Missing Chapters and Winter's Nights

My husband and I have been reading The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman aloud together. It is a decidedly wintry book, so we read the first half last winter, then put it aside in the spring and have just picked it back up. We were happily reading about arctic temperatures and Alethia meters when we noticed a printing error in the book: chapters 15 and 16 had been printed twice, chapters 17 and 18 were missing. This left us with a pretty serious problem: what happens next?

My first thought when we discovered the error was another half-finished book I left behind somewhere in Italy. Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino (English translation: If on a winter's night a traveler) is a novel all about the joy of reading. The bookworm protagonist settles in all comfy on the sofa for a good read, dives into an intriguing tale, but is jarred out of the authorial spell part way through when he realizes a large portion of the book is missing. He sets out on a quest that leads him to bookstores, libraries, publishers' offices, and obscure university departments, in search of the rest of the manuscript. Along the way he encounters nine more incomplete manuscripts (each more captivating than the next, and yes, we get to read them all) international intrigue, and romance with a mysterious girl. The Calvino book is the kind of novel meant to savor: by which I mean turning the pages in wild feverishness then, like the protagonist, stepping back for awhile to ponder the significance of what it is you've read. It's the sort of book that will stay in your head years after you should have forgotten it.

Real life, alas, is not so fun and exciting as fiction.

In my own attempt to find the rest of The Golden Compass, I contacted the publisher. Random House customer service could not send me an electronic copy of the missing chapters (Random House, Inc./Yearling owns the rights to both my defective book and the eBook version) nor would they replace the book. They advised me to contact the seller. A phone call to Barnes and Noble customer service ended in a stubborn adherence to their 30 day exchange policy. Of course I knew about their policy before I called, but I mistakenly believed they had an interest in readers, that a bookseller would understand that readers don't want to thumb through the book to check for printing errors before they read it. Turns out B&N doesn't understand the reader, but they are excellent at moving product- defective or otherwise. Even when I said I'd be happy with an electronic copy of the missing chapters, they were unable to help me. So at this point I was stuck with a grave conundrum for the avid reader: I couldn't find out what happened next. My solution? Three bucks and change at fictionwise.com. Less romantic than Calvino's Winter's Night, but at least now I can learn Lyra's fate!

Ubik

"Ubik speeds relief to head and stomach. Remember:...Avoid prolonged use."
"Ubik plastic wrap- actually four layers in one. Keeps freshness in, air and moisture out."
"Instant Ubik has all the fresh flavor of just-brewed drip coffee...Safe when taken as directed."
"Ubik is the nation's number-one choice in beer. Made only in Cleveland."
"Ubik provides uninterrupted sleep...Do not exceed recommended dosage."
-Philip K. Dick, Ubik

Just what is this ubiquitous Ubik? If Joe Chip weren't fighting a losing battle against time, he might have a moment to figure it out. But he really, really doesn't.

Joe is the kind of guy who doesn't have so much as a nickel to pay his refrigerator so he can drink a glass of milk. His trouble with small change only gets worse when he finds the vending machines won't take the quarter in his pocket, and only antique coin collectors accept his currency. Cups of hard-won coffee grow rancid in his hands. Bummed cigarettes decompose and crumble on his lips. Just when Joe doesn't think life can get any cruddier, a friend dies, found dried up like a mummy. She's one of twelve people exposed to a bizarre bomb blast. Joe is among the twelve. Yep, things just got worse: the world around Joe and the ten survivors is slipping back in time. Yesterday it was 1992, today the papers are asking if the U.S. will join the war in Europe. Joe Chip would like to know what the hell is going on, preferably before he dies.

Much like its namesake, Ubik offers something for everyone. It's that satisfying mystery novel that allows you to figure out whodunnit just one step ahead of the protagonist. It has smart-mouthed appliances, telepaths, and a sexy stranger who takes off all her clothes. Dick refers to the Bardo Thodo (often called the Tibetan Book of the Dead) and makes fun of funeral directors. The reader enjoys a trip to the moon and later to my home state of Iowa in 1939. Readers may enjoy laughing at what pre-war Iowans thought of houses of prostitution, or the way Dick envisions futuristic tape recorders. Slight chaffing may occur as certain plot devices repeat in the last third of the novel, but the reader, like Joe Chip, will probably be too distracted by Chip's eminent death to be annoyed. If not, you can always apply a little Ubik to the pages. It will make everything shiny and new.

Ubik, a highly recommended read. Safe when imagination is used as directed.

Virtual Limb

As an SF writer I find the idea of an amputee's phantom limb fascinating fodder for the imagination. As a human being I feel bad for the amputees! What can be done to cure intense discomfort in an area of your body that does not exist anymore?.

