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Gary Friedrich, Ghost Rider and Marvel: Different Voices Respond UPDATED

2012-02-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

Alex Ness: I asked several creative talents in the comic book medium: With regards to the recent events in the Ghost Rider/Gary Friedrich versus Marvel court cases, is Gary Friedrich being treated fairly, and if not why not? (Find links to the events HERE

STEPHEN R. BISSETTE

You know, these cases are coming into public view because Marvel has, over the decades, refused any and all rational discussion or negotiations regarding the properties. They refused living creators, like Gary Friedrich; they refused now-deceased creators, leaving it to their respective heirs to battle. So, now, decades later, it comes to a head—and the absolutely pro-corporate early 21st Century American legal landscape enforces absurd scenarios involving lack of contracts, lost contracts, dubious "back of check contracts," etc. as "evidence" of corporate ownership and the law of the land.

The problem is impossible to summarize succinctly. Why didn't these creators have agents, lawyers? Well, the fact is (and I entered the industry in 1976-77, when this was true), there was only ONE agent tolerated by the comics publishers in the 1970s (ironically, Mike Friedrich, by name); creators who dared mention either an agent or a lawyer were simply denied work or had doors closed on them. Why didn't these creators resolve these differences sooner? First of all, the Marvel of 1961 was no longer the Marvel of 1969, after Martin Goodman sold Marvel—which was no longer the Marvel of James Galton, or of Jim Shooter, or that was bought by New World, or that was fought over by Perlman/Icahn; etc. Secondly, the Copyright Act of 1976 changed the landscape—requiring contracts for the first time, for an industry that (let's face it) found retailers fighting CASH REGISTERS, bar codes, and basic accounting practices in the 1980s, and the publishers fought tooth-and-nail to make the altered "work-for-hire" definition fit their ramshackle, improvised manner of doing business with freelancers. Marvel rarely represented anything vaguely resembling "progressive" policies (even their much-feted royalty plan of the mid-1980s was a response to DC Comics instituting royalties for creators first, and don't even get me going on return of artwork policies). In fact, many creators did try to deal with these legal matters—and every case history is different, none evidencing anything except the inevitable Bataan Death March to where we see these creators now, losing legal battles long coming.

The bottom line is only two things may, in time, alter the course of history:
(1) The creative community—and by that, I include the motion picture industry, including screenwriters, actors, directors, technicians, etc.—joins forces to somehow redress the gross imbalance of power, or:

(2) Utter capitulation, resulting in a new generation realizing (a) there's absolutely no reason to bring anything of any creative or legal value to firms like Marvel/Disney, and (b) there's absolutely no reason to believe in a nanosecond in the corporate product espousing "heroes" fighting against enormous odds for "justice" or "right," since the behavior of the corporate proprietors themselves so transparently demonstrate how meaningless those fictions are.

(1) could begin, for instance, with, say, the star of the GHOST RIDER movies publicly donating $17,000 to the creator of a comicbook character he claims to "love." If the star wouldn't take such action, perhaps a co-star, or the screenwriter, or the director, or a collective of grips, or, hell, ANYONE with HALF the backbone fictional characters like Ghost Rider pretend to embody could take such public action.

The Actor's Guild and Writer's Guild strike when conditions become intolerable for their members. Well, Guilds, this doesn't involve your members—but it does involve a definable creative community, whose history now yields more employment for the industries you work in than almost any other pool of creative work, save the public domain realms of Austen, Doyle, Stoker, etc.

(2) takes a leap of imagination, too, that I frankly don't see even a spark of at present. The baying and bickering on online articles and essays about creator rights reveal a cesspool of animosity, resentment, drones asserting drone capitulation to corporate will, etc. directed at any creative individual who dares to—well, not so much "stand up for their rights," as "dare to interfere with the ceaseless flow of entertainment." The masses want their corporate parables without the messy intrusion of real-life battles against insurmountable odds for "justice" or what's "right."

There is a third or fourth possibility—say, international boycotts of such corporate product until source creators and/or their heirs are given crumbs; or, perhaps, a creator torching themselves at a national premiere of the next movie based on their creations, setting off an "Arab spring" and prompting questions at last about all this. But both of those seem even less likely than (1) or (2), and I'm not ever an advocate of self-immolation.

Ultimately, given our national identity as a consumer nation addicted to human slavery for everything from our Walmart shoes to our Apple computers, what we're seeing, I fear, is the national embracing of creative imaginations being codified as another form of slave labor, too. It's tough to interpret the bile and vitriol coming from the so-called "fan" community as anything other than that.

Me, I'm not even curious any longer about seeing these Marvel movies, and I'll never spend another penny on Marvel product or Marvel-derivative product of any kind. Marvel/Disney has made it completely clear where they stand on sharing even morsels of the billions they rake in, so I'll withhold my micromorsels from their coffers. It's a meaningless decision, I'm sure, in the grand scheme of things, but it's a start.

Visit Steve’s website

MIKE GRELL

Fair and legal are two separate things. Like many of us creators, Gary had to know that, unless you have a contract that says differently, the company you create a new character for owns that character and can do what they want with it and not have to pay you a cent. Guys like Siegel & Shuster, Jack Kirby and even Stan Lee found that out.

That's the legal.

The fair, in my opinion, would be to acknowledge his contribution and do something nice for the guy who made it all possible, rather than spend twenty times the amount on lawyers to hound him to hell.

That ain't gonna happen in this lifetime, because, despite what the government would have you believe, corporations are not people. They don't have any obligation to be benevolent. They do have an obligation to their stockholders to make money and part of that includes defending their copyright and trademark in court. They can't afford to simply look the other way, because they have to be concerned about precedent (look at Disney's case against THE AIR PIRATES). They don't have to give a single thing that is not covered in an enforceable contract.

And that, too, is fair.

Visit Mike at his website

CHUCK DIXON

At Marvel all you need to do is endorse your check and you've legally turned over all rights to them. Anyone who works in comics under a work for hire agreement knows that any rewards they receive are at the whim of the company who owns the property. The company can grant or deny you further funds at their discretion. Marvel certainly could have cut a check for Gary based off of the Ghost Rider movies. It's undeniable that he created the property (along with Mike Ploog). Marvel has given money to other creators when their material was used in other media. There's certainly enough money to go around after two movies and tons of merchandising. There's what's strictly legal and what's right. Marvel is way wrong in this case. But, sadly, Gary's in a large club of creators who are victims of very bad deals.

Visit Chuck at his website

Alex Ness here again. Thank you to Stephen, Mike and Chuck. They know the industry, they’ve worked in it and are still working, for a combined total of over 90 years.

For my part I know there are contracts signed. But in the advent of new technology and new avenues of revenue, the publishers and owners of the characters should well consider the cost of fighting challenges versus that of paying a fee, perhaps not huge, but something to say we appreciate how you enhanced this corporation.

I am boycotting Marvel and all ancillary companies. My money is not a big deal, but I can’t, in good conscience support the exploitation of creative talents. The reward reaped by Marvel versus that of Gary Friedrich is obscene.

UPDATED TO ADD ERIK LARSEN AND STEVEN GRANT COMMENTS:

On the face of it--it looks really shitty.

But I have no idea.

I wasn't there when the character was created and I don't know what Gary's contribution was. There are others claiming Gary was not involved with the character's creation. If that was the case--would it be right for him to sue Marvel and cost them a ton of money defending themselves?

On the other hand--who would claim to have co-created a character they didn't create?

I don't know the case--I don't know the creators but on the surface--it does look bad--it's Marvel beating up the little guy.

Regardless of who is in the right--it just seems very wrong for them to ask for money from him.

And this from Steven Grant

From a legal standpoint, yes, Gary is probably being treated fairly. It's not unusual in civil suits for a plaintiff who loses to be ordered to pay some or all of the defendant's legal fees. Trademark/copyright law pre-1977 is so murky it's hard to tell where the ownership stands on properties & whether Gary does have any rights to the Ghost Rider character. Certainly it's murky enough there was no reason for Gary to assume he didn't. Clearly the judge didn't see it that way.

However, Gary's right that it's chump change to a company that recently sold for, what was it?, $4 billion? That suggests the main point of the fine is punitive, not only to punish Gary for attempting to stake a claim in his own creation but as a message to the rest of the creative community not to challenge Marvel's ownership of properties or suffer what would likely be for them serious consequences, given how much they were paid in the first place. Unless there's some point of law allowing for an appeal, Marvel won the case; there's no point to them pressing this except to show a pretty ugly face to the creative community. In essence, they're demanding Gary pay back everything they ever paid him for his Ghost Rider work. The right move for Marvel now would be to waive the fine and let bygones be bygones. For his creation of the character alone, Gary deserves better from them.

MARVEL COMICS, GHOST RIDER, and GARY FRIEDRICH

2012-02-09T00:02:00.000-08:00

First Read This
Then Read This
Then This

Art doesn't happen in a vacuum. Characters and concepts have creators. Marvel Comics destroyed Gary Friedrich in court and to prove their dominance over him have counter filed requesting/demanding that he pay 17,000 and never say he was the creator of GHOST RIDER in a public forum ever again.

If you support the arts, and love comics, remember that there are people creating them. Do not ignore the fact often times, creative talents sign contracts, and when they sign contracts the corporations have conveniently ignored them. Yes, it goes both ways, but, 17000 dollars and never saying he was one of the creative forces of Ghost Rider?

Gary Friedrich is the creator of Ghost Rider.
He created Ghost Rider. He previously created Hell Rider and went to Marvel shortly thereafter with a similar concept. And now, Marvel would like you to believe Marvel created Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider didn't appear out of nowhere, it had a creator, and it wasn't a corporation.

Hell Rider
Ghost Rider
Gary Friedrich

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Part 2: How to Start a Revolution

2012-02-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

In last week's reading we were introduced to Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis, the IT guy who maintains the Lunar Authority's massive central computer; Wyoming Knott, the incendiary blonde firebrand who wants to overthrow the Authority; and Professor Bernando de la Paz, professional dissident and sage. Oh, and we met Mike, the sentient computer who runs the Lunar penal colony and the associated communities, who longs for companionship and likes telling jokes. Mike has just calculated the odds of a revolution on the moon actually succeeding and has concluded that they are only one chance in seven. But those are good enough odds for a Loonie, and the Revolution is Declared!

The bull session in Room L of the Raffles Hotel continues. A question to Mike about the Warden's Security forces reveals that the Warden's Chief of Security actually has a fairly large network of informants, many of whom are members of Wyoh's revolutionary group. "That means the Warden has our whole organization," she wails. "No," Prof corrects her; "It means we have his organization!"

Prof counsels doing nothing about the informants at present, except to place them in special "cells" in the new organization where they can inform on each other and be spoon-fed misinformation. "...it would be the greatest waste to eliminate them -- not only would each spy be replaced by someone new but also killing these traitors would tell the Warden that we have penetrated his secrets."

They have Mike look up their own Security files. Prof is delighted to be classified as a "harmless old fool" who is subversive, but too argumentative to be a serious threat. Mannie is annoyed to be classified as "non-political" and "not too bright", (which he admits is not inaccurate, or else he never would have gotten involved with a Revolution.)

Eventually they get to the big issue. Overthrowing the Warden will mean that eventually they will have to fight Terra itself. Luna has no weapons, no defenses, even no spaceships; a David and Goliath situation if ever there was one. Mike's suggestion: "We can throw rocks."

For once, Mike isn't joking. Luna sends the grain it grows in steel canisters which are shot to Earth by a large "catapult", a gigantic magnetic cannon. All they have to do is replace the grain with a big honkin' rock and aim it at a military target. (Larry Niven is fond of the plot device of using a huge asteroid dropped from space as a weapon; he used it in his novel Footfall and some other places as well).

It is decided that Prof will remain in hiding at the Raffles, while Mannie takes Wyoh (once again in disguise) home to meet his family. Mannie belongs to a Line Family, one of the peculiar variations of matrimony that has been devised on Luna to cope with the tremendous imbalance between the male and female population. Some families form triads, with two husbands and one wife, as in the marriage Wyoh was in before she became a revolutionary. In a Line Marriage, there are multiple husbands and wives, and the family continues to add more on as time goes by.

The Davis family, the one Mannie belongs to, was founded by Black Jack Davis, one of the original convicts transported to Luna a century ago. The current Senior Husband of the family, Grandpaw, is getting on in years and has little active role in the family. The next husband in line is Greg, who is the pastor of a small church group which worships on Tuesdays. (It happens to be Tuesday evening, and Mannie warns Wyoh that it will be a good idea for her to join the family going to church to make a good impression). The real head of the family, though, is Mimi Mum, the Senior Wife. Mimi is a strong-willed woman, smart, practical and protective of her family. Mannie has no qualms about recruiting her for the Cause. Other family members include Sidris, one of the middle wives who runs a beauty salon which becomes an important information center for the Revolution; and Ludmilla, the youngest wife at sixteen, who is also Mimi's granddaughter and was raised in the family.

One of the commenters on last week's installment brought up a point which hadn't occurred to me. In the line marriage, all property would remain in the hands of the Family, that is, the husbands and wives; children would not inherit anything. Oh, perhaps they would be granted a lump sum of start-up money when they reach adulthood; but I can see this as a recipe for a large class of rootless single young men -- which is pretty much how Heinlein describes the stilyagi, or unmarried young men of Luna.

But back to the Revolution. To create a favorable climate for revolt, the protagonists need to make the Warden as unpopular as possible. Fortunately, the Warden is helping them in this. After the debacle at the Rally where Mannie and Wyoh met, the Warden called for additional forces to help put down the "subversive elements". His Chief of Security, Alvarez, instituted a passport system so that no one could use the transport system connecting the domed cities without ID. A lot of Loonies resented this, especially the ones who were not, nor ever had been, convicts.

They keep up the pressure on the Warden and his forces. The "Peace Dragoons," sent by the Federated Nations at the Warden's request, were never told that their deployment to Luna was a one-way ticket. They were also sent without what Mannie euphemistically calls a "comfort detachment". So Loonie women, some part of the Organization, some acting on their own, start teasing them. All they have to do is walk by. At one-sixth G, a woman can undulate quite nicely. Frustrated soldiers leads to clashes between soldiers and civilians, which leads to even greater resentment of the Authority.

Mannie, Prof and Mike adapt and refine the cell system for organizing their conspiracy. The three-person cell is intended to limit each member's connection to the rest of the group to prevent a single arrest or defection from compromising the whole organization, while allowing enough connection so that communications can be relayed. Having a super-computer on your side helps here. Mike, or "Adam Selene" as he's called in the organization, handles all the communications. Since he can't be corrupted, the system is foolproof. They decide to create a persona for "Adam" to establish the illusion that he's a flesh and blood person.

"You're our Scarlet Pimpernel, our John Galt, our Swamp Fox, our man of mystery. You go everywhere, know everything, slip in and out of town without passport. You're always there, yet nobody catches sight of you."
His lights rippled, he gave a subdued chuckle. "That's fun, Man. Funny once, funny twice, maybe funny always."

Mike also indulges in less subtle forms of humor, such as messing up Security Chief Alvarez's attempts to trace the Subversives. Mike sees to it that every contact number provided by one of Alvarez's informants winds up leading to someone in the Warden's own office. He also causes the air conditioning and plumbing in the Warden's living quarters to go on the fritz in comical ways.

One major factor in the plan is the slingshot which they plan to use to "throw rocks" at Earth. Unfortunately, it is also a large and obvious target. They need to build a back-up slingshot in case the main one is destroyed. To that end, they created a dummy corporation whose purpose is to build it. This one is to be constructed underground; the only visible target will be it's mouth, which will be just one more hole on the lunar surface. They take great pains to hide the exact location of the slingshot.

The Organization recruits children to run messages and do surveillance. Mannie calls these kids "The Baker Street Irregulars". The Peace Dragoons quickly learn that trying to use force against kids is much more grief than it is worth. Mannie spots one pre-adolescent he recognizes from the Rally: a red-headed girl named Hazel who also gets adopted both into the Davis family and into the Revolution. This is the same Hazel who appeared as Grandma Hazel in Heinlein's earlier novel The Rolling Stones, and later still in The Cat Who Walked Through Walls.

Mike expands his explorations into creativity to writing poetry. His early efforts are doggerel lampoons of the Warden, written under the pseudonym of "Simon Jester", which get distributed on anonymous scraps of paper and scribbled on bar-room walls, etc. He also writes a serious piece of verse which he submits to a literary magazine under his Adam Selene name. This really freaks out the Warden.

One day, Mannie comes across a gang of stilyagi who have roughed up a tourist from Earth and are looking for a judge. The tourist had been flirting with the gal who hung out with that gang, and he impulsively engaged in some inadvisable physical contact. On Earth, it might have gotten him at worst a slap in the face or a sexual harassment suit. But on Luna, where women are a scarce resource and highly regarded, this is hanging offense. Well, they don't hang people on Luna, the one-sixth gravity makes it impractical; instead they chuck them out an airlock into airless space.

But these are good boys. They want to do things right; so they're looking for a Judge to arbitrate the matter. Mannie agrees to act as judge for them, partially because he thinks that recklessly eliminating strangers will be bad for the tourist industry, but also for another reason.

There are no laws on Luna, and so the proceedings are rather informal. Mannie has the boys pony up a fee for his judgement and requires the Accused to match it. When the gal whose honor was sullied hesitates, Mannie reminds her "TANSTAAFL." Remember that acronym. Jurors are recruited from nearby who are paid for their time from Mannie's fee. Mannie listens to all sides, questions the witnesses and sums up for the jury. By this time tempers have cooled, and a resolution is reached which all sides are reasonably happy with.

Afterwards, Mannie has a few drinks with the tourist, a wealthy dilettante named Stuart Rene LaJoie, and explains some aspects of Loonie society, including the peculiar word he used: TANSTAAFL; meaning "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch", which in many respects is the unofficial motto of Luna. Stu is an affable, friendly guy who is genuinely interested in Luna. He also has money and connections. This is important, because Prof has recognized that in order to succeed, they need agents actually on Terra helping them. Mannie brings Stu home to have him meet the family and cultivate him further. Before long, Stu is part of the Party as well.

Things are starting to move too quickly now. The Warden is becoming more panicky. There is a risk that he might clamp down too hard. Then, unexpectedly, things come to a head.

A group of Peace Dragoons rape and murder an eighteen-year-old girl; then murder another woman who comes across the crime. Mike passes the news on to Prof and the others almost as soon as Chief Alvarez learns of it. Prof realizes that this is their "Boston Massacre", the incident needed to galvanize the people to active revolt. "We're on our tiger; we grab its ears.... Mannie, Mannie! This is The Day!"

They spread word of the atrocity throughout all the domes and warrens. Anti-Authority riots break out, overwhelming the Warden's security.

Mike turned out all lights in Complex,save those in Warden's residence, and reduced oxygen to gasping point ... Finn's men, waiting in p-suits at Warden's private tube station, broke latch on airlock and went in, "shoulder to shoulder." Luna was ours.

NEXT WEEK: They have Luna, but can they keep it? Chapters 14-19: Provisional government; Adam Selene goes public; Luna makes its Declaration, and the Embassy to Earth!

THE COST OF ART

2012-01-31T22:31:00.001-08:00

What is the worth of art?

Is it found in your pleasure?
Does it get lost in the amount of money for the artist?
Does art even bring a reward to the artist?
Do you care about the cost of art?

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Part 1: The Dinkum Thinkum

2012-01-31T20:06:00.000-08:00

I tend to divide Robert Heinlein's works into two periods: the stuff I like, and everything after Stranger in a Strange Land. I generally prefer the early Heinlein; his short stories and juveniles and some of his earlier novels like Double Star. I didn't care for Stranger -- although many fannish friends of my generation regard it as The Book that Changed Their Lives -- and neither do I like most of the books he wrote after it. Most, but not all. Glory Road is a later Heinlein work that I enjoyed; it's his sole descent into the Sword & Sorcery Epic Fantasy genre, and it's fairly good.

Another is the book we're going to start gnawing on this week: a story of a Revolution on the Moon that parallels in many ways the American Revolution and provides a background for Heinlein to discuss politics, families and government. He originally wanted to title it "The Brass Cannon", for reasons that will come up later, but it was published as The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

The story is set on Luna in the late 21st Century. For about a century, the Federated Nations of Earth have been using the Moon as one big penal colony, sending their hard case criminals, their troublemakers and malcontents off-planet. It's a permanent exile, because after a month or so of living in lunar gravity, a person's physiology changes, making it difficult, if not impossible for them to return to Earth. And so a large part of Luna's population consists of ex-convicts who have technically served their sentence and their descendants, living in large, underground domed cities.

Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis is a computer repairman in Luna City; or rather, THE computer repairman. He's a typical Loonie: independent, apolitical, and willing to bet on anything if the odds are at least one-in-ten. He narrates the story, and speaks in a peculiar truncated dialect, liberally sprinkled with loanwords from Russian and Australian slang, which takes a bit of getting used to.

Mannie works for the Lunar Authority as a private contractor -- he is NOT on the Warden's payroll, thank you -- fixing the massive mega-mainframe that runs every aspect of life in all the cities of Luna, from communications to power, water and air, to making the transportation tubes run, to calculating trajectories for the huge magnetic "slingshot" used to send shipments of the grain grown in underground Lunar farms to Earth. The Authority calls in Mannie when little glitches turn up, because he's one of the few -- maybe the only -- trained computerman on Luna (the job requires training available only on Earth; Mannie had to take two dangerous trips there to get his education), and because he's familiar with the central computer's little quirks. The biggest of which is that the computer has a sense of humor.

The computer is an Artificial Intelligence. Mannie suspects that the computer gained sentience because people kept adding to it until it's capacity for neural connections surpassed that of a human brain; but we never find out for sure. Mannie calls the computer Mycroft, or Mike for short, after the character in a story "written by Dr. Watson before he started IBM." Mike is like a hyper-intelligent child. He knows practically everything -- if he doesn't have it in his memory banks, he can look it up in a fraction of a second -- but practically nothing about human interaction. He's extremely lonely. Manny is the only human who talks to him; and the only one who knows he is alive.

Lately Mike has been experimenting with humor. He has been collecting and analyzing jokes and trying to invent his own. His latest attempt at humor has been to print off a paycheck to some janitor for ten million million dollars over the correct amount, and so the Authority calls Mannie to fix the problem. This consists of going down to the computer core and chatting with Mike for an hour or so about the nature of humor, while removing and replacing a couple access plates to make it look like he actually did something. Mike promises not to pull any more "jokes" without checking with Mannie first. In exchange, Mannie promises to look over a printout of a hundred jokes out of the thousands he has recorded in his memory to help him evaluate which ones are funny; also to find another "not-stupid" to talk to, (Mike thinks most people are stupid because they only talk to him in computer programming language); and to check in on a meeting hall in Luna City. Mike has audio pickups in many public places, but someone has switched off the one in Stylagi Hall.

When Mannie arrives there he realizes why. A protest meeting is being held there, and the dissidents don't want the Warden listening in. Mannie doesn't have much use for politics, but he promised he'd record the meeting for Mike. It's a raucous gathering, full of speeches which pretty much come down to everyone is unhappy because Luna City is a Company Town; the Lunar Authority sets the fees and prices for everything and ensure that no one can get ahead. The obvious solution is to get rid of Authority! Mannie is skeptical: Everybody does business with Authority for same reason everybody does business with Law of Gravitiation. Going to change that too?

Another speaker addresses the crowd, a statuesque knockout (unlike most of Heinlein's heroines, this one is a blonde) named Wyoming Knott. She comes from Hong Kong Luna, a domed city administered by the Authority, but not directly connected to Luna City. She urges the crowd to throw off their dependency upon Authority and develop a Lunar Free Market so that they can negotiate a fair price with Authority for their produce.

She is interrupted by another speaker; someone Mannie actually knows: Professor Bernando de la Paz, a political dissident who had been transported to Luna many years ago and is respected in the community. He had been Mannie's teacher when he was younger. As far as Professor la Paz is concerned, the main problem is not that Authority is cheating the people of Luna, but that Luna is growing food and sending it to Earth and getting nothing in return. This, Prof insists, is ecologically unsustainable. Eventually Luna must run out of water -- already a rare commodity that must be mined out of the lunar crust -- and then the system will fall apart.

