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Short, but sweet.  I had no idea they were making a Captain Harlock movie.  If you don't know who that is, it's because you don't watch enough anime.  You should start.  Immediately.

Anywho.  Despite the random almost-nude shot (so strange for anime to have a skin fetish, after all -- ha), it looks like a compelling film, no?  If by "compelling" we mean "two hours of gun battles, space battles, sword fights, and all the other cool trappings of genre," that is.

Here's the video (after the fold):

On the recent Skiffy and Fanty Show podcast, my friend Jen and I interviewed author Myke Cole about Shadow Ops:  Fortress Frontier, the sequel to his 2012 hit, Shadow Ops:  Control Point (which we interviewed him about here).  During the discussion, we (Jen and I) sidetracked from asking Myke direct questions to actually considering the world he had actually created -- specifically, the ethics of that world and how it might actually happen in the real world.  I'd like to continue some of that discussion here (on top of this post by Myke on a similar subject).

For those that are unfamiliar with Myke's work, you'll need to know that Shadow Ops takes place in an alternate present where "magic powers" (a.k.a. superhero powers) are monitored and "controlled" by the various world governments.  In the case of the U.S., they have sought to control these powers and the people who have them by banning their use in the general populace and forcing people who discover that they are "latent" to join the military (or some related agency, depending on the need).  Much of the "forcing" isn't publicly acknowledged, which becomes apparent in this brilliant book trailer for Fortress Frontier:

One of the questions I've always asked myself when looking at any superhero universe (whether it's Myke's or the X-Men universe or whatever) is "What would we actually do?"  Myke's universe is not that different from popular comics like X-Men.  In a way, the narrative of government control, often using violent force, is a staple of superhero narratives.  And rightly so.  It's possibly the most important issue in any superhero world still populated by "normies."  Magneto recognized this when he waged a personal war against humanity, assuming that mutants would become the dominant lifeforms on the planet (the evolutionary model is more important to X-Men than Shadow Ops); thus, what seems like a fit of genocidal thinking turns into a vendetta that is both biologically and personally-oriented (Magneto's heritage is crucial to his motivations, however problematic).  Of course, his actions also fueled the very things he had hoped to prevent.

No idea how he has an 8-pack...not like he actually lifts anything.

In Myke's world, however, the the only rational answer the officials can come up with is "CONTROL" (hence the name Control Point for his first book -- one of many meanings).  Not surprisingly, this is a painfully repetitive human response.  For example, the current debate over gun control is largely an emotional response to something we don't quite understand -- mass shootings (this is not intended as a 1-to-1 analogy).  When bad things happen, the human response is often to control that thing, because to control "evil" is to secure the "good" (or something like that).  We jump on "mental health" and "fewer guns or stricter laws" because they are the simple answers to problems which, on the surface, appear simple, but, underneath, are complicated.  The same thing has happened throughout history, with some noticeable spurts of reasoned progress.*
The Shadow Ops series is a great example of this knee-jerk response at work, but based on an actionable threat. If random people gain extraordinary powers, wouldn't it make sense to launch at campaign to control those powers?  Certainly.  In the face of a presumed evil (I use this word lightly -- the "other" might be a more appropriate term), we can only conceive the arrival, the moment when we know something new and terrifying has arrived, and we must take whatever action we can to prevent that change from overwhelming civilization itself.  Some superhero universes use mutant registration, incarceration, extermination, indentured servitude (such as military service in Shadow Ops), or some other method of control that inevitably punishes the "mutant" for having abilities they didn't ask for.

George Clooney, Howard E. Rollins, Jr., and Aamir Khan walk into a bar...

Mutant punishments, then, are easy analogues for the real world.  People like to make grand comparisons between gay rights, race, and so on and so forth when talking about superheroes.  They are fair comparisons when you treat the issue simplistically.  I, however, don't see the validity in such comparisons, in part because there is something tangibly different about a superhero.  Arguments against the inclusion of LGBT people in contemporary society are, in my honest opinion, based not on rational determinations of "social damage," but rather on unfounded accusations that such damage occurs and that it is exclusively the fault of LGBT people.  I have seen a few studies which suggest that children raised by gay parents may suffer as a result, but these studies are always a reflection of how social conditions influence children and marginalized groups.  In other words, if you raise kids in a homophobic culture, it shouldn't surprise us that kids of LGBT parents develop social relationships that appear "damaged" in comparison to kids of heterosexual parents; there's no way to know what effect LGBT parents have on their children without having those results tainted by the culture around us (woe be to sociology!).  Similar arguments were made about people of color and so on and so forth -- the wheel keeps turning.  The older I get, the harder it is for these arguments to remain palatable for me...

And then they made it into a movie...

But some of those same arguments are actually valid when it comes to superheroes.  For example, there are tangible social and physical impacts on the nation when unusual and seemingly supernatural powers are involved.  If you think school shootings are terrible, imagine a world with superheroes.  Someone who can control the earth around us could easily smash thousands of houses beneath a landslide.  A person with fire on his fingertips could burn cities to the ground.  Someone with a variation on teleportation (a la Jumper; porting in Myke's universe) could steal untold amounts from banks or infiltrate secure areas (and, therefore, threaten national security -- see the second X-Men movie).  Whether we like it or not, superheroes are a potential threat to social stability, since their abilities have real-world consequences for everyone, including themselves (in the form of a response from the wider public, most likely).

I think Vincent D'Onofrio is in this picture...

It's for this reason that I'm not altogether surprised by the direction the government takes in Myke's Shadow Ops series.  In a weird way, I completely understand it, and almost agree with it, even though saying as much gives me an icky feeling inside.  If people start popping up with powers, what exactly is a society supposed to do?  Is it rational to sit back and hope nothing bad will happen?  Hardly.  Even Myke acknowledges in his work that you can't control who gets what power, which means that sometimes, a bad guy with murder on the mind will hold thousands of lives on the edge of his or her fingers.  While we like to think we can control gun violence -- to a certain degree, we can -- we have absolutely no hope of doing so with powers that appear seemingly at random in the populace, and which, when in the hands of villainous people (or even folks with a civil rights agenda), can cause unimaginable damage.
The ethics of superheroes, then, is not a simple question to answer.  It is not like granting people the right to bear arms or integrating women into the military (which may or may not have significant influences on battle preparedness -- more social than physical, I imagine).  When we let superheroes roam free, we subject ourselves to an extraordinary amount of danger.  That's hard to stomach for a normy like myself, even if I also cannot imagine myself supporting indentured servitude in the military, banning, incarceration, or murder.  None of these things are palatable.  None of them are good.  But if we govern ourselves by a "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" ideology (we don't, but I like pretending), it comes down to this:  Should superheroes be allowed to live if their very existence might mean the deaths of thousands, the destruction of trillions of dollars in property, and the perpetual fear of mutant terrorists among the general populace?
I just don't know...