Graphics technology may have found an answer. This CRAVE article describes how a virtual reality system using video game graphics helped a woman experience the use of her fingers again and find relief from the her painfully clenched missing hand. Participants in the program get nifty virtual reality goggles and enter into an absorbing virtual reality where they can wiggle non-existant fingers and run with legs that have magically come back to them.

Variable Star

"I wanted to read a new Heinlein novel so badly that I didn't care if I had to finish it myself."
-Spider Robinson

I grabbed this quote from a Slashdot article on the Heinlein manuscript Robinson completed. Variable Star was released on September 19th, 2006 by TOR. I read the first chapter before the release but haven't yet read the book. Trying to avoid spoilers, I've merely glanced at the reviews. My impression that this is classic, yummy Heinlein has been confirmed by reviewers on Slashdot and Amazon, but there are some disgruntled readers who complain that the history timeline includes modern events that Heinlein would have never known to include.

Glass Soup

"Whenever you take a mouthful of too-hot soup, the next thing you do will be wrong."
-John Flannery, Chaos's evil agent in Jonathan Carroll's Glass Soup.

Sound advice from a creepy antagonist.

I enjoyed Glass Soup. It's a literate spec fic novel set in Austria. The hints of Europe were a familiar and pleasing flavor for me, and gave Carroll a chance to use his intimate knowledge of his expatriate home to slide interesting facts about Mohr im hemd (chocolate pudding) and flakturm (indestructible antiaircraft towers) into the tale. A colorful and engaging parade of absurdities first delight and distract, then begin to coalesce into an intriguing hierarchy of life after death and dreams. Protagonists Vincent and Isabelle must wade through bizarre events, the death of loved ones, and even their own deaths in order to save their unborn child, Anjo.

One of the most interesting scenarios in the book happens before the narrative begins: Vincent dies, and Isabelle jumps after him into the afterlife, successfully bringing him back from death. Vincent has returned to life to raise his still in-utero son. Anjo is (for no specified reason) fated to stop Chaos from destroying the world to preserve its newfound consciousness. So Chaos really has it in for Anjo. Chaos is intent halting the cycle of the godlike mosaic that forms and reforms, creating the pattern of life. Ironically Chaos would like everything to stay just the way it is- it doesn't want the mosaic that brought it to life to break down. Right here is one of strangest things about the book. Chaos when personified in fiction usually thrives on disorder. In Glass Soup, the protagonists are able to defeat Chaos again and again by capitalizing on the very disorder it creates.

Strengths of the book include humor, absurdity, internal logic, and bits of trivia about autographists and Blue Morpho butterflies. The main weakness is characterization. Womanizer Simon Haden is the best developed character in the book and the first introduced. It is through his afterlife that we discover the rules of the game, and get great insight into his personality. We are never present in Vincent or Isabelle's afterlives, and without that device, Carroll is limited in how engaged the reader becomes with his protagonists.

Characterization issues also plagued the bad guys. John Flannery and his dog Luba were introduced as the bowel-loosening henchman of Chaos, but their creepiness wore off as I got to know them, until they just weren't that scary. This left the end of the novel feeling a mite drab- the sense of urgency faded as the antagonist lost its bite, and it seemed only a matter of time before the more competent protagonists worked their way through the loophole inconveniences of the universal laws of life and death.

Dawn, and the Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth

Dawn was theirs, and sunset, and the colours of the earth
-Rupert Brooke

I just finished reading Michael F. Flynn's novelette titled "Dawn, and the Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth" in the Oct/Nov issue of Asimov's. Lovely title, isn't it? Flynn took it from a poem by Rupert Brooke, and quotes a stanza of the same poem later in the piece. Flynn teases the reader by refusing to identify the poet- a tease made all the worse by his mention of a boat named Odyssey right around the time the stanza is quoted. I fell right into the trap, and browsed through an online version of the Odyssey looking for all the (many) references to Dawn and Sunset. Further research revealed the true source of the quote was the fourth of a series of five sonnets (plus prelude) written by travel writer turned WWI soldier, Rupert Brooke. According to the Rupert Brooke Society, the most famous poem of the series was The Soldier, though Brooke's personal favorite was Death (IV)- and Michael Flynn seems to be taken with it, as well.

Here is the series of sonnets:
The Treasure (written in August 1914)
1. Peace (numbered sonnets written in the autumn of 1914 after the outbreak of WWI)
2. Safety
3. The Dead
4. The Dead
5. The Soldier

In true dramatic fashion, Brooke died in April of 1915, just as his published sonnets were beginning to meet with fame and acclaim.

So what does Rupert Brooke's poem have to do with a science fiction novelette? You'll have to read it for yourself to find out. I can tell you that you'll encounter the stories and perspectives of many people whose lives were touched by the incident on the Bay, read some emails, and even read a little play. Flynn does a great job building a sense of mystery, and tying all these little stories and snippets together into a tale almost- but not quite- as beautiful as Brooke's sonnet.

Happy October!

