wisb-Guardian-Express

First, read this.

Have you read it now?  Good.  I want to start by briefly talking about two of the central problems that Ms. Bourke rightly struggles with throughout her post (and which many readers had issues developing or agreeing to on their own) -- definitions and the perception of their application.  For the sake of space and time -- you should read the actual thread anyway -- I'm going break this down into little, methodical sections.

The two main terms at work here are "conservative" and "epic fantasy."  The latter is somewhat impossible to define, in part because subgenres are, in effect, convenient marketing categories.  There might be something called "epic fantasy," but I don't think anyone can approach a satisfactory definition.  I tend to imagine "epic fantasy" as a matter of scale.  In most works in this class, what is at stake is not the individual so much as the entire world (or the world as the characters know it).  Thus, any actions the heroes take is in an attempt to save the world from destruction, whether literally through some kind of magic or figuratively through some
sort of violent conquest.  Thus, Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire share something in common with Karen Miller's Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series.  What is crucial, for me, is that the stakes are greater than a single, isolated community.

"Conservative," however, is a far simpler term to define.  While some arguments about its supposed meaning are interesting, they tend to rely on isolated meanings within individual communities, which themselves are often reductive and meaningless.  Saying that "conservative" means "smaller government" is to fall prey to a particular narrative about the term, one which itself is often self-contradictory.  "Conservative," then, must be taken not for what people say it is, but what it does.  It ultimately comes down to roots.  If conservative is both "restrained" and "protective," then it follows suit that the term refers to a wide range of possibilities:  from traditional cultural movements to general conservation, and so on and so forth.  This is partly why we identify "conservative" most often in opposition to "progressive," as the latter actively seeks change (not always "good" change), where the other frequently wants to prevent or slow it down (not always a "bad" thing).

There's no point debating "epic fantasy" and trying to find an adequate definition to apply to this scenario.  In other words, I'm skipping it here for the more interesting questions related to conservatism.

If we take as given that "conservative" rests in opposition to "progressive," I think it becomes clear that much of what falls under the "epic fantasy" category is neither wholly one or the other -- with exception, of course. Take Lord of the Rings as an example.  From the start, the major conflict of the novel centers around the ring and preventing some other force (the progressive change) from using it to take over.  This is an inherently conservative idea:  maintaining the status quo.  And that's not a bad thing in this case.  Sauron, after all, would likely change the world of Middle Earth so drastically as to render the limited freedoms of such a world void, thus plunging everyone into "darkness" (a melodrama that rests on an assumption).  Avoiding that problem is naturally conserving the present because it is simply the better option.  But the narrative is not wholly conservative, for one of the subplots is the "Return of the King," which assumes that one man will return to his rightful place among his people, thus bringing back a lost ideal and taking the world of Middle Earth into its next mythic phase:  the Age of Man.  Thus, the ending of Lord of the Rings offers a progressive shift away from the status quo.  We can assume that certain things will always remain the same (conserved), but other things will change (progressed) -- hopefully for the better.

This is true for many other epic fantasies too.  Karen Miller's Kingmaker, Kingbreaker series follows a similar conservative/progressive structure.  The narrative opens with the ascension of a previously "crippled" (non-magic) son, who must protect the kingdom against the faltering "dome" that protects everyone from the dark forces beyond (forces connected to the goddess who made magic possible -- it's complicated).  But because he has no true magic himself, he must rely on a "commoner" (Asher) to do the work for him.  Thus, Asher, the protagonist, gets caught up in the court politics of a world where only certain people are allowed magic, ensuring a certain degree of "slavery" among certain classes, and untold freedoms among others.  The narrative is, more negatively than in LOTR, about conserving the present -- protecting it from what will undoubtedly look a lot worse.  But the end of the duology posits an entirely different future:  one where Asher ascends to power, upending the entire social system of this isolated "continent" and taking the people there to the next stage in their cultural development.  These are good things, we assume, because it means granting certain freedoms to everyone (progressing) while maintaining certain privileges for others (conserving).

All of this is to suggest that there are simply no easy dichotomies when it comes to conservative and progressive.  The two work against and with one another for the betterment of the whole.  At least, that's how it's supposed to work.  In a great deal of fantasy, it works wonderfully.  In real life?  Well, you just have to look at the U.S. Congress for your answer...

