I realized that I will instantly love a book if there is an interesting concept in it. I could hate the style, the plot, the characters.. and still say it is good if it makes me think in a way that I never have before.
For example, my favourite book by Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five. It has the most amazing perspective on time/space continuums that it almost gave me a headache trying to understand it. It is not sequential, but constant. A circle instead of a timeline. There is no "past" in the way that we understand the word. It still exists because it happened, and continues to happen in our minds. There is significantly more to this but it is hard to explain without being Vonnegut himself.
"I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warning or explanations. It simply is."
Alan Moore's Watchmen has a concept of time that resonates well with Vonnegut's. Well, at least the Dr. Manhattan character does.
"There is no future. There is no past. Don't you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet. Your earliest memory isn't gone, it's still there. You still see it."
A Watchmen movie is coming out soon, and I'm wondering if these convoluted theories will translate well onto film. I hope so, because it would be a shame if they didn't. Movies based on books or graphic novels tend to leave out key elements in order to leave a margin of space for special effects or whatever else.
Well, at least the trailers and posters look awesome.
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