Just then, the Warden's Security Forces bust in to raid the meeting and all hell breaks loose. The Loonies fight back. One of the rebels, an old friend of Mannie's, tells Mannie to get Wyoh to safety... just before the goons blow the man's leg off.

So Mannie hustles Wyoh out of the hall, and they find refuge in Room L of the Raffles Hotel, after disguising Wyoh so that she won't be quite so noticeable. (They use hair dye and makeup to make her look black; which in context seems logical, but always gives me bad Al Jolson flashbacks). They indulge in a little sexual banter, to establish that Mannie isn't in a hurry to bed her, but that she wouldn't necessarily mind if he was.

We learn a little bit more about Wyoh. (For one, she hates the pun "Why Not?" which everybody makes on her name). She's a "Free Woman", which from Mannie's reaction we gather is a sort of chip-on-the-shoulder feminist. She used to be married to a pair of brothers in Hong Kong Luna, (because of the low percentage of women in Luna's population, the standard "One-Man/One-Woman" marriage is unknown and this is an important theme in the book); but when her first child turned out to be a "monster", the they agreed to a divorce. None of them were willing to risk the chance that her future babies would also suffer birth defects. (Yes, Wyoh is another of Heinlein's women who want babies; but in her case I think her reasons are well explained). The doctors determined that her ovaries had been damaged by radiation exposure she suffered when she was originally transported to Luna as a child. The ship she was on had been forced to remain out in a solar storm longer than necessary because of bureaucratic red tape. "I was too young to know. But I wasn't too young later to figure out that I had birthed a monster because the Authority doesn care what happens to us outcasts."

This is what drove Wyoh to pursue politics an become a revolutionary. And I think it's important, because it points out a weak spot in Heinlein's Libertarian utopia. The repressive Authority didn't care about her; but a purely Libertarian one wouldn't care either. The only thing that would have protected her would have been rules by a meddlesome Regulatory State, limiting radiation exposure levels and providing better protection for transports. But this point is ignored later on.

Mannie cautiously feels her out, and decides that she might very well be a "Not-Stupid." He shares Mike's printout of jokes with her and together they rate the jokes as "funny", "not funny" and "funny once". Manny notes that the jokes upon which they disagree tend to be about the "oldest funny subject". He then tells her about Mike.

Her immediate reaction is a sober one: "Mannie, does Mike hurt?" Because Mike is the boss computer of the whole Authority, he would make a perfect target for sabotage. A couple kilos of explosives in the right place would cripple the Authority.

Mannie is aghast. It would also kill his friend. A moment of consideration convinces him that it would be impractical too: destroying Mike would not just cripple the Lunar Authority, it would also blackout power all over Luna, shut down the heating and the air circulation system. Wyoh would do much better to get Mike on her side.

"Mike doesn't feel loyalty to Warden. As you pointed out: He's a machine. But if I wanted to foul up phones without touching air or water or lights, I would talk to Mike. If it struck him as funny, he might do it."

Mannie calls up Mike and introduces him over the phone to Wyoh. Mike is delighted to meet a new friend and the two hit it off quite well. In fact, comparing notes on their ratings of Mike's joke list, Wyoh realizes that Mike's sense of humor is closer to hers than it is to Mannie's. "Mannie... Mike is a she!". In chatting privately with Wyoh, Mike creates an alternate persona with a feminine voice which she calls "Michelle", Since we see the story from Mannie's point of view, we don't get to see very much of Michelle, but this does establish Mike's ability to take on other identities.

Professor la Paz has been looking for Mannie and Wyoh, and with Mike's help, he is brought to their hideout in Room L. Prof explains what happened after they left. A few of the revolutionaries were killed by the Security forces, but not one of the goons survived. The Warden has clamped down on the news agencies to suppress reports of the debacle. This leads to a discussion of revolutionary theory.

Nearly all of Heinlein's novels have an "Old Man" character who is a dispenser of wisdom and a mouthpiece for Heinlein's ideas. In this story, it's Professor la Paz. Prof is a self-described Rational Anarchist. ""What's this? Randite?" Wyoh asks. "I can get along with a Randite. A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have not existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals." He and Wyoh argue further about his principles, with Mannie remaining neutral. "Every time I state a general principle, you wiggle out," Wyoh complains.

(It is important to note that Prof is also a Rational Vegetarian. When he arrives at the hotel room, hungry after a day of hiding, and smells the ham steak that room service had delivered for breakfast, he asks if he could have some of that 'pink salmon.' He argues quite eloquently, but when it comes right down to it, his philosophy really is a slippery one).

But on the important issues, they are in agreement. Both desire an end to the Authority, and would die to achieve that end.

Mannie is still unconvinced. He's willing to bet on a long-shot; he says that any Loonie would be willing to bet on ten-to-one odds; but he first wants to know the odds. Prof protests that calculating the odds of a successful revolution would be impossible. Wyoh gets an idea. "Ask Mike," she says.

After some discussion which Prof finds confusing, Mannie and Wyoh agree to introduce him to Mike. Once pleasantries are out of the way, they ask Mike to analyze Prof's projections about Luna's future. In the short run, Mike says, Wyoh's plan of forcing the Authority to pay better prices would benefit Luna; but in the long run, resources would run out. He projects that there would be food riots in seven years, and after that people would resort to cannibalism. This sobers everybody. Even Prof did not expect the Long Run to come so soon. Then they ask him to project odds on a revolution.

It's not an easy problem. Prof and Mike spend a good couple hours discussing all the possible factors, and once they are both satisfied, it takes thirteen minutes for Mike to do the number-crunching -- an eternity in computer time. Finally Mike comes up with the answer.

"Manuel my friend, I am terribly sorry! ... I have tried and tried, checked and checked. There is but one chance in seven of winning! "

NEXT WEEK: Chapters 7-13; Forging a Revolution; the birth of Adam Selene; driving the Warden crazy, "Know any vips dirtside?" and Things Come to a Head.

THE WIDOW Band interview

2012-01-30T23:37:00.000-08:00

REMEMBER THIS? IF NOT GO THERE NOW. OK Ready?

Now for some questions for the band, The Widow

Who are the members of The Widow?

Dan Bartlett – Vocals, Keys

Mitch Simpson – Vocals, Keys

Joel Danger McCarty – Drums

Brandon Bornhoft – Guitar

Mike House – Bass

Former member: Dan Gast – Drums

What does the name of the band mean?

In the beginning when the band first got together we were having trouble finding a name for ourselves. We honestly didn't have any ideas going around. A few people were asking us what our name was and we need something temporary until we came up with a real name. One of the bands we were all really into at that time was As Cities Burn and one of their songs off of their 1st album was called The Widow. One of us was like, “Hey, lets call ourselves The Widow like the song.” It just kind of stuck.

What music inspired the members of The Widow?

We all listen to a lot of of different styles and eras of music. Everything from 60's and 70's Psychedelic Rock to Metal and Hardcore. In the beginning of our project we were listening to bands like Emery, As Cities Burn, and Showbread. Especially Showbread's albums Anorexia and Nervosa. Those two albums were a major influence to us. Other influences include Radiohead, Pink Floyd, The Listening, The Devil Wears Prada, Underoath, and many, many more.

For those who haven't listened to your work yet, how would you describe it?

It's melodic, and yet very dark. We tried to bring both soft and hard together into one. The music leaves you feeling anxious and relaxed at the same time. Someone once told us we were the Pink Floyd of metal. We thought that was a pretty generous compliment! It's very synth driven, and we use a lot of off beat rhythms with a mix of screaming and clean vocals. There are also elements of organized chaos.

What events or decisions led to the creation of the band The Widow?

Dan, Mitchell, and Dan Gast (who was the original drummer for The Widow) had been in a small Christian rock band called Not About Us. That band broke up at the end off the summer of 2007. There was some talk of starting a new band but they didn't have a guitar player. Dan met Brandon who was the roommate of a friend. Dan lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment and needed a place to store his equipment. To make a long story short, Brandon ended up letting Dan store his equipment in his basement and Dan soon learned of Brandon's love for music, guitar, and recording. Dan asked Mitch and Dan Gast if they wanted to start writing new music and asked Brandon if he'd help. The band formed in early in 2009 and began writing.

What are your goals for your creative work, and if you were to suggest a model for your band to follow, who would it be and why?

We really just want to make music and share it. We love music. We haven't set out with any crazy goals for our work other than we want it to be genuine and have quality. We don't really have any models we follow after. We strive for originality and uniqueness. We like to do things different, and don't mind causing people to think.

What are the backgrounds of the individual talents on the Widow

Dan was classically trained in piano for seven years, and taught himself how to play guitar. Mitchell played Clarinet in band in High School, and taught himself bass which he played in the band Not About Us. Brandon taught himself guitar, bass, and audio engineering. Mike picked up and taught himself bass when The Widow formed. Joel taught himself drums and has played for various bands in the past as well as working for Victory Records.

Who is God?

Every member of The Widow believes that Jesus is the express image of the invisible God. Jesus is God, and is our Lord. If you want to know who God is, than you must read the gospels and study Jesus' life, ministry, and message.

Artistically do we create to reflect our creator as we create, or do we create to express our humanity?

Both. When we write, we strive to reflect reality. We try to reflect how we see the world, and what's important or real to us. Some times that comes out reflecting our humanity and sinfulness, and some times it comes out reflecting our Creator. An important thing to remember is that no one in this world can reflect their Creator perfectly because of our fallen state. All art in the world has elements of humanity in it.

Is the world ready for The Widow?

Sure! However, our music appeals to people who listen to music for it's artistic appeal. Our music isn’t flashy. It's slow and tells a story. It takes patience. Most people in this day in age want something quick, and has a “catchy” melody (radio friendly music).

When can we hope to see the next new CD of music from The Widow?

We are currently working on a new album and are 4 songs into it. We are hoping to release a full length album that has at least 10 tracks on it. We are super stoked on the new stuff! Hopefully we can release it some time in 2012, if not early 2013.

War of the Worlds 4: Dead London

2012-01-24T18:27:00.000-08:00

In last week's reading, our Narrator and his companion the Curate found themselves trapped in a house that had been buried under the rubble from one of the Martian Cylinders. During their fifteen days of imprisonment, the Curate went mad and the Narrator struck him down in a vain attempt to keep him from alerting the Martians. The Narrator spent the next few days of terror hiding. When he came out again, the pit was empty and the Martians were all gone.

For some time I stood tottering on the mound regardless of my safety. Within that noisome den from which I had emerged I had thought with a narrow intensity only of our immediate security. I had not realized what had been happening to the world, had not anticipated this startling vision of unfamiliar things. I had expected to see [the town of] Sheen in ruins -- I found about me the landscape, weird and lurid, of another planet.

The Martians have brought with them -- whether by accident or intent -- the seeds of native Martian plant life which has spread kudzu-like all over the countryside; especially along the waterways. The Narrator tells us that this Red Weed eventually died off, victim to some sort of terrestrial blight (more foreshadowing!), but for the time being, he has to struggle through dense patches of it.

His immediate concern is food; but there is little to be found. He is able to dig up some roots from neglected gardens, but the few houses he finds intact have already been emptied of food. What remains is mostly spoiled. He spends the night at a ransacked inn on Putney Hill in suburban London. He ponders briefly on his killing of the Curate, an act which, in retrospect, gives him "no sensation of remorse or horror to recall." He frets about the fate of his wife. Finally, he sits down an prays, deeply and earnestly, for the first time since he left Leatherhead.

I had uttered prayers, fetish prayers, had prayed as heathens mutter charms when I was in extremity; but now I prayed indeed, pleading steadfastly and sanely, face to face with the darkness of God. Strange night! strangest in this, that so soon as dawn had come, I, who had talked with God, crept out of the house like a rat leaving its hiding place -- a creature scarcely larger, an inferior animal, a thing that for any passing whim of our masters might be hunted and killed. Perhaps they also prayed confidently to God. Surely, if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity -- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion.

As he continues on, me meets a man, armed with a cutlass, who has been watching him. At first, the confrontation is tense; the Narrator has entered the stranger's territory, and he demands that the Narrator leave. But as they talk, they recognize each other. The stranger is the Artilleryman the Narrator met after the destruction of Woking and whom he accompanied to Weybridge. Well, that makes them practically old comrades, and the Artilleryman invites the Narrator back to his bolt-hole.

The Artilleryman tells him a bit about how he escaped from Weybridge, and a lot about what he thinks about the Martians. "This isn't a war... It never was a war any more than there's a war between men and ants." He's given a lot of thought to what the Martians want from humanity, and his outlook is bleak. "Cities, nations, civilization, progress -- it's all over. That game's up. We're beat."

"All these -- the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way -- they'd be no good.... the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week or so chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they'll come and be caught cheerful. They'll be quite glad after a bit. They'll wonder what people did before there were Martians to take care of them.... Very likely these Martians will make pets of some of them; train them to do tricks -- who knows? get sentimental over the pet boy who grew up and had to be killed. And some, maybe, they will train to hunt us."

But the Artilleryman is a man with a vision. In order to survive, humanity is going to have to go underground. "We have to invent a sort of life where men can live and breed, and be sufficiently secure to bring the children up." His idea is to retreat into the sewer tunnels and subways of London and build a new civilization. He has definite ideas about what kind of people should be allowed into his survivalist utopia. "We're not going to pick up any rubbish that drifts in," he says. "Weaklings go out again." It occurs to the Narrator that he himself was nearly one of the weaklings the Artilleryman cast out.

In his imagination, he has it all planned out: recruiting able-bodied and clean-minded women -- not the weak and hysterical type; raids on the British Museum to preserve books and knowledge; organizing networks to spy on the Martians; and one day:

Just imagine this: Four or five of their fighting-machines suddenly starting off -- Heat Rays right and left, and not a Martian in 'em. Not a Martian in 'em, but men -- men who have learned the way how.... Fancy having one of them lovely things, with its Heat Ray wide and free! Fancy having it in control! ...swish comes the Heat Ray, and, behold! man has come back to his own."

But for all the Artilleryman's big plans, he hasn't actually accomplished much. He's amassed a goodly cache of scavenged food and booze and he's started to dig a tunnel from his hideout to the nearest drainage tunnel, but he hasn't gotten very far; and although the Narrator is eager to help, the Artilleryman would rather celebrate his new companion. The two stay up most of the night drinking and playing cards.

The next morning, the Narrator is thoroughly ashamed of the previous night's binge; and he realizes that his new friend is more talk than action. He decides to leave the Artilleryman and continue on into London to learn what the Martians are doing.

The streets of London are completely deserted. In places the sooty residue from the Black Smoke dusts the streets. Occasionally, he'll find a skeleton, stripped clean of flesh by scavengers. As he proceeds further, he hears a hideous howling, a piteous wail: "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla..." The cry continues incessantly as he makes his way through the city. At the crest of a hill, he sees the source of the ululation: one of the Martian Machines, simply standing stock still in the middle of the street.

Further on, he finds a wrecked Martian Handling Machine, which has apparently run directly into a building and crashed. And further still, another Tripod, motionless like the other; and then a third.

Impulsively, he decides to stop hiding. He makes his way to the Tripod, which he now sees is standing in a huge Martian encampment on Primrose Hill. As he gets closer, he sees birds flocking around the hood of the Machine; and closer still, he sees that the birds are pecking away at the lifeless, rotting tentacles hanging limply from the open cockpit. Reaching the rim of the Martian encampment, he sees that all of the Martians in it are dead.

The Martians had no defenses against terrestrial diseases; apparently they had no diseases at all on their homeworld. And so they were slain, "after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest thing that God, in his wisdom, had put upon the earth." The Narrator even mentions a Biblical allusion I had forgotten about: the destruction of Sennacherib's army by a plague as it besieged Jerusalem. And just as the first to discover Sennacherib's defeat were a group of lepers wandering into the Assyrian camp, so did the Narrator, a wandering vagabond, discover the overthrow of the invincible Martians.

The Narrator skims over the next several days. He is found by a kindly couple who take him in and help restore him to health. He learns that the town of Leatherhead was indeed destroyed by the Martians during their brief reign of terror. With a heavy heart, he returns to his old home. As he walks through his study, reading the foolish essay on futurism he had started the morning the Martians arrived, he hears voices downstairs. It is his wife, who has also escaped the Martians and has also returned to the house in the foolish hope of finding her husband. And so they are at last reunited.

War of the Worlds 3: Under the Martians

2012-01-17T17:19:00.000-08:00

In our last reading, we experienced the evacuation of London in advance of the Martian attack; and witnessed the heroic sacrifice of the torpedo ram Thunder Child which managed to destroy two Martian Fighting Machines and save the ships ferrying refugees out of England.

Meanwhile, our Nameless Narrator has been witnessing the Martian advance from ground-level, barely escaping from the destruction of Weybridge. He has fallen in with a curate from the Weybridge church, whose faith and whose very reason has been horribly shaken by the Martian blitzkrieg. Together they see the Martians unleash a new weapon, a chemical attack producing a suffocating black cloud.

We pick up with Book Two of The War of the Worlds: Earth Under the Martians

The Narrator and his unwanted companion the Curate make their way through the destruction left in the wake of the Martian advance. Although some of the towns they encounter have been razed by the Heat Ray, others have been left relatively untouched. At one point, they see a Fighting Machine striding across a field, pursuing a small group of people. Instead of training it's weapons on them, the Martian reaches down and grabs them, one by one, and places each in a large basket-like container in the rear of the machine. This is our first intimation that the Martians may have plans for humanity other than extermination.

They take refuge that night in an abandoned house. As the two are arguing what to do next, a blinding glare of green light comes through the window, followed by a cataclysmic crash.

The Fifth Cylinder has landed; and it has come down nearly on top of them. The house they are in has been almost completely buried in the earth thrown up by the impact crater. Only the kitchen and pantry and a couple small adjacent utility rooms escaped destruction; and when the Narrator is able to look out on his surroundings, he sees that the only available means of escape looks out into the pit where the Cylinder lies, and where one of the Fighting Machines has already taken position as a sentry.

The Narrator and the Curate spend several nightmarish days hiding from the Martians. From their vantage point, the Narrator has the opportunity to see the Martians up close. He describes in detail the variety of machines the Martians use. In addition to the Fighting Machines, they have general purpose Handling Machines that they use to assemble other machines and do routine work around the pit. The Narrator also describes a processing machine that seems to refine aluminium from the clay of the pit. The Narrator is struck by how these machines seem more like living creatures than mere mechanisms. Even the stilt-like legs of the Fighting Machines are supple and organic, despite the silvery, glittering metal they are crafted out of. Here is where the subject of Martians seeming to lack the wheel which was mentioned in last week's comment thread comes up, and the Narrator observes that the wheel does not exist in nature either, suggesting that Martian technology is based on imitating organic life.

The Narrator also describes the Martians in detail, and here he throws in an in-joke. He quotes "a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute" who had before the invasion written a piece about what the future of Human Evolution might look like. That speculative writer, of course, was Wells himself. In the cases of both the hypothetical Future Man and the Martians themselves, all non-essential biological functions have atrophied leaving pretty much the brain, super-sized into a tremendous intellect; and the hands, which have elongated and evolved into highly-sensitive and dexterous tendrils.

They have become pure intellect, unfettered by other biological processes. Lacking a bulky muscular system that requires periodic rest, the Martians need no sleep. They have no sexual organs -- they reproduce like the microscopic hydra, by budding -- and have no digestive organs at all. They take in nutrition by injecting the blood of other creatures directly into their veins. That is what the Martians want humans for; and the Narrator has the opportunity to see one of the Martians feed this way.

The Narrator also mentions in passing that the Martians seem to have either eliminated microorganisms on their planet, or to have never had them to begin with. This is important. There will be a test later.

As interesting as this all is in an academic sense, the Narrator is still stuck. He can't leave the ruined house without going through the Martian's pit; he lives in terror that the Martians will notice him; and the Curate is really getting on his nerves. The man's incessant mutterings, alternating between apocalyptic rants and whining self-pity, have gotten worse. And as the Curate's mental condition becomes more and more unstable, he becomes more careless.

They have a limited supply of food, and the two men begin to quarrel over it. The Narrator tries to ration their provisions, but the Curate keeps sneaking more than his share. His compulsive stream of muttering becomes louder, oblivious to whether the Martians can hear him or not. The Narrator tries to quiet him, but the deranged deacon will not be silenced. He launches into a strident jerimand and begins shouting at the top of his lungs, running towards the hole in the wall looking out into the Martian's pit. The Narrator grabs a meat cleaver and strikes the Curate a blow to the head with it's butt end.

Too late. The Martians have heard and one approaches the opening to investigate. It grabs the still body of the Curate; and then its tentacles begin to probe the rest of the kitchen.

The Narrator flees into the coal cellar and shuts the door. In one of the most suspenseful passages of the book, he waits, breathlessly, as the Martian investigates the door and opens it and as it's tentacle blindly gropes around the cellar. At one point the tentacle touches his boot, and the Narrator is sure he is finished; but finally the Martian contents itself by taking a lump of coal for study.

It's a full day before the Narrator dares venture out of the cellar; and even then, he dares not go near the opening. The Martians have taken all the food out of the pantry. The Narrator has access to a working water pump, but he fears that the noise it makes will attract their attention. For a few more days he waits. He's not hearing noises from the pit any more. Then, on the fifteenth day of his captivity, he hears a dog nosing around outside. The Narrator looks out the opening, which has become overgrown with strange Martian weeds, and sees that the pit around the Martian Cylinder is empty.

The Martians have gone.

NEXT WEEK: We wrap things up. We meet a survivalist on Putney Hill; we walk through the streets of Dead London; and we learn the truth about Earth's Invisible Allies. Until next time, "Ulla ulla ulla!"

Debut author brings a devilish edge to the English Civil War

2012-01-17T03:14:00.000-08:00

Figure the English Civil War is all about dashing Cavaliers and dour Roundheads? Think again…

Solaris is proud to announce it has acquired Gideon’s Angel by Clifford Beal, due for publication in 2013, which takes the seemingly familiar history of the mid 17th Century but introduces an infernal plot that makes this much more than just a history lesson!

Described as The Day of the Jackal meets The Devil Rides Out, this swashbuckling historical fantasy set in the aftermath of the terrible English Civil War sees science and alchemy as strange bedfellows with witchcraft and magic.

An epic adventure in the tradition of Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane, it is set in England in 1653. Colonel Richard Treadwell, an exiled Royalist officer in the service of Cardinal Mazarin, returns home in secret from France on a self-appointed mission to assassinate Oliver Cromwell, now king in all but name. He quickly learns however, that his is not the only plot in motion.

A secret army run by a deluded Puritan is bent on the same quest, guided by the Devil’s hand. When demonic entities are summoned, Treadwell finds himself in a desperate turnaround: he must save Cromwell to save England from a literal descent into hell. But can he convince the man sent to forcibly bring him back to the Cardinal? A young king's musketeer named d'Artagnan.

“Not only is Clifford’s novel a rip-roaring blood and thunder horror fantasy,” said Jon Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris, “it is also a brilliant historical thriller. His sense of history and depth of narrative really transports you deep into a post-civil war London. It’s always a real joy to discover an accomplished debut novelist, and I know that Gideon’s Angel is really going to make its mark on the genre.”

About the Author

Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, Clifford Beal is an award-winning journalist and the former Editor of the authoritative London-based international news magazine Jane’s Defence Weekly. He worked as a defence journalist for over 20 years in both the US and the UK before he began writing books.

Beal is the author of Quelch’s Gold, the true story of a little-known but remarkable Anglo-American pirate of the 18th century who was the first man to be tried in a British Admiralty court outside of England (Praeger Books, 2007).

And writing realistic sword fighting scenes in fiction is second nature to Beal. He began medieval style armoured combat at the age of 17 in the US and later, in the mid-1990s, he organised a group of friends to begin the practical study of renaissance rapier and dagger techniques. This became the Sussex Rapier Society and is now the Sussex Sword Academy in Brighton. Gideon’s Angel is his debut novel.