October is the most magical month of the year. Oak leaves skitter across the pavement, clattering like skeleton bones. In northern Italy thick fog roils above the vineyards. The vines grow bare as palm-sized green leaves motle yellow and drift to the ground. There is a thinness to the air, and the line between life and death is a little less solid than at any other season. We're on a 31-day countdown to my favorite holiday, Halloween, and 32 days from the bone cookies and graveyard treks of All Saint's Day. To celebrate the season and to put you in the mood for reading and writing in the autumnal atmosphere, here's a list of my favorite October music:

Vocal:
Bargainville by Moxy Fruvous. Right from the first track, "River Valley," you're out in the country on an autumn walk. Maybe Canadian groups just get autumn. If you like Bargainville, be sure to try Maroon by the Barenaked Ladies.

Instrumental:
Amélie: Original Soundtrack Recording by Yann Tierson from the French film Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain. Tierson loves to write for accordion and toy piano, and the result is a sepia-toned portrait of childhood suddenly infused with new color and life. The whole album is a September-October delight, but, despite its name, Track 4: "Comtine D'un Autre Ete: L'apres Midi," is the most autumnal of the album. The solo piano notes you hear in this track are actually falling red and gold leaves.

Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits by Vince Guaraldi includes the heart-breakingly cheerful "Great Pumpkin Waltz." George Winston also plays a touching version of this song on his album Linus & Lucy: The Music Of Vince Guaraldi . Winston has an album called Autumn that makes lovely reading, writing, studying music.

Orchestral:
Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók. Bartók wrote this haunting music during the last years of his life in New York.

Night on Bald Mountain by Moussorgsky (you might know this spooky music from Disney's Fantasia).

Passwords: the new magic words

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God."
-John 1:1 KJV

Magic words have deep roots in our culture. In The Bible the creation of the universe is accomplished by the Hebrew god's declarative sentences. Adam's first important act in Genesis is to give the animals their names. Many of the phrases we consider "magic words" have their origin in Christian religious ritual. Hocus pocus , for example, may find its root in hoc est corpus (the "this is my body" line of the Communion ritual).

The neat thing about a magic word is that it can be written in an old language whose source is disputed (Abracadabra has possible sources in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Syrian), can be written in nonsense (presto chango), an invented language, or pseudo-Latin (popular with medieval conjurers and J.K. Rowling), pseudo-Arabic, or pseudo-Greek.

Regardless of how they are formulated, there is no denying that magic words are an important source of a magician's power. The wizard in LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy performs his magic and can be controlled through knowledge of true names . In the Lord of the Rings, the fellowship is stopped at the Dimrill Gate, unable to open it and enter Moria. The door is inscribed with an obscure Elvish dialect that reads: "speak, friend, and enter." As Gimli points out, the inscription is "plain enough. If you are a friend, speak the password and enter." Gandalf tries a whole series of powerful magic words until, under duress, he stumbles on "Mellon-" the common Elvish word for "friend." Gandalf quite literally speaks "friend" and enters. His magic words were of no use to enter the door- and thus began the age of passwords.

Many years ago I read an article by Robert Cringely pointing out that software programmers building the applications that manage our bank accounts, mutual funds, and stock trades, manage our amazon.com transactions, eBay purchases, and my weekly grocery delivery, are huge fans of the Lord of the Rings. Is it any wonder that our entrance to these virtual worlds is guarded by passwords?

Our passwords are cobbled nuggets of our inner selves- words, names, numbers, phrases, ideas that have some very personal meaning to us. We take those nuggets and obscure them in a myriad of ways to keep our bank accounts and identities safe. When it is time to log on and open the magic door to our virtual life, only we know the password. And we protect the knowledge of these words in much the same way as LeGuin's wizard protects the knowledge of his true name.

Passwords are the new magic words of our magical modern life.

* I was helped writing this post by Craig Conley's book The Magician's Hidden Library . Check it out!

Carol Emshwiller

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that Carol Emshwiller won the Neubla for best short story. Though I haven't had the opportunity to read the story that got the prize, I just finished her two most recent tales.

"The Seducer" appears in the Oct/Nov issue of Asmiov's, and "Killers" is in the Oct/Nov F&SF. The two stories shared some striking similarities that may indicate something about Emshwiller's current trends as a writer.

1. First person, present tense.
2. Protagonist has had to care for elderly, ornery parents. At the start of the tale, the protagonist is freed from this obligation by their deaths.
3. A spectral sibling- important to the protagonist in early life, now missing.
4. Moving up the mountain- as tensions rise, the characters seek higher ground.
5. Celibate (or unemotionally unattached) protagonist is overwhelmed by love for specimen of the opposite sex who does not conform to protagonist's ideal of beauty.
6. Short noun titles implying active characters.

This was the very first story I've read out of my new Asimov's subscription. I was shocked when I got to the end and realized "The Seducer" isn't science fiction.