Thoughts?

You decide!

I have never seen Forbidden Planet.  It's one of those films that SF enthusiasts say you have to see, but I have never made the time to do so.  Until now...

As a first time viewer of a now-50+-year-old movie, I find it necessary to offer a number of concessions:  1) I cannot expect the visuals to meet contemporary standards of "realism" (limited budgets + limited technology); 2) I cannot expect characters to develop in ways that are anything but consistent with a 1950s cultural milieu; and 3) I must accept pseudoscience.  That's more or less how I came into the film.  After all, if you watch Forbidden Planet, you'll become aware of the limitations of the cinematic medium during the 50s, the rampant, almost "rapey" sexism that was all too common during the "glory days," and the laughable nonsense that passed for "science" then (and still passes for "science" today).

And yet, for such a campy film, Forbidden Planet does something that only the best SF films do:  eloquently visualizes and explores the science of a future world, even if, upon further inspection, much of that science is impossible, unexplained, or downright false (it was the 50s, after all).  The
opening scenes, for example, imagine a future in which FTL is possible, but not in the fanciful and convenient way of Star Wars, which wouldn't appear for another 20 years.  Rather, the crew reminds us of two important things:  traveling to other stars takes an extraordinary amount of time and deceleration is not a "cakewalk."  Navigators must set the deceleration process on a "timer" and climb into the anti-gravity pods to wait the process out.  Nothing is every quite explained.  How do the pods work?  Why do they turn strange colors and "disappear"?  We just don't know.

The film is littered with these moments, from explanations about the alien technology to incredible closeups of the navigation systems of the reconnaissance ship, etc.  Moments like these serve to rationalize the irrational things to come -- in the case of Forbidden Planet, we are meant to accept that one's "id" is capable of manifesting as an unstoppable, invisible monster (provided one's mind has been manipulated by alien technologies).  They are also what one might call "scientific excess," the necessity of which is readily apparent:  what I've already suggested (so we can rationalize the irrational) and to establish the science fiction frame (this is not our world; it is a future world).
This is not unusual in science fiction film.  I cannot speak for the wide range of SF film leading up to the release of Forbidden Planet in 1956, since that period is hardly my forte.  However, many classic SF films have gone to almost masturbatory levels to establish scene/setting through scientific excess.  2001:  A Space Odyssey (1968) provided us with two extraordinary sequences inside massive, moving sets, the object of which was to mimic for the audience how artificial gravity (and stasis pods, for that matter) might work on a visual level.  The scenes are beautiful, if not a tad dated, and perform exactly the same function as the opening minutes of Forbidden Planet (we're meant to accept the unexplained monoliths and the Starchild).  Alien (1979) and parts of Aliens (1986) are similarly focused on the technological mechanics of the future.  The former contains no dialogue until nearly 6 minutes into the film, instead focusing on a) the computational abilities of the Nostromo (which haven't aged well), and b) the long process of waking from stasis.  Aliens reverses this imagery by showing the decrepit condition of the Nostromo's escape shuttle, which salvage crews must cut into before they can extricate the sole survivor of the previous film -- a person nobody was expecting to find anyway.  Rather than focusing on how technology has "advanced," the sequence focuses on how the very technology that made the previous film possible has remained static in time, providing the necessary jolt of reality that Ripley will need to reach the next stage as a hero.  The result?  We're drawn into the world so we can more easily take that leap of faith when the seemingly impossible alien(s) show up.
Contemporary SF films no longer do this.  There are exceptions, of course, but almost all SF films these days focus on setting, vague definitions of character, or imagery.  While technology exists in these films, it is often backdrop, not scene-starter.  The characters interact with the new world, but they are disconnected from it -- disengaged, if you will.  Even the latest Star Trek film tossed aside the pseudoscientific jargon that made the franchise the subject of many linguistic jokes; Abrams opted for a flashier, more "agile" narrative in what I can only assume was an attempt to breathe (or bleed) new life into the franchise.

I'm not sure why this trend apparently died off.  Budgetary reasons?  Were audiences disinterested in the extraordinary details many SF writers/directors put into their work because of pacing concerns?  Your guess is probably as good as mine (unless you're an SF film scholar and have answers).  One thing is for certain:  it's a fascinating and illuminating SF trend.  Perhaps we'll get something like it again one day...