MLK Jr Celebrations

2012-01-16T16:38:00.000-08:00

I WROTE THIS

BONO WROTE THIS

War of the Worlds 2: The War Begins

2012-01-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

As last we saw, a large metallic cylinder has landed in the Common outside of the village of Horsell in southern England. The cylinder has come from the planet Mars and its passengers, inhuman tentacled horrors, are decidedly hostile. They are armed with a horrific weapon which fires a beam of intense heat which causes anything it touches to spontaneously combust. The Unnamed Narrator witnesses the incineration of a crowd of onlookers on the common and barely makes it home alive.

A second cylinder has now landed. The War is beginning.

Saturday morning begins with the rattle of the milkman's cart. Everything seems quite normal. The Narrator hears that troops have come to surround the pit where the Martians are holed up and his neighbors seem fairly confident that the army will soon have things well in hand. In fact, some seem worried that the Martians might be utterly destroyed. "It's a pity that they made themselves so unapproachable... It would be curious to know how they live on another planet; we might learn a thing or two."

The Narrator strikes up a conversation with some of the soldiers who have arrived at the village; he describes the Martians and the Heat Ray and the soldiers discuss tactics. But nothing else happens all morning. The soldiers stay camped in their positions, waiting for the heavy artillery to arrive, and the Martians remain in their pit. Noises and smokes from the pit suggest that they are working on something, but no one knows what.

Still, the Narrator is pretty excited about the whole business and confident that the army will take care of things. That is, until late that afternoon when he happens to notice that, since some of the larger buildings on the edge of the village have been destroyed, his own house is within line-of-sight of the Heat Ray.

He tells his Wife they have to leave. He remembers he has a cousin in the town of Leatherhead, about twelve miles away. He manages to borrow a dogcart, a light horse-drawn carriage, from the landlord of the nearby public house, promising to return it by midnight. By this time, soldiers are starting to go from door to door, telling people to evacuate the village. The Narrator and his Wife are getting out just in time.

They make it to Leatherhead safely, and with his Wife's misgivings, the narrator heads back to his village to return the cart. This is one thing about the book that annoys me. The Narrator's Wife is almost a complete nonentity. He alludes to conversations with her, but she seems to only exist as a plot device. Once in high school I tried drawing a cartoon adaptation of the book but I got hung up after a couple pages because of the wife. I couldn't picture what she was like or what she would say because the book doesn't give us any of that; and at the time I wasn't confident enough as a writer to make something up.

On the way back from Leatherhead, a thunderstorm gathers. The Narrator is within sight of his village when a streak of green in the sky heralds the landing of the Third Cylinder. The original flashes on the surface of Mars occurred once every twenty-four hours; and now the Cylinders that were fired are arriving, one at a time, every night. Frightened by the nearby landing, his horse bolts and about the same time the thunderstorm breaks. In the flashes of lightning, the Narrator sees glimpses of something huge moving up ahead of him. And then he gets a good look:

And the Thing I saw ! How can I describe it? A monstrous tripod, higher than many houses, striding over the young pine trees, and smashing them aside in its career; a walking engine of glittering metal, striding now across the heather; articulate ropes of steel dangling from it, and the clattering tumult of its passage mingling with the riot of the thunder.... Can you imagine a milking stool tilted and bowled violently along the ground? That was the impression those instant flashes gave. But instead of a milking stool imagine it a great body of machinery on a tripod stand.

A second machine appears directly in the Narrator's path, and in trying to control his already panicked horse, he runs off the road. The cart overturns and the horse falls, breaking its neck. Stranded in the middle of the downpour, the Narrator makes his way to the village back to his house. The village is largely deserted now. He stumbles across a dead body; it is the landlord of the pub, who won't be needing his dogcart any more.

As he waits in his house for morning, he spots another survivor; an Artilleryman who had been with the soldiers surrounding the pit earlier in the day. The Artilleryman tells the harrowing story of how the first Martian Fighting Machine had wiped out his unit and gone on to destroy the town of Woking.

The next day, Sunday morning, the two of them fill their pockets with provisions and head out together; the Artilleryman to rejoin his battery, and the Narrator to get back to his Wife in Leatherhead; making a wide detour around the Third Cylinder. They meet up with more soldiers setting up gun emplacements near the town of Weybridge and trying, with varying success, to urge the citizens to evacuate. And then the Martians come.

Wells goes into great detail describing each of the battles in the book. Although a pacifist, or perhaps because of it, he had a great interest in war. He enjoyed playing with toy soldiers and later wrote a book entitled "Little Wars" containing perhaps the first rules for strategic miniatures games. The Martian Fighting Machines advance on Weybridge, firing their Heat Ray at the visible gun emplacements. One hidden unit manages to hit one of he Fighting Machines right in the "face" where the controlling Martian sat, and the remaining Machines withdraw; but the victory is a Pyrrhic one. The Narrator narrowly escapes being boiled alive when the fallen Machine's Heat Ray projector falls into the river where he was taking refuge.

Fleeing from the battle, the Narrator falls in with a Curate, an assistant clergyman from the Weybridge church. The Curate has been shattered by the sudden destruction of his church. "What does it mean? What do these things mean? ...Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done?" He is convinced that they are now experiencing the End Times and that the Martians are God's Instruments of Destruction.

The Narrator becomes annoyed by the Curate's apocalyptic despair. "Be a man! ... "You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent." Considering how the Narrator's own mood has gone back and forth like a yo-yo, he's being a bit hard on the clueless cleric; but the Curate will become more grating as time goes on.

Here Wells jumps from the Narrator's account to his Brother, a medical student living in London. The Brother reads accounts of the Martian's arrival in the newspapers, but the early reports are confused. The early reports emphasize the Martian's sluggishness and their weakness in Earth's gravity. Because the Martians destroy the rail and telegraph lines, news of the invasion travels little faster than the Martians themselves. The panic does not hit until Monday morning, when news of terrible massacres in the Thames valley arrives. London is in immediate danger and people begin to flee.

What causes the panic is a dreadful battle in Surrey that the Narrator and the Curate are able to witness from a distance. The Army has learned from it's previous encounters and has positioned its artillery under cover so that they are sheltered from the Heat Ray. But the Martians have learned too. When the Army opens fire, the Martians respond by shooting canisters into the woods from which a dense, suffocating smoke emerges. The soldiers who flee from the Black Smoke become easy prey for the Heat Ray.

The scene shifts back to the Narrator's Brother who is now caught up in the mass of humanity fleeing London. When I first read the book as a kid, I found these London chapters boring; but now I can appreciate them more. This I think is what Wells enjoyed most: showing these glimpses of ordinary people reacting to the unbelievable. The Brother comes to the rescue of a couple ladies being accosted by robbers and joins up with them. Together they press on through the mass of refugees. It is here that we get the vignette one of the commenters referred to last week of the "bearded, eagle-faced man" clutching a valise full of gold, who is run down by a carriage when his bag spills open and he tries to recover his wealth.

The final chapter of this first part of the book is one of the most dramatic scenes in the novel. The Brother and his companions have reached the coast where a flotilla of ships, like a Dunkirk in reverse, are picking up refugees to carry them to safety. Among these ships is one naval vessel, a torpedo ram called the Thunder Child.

The torpedo ram was a small, low-profile ship built in the late 1800s. It originally used a "spar torpedo", an explosive device mounted at the end of a long pole that the vessel would drive into its target. It's low profile and high speed were intended for quick, hit and run missions. As modern self-propelled torpedoes became more common, the torpedo ram retained it's secondary function as a ram.

As the refugee ships are leaving the harbor, three Fighting Machines arrive and wade out into the water to stop them. The Thunder Child heads towards the Martians to intercept them, holding its own fire so as not to provoke the Martians into using the Heat Ray. The Thunder Child catches the Martians off-guard; it is fast enough to steam through the clouds of Black Smoke they launch at it before the vapors can kill its crew. By the time the Martians realize the danger, the Thunder Child has already rammed into one, wrecking it; and the ram able to get close enough to a second that when the Martians turn their Heat Ray on it causing it's boiler to explode, the Thunder Child takes the second Fighting Machine with it. The sacrifice of the torpedo ram not only destroys two Martian Machines, it gives the refugee ships time to safely escape.

NEXT WEEK: Earth Under the Martians! Martians up close! And The Death of the Curate!

War of the Worlds 1: The Coming of the Martians

2012-01-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's, and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Invasion Stories have been a notable sub-genre of Speculative Fiction for well over a century now. Their level of popularity has waxed and waned depending on the mood and the paranoia of the time. H.G. Wells took this formula and gave it a twist: his invaders were not the militaristic Prussians or the perfidious French or even the countless hordes of Chinese as in one Jack London short story. Wells brought his invaders from outer space and forever knocked humanity off of the top of the food chain.

The story starts out with a description of Mars, as it was known to Victorian Science. At the time, the prevailing theory of the origin of the Solar System was the Nebular Hypothesis, stating that the Solar System was originally a large cloud of gas which cooled and condensed into the planets we know today. Current theory is somewhat similar, but there was one important aspect of the original Nebular Hypothesis that was basic to the premise of War of the Worlds, and was highly influential in Science Fiction for the first half of the 20th Century. This is that as the primordial nebula of the Solar System condensed, the outer planets were the first to form and cool. This meant that these outer planets were much older than the Earth.

This seemed to be verified by astronomical observation. Mars, with it's cold, thin atmosphere, appeared to be a dying planet, millions of years past its prime. (And, by corollary; it seemed reasonable to picture hot, cloud-enveloped Venus as being similar to Earth in the prehistoric past).

And so Wells pictured his Martians as a very old, technologically advanced race dwelling on a dying world with dwindling resources and looking covetously at our own green Earth. In doing so, he quite deliberately held a mirror up to European colonial attitudes of his own era:

And Before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our on species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The first inkling humans have of the oncoming invasion is when flares of light are observed on the Martian surface; "Outbreaks of incandescent gas" similar to "Flaming gasses [rushing] out of a gun." The narrator's friend, an astronomer named Ogilvy, invites him to watch the flares one evening. They occur every night at midnight for about two weeks. Ogilvy speculates that they might be caused by meteors striking the planet's surface, or perhaps by some sort of volcanic eruption. He scoffs at the idea that inhabitants of Mars might be signalling the Earth. "The chances of anything manlike on Mars are a million to one."

Then one night a "falling star" lands in the Common between the villages of Horsell, Ottershaw and Woking. The Thing is an immense cylinder, and when Ogilvy goes to investigate, he sees that the top of the cylinder is rotating, like the top of a can unscrewing. Despite his early skepticism, he instantly realizes that this is an artificial object and undoubtedly came from Mars.

A large crowd of curiosity-seekers from the nearby villages, including the narrator, soon gathers. The top of the cylinder finally opens and the spectators get a glimpse of an octopus-like creature with leathery skin and writhing tentacles. Ogilvy was right after all; they Martians are not particularly manlike.

Ogilvy, along with Stent, the Astronomer Royal who has come to investigate the cylinder, and a few reporters, cobble together a white flag of truce and approach the Martians in order to communicate with them. The Martians, for their part, have begun raising up a long, segmented pole with some sort of mirror at the top.

Forthwith flashes of actual flame, a bright glare leaping from one to another, sprang from the scattered group of men. It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them and flashed into white flame. It was as if each man were suddenly and momentarily turned to fire.

When the Tom Cruise remake of WotW came out a few years ago, my teenage daughter commented that this scene from the 1953 George Pal version seriously freaked her out when she was little. When I was little, I was freaked out by the Edward Gorey illustrations of the edition I read, with the Martian fighting machines towering over little burning figures lying on the ground and wreathed in flames. Interestingly enough, in Wells's description, the Heat Ray is invisible. There is a puff of glowing, green smoke from its projector before it fires; and its targets burst into flame, but the beam itself is silent and invisible; much like laser beams are in real life.

After killing the Deputation, the Martian's Heat Ray flashes around in a wide circle, incinerating most of the crowd around the pit. By sheer luck, the hero manages to make it home and is surprised to find most of the people there indifferent to the whole matter. These were the ones, after all, who stayed home. They weren't impressed by the initial reports of the cylinder and not inclined to believe the hero's wild stories.

Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about the novel from our standpoint of a century later is how slow communications are in Wells's day. News of the Martians is remarkably slow to filter out of the Horsell Common, and much of that is confused and erroneous. (Of course, having the reporters on the scene unable to confirm their initial reports because they've been incinerated doesn't help).

The Narrator tells his wife about the inferno on the Common. She is horrified at his story and fearful of the Martians. He tries to reassure her. The Martians are limited in their mobility by Earth's greater gravity. In the brief glimpses he saw of the Martians, they seemed sluggish and hesitant. As terrible as the Heat Ray might seem, the Martians are trapped in their pit. Now that the initial rush of terror and adrenaline have worn off, the Narrator is beginning to feel more confident.

So some respectable dodo bird in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipfull of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear."

That night, the second Cylinder arrives.

NEXT: The Fighting Machines emerge and the fighting begins in earnest.

Sphinx Group Announces Good Cause Initiative

2012-01-03T12:04:00.001-08:00

(Chicago,IL- January 3, 2012) Sphinx Group announced today a new monthly initiative offering to distribute a press release or news blast for free that covers a person or cause that could be helped by added exposure. Sphinx's realm of press contacts range from Mommy Bloggers to Geek press and everything in between. Sphinx will edit your message and make sure that it is crafted to gain the maximum response. This will begin in January 2012 and all interested parties should send an email to lys@sphinxgroup.com with “Good Cause” in the subject line of their email.

“With over a thousand various press contacts the least we can do is help those in need”, explained Sphinx Group CEO, Lys Fulda. “We regularly work with folks like Reading With Pictures and Comic Creators for Freedom but we wanted to do more. In two short years, Comic Creators for Freedom helped raise fifteen thousand dollars to aid in awareness about human trafficking. It got me thinking about the change we could make in the world by helping good causes on a regular basis.”

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Popular Culture as Art as Culture as Art as Culture

2011-12-30T18:32:00.001-08:00

There has to be a beginning for things. The first parody was of something known. Parody and Satire exist to spoof, mock or make points by understanding the subject well. If you don't know where something comes from, or don't know what is being parodied, the parody has failed.

American Gothic by Grant Wood is an American icon. We see it for how staid and solid and boring life can be, at the same time wondering why people devote a lifetime to the work... And it is because it is a life, not a job.

Here are a number of uses of American Gothic:

In each case something was being said by posing the characters in such a way. To mock the civility of the original, to parody the setting using popular stars, to pose characters in such a way as to say, here is our version of American Gothic.

(The bottom piece is mine, and I was tempted to make it a political comment, but preferred to just show the juxtapositions of modernity and the past with Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul.)

End of the Year, People gone, New paths begin

2011-12-28T23:09:00.000-08:00

Thank you for reading this blog, for this year and past years. Even if you have only stopped in once or twice, I appreciate the time you've taken to read the content of this blog. There have been a number of people who have posted here and are no longer posting, we've friends here even die, R.I.P. Alan Coil, so with it being the end of the year I am just going to remark briefly about life, and passings.

Many people die every single year, and 2011 was of course no different. Some people dying are celebrities, famous, talented, creative, smart, others lived their lives in obscurity and a lack of fame, but lived every bit as good lives as the wealthy or famous, the talented or elite. We are all given a life, whatever else that comes with, and some of us are lucky, blessed, able, and others are not.

The two people who I mourned the most in passing were Amy Winehouse and Elizabeth Taylor. In the case of Amy Winehouse, some people believe that she dug her own grave, with various disorders and addictions. But most people I know who said that haven't an ounce of the vast ocean of talent Amy Winehouse had. I can't judge her for his mistakes, for her addictions... I can only listen to her music, and be amazed by the lush of her voice. I think creative forces in people sometimes work their way out in addictions, and self abuse. Amy Winehouse had great talent, but great sorrow. I miss what she'd have done if she'd lived.

Elizabeth Taylor lived an incredibly full life, she was famous, wealthy, beautiful, bright, and she took an effort, when seeing her male friends dying of mysterious disease to go forward and make A.I.D.S. research and awareness her top priority. Yeah, she was rich and famous and it didn't hurt her and she didn't give up a life of leisure, but she took the lives she loved and made them into a memory bracelet and took that to the US Congress and spoke there. I loved her, both as an actress, and passionate human being.

Obviously there are tragedies that mark this page, many die by their own deeds, addictions, foolishness, and for that we should be angry. We should mourn them for our loss, and wish they'd made better decisions, so that they'd still be here.

Along with the cherished and mourned, there are people who earned the scorn of humanity by their terrorist agendas, their cruel ways, and their choices to harm others. The world has a name for these people...

ASSHOLES.

Dune: Part 9: Nexus

2011-12-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, we're in the home stretch, gang! Four more chapters to go! Paul has cemented his leadership of the Fremen tribes and has publicly declared himself as rightful ruler of Arrakis. He's been re-united with his friend and one of his father's most trusted advisers. Off-stage, the situation in the Harkonnen-held cities are reaching a crisis as the Baron puts more pressure on his nephew Rabban and Rabban responds by further oppressing the people. Now the Emperor himself has decided to take a personal interest in Arrakis. And everything is about to collide with the great-great grandmother of all sandstorms.

Chani has been summoned from the camps in the south to the northern camp where Paul and his fighters have made their base. But Paul does not meet her; instead his mother, Jessica engages her in annoying chit-chat. It takes a bit of social pleasantries and exposition for Jessica to admit that Paul wasn't the one who summoned her. Paul has been in a coma for the past three weeks.

Jessica can sense that he is still alive, but the signs are so slight that only her Bene Gesserit training, (and perhaps her rapport with her son) can detect them. She fears that he has been poisoned by enemies, but despite her own heightened awareness, she cannot detect any trace of poison within him. She needs Chani's help.

Chani guesses the truth: that Paul has taken some of the raw, unconverted Water of Life; the concentrated essence of the spice-drug produced by a drowned sandworm used to give Reverend Mothers their enhanced perceptions. Why didn't Jessica realize this herself? Perhaps as his lover and companion, Chani was closer to Paul than his mother could be. I think Paul probably shared more about his concerns and apprehensions regarding his prescience with Chani than he did with his mother.

Paul awakens from his trance a transformed man. He is most definitely the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can be many places at once which the B.G. has spent so many generations trying to produce. He enters a mental rapport with his mother and has her take him to that place within which the Reverend Mother Mohiam spoke of back when he underwent the Gom Jabbar, the place in human memory where women cannot go. And here, once again, we get a little of Herbert's ideas on the nature of and differences between Men and Women.

"There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place with himself where the taking force dwells, but it's almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed."
...

"And you, my son," Jessica asked, "are you one who gives or one who takes?"

"I'm at the fulcrum," he said. "I cannot give without taking and I cannot take without [taking]."

Paul has seen many things in his psychic journeys; not just the future, but the present. All of his enemies have converged on Arrakis: the Baron Harkonnen; the Padishah Emperor, Shaddam IV; the Emperor's Truthsayer, Reverend Mother Mohiam; Feyd-Rautha, the Baron's nephew and heir; and representatives of the Spacing Guild, which uses the spice to calculate courses through hyperspace. The Guild's spice use gives them enough prescience to know that something big is coming up and it scares the heck out of them.

There are two different ways of looking at the idea of Changing the Future. One is the idea that You Can't Fight Fate; that no matter how you try to alter a pre-destined future, events will force you to keep your Appointment in Samara. The other is the Butterfly Effect idea; that small changes will multiply as they propagate through time and the butterfly flapping it's wings in the Amazon indirectly causes a hurricane off the Carolinas, or the time travelling hunter treading on another butterfly in the Mesozoic Era results in a future where Sarah Palin is president.

For much of Dune, Herbert seems to lean towards the former theory, as we see Paul struggling to avoid the jihad his visions show him. But he also describes nexus points where lines of probability converge and anything might happen. One of these is coming up, and it's a big one. Paul has decided that there is a tide in the affairs of men -- even on planets with no oceans -- and that the time has come to seize it.

Paul gathers his forces to plan an attack on Arrakeen, where the Emperor has landed with several legions of Sardaukar. A humongous sandstorm is approaching, and Paul plans to use atomic weapons to blast a hole in the Shield Wall, a large geological feature that shelters Arrakeen and the other communities of the northern basin from the storms. Use of atomics is prohibited by the Great Convention that all the noble families adhere to, but Paul takes this step because (A) he is technically using them against a geological feature and not people, and (B) nobody is going to want to destroy Arrakis (the normal punishment for violating the Great Convention) because it is the source of spice. And so Paul nukes the Shield Wall and leads his army into the city, riding on giant worms! How's that for epic?

But even as Paul's forces strike, he receives a message from Sietch Tabr, where the women and children are being kept. An Imperial raiding party has attacked the sanctuary, carrying off Paul's sister Alia, and killing his infant son.

The Emperor has set up a huge pavilion to house himself, his five legions of Sardaukar, and his smaller legion of courtiers and hangers-on. He has come to Arrakis to see first-hand what a mess the Harkonnens have made of the planet, and to rub the Baron's nose in it. The Baron is here, cringing and grovelling for a change. He pleads that he knows nothing of any intrigue going on here, and that as far as he knows the Fremen are an insignificant rabble. The Emperor knows better; and as Exhibit A brings forth Alia.

"Unfortunately," the Emperor said, "I only sent in five troop carriers with a light attack force to pick up prisoners for questioning. We barely got away with three prisoners and one carrier. Mind you, Baron, my Sardaukar were almost overwhelmed by a force composed mostly of women, children, and old men. This child here was in command of one of the attacking groups... Mark that, my dear Baron: Sardaukar forced to retreat in confusion from women and children and old men!"

For once, the Baron has absolutely no control over the situation he's in. "Make him afraid some more, Shaddam," Alia giggles. It's kind of cute, in a twisted way, to see the Emperor browbeating the cowering Baron while dandling the precocious toddler Alia on his knee.

The Reverend Mother does not find Alia cute. "That child is an abomination! ...She's in my mind, She's like the ones before me, the ones who gave me my memories. She stands in my mind! She cannot be there, but she is!"

It is now that the attack occurs. Paul's forces quickly overwhelm the Emperor's defenses and the Imperial ships disabled. In the confusion, Alia runs to the Baron and stabs him with a poisoned needle. "I'm sorry, Grandfather," she says; "You've met the Atreides gom jabbar." The Emperor and his entourage retreat into the safety of his ship.

Once again, Paul occupies the palace in Arrakeen where his father had once taken residence. "This place is a symbol. Rabban lived here. By occupying this place I seal my victory for all to understand." But his victory is a bitter one. He has lost his son, and as he looks around him he see that he has lost more: Stilgar, who he once regarded as an ally and a friend, now looks on him with awe and reverence; and Paul feels even more keenly his isolation from the rest of his world.

The Emperor and his court are brought before him. Paul wishes to negotiate with his enemies. Among the entourage, Paul sees a familiar face: his old tutor Thufir Hawat. He has had a vision of the Emperor commanding Hawat to "kill this upstart duke." Paul acts boldly, with the bravura his father once spoke of, and offers the old mentat a choice that has nothing to do with logic and data. "...in payment for your years of service to my family you may now ask anything you wish of me. Anything at all. Do you need my life now, Thufir? It is yours." He offers himself to the old assassin.

This is Thufir's crowning moment of awesome. He is near death anyway, dying of the Baron's residual poison. He turns to face the Emperor in defiance: "See, Majesty? ... Did you think that I who've given my life to service of the Atreides woud give them less now?"

Paul next turns his attention to the Guildsmen who are present and informs them that they are to take orders from him. The Spacing Guild has long been used to being the ones who give orders, due to their monopoly on space travel; but to navigate through space, they need the spice, and Paul informs them that unless they submit to his authority, he will destroy all the spice on the planet. He can do it too; the Fremen knowledge of the Arrakis ecology has given him a method that will set off a chain reaction through the planet's ecosystem. "He who can destroy a thing has the real control of it." This is the possible future that terrifies the Guild. They submit.

The Reverend Mother Mohiam now sees that Paul is indeed the Kwisatz Haderach, and he rubs her nose in it too. All their labor to produce him and they will get no benefit for he will never serve their purposes. Even Jessica has turned her back on her old order.

