedi?" nobody so much as snickers. Unfortunately the audience didn't seem to get it either: only my wife and I were laughing.

Wilton is on a mission to prove to his wife that he's more of a man than the one-armed editor who steals her from him. See? One armed men are funny!

Partnering with Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a Special Forces psi-ops soldier, the two travel around Iraq on a mysterious mission. Just about every eccentric Ronson encountered in his book is collapsed into two characters in the film, Cassady and Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), Cassady's mentor.

And that's pretty much where The Men Who Stares at Goats loses its way…literally, as the two characters repeatedly get lost in the desert. Eventually, they end up at a secret base where more than just goat staring takes place.

The film is faithful to its source in surprising ways, from the Today show broadcast of Barney music used in torturing prisoners to a picture-for-picture reproduction of the First Earth Battalion manual (here titled the New Earth Army). The problem is that following Ronson/Wilton's journey to its logical conclusion should end with court marshals, public outrage, and an official inquiry. The strength and weakness of The Men Who Stare at Goats is that it unflinchingly deals with this problem…it's just that the solution is patently ridiculous. The film drives right off the cliff into a wish fulfillment fantasy that saps the strength of the rest of the movie.

The film ends with a sucker punch (SPOILER). Wilton publishes the truth, and instead of outrage, the world just laughs. The moral is that mass media turned the awful true story into a comedy…just like a comedic buddy movie did to a certain book you might have read.

Too bleak to be funny, too lighthearted to be serious, The Men Who Stares at Goats ends up as a hot mess of hippy idealism smashed together with modern conspiracy. It should have been a documentary.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

This book isn't funny.

Mind you, Ronson knows exactly what he's doing by presenting the book as "hilarious" – it starts out completely absurd, with the high-minded hippy ideals of a shell-shocked Vietnam veteran presented to a beleaguered military under siege. Jim Channon, seeking solace in the emerging human potential movement in California, struck a chord with the top brass, and the repercussions are still felt today.

But instead of being used as a positive force for peace, the military twisted it into a force of evil. Ronson ties it all together: September 11, Heaven's Gate, sticky foam, Abu-Grahib, Waco, Art Bell, Projects STARGATE, MKULTRA, and ARTICHOKE, and yes, Barney. Goat-staring is the least of our worries.

The thread running throughout all these seemingly disconnected blips in history is that they are a new form of psychological warfare that is innocuous, ruthless, and entirely effective. The Men Who Stare at Goats would be just another conspiracy-laden anti-government diatribe if it wasn't for the fact that Ronson always takes the next step as an investigative reporter. He finds people to back up the wild claims, interviews them, and often challenges their wild theories.

The sad thing is, very few of these shadowy contacts hide their past. Almost unilaterally, Ronson calls them all out by name and they step forward, sharing a story that sheds a disconcerting light on America's human rights record. Where is the vigorous conversation, the protests, the discord over these revelations? The facts are right here before us – even photographic evidence -- but we laugh about Barney being used to torture prisoners and we shake our heads at the poor, misguided psychics. But outrage? There's no outrage. We save our vitriol for partisan debates in our own government.

Eric Olson, son of Frank Olson, a military scientist who died under mysterious circumstances while working on MKULTRA, sums it up best:

"The old story is so much fun, why would anyone want to replace it with a story that's not fun. You see…this is no longer a happy, feel-good story…People have been brainwashed by fiction…so brainwashed by the Tom Clancy thing, they think, 'We know this stuff. We know the CIA does this.' Actually, we know nothing of this. There's no case of this, and all this fictional stuff is like an immunization against reality. It makes people think they know things that they don't know and it enables them to have a kind of superficial quasi-sophistication and cynicism which is just a thin layer beyond which they're not cynical at all."

Have you heard? There's a movie based on this book coming out starring George Clooney.

It's a comedy.