*I am not suggesting that the gun control debate won't end with rational changes.  Rather, I am suggesting that those changes won't come from knee-jerk emotional responses from either side.

A new feature around these parts!  The Academic Spotlight's purpose will be to draw attention to the wide range of new and old scholarship on genre fiction floating about on the net, from special issues of academic journals, to essay collections, to books, and so on and so forth.  In some cases, I'll offer some thoughts on the work in question -- particularly if I'm familiar with it.  Why am I doing this?  Because I think academia is important, even if it is sometimes inaccessible to the wider public ($75 for an academic book is a lot to ask for; additionally, the writing styles are often not conducive to general reading).

The first entry into this feature is Gurevitch's With Both Feet in the Clouds:  Fantasy in Israeli Literature.  The book came out on the first of January, though I only discovered it today through the World SF blog.

Personally, I don't know much about Israeli genre fiction.  My exposure to writers from that part
of the world has been relatively limited:  Lavie Tidhar and Niv Yaniv are the two I can name off the top of my head.    Still, I'm fascinated by this work because it fills in some of the gaps in the genre/academic community.  The question I have is this:  What other works on Israeli genre fiction area already out there, and how much of it has been translated into English?  If you happen to know something about this particular sub-field, feel free to leave a comment.

You can read a review of the book by Abigail Nussbaum here.

Note:  The title seems to fluctuate between With Both Feet in the Clouds and With Both Feet on the Clouds.  I'm not sure why these differences exist, so you'll excuse the confusion between the title of this post and the title of the book image below.


Description:

Why do Israelis dislike fantasy? Put so bluntly, the question appears frivolous. But,in fact, it goes to the deepest sources of Israeli historical identity and literary tradition. Uniquely among developed nations, Israel s origin is in a utopian novel, Theodor Herzl s Altneuland (1902), which predicted the future Jewish state. Jewish writing in the Diaspora has always tended toward the fantastic, the mystical, and the magical. And yet, from its very inception, Israeli literature has been stubbornly realistic. The present volume challenges this stance. Originally published in Hebrew in 2009, it is the first serious, wide-ranging, and theoretically sophisticated exploration of fantasy in Israeli literature and culture. Its contributors jointly attempt to contest the question posed at the beginning: why do Israelis, living in a country whose very existence is predicated on the fulfillment of a utopian dream, distrust fantasy?

I find it amusing when smart people take science fiction concepts seriously enough to question their validity in the real world.  From rocket packs to hover cars to laser guns, the smart ones have destroyed our childhoods, one reality-based argument at a time.  The Death Star is no different (and I'm going to add to the hurt).

Earlier this year, Paul Shawcross, acting on behalf of the White House, released a statement on We the People in response to a petition requesting the U.S. government to build a real-life Death Star by 2016.*  Because petitions that receive 25,000 signatures require a response from the White House, there wasn't any way to avoid this humorous situation.  Thankfully, they took the issue with a heavy dose of humor and succinctly reminded us that such a project is pretty much impossible -- it would cost $850,000,000,000,000,000 (or, as we poor people like to say,
"a friggin ton of money").  io9 recently explored this number in some depth, using a Centives.net article as support; they concluded that the $850 quintillion figure is more tongue-and-cheek than an accurate measurement (this is one of many conclusions, of course), but it fulfills the purpose of keeping the genocidal geek community at bay.

Disney will probably turn this into a musical in a few years...

Setting aside arguments about how much the Death Star would cost in exact terms, the real question is two fold:  how would a country or a world economy come up with that kind of money, and how would they justify the expense?

First, the size of the loan necessary to build a Death Star would exceed the GDP of the entire world by a factor of approximately 12,100 (based on figures acquired here).  Assuming, then, that the world agreed to sacrifice its entire GDP to pay off said monumental loan, it would still take 12,100 years to pay that loan off, assuming no growth in GDP and no interest.**  And let's face it, there's no way we can assume there won't be inflation, interest, and so on for the next 12,100 years.  I'm no economist, but it seems to me that taking on a project at this point in time, without any easier means for manufacturing the materials and the Death Star itself, would lead to worldwide financial disaster.  Besides, what exactly would a budget debate about the Death Star look like?  Imagine, if you will, the Death Star is 50% behind schedule due to 800 straight years of economic shortfalls, politicians are bickering back and forth, some running around like chickens with their heads cut off in a pathetic attempt to balance the world budget.  Meanwhile, poverty rates increase exponentially, because too many resources have been pegged for the Death Star Fund; healthcare, scientific progress, and so on and so forth have likewise crumbled beneath the pressure.  Perhaps stress-related baldness will become the new "epidemic" of the future...

I'm the Death Star on a budget deficit.  Any questions?

All of this assumes that we take seriously the financial viability of a 12,100-year construction project.  Considering that we can't even resolve the relatively simplistic budget problems in the United States without all of Washington D.C. losing its mind, the idea is just three shades shy of batshit.  Even if the money and resources existed to make constructing the Death Star possible in 100 years (a big if), the political environment surrounding such an international effort would make the project practically impossible.  The United Nations, bless its heart, tries to get everyone to work together towards common goals, but after 71 years in operation, it still struggles to address the most obvious of human rights issues (among other problems).  It's like watching a puppy who tries to jump onto the couch, but its legs are too short, so it keeps falling off -- only this puppy may or may not grow up, may or may not develop more efficient motor skills, and may or may not stare at you with its puppy eyes, vainly hoping that you'll lift it up to your lap.

But the even bigger question is this:  Why would we bother doing this, and what would we do with a Death Star?  Let's imagine the scenarios:***

1) Some large, planetary body is on a collision course with the Earth.  It must be destroyed.