Then comes the actual negotiation. "Majesty, we both now the way out of our difficulty," Paul says. The Emperor has no male heirs, but several marriageable daughters. This was how the Bene Gesserit intended it, but they didn't foresee this possibility. The Emperor does not like the idea of passing on his throne to desert upstart.

Chani also feels uncomfortable about the situation. After all, Paul has never actually married her. This sort of arranged political marriage is exactly what Jessica had been hoping for him. Paul reassures her. "Leave? You'll never again leave my side... That which binds us cannot be loosed. Now watch these matters closely for I wish to seen this room later through your wisdom." Paul regards her not only as a lover and a soul-mate, but also for her perception and her understanding.

But there's one last loose end to be accounted for before the marriage business: the matter of the Vendetta. Feyd is among the Emperor's group and he demands a duel. Paul has never seen Feyd in any of his prophetic visions; once again, he is entering a blind spot. He could easily leave Feyd for Gurney or one of his lieutenants to kill, but honor -- both Atreides and Fremen -- demands that he does it himself. He has ceased trying to fight his destiny; he throws himself into his fate with grim abandon.

The duel has echos of Feyd's earlier fight on his birthday; once again, there is a poisoned blade and dirty tricks; once again one of the combatants has been primed with a trigger phrase that can end the fight, although Paul refuses this advantage. Paul kills Feyd and ends the feud between their houses.

The Emperor tries one last gambit. He signals his friend, Count Fenring, to finish Paul off as he is tired from the fight. Paul recognizes Fenring as another of the B.G.'s genetic experiments, one who also might have been the Kwisatz Haderach. A moment of silent understanding at their strange, shared brotherhood passes between the two men. Fenring refuses his emperor's command.

By this time, the Emperor's daughter, Princess Irulan, (yes, that Princess Irulan), is getting antsy. She keeps tugging at his sleeve and saying Pleeeeze Daddy, won't you let me be a bargaining chip? In exchange for the Imperial throne, Paul will allow Shaddam to keep his throne on Salusus Secundus, promising to make the prison planet "a garden world, full of gentle things." The Emperor gets the point.

Jessica has come to regret her molding and shaping of her son and has overcome her hostility towards Chani. A bit earlier, (and now I can't find the spot), she told Paul to forget about marriageability to another noble house and to wed his desert girl if it made him happy. Now she once again warns him not to make the same mistake she and Leto made. Paul understands. He has decided his course and what must be done to accomplish it; but he also assures Chani again that she is the only one he will love:

"I swear to you now... that you'll need no title. That woman over there will be my wife and you but a concubine because this is a political thing and we must weld peace out of this moment, enlist the Great Houses of the Landsraad. We must obey the forms. Yet that princess shall have no more of me than my name. No child of mine nor touch nor softness of glance, nor instant of desire."

Jessica underscores the truth of this: "...that princess will have the name, yet she'll live as less than a concubine... While we, Chani, we who carry the name of concubine -- history will call us wives."

Presenting: The Widow

2011-12-23T19:37:00.000-08:00

A mixture of darkness and hope, The Widow has created a sound that is unique, moving, and disturbing. I recommend their music, for the sound, the lyrics, and the emotional power of the truths they present.

“Through Lust and Tragedy We Become” by the Widow

From: IA, United States
Genre:
Rock, Ambient , Screamo

The Widow formed in the spring of 2009 and quickly began writing. After over a year of writing the band began recording their debut album "Through Lust And Tragedy We Become" in May of 2010. They recorded from May of '10 to April of 2011 in Dan Bartlett's basement. Their record was mixed at Radiostar Studio's in Weed, CA by Rich Veltrop. The record was released June 4th of 2011.

"Through Lust And Tragedy We Become" is a mixture of synth driven chorus' and melodic screamo.

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The Widow
Photo by Dave Poyzer

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Dune: Part 8: Wormrider

2011-12-20T06:20:00.000-08:00

In our last Machievellian episode, we got to enjoy some of the intrigues going on among Those Wacky Harkonnens; and Jessica underwent the ritual transforming her into a Reverend Mother. Now we are hurtling towards the end game, the Nexus where possible futures come together. Will Paul be able to prevent the Jihad?

In the past two years, Paul Atreides has undergone many rites of passage: formal tests, like the Gom Jabbar; life thresholds, like the death of his father; deadly challenges, like his duel with Jamis.

Now, he crouches among the sand dunes waiting for another rite of passage. Although he has been accepted into the Fremen tribe, and is respected as a skilled fighter and war leader, and revered by many as the Lisan Al-Gib, the "Voice from Beyond" of prophecy; he cannot be considered a full Fremen until he has Ridden a Worm.

(And no, the gay implications of that line did not occur to me until I typed it just now.)

As he waits, he thinks back on some of his experiences among the Fremen of Stilgar's tribe. He is joined now to Liet's daughter Chani, and have had a son together, Leto II. Jessica still balks at the idea of Chani being her son's wife though; she worries that his being married to a "desert girl" might hurt any future political ambitons. Paul has a sister now too: Alia, concieved shortly before his father's death, and altered into something not quite normal by the Waters of Life ritual their mother partook of while Alia was in her womb. Sometimes Paul has difficulty keeping track which of his memories have actually happened and which are future events. Prescience can be a pain sometimes. Especially when there are things it doesn't show you. Like how this day is going to go.

Meanwhile, back at the stiech, Jessica awaits word of her son's test and deals with more immediate concerns. The women of the Fremen communtiy are becoming more and more freaked out by the unearthly child, Alia. Thanks to her pre-natal exposure to the Waters of Life and her involuntary participation in the mental joining of that ritual, Alia was born with not just the memories of an adult, but the memories of every Reverend Mother of the tribe going back to who-knows-when. Preccocious does not begin to describe her. And some of the Fremen whisper that she is a demon.

Jessica has a talk about this with Alia and Harah, the wife of Jamis who Paul kept as a servant and who has become somthing of a nanny to the infant Alia. They agree that Harah will speak for Alia and explain her to the others. "I will tell them the truth... I will tell them that Alia only pretends to be a little girl, that she has never been a little girl." Alia shares with her mother and with Harah how the experience of her awakening seemed from her point of view.

But Harah and Jessica anticipate another problem as well. As Paul has gained status in the tribe, some of the younger warriors have been wondering when he was going to challenge Stilgar for the tribe's leadership. The traditional way to do this, of course, is with a duel to the death. The leadership question has been postponed so far because until today Paul wasn't a sandrider and a full-fledged Fremen. If Paul survives this test, he won't be able to put off the question any longer.

Paul does pass the test; he successfully calls, catches and mounts a sandworm. The description of how one actually does this to a creature large enough to swallow the Sydney Opera House is neatly and plausibly described. By Fremen tradition, the first time Sandrider always gets to choose where the gang goes that day. Paul wants to go to the southern settlements where the Fremen's secret ecological experiments have been taking place and where the women and children have been moved for safety. Stilgar wants Paul to lead the men on another raid against the Harkonnens. This disagreement threatens to flare into an argument, when a smuggler's aircraft appears on the horizon.

For years, smugglers have been doing illegal hit-and-run mining operations behind the backs of the ruling authorities. With the Harkonnens increasing their patrols, the smugglers have been forced to move into Fremen territory. Paul has the Fremen set up a trap to ambush the smugglers and discovers that they are being led by his old friend Gurney Halleck. The reunion is a happy one, but not without some tensions. For one thing, the Fremen managed to kill half of the smuggler's crew before Paul and Gurney put a stop to the fighting; for another, there are Sadaukar infiltrators in the crew hoping to find and kill Muad'Dib, (they don't); and more imporantly, Stilgar needs convincing that Gurney is reliable.

Paul decides to have things out with Stilgar over the leadership question. "Do you think I wish to cut off my right arm?" he asks; "Do you think I want to deprive myself or the tribe of your wisdom and strength?" The traditional way of transitioning power within the tribe needs to bow to the necessity of the moment. Stilgar accepts the wisdom of this, but now the tribe needs to be convinced as well.

Paul, Stilgar and Jessica arrange for a little political theater to persuade the rest of the tribe. Paul makes his case and formally claims himself the rightful ruler of Arrakis. He accepts Stilgar's fealty, meaning that Stilgar remains leader of the tribe without anybody losing face, and Paul becomes Duke, (something he technically was already; but no one was recognizing it).

It's just when he thinks he has everything taken care of when he comes in on Gurney trying to kill his mother.

Gurney still thinks that Jessica was the one who betrayed Duke Leto and the desire for revenge has been the one thing keeping him going these past couple years among the smugglers. Paul is able to talk him down and persuade him of his mother's innocence; but it is a tense moment. "You speak of pride in my father's friendship! Didn't you learn the difference between Harkonnen and Atreides so that you could smell a Harkonnen trick by the stink they left on it? Didn't you learn that Atreides loyalty is bought with love while the Harkonnen coin is hate? Couldn't you see through to the very nature of this betrayal?"

Overwhlemed by what he has almost done, Gurney begs Paul to kill him. "Must I go through this with every man I need?" Paul grumbles. Jessica makes peace. "You thought you were doing a thing for Leto... and for this I honor you... Let us think of this as a misunderstanding among old friends. It's over and we can be thankful we'll never again have that sort of misunderstanding between us." Later on in the series, we find that Jessica and Gurney have become lovers. Reading this scene, we are not surprised.

Paul has one more rite of passage to undergo. He has forseen none of the crises that have occurred today. He needs a clearer vision of the future. He decides to take the Waters of Life; the Truthsayer's drug that the Reverend Mother spoke of way back in the first chapter, that no male has taken and survived.

NEXT: At Death's Door; the Emperor comes to Arrakis; the Atreides Gom Jabbar; and the title fight we've all been waiting for, Paul vs. Feyd! The Nexus is coming!

Dune: Part 7: Meanwhile on Giedi Prime/The Waters of Life

2011-12-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

As last we saw, Paul and Jessica have been accepted into Stilgar's Fremen tribe. Now let's check in on what's going on with those wacky Harkonnens!

It's the birthday of young Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the Baron's nephew and heir presumptive, and he is celebrating in the traditional Harkonnen fashion: by killing something. One of Feyd's hobbies is participating in gladiatorial combat -- all carefully arranged, of course, to eliminate any actual risk to himself. But this time the slave he is to fight has not been drugged as is usual, and comes very close to killing Feyd by seizing the na-Baron's poisoned dagger and stabbing him with it. Good thing Feyd took the precaution of poisoning the other blade, the one traditionally left untainted, instead. And the mental conditioning which caused the slave to go limp when Feyd uttered a trigger word helped too.

The whole thing was set up by Hawat, who is now the Baron's mentat, but who is also advising Feyd for his own purposes. By vanquishing a deadly opponent despite apparent treachery, and by his magnanimous treatment of his dead foe, Feyd has won a good deal of popularity. He also has given future enemies whom he might want to intimidate something to think about. And, most immediately, he has discredited the Harkonnen slavemaster who will take the blame, giving Feyd the opportunity to place his own candidate in the position.

Here we see Feyd at his best. He does have some good qualities. Besides being handsome and athletic, he has courage and skill. He is capable of cultivating the brauvara Duke Leto spoke of in an earlier chapter. Count Fenring and his wife, observing the combat, note his potential and lament how he could have turned out if raised, say, under the Atreides code rather the Harkonnens. In many ways, Feyd is an analogue to Paul; his story runs parallel to Paul's and in fact the Bene Gesserit. originally intended that Lady Jessica bear a daughter so that she could be married to the young Harkonnen. It didn't work out that way.

Count and Lady Fenring are I think the most interesting minor characters in Dune. The Count is a close friend of the Emperor, and serves as the Emperor's eyes and ears as well as being his hatchet man. A killer with the manners of a rabbit, is how the Baron describes him, and the Count's foppish, insinuating manners mask a stiletto-keen mind. But what I find most interesting about him is the relationship he has with his wife, Lady Margot Fenring. We had mention of her in an earlier chapter where Jessica recieved a letter from her. The Count and his Lady were formerly the Emperor's unofficial representatives on Arrakis during the Harkonnen's rule and they resided in the palace Duke Leto chose for his own. Like Jessica, Lady Fenring is a Bene Gesserit.

But although the Count and his Lady are essentially agents working for different patrons, (the Emperor and the B.G., respectively), they work together as partners; respecting each other's work and even comparing notes.

The Count is visiting the Baron to tie up some of the loose ends of the Arrakis situation. The Emperor is not at all happy with the way some of the things ended up. As the two exchange pleasantly veiled threats, the Baron off-handedly mentions that he is considering using Arrakis as a prison planet, similar to what the Emperor has done on the planet Salsus Secondus. The Baron is puzzled as to why the Count seems so interested in this. The reader, however, will recall Duke Leto's theory that the Emperor used the harsh conditions on his prison planet to train his elite Sardaukar troops and that the conditions on Arrakis might have done the same to the Fremen. And we have seen that the Fremen are as good or better than the Sardaukar in battle. The Sardaukar really hate the Fremen.

Lady Fenring's mission is to investigate Feyd and to ensure that the B.G. doesn't lose his genetic material. She won't find it difficult to seduce him; Feyd is a horny adolescent, after all. He shares the Harkonnen self-centered hedonism, and has already expressed an unseemly interest in Lady Fenring. While she's at it, she'll perform a little discreet Bene Gesserit mental programming on him while he's having his fun with her. After all, you never can tell when something like this might come in handy. No wonder the Baron is so paranoid about the B.G.'s.

We return then to Stilgar's tribe in Sietch Tabr. The Sardaukar patrols have been coming too close to the sietch, and so preparations are being made to relocate. Paul is introduced to something else he has inherited from Jamis: the man's wife, Harah. Although Paul does not wish to marry her, the woman -- and her two sons -- are his responsibility. Through Harah we get to see a few glimpses of the Fremen's home life.

The Fremen's impending move has precipitated matters for Jessica as well. The tribe's priestess, their Reverend Mother, is too old to make a long journey, and so Jessica has been asked to take over as Reverend Mother right away. She is apprehensive about this, but she sees it an a necessary step to cement her place in the Fremen community.

From here, the chapter gets psychedelic. The ritual involves partaking of the "Waters of Life", secretions of a small sandworm that has been drowned, that takes the consciousness-expanding qualities of the spice and cranks it up to Eleven. It is one of the awareness drugs the Bene Gesserit uses to produce its own Reverned Mothers. It is also, Jessica realizes too late, a deadly poison; but by ingesting it she also gains the ability to psychically alter the drugs chemical structure to make it harmless.

She also makes mental contact with the tribe's old Reverend Mother, who chides her for the risk she has taken. Jessica is pregnant; something only she and Paul know; and the drug will have an unknown effect on the unborn child. That's too late to be helped now; the Reverend Mother is dying and in her death transfers all her memories into Jessica's mind; including the memories of all the Reverend Mothers of the tribe before her for who knows how many generations. Jessica is now the living repository of the tribe's experiences.

And so is her still-embryonic daughter. Jessica must reach out to her as well and try to cushion the unbelievably brutal shock of all those lives downloaded into that yet unformed mind. This will have consequences.

Fast forward.

Two years have passed. Feyd is no longer the bratty adolescent showing off in the arena; he's now a bratty adult who's getting tired of waiting for his uncle to kick the bucket. And so he's taken matters into his own hand.

The Baron has just avoided an assassination attempt by Feyd. The impetuous youth arranged to have a poisoned needle hidden on the body of the latest boy-toy sent to his uncle's bedroom. It might have worked too if Hawat hadn't warned the Baron of the plot. The Baron has some stern words for his nephew. He has big plans for Feyd -- bigger even than his plan to have Feyd replace his brother Rabban as governor of Arrakis -- and he certainly doesn't want Feyd to muck things up. Through a skillful blend of promises and threats, he brings Feyd around to a sullen acceptance of the situation... for now.

Feyd realizes that Hawat has been playing him and his uncle against each other. He warns his uncle of the mentat's danger, but the Baron believes he has Hawat under control. He thinks that by focusing Hawat's energies against the Emperor, the mentat won't be plotting against him. And he believes that the residual poison makes Hawat dependent on him, rendering him harmless.

"In a way, it's like the arena," Feyd muses. "Feints within feints within feints." That theme of plans within plans is repeated often in the series.

In the next chapter, Hawat has a meeting with the Baron to discuss the Arrakis situation, which the Baron thinks is under control. The Baron has always dismissed the Fremen as being merely a handful of desert scum, not worthy even of contempt. Hawat knows better. He patiently lays out the evidence in front of the Baron of the Fremen's numbers, of their deadly fighting ability as evidenced by statistics of battle casualties, and of his conclusion that the Fremen are equal to or better than the Emperor's elite Sadaurkar.

Here is where the Baron sheepishly admits mentioning to Count Fenring something about making Arrakis a second Salusa Secundus. Hawat loses his temper. As a mentat, he lives by information, and this small piece of information changes everything. The Emperor would have assumed, from the Baron's remark, that Harkonnen was trying to build an elite fighting force against him and has had two years now to take counter-measures. Hawat immediately takes command of the situation and begins devising counter-counter-measures.

Here, in these Harkonnen chapters, we finally see Hawat in his element. In the earlier chapters, he seemed impotent; out-maneuvered by the Harkonnen plots and blinded by his mistaken suspicions of Jessica; but here we get a glimpse of the old plot-meister at work. In the past two years under the Baron's service he has been making himself indispensable. If he is dependent upon the Baron for the antidote to the residual poison, the Baron has become dependent upon him as well. Hawat and the Baron each knows that he is being used by the other; but the Baron's grasp on the situation is not nearly as good as he thinks it is.

NEXT TIME: Paul catches a worm; we meet his creepy baby sister; and we're re-united with an old friend, whom Paul might have to kill.

DECEMBER 7, 70 YEARS AGO

2011-12-06T11:11:00.000-08:00

In the ongoing attempt here to link media with real life events, and apply that, December 7, 2011 is a 70th anniversary of an event, Pearl Harbor, that forever changed America. Changed not for the lives lost or ships sunk, but for the future of how the USA would act upon the world stage.

Watch a movie, read a book, I've linked a poem, but remember the event, and then apply how many ways the world as a whole change by the US becoming involved in world affairs, instead of sheltering itself in isolation.

A POEM ABOUT PEARL HARBOR

RIP Anne McCaffrey: 4/1/26 11/21/2011

2011-11-23T03:11:00.000-08:00

Anne McCaffrey was a prolific and well able writer. She wrote books that allowed the mind of the reader to soar. And she will be missed.

(Book covers by artist Michael Whelan)

Bibliography (source NNDB)

Restoree (1967)
Dragonflight (1968)
Decision at Doona (1969)
The Ship Who Sang (1969)
Dragonquest (1971)
To Ride Pegasus (1973)
Dragonsong (1976)
Dragonsinger (1977)
Get Off the Unicorn (1977)
White Dragon (1978)
Dinosaur Planet (1979)
Dragondrums (1979)
Crystal Singer (1982)
Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern (1983)
Dinosaur Planet Survivors (1984)
Killashandra (1985)
Nerilka's Story (1986)
Dragonsdawn (1988)
Dragonlover's Guide to Pern (1989)
Renegades of Pern (1989)
The Death of Sleep (1990)
Pegasus in Flight (1990)
The Rowan (1990)
Sassinak (1990)
All the Weyrs of Pern (1991)
Generation Warriors (1991)
Crisis on Doona (1992)
Crystal Line (1992)
Damia (1992)
PartnerShip (1992)
The Ship Who Searched (1992)
The Chronicles of Pern: 1st Fall (1993)
The City Who Fought (1993)
Damia's Children (1993)
The Planet Pirates (1993)
Powers That Be (1993)
The Dolphins of Pern (1994)
The Dolphins' Bell (1994)
A Dragon-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic (1994)
The Girl Who Heard Dragons (1994)
Lyon's Pride (1994)
Power Lines (1994)
The Ship Who Won (1994)
Treaty at Doona (1994)
An Exchange Of Gifts (1995)
Freedom's Landing (1995)
Power Play (1995)
Black Horses for the King (1996)
Dragonseye (1996)
No One Noticed the Cat (1996)
Space Opera (1996)
A Diversity of Dragons (1997)
Freedom's Choice (1997)
Queen of the Unicorns (1997)
The Unicorn Girl (1997)
Acorna's Quest (1998)
Freedom's Challenge (1998)
If Wishes Were Horses (1998)
Acorna's People (1999)
The Masterharper of Pern (1999)
Nimisha's Ship (1999)
The Tower and the Hive (1999)
Acorna's World (2000)
Pegasus in Space (2000)
The Skies of Pern (2001)
Acorna's Search (2002)
Freedom's Ransom (2002)
A Gift of Dragons (2002)
Acorna's Rebels (2003)
Brain Ships (2003)
Dragon's Kin (2003)
The Mystery of Ireta: Dinosaur Planet & Dinosaur Planet Survivors (2003)
On Dragonwings (2003)
The Ship Who Saved the Worlds (2003)
Acorna's Triumph (2004)
The City and The Ship (2004)
Doona (2004)
Changelings (2005)
First Warning (2005)
Maelstrom (2006)
Second Wave (2006)
Dragon Harper (2007)
Dragon's Fire (2007)
Third Watch (2007)
Deluge (2008)
Catalyst (2010)

Dune: Part 6: Initiation Rituals

2011-11-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

In our last reading, Paul and Jessica continued their flight into the desert as both their friends and foes regrouped after the catastrophe at Arrakeen.

Kynes is in a bad situation. He gave shelter to Paul and Jessica as they fled the Harkonnens and was captured. Since he is an Imperial Agent on the planet, the Harkonnens do not dare kill him outright; so they have left him out in the desert without a stillsuit to let the elements finish him off. But he has spent his entire life surviving in the desert and he is not dead yet.

As he struggles to hang onto life, grasping for hopes of rescue, he hears his father lecturing him on ecology. Re-reading the book this time around, something occurred to me that I had overlooked before. I had always assumed that his father's appearance was a hallucination; but perhaps it wasn't. The spice has awareness-enhancing properties, and later on in the book and the sequels we learn that Paul and his sister (whom we haven't met yet) and the Fremen's own Reverend Mothers have the ability to access ancestral lives. Kynes is lying directly on top of a pre-spice mass, the strange biological fermentation process that produces the spice melange. Perhaps this concentration of spice is enhancing his own latent abilities, whatever they might be, allowing him to hear his dead father's memories. Perhaps.

His father chides him for getting involved with the boy, and warns him that a Hero could be the worst thing that could happen to his people. This is an important theme in the book; the dark undercurrent to the surface adventure plot of the Special One seeking his Rightful Place. In then end, Kynes' efforts to stay alive come to nothing. The spice mass blows and he is engulfed by the desert, just as he has been sucked into the tragedy of the House Atreides.

Paul and Jessica have been searching for Fremen. Well, now the Fremen have found them; led by Stilgar, the Fremen leader of Stiech Tabr whom we met in an earlier chapter. Kynes has sent orders to the Fremen to look for the Atreides fugitives and aid them. Stilgar is willing to save Paul, who may be the Lisan Al-Gib, the Mahdi promised by prophecy, and who in any case is young enough to train in the Fremen ways. But what of his mother? Yes, she might be the Reverend Mother also mentioned in prophecy, but what if she isn't? What good is she?

She's good enough to kick butt, that's what she's good for. "I am the mother of the boy... In part, his strength which you admire is a product of my training." And she goes on to prove it by disarming Stilgar and grabbing him in a judo hold. This impresses him; the Fremen are unpracticed in what they call "the weirding way", the advance techniques of unarmed combat that the Bene Gesserit know. He agrees to let her and Paul live if she'll teach his fighters the weirding way.

During the confrontation, Paul encounters a familiar face: Chani, the daughter of Kynes, whom he has seen in his earliest prescient dreams; ("Tell me of your homeworld, Usul...")

Paul and Jessica are taken to Stiech Tabr, the refuge of Stilgar's tribe; but their new position in the tribe has not quite been established. Stilgar and Jessica feel each other out about this. The obvious thing to do would be for Stilgar to marry Jessica; but both reject this option, each for his and her own reasons. The Fremen suggests an alternative: that Jessica take over for their tribe's own "Reverend Mother" who is old and may die soon. The B.G.'s Missionaria Protectiva, the program of seeding planets with legends to make them more open to the Bene Gesserit, has succeeded on Arrakis so well that the Fremen have adopted B.G. titles and rituals for their own religion.