"Revelations"

I just finished "Revelation" by Albert E. Cowdrey in the Oct/Nov issue of F&SF. Here are my favorite lines, descriptions of self-centered, paranoid college student, U:

"'The truth is,' he went on, eyes taking on the thousand-yard stare of introspection, 'it really baffles me not knowing where the dragon came from.'"

"After his outburst U sat in silence while the filmy cataracts of self-absorption slowly cleared from his eyes..."

Additional kudos for getting Gordon Van Gelder's name and the title of the magazine into the story. Would have made a tough sale in Asimov's or Realms of Fantasy- along with the fact that the story was neither science fiction nor preciesly fantasy, but something in between .

Coagulate

Today I encountered "coagulate" in two unusual descriptions:

1. Perdido Street Station (China Mieville)
"Perched where two rivers strive to become the sea, where mountains become a plateau, where the clumps of trees coagulate to the south and- quantity becomes quality- are suddenly a forest."
- Mr. Motley explains his theory of Transition to Lin.

2. "Revelation" (Albert E. Cowdrey)
"I can't coagulate my thoughts...I can think of A, or B, or J, but how they connect, I don't know."
-U blames this condition on the fact that he has been administered an anticoagulant.

Digital Trend

"I'm all for compassion, just not on my dime."

-from the "Bank Job" Barenaked Ladies Are Me (Page, Robertson)

What a great song lyric. The first time I heard it, it hit me right in the solar plexus. I could have written reams trying to explain the morality of the world I am living in, but Ed Robertson and Steven Page said it in a single line. The fact that they slid this profound insight into a story about guys sticking up a bank filled with nuns makes the Barenaked Ladies my heroes of the week.

So, how did I get to hear this BNL album on September 12th, right on the release date? Did I rush to Union Square and pound down the doors of the Virgin Megastore? No way! I just logged onto Rhapsody, and grabbed it- no extra charge, just part of my subscription. I get an all-you-can-eat buffet of awesome music for a monthly subscription fee that is less than the price of a single CD. Kind of makes you happy to live in the digital age.

Pioneered by iTunes, digital music has been around- and profitable- for some time. It seemed inevitable that digital video would follow. I've actually been tapping my toes, glowering as my bookshelves fill with DVDs (I'm buying eBooks now whenever possible- though some dead tree books constantly trickle into the house). Sure enough, this week both amazon.com and iTunes announced digital video stores. My husband and I sped through cyberspace to check them out- looks like Amazon has some software issues to sort out before it is really usable. As expected, iTunes digital video store is slick and easy to use. Right now they only have titles from Disney- but not all of them are cartoons. And, hey, what's wrong with cartoons? Apple had to start somewhere, but I'm looking forward to wider selection.

In addition, this week Apple announced the ILoad , a device which will load content directly to your living room TV. We're using a less groundbreaking, but equally cool device to play any of our millions of Rhapsody tracks on our living room stereo. It looks like tech is finally getting ready to cozy up on the sofa.

An interesting phenomenon about iTunes music and video stores, and about Fictionwise's eBook store, is that when you purchase digital media it is stored on a virtual bookshelf- which doesn't take up any room in my apartment! The idea is, that if I accidentally erase an eBook off my Palm, or need to make room for more music on my portable digital music player, it's no problem. I have bought the rights to to the music, and virtual stores remember what I bought and let me access it from my virtual bookshelf whenever I need it. No need to clutter up devices

So, how do I access my virtual bookshelf? All I need is an internet connection...and a password. I need a password for almost everything I do: ordering a book, ordering my groceries, balancing my check book. Blog post coming soon- "Passwords: modern-day magic words."

Toward the End of Time

I love the cover of this book: the terra-cotta bust of a man, facial features just beginning to crumble and erode. The cover suggests the earthy, human nature of Updike's 1997 offering, and hints at the philosophy within. What it does not indicate is that Toward the End of Time is actually a spec fiction novel. Phoebe-Lou Adams of the Atlantic Monthly identifies three speculative elements to the narrative: future fantasy, science fiction, and magical realism.

Here's the future fantasy angle: Updike asks what American life would be like if the U.S. lost a major war with China. The answer seems to be "not that different from what it is today," provided you live in the American Northeast. The year is 2020. The dollar is gone, the federal government is hiding. But that tireless American spirit of get up and go has caused locals to organize local monetary systems. Freelancers of varying respectability take protection money to keep the area safe so that people can go to work and children can go to school. For retired investment adviser, Ben Turnbull, normal life means helping his second wife tend the garden, infrequent visits with his ten or so grandchildren, and trying to keep his aging body from falling apart.