Han:  And that, kids, is what we call a Solo Seduction Device. Chewie:  Ra-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-gh!

Fail:  If we need something with the firepower of the Death Star to destroy a planetary body, there's no valid reason for constructing the whole thing.  After all, this scenario does not require the laser system to form part of a much larger military function.  You can't exactly threaten the Earth with its own destruction, can you?****  Even so, we could probably put the laser on the Earth without decreasing its firepower significantly (I'm guessing) or use our mountains of nuclear weapons to pound the living hell out of said planetary body.  The latter seems a cheaper option, though certainly less cool than a giant green laser.

2) An alien species attacks us with firepower that far surprises our current military might.  They must be stopped.

It's okay.  There aren't any real people there.

Fail:  Setting aside the fact that such an alien species would have some method of faster space travel than currently available on Earth AND the technological means to subjugate us anyway -- not to mention the fact that building the Death Star would take far too long to make it useful to us -- there is the disturbing question of whether it is right to commit genocide as a last resort.  Are there no other ways?  If not, should we commit genocide for our own survival?  I realize that The Doctor does it all the time, but we are not Time Lords.  We're supposed to have a moral framework.  Then again, "right" is sometimes not an important factor in our decisions as species, since we've committed acts of genocide against one another for centuries -- justifying such activities against aliens would likely fall prey to the "they're not human" argument.  Maybe I need to address this question in more depth elsewhere...

3) Some angry humans (presumably white men and their slave women) want to build a colony elsewhere, but need a giant floating deterrent against retaliation or subjugation by Earth governments.

This is the Martian City of the future, controlled by a corporate oligarchy a la Neuromancer and filled with good shopping, sexy hotels, and reasonably- priced sex slaves who will fulfill your every desire.  Every desire.

Fail:  The size of the conspiracy required to make this happen would hardly survive simple scrutiny -- insert any government conspiracy here as an example of just how unlikely these things really are.  Let's say there really are a bunch of angry guys who want to use the Death Star as a deterrent against Earth-ian meddling.  Okay.  So where are they going to get the money to do it?  How are they going to keep that motive secret?  How are they going to take over the Death Star, which would certainly require an enormous staff to function?  It doesn't make sense.

4) We get bored or curious.

The Curiosity Baby reaches for the stars...and burns off his fingers.

Maybe:  We've done a lot of stuff out of curiosity, haven't we?  I don't think we'd do something like this because we've got nothing else to do (or because, well, we can), but in 1,000 years...who knows?

You can come up with more scenarios as you see fit.  They'll all fall apart in some way, or at least present new challenges to the discussion.  The problem with a Death Star is that its primary purpose (if not its only purpose) is to destroy planets (or act as a deterrent because it can destroy planets).  In the Star Wars universe, its purpose makes sense (realistically, not ethically).  But we don't live in that universe, and we probably never will (physics says so).

Now to take this critical eye to the Star Trek universe...


*Most of you probably know about this story already.  I think it's too funny to ignore.

**I use the word "loan" to indicate the massive borrowing required for the construction of the Death Star.

***Yes, I am over-thinking all of this.  So sue me.

****You can.  I'm fooling myself here.

There's something enjoyable about watching critics from the 80s battle over whether Star Wars is actually a good movie.  It's equally enjoyable to listen to a somewhat bitter man battle his inner child over whether to actually let loose while watching something like Star Wars, a series that, at the time, offered the world some of the best entertainment money could buy.

Class 1980s entertainment, this (after the fold):

In the interest of filling my blog with all your lovely voices, I want to know your answer(s) to the following question:

Which novels, novellas, short stories, films, fanzines/writers, fancasts, and so on do you think will win the Hugo Award this year?

I have a secret agenda for asking this question, which I will now reveal (thus stealing its secrecy) -- I am curious what I might have missed this year, for one reason or another, what others think were Hugo-worthy (which may reflect a particular taste), and so on.  In other words, you're going to give me a taste of a world I've never experienced (though I am attending Worldcon this year).

So have at it!

I just had a rather strange short conversation with a fellow about The Iron Heel by Jack London.  That conversation went something like this:

Guy:  Is that Jack London?
Me:  Yup.  The Iron Heel.
Guy:  I've never heard of that one.  I wonder if I have it on my reader.  (checks)  Yup!  I'm currently reading The Sea-Wolf.  It's a post-apocalyptic book.
Me:  I've never heard of that one.  Cool!
Guy:  Why are you reading The Iron Heel.  A fan?
Me:  I'm teaching it.
Guy:  Are you an English major?
Me:  Yup.
Guy:  And you're teaching a book you've not finished?
Me:  Yup.
Guy:  Good luck. (turns away as if annoyed)

I don't know anything about this individual.  Perhaps he's an England major or just an avid reader or a philosophy major or whatever.  But it was clear from his tone that he found it rather distasteful that one might teach a book they haven't read yet (if I didn't plan to read the book at all, then I'd deserve the tone -- keep in mind he had no idea when I planned to teach said book).

Of course, he might think this because many people don't know much about literature courses --
particularly, surveys, in which you have less freedom for selection (thus, we end up teaching a few things we haven't read simply because much of the study in any major literary field -- American, British, etc. -- has moved beyond standard canonical studies).  But we don't select books in a vacuum (I don't, that is).  When I select books, my criteria focuses first on my own personal readings, and second (and most importantly) on the critical literature.  In the case of The Iron Heel, I selected it because it fit into the themes of the course (Dystopia and American Anxiety) and because it appears in great detail in much of the critical literature on dystopian writing.  In other words, I know what this book is about, I know about its themes and issues, and I know much of the major interpretations of the work as they relate to the theme in question.  This isn't a book I'm reading blindly.  It's a book that I've practically already read, minus the fact that the actual pages have never flitted before my eyes.*

And, surprisingly, this is not unusual in academia at large (I know many people who teach introductory courses in their fields who effectively teach from knowledge obtained elsewhere than the books they assign -- the same happens in a lot of introductory college argument classes, since the general information rarely changes, though the structures and pedagogical practices do).  Part of the problem is the assumption that all humanities courses are entirely and utterly subjective, and that we come to literature simply from some ingrained interest or feeling about a work.  This is false.  Literary studies are far more than just "reading books and responding to them."  It is a tradition and a body of research that transcends the limits of the page.  That literature has remained a major field of study for centuries is a testament to its validity as a scholarly field (the same is true of much of the humanities, including philosophy, religion, and so on).