But there are still problems. Jamis, one of Stilgar's men, was embarrassed by Paul in the earlier confrontation and bears a grudge. He demands that they prove themselves by combat. Under Fremen custom, Jessica cannot fight for herself; she must be championed by another. Stilgar tries to put a stop to it, but Jamis accuses him of being bewitched by Jessica. The only way to resolve this to everyone's satisfaction will be to let Jamis fight Paul.

The fight is done in the open, without stillsuits, with crysknives, the sacred Fremen weapon carved from a sandworm's tooth. Although Paul is well-trained in fighting, he is accustomed to using personal force shields which block fast attacks. He is quick on the defense, but his habits make him slow in striking, which makes it look to the Fremen like he is toying with Jamis. Also, Paul does not immediately realize that this is a fight to the death; that quarter will be neither given, nor accepted. Adding to his uncertainty, his prescient visions have not shown him this fight; although he has seen a possible future in which he lies dead of a knife wound.

He defeats Jamis and kills him; thus cementing his and his mother's place in the Fremen community. Stilgar recognizes him as a man and gives him the name Usul, meaning the base of the pillar, as his private name to be used by the Stietch Tabr community. (Hm. It just occured to me: "the base" is also the translation of "Al-Qaeda". Interesting) Stilgar also tells Paul to choose a Fremen name of his own, to be his public name. Paul asks what the little desert mouse is called, which he had observed earlier. "We call that one muad'dib," Stilgar says.

Once again, Paul feels destiny tightening around him as he remembers his visions of fanatical legions waging war under the Atreides banner shouting the name "Muad'Dib". "Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad'Dib?" he asks. He hopes this will alter the future somewhat; but he suspects it won't help.

Afterwards, a funeral is held for Jamis. As part of the ritual, the man's fellow tribesmen step forward to claim friendship with Jamis and take one of his possessions. Paul realizes that he too, is expected to take part in the custom.

Slowly, Paul got to his feet.
A sigh passsed around the circle.
Paul felt the diminishement of his self as he advanced into the center of the circle. It was as though he lost a fragment of himself and sought it here. He bent over the mound of belongings, lifted out the baliset. A string twanged softly as it struck against something in the pile.
"I was a friend of Jamis," Paul whispered.
He felt tears burning his eyes, forced more volume into his voice. "Jamis taught me... that ... when you kill ... you pay for it. I wish I'd known Jamis better."

The Fremen are awed by this. "He gives moisture to the dead!" And they gather around to touch his face as if his tears were something sacred.

After the ceremony, Paul learns that as part of Fremen custom, he is entitled to the water recovered from Jamis' corpse. The actual water itself will be stored in the Stietch's reservoir, of course, but Paul is given water counters, tokens which represent his share of the communal wealth. This frankly creeps Paul out, but his mother impresses on him that it is better to abide by the custom than to refuse. Unsure what to do with the water counters, he asks Chani to hold them for him; and when Chani blushes and the Fremen around him chuckle, he realizes that under Fremen custom he's just proposed to her. Stilgar reminds Chani that Paul is still unfamiliar with their ways and advises her to hold his tokens without commitment for the time being.

But after the rituals are over, Paul and Chani sit together getting to know each other. Paul plays a song for her on the baliset he has acquired. A romantic ballad.

Jessica does not like where this is heading.

NEXT: Feyd celebrates his birthday in the Harkonnen fashion, by killing something. Paul inherits something else from Jamis. Jessica takes the Waters of Life and disregards the warning label about "do not take this while pregnant".

Author R. A. Salvatore Interviewed

2011-11-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

Chatting with Fantasy Author R.A. SALVATORE

In 2006 I had the great fortune of interviewing author R.A. Salvatore, as a fantasy fan it was a dream to interview one of the big names in the field of writing fantasy stories. And now, 5 years later I am writing some myself... I present here for your enjoyment, an interview from 5 years ago...

How did you move from role playing great characters to writing them?

This is a common misconception. I didn’t.

Sure, I began playing D&D just before I started writing but mostly it was a creative outlet for me. DM’ing a game was writing for me at that time. Drizzt, Wulfgar, Bruenor, Cattie-brie and Regis didn’t start out as game characters; in fact, I’ve never played them once in any game. Well I tried playing Drizzt once (and this was back before there were many dark elves as PC’s). My DM killed him horribly in the first encounter and everyone around the table told me to play a real character!

The only novel character who started ina game was Oliver Deburrows, the highway halfling from the Crimson Shadow trilogy. Oliver is a combination of Inego Montoya from “The Princess Bride” and the little French guy on the wall in “Monty Python’s Holy Grail”. I wanted to see if I could make him annoying enough. After a few weeks he died horribly (a common theme) and at that moment I knew he had to go into the book, because everyone stood up and cheered.

Do you still play? If so what do you play?

I still play D&D (1st edition, mostly, sometimes 2nd or 3rd) on Sunday nights, with pretty much the same gang who have together for more than a decade. Now, though, my two sons join in every once in a while, when they manage to get home from college. Also, once a week, several friends and I get together online for Everquest, or World of Warcraft.

You have a BS in Communications and BA in English, how do the both of them intermingle in your writing success?

The most important part of the BS in Communications was that that particular program allowed me to take literature class for all my electives, and even a few for the majors course of study. The most important thing for a beginning writer to do is read. You don’t how to tell a story by having some frustrated-writer creative writing professor tell you. You learn by reading those who did it best.

It’s funny, but of my college courses, the ones that helped me the most in my career, other than the literature course are the math classes. I keep a spreadsheet of al my books, tracking trends and sales, and of course, keeping track of the publishers and their payment schedules.

What fantasy authors did you read prior to entering the field? Who do you read now?

Tolkien, of course. Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, Terry Brooks and Stephen Donaldson still rank among my favorites, and all for very different reasons. I love Lieber's characterizations, and the pace of his many Fafhred and Mouser novellas. Donaldson was the first to show me the wider boundaries of fantasy, as in the story of Thomas...

CRYSTAL SHARD was among the few books I have collected and widely shared with other fantasy fans. I wonder at what point did you realize the tremendous success you had with the books and what it felt like to know that.

Have I? Seriously, none of this has ever sunken in, and given my thick head, it never will. (I hope). I’m just telling stories, and thankfully, some people seem to be garnering enjoyment from them. That’s all I can hope for. I’m having fun, doing what I love to do, and, they pay me for it. Hard to complain, so I won’t.

I’m still surprised whenever someone shares a personal story about one of my books. I’m still thrilled every time that someone was turned on to reading through one of my books. I’m still stunned and giggle like a little kid when I see my books in other languages. It’s like watching it all happen as if it I was a reporter covering my own career. I don’t know how else to explain it.

In the cast of the series of Icewind Dale you manage to, rather quickly, create a sense of camaraderie and even love and friendship. How much of that came via knowing the characters through role playing, and how much was original creation?

Well, see above. It really had nothing to do with role-playing, unless, perhaps, my love of gaming clued me into the feelings of connectedness that makes a shared adventure thrilling. At one of those many conversations writer and editors share we sit down and try to unravel the truth of the world, (usually in a bar about the time the staff starts washing dishes and opening the broom closet), my editor commented that she thought the driving factor in the success of the Drizzt books was I had created a party of characters with whom the readers wanted to upon an adventure. People read Drizzt and the gang because they wanted to be part of that gang. They wanted to be in the Icingdeath’s lair with Drizzt and Wulfgar, or stand on the line besides Bruenor Battlehammer against the swarm of charging barbarians.

There’s probably some truth in that theory. I know that I wanted to go along with the nine to destroy the One Ring at Mount Doom in Mordor. I know that pulling a job in Lankhmar beside the Mouser ranks high on my list of things “to do”.

Creating this type of a group comes as naturally to me as putting together a softball team for the local league. I’ve always surrounded myself with people I know I can count upon, and, who know they can count on me. When I am writing, these characters become as real as living friends. These are characters I interact with whenever I join them on an adventure. I know, I’m crazy, but don’t tell the authorities to lock me away until I’ve paid for college for my three kids okay?

Drizzt is becoming a literary charter, worthy of entering the greater pantheon of Conan and the like. If there is one quality about him you think is vital to his popularity is it his morality in the face of evil, the appeal as that of an outsider, or his sword skills? Which specifically would you choose if you could pick just one?

People ask me if I’m Drizzt. No, I’m not. Drizzt is who I wish I had the courage to be. We live in a world where too many people think that the hero is the guy with the biggest sword, but in truth, the hero is the hero is the guy with the biggest heart. The hero is the guy who sticks to the path of his moral compass when easier roads present themselves to the side. The hero is the guy who always looks at the world in terms of common good, and community, and loyalty. Drizzt is a hero in the classic sense, before we got hijacked by villains disguised as heroes, who wield the biggest guns and kill with abandon. That’s not being a hero. Being a hero is living a life with purpose, and leaving the world around you a little bit better than when you discovered it.

Dune: Part 5: Into the Desert

2011-11-15T18:44:00.000-08:00

In last week's reading, the Harkonnens struck; Yueh double-crossed the Baron; Duke Leto died in an unsuccessful attempt to kill the Baron and Paul and Jessica escaped into the desert. Part I of the novel ended with Paul experiencing cascading visions of the future, including the realization that he himself has Harkonnen blood.

Before we go any further in the plot, I wanted to touch a bit on the Baron Harkonnen's ... orientation. He Likes Little Boys. What's more, he has squick-inducing thoughts about Paul Atreides as well. And for that matter, his attitude towards his own nephew Feyd occasionally is not exactly avuncular either. Herbert seems to use the Baron's homosexuality; along with his corpulence, hedonism and dependence on anti-gravity units to even walk; as marks of the Baron's decadent depravity.

So, is Frank Herbert a homophobe? I don't like to think so. I like Dune, and I've enjoyed much of Herbert's writings. The Baron is the only gay character to appear in the novel (unless we count the Count Fenring, but his case is far from explicit); and I can't think of any gay characters in the other Dune novels off-hand; so I can't really say how Herbert portrays homosexuals in general.

He reminds me a little of a bit of conversation from a comic book. Wally West, the Flash, was chatting with a friend of his, the reformed villain Pied Piper. Wally asked him about the Joker: "You used to hang around with a lot of super-villains. Is it true that the Joker's gay?" The Piper explains that he didn't exactly hang around with the Joker -- nobody does -- but that as far as he could tell, the only person the Joker was in love with was himself. I think the Baron is like that too. He is intimate only with slave boys, those whom he has complete dominance and control over. And he hates and is terrified of the B.G.s who could have power over him if he let them. He did once, in his youth, when he unknowingly sired Jessica, and perhaps that frightened him.

Then again, perhaps Herbert is just borrowing the trope of the Decadent Roman, like the Emperor Nero or the Peter Ustinov character from Spartacus and doesn't mean him to be any deeper than that.

But back to the story.

Paul and Jessica are in the desert, waiting for the return of Duncan Idaho. They are still on the run, but Paul's deluge of insight in the previous chapter has changed him. Now he seems to be taking charge of the situation. As they pack up their tent and proceed on, they see signs of Harkonnen pursuit: aircraft strafing the desert with lasguns, bringing to mind the cryptic message Leto received: "A column of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night."

Thufir Hawat has managed to escape the disaster at Arakeen with a handful of men and have joined up with some Fremen. At least they are trying to. Hawat discovers his logical mentat mind stymied by the fact that he doesn't understand the Fremen and their ways. He and the leader of the Fremen go around and around speaking at cross-purposes until finally he can find common ground where they can communicate. Hawat is startled to learn that the Fremen were able to not only hold their own, but actually kick butt against the Sardaukar, the Emperor's own elite shock troops currently on loan to the Harkonnens. But just as Hawat and the Fremen reach their understanding, the Saudakar make another attack and capture Thufir.

Paul and Jessica meet up with Duncan. Wait, I thought he was dead. I guess he wasn't. Then who was the unnamed Atreides who died under torture by the Harkonnens? I'm confused. The whole chronology of these chapters really could have been better organized.

But Duncan Idaho arrives with Kynes, who takes them to one of the Imperial Ecological Testing Stations that Leto had initially coveted. We discover that Kynes is actually Liet, the mysterious leader whom the Fremen defer to. This is fleshed out considerably in the Appendix: The Ecology of Dune, which describes how Kynes' father first came up with a visionary plan to terraform the planet into something more habitable; how he recruited the Fremen to make the plan work; and how Kynes' plan became a holy mission for the Fremen. Kynes realizes that by aiding the Atreides, he is putting this plan in jeapordy; but when pressed for a decision, he aids them anyway.

Also in this chapter Paul outlines his long-range plan. Immediately, of course, he wants to stay alive, but also to gain evidence of the Sardaukar involvement in his father's fall. If he can prove that the Emperor was personally invovled in destroying a Great House, then the other nobles will band against him. Paul plans to use the threat of this revelation as leverage against the Emperor.

But first he has to stay alive. The Harkonnens attack the station. Duncan is killed; (really, this time) and Jessica and Paul once more have to flee. They take an ornithopter and fly into the deep desert, right into the mother of all sandstorms.

"They are dead, Baron," one of his flunkies tells him. After all, No One Could Possibly Survive That. The Baron is not so sure, and is not happy about the entire situation. Paul is a troublesome loose end, and the death of Piter has forced him to alter his plans. The only good news he receives is the capture of Hawat. He sees that the Atreides mentat can be useful to him. Hawat still blames Jessica for the treason against Leto. The Baron thinks that by controlling the information Hawat has, he can persuade the mentat to work for him. And just to be safe, he orders that Hawat be secretly given a special poison which will kill him unless he takes a special antidote which will be administered in his food. That way, if Hawat becomes dangerous, the Baron can kill him at any time simply by withdrawing the antidote.

The Baron also has a chat with his other nephew, Rabban. Rabban was the former governor of Arrakis, before the Atreides briefly took over. Now the Baron is giving him the planet back. He only requires that Rabban squeeze. The plot against the Atreides has cost the Harkonnen an enormous amount; roughly equivalent to the planet's total spice production for fifty years. He demands that Rabban start paying it back and quickly. Of course, this is part of his greater plan to make the current governor so hated on Arrakis that when the Baron eventually replaces him with Feyd, the younger nephew will be worshipped as a hero.

Rabban is not portrayed as being particularly intelligent. "A muscle-minded tank-brain" is how his uncle describes him. But in his conversation, we do see some glimpses that he may not be as dense as the Baron thinks. He tries to warn his uncle that the Fremen might not be so inconsequential after all. But a glimpse is all we get. Rabban is just a pawn in this game, and a brutal one at that.

The Baron is right to worry about loose ends. Paul and Jessica have indeed survived their flight into he sandstorm; although their aircraft was damaged and they are forced to make an emergency landing in the desert. They continue on foot, taking advantage of rocky outcroppings whenever possible to avoid the sandworms.

While descending a cliff face, Jessica becomes buried in an avalanche of sand. Using B.G. techniques to slow her respiration, she is able to stay alive until Paul can rescue her; but now much of their gear is buried under tons of sand so fine that digging in it is like trying to shovel water. Here we get a very old-school SF touch. Paul uses a nearby patch of spice, combined with the acidic battery pack from a piece of equipment to create a stabilizing foam to hold the sand while he digs down to the gear. This MacGuyver-ish touch used to be common in the old "Hard SF" stories.

Gurney Halleck has also escaped the Harkonnen attack, and along with about seventy men has fallen in with a group of smugglers, led by Esmar Tuek, the son of the smuggler we met at the dinner party. Gurney is itching for vengeance against the Harkonnens, but Tuek is a practical man and counsels patience. Halleck ultimately agrees and throws in his lot with Tuek's smugglers.

In the final chapter of the reading, Paul and Jessica make a desperate trek for the safety of a region of cliffs. They have to cross the sands carefully, trying to avoid making the kinds of regular, artificial sounds that might attract a sandworm's curiousity. They accidentally hit a patch of drum sand, gravel that has been compacted and amplifies the sound of footsteps. Now they must run, and barely reach safety before a worm comes up from the sands after them. They find themselves in a rocky grotto used by the Fremen as a refuge; and soon discover that they are not alone...

NEXT: Paul and Jessica have found the Fremen! But will the Fremen help them, or kill them? Paul sees a knife wound in his future; but will it come to pass? Plus: Kynes goes out with a bang!

A NOTE ABOUT SPORT AS ENTERTAINMENT

2011-11-14T13:07:00.000-08:00

Dear NBA owners and players,

There are many forms of entertainment fans can enjoy. Your sport is one of many. If you choose not to have a season, many will watch and spend their money elsewhere. Feel free to come back, but don't expect a celebration or that fans will be waiting for you. You'll have to earn your way back. There is a recession, and many people don't have money for games anyway. So thank you for allowing people to make better and easier choices with their entertainment dollars.

Yours,
Not entirely sincerely
Not really a fan

TOP SHELF HAS GONE DIGITAL!

2011-11-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Special occasions

2011-11-13T21:59:00.001-08:00

According to some new researchspoilers may be beneficial to enjoyment of a story. That’s good to know, as Larsvon Trier’s latest film, Melancholia, spoils it own conclusion within its first five minutes. Melancholia is, in part, the story of the end of the world.This is telegraphed in the grand, apocalyptic opening sequence, whichculminates with a rather large planet slamming into our woe betide world.

Thereafter we go back to the beginning of the tale, andwitness (in irritating hand-held camera, for the most part) the ultimately disastrouswedding reception of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Michael (Alexander Skarsgard).Justine battles with depression, which frustrates those trying to support her.This is compounded by other challenges, such as eccentricparents who aren’t past the feuding stage of their break-up, and a venalboss pressuring Justine for the perfect ad campaign tagline. Ultimately,Michael leaves Justine, and the special day ends up memorable for all thewrong reasons. (Well, it would be memorable, except it gets rather overtaken inthe scheme of things by the end of the world.)

In the second half, set some days after the events of thereception, Justine falls even further into depression, and her sister Claire (CharlotteGainsbourg) tries to nurse her back to sanity at the mansion estate of hermega-wealthy husband John (Kiefer Sutherland). In the background to all this isthe predicted “flyby” of the newly discovered rogue planet Melancholia. DespiteJohn’s reassurances, Justine (like the audience) knows that this won’t endwell.

Armed with her complacent fatalism, Justine becomes measuredand collected as the rest of the family become increasingly fraught. Justine’stransition in the second half from exhausted depressive, dependent on hersister, to the calm, assured head of the family is an oddly believablecharacter arc.

It was no surprise to read that the initial idea for Melancholia came from a therapist’s suggestion to vonTrier that people with melancholia are better able to handle extreme situations. Regardless of whether that theory is correct or just psychobabble, von Trier’s film makes fora compelling fictional example.

There were plenty of comparisons between Melancholia andTerrence Malick’s The Tree of Life afterthey both deputed at Cannes this year. Both were anticipated films by noted‘art house’ filmmakers, and both featured fairly gritty day to day realisminterrupted by celestial affairs. One film featured the beginning of life onearth, the other the end of the world. Malick’s film won the Palme d’Or, butMelancholia is the more interesting cinema.

Melancholia has some impressive imagery, especially duringthe opening montage. Surreal images such as this one are more evocative than most of the cosmic flourishes from Tree of Life. Itis also more engaging, and surprisingly funny. You don’t have to be themisanthrope that von Trier is to appreciate his cynical humour

A stylistic misstep, however, was the hand-held camera workthat was used in most of the interior scenes. Lars Von Trier considers it lendssome verisimilitude to the domestic aspects of the story. It actually does theopposite. A similar approach was used in Dancer in the Dark,where von Trier used hand-held for the “real world” parts in contrast to theslicker fantasy musical sequences. As a friend commented after that film, thesustained hand-held camera work only draws attention to the film making process,and von Trier has even less justification for the long periods of shaky camera inMelancholia

As mentioned earlier, the issue of plot revelation issomething von Trier has considered. “It was the same thing with ’Titanic’, he says ... youjust know: aw, something with an iceberg will probably turn up. And it is mythesis that most films are like that, really. In a James Bond movie we expectthe hero to survive. It can get exciting nonetheless. And some things may bethrilling precisely because we know what’s going to happen, but not how theywill happen.”

He has a point, but obviously there are some films which, uponfirst viewing, achieve greater suspense because they play on the audience’suncertainty about what will happen. Whether this would have been the betterapproach with Melancholia is an interesting question. Von Trier thought that leavingthe audience in suspense over the issue of the world ending would be adistraction.

On the other hand, as some critics of the film have pointedout, it can be more difficult to care about the characters if we know from theoutset that they will be killed. More importantly, it is that small, naggingdoubt in the back of the viewers mind over the duration of a story that createsthe kind of suspense that can draw the audience further in to the narrative,rather than distract from it.

If there’s one thingLars von Trier understands perfectly, it is ritual. In publicity for the film, he told Nils Thorsen : “Ifthere’s some value beyond the rituals, that’s fine. The ritual is like a film.There has to be something in the film. And then the film’s plot is the ritualthat leads us to what’s inside. And if there’s something inside and beyond, Ican relate to the ritual. But if the rituals are empty, that is: if it’s nolonger fun to get Christmas presents or see the joy of the kids, then the wholeritual about dragging a tree inside the living room becomes empty.”

Melancholia is heavy on ritual, with the weddingreception being the backdrop in the first half. In the second, Claire eventries to ritualise the end of the world, wanting to “do this properly” by beingin the right place, with the right wine and music – an approach mocked byJustine. Nevertheless, in the final moments, they do end up acting out a kindof ritual; in a continuation of the games they played earlier, Justine comforts Claire’s son by making aspecial ‘cave’ to hide in. Rituals are essentially childish, so acknowledgingthem as an extension of play is actually the more mature approach.

So why would von Trier,a confessed self-satisfied filmmaker, have doubts about his latest film? He hasacknowledged fears that the film is too close to a Hollywood-style. He hasworried that it could be viewed superficially, as if the film was too slicklymade to allow for ambiguity or getting “lost in the cracks”.

"I am afraid that it has turned out too 'nice’. I likethe romance in it. Pathos. But that’s alarmingly close to nice."

That’sthe dilemma von Trier faces when making cinema about the end of the world: willhe be thought of as being too nice?

As afilmmaker, von Trier is bold and skilful, but seems concerned not just withbeing true to himself artistically, but on being seen to be so. Maybehis attachment to the faux-naturalism of the shaky-cam, and his reluctance athaving an accessible story trait like suspense, comes from the same place ashis fretting over being too nice. It’s a partly contrived outsider position. TheT-shirt version would be: “I hope you realise I don’t care what you think.”

Thisattitude leads to otherwise uncompromising artists worrying about how they arebeing perceived, which does not necessarily lead to betterart. Melancholia is an excellent film that may have relatively wide appeal.Hopefully, von Trier’s therapist will tell him that’s okay.

Dune: Part 4: Didn't See That One Coming

2011-11-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

In our last reading, the Harkonnens successfully planted suspicion right where it would do the most damage; Duke Leto and Paul got to see their very first Spice Factory swallowed by a creature the size of Dubuque; and Lady Jessica threw a dinner party to get to know their enemies better.

Even though I've read this book I don't know how many times, and even though I know how things fall out, this next chapter always seems to sandbag me. While we're still reeling from Jessica's face-off with Hawat in the previous chapter, Leto walks down a hallway in his palace and discovers a dead man. The house's protective shields are down, and the servants who might have given warning are dead. Leto barely has time to realize his danger when he feels the drugged dart shot into his arm.

"What th--? It's happening already??? But they just got here! Leto never had a chance!" No he didn't. That's what everyone's been saying for the past dozen or so chapters.

Doctor Yueh, the Traitor, has finally made his move. "I'm sorry, my dear Duke, but there are things which will make greater demands than this," he says, indicating the tattoo on his forehead symbolizing his ethical conditioning. "I find it strange, myself -- an override on my pyretic conscience -- but I wish to kill a man.... Oh, not you, my dear Duke. The Baron Harkonnen. I wish to kill the Baron."