Here's the science fiction angle: Multiple universes. Quantum theory. Is Ben going a little bit senile, or has his life suddenly taken an unexplained (but not unwelcome) leap to an unfamiliar reality? Ben does a lot of musing on the nature of science in this book. Be prepared to stop and listen- he's in his late seventies, after all, and he's not moving or thinking too quickly these days. One other neat science fiction element: metallobioforms- mechanical creatures designed to clear away large tracts of land for human exploitation. Occasionally one of these metallobioforms will wander into the wrong place and gnaw off someone's leg, and there is some fear they will evolve to newer "more voracious" forms, but Ben isn't very afraid of them, since they must stick to "oily, electricity-rich" areas like cities, train tracks, gas stations. Like so many other science fictional elements of this book, metallobioforms are only one cool periphery to the story.

Last but not least, magical realism: Toward the End of Time is chock full of fantastical elements that Ben absorbs as no less real than the persistent and demoralizing deterioration of his body. There is also heavy use of symbolism equating the passage of time in the natural world with Ben's aging, and the identification of Ben's young lover with the deer his wife seems bent on exterminating from their backyard. Wikipedia defines one element of magical realism as: "Emotions and the sexuality of the human as a social construct are often developed upon in great detail." Toward the End of Time fulfills this convention and then some. Ben may be old, but he's not dead, yet.

And here's why I loved the book: the language. This is not a plot-driven page-turner. It is a beautiful, meditative, honest look at the human condition. As a speculative fiction fan, I'm so happy Updike chose to set this human drama in the future.

Note: This is not a book for the prudish, nor for anyone unwilling to look death and decay straight in the eye.

A Wizard of Earthsea

This morning I finished the first novel of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea Trilogy. I was enchanted by the tale, and at the same time mystified by how LeGuin pulled it off. She broke many of the conventions that are supposed to result in an excellent fantasy novel. For example:

1. Telling the story from a third person omniscient point of view: while the majority of the narrative draws the reader into protagonist Ged's actions, thoughts, and feelings, surprising p.o.v. leaps occur when we see the thoughts of other characters, or when the all-knowing voice of the narrator tells us what will happen to Ged in the future.
2. Skimming over a long, consecutive timeline: LeGuin covered nineteen years of Ged's life in a 144-page novel. Compare that to a Tolkein book, which may refer to events in the past, but follows a very tight narrative timeline. Compare to Harry Potter (a fair comparison since young Ged goes to wizarding school). Ten months of Harry's life result in door-stoppers.
3. Handful of characters: there is only one character who matters in this book, and that is Ged. Mentors, one friend, a rival, and two young women are fleeting presences in Ged's life. They come and go, subtly altering the course of his journey. Yet only three very special characters make a second appearance. Compare this to Jordan and Tolkein, whose cast of characters is so vast and intricate that a special glossary is included to help readers keep track of them.
4. Protagonist already knows his power: Ged may have a lot to learn, but he knows he can use magic before his adventure begins. There is no magical revelation of his true nature, no shock or adjustment as he comes to terms with his new-found power. Ged is no hobbit stepping up to the plate, no Daenerys Targaryen unaware she has inherited the power of her ancestors, no Harry Potter taken aback to learn he is a wizard, no Rand shocked and terrified to learn that he can touch the Source.
   

Reading the opening pages ofA Wizard of Earthsea (The Earthsea Cycle, Book 1), I was delighted by the setting: a world almost entirely water, with tiny, isolated islands of land. I had fun looking through the maps and exploring what made this world different than my own. But I was quite concerned how I would begin to identify with a young man whose childhood history skimmed by in passages of exposition illuminated by brief scenes of narration. But Wizard of Earthsea was a moving adventure, worthy of the comparisons to Tolkein touted on the back cover. So how did LeGuin do it?

She used rules- not rules about narrative style or fantasy convention, but rules about magic.

You see, magic is not something you are born with or born without. It isn't something that you study, or something that you master. Magic is inherent in everything, as natural to every rock, every tree, every soaring sparrow hawk, as the waves that lap the rocky beaches of Earthsea. Magic is what created the world, it is the essence of anything that exists; and anything that exists can be called upon by its true name- its name in the Old Speech of the dragons- to make the fantastic happen.

A mage, or wizard, or a simple village witch is a special person with the ability to call things by their True Name. The ability to stir the wind, create an illusion, or even transfigure an illusion into something of substance, depends on the depth of the wizard's knowledge of Old Speech. The use of magic to physically alter reality carries with it heavy consequences that may drastically disturb the delicate balance of reality.

It is by establishing these rules of the magical world that LeGuin draws the reader into Ged's journey. Young Ged is goaded into making some bad choices at a point in his career when he has more power than wisdom. His struggle with the consequences results in a gripping story that plays poetically and emotionally through the natural laws of magic of Earthsea.