I can't say for certain, but I suspect this false perspective derives from the teaching practices in the K through 12 system (everything prior to Uni for non-U.S. folks).  Much of my evidence is anecdotal, though I think the shocking percentage of students I've taught who don't even know what "literary analysis" means is credible enough (at least a third of all students in the few literature classes I've taught, if not slightly more**).  In other words, if we teach literature not as a discipline of study on par with the sciences (in terms of its academic output, not necessarily in terms of its applicability to the everyday world), we might curb some of the misunderstandings that contribute to the nationwide attempt to devalue and defund literary study (and other humanities fields).

If this narrative sounds familiar, it's because a very similar narrative was used by literary scholars to disregard genre fiction -- one of my major fields of study.  Just as those scholars didn't understand the value of science fiction, so too do many universities and a portion of the public often fail to understand the value literary studies.  Some of that is undoubtedly because the people within my field have failed to convey the message about literature to the general public in a way that attracts interest and understandng (in particular, an answer to the question "Why should we take you seriously?").  There is already a small movement in genre studies to convince scholars to attempt to bring their work to the masses, and no insignificant amount of push back by scholars from the old guard.***  I'm not sure if it will succeed, though McFarland Books is largely considered by many faculty to fulfill that role, more or less.****

Maybe what literary studies needs is a Neil deGrasse Tyson to play Literary Populist for everyone who doesn't become an English major.  What do you think?

*As a general rule, I do not fill my syllabi with works I have no read.  The only works I will include that fall in the "I know everything about it, but I haven't read it" category are those works that I feel are crucial to the theme I am trying to explore.

**This statistic is not meant as an insult to students or to education at large.  There are a lot of reasons why students don't know X, Y, and Z, just as there are a lot of reasons why schools often can't teach those subjects.

***I still recall attending a PCA/ACA conference wherein the keynote declared in his speech that genre studies must reframe itself for everyday folks if it expects to survive.  Some people were quite unhappy with that speech.

****Despite the image as a pop academic press, McFarland has released a great deal of scholarship that otherwise would get ignored in presses associated with universities.  It's sad, but true.  Most of the major work on Battlestar Galactica and other major television and film franchises from the last 20 years can be found in McFarland's catalogue.

between the two world wars) and the women who were almost forgotten there.  As an experiment in feeding female artistic expression (painting) through literary interpretation (fiction), the collection draws parallels between the worlds of metaphor (the paintings) and the very real discourse of female identities in the wake of a patriarchal culture -- this is part of the mission of the "Conversation Pieces" series at Aqueduct Press (to explore the "grand conversation").  "Birthday," for example, expands upon Dorothea Tanning's painting of the same name by turning the unknown woman into Emma, who has spent her formative years taking on the identities required of her by her parents and the culture around her (53-54).  Thus, when Emma inherits her parents' apartment complex, marries Joe at 21, and soon has a child (Jenna), she embarks on a quest to find an identify that more appropriately fits her inner self.  What begins as a series of cruel gestures on Emma's part (leaving her family and her various lovers, one by one, by changing apartments within the same complex) quickly become the sympathetic acts of deliberate personal interrogation through others.  Perhaps the most disturbing of the three stories, "Birthday" is also perhaps the most profound in the collection as a work of neo-surrealist magical realism that draws into question the ways humans have been conditioned to accept identities for convenience.


Birds and Birthdays is currently available at Aqueduct Press as an ebook or paperback.  It is the 34th volume in their "Conversation Pieces" series.  You can learn more about the author on his website.

I've included images of the paintings Barzak describes in his book below.  You will also find two YouTube videos of early surrealist cinema at the bottom (specifically, Entr'acte by Rene Clair and the popular La Voyage dans la Lune by Georges Melies -- the latter is not technically a surrealist film, though it is sometimes seen as an important precursor to the surrealist cinematic movement).  Enjoy!

It's official.  J. J. Abrams is going to direct the new Star Wars movie.  The good news?  He's not writing it.  Nope.  That would be Michael Arndt, who is best known for Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3.  That's good news indeed.

When I set out to write this post, I imagined it would begin and end with a long diatribe about how many times I have been burned by J. J. Abrams since the travesty that was Cloverfield.  As a writer, Abrams is, in my opinion, no better than whoever Michael Bay pays to write his bloated scripts of plot-ological stupidity (Transformers 2, anyone?).  But he's not a terrible director, given a good script, and he's worked with amazing folks like Steven Spielberg.

This post, then, will take a far different approach to whether Abrams is a good pick for the Star Wars universe (i.e., a randomly numbered string of equally random thoughts -- sort of):

1) Considering what the Star Wars franchise has become, and the unlikelihood that Disney will make significant changes to the model, I can't say that Abrams is necessarily a bad choice, given his work on Star Trek.  Star Trek, after all, wasn't necessarily a bad movie in terms of its presentation.  It had a lot of the things that the franchise had been missing all lined up in near-perfect order; all of those elements are crucial to Star Wars movies anyway, minus glaring plot holes.  On this front, I agree with John Scalzi.

2) Whatever will happen to the Star Wars universe under Abrams, I can't imagine it can end up any worse than Attack of the Clones.  The new movie won't be another prequel, and is likely to take us away from the stock characters (not that I don't like Skywalker and Solo or anything).  Even if the second half of that sentence isn't true, at least we'll have new stories to think about, with different writers and directors behind the helm.  At worst, Abrams can only offer a different look at a commercial franchise.  At best, he might actually make something that we'll fondly remember.

3) I care more about the continuation and improvement of the Star Wars franchise in film form than I do about my well-documented dislike of J. J. Abrams.  In other words, I will see the new movie whether Abrams is a part of it or not.  That Arndt is writing the screenplay leads me to believe I'm not irrational to expect a decent movie.

None of this means that I'm not apprehensive about the selection of Abrams.  I'd rather have a different director behind the helm, if I'm honest.  But the more I think about the selection, the less inclined I am to think, as I stupidly said on Twitter the other day, that Abrams will have a negative impact on the franchise.  Lucas kicked it when it was down well enough on his own...

What do you all think?