Yueh promises to save Jessica and Paul. He has persuaded the Baron to leave the two of them out in the desert to die, and has arranged for survival gear to be hidden for them and for Duncan Idaho to find them and take them to the Fremen. In return, he ask Leto to extract revenge on the Baron for both of them, by means of a poison gas capsule disguised as a false tooth.

Jessica awakens to find herself bound and gagged, along with Paul. The Harkonnens have arrived and the Baron is here to gloat over her. The gag is important, because the Baron fears her use of "The Voice", a Bene Gesserit technique of inducing others to instinctively obey commands by pitching the voice in just the right manner. It's a little bit like "Jedi Mind Tricks," and we saw a bit of it in her interview with Hawat in last week's section.

The Baron has promised promised Jessica to his mentat, Piter de Vries; but he now offers Piter a choice: either take the woman he's been lusting after and leave Arrakis, or remain as the Baron's governor. This is part of the Baron's larger plan; he expects Piter to make himself so hated as ruler of the planet that the people will welcome his eventual replacement, the Baron's nephew Feyd, with open arms. A mentat should know when he's being manipulated like that, but Piter jumps exactly the way the Baron wants him to.

Piter has a couple minions take Jessica and Paul in an ornithopter, the one Yueh prepared, out into the desert, "as the Traitor suggested." Both Piter and the Baron fear the possibility of being questioned by the Emperor's B.G. Truthsayer (whom we met in the first chapter), and so they want to be able to say truthfully that they did not actually kill either Jessica or her son. Paul has been left un-gagged, and although he is not yet fully trained in the Voice, he is able to induce one of the guards to remove his mother's gag as well. Big mistake, guys.

A little bit here about Duncan Idaho. In the sequel, we meet a clone of Duncan and are told how much Paul admired the original, but he never seemed to me to have done much in the original book. Re-reading it, I see that Duncan did a lot of cool stuff -- just that it was all off-stage. For example, we are told early on that Duncan was Paul's chief fencing instructor. His mission to the Fremen must have been exciting and dangerous, and here we are told that Duncan picks up Paul and Jessica. Then, apparently, Duncan goes to rendezvous with Kynes, and gets captured by the Harkonnens. He is tortured to death; all off-stage. We aren't even told for sure it's him. Duncan deserves better. Just sayin' is all.

Yueh meets the Baron and demands that Harkonnen keep his part of the bargain: to free Yueh's wife from her agony and permit him to join her. Yueh's no fool. He knows exactly what this means; but he has to be sure that his wife is truly dead and free from the Baron's tortures. And he wants to get his revenge.

His plan very nearly works; the poison gas in Leto's tooth kills Piter and some of the Baron's soldiers, but by chance the Baron himself is far enough away to cheat death.

Out in the desert, Paul and Jessica wait in a tent for Idaho to return. They've found the pack of survival gear Yueh hid away on their ornithopter, along with the Atriedes ducal signet ring and a letter confessing to his treachery. Paul finds himself unable to stop analyzing things. The mentat training Hawat has been giving him; his mother's B.G. training in observation; his genetic potential as the possible Kwisatz Haderach, the one who can be many places at once; all boosted by his recent exposure to the spice melange are coming together and making him hyper-aware. He experiences glimpses of the future -- of possible futures.

Paul's mind had gone on in its chilling precision. He saw the avenues ahead of them on this hostile planet. Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his prescient awareness, seeing it as a computation of probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery -- as though his mind dipped into some timeless stratum and sampled the winds of the future.

The possibilities he sees in the future frighten and repulse him. And he sees the jihad; a galactic war carried on in his name. "I'm a monster!" he thinks; "A freak!" He also realizes that he himself carries Harkonnen blood; that his mother's unknown father was in fact the Baron himself. And he sees the huge vortex of destiny ahead of him ready to swallow him up.

NEXT: Paul and Jessica flee into the desert. Gurney and Thufir seek refuge. The Baron reviews his options. And: Walk this way!

REBELLION! E-books!

2011-11-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

‘My god, it’s full of books’: new Rebellion publishing store opens

Rebellion Publishing is proud to announce the opening of its brand new digital store – giving you the pick of the freshest genre writing available at the click of a button.

Everything from SF to horror and fantasy to urban fantasy will be available direct from our Solaris and Abaddon Books imprints for the first time, and in both ePub and mobi formats – perfect for anyone with a Kindle or eReader.

You can visit the new store at Rebellionstore.com

The ideal one-stop shop for the 21st century reader, the Rebellion Publishing store offers digital downloads for all our titles with competitive prices, special sales and promotional offers – it’s the perfect place to stock up with winter warmers for the festive season.

Offering Steampunk, SF, fantasy, urban fantasy and horror, the site is easily navigable and each book is categorised in multiple ways. Alternatively, in search of a new read with a strong female lead? Or maybe a good anti-hero? Find what you want quickly with our ‘popular themes’ sections.

And to kick off, not only is there 10% off of all ebooks but, inspired by the lingering chill of Hallowe’en, for this week only all the novels in our Tomes of the Dead zombie series and the Infernal Game series are just £2 each!

“The Rebellion Store is your one-stop digital shop for all that very best in genre,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Solaris and Abaddon Books, “and a great place to find bargains.”

COMICS THAT SHOULD BE REPRINTED IN TPB FORMAT, BUT WON'T BE

2011-11-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

I am a reader of many comic books. The past saw me spending money and time reading a lot of comics, many of them very good. As an adult, a much older one, I guess, I've attempted to buy TPBs of the collected forms of the great comics I have read. But some of the best comics cannot be reprinted.

Sometimes it is due to copyrights and trademark issues. Sometimes the license has expired and no one has a right to reprint. Sometimes the owner of the trademark/copyright product/property wasn't pleased with the stories. Sometimes they have a different plan in mind and want to start new and not remind the public of past versions of the product/property.

Some times, no matter how good a product is, and no matter how clear the path to publication, there is a petty reason to keep the product/property from happening. I think some comics DESERVE to be collected, not solely or because I liked them, but because they were so good they qualify as being worthy. I am not commenting specifically here, I think though that any of the pictured series deserve being reprinted. And it is a shame they remain without such treatment.

Dune: Part 3: What A Swell Party This Is

2011-11-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

As Last we saw, the Atreides began settling in on Arrakis and dealing with the various surprises and deathtraps the Harkonnens have left behind for them; and we got our first close-up looks at the Fremen, the wild desert folk whom the Harkonnens despised and dismissed and whom Duke Leto hopes will be valuable allies.

Hawat has been guarded and disturbed during the Duke's planning conference, and in private he gives the reason why. His agents have intercepted a Harkonnen message that suggests that their spy in the Atreides household is none other than the Lady Jessica. Leto does not believe this, and the reader knows this is indeed a Harkonnen ruse, but Leto decides to allow Hawat to pursue his investigation. "Perhaps if I appear to believe this, it will make another man careless," he thinks.

He discusses this with Paul in the following chapter. He does dare let Jessica into his confidence about Hawat's suspicions -- and there I think he errs; talking to her probably wouldn't have prevented his own tragedy, but it might have saved a lot of angst along the line -- but he wants Paul to know about it. "This way, if anything should happen to me, you can tell her the truth -- that I never doubted her, not for the smallest instant. I should want her to know this."

The conversation is a difficult one for Paul, not only because of the suspicions against his mother, but because his father speaks to him frankly about his own doubts and insecurities. With all the intrigues and counter-plots swimming about, Leto is running out of people he can confide in. "I have to have someone I can say these things to, Son." When Paul tries to encourage him, he can only reply with a weary cynicism.

The Imperial Planetologist arrives to take Leto and Paul on an inspection tour of one of the spice factories. The planetologist, Kynes is a man of contrasts. He is a civil servant, the official representative of the Imperial Government on Arrakis, and as such he is supposed to turn a blind eye to the Harkonnen vendetta against the Atreides. But he also identifies as a Fremen, as Leto quickly realizes and Paul guesses sooner. Although Kynes thinks of himself as a scientist, he has been raised among the Fremen and the Fremen religious beliefs are deeply ingrained in his psyche. When Paul impulsively greets Kynes with a quote from the O.C. Bible, and when Kynes notes that Paul seems instinctively familiar with the stillsuit he wears, these things remind Kynes of elements of prophecy.

The party flies out over the desert in an ornithopter, giving us an opportunity for a fairly painless infodump about the workings of the stillsuit, spice mining, the desert ecology, and survival. While approaching one of the mobile spice factories, the Duke notices a wake in the sand indicating the path of one of the giant sandworms. The support craft which are supposed to be watching for wormsign and ready to pick up the factory if a worm shows up are mysteriously missing -- the result of Harkonnen treachery.

Here we get a chance to see Leto as a heroic man of action as he takes charge of the situation and personally lands his ornithopter to rescue as many of the spice miners as his craft can carry -- jettisoning excess baggage to accommodate the last few. They take off in time to see the Sandworm, the great behemoth of the Arrakis desert, erupt from the sand and swallow the factory in a single gulp. "He passed off the loss of a spice crawler with a gesture. The threat to men's lives had him in a rage," Kynes notes.

This dramatic action scene is followed by a chapter in which all the drama takes place over a dinner table. Lady Jessica has arranged for a dinner party and has invited a number of important people in the city of Arrakeen, each representing a different power faction. I was disappointed that this scene was not included in the movie, because I've always found it one of the most memorable; but in a way I can understand why. Most of the real action in the scene takes place inside people's heads, and in the subtexts underneath what the characters say. Tensions run high, and almost break out into violence once or twice. Jessica wins over Kynes by declaring that the Atreides intend to work towards reclaiming the desert, the Fremen holy goal; (although she might have said that just to annoy the snarky water merchant). Paul proves himself adept at the cut-and-thrust of conversational fencing.

After the dinner, an ugly scene occurs in which Duncan comes back to the palace drunk. He has been pulled from his diplomatic mission to the Fremen in order to "guard" Lady Jessica; actually to watch her because of Hawat's suspicions. When Duncan drunkenly accuses her of being a Harkonnen spy, Jessica summons Hawat to have things out with him. They circle around each other warily, like a bull and a matador; but Jessica realizes bitterly that she cannot prove to him that she is not a spy; that anything she might say or do in her defense can be and will be taken by him as proof that she's manipulating him. The meeting ends as a stalemate.

Things are about to get worse.

NEXT WEEK: The Harkonnen Trap Is Sprung! The Baron Gloats! And we learn a Shocking Truth about Jessica! That and more, next time!

200th Issue!

2011-10-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

USAGI YOJIMBO REACHES 200^TH ISSUE!

STAN SAKAI HONORED WITH YEAR OF THE RABBIT EXHIBIT!

October 25, MILWAUKIE, OR—Earlier this year, Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai was named the 2011 Cultural Ambassador by the Japanese American National Museum. Shortly thereafter, the JANM opened their Year of the Rabbit exhibit—the most comprehensive collection of Sakai’s work to date.

Stan Sakai has won several Eisner Awards and has received over twenty Eisner Award nominations. Prior to Dark Horse’s long run on the series, there were thirty-eight Fantagraphics issues, sixteen Mirage issues, a summer special, and four color specials. Dark Horse’s Usagi Yojimbo #141 marks the landmark two hundredth overall issue of master storyteller Stan Sakai’s beloved series, and the rabbit ronin celebrates with a special story perfect for new readers, “200 Buddhas”! With a ruthless gang terrorizing his small town, a humble stonecutter receives a vision and sets out to carve two hundred stone figures. Just as he has finished the 199th, a long-eared stranger comes to his door seeking shelter from the rain!

“In a perfect world, everyone would read Usagi Yojimbo.”

—Greg McElhatton, Comic Book Resources

The Japanese American National Museum is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to sharing the experience of Americans of Japanese ancestry. The founding of the museum is a story of high hopes, remarkable achievements, frustration, and, ultimately, success. The JANM is located in Los Angeles, and the Year of the Rabbit exhibit closes its doors October 30, 2011 - LINK

Usagi Yojimbo #141 is on sale October 26, 2011!

VIPER GOES DIGITAL

2011-10-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

Viper Comics Takes A Bite Out Of Digital!

For immediate release October 26, 2011

October 26, 2011 (Dallas, Texas) - This is the year for something old and something new at Viper Comics. Earlier this year, the Texas-based publisher enjoyed an uber-successful relaunch of classic comics Inspector Gadget and Johnny Test at this year's Comic Con. But Viper will round out 2011 at the other end of the distribution spectrum: digital.

"Digital isn't coming," says Viper President, Jessie Garza. "It's here. Not only has the economy hit the comic business but even our most hardcore fans want to read their comics with the same tools they use to work, create and communicate. Digital has so many possibilities. We just can't wait to get started."

Viper is leaping into the digital revolution in two ways. First, they will make their library of existing books-from oldies like Gadget to cult favorites like Middleman-available in digital format. This will ensure fans have ready access to their favorites at any time and a whole new fan base can discover Viper books they might have missed.

And second, Viper will begin to create a new line of comics expressly for digital distribution.

Beginning with Five Senses, a gritty crime story about a murder witness bent on solving the crime while trying to keep the mysterious killer from stealing his five senses, Viper's entire catalog of comic books will be available in digital as well as paper formats.

"Our writers and artists are stellar," says Editor-in-Chief, Dale Mettam, "and it's time to give both our established and up-and-coming creators a new medium to really strut their stuff. We think our fans are going to love what we've come up with."

Don't worry though if you're a print lover. "Over the years, Viper has built many lasting friendships with small comic stores. We still have books that will go straight to print on our slate of upcoming projects," Mettam went on. "However, the digital technology allows us to take more risks with projects and open the door for more up-and-coming talent that perhaps wouldn't get the chance otherwise."

"We're a small indie publisher," added Garza, "so anything that allows us to push the creative limits is something we're equally committed to explore."

For Mettam, this new medium hits close to home as he is the author of Viper's Halloween digital release, Nightmares in Oz, a modern-and pretty gnarly-spin on the Oz tales we all thought we knew.

Shannon Hilson, of MoreHorror.com said of Nightmares in Oz,

"Nightmares in Oz offers a fresh and frightening new twist on an old favorite. Stunning artwork and truly creepy characters help bring Osmann Grove, Kansas to life in a way horror fans and comic book lovers alike won't want to miss."

Additionally, Viper will release its reader app making downloading and launching a comic just a click away. Until then, readers will be able to get a hold of books via iVerse, Graphicly, Comixology, Kindle and the Viper website.

About Viper Comics

Viper Comics has been publishing comic books and graphic novels since July 2003. Their debut title, Dead@17, was an instant hit and was noted as a Top 10 Hot Comic in Wizard Magazine. Viper has since released a number of successful books, including Daisy Kutter, a critically acclaimed series that was nominated for a Harvey Award in 2006 and was also named a top pick for young adults by the American Library Association. Viper has published over 100 comic books and 40 graphic novels. Viper has had four graphic novels recommended by the American Library Association: The Middleman (ABC Family TV Show), Daisy Kutter, Emily Edison, and Oddly Normal.

Dune: Part 2: Welcome to Arrakis

2011-10-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

In the first few chapters, we met Paul Atreides, his family, and some of their closest circle, as they prepared to leave their home on Caladan for the desert world Arrakis. His father, Duke Leto, is well aware that he has been manipulated into this situation and the new world he has been given is a planet-sized trap set out by his hereditary enemies the Harkonnens with the blessings and support of the Emperor. Leto hopes that by walking into the trap with his eyes open, he can use the situation to his best advantage; and he suspects that Arrakis holds secrets of which the Harkonnens are unaware.

In the midst of this, Paul must grapple with his discovery that he may be the Kwisatz Haderach, a being with time-spanning powers of perception that the Creepy Space Nuns of the Bene Gesserit have been trying to breed for untold generations.

So now, we arrive on Arrakis.

Chapter seven begins with Jessica supervising the unpacking at their new home in Arrakeen, one of the major cities on Arrakis. The crates she opens contain items of symbolic importance: a portrait of the Old Duke, Leto's father; and the mounted head of the bull that killed him. The Old Duke enjoyed bullfighting as a hobby, presumably because he enjoyed stabbing large dangerous things. Jessica hates the bull's head, and hates her dead father-in-law; but Leto insists that both must be prominently displayed in the dining hall. It's a matter of tradition.

I think the love between Jessica and Leto in this book is emphasized by the quarrels they have. Yes, we'll get emphatic statements of love from each of them; but it's scenes like this, where we see disagreement and friction between the two of them, that makes their relationship more real.

In the next chapter, Jessica tells Yueh:

"...the Duke is really two men. One of them I love very much. He's charming, witty, considerate ... tender -- everything a woman could desire. But the other man is ... cold, callous, demanding, selfish -- as hard and cruel as a winter wind. That's the man shaped by the father." Her face contorted. "If only that old man had died when my Duke was born!"

In our glimpses of Leto in these first few chapters we get to see both sides of his personality.

Jessica meets a servant woman named Shadout Mapes, a woman from a Fremen tribe; and in the interplay between the two we learn a bit more about religion in the world of Dune, most specifically, the Missionaria Protectiva.

Herbert does something here which I think is rather brilliant. He takes the age old theme of the Hero of Prophecy, make it a major theme of the story, and yet from the very beginning tells us that the Prophecy is a fake. The Bene Gesserit, as one of their many galaxy-spanning plots, has as a matter of SOP planted legends on every world regarding their Order, on the off chance that someday a Sister of the Order might find themselves stranded there and needing help. On Arrakis, this legend tells of the "Lisan al-Gaib", the Voice from the Outer World, the offspring of a Reverend Mother who will lead the people to freedom.

"Great Mother! They planted that one here! This must be a hideous place!" Jessica thinks. But in a careful verbal dance, she answers Mapes' questions, playing to the woman's expectations. I doing so, she realizes that she too is cynically manipulating Mapes' beliefs.

The next chapter is another fencing match; this one between Jessica and Yueh. The Doctor struggles to keep her from perceiving his guilt and almost confesses his planned treason. Jessica sees that he is keeping a secret from her and almost compels him to reveal it. "I should place more trust in my friends," she decides, making one of her worst mistakes in the book.

Back in the second chapter, when the Harkonnens were discussing their plans, Piter explained that there would be an assassination attempt on Paul. In the ninth chapter, the attempt occurs: a remotely-controlled drone designed to impale it's victim and burrow deep into the nervous system. Paul is able to recognize the danger and not only evade the attack, but prevent it from killing Mapes, who walks unwittingly into the situation. "You could've let it have me and made your own escape," Mapes observes. These things are important to the Fremen.

While Paul battles the Hunter-Seeker, his mother finds a special room in the palace that had been built by its previous residents, the Count and Lady Fenring. The room is a climate-controlled greenhouse, with the kind of lush plant life and humid atmosphere unknown on the rest of Arrakis. Lady Margot Fenring is, like Jessica, a member of the Bene Gesserit and has left a secret message for Jessica warning of a traitor in the Duke's entourage. Secret messages and meanings buried in meaning are a recurring theme in the book.

The scene shifts to Duke Leto, who is inwardly in turmoil over the attempt on his son's life. But he knows that it is vital to display an outward appearance of confidence for the sake of morale. He permits Paul to sit in on a strategy meeting with several of his top officers in which they discuss the Arrakis situation and what can be done about it.

In the middle of the meeting, Duncan Idaho, one of Leto's most trusted lieutenants, arrives accompanied by some Fremen. Leto has sent Idaho to the Fremen to try cultivating them as potential allies. Things start off badly. Duncan almost unsheathes a Fremen crysknife, a weapon made from the tooth of one of the giant sandworms, in front of the Duke, which violates strong Fremen taboos. No sooner does Leto defuse this situation, than the leader of the Fremen spits on the table in front of the Duke. "Remember how precious water is here, Sire," Duncan explains. "That was a token of respect." Despite the tense beginning, the encounter with the mysterious desert tribesmen ends amicably and both sides agree to let Duncan be admitted into the Fremen tribe and act as an ambassador.

But underneath the plans and stratagems, Paul senses unease in the men and desperation in his father. And he remembers the Reverend Mother's sinister warning: "...for the father, nothing."

NEXT: BIG HONKIN' WORMS!!! And, What a Swell Party This Is!

Dune: Part 1: Leaving Caladan

2011-10-18T20:56:00.000-07:00

(Cross-posted from Daily Kos)

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. To begin your study of the life of Muad'Dib, then, take care that you first place him in his time... And take the most special care that you locate Muad'Dib in his place: the planet Arrakis.

-- from "Manual of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan.

When David Lynch's film version of Dune was released in 1984, many of my friends in the campus science fiction club anticipated it with a mixture of hope and dread. After all, despite the boom in science fiction movies following the success of Star Wars, there hadn't been any really big, serious SF films since 2001: A Space Odyssey. "Let this be our 'War and Peace'," one friend said.

Well, the movie turned out to be disappointing; but I still like to think of the book as "Our War and Peace"; a big, sprawling work about conflict and intrigue, religion and politics and destiny, on a scale the size of Shai-hulud.

The story is set so vastly far in the future that Earth is not even a memory, in a galaxy-spanning empire with a feudal society. Duke Leto Atreides, ruler of the planet Caladan, has been given the planet Arrakis by the Emperor. Arrakis, the planet also known as Dune, is a desert world with exactly one important resource: a substance known as the spice melange. Spice is a drug with life-extending qualities; it neutralizes many popular forms of poison; it's highly-addictive and will turn your eyeballs blue. It probably also mends vinyl and freshens your breath. In high enough doses, it expands the user's consciousness and enhances precognitive abilities. Navigators on starships use melange to calculate routes through hyperspace, and the Creepy Space Nuns of the Bene Gesserit use it to enhance their own mental disciplines. It is the most valuable substance in the galaxy, and Arrakis is its only source; therefore the ruler of Arrakis is sitting on the wealth of the universe.

But Arrakis is also a trap. The planet's former rulers, the Harkonnens, are hereditary enemies of House Atreides, and the Baron Harkonnen has set up an elaborate plot to destroy Duke Leto and his house forever.

Paul Atredies is Duke Leto's son; a boy of fifteen who is just on the verge of manhood. And he has unusual dreams. Yes, this is a story about a Boy Becoming a Man as he discovers that He Is Special. But Paul is more than a Mary Sue, and although he does indulge in angst occasionally, he does not wallow in it.

As the story begins, Duke Leto is preparing to move his family and his court from Caladan to Arrakis; and it is through these preparations that we meet Paul's family and the Atreides' closest retainers. Thufir Hawat is the Duke's mentat; a man trained to be a kind of living computer; skilled at analyzing data. Gurney Halleck is a veteran fighter and something of a bard. Dr. Yueh is the court physician and one of Paul's teachers; he also has a dark secret and a tragic destiny hanging over him.

We also get a chapter introducing the Harkonnens: Baron Vladamir, corpuant and vile; his own mentat Piter, nasty and hedonistic; and his nephew Feyd, who in many ways is Paul's parallel, the way Hal and Hotspur parallel each other in the the Henry IV plays.

The moving plans on Caladan are interrupted by Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, a high-ranking woman of the Bene Gesserit. This quasi-religious order is one of the most powerful groups in the galaxy; and their chief purpose, putting it crudely, is improving the species through selective breeding. Their ultimate goal is to create a genetic super-being called the Kwisatz-Haderach, a male who can utilize the Bene Gesserit's mental disciplines to see backwards and forwards in time. Paul's mother, Jessica, thinks that he might be the one; and the Reverend Mother has arrived to test him.

These opening chapters touch on a lot of things: elements of the culture and religion of the novel's world; foreshadowing hints about Arrakis; and above all, premonitions of doom. From the very beginning, the narrative marks Duke Leto as a man destined for tragedy. Everybody knows it; his wife, his mentat, he himself knows it; but Leto sees Arrakis as an opportunity as well as a trap and intends to take the risk. Yueh also is a tragic figure, and the historical chapter heads direly remind us of his fate, even as we watch him struggle against it.

And also Paul, in his way is something of a tragic figure. His glimpses of the future show him things he cannot avoid and choices to make where every option leads to bad results. This is only hinted at in the early chapters, but Paul's grappling with this aspect of prescience is one of the main themes of the book.

NEXT WEEK: We'll discuss the next six chapters. The Atreides arrive on Arrakis and an assassination attempt is made on Paul.