One of my colleagues recently asked me whether I think he should finish reading Ringworld by Larry Niven.  While he didn't say so directly, I assume that he isn't enjoying his first foray into the Known Space universe.  There are probably a lot of good reasons for that.  His research interests lean toward the last 30 years of science fiction, with special attention to works that fall loosely into the cyberpunk, biopunk, and ecocriticism categories -- authors like Paolo Bacigalupi, William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, etc.  He's made a solid effort to read the classics, though, since knowing about the history of the genre is important to the scholarship.

Personally, I think Ringworld is a fascinating book that falls prey to its age.  True, it is one of the most important works of science fiction ever written.  True, it has affected genre in profound ways.  But it is also a work that doesn't connect as well with contemporary audiences as it did in the decades immediately following publication (1970).  That said, it has not aged as much as the works
of the Golden Age, which have suffered the effects of time more acutely than the stuff from the New Wave.

My first foray into the Known Space Universe was via an abridged audiobook of Ringworld.

I think this is simply what happens to all literature over time.  While we still read Dickens, Bronte, Faulkner and Hughes today, we do so primarily because they are "classic" writers (with some exceptions, of course).  The real discussion these days surrounds works that have more relevance to the now, from O'Connor and McCarthy to O'Brien and Wallace to Adichie and Atwood.  The list goes on and on.  I don't think this is a revelation, though.  That's just how literature works -- like any other field.  We don't become stuck in time, as it were.

Science fiction, however, has been accused of having the exact opposite problem:  the Golden Age and so on and so forth are viewed nostalgically, not as stepping stones in a much larger literary movement.  I'm not convinced this is wholly true, but it is certainly true in some cases -- Myke Cole would probably agree.  We are often so focused on what were great works "back then," and not on the great works of "just a short while ago" or "now."  "We" as in "the community."  That's not our fault really.  Because most of us think of science fiction as having that "sensawunda" feel, it becomes increasingly difficult to surprise.  So we go back to a time when SF did what we want "all" SF to do, in a way that seems or feels like it's divorced from the unfortunate and material reality we all live in.  Golden Age/Classic SF doesn't care about how the world really turned out and what that might mean for future generations (so the nostalgic argument goes); it just wants to take us to the future, to show us grand adventures, exciting technologies and peoples, and so on and so forth.

Whatever you might think of the classics, the idea of a giant ring world is still pretty amazing.

But for someone who doesn't have that experience, these works feel dated.  Lost.  Even somewhat overwhelming in their "simplicity" and "tone" (illusions, of course).  Ringworld, then, is a book that simply falls prey to a duality in genre:  the folks I'll call the Sensawundas and the others (the Contemporaries).  Some might say the Sensawundas are winning...

What do you think about the classics?  In particular, what do you think of Ringworld?  What did you think of it when you first read it?  The comments are yours.

You decide!

This is the most adorable character in the entire movie.  Fizzgig!

Today, I had a strange moment of contemplation:  since I don't re-read books all that often, I wondered about the criteria for re-reading and what re-reading does to our perception of the work.  Do we re-read books we simply love, or are there certain elements that compel re-reading?  And what happens to a book when we re-read it (or to ourselves, for that matter)?

You decide!

I thought today would be a good time to talk about social networks (broadly defined).  Since there are about 10,000 of these blasted things out there, it's always a struggle to figure out which ones work best for whatever it is I want to do -- talking about geeky things, writing, and politics.  I've been pretty careful to separate some of these subjects from one another, in part because I (used to) think separation was important for aspiring writers such as myself.  After all, politics and writing sometimes don't go together, particularly when you say things that other people won't like (a guarantee in this political climate).

And so, across my various social networks, I've found ways to separate and compartmentalize my various interests (with some crossover).  I won't suggest that everyone should do what I do.  Rather, I think it's more compelling to see how other people do it.  For that reason, I'd appreciate it if folks would comment below with their own explanations for how they use the various social networks.

The following are the major social networks of which I am a part.  For those that don't follow me elsewhere, this list might help you decide where to follow and/or avoid me:

Blogger (where you're currently reading this, I assume)
Topics:  Writing, Genre Fiction, and Other Geeky Topics
Follow:  N/A
I use Blogger primarily to explore the geeky things that matter to me, and to maintain some sort of online presence for my writing career (fiction and academic).  As such, much of what I post here, if you don't already know, is focused on genre fiction, with a side of writing (mostly genre fiction writing).  In the past, I've included things like politics and poetry, but those topics have since moved to other arenas (mostly because I find they fit better elsewhere, but also because, if I'm honest, I don't want this space to fall into the politics trap).