Wouldn't it make the world a better place if we all randomly searched through our grandparents' stuff and one day discovered some super important antique book signed by the author?  We could all share our magic book stories with one another, hold hands, and frolic in fields of emerald grass...

Or we could just sell them to one another and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is what this guy did when he discovered a copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in his grandfather's house (one of two inscribed by the author to have survived the evils of time).  We don't know how
much he sold the book for because the final auction price has been kept private (it exceeded his asking price of £350,000 ($567,000)).  That's a lot of money, no?

This guy is way cuter than I am, but it's all the book.  Honest.

The question, for me, is whether I would have sold the book if it had appeared on my grandmother's shelf.  I'm not sure I would, to be honest.  A good chunk of my book collection is, well, collectible.  I've got some 100+-year-old books, lots of signed and personalized ones, and so on and so forth.  I even have a 1st Edition of the U.S. edition of the Silmarillion floating around in this apartment of mine (I think that's important, but it's probably not).  But no Frankenstein.  In fact, the most exciting discovery I recently had was realizing that my copy of Dionne Brand's A Map to the Door of No Return had been signed by the author.  See?

This is me trying my best creepy stalker / seductress pose.  Any tips?

In any case, we now have two sexy copies of Frankenstein to hoo and haa over.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to see one of them before I die...

And on a completely random note, this:
It's now Thursday, but Monday was kind of an important holiday for us American people -- Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  MLK, I think it's fair to say, is one of the world's greatest heroes -- I still tear up when I hear his "I Have a Dream" speech.

He also has a unique connection to the genre community through Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on the original Star Trek.  You can hear her talk about her brief interactions with MLK Star Trek on this repeat episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk podcast.  I just thought it was worth mentioning on this blog, even if the day is over.

What nifty stuff has been going on in your worlds?

I remember being 9 years old and buying my first issue of Uncanny X-Men; my Mum had worked in a bookstore when I was little and had brought home rare gems, well-worn back-issues and cover-less comics [she couldn’t stand the sight of any book, comic or otherwise, being tossed into the garbage] so the sight of them on a newsstand was nothing new to me, however, this was the first issue I had bought of my own volition with my own money. And it? Was glorious.

Newsprint paper supported an array of colors most reminiscent of the Kirby-era, bold primes leapt off the page, and the cast of characters? Larger than life. A vibrant team of misfits and underdogs – each imbued with fantastic powers which set them apart from the everyday, yet
personalities which connected them to people I knew, even in my suburban Virginia daily life in elementary school and daycare. Their leader Cyclops, in bold blue and red; the mischievous Nightcrawler in India Ink wash and swashbuckling indigo; the stalwart Colossus in naked-comic page-white, yellow and red; the cantankerous Can-nucklehead himself, Wolverine, in his distinctive yellow/blue costume and, of course, Storm commanded the page in her diaphanous black and yellow ensemble, her cascading white hair billowing in the Cockrum-inked wind.

I couldn’t put it down, the introduction of Alpha Flight, a super-hero group from that far-off cousin of ours, Canada [What, I was 9? The furthest I had been at that point was to the various Smithsonian Museums in DC and the Baltimore Aquarium – Canada was foreign AND mysterious. Plus? It was the end of the ‘80s, who didn’t think Canada was cool back then?]. I instantly had to get my hands on more comics show-casing these unique team members. True, Snowbird’s costume and diadem were like a white-chick knock-off of Storm, but, who didn’t wanna emulate Storm? I mean, she’s STORM! And Vindicator was a prick, but … Northstar’s douche-y ‘tude, Sasquatch’s cool-as-all-get-out look and Snowbird’s awesome powers made this team something to read and watch in-action.

After devouring the issue and reading it three times through, I snuck into Mum’s Sewing Room where she kept her stash of comics.

Found, bought, rescued – her collection may not have put the fear of foreclosure in the hearts of comic book stores, but to my eyes it was a Solomon’s Gold Mine. A veritable treasure-trove of new reads [I’ve always been a voracious reader, books, comic books and mini-comics that came with He-Man or She-Ra toys] with art that leapt off the pages and pulled me into the worlds Marvel and DC built for me. Mum found me, several hours later, splayed amidst a sea of open, half-read and varying titles and chuckled at the sight.

Issues of Amazing Spider-Man [Cool art from Charles Vess], Uncanny X-Men [Classic X-Men re-prings as well as the Silvestri-era in the Australian Outback! Which of course I’d long-since read … repeatedly], ElfQuest, The Dark Knight, House of Mystery, Detective Comics, Rom: Space Knight and others ringed me. But what held my attention most? Two comic titles sat in my lap: The New Defenders and Alpha Flight.

These two ended up holding my attention, not merely because of interesting stories and art, thank you John Byrne, but because of the rich (and confusing) development of two separate characters in their respective titles [tho’ Alpha Flight writers, what were you thinking with Marrina? Seriously, I’ve never understood that, even 20 years later]: Moondragon and Northstar.
Moondragon was a Persis Khambatta-esque beauty [if you don’t know who that is, Google Star Trek Ilia]; powerful, intense, brave, with a touch [*cough*] of smug and a whole lot of re-writes. In the 20-ish issues Mum’s collection allowed me access to she bounced from angry-scorn-filled martial artist to floating-dragon-thingy to bisexual female all on top of fighting off bad guys like Thanos and dealing with young adult angst while the team tried to lived together. This soap opera was not to be missed. If I’d been of the mind [read: not so lazy], I’d have grabbed some popcorn and just sat back to watch/read it unfold.

Marvel’s writers weren’t afraid to see where this character development would take her – and they ran with it. True, she did fit the cliché as a mildly butch non-heterosexual woman skilled in martial arts and mildly man-hating (she really just didn’t like much of anyone, to be fair), however she ran around in what can affectionately be called a costume consisting of cape, gloves, mid-calf high-heeled boots and a open-bodice one-piece thong [ouch] much like her completely off-the-rack heterosexual counterparts. The writers allowed her character to explore a range of highs and lows in those few issues – including her mind-violation whose effects were tempered by the love of a fellow Defender, Cloud [who had her/his own sexual identity issues – Oy vey].