Comics take down corrupt political leaders

2011-10-16T01:02:00.000-07:00

With Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movements being so active and all over the American media so much recently. I thought it would be interesting to share with everyone a true story of comics taking down a corrupt group of lawmakers. This group of men were stealing massive funds from the State of New York. Enter the Story of comic images taking down some very large scale thieves of public tax money.

This series of famous political comics featured William Tweed--more commonly known as Boss Tweed--famous historically for being a corrupt politician. Tweed, with his cohorts (the Tammany Ring), was responsible for the disappearance of US $200 million in the 1870s and got taken down by comics. The scandal was, of course, covered by the newspapers and many people in New York were angry, but no action was forthcoming.

A breaking point in the pursuit of Boss Tweed occurred when Thomas Nast created a series of cartoons targeting them. The scandal quickly reached a fever pitch, the public moved against the ring, and Boss Tweed and others ended up in jail.

Boss Tweed is attributed by many sources as saying, “Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures!”Tweed later escaped from prison and was caught in Spain by a customs clerk who, according to legend, recognized him from Thomas Nast’s political cartoons. Legend also holds that Tweed had copies of the editorial cartoons in his suitcase as he went through customs:The same cartoons that helped bring him to justice.

Disgracing a group of corrupt legislators and helping to throw them in prison isn’t bad for a series of political cartoons.

Aliens, Baseball, and Dead Children. Oh, My!

2011-10-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

It is October 13th, which means it’s time to shout “I made this!” and pile in the car to participate in the eighth annual X-Files Halloween marathon. The time is 10:00 pm and the location is my house, located more-or-less nearby Terma, North Dakota. Candy corn and pumpkin beer will be served. No heckling, please; MST3K, you are not.

This year, being odd-numbered, is a mythology year. All installments over the course of the next eight days, to some degree or another, will detail, develop, or, in some cases, deconstruct the show’s overarching narrative. This is no mean feat, but it is also not as cohesive as one might assume.

The mythology of The X-Files, even in the day and age of serialized television (as exemplified by, say, Battlestar Galactica or Lost), is one of the most sophisticated and convoluted narratives in the annals of television history. “Convoluted,” of course, holds both positive and negative connotations, and the series hits the head squarely on both nails, sometimes even simultaneously. The constant storytelling retractions and redactions, the more-or-less likely alternative hypotheses, the slow pace of progress not only all combine to make the most strenuous narrative workout session possible – the viewer oftentimes has to earn that payoff, across six seasons and ten possible theories – but also a more believable one, as Chris Carter himself has pointed out several times both during and after the show’s production. (Ever try to sum up The X-Files’s basic story in five minutes, particularly to a neophyte and especially at the start of a marathon? It’s absolutely ridiculous.)

What tends to undermine the density of this believability is the rather haphazard, ad hoc quality that permeates the entire production. Pivots in direction and intention are sometimes subtle but also common enough to have a jarring, disruptive effect on the viewer and his sense of immersion. In one episode, the extraterrestrials’ DNA is described as being completely unlike any found on the planet; in all following installments, humans are the biological offspring of the alien colonists, with some individuals – those who still retain the progenitors' genetic trait of telepathy, just as an for-instance – being described as being "more human than human." And if you don't like the revelation late in the series that Mulder is the prophesized chosen one to lead the charge against the inevitable alien invasion, you don't have to worry – that particular plot point would never be mentioned again, not even when he has a child borne of a barren mother (who quickly gives him up for no suitable or otherwise believable reason).

All of which, of course, is not to mention the all-too-frequent problem of omission of consequence, such as the previously offered example of Scully's (first) child being killed with nary a mention throughout that season's subsequent episodes – or throughout subsequent seasons, for that matter. Hell, even Gillian Anderson had difficulty buying into the proposition that Agent Scully could possibly remain a skeptic after digging up UFOs and watching aliens shapeshift in front of her eyes. "It's the formula," Carter told her on the phone.

It is at that, but it is also, much like The Simpsons or, even, the aforementioned BSG, one that works, and works well. Once all transitions to the show’s narrative foibles have been completed, once the viewer’s suspension of disbelief has finally been allayed (it is not unlike a lay person going into the theater to see his first Broadway musical), it is a dynamic that fires on all levels, from conceptual to instinctual. The show just clicks, and does so, as mentioned before, in a way that few others have managed.

So what is the show's overall story? Come on over sometime this week, sit back, relax, and prepare for one of the most outlandish five minutes of your life.

Happy Halloween, narrative enthusiasts.

Thursday, October 13th – “Fallen Angel” (season one)

Friday, October 14th – “Red Museum” (season two)

Saturday, October 15th – “Quagmire” (season three)

Sunday, October 16th – “Demons” (season four)

Monday, October 17th – “Kitsunegari” (season five)

Tuesday, October 18th – “The Unnatural” (season six)

Wednesday, October 19th – “all things” (season seven)

Thursday, October 20th – “Empedocles” (season eight)

Friday, October 21st – “Release” (season nine)

Manifest pomposity

2011-10-13T00:48:00.000-07:00

This year’s Palme d’Or winner was Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, featuring Brad Pitt, JessicaChastain, Sean Penn and a special appearance by the planet Jupiter.

The semi-autobiographical coming of age story features anearly scene where two parents, the O’Briens (Pitt and Chastain) find out thatone of their three children has died. It’s not clear what the cause of death is,however, the film contains a number of similarities with Malick’s own life, andone of his own two brothers committed suicide at a similar age.

The eldest son, Jack, played very well as a child by HunterMcCracken, is the focus of most of the narrative thereafter. We follow inparticular his stormy relationship with his loving but authoritarian father andhis angelic mother. Adult Jack (played by Penn) is reminiscing on his childhoodwhile wondering around Houston, where he moans to no one in particular aboutisolation and corruption in the modern world, and whatever other existentialangst is weighing on his soul. As with other Malick films, many of the characters spend muchtime relating short philosophical musings. At one point, Jack whispers:

“Lord, why? Where were you? Who are we to you?”

I found this pontificating mostly annoying in The Thin Red Line, and its use in Tree ofLife is even more tiresome. Most of the notions the characters narrate areimplied by the visuals and performances anyway. It is odd that a director this cinematicallystrong feels the need to have his characters frequently tell us what’s on theirminds.

The Tree of Life is perhaps most notorious for its epicdigressions, such as the early, evocative display of celestial and primordialforces. These scenes are done well in themselves (visual effects pioneer DouglasTrumbull came out of retirement to consult on the effects), and add to theoverall meditative quality of the film, but they don’t gel otherwise.

The ending highlights the pretentious mélange Malick offersup. We are left with symbolic scenes on a beach with the disillusioned adultJack reuniting with most of the people he knew, including with his family - happilyembracing his father, mother and brothers. In other words, it was pretty much the sappy part of the ending for that other Jack. (The finale of Lost did have its impressive aspects, however, as outlined here.)

Some reviewers have seen in The Tree of Life an epic, transcendent work. I did not, and was occasionally taken out the moment by thefilm’s jarring pomposity. That said, I’d recommend cinephiles catch it on thebig screen if you get the chance. An ambitious quasi-failure is still betterthan just about any film featuring Cameron Diaz, after all.

The Tree of Life is visually impressive, and there’ssomething endearingly earnest and truthful about the boyhood point-of-viewdepiction of the life of this 1950s Midwestern family. Mostly due, I suspect,to the amount that Malick drew on reminiscence.

Donny Krosch interviewed Alex Ness

2011-10-09T00:01:00.001-07:00

HERE

Magic and Fantasy

2011-09-28T12:48:00.000-07:00

(cross-posted from the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Club on DKos)

A lot of the distinctions made between "Fantasy" and "Science Fiction" are arbitrary, simplistic, and unneccessarily dualistic. One such distinction is that Science Fiction deals with "Science" and Fantasy deals with "Magic".

This definition, of course, is less helpful than it at first appears, even without invoking Clarke's Third Law. Nevertheless, this time around we're going to take a look at what we mean when we use the word "Magic". This is going to be a bit disorganized, I'm afraid, and far from complete; but let's jump in and see where we get.

Tolkienesque Magic

Magic in Fantasy is often ill-defined; it's just used as a plot device with little thought as to consistancy. Tolkien often seems guilty of this; but, philologist as he is, he suggests that part of the problem may be that we're using a word we don't quite understand. In one chapter of The Lord of the Rings, elf queen Galadriel tells the hobbit Samwise:

"For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word for the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel."

Gandalf himself is a wielder of powerful magic, but we rarely see him actually do much in terms of flashy spells. This has led to the famous claim that in D&D terms, Gandalf is only a 3rd Level Wizard at best. Tolkien justifies this to a certain extent by observing in one place that the Hobbits as a rule usually only saw his jests and that he rarely displayed his full power. More importantly, Gandalf's mission was to persuade and inspire men and not to be a Big Damn Hero himself.

Vancian Magic

Unlike fiction, where the author can make things up as he goes along, role-playing games have to have systems of magic worked out in a fairly consistant manner. The best-known RPG system, Dungeons and Dragons, has a idiosyncratic system that's sometimes called "Vancian Magic", because it was inspired by the way magic works in some of the novels of Jack Vance. Under the rules of Vancian Magic, spells must be prepared ahead of time in an elaborate ritual, and once they are cast, they cannot be cast again until the mage once again prepares it. In D&D rules this means that a magic-user must memorize any spells he wants to use at the beginning of the day, and as soon as he casts that spell, he forgets it. Some gamers find this notion silly, and most other game systems find some other means to regulate the use of magic. Still, "fire-and-forget" spell-slinging is one of the hallmarks of Classic Gygaxian Dungeon Fantasy.

Magic as Science

One theme that comes up occasionally in fantasy is the idea that Magic and Science are antithetical to each other because Magic is irrational while Science is based on Reason. Personally, I don't care much for this trope, because it seems to me that if Magic works at all, it has to have some kind of rules which it follows, and which can be understood.

L. Sprague de Camp wrote a novella entitled Land of Unreason about a 20th Century man who finds himself transported to fairyland. At first he considers this world a "Land of Unreason" because nothing seems to make sense. But as he figures out how things in the fairy realm operate, he realizes that there are indeed rules here; he just needs to figure them out.

James Robinson touched on this in an issue of his STARMAN comic book. In one story, the Golden Age Starman, Ted Knight, has to find Etrigan the Demon. Now Knight is a scientist and a skeptic. Someone asks him how he can deal with a demon when he doesn't believe in magic. He replies that he works on the same team as Dr. Fate and the Spectre; he's seen them do things he can't scientifically explain, but he doesn't believe they are inexplicable. As far as he's concerned, what they call "magic" is a form of energy; and if energy exists, then science can devise a means of measuring it. So he builds a device to detect "magic" and uses it to trail the Demon.

Sufficiently Advanced Technology

Arthur C. Clarke, in his "Third Law", states that "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We get this in the old Great White Hunter stories in which Alan Quatermain or someone impresses the superstitious natives with the "White Man's Magic" by dropping a deer with his rifle. Looking at it from the other end, one of the villians from the comic book THE FLASH is a stage magician from several millenia in the future named Arba-Kadavera, whose magical-seeming powers come from futuristic gadgetry.

The early issues of Jack Kirby's THE DEMON has a similar theme. Etrigan the Demon is a servant of Merlin, fighting against the machinations of Morgan le Fay; but the way Kirby drew the comic, the magical stuff all looked like alien technology. Of course everything Jack Kirby drew looked like alien tech; but I think in this case it was intentional; that in Kirby's vision the sorcery of Merlin and Morgan really was a sufficiently advanced technology. Later writers of the character dropped this aspect and emphasized Etrigan's hellish heritige; but I kind of like the techno-magic vibe of the first issue.

Perhaps the most interesting variation on this theme I've come across is in a novel entitled Newton and the Quasi-Apple by Stanley Schmidt. Anthropologists visiting a planet with a medieval technological level hope to spark people's interest in science with a type of fourth-dimensional matter that behaves in a non-euclidean manner. Unfortunately, one of the natives actually has started to suss out some basic principles of gravity and motion, but the stranger's demonstrations have discredited his discoveries.

Keep in mind, though that the inverse of Clarke's Law is just as valid: That a sufficiently advanced Magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Mathemagic

Numbers have always have magical connotations. Pythagorias helped develop geometry; but he also believed in the mystic properties of numbers. Throughout history, numbers have been used for symbolic purposes. The Bible is full of them. As the science of Mathematics developed, mathematicians also developed the idea that the whole world could be described mathematically. And so it was inevitable that things would come full circle and someone would try applying mathematics to magic.

L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt wrote a several stories, many of which were collected as The Incomplete Enchanter, about a modern-day mathematician named Harold Shea who discovers that interdimensional travel is simply a matter of getting the math right; but when he finds himself in other magical worlds, he must figure out the laws by which the magic of each world works in order to survive.

More recently, The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross and the other books of his Laundry series is about a secret government agency that uses technomagic in a world where higher mathematics can weaken reality, and where computer programming really is an arcane skill.

Name Magic

Another idea that comes up in legend is that knowing the True Name of a person can give you power over him. Usually this only applies to demons and certain types of magical beings; but some writers have expanded this idea to suggest a system of magic based on knowing the True Names of things. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin uses this type of magic system.

Headology

Granny Weatherwax, one of the recurring characters in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, subscribes to a specialized form of magic she calls "Headology." She holds that most of the business of being a professional witch has less to do with spells and arcane forces than it does with giving people what they expect and letting them see what they want to see. Which isn't to say that she can't use more traditional forms of magic; she can and does. But convincing someone else that you already have saves a lot of bother.

Let's Make a Deal

Sometimes the magic weilder draws power not from himself, or even from the world around him, but from other, more powerful allies. The medieval Christian view of the sorcerer was one who gained his powers from demonic forces: as Faust did with Mephistopheles. But the powerful forces don't have to be evil. The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud is set in a world where magicians can conjure djinni and compell them to do their bidding. Similarly, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke is drawn from faerie and involved dealing with the dangerous, chaotic beings of that realm. But the problem with getting your magic from other beings is...

There's Always a Cost

Neil Gaiman's graphic novel The Books of Magic is about a young English boy with tossled dark hair and glasses who may be the greatest magician of his generation and who is not named Harry Potter. A quartet of mystic guides takes him of a tour of the magical world. On one level, the story is a series of encounters with nearly every magical character in the DC Universe; but more importantly it is as exploration of what Magic means. The protagonist, Tim Hunter, gets many answers to this question -- many of them conflicting -- but one thing is pretty constant. Pretty much everyone he talks to agrees: you always have to pay something. Magic always comes with a cost of some sort. This is an idea Gaiman has carried over into many of his non-comics works as well.

The anime series Full Metal Alchemist explicitly states this at the beginning of each episode. It is set in a world in which Magic has been reduced to a science which in the series is called Alchemy. The First Law of Alchemy is that for every magical action, there must be an Equivalent Exchange. The story begins when a young alchemist named Edward and his little brother Alphonse rashly attempt to bring their mother back from the dead. They grossly underestimate what would be needed to balance the equation and the resulting misfired spell destroys Al's body and nearly costs Al his life. It is only by quickly casting another spell, at the sacrifice of two of his own limbs, that Ed is able to save Al's spirit by anchoring it to a suit of armor. Much of the rest of the series involves Ed's quest to restore his brother to his proper body.

Odd, isn't it? One of the underlying impulses behind man's dreams of magic is the desire to get something for nothing. But perhaps the most satisfying tales of magic teach us the exact opposite; that, as Heinlein taught us, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Which brings us back to Science Fiction. Funny how that worked out.

LEGENDARY COMICS: FRANK MILLER'S HOLY TERROR

2011-09-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

Legendary Comics Premieres Frank Miller's Holy Terror

Holy Terror Releases September 28th, 2011

(Burbank, CA – September 28, 2011) - Legendary Comics announced today that their inaugural release, Frank Miller's (Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns) Holy Terror (ISBN:978-1937278007), exploded into stores today. The book follows hard-boiled hero "The Fixer" and his cat burglar love interest, Natalie Stack, as they try to save Empire City from zealots determined to commit a horrific crime against humanity. The 120-page hardcover is Miller's provocative commentary on how society views its heroes in the era of modern terrorism.

Miller commented, “I’m thrilled to partner with Legendary Comics to help bring this project which I have worked on for so long to fans around the globe. This is a story that redefines and explores terror in its truest form, forcing all of us - including myself – to think about our heroes differently.”

Years in the making, fan interest in this highly anticipated release has reached a fever pitch with over 75,000 views of the trailer online and a standing room only crowd at the Legendary Comics panel featuring Holy Terror at San Diego Comic Con. The book is available online at www.bn.com and www.amazon.com as well as comic shops and bookstores nationwide.

“This has been a long time coming,” stated Legendary Comics Editor-in-Chief Bob Schreck, “but certainly well worth the wait. Frank continues to push the limits of what comics storytelling can do while delivering yet another epic tale that challenges the reader to think while also forcing them to feel.”

Join Legendary Comics Editor-in-Chief Chief, Bob Schreck, and Frank Miller at the Union Square Barnes & Noble in New York City on Friday, October 14 from 7-9pm for a signing and discussion. Autographed copies of Holy Terror will be available for purchase on site.

Keep an eye on Legendary’s Facebook page for more details on panels and signings at the New York Comic Con with Legendary artists including Frank Miller, Paul Pope (Heavy Liquid, Batman: Year 100) and some surprise guests!

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About Legendary Comics

Legendary Comics is a division of Legendary Entertainment, a leading media company with film (Legendary Pictures), television (Legendary Television) and comics (Legendary Comics) divisions dedicated to owning, producing and delivering content to mainstream audiences with a targeted focus on the powerful fandom demographic. Through complete or joint ownership, Legendary is building a library of marquee media properties and has established itself as a trusted brand which consistently delivers high-quality, commercial entertainment. Among the wholly-owned projects that Legendary Pictures is currently developing in-house are an adaptation of the phenomenally successful interactive game universe Warcraft; Godzilla, based on Toho Company’s famed character; Pacific Rim directed by Guillermo del Toro; Paradise Lost directed by Alex Proyas; Seventh Son directed by Sergei Bodrov; Warren Ellis’ Gravel; and Mass Effect, based on Electronic Arts’ and BioWare’s hit videogame franchise. With partner Warner Bros., Legendary’s productions include the critically acclaimed Inception, which has been a box office smash grossing more than $823 million worldwide, as well as the global blockbusters Clash of the Titans ($493 million worldwide), The Dark Knight ($1 billion worldwide), 300 ($456 million worldwide), The Hangover ($467 million worldwide), and the recent smash hit, The Hangover Part II ($575 million worldwide), which holds the distinction of posting the highest opening weekend gross ever for a comedy film.

THE END well covered, in book form

2011-09-26T22:33:00.000-07:00

I've written before about the massive amount of avenues to follow if you enjoy fiction at the end of the world. There are books, games, comics, video games, even music, and of course a vast number of religious television shows warning you what to do. From nuclear holocaust, to germ warfare, to endless war, to natural disasters, fiction has seen humanity die or struggle to stave off death in many ways.

The truth is, the world has issues now. There is debate but Global Climate change is a grave threat. Immune suppressing disease and overpopulation is a disaster of enormous scale waiting to happen. Germ and Nuclear warfare are able to wipe out vast numbers of human societies, and the cause of them can be State against State, Religious wars, Terrorist attacks and more unnamed. The calender of the Mayans ends in 2012 and if you are worried about it, there are others who are also worried. Some even suggest that a planet collision is possible... with attendant castastrophic end.

Some argue the end will occur without a cause but essentially entropy claiming the last of human progress, and chewing up societies by virtue of malaise and fear.

There are many authors and many outlooks that visit future societies in disarray. It is a ripe field that is bound to produce more scenarios of interest. But the most interesting aspect of this is not the thing itself, that is the disaster that ends it all. But rather, how humanity will struggle to overcome the shock to the system and whether that remnant will exist beyond the moment of crisis. Humanity is a seed, and it is possible humans have faced similar crisis in the past. Some scientists argue that a bottleneck in the human family occurred a long time ago in the past when breeding pairs were down to numbers in the hundreds. But as we know, when the chips are down and humans are required to mate, its usually possible to succeed.

I do not recommend dying. I surely think life is worth keeping. So don't see this genre as my way of saying Oh we are all doomed. I just think that it is an interesting genre, one that is growing, and as we face crisis similar to those in fiction, perhaps we can take some measure of hope that, even in the darkest of ages, we can overcome.

Thanks to Rich Chapell and Steve Olle for their assistance in my gathering books to share here, I appreciate their allowing me to pick their brains.

Oh and for the people who wonder where the Zombie stories are, I've tried to use illustrations of books that are within the realm of possible. Fiction though means doing whatever you can imagine, so, if you dig Zombies, break open the glass and pull out the shotgun, its time to go to work.

Weird request: What Do I Watch on Television

2011-09-26T00:35:00.000-07:00

I was asked what I watch on television. And it is an interesting question to me because the assumption is, most people watch a lot of television. But I don't. In fact, Reality television shows piss me off. I find them horribly done, uninteresting and focused upon the worst things of human existence.

Outside of cooking hows on PBS and the COOKING Channel I am pretty much not a watcher of television. It is distracting and I try to write. Andreas Viestad is a great chef, and the long missed Two Fat Ladies are still my favorites.

However, I do find myself entertained by ANCIENT ALIENS despite the fact that as a historian and a Christian I find the notion that "aliens" are responsible for nearly every single human advancement to be insulting. Also that the notion that Gods to the ancient humans were really aliens is somewhat insulting to the notion I have about God. Now, I still watch it. In the past I've read the works of Von Daniken and Zecharia Sitchin. But there is a difference between finding the story telling intriguing and thought provoking, and belief.

But, if you only watched or did what you know, or think like, how could you grow? Well on television I guess its a rare thing to expect that. Or is it? Am I just a snob?

Making the Connection

2011-09-24T00:13:00.000-07:00

I have a son who is greatly skilled at defeating Role Playing video games. And fortunately, he reads books related, and enjoys a fine imagination to do more than just kill things via video game.

But I've met people who tell me that people who play "D&D" are nerds, without a life. But they play RPGs derived directly from the engines created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson in developing role playing. I don't mind, frankly, being called a nerd. I think it is a label that to some would certainly fit who I am. But I get driven to madness (a short drive, yes I know) by people who mock others for their pursuit of the mind's escape, but have no idea how closely aligned their own is to the one they mock.

So here is my idea. If you play paper and dice and pencil RPGs, share it with someone bright enough to get it. If you play Video games primarily but enjoy the aspect of it that is RPGing, check out a game like Pathfinder, or Dungeons and Dragons or Castles and Crusades. The world is so much bigger than we can perceive. There are ways to make your hobby better, whatever that hobby is.

So make the connection.
Share a book or a game or music or DVD.

My Requests For you to read more have gone unanswered

2011-09-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

Ursula K. Le Guin is a great writer. Her works explore gender, societal roles, the power of belief, and environmental and ecological concerns.

You cannot read her work and not be affected.

Read her books, visit her website

READ. READ MORE. READ THIS.

2011-09-21T19:11:00.000-07:00

So I've been telling you to read more. But do you listen?
No. You play your video games.

So reading can expand your vocabulary and reasoning mind.
Do you care?
No.

But I am telling you, reading is good for you. All of it. Even the more difficult works, even the more mundane works. Reading grows your brain. Do you care?
Hmmm...

Michael Moorcock writes dark stuff well, and his character Elric is chillingly well written. Elric is a magical sword wielding albino who can only be fully powerful doing the darkest of things, who is Emperor, but is a thinker, a poet, and dreary soul,

Oh you don't like dark? How about Corum, who is an imagining of a character placed into the Celtic mythos and still fantasy, but really strikingly authentic feeling.

So read this mind blowing stuff.

And check out the writer's website

TIME'S ARROW CHANGES THINGS UP

2011-09-21T10:54:00.000-07:00

TIME FOR A CHANGE

Abaddon Books introduces a new direction for genre publishing

Abaddon Books is delighted to announce a bold new venue in genre publishing – one where the readers are in charge!

Time’s Arrow will be the latest book from the world’s longest continuously running Steampunk novel series, Pax Britannia. Set in a world where the Victorian age never ended, Pax Britannia is an insane world of high technology and rip-roaring adventure.