Twitter
Topics:  Writing, Genre Fiction, Politics, Randomness, and Other Geeky Topics
Other Uses:  Linking to my other content...
Follow:  Friends, Colleagues, and Professionals
Most of my Twitter activity is focused on genre, random things that I find amusing, and related categories.  For the most part, I've found it to be a great place to interact with other SF/F folks, and have, as such, used it sparingly for political stuff (maybe 25% of my activity there has to do with political things).  Likewise, I have found it a great avenue for keeping in touch with fellow grad students, many of whom follow me there.  You'll find me discussing a lot of genre-related topics there because it is one of the most lively places for such things (such as today, in which Mari Ness, Julia Rios, etc. and I talked about SF Poetry).

Google+
Topics:  Politics and Geeky Topics (w/ cross-pollination from my other ventures)
Follow:  Professionals, some Friends, and Political Folks (plus a lot of random people who periodically disappear from my list)
The bulk of my G+ use is political in nature.  In fact, of all the social networks I use, this is the only one that I use primarily to discuss politics.  As such, most of my followers aren't necessarily genre people (though there are a few of those), but folks who find my take on various political issues interesting (even if they disagree).  The remaining, tiny percentage of posts is devoted to geeky things and my own various works (such as podcasts, publications, etc.).  If you want to know what I have to say about politics, though, this is the place to go.  You won't find nearly as much discussion about such things anywhere else.

Facebook
Topics:  Personal Stuff, Writing, Politics, and Cross-pollination from Twitter
Follow:  Friends, Colleagues and the Rare Professional
Facebook is one of the ONLY networks I use primarily for personal communication.  I rarely friend anyone there who I do not already know.  As such, most of the people on my Facebook are people from college, friends, colleagues, and the occasional writer (most of whom fall into one of the other categories).  While politics, writing, and genre fiction pop up on my FB page all the time (usually through Twitter), its primary function remains personal.

Tumblr
Topics:  Poetry, Writing, Art, Nature, and Related Topics
Follow:  Friends, Interesting Posters, and the occasional Colleague
Of all my various social networks, this one is quickly become the most personal (in terms of what I share).  While I am sharing my own writing (poems and snippets from fiction), I've primarily been using it to explore various things that matter to me, such as art, life, my dreams, and more.  In fact, this will probably become my depository for all the things that frankly don't fit elsewhere (particularly, my poetry).  Tumblr is uniquely designed towards sharing these sorts of things (also:  porn, which I'm not sharing).  While Blogger is also a great space for the personal, it doesn't work so well for the things I'd like to do on the side, in part because my history on Blogger has pegged me as a certain kind of blogger.  Tumblr, then, is filling in the gaps.

What about you?  Do you use your social networks in different ways?  If so, how?

This is the profound power of innocence, whether embodied in the ideal image of Lily (virginal, free, beautiful, and sweet as rain) or in the internal philosophy of a fairy tale, where innocence destroys itself, only to be reborn exactly where it began.  Legend is only static because innocence is cyclical.  For the world to return to its original place -- a world of life, beauty, and wonder -- no trace of the real consequences of the temptation of innocence can remain.  It's an almost childlike reversion, if you will -- as if Legend were the child that had to be returned to us, pre-influence (say, pre-Janet Jackson).  The audience, however, can't return.  Ever.  The world might right itself, but we will always remember, like parents remember their children's experiences, that something has occurred and that, just as innocence and light are cycles of power, so too are the darkest recesses innocence and light produce.  The Lord of Darkness is right:  he is in all of us, and he will return one day, perhaps in a different form, but returned nonetheless.  Regardless, historical time shifts, because we know the history as it actually happens, and narrative time swings back around to start all over again.  Rinse and repeat.