I sat there confused, yet felt an odd kinship for this angry, lashing-out-at-the-world and oft-times lonely character.
From the pages of that classic Uncanny X-Men battle, the French-Canadian Northstar caught my eyes (for his complete and total unlikability). In the first few issues I read I couldn’t help but mutter under my breath how much of a freaking asshole he was, but, those Marvel scripters are crafty bastards – it wasn’t long before I was rooting for the jerk [despite his first appearance having him deck Storm – my admiration/mild comic geek obsession with her should be discussed elsewhere] and when, to my surprise, the Olympic-medal-holding skier came out of the closet? Well, I was already 7 random issues in. And I was well-and-truly reader-hooked.

The writers had created yet another well-layered character whose sexuality was not the issue, yet set him apart. He did not fit the cookie-cutter gay-best-friend-full-of-lonely-angst-and-fueled-by-catty-remarks-who-dresses-better-than-you-ever-could so lauded in literature and movies at the time, he was an athlete held in esteem and admiration for his feats of national heroism. Yes, the writers had him quipping bitchy and caustic remarks, but let’s just assume that’s the whole FRENCH-Canadian thing and not because they had a gay man unwilling to mince words.

At 9, I was picked on a lot at school. I was a geek [and still proudly am, ask any of my friends], a loner not by choice but because I wasn’t cool, I used big words and a heavily sarcastic tone [word bandying I may or may not have emulated from my favorite comic characters], and I didn’t like to do rough’n’tough ‘boy’ things like throw dirt clods at one another or talk about what was happening in the world of Wrestling … instead I read, hung out with girls occasionally and was known for my thinking She-Ra was cool. I was labeled ‘gay’ early on – the school guidance counselor actually wrote a report when I was five declaring me “a homosexual, but perhaps this can be worked with” because of these differences.
I was labeled this long before I knew what being gay was; whether I was gay or not wasn’t the point. [And the national advertising campaigns for Bengay so did not help, thanks.] The X-Men drew me in as an outsider trying to fit in and become part of a world that feared and hated what they called me. Comic characters like Moondragon and Northstar showed me that being different from those who were different was still an option – something even lauded. They showed me hope.

The marriage of Northstar recently, in Astonishing X-Men vol 3 #51 was one of the most touted and pleasantly-received Comic publicity maneuvers in years (by dint of an actual actor-portrayed reenactment and a slew of online campaigning) shows how far such ground-breaking characters have come – allowed by their writers and fans.

One of my favorite things about the nonstop progress of technology is how it assists the less fortunate to interact with the world on a more complete level. A lot of these technologies -- DARPA's advanced carbon-fiber limbs, implantable retinas, brain-computer interfaces -- try to correct disabilities so these people can live a "normal" live. But is this the best way?

This article is about a new way for deaf-blind people to communicate, and also to use the internet in a way that will only be native to them. It allows them to interact with non-disabled people using
a method that only users of this technology will understand. In essence, they have passed a type of singularity and have become true transhumans. Users of the TacTic will be able to communicate with each other more easily than with non-users. These users will have a constant, tactile link to the internet; something beyond even those with smartphones can experience.

And the thing is: TacTic is just an input device; a translator. It can be used for things beyond surfing the internet. It could issue commands to a vehicle or a house; service animals can become that much more useful.

More than anything, though, TacTic will allow people with disabilities to communicate more effectively with everybody around them, and that will create a higher standard of living. But is technology getting to the point where instead of creating compensation devices, scientists begin to tailor devices to the specific disability where, with regular use, the disabled may exceed "normal human" levels of interaction with the environment? If that did arise, would people chose to maim themselves to get access to the technology.


Adam Callaway is an SF/F writer.  His work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flurb, and AE.  You can find out more about him on his website or twitter.

I am told that there are legends from long ago about the mystical Book Mountains.  They arose when the gods had let their book collecting habits get the better of them, thus resulting in massive mountains of cosmic knowledge in need of organization in the Great Library of the Sky.  It seems the mountains are returning...

Far over the book mountains old
To imaginations deep with mold
We must away ere break of day
To seek enchanted shelves of gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While fountains fell like inky bells
In language deep, where dark words sleep,
In hollow covers beneath ink wells.

For ancient kings and elvish lords
There many gloaming golden words
They shaped and wrought, and minds they caught
to hide in gems on pen-like swords.

On silver necklaces they strung
the feathered arms, on crowns they hung
the bookworm's-soul, in twisted coal
They penned histories of moon and sun...

--------------------------------------------------

Dear Tolkien's Estate:  No copyright infringement intended.  I'm acting silly.  Don't sue me, please.

(You can read my earlier post about the ten year anniversary of my first chemo treatment here.)

Thanksgiving.  It's that time of year when we all hang out with family, eat lots of food, and avoid contracting deadly diseases.  It's a time of thanks, too, though nature has this odd tendency to understand "thanks" to mean "how can I make your life difficult today?"  Thus begins my long road to discovering the cancerous tumors that at one time riddled my body, trying their hardest to kill
me slowly and painfully (excuse me while I say a giant "fuck you" to cancer.  You're dead, suckas).  But let's step back a little first...

Darko Suvin and Louis Marin think Disneyland is problematic. I agree, but they're not going to steal my imaginary childhood from me...

2002 was not a good year for me.  Around September or so, I totaled my car in Los Angeles while driving to Disneyland for a weekend of fun.  We got sideswiped in an intersection that didn't have a turn signal, which was something I'd never seen before (we didn't have such things in my small town, because all our signals were properly marked -- if you didn't have a turn signal, it told you that you had to yield.  In this case, the turn lane had a signal, but without the arrow OR a "yield to oncoming traffic" sign.  But L.A. is evil, so it was all my fault.).  Luckily, nobody was hurt, despite the fact that the other car was moving at close to 40 miles an hour and struck the car a foot or so from my legs, smashing the frame up until the engine block.  No broken bones.  No pain.  Just a lot of hot chocolate everywhere and crying (which is what I do when I'm suffering from shock).

Things didn't improve from there.  Maybe a month later, I got fired from my job as night manager of a local fast food restaurant.  They blamed me for money that had gone missing in the safe, despite the fact that the general manager and the franchise owner had previously been shown evidence that the office in which the safe was kept was not secure (we had video evidence of an employee adjusting the focus on the camera while out of frame before returning after closing to try to Spider Man his way through the crack above the office door).  But I got blamed for it and fired without notice.  Literally.  Nobody told me I'd been fired.  I had to find out about it through a letter sent almost a month later (after I began filing a complaint with the unemployment office).  To add to the irony, the general manager was caught siphoning funds from the safe a year later.