Sweet Serenity

Before I begin my review, you should know that for most of my adult life television has equaled Joss Whedon. This screenwriter/director understands that drama does not move the human spirit unless it is laced with humor. His space western television series, Firefly , is an excellent example of his ability to mash together seemingly disparate ideas- drama and humor, cowboys and space ship pilots, futuristic geisha and girls turned science experiment- and make everybody wonder why nobody thought to do it before. His translation of this short-lived television series to film was a huge success, and not just according to me. As mentioned in earlier posts, Serenity has won both Hugo and Nebula awards. Check out Serenity's wikipedia page to read about the seven or so other awards it has won.

Now, let's get down to why Serenity is so good.

Serenity is about people. Whedon isn't telling a story about science, he's telling a story about how people in a world changed by science go on putting one foot in front of the other. Serenity draws the viewer in with an ensemble cast of characters who need enough fuel, oxygen, food, and cash to eke out another day of semi-legal survival on the fringe of planetary pioneer life. Beyond sheer survival, the characters have other hopes and dreams. Zoe and Wash would like things to calm down so they can have a baby. Kaylee would just be happy to have sex. Inara would like Mel to stop thinking her geisha-esque profession makes her a whore. Jayne would like a chance to use his most awesome gun. Simon is trying to keep his sister, River, from being captured, tortured, and abused by the Alliance government. As captain, Mal is trying to make sure his crew don't all end up dead like his platoon in the Battle of Serenity- the battle which, by the way, put the Alliance in power. Of all the characters, Mal most embodies the show's mission statement: "It's just about getting by. That's always been the mission statement of what the show is -- getting by." (writer, Tim Minear).

Serenity's fun characters and situations embody the film's theme, which deals with the nature of humanity. Again and again, we see the Alliance's attempts to "improve" people. We also see the consequences of those "improvements," and they aren't pretty. Whedon seems to be saying that people are going to be people: no amount of tinkering is going to change anything. The moving conclusion of the film, which I do not wish to spoil, proposes an alternate solution to creating a better society- one that recognizes that the way toward healing is not to change the definition of humanity, but to open up communication, exchange ideas, work on solving problems collectively.

I think it's a cool message, and a cool film. If you haven't seen it, I highly suggest you check it out.

Hugo Winners

Sleepy Worldcon reports are beginning to trickle in from friends and from sf writers' blogs. Apparently people sang, partied, chatted, drank coffee- did everything but sleep at this conference. Tired or not, the organizers of the conference managed to get the Hugo Award Winners up online.

First, let me mention that Serenity stole both the Nebula and the Hugo this year. Well-deserved in my opinion. Check back later this week for my review of Serenity.

While we're on the subject of video media, let me say that "The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances" were undoubtedly the best two episodes of Dr. Who (as aired so far in the U.S.) that I have seen. There is no doubt that these two episodes were deliciously creepy. Were they better than Battlestar Galactica's "Pegasus?" I'm still catching up on this series, so I couldn't say.

Now onto that old-fashioned print stuff. Best novellette went to Peter S. Beagle. I remember reading "Two Hearts" in the double October/November issue of F&SF. I was so impressed that I ran out to the used bookstore in search of more Beagle.

Asimov's cleared away the rest of the short fiction prizes. Sadly, I read neither tale. Nor have I read the book that took away the big prize for best novel by Robert Charles Wilson.

"Related Book" award went to Kate Wilhelm for her memoir on the creation of the Clarion Writer's Workshop. This book is sitting on my shelf, partially read- not because it isn't excellent, but because there is so much information on craft that I want to absorb it just a little at a time. It is also great fun to learn how Wilhelm and her husband nursed the fledgling workshop along in its earliest days.

One last interesting note: Neil Gaiman's blog post, Hugo Words, discusses his decision to withdraw his novel Anansi Boys from the Hugo nominations. I reviewed this book in a previous post. It was, in fact, the first post ever on my blog!

The Hugos are Coming!

If you're not already aware, the 64th Annual Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention) is going on right now in L.A. (technically Anaheim, CA). The conference has been going on since Wednesday, and will dramatically conclude Saturday evening with the Hugo Award Ceremonies. You can check out the Hugo nominees here.

For an explanation of the difference between the Nebula and Hugo Awards, see my post: The Nebulas are Coming!. In short, the Hugo is voted on by members of the Worldcon convention. That isn't as exclusive as it sounds: all you have to do to be a member of the convention, is buy a ticket and go. This makes the Hugo more of a "people's choice award" than the Nebula, which is determined by SFWA members (membership to that organization is for professionals with strict pro sale requirements).

If you're interested a ground's-eye view and pictures of what's been going on at Worldcom, check out the convention's live journal.

Ellison's Nubbin

Something interesting is going on in the September issue of F&SF. Harlan Ellison donated something to the magazine that he calls a nubbin- the kernel of a story idea that usually results in a full-blown, publishable tale. Ellison says he's only ever had two nubbins that wouldn't sprout. He has offered one of them to Gordon Van Gelder, to pass on to selected writers and see if they have better luck.