Stepping out for a moment, I think it's interesting to consider how this might apply to the narrative if we consider Legend either as a children's fable OR as an adult fantasy.  For me, Legend is far too dark to fall under the traditional children's fable, if only because the imagery, sound, and tone are undeniably macabre.  At least in Disney movies, the villains sing a song.  Here, the only one who sings is Lily, while all else is nearly gory in detail -- excessive, vivid, and all too real.  To think of Legend as an adult fable, then, means perhaps realizing how innocence compels us to action in the real world.  We, in a sense, are always trying to keep the Lord of Darkness at bay, if only so we can protect the illusion of a utopia for ourselves and for our children.  Princess Lily, then, is more than just an embodiment of ideas, stereotypes, and innocence; she is also a reflection of the eternal battle between child-like perfection and "evil."
And on that note, I will sign off...

One of the things I hope to do one day is teach a class on Space Opera.  Thus far, that opportunity has not arisen just yet, but the future is bright (as they say).  For this teaching-related post, though, I'd like to offer a suggested reading list for two different Space Opera courses and then get feedback from the wide world of SF/F.  I should note that I will conflate Military SF with Space Opera, in part because I'm not wholly convinced that they are always distinct categories.  For the sake of this post, I will use a slightly modified definition from Brian Aldiss' (italics mine):

Colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, often but not always optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes...

The problem, of course, is that so much fits into this definition.  To avoid that, I will put emphasis on "very large-scale action" and take that to mean "multi-planetary action."

Since I mostly teach American literature courses right now, I'm going to make two lists -- one for an American literature course and one for a British literature course.  However, I am also wide open to the possibility of a World Lit-style course, so if you have suggestions for space operas written by people outside the traditional science fiction zones, please suggest them in the comments.

Here goes:

American Space Operas
The Skylark of Space by E. E. Doc Smith (1946)
Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1951)
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (1959)
Ringworld by Larry Niven (1970)
Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell (2007)
Dust by Elizabeth Bear (2007)
The January Dancer by Michael Flynn (2008)

British Space Operas
Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (1972)
Canapus in Argos by Doris Lessing (1979-1983)(not sure which book I'd pick)
Consider Phlebus by Iain M. Banks (1987)
The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton (1996)
Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds (2000)
Light by M. John Harrison (2002)
Singularity Sky by Charles Stross (2003)
Natural History by Justina Robson (2004)

Of course, teaching all of these books in a single semester might be difficult.  Sacrifices suck... I've also not included short stories, which are likely to replace certain novels (such as Bujold, who has written many shorts in the Vorkosigan Saga, thus opening up space for more space operas).

So, what would you change in my lists?  What am I missing?

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Note:  I am not pleased by the overwhelming number of men on my lists.  Due to my definition, many of my favorite female authors simply didn't fit, which exposed a critical gap in my reading.  If you have recommendations for significant space operas written by American and British women (other than the ones I've already named), please let me know so I can start filling those gaps in my reading.

If you haven't already heard from io9, Entertainment Weekly, and Geeks of Doom, Lucasfilm is considering the possibility of two standalone Star Wars films -- one involving an origin story for Han Solo, set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope (III and IV), and the other involving Boba Fett either between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back (IV and V) or Empire and The Return of the Jedi (VI).  That is, of course, if you accept the rumors (including this weird one about a Yoda movie).  Frankly, we don't have much reason to believe Disney won't make as many Star Wars movies as they possible can, especially when you consider just how lucrative the universe has been for Lucas and his various companies.  Any new movie would equal a new video game, new books, new merchandise, and on and on and on and on.  Basically, unless a Star Wars movie ends up flopping at the box office -- unlikely -- Disney will probably pump out as many movies as is reasonable.  Expect one of these years to become "the year of Star Wars," with t
hree different movies/series releasing all at the same time... (that's my rumor -- you can quote me).

What do I think about all this?  First, I'm not actually all that bothered by the prospect of a whole bunch of new Star Wars movies.  Honestly, I expect Disney to handle the franchise well enough; they might even do a better job of it than Lucas has in the last decade-ish.  I'm likely to see most of the movies, regardless of their setting, characters, and so on, if only because I have been a Star Wars nut since I was a kid (my mother gave me the VHS tapes of the Leonard Maltin editions, and I still have them -- in fact, I have two sets, because I wanted one that I could play without worrying about damaging the tapes...I was a weird teenager).

I see pride! I see power! I see a bad-ass mother who don't take no crap off of nobody!