This is what he thought he was like...

This is how he actually looked, minus the wine...

After losing my job and my car, I continued on with school, hoping to at least make something of myself through education (that's a half-truth).  About halfway through the semester, I started having asthma attacks.  These didn't surprise me terribly much.  I've had asthma my whole life; some of the attacks have even sent me to the hospital.  But my doctor thought these attacks seemed associated with chronic bronchitis, and he put me on some meds and prescribed asthma treatments (through the respirator of doom) to hopefully curb the illness.  I didn't challenge it because I didn't have any reason to.  All my symptoms said "bronchitis" -- night sweats and cold saps, coughing, asthma-like symptoms, etc.

All these things didn't help make the year a particularly pleasant one (a factor which helped lead to severe depression over the next few years).  But I made plans to spend Thanksgiving with my mom, her partner, and my brother and sister along the northern coast of California, thinking "yay, rocky beaches and Fort Bragg."  I dragged my respirator of doom along and resolved myself to have as good a time as a sick person can have.  Everything seemed fine, and a fun time I had indeed!

But 2002 is the only year that hates my guts.  I know this because I lived during that year, and I remember the distinct moment when its physical form descended upon my person and accosted me for no reason whatsoever.  Its breath smelled suspiciously like old socks...

While returning home, I started to have another asthma attack.  Once we arrived, I sat down and took another treatment...only it didn't do anything.  I could feel my heart rate surging and my lungs struggling against some unknown constricting force, and I knew "this is the worst asthma attack I've had in a long time, and I need to go to the hospital."

This is where the wonders of the U.S. healthcare system come into play.  Emergency rooms tend to work from "most serious" to "least serious" based on available information.  Someone who comes in complaining of a broken toe, for example, will get passed over for someone with chest pain.  But that's not how it went in my case.  When we arrived, there were a number of people already waiting.  Most didn't have severe issues going on, as far as I can remember -- some folks had cold symptoms and some had fevers.  But we were forced to wait for 6 hours (or something like that) anyway, despite my symptoms -- difficulty breathing and an increased heart rate.  They even put someone ahead of me who had fallen out of a tree, who seemed to have done little more than hurt his arm (why he was climbing a tree in the middle of the night is beyond me).  It's possible all of these people were actually worse off than myself (or seemed so based on whatever they reported to the orderly), but it didn't seem so to my 19-year-old-I-can't-breathe-oh-my-god self.

Someone eventually brought us into the emergency room, took my vitals, and raised some concerns about my heart rate.  They gave me some treatments, tracked my heart rate, etc., and even ordered an X-ray to see if there were any obstructions or what have you in my lungs.  And then came the two enormous shocks of the day:

1. Because of my vital signs, they needed to get an IV in me to administer certain treatments and so on.  I hadn't voluntarily allowed doctors to put needles in me for as long as I could remember.  In fact, I still have a memory of doctors and nurses holding me down when I was a young lad so they could administer a shot.  I was deadly afraid of needles.  You can understand, then, why I resisted the notion of letting them stick anything into me.  Eventually I had to give in, because if I didn't, they wouldn't have as many options to help me.  Needless to say, I hated every minute of it (I still hate needles, though I've accepted that they have to go into me for my own good).
2. The X-ray showed abnormalities that the doctors could not diagnose properly without a better image (CT scan).  As a general rule, you don't want to hear "there are abnormalities in your chest x-ray" from a doctor.  Nothing good comes from it.  Trust me.  Nothing at all.

According to RT, Elon Musk of Paypal / SpaceX fame wants to put a colony on Mars.  Musk's proposed city will help re-settle 80,000 people, run on sustainable technology (at least in part), and contain a population of -- you guessed it -- vegetarians.  I'm intrigued by this idea because it makes me wonder about the motives and possibilities of such a city.  What would compel Musk to narrow his focus only to vegetarians (or people willing to convert)?  What advantages would that provide a space-faring society?

Salad alien only eats saladses. Meats is gross.

If we lived in 1960, one might easily argue in favor of a vegetarian diet.  Presumably, Mars contains all the required components to maintain basic farming -- with a little work.  Maintaining
an animal stockyard, however, would put too much strain on a growing colony, requiring a lot of resources both in terms of land and "set-up costs."  We didn't have the means to grow animals from petri dishes back then (though we're closer to such technology today).  Imagine trying to lift a herd of goats into space, take care of them for 6-8 months, and then get them safely on the Martian soil.  Then imagine trying to stop them from eating through the hull of your mini community...

But we don't live in 1960.  We live in 2012, and Musk intends to begin building said city as early as 2022.  I'll assume for the sake of argument that 2022 is a reasonable date for the foundations of a Martian city of vegetarians.  But do the advantages remain?  I'm not convinced.  Considering that recent technological advances (such as those by the company, Modern Meadows) have opened up new possibilities for lab-grown meat, I think the argument in favor of a purely vegetarian colony is impractical.  If we are able to produce such products now, imagine what another ten years of advances will do.  Perhaps we'll learn how to reproduce the animal cells from smaller colonies of cells (current technologies require us to get cells from an animal; I assume stem cell research opens up opportunities here, though I'm not a cell biologist).  We already have growth stimulants for hospital patients, so it's not beyond reason to assume we can do the same for lab-grown meat without creating an inferior product.  This means that, in theory, we can reduce the required resources to maintain an omnivore culture.  The only concern is one that already exists for any Martian colony -- resources.  To grow crops, lab-burgers, and so on, we need access to good soil, good nutrients, and so on.  Presumably we can get that from Mars, but there's another area in which I am not an expert.

Apparently this is what vegan Mr. Rogers looks like...on Mars.

Of course, I could be wrong.  Maybe there is a good reason to avoid meat altogether.  Maybe vegetarianism is sustainable and rational when severe conditions are involved.  In fact, I don't even have a problem with a vegetarian culture.  It sounds cool.  But I have this odd notion in my head that lab meat is easier to produce than an enormous farm.  Then again, if we can make meat in a lab, wouldn't it follow that we could do the same for produce?  I wonder what that would look like...