The big difference with Time’s Arrow? Each instalment will be published as an ebook and, at the end of each of the first two, readers will be able to vote on where THEY want the story to go. Once all three instalments have been published, they will be bound together into a print edition.

The first part of the book will go live online on October 11th, with the vote for what happens next closing on December 11th.

Merging the best of print and online, Abaddon is proud to engage in such an exciting experiment – one where readers actively have a say in how the book is written.

Jon Green has written titles in the legendary Fighting Fantasy series and created seven of the critically-acclaimed Pax Britannia books for Abaddon.

“Pax Britannia is one of Abaddon’s most established series,” said Jonathan Oliver, editor-in-chief of Abaddon Books, “so it seemed like the natural choice for such a unique venture in publishing. This adventure is sure to reach out to new readers while giving established fans a say in the rich universe they have come to love.”

“I am passionate about the whole Steampunk milieu, and the world of Pax Britannia in particular, while my first forays into writing professionally were adventure gamebooks,” says Jonathan Green. “To marry elements of both is a fantastic opportunity for me as a writer and I, for one, can't wait to see how the story pans out!”

The Mohs Scale of SF Hardness

2011-09-19T19:19:00.001-07:00

(cross-posted from DailyKos )

Jules Verne, the story goes, disliked being compared to his English rival, H.G. Wells. In an interview he once said:

I do not see the possibility of comparison between his [H. G. Wells] work and mine. We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on a very scientific basis. ... I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannon-ball, discharged from a cannon. Here there is no invention. He goes to Mars in an airship, which he constructs of a metal which does not obey the law of gravitation. Ça c'est très joli ... but show me this metal. Let him produce it.

In this comment we can see a tension that has existed almost from the beginning of Modern Science Fiction: the conflict between Hard and Soft SF.

Verne had a deep interest in science and technology; and his publisher was devoted to producing educational works for family audiences; so it's not surprising that his works would have a strong didactic vibe to them. He called his novels "Voyages Extraordinaires" ("Extarordinary Journeys"), and each book was a geography lesson and an adventure combined. He would often consult his brother, an engineer, to get his figures accurate when, say, calculating how much pressure the hull of the Nautilus would have to withstand, or how much force would be required to propel an artillery shell at escape velocity.

Wells, on the other hand, was more interested in people and society than in places and devices. He'd use scientific ideas and jumping-off points for stories, but for the most part was unconcerned with the nuts 'n' bolts of how the science worked.

Now, granted, this over-simplification does injustice to both men. Verne was no purist when it came to science and was certainly not above fudging things when it came to the plot. He would certainly been aware that the force of his space cannon in From the Earth to the Moon would have killed its passengers; and the entire plot of A Journey to the Center of the Earth depends on throwing out nearly everything 19th Century science knew about geology -- and the narrator comes out and says so, frequently! And Wells, although he does not get out the slide rule and rattle off figures with Verne's persnicketiness, has enough familiarity with the scientific ideas with which he plays to give us some grounding and the sense that he knows what he's talking about. The chapter explaining Time as the Fourth Dimension from The Time Machine is essential reading for any fan of Time Travel stories; and Griffin's description of his invisibility from The Invisible Man has just enough scientific technobabble sprinkled in to make it plausible... at least for the span of the novel.

Hugo Gernsback, publisher of Amazing Stories, coined the term "Science Fiction" (although he preferred to call it "scientifiction"). Gernsback was a radio experimenter and and inventor as well as a magazine publisher, and like Verne before him, he saw science fiction as a way to educate the public about science, and insisted on scientific accuracy in the stories he published. It bugged him when readers seemed to prefer more fantastic stories with dubious educational value.

John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science-Fiction, reigned over what has been called the Golden Age of Science Fiction and was possibly the most influential person on the genre of the early 20th Century. He insisted that his writers have a strong grasp of both the gadgetry and technology of SF, but also on the human part of the equation and how the science will affect society. Campbell's protegés included Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and other greats of the Golden Age.

These men established the ground rules for the the genre of Science Fiction and forged the assumption that there must be a solid foundation of Science underneath the fantastic Fiction.

But as time went on, things began to shift. I think part of it was that science had advanced to the point where it could not be as easily grasped by an adolescent with a high school knowledge of physics; part of it, no doubt, was that Einstein's Theory of Relativity had forever banished Interstellar Travel to the realms of Fantasy and Handwavium. But I bigger part, I think, was that a new generation of writers had come up who were looking beyond the territory staked out by the Golden Age writers for new worlds to conquer. They turned from the "hard" sciences like chemistry and phyisics and began looking more at "soft" sciences like sociology. Even Campbell himself, always seeking to challenge both his writers and his readers, moved more and more to areas like psionics and paraspychology and even mysticism in the 1950s and '60s.

About the same time, science fiction began to filter more into popular culture; first in comics, then in radio, movies and television. In these media there wasn't time to explain the theory behind a rocket. As Gene Roddenberry put it, whe Joe Friday pulls out his gun, he doesn't pause to explain the chemical reaction that propells the bullet. And so in these media, science took a back seat to storytelling, and Hugo Gernsback rolled over in his orbit.

If one is so inclined, it is possible to sort these out into a scale of "hardness", much like the Mohs scale in geology rates the comparative hardness of different types of rocks. In fact the website TV Tropes has done just that: (WARNING: do not click on this link unless you have several hours to kill!!!): the Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness At the hardest end of the scale we have Reality, with no speculative science thrown in at all. Next we have things extrapolated from and plausible according to current technology. The further along we go, the more hypothetical we get, and the more impossibilities we are willing to accept. At the softest end, we have the type of sci-fi described in Mystery Science Theater 3000:

"If you're wondering how they eat and breathe
And other science facts;
Just repeat to yourself, it's just a show;
I should really just relax."

When I was in college, many of my friends in the campus Science Fiction Club were Hard SF fans; fans of Heinlein and Asimov and Niven; the disciples of John W. Campbell who insisted on having a rigorous foundation of science undergriding their fiction. And maybe some of them were even a bit snobbish about it. The Oldest Member of the group when I was there liked to sneer at the term "Sci-Fi", which he felt should only be applied to the kind of garbage that usually came under that name in popular culture. He liked to quote the limerick:

"You ask me the reason why,
I call it 'S-F' not "Sci-Fi"
I think there's a fine line
Between Robert Heinlein
And 'Son of the Two-Headed Fly'

It was a kind of transitional period back then, between the pre-Sputnik era when science fiction was considered "That crazy Buck Rogers stuff" and the present day when it's pretty much mainstream. I think some of us were sensitive about others labeling science fiction as inferior to "real" literature. I know I was.

And so I became a SF zealot. Science fiction was NOT escapist drivel because it was based on SCIENCE! It was focused not on the past but on the Future!

Except... when I stopped to think about it, that seemed awfully pretentious. And I realized that a lot of my favorite science fiction was not based on hard science at all, or was based on old, outdated science that was no longer considered accurate, like my beloved old Jules Vernes. I realized that what I treasured most about science fiction was not that it is the Fiction of Science, but rather that it is the Fiction of the Imagination.

Indeed, that is one of the reasons why my friends considered 'SF' a better abbreviation for the genre than 'Sci-Fi'; because it could equally stand for 'Speculative Fiction', or for 'Science Fantasy'.

That was Hugo Gernsback's guilty little secret. There were basilisk eggs in the cuckoo's nest. The Garden of Science which he had so optimistically planned had tares sown among the wheat. Mixed in with his Engineers' Tales of formulae and equations, were also stories of Magic, of Whimsey, of Demons and Sorcerors, and of Dragons.

Some of the Hard SF Masters of the Golden Age wrote fantasy as well; but their approach was informed by their appreciation for science. L. Sprague de Camp wrote a novella in which an engineer finds himself trapped in fairyland. At first he considers it a "Land of Unreason" because it does not follow the laws of physics that he understands. Eventually, he comes to realize that magic does follow laws; he just need to suss out what they are. His Harold Shea stories, written with Fletcher Pratt, uses a similar conceit, that other magical worlds can be reached through the use of higher mathematics. Robert Heinlein wrote a novella entitled "Magic, Inc." set in a world where magic and technology co-exist, and Poul Anderson developed the same theme in his novel Operation Chaos. And if we go back to a previous century, probably the most famous writer of Victorian Era fantasy, Lewis Carrol, was in his day job a professor of mathematics.

And of course, we can't forget Arthur C. Clarke who formulated the ultimate loophole for writers wishing to slip fantasy into SF: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Reading? What the hell? Oh yeah, here is something for that

2011-09-18T13:51:00.000-07:00

Fritz Leiber wrote works that were fun, well written, and interesting. His heroes were unique, humorous, courageous, and unwise. I strongly recommend them all.

More than Fritz Leiber though, I want to just say, I've seen on various social network profiles where people proudly state "I don't read". Now I get that some people have difficulty ready. I get that some people learn by doing, not by reading about such. But reading is how I learned that there was more to living, more to existence than I've experienced or ever could.

Read.

Share a book.

Encourage reading.

I fear a society that doesn't read.

GOR and FANTASY

2011-09-17T01:01:00.000-07:00

There is a series of fantasy books that were once popular enough to remain in print, but in recent years have been considered, sexist or misogynistic. GOR by John Norman was a book revolving around the events and adventures upon a Counter-Earth, by Tarl Cabott and others. It was a setting of cultures similar to our own, but played off as having grown in a vacuum of no modern weapons or technology. So the Arabic setting was one where slaves and trades in the desert were the focus, where the Northern European warriors we called Vikings still roamed the seas. And, because there was no presence of an overtly moralizing group of people, or beliefs, there was no narrative voice telling the readers how to react. In the world of the present, that is considered deviant. So the books have become more rare, and the new editions have a markedly lower availability and poor distribution.

However, the author might well just being telling stories. He might not in fact be offering an alternative to reality, but simply writing fantasy. What a concept, writing stories without moral judgments for the reader to digest. I am herein suggesting that you seek these out, not because the writing is the best anywhere, but that they are good, and interesting, and while perhaps uncomfortably sexist, an honest portrayal of a world similar to but not identical to our own.

Webpage featuring the World of Gor

Why Games?

2011-09-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

Why do we play games? Sounds like a bad line in a dating profile “I don’t want anyone who is going to play games” Sometimes games have this false imagine of being children’s pass times. Yes they are that but so much more in addition can be discovered within our games. There are such a wide variety of games that there may truly be a game for every person anywhere.

You can command a company of tanks with infantry platoons in support trying to cut off the last remaining soldiers of Hitler’s 3rd Reich in the Table Top Miniatures Game Flames of War. As you refight world war two battles and test your hand against other table top generals learning the history of the war and perhaps you can even top Old Blood and Guts Patton himself. I can be a mighty gnome fire mage from Azeroth using my Mouse and keyboard to slay the vile horde Orcs and Blood Elves in the World of WarCraft MMO. You can test your mettle fighting against a terrible breakout disease in the board game Pandemic. Can you and a team of your fellow players save the world from terrible contagion?

Games can be competitive, cooperative or a mix of both. Games can be highly technical and elaborate or a few lines on a paper or even betting the serial numbers on dollar bills. Games allow us to travel to fantastic worlds, historical times, and take on roles we likely will never experience otherwise. They can test our skill, our memory, our wits, and sometimes our patience as one broken Nintendo controller from my teenage years would surely attest. But they mirror us as people an outlet for hopes, dreams, and teach us new ways to think and solve problems. Games can help us grow as people, relax and challenge us as we see fit.

Games are whatever we want them to be and with friends whether they are real or imagined they can make our lives richer. The only thing standing in our way is finding which games to play and those friends who make them all
worthwhile.

Eldon “Donny” Krosch Jr.

TOP SHELF HAS GONE MAD

2011-09-07T08:54:00.001-07:00

For the next two weeks -- thru Friday September 23th -- Top Shelf is having a giant $3 web sale.

When you visit the site, you'll find 175 graphic novels and comics on sale -- with over 100 titles marked down to just $3 & $1! To help us continue doing what we do, please participate in this sale. With the economy as it’s been, it’s getting harder and harder to keep publishing such quality material. But if enough people participate, we’ll be able to finish paying for this year’s amazing releases, and “kick start” a full roll out for next year. Thanks in advance for your support (as the comics community IS the best community)!

To go directly to the list of items on sale at the Top Shelf website, just click here:

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/specialdeals
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/specialdeals

But here are a few sample sale items:

-- Slashed Prices: League 1910 & 1969, the new Blankets Hardcover, and more!
-- Slashed Prices: Infinite Kung Fu, Any Empire, Lucille, and more!
-- Slashed Prices: The Homeland Directive, Incredible Change-Bots, and more!
-- Slashed Prices: Lost Girls, Chester 5000, From Hell, and more!
-- Slashed Prices: Essex County, Alec, Tricked, Ax, and more!
-- Slashed Prices: Owly, Korgi, Johnny Boo, Dragon Puncher, and more!

-- $3 Titles: The Playwright, Fingerprints, Voice of the Fire, and more!
-- $3 Titles: Dodgem Logic, Super Spy (V2), The Surrogates (V1&V2), and more!
-- $3 Titles: Regards from Serbia, Comic Book Artist, The King, and more!
-- $3 Titles: Will You Still Love Me If I Wet The Bed, Woodsman Pete, and more!
-- $3 Titles: The 120 Days of Simon, Hey Princess, The Troll King, and more!
-- $3 Titles: Pinky & Stinky, Yam, I Am Going To Be Small, and more!

-- $1 Titles: Sulk (Vols 1, 2, & 3), SuperF*ckers #1-#4, and more!
-- $1 Titles: The Surrogates #1-#5, The Sketchbook Diaries #1-#4, and more!
-- $1 Titles: Lower Regions, Feeble Attempts, Conversations #1 & #2, and more!
-- $1 Titles: Comic Diorama, The Man Who Loved Breasts, 24x2, and more!
-- $1 Titles: Tales of the Great Unspoken, Black Ghost Apple Factory, Dang!, and more!
-- $1 Titles: Mephisto & The Empty Box, Hey Mister, Yearbook Stores, and more!

***

Please note that Top Shelf accepts PayPal (as well as Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Discover -- all secure), and that this sale is good for retailers as well (and comic book shops will get their wholesale discount on top of these sale prices).

http://www.topshelfcomix.com/specialdeals
http://www.topshelfcomix.com/specialdeals

Jack Kirby's Birthday

2011-08-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994)

I never got to wish him a happy birthday or thank him for his great work, before he passed away, so I'd like to here just show how and why he thrilled my comic book reading mind.

Press play/record

2011-08-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

Simon Sweetman at Blog on the Tracks has an interesting lark: your life as a Mix Tape.

Here are his rules:

...take three songs from across the first three or four albums you ever owned. You add three songs from anything you considered formative at high-school. You add three more songs from university or early working days. You take three songs from anything you’ve liked across the last three years. And you take three songs that show the impact of other people ... Side one will be subtitled The Early Years and will feature the music from the first albums you bought, high-school and university or first job days (nine tracks in total). Side two can be called These Days and will feature six songs - the three from albums across the last three years and the three you’ve picked up from someone else’s influence.

Sakura_59 has put forward her mix, too. Both concluded that in effect their tapes were for “today” and would be different if you asked them tomorrow. These things are always capricious. In putting mine together I decided that it’s best not to over-think the list, and just go with what came to mind when dealing with each of Simon’s criteria. Below is the result.

Side one: Early Years

Let’s Dance, David Bowie (Let’s Dance)

Message to My Girl , Split Enz (Conflicting Emotions)

Girlfriend is Better, Talking Heads (live version from Stop Making Sense)

With or Without You , U2 (The Jushua Tree)

Orange Crush , REM (Green)

Elevate Me Later, Pavement (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain)

That’s All You Wanted, Throwing Muses (University)

Fake Plastic Trees, Radiohead (The Bends)

Waitin’ for a Superman, The Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin)

Side two: These Days

Someone Great, LCD Soundsystem (Sound of Silver)

No Cars Go, Arcade Fire (Neon Bible)

Patins, CSS (Cansei de Ser Sexy)

The Worst Taste in Music, The Radio Dept. (Pet Grief)

Pigeons, The Hundred in the Hands (The Hundred in the Hands)

Glass, Bat for Lashes (Two Suns)

The first side’s ‘Early Years’ was easiest to compile, and generally specific songs came to mind.

‘These Days’ was much more difficult. I decided to keep ‘side two’ to fairly recent releases, even though the three picked from the influence of others can come from any era. I listen to a lot of earlier stuff these days, but not generally from a particular person's suggestion.

Reviewing my selection, I realise how relatively conservative and, especially, how narrow my music taste generally has been. But it is what it is. Within those narrow confines, there’s certainly some quality there.

52 Chances to Learn to Love DC

2011-08-23T03:21:00.002-07:00

I have an idea, and I need your help.

I grew up a Marvel kid. I knew at least a little about the big guys over at DC of course. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman mostly: the franchises that enjoyed success on TV and/or the big screen. The three of them were so recognizable that I always considered myself as rooting for the underdog by buying Marvel. Sure, Marvel had its household names but none of them were as iconic as the Big 3 of DC.

As I got older and stopped caring about any competitive urges between comic book companies, I still didn't stray much. There were doubtless a few reasons for that, but one of the big ones was that I simply knew the history of Marvel's cooperative universe better than that of DC.

DC hasn't made it easy for me. Precisely because of how widely recognized DC's heroes are, it has never made sense to me that DC's crossover events relied so heavily on the changes in status quo. Crisis On Infinite Earths is practically impenetrable without a good deal of knowledge about what came before, as is Infinite Crisis. When I was a part of Trouble With Comics and was invited to something of a roundtable discussion of Final Crisis, I never even considered it a possibility.

Maybe at this point DC will always be somewhat impenetrable to me. At least in the sense that it may never be possible for me to feel the same about a book like Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? as someone who read it only after reading Superman and Action Comics as a child. Not to mention that with the massive reboot approaching, the DCU's history is about to get a lot more confusing.

Regardless, I still want to try. Plus, I'm a blogger, and I need something to blog about.

So, here's my idea. I need you - comics bloggers, fans, readers, etc. - to help me out. What I need to do is get a list together of DC graphic novels (and by "graphic novels" I simply mean any reprint collection) that are important to the history of the DCU. Now, to be clear, I'm not looking for a "Best Of" list. I'm specifically looking for books that are important in understanding the history of the DCU, regardless of quality.

And once we get this list together, I'm going to read and review 52 of them here at Poplitiko.

I'm not going to read and review 52 of them right away. It will take a bit, but I'll get it done.

So, let's get started. What've you got for me?

-Mick Martin

Interview with the creators of Corpus Christi: The Comic Book

2011-08-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

I am a friend of Trent Westbrook, and was very excited to learn of his newest project. Then when I linked to it while on Facebook a couple people remarked to me, accused is closer to what they did, that it looked like "One of those Christian comics"... So I thought the best way to find out was to ask the creative team about their work.

For the record, I think having real life motives and desires and thoughts only make a work better, so if it is the case that the comic has Christians in it, I'd have no issues with that. However, there are some who might call this propaganda, and so, it is important to look at it, and ask if it is in fact such a thing.

I want to thank both of them, and wish them both great success.

Who is the book aimed at? Does it play better to a certain group of readers over others?

CORBIN DOUGLAS – I’d say the book definitely caters to the teen to adult crowd. It has some mature themes psychologically that I think anyone younger probably wouldn’t completely grasp. It’s basically a psycho-drama/suspense thriller disguised in a super hero format.
Where is the book available to purchase? Can it be ordered from you?

TRENT WESTBROOK - Comixpress.com is our primary distributor of the book online. We ultimately plan to shop it around city by city, con by con in the future, but if you want the book before then, Comixpress.com will be the place to go.

Here is the link

Tell us a short introduction to the story/characters...

CORBIN DOUGLAS – Barry Christiansen is our protagonist, a man that witnessed a murder when he was only 4 or 5 years old and somehow blames himself for that person’s death. He is cursed with visions of violent acts that are to take place and he takes it upon himself to try and stop the violence in an attempt at redemption.

The work makes thematic use of Christian names and characters, is that because the work is specifically Christian and if so would that not make the work thereby "propaganda"?

CORBIN DOUGLAS – We heard this very early after we began to promote the book online and I have to say nobody saw the “propaganda” label coming. Due to the nature of using the city of Corpus Christi as the setting, and ultimately as a character in the context (very much the same way Superman has Metropolis, Batman has Gotham, etc.), it seemed an obvious plot point to use the background of the city and it’s name as part of the narrative. Yes, it has a strong Christian thread running through the story, but so does the play Agnes of God. So does The Exorcist. So does the comic book Spawn, and I wouldn’t say any one of those pieces of entertainment could be accused of being Christian “propaganda”. It was laughable hearing the label, because I know of only a handful of people who have read this book and know what it is about, even past issue #1. Here was a label being dished out from a basically just a snapshot of what the book ultimately is.

What cultural influences were poured into the work?

TRENT WESTBROOK – A conscious effort was made to include landmarks of the actual city in the story and visuals to add to the idea of a modern myth. Comic heroes are literally our modern myths and one of the primary ideas for the project was to create a myth for the city; a myth where people can visit actual locations if they wanted and see where supposedly this story took place.

Who is publishing the work?

TRENT WESTBROOK – 2023 Comics is the banner we are working under. So far there are about 5 of us (writers, pencils and inks, colorists, musicians), all working on projects that we want complete creative control over as well as control on how they are presented and distributed to the public. It has a very indie band vibe to it that feels very liberating as well as exciting at the moment. We’re starting small and aren’t expecting much right out of the gate but at this point we aren’t too worried about that. We’ve found methods of presenting our work to people and that’s fine at this point.

What future projects do you have coming out?

CORBIN DOUGLAS – LECHUSA with 2023 Comics.

TRENT WESTBROOK – I have a lot lined up for the rest of the year at this point: EMPIRE OF STONE with writers Alex Ness and Josh Brown through their distribution is done and should be out the gate soon. Then secured with 2023 Comics is a samurai tale with writers Alex Ness and Jason Waltz; THE REPORTER by writer Steve Phillips and artist/co-creator Adam Webb; and issue #2 of CORPUS CHRISTI. I have one more project in the preliminary stages with another writer but I don’t want to announce that just yet. Stay tuned.

If you could have any creative talent write or draw a short story for the Corpus Christi book, who would you choose, and why?

TRENT WESTBROOK – I’ve always had in my mind Alex Maleev as the artist for CORPUS CHRISTI. All my work on the book so far has been primarily inspired by Maleev’s work on THE CROW titles and his run on volume 2 of DAREDEVIL.

Wanton Wailings: Jesus LOL

2011-08-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

Board Game News

2011-08-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

Toxic Bag Announces New Sci-fi/horror Board Game

CHICAGO, IL (August 15, 2011) --Toxic Bag Productions announces its entry into the board game industry with its first product, titled SPACE MONSTER. SPACE MONSTER is a two-player card-driven board game that pits a group of human astronauts against a predatory extraterrestrial life form.

At the beginning of play, the SPACE MONSTER boards the ship in an embryonic stage and evolves throughout the game, becoming more difficult to kill as the turns progress. In addition to attempting to kill the crew, the monster can also destroy sections of the ship, forcing the human players to divide their efforts between defense and structural repair. The monster can win the game by either killing all seven members of the crew or damaging enough sections of the ship that it breaks apart. Adding the destruction of the ship as an alternate victory condition allows for varied strategies on the part of both players. The human player can use tools to effect repairs, construct weapons and trackers to hunt down the monster…or ultimately blow up the ship if all seems lost.

The SPACE MONSTER player constructs his/her monster from a selection of over 20 different attributes (offensive, defensive, or special abilities), providing new and different threats to the human player each game. This constantly changing monster, combined with 80 event cards driving game play, allows for infinite re-playability. No two games should ever be the same.

Game designer Steve Baldwin said, “This game is something I’ve always wanted to play and couldn’t find anywhere in the industry – so we decided to make it.”

Production of the game will be funded in part with P500-style pre-orders. SPACE MONSTER is currently in the play-testing stage.

Toxic Bag plans to start taking pre-orders in September, 2011. For more information, visit Space Monster