My concern is that Disney will produce Star Wars films it shouldn't just because it can.  While an origin story for Han Solo or an expansion of Boba Fett's sparse plot in the originals might be interesting, it does make me wonder whether there aren't new and more interesting ways to inject freshness into a franchise that has, if we're being honest, been pretty stale (with some exceptions to a few of the extended universe products -- books and games in particular).  I love Star Wars and always will, but I'm also a bit bored of seeing the same old characters being trotted out over and over.  Now that we've followed through the origin of Darth Vader, I'd really like to see more new stuff.  New characters.  New stories.  And not just origins for characters living during the major events of the prequel and original trilogies.  I want to see stories set beyond the current film franchises.

I'm like a snake. I lure you into a false sense of security, and then I shot your ass under a table, melting your green skin like a mutated cake from a galaxy far, far away... Fool...

Think about it.  For those that follow the extended universe (I have some familiarity), imagine all the ways Disney could reinvigorate the franchise with new and exciting plots.  Take, for example, the post-Empire narratives, from the final death knell of the Empire to the various new invasions and terrors that befell the New Republic.  Even more fascinating might be to take us all the way outside of the immediate aftermath (an easier feat when you consider that most of the original cast is too damn old to reprise their roles) and film the Young Jedi stuff (the solo kids would make a great new set of heroes for new Star Wars fans) or even the incredible Yuuzhan Vong War, which would allow the original cast to return as secondary characters (or even as primaries, if one wanted to go that route -- I'm not sold either way) and allow us to see the New Republican and the New Jedi Order engage in one of the most important, violent conflicts of its new life.

The dreams of a Republic scattered like so much biology...

Basically, I'm saying that there is too much to show us in this world to let it go to waste re-hashing stuff we've already seen.  Sure, Han Solo is a great character, but he's an old character.  We more or less know his story; a prequel won't change that.  We even know Boba Fett, to some extent, and so imagining his pre-ROTJ past doesn't really add anything to the film franchise.  The only new material we're getting is in whatever film J. J. Abrams ends up making, but I'm not sure where he's going to set that story (or, rather, what Disney will let him and his writer do with the universe).  I can dream for a Mara Jade narrative, but I also have this absurd notion that Mark Hamill must reprise his role as Luke Skywalker at some point.  He can't do that in the Mara Jade plot because he's just too old (sorry, Mark), and I'm not sure I like the idea of casting a young blond guy to play the role...

I guess my biggest concern is that Disney will try so hard to keep the money coming in that they'll piss on the only opportunity I see that could make Star Wars more than just "that series we loved as kids, and which gave us enough merchandise to destroy a planet."  I want to go back into that movie theater and have the experience of a lifetime -- my first, actual Star Wars experience (the one older folks talk about all the time when they wax nostalgic about 1977).

But I don't expect that to happen...

In a recent discussion on The Skiffy and Fanty Show (it's here), Andrew Liptak, James Decker, Paul Weimer, and I discussed the prevalence of dystopian narratives in science fiction.  At one point, Andrew suggested that dystopias are, in large part, responses to the political climate of the author's present.  I agree with this assessment in principle, but I think the idea collapses when applied to works of the popular dystopia tradition -- the "dystopia is hip" crowd, if you will.  The Iron Heel, however, is the most obvious example of a literary response to a particular political climate -- in this case, the U.S. boom-and-bust economy at the turn-of-the-century.*

Told through the memoirs of Avis Everhard, The Iron Heel employs a number of literary devices to explore its political climate.  First, London frames Avis' narrative with Anthony Meredith, a
historian from a future in which the Revolution (i.e., the Socialist Revolution) has succeeded, resulting in an apparent utopia -- though we are never given much information about this future world.  Meredith introduces and annotates the "journals" of Avis Everhard, herself attempting to relay her past life with Ernest Everhard and the first revolts -- all of which fail.  We know from the start that both Avis and Ernest are dead, the latter due to some form of execution, but that their desires to see some form of change will find their realization some 700 years later.  The confusing narrative structure is probably best understood in terms of time:

• Anthony Meredith is writing from 700 years into the future
• Avis Everhard is writing in the 1930s about events that took place roughly between 1912-1917
• Ernest Everhard's speeches occur in Avis' recent past