Luck is, in fact, the essence of the nubbin. Ellison envisions Lady Luck "wending her way through a gambling venue." Enter Unluckiest Guy in the Universe. Not only is Unlucky the only person in the crowd able to see Lady Luck, but he falls madly, hopelessly in love with her.

Sounds like fun- and all three commissioned stories are in the issue- though the editor never explains this, nor are the relevent stories highlighted in any way. You'll know a story is one of the three if the blurb at the top of each story gives some mention of why the particular author was chosen. All three intros will also claim certain members of a test audience thought THIS one was the best.

They were all fun to read, but Michael Libling's "If You've Ever Been A Lady" best captured the vision implied by Ellison's nubbin, and did the best job of exploiting the nature of luck.

If you pick up this issue and, like me, want to read the three Luck Be a Lady stories in a row, without turning all the pages of the magazine, here they are:

• "Señora Suerte" by Tananarive Due (Lady Luck blesses Bingo in an old folks' home)

• "Poor Guy" by Michael Kandel (a karma trip)

• "If You've Ever Been A Lady" by Michael Libling (Lady Luck meets her match in Las Vegas)

Interesting to note- all these stories were from Unlucky's point of view. I am itching to write a take where Lady Luck is the sympathetic character.

Child of a Rainless Year

Let's continue with the theme of fantastical houses and talk about the Phineas House. When middle school art teacher Mira Fenn returns to her childhood home, she learns that she has inherited more than than a building. The Phineas House is a responsive structure that may hold clues to her mother's mysterious disappearance forty years ago. Hoping to learn her mother's fate, Mira begins to commune with the house by repainting it in an orgy of fantastic colors.

Mira's adventure draws the reader into the fascinating world of color. Vibrant hues surround us, yet in essence every color is derived from variegated shades that subtly blend to create new aesthetic sensations. Jane Lindskold seizes upon the theme of color and refracts it through a magical kaleidoscope of storytelling to bring us Child of a Rainless Year.

Lindskold's fantasy is refreshingly modern and magical. She brings passages of The Golden Bough and other potentially dry mythological and mystical texts to life and expertly weaves legends of mirrors, shadows, and liminal space into the plot. Frequent tracts on feminism and women's rights are justified by the link Mira sees between herself and her adoptive 1950s mom, though at times these passages betray the author's intrusive voice.

I enjoyed meeting Mira and getting to know a Las Vegas that has nothing to do with casino wheels and dice. I had a lot of fun learning all about kaleidoscopes and teleidoscopes. And I love a fantasy in which the main character can both go on a mystical journey, and sell collectibles on eBay.

Monster House

I've seen quite a lot of films this summer, but only one was in 3D. Monster House was a great opportunity to sit in a dark, air conditioned environment, eat raisinettes, and wear nifty glasses. I saw this film in "Real D" (uses a single digital projector instead of the traditional two projector system), and the graphics were fantastic. The effect was less like hands reaching out and poking your eye (traditional 3D) and more like peering into a giant, three-dimensional diorama. A single autumn leaf drifting through the trees was a feast for the eyes- and the kids in the row behind me (who were hopped up on more than raisinettes) went nuts during this sequence.

Now, past the obvious coolness of great digital animation and Real D technology, we get to the story. There, the film faltered a little.

Don't get me wrong. The set-up was cool. Halloween, cursed house that comes alive, parents gone on vacation. It had all the makings of a really fun story. And fun was had. But my credibility was stretched to the breaking point. Now, I'm not talking about believability. I'm willing to suspend my belief pretty far in a world where a house can loll its red carpet tongue onto the front lawn and eat the neighborhood dog. But credibility talks about how the story behaves according to the rules of the make-believe universe. Do characters behave and events unfold in a way consistent with the rules established in the world?

If you're in the mood for some funny glasses and candy, go see for yourself and tell me what you think. I would say that the climax of the film relied on coincidence, that characters behaved in ways inconsistent with their abilities and special skills, and that the jaded babysitter so critical to the opening scenes of the movie faded away and disappeared without a whimper when her plot-device service was done.

But seriously, if you're a fan of computer graphics and digital 3D, don't let a few story flaws stand in the way of enjoying a beautifully animated film!

Vertiginous Monkeys

It's hot. The air conditioner died in a dramatic fireworks display just in time for the Fourth of July- and there is no possibility of getting it replaced for a few days. What do you do? Sink down on the sofa and watch some movies. Eat loads of Italian Ice. Yeah, that sounds good.

I found myself in this situation last week, and was fortunate to have some excellent films around to watch. But if you combine slow, hot vacation days with some Hitchcock and Terry Gilliam, things can start to get a little strange.

Last Friday I watched Vertigo. I am now actually afraid of bleached blondes.

