Cool Bombs
Self-contain nuggets of wonder that can bring fiction alive
When it comes to what in a book or film can hook me as a reader or viewer, sometimes it’s not the plot, or the dialogue, or characterisation, or even the setting as a whole that grabs me, but what I like to call “cool bombs”. These are little nuggets of setting or plot that just set my brain spinning.
My friend Gareth Hanrahan manages to have two cool bombs in the first few chapters of his debut novel, The Gutter Prayer: the Tallowmen, who are living candles animated by the Alchemists Guild and used as police; and Stone Men, who are people slowly dying from a plague that turns its victims to stone, but who are, in the meantime, incredibly strong and tough, albeit slow and lumbering.
A cool bomb sets your mind alight with questions, and wonder, and possibilities. It’s like a little meme the author conjured up themselves that conveys a whole load of information not just about itself, but about their story’s setting, theme, and vibe.
When Luke Skywalker looks out at Tatooine’s binary star sunset, he’s looking at a cool bomb.
The Mini Coopers in the Italian Job are mobile cool bombs, in some ways for what they aren’t rather than what they are. They’re not Italian sports cars. They’re not American muscle cars. They’re not even British sports cars, or at least not conventional ones. Their very presence tells you that this is not a straight action film, isn’t to be taken too seriously, is running on charm as well as adrenaline, and is about criminals who aren’t so much masterminds as underdogs.
Cool bombs don’t have to be good things. Obergruppenführer John Smith in the Man in the High Castle is a cool bomb. By simultaneously being both an All-American family man and a high-ranking SS general in that evilly iconic Hugo Boss unform, he manages to embody the paradoxical and yet terrifyingly real setting of the story.
The crutch that turns into a sniper rifle in the Day of the Jackal is one hell of a cool bomb, for not only is intriguingly clever, it gives us an insight into the intelligence, the attention for detail, and the – for want of a better word – professionalism our unnamed protagonist exhibits.
The James Bond films and books are littered with cool bombs, from the cars (the submarine Lotus), to the bases (the volcano with the sliding “lake”), to even the drinks (“A martini, shaken not stirred”).
The key aspects of a cool bomb are that it’s self-contained and immediate. It should spark your imagination as soon as you see it, without waiting upon either time, or the arrival of something else. It’s a shorthand, a hook, a meme.
I love me a good cool bomb.
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