I don't want to bore everyone with the socialist teachings of the book, themselves a product of London's attempts to come to terms with his own beliefs about capitalism and socialism.*****  Rather, what I want to point out is the way this novel fits into a larger paradigm of political dystopias -- that is, works of dystopian literature which are direct responses to real-world concerns, as opposed to the anti-utopians (i.e., the Dystopians) who simply rejected the supposed utopian impulse in political thought.  London (and E. M. Forster in the 1909 short story, "The Machine Stops"), like many writers that followed in the wake of the First World War, was one of the first to do just what I am describing, and his work, whether directly or otherwise, influenced dystopian literature through the pre- and post-Second World War periods, from Sinclair Lewis' fascist dystopia in It Can't Happen Here (1935) to Yevgeny Zamyatin's satire of the Soviet Union in We (1921)(not in chronological order, obviously).  The trend continued through George Orwell in his most famous works, 1984 (1949; apparently influenced directly by The Iron Heel and We, if Michael Shelden is to be believed in Orwell:  The Authorized Biography (1991)) and Animal Farm (1945) -- both works deeply concerned with totalitarian forms of government (a common trend); to Kurt Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" (1961) -- a dystopian look at radical equality; Alan Moore's V for Vendetta -- totalitarianism again; and P. D. James' Children of Men -- an allegory of reproductive rights.
There are plenty of books I'm leaving out, of course, but the idea, I think, is clear.  The political format of dystopian literature -- the political dystopia -- has a long and incredible history in literature, and it is a tradition that continues to this day, such as in Max Barry's Jennifer Government (2003) or Koushun Takami's Battle Royale (1999).****** Unlike many works of dystopian literature, the various ones I have mentioned here have directly engaged with real-world issues, often set within the author's present.  They attest to the remarkable ability for dystopia and science fiction to engage with our contemporary world by opening up the dialogue that is so crucial to any political system.  Even if we recognize that many of these dystopias are unlikely, the intellectual exercise entailed in reading political dystopias, I believe, fosters the critical faculties we all need to assure the unlikelihood of terrible futures.  The Iron Heel, in other words, is not just an important work of literature, but also, and more importantly, a poignant, timeless warning about unchecked economic inequality.  More terrifying is the fact that so many of the things London imagines actually happened.  A poignant warning indeed....

What do you think about all of this?  Feel free to leave a comment.


*I am not properly representing Andrew's argument here.  I recommend checking out the discussion on The Skiffy and Fanty Show.

**This is not to suggest that the U.S. dystopian movement was not significant.  It was, but you'll find a much more concentrated mass of dystopian works in Europe during the aforementioned time period, while the more contemporary moments are dominated by American texts.  I could be wrong on this front, though.

***While London imagines the Oligarchy as the end result of monopoly or market capitalism (or boom-and-bust capitalism), the true brunt of the novel, as I see it, is fascism through an incredibly affluent class.  The Oligarchy, after all, ceases to be a capitalist government after a while, dominated by what Ernest identifies as the compulsion to expel excess capital (which it refuses to spend on making the lives of individuals better).  Thus, the Oligarchy uses its political weight, derived from its original wealth, to create a virtual slave class of laborers and homeless citizens, which it lords over through coercion and violence (if you join the socialist revolution, you will likely die within five years).

****I couldn't find any reviews from around the publication date of The Iron Heel.  I'm sure they exist, but my initial academic searches came up empty.

*****I recommend reading The Iron Heel, though, if only to explore the political depth of London's work, which are not discussed as often in relation to his more popular novels, White Fang and The Call of the Wild.

******If you have any suggestions for political dystopias originally written in a foreign tongue, feel free to let me know in the comments.

The awards have come!  Every year, I offer my favorites from the previous year, from movies to books and so on and so forth.  This year, I'm keeping with the tradition.  First, the rules:

1. I must have consumed the chosen item in 2012, with special preference given to works released during that year.
2. I may not have more than three runners up for any category (which means a lot of folks get left out -- sorry).
3. I have the right to drop categories if I don't believe I can honestly assess the products contained within it (example:  I can decide to drop a TV category if I only watched one show in that category because it's really not fair for me to assess the best of the best if I haven't actually watched more than one show).