What does everyone else think about this idea?


"Science in Our Science Fiction" is a new feature on WISB.  It will feature real science news and my thoughts about how it might apply in the future or might make for interesting SF stories, etc.

Woo!  This is pretty awesome, don't you think?

It's not very often that you get to see a sword slice through various fruits and a water bottle.  But when you do, it's pretty much awesome!

My good friend, Adam Callaway, has fallen on some pretty rough times this year.  He lost his job and due to a number of factors (the recession hit right as he was graduating from school, he's young, he doesn't make $289,000 a year, etc.), he and his wife don't have much saved up to help them survive the next few months.

In other words, he could really use some help.  I've known Adam for years now.  He's not one to ask for money often, and I know for a fact that he's already applied to at least a dozen jobs since he was let go by his previous employer.  He doesn't want to be where he is (who does?).  But because he's there, he's hoping folks will offer a little financial help.

His goal is to have enough saved to survive through March, assuming he can't get a job before then.  That's about $2,000.  I think we all can help him get there -- no problem.  The good news is that Adam is offering all kinds of perks for donations, including:

For a $3 donation:
My short-short story collection #TWITFIC in any format (mobi, epub, pdf).
For a $5 donation:
Everything above plus a copy of the very first Lacuna story, a novella called The City of Missing Letters. If you ever wondered about the origins of the city, this is the story to have.  Available in any format (mobi, epub, pdf).
For a $10 donation:
Everything above plus a copy of my mosaic novel The Inked Man, comprised of previously-published Lacuna stories as well as stories entirely new to the collection in any format (mobi, epub, pdf). There may be a slight delay in receiving this as I'm finalizing the cover and layout.
For $25:
Everything above as well as my young adult science fiction novel Junkyard Kings. Readers have described it as "Harry Potter with giant fighting robots." This also comes in any format (mobi, epub, pdf).
For $35:
Everything above and a personalized Filament webcomic attached to a blog post detailing how awesome you are as a person.
For $50:
Everything above, plus I'll ship you a random rare or antique book from my own collection. Most of the books are signed genre works and I will email you a list to choose from if you reach this level. (This one is confined to the continental 48 only. Sorry Hawaii, Alaska, and the rest of the world).
For $100:
Everything above, plus a permanent link or thank you on Sensawunda, seen by hundreds of visitors each day.
For $250:
I will write for you a personalized story of between 1000-2500 words with nearly all parameters chosen by you. And a second rare book.
For $500:
Everything above, and I'll write you your own, 2500-5000 short story. Any genre, idea, or circumstance. And it'll be damn good too. And I'll send you a third book.
For $1000:
Everything above, except I'll write you a novella of at least 10,000 words. I'll send you a fourth rare book.  And if I ever get the pleasure of meeting you in person, I'll give you a bear hug, bake you butterscotch cookies, and declare you Supreme Being.

He's also offering to release panels from his comic, Filament, for every $10 submitted.  That means 200 comics if we make it to $2,000!  And what fiction he will release to folks, you better believe it will be great stuff.  His Lacuna stories are wonderful and weird.

So if you think you can spare $1, $10, or whatever, please head over to Adam's site and click the donate button on the right.  Alternatively, you can directly donate through Paypal using adam.r.callaway[at]gmail[dot]com (just leave a little note or email him so he knows that's what it's for).  Any little bit helps!

Please spread the word!

On January 10th, Catherine Schaffer and Mary Robinette Kowal organized a fundraiser to raise money for a genome sequencing procedure for fellow writer, Jay Lake.  Lake, as you might know, has been battling cancer for years, and recently received some terrible news about his future.  Having this procedure done could very well suggest new treatments that could extend his life.  The fundraiser offered a lot of amusing perks for different goal levels -- Paul Cornell, for example, offered to sing "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush (goal reached!):

You can find many of the other amusing examples, from ancient trunk stories to Mary Robinette Kowal's amazing rendition of "Mother Goose" in her "phone sex" voice.

Needless to say, the cause is a good one.  When I had the fortune to have Jay Lake on my podcast last year, he shared a great deal about his personal life, which had the effect of convincing me that I should write about my own travels with cancer (which I started here).  While it's not fair to offer up one of those "if anyone deserves it" statements (almost everyone deserves the right to a long, healthy life, as far as I'm concerned), I have to admit that I'm extraordinarily happy that so many wonderful people stood up to raise money for Jay.

And that fundraiser has, at the time of writing this post, raised over $36,000 in under 48 hours, with numerous bits of joy added on as previously unexpected financial heights were reached (the fundraiser has now become a way to help Jay pay for his medical bills).  I imagine Jay is overwhelmed for very good reasons.  After all, the community came out en mass to help him get a potentially life-saving procedure he otherwise couldn't have afforded.  I can imagine he's ecstatic and emotional over this.  I would be too if I were in his position.

But I've found myself overwhelmed too, for different reasons.  Folks who know me have been, shall we say, gifted to my perpetual cynicism about our culture.  Barely 12 hours before this fundraiser went live, I recall telling my friend, Adam Callaway, that our culture is a painfully selfish one, and that we are capable of so much good if we could only get over our desperate need to hoard wealth and back-stab one another.  I still believe that, but the enormous success of this fundraiser (one that still has a month left) has made me realize that there is a strong pocket of what I'd call "true humanity" right here in the genre community.

That so many people who don't even know Jay would pour out their support for him, and at such a rapid pace, has taught me that maybe I shouldn't be so cynical about everything.  After all, fundraisers happen all the time, for very good causes, and some raise massive amounts of money too.  The genre community is relatively small, though.  The people offering to embarrass themselves in public or donating their money have done something extraordinary, as they have done many times before.  This time, it was too obvious to ignore.  Too big.  Too amazing.

That's more or less how the genre community restored my faith in humanity.  You've shattered my view of the world in all the right ways.  And I thank you for that.

For those who haven't helped yet, please head on over to the fundraiser for Jay and give a little money.  The stretch goals have since been, well, stretched to the $100,000 mark, in which someone will produce a Jay Lake musical (after Howard Taylor draws a picture of Jay beating the crap out of cancer).  I'd love to see that musical, and I'd love to see Jay ride out the rest of his life with a little less stress.  Go donate!