So, without further delay, here are my selections for the 2012 WISB Awards:
I loved this book so much that I almost taught it in my American dystopia class.  Unfortunately, space constraints prevented me from doing so.  In any case, if you want to know exactly what I thought of the book, you can read my review.  The short version:  simply stunning.  Then again, I've loved Brian Francis Slattery since Spaceman Blues, and will probably keep on the love affair for as long as he lets me...

Runners Up:  The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers, And Blue Skies From Pain by Stina Leicht, and Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell.

This is the only award I am giving to a work that wasn't actually published in 2012, which I will justify by saying, "I reviewed it in 2012, which is good enough for me."  Maureen McHugh's After the Apocalypse is more a concept collection (a la Christopher Barzak's Birds and Birthdays) than a traditional collection.  Exploring the various ways humanity responds to catastrophe, this collection quickly became one to remember, so much so that Locus put it on its 2011 recommended reading list.  That's about where I would have put it too -- except I decided to give it an award!

Runner Up:  Near + Far by Cat Rambo




Runners Up:  Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Cross Genres, and Shimmer.










Over the last few years, I've found myself drawn to what I can only describe as "concept soundtracks."  Just as Hans Zimmer's soundtrack for Inception integrated with the narrative, so too does the soundtrack for Cloud Atlas, composed by Tom Tykwer, Johnny Klimek, and Reinhold Heil.  Featuring the actual "Cloud Atlas Sextet," which is integral to the narrative of the book and the film, it is certainly one of the more ambitious and musically compelling soundtracks of the year.  If you didn't like the movie, you're bound to like the soundtrack!

Runners Up:  The Hobbit:  An Unexpected Journey by Howard Shore

Jim C. Hines!  2012 was a damn good year for Jim, not least of all because he found a hilarious way to open the discussion about women on the covers of SF/F books:  by switching the genders, with himself as the "model."  It all started here, then it continued here and here for charity until finally John Scalzi and a bunch of other folks got involved at the start of 2013.  What could be more wonderful than tearing down the foundations of cover art expectations than to put a bunch of grown men (and one woman) in a masquerade of cross-dressing SF/F hilarity?  Nothing, I tell you!  Nothing.

So Kudos to you, Mr. Hines.  You rule.



Marvin Kaye (Weird Tales).  I'm not going to bother explaining why here.  If you must know why I selected Kaye for the Wappa Wappa Wa Award this year, all you have to do is read these posts.  Mind you, the problem, as I see it, isn't the novel that started it all, but Kaye's response to the situation.  That, in my honest opinion, makes him suitable for a Wappa Wappa Wa Award....


So there you have it.  My selections for 2012.

Now for the big question:  What would you include in the above categories?

And now it's your turn to decide which film I'll watch for this Monday's Retro Nostalgia feature.  Choose wisely!

(founder of the Zero Population Growth movement, now called Population Connection), which inspired Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room!, and the "social revolution" of the period (particularly among the younger generations).  Logan's Run, thus, imagines a future in which the outside world has collapsed -- for reasons we are never told, because nobody is alive to remember it -- resulting in a self-contained, futuristic community where life is artificially ended at age 30 and, so we're told, the entire system runs on a 1-to-1 cyclical rebirth process.  There is no population growth because growth would crash the system, and the population is perpetually kept in the "dark" about the inner workings of Carrousel (the communal celebration of disintegration/termination that occurs whenever a group reaches maturity -- 30).  It's that darkness that I want to talk about here.

Only those who run really fast get away long enough to run more.

Jessica is the only main character who thinks the world is, well, wrong, but because it's the 1970s, and the filmmakers decided not to take that whole "2nd Wave Feminism" thing seriously, she basically spends the whole movie acting like a child^2.

This is the only picture I could find with Francis looking like the crazy person he becomes in the film...

If you didn't know, this guy won two Oscars for previous performances.

This is perhaps why I find Logan's Run such a compelling narrative, and also a somewhat terrifying future.  To imagine a world in which we are all violent or confused children is to imagine the collapse of true civilization.  Logan's Run imagines a city of trickery, for we can only accept the utopian ideals as utopian if we suppress the knowledge that the people who exist there are themselves mere fixtures in a cyclical culture that has no hope of progressing because it suppresses the very idea of "progress."  After all, if pregnancy is not a problem in the dome city -- it isn't -- what purpose does dying at 30 serve if not to keep people from spending too much time questioning?

And that's all I've got to say for the moment.  Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!