Saturday afternoon I slipped Twelve Monkeys into the DVD player. Twelve Monkeys is a fairly intense time travel story- the kind that makes you squirm in your seat. Near the climax of the film, desperate time traveller James Cole and his psychiatrist Kathryn Railly try to escape pursuit by hiding out in a movie theater. There, James puts on his cheesy mustache and hairy wig. Kathryn disguises herself by bleaching her hair blond in the bathroom. As the transformation takes place, scenes from Vertigo are playing on the big screen. It was enough to give me the creeps in an already creepy film.

Have you ever noticed the time travel movie convention that everyone thinks the time traveller is mentally ill? Of course, mental illness is central to Vertigo, as well. Maybe I should limit my spec fiction viewing to reruns of Mork and Mindy. That ought to be safe, argh, argh.

By the way- if the name Terry Gilliam has been nagging you, the director of Twelve Monkeys is better known for his stint as animator and actor with Monty Python.

Speech Sounds

I was just reading the July issue of Asimov's when I came across the "In Memoriam" for Octavia Butler. The memoriam noted that Butler wrote few short stories. Of those she published, Asimov's had only printed two: "Speech Sounds" and "Bloodchild." These two stories "brought her three of her four major science fiction awards."

As it so happens, I'd just read "Speech Sounds." Sure enough, it won her the 1984 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

"Speech Sounds" was a terrific story to read- not in the least because the science behind the science fiction was linguistcs- one of my favorite fields! The pandemic in this story leaves survivors unable to read, write, or speak. But things don't really start to get creepy until we learn that certain individuals, more resistant, stronger, luckier than the other survivors, have managed to retain limited portions of their linguistic abilities. These rare individuals who can still read, or, as in protagonist Rye's case, still speak coherent sentences, form a hated segment of an angry population who no longer have the ability to let off steam verbally. Their anger has to be acted out in a very physical way.

閉
Shut

A tiny Buddhist temple floats in the middle of a sparkling lake. Mountains soar above the lake, dwarfing the temple and the little canoe that serves as the only means of transport from the temple to the outside world.

Sounds charming, doesn't it? As Korean film Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring) unfolds, the scene only gets more beautiful. Inside the temple lives an old monk and his little apprentice. The child's room is a mat on the floor. The room has no walls- just a door that juts up incongruously from the floor, and through which the little apprentice dutifully exits upon waking.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring isn't technically a speculative fiction film, though a few miraculous things do occur. For instance, when the little apprentice steals the canoe and ventures alone to the mainland, the old monk mysteriously appears behind him. The old monk isn't even a little wet- leaving the viewer to wonder whether he has discovered teletransportation or just learned to walk on water.

The film traces the story of the young apprentice through the seasons of his life, from innocent child, through his sexual awakening, his disastrous excursion to the outside world, and his return to the floating temple. The cinematography and acting are moving- but I was not prepared to encounter anything in this seemingly mainstream film so creepy as 閉.

閉 is the Chinese character for "shut" or "closed." This symbol has become indelibly burned into my mind. It appears twice in the course of the story- and both times the wearer has written it on scraps of paper which have been glued firmly over the eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. The papers have been glued in place in an attempt to shut out the world from the five senses- and to shut off the supply of oxygen. The first time I saw a character plastered over with 閉s, I was terrified. Even my untrained Western gut reaction had no trouble identifying this very Eastern symbolic gesture as an attempt at suicide. Later in the movie, the symbols appear again. This time suffocation is not the only means by which the wearer of the 閉s attempts to achieve death.

The impact of these scenes are heightened by the fact that the film is largely unspoken. Writer/director Ki-duk Kim rarely uses dialog, relying on the actions of the actors to tell the story. This hardly means that language is unimportant to the tale. Carving the characters of a Buddhist sutra into the planks of the floating temple bring about a veritable miracle, and let us not forget the power of the word 閉.

You can see some still images of the film (including an actor pasted over with 閉) in the gallery of the film's website.

The Improbability Locus Theory

A few weeks ago I discussed Joe Haldeman and how his experiences in the Vietnam War influenced his writing (Camouflage: on Humanity's Coming of Age and the Importance of Adaptability)

Today I came across a short story by Haldeman: "The Private War of Private Jacob."

There are a lot of puns in this barely five-page story. The title is a good example. Another pun arises when the soldiers are talking about their sergeant- a man who has never once been hit in battle. Jacob proposes that the sergeant's good fortune is due to the "improbability locus theory." A fellow private jokes that Sergeant Melford "sure is an imperturbable locust." Soldiers facing very grim circumstances need to use humor as an escape.

Graveyard humor is one thing, but the way Sergeant Melford acts is something entirely different. Jacob has serious misgivings about the sanity of the overly cheerful sergeant, who laughs with genuine glee as he leads his men to their deaths.

So- what is this "improbability locus theory?" Is Haldeman just putting some fancy words into a Yatzee tumbler and seeing what comes out? I don't think so.

Try looking up luck on wikipedia. You'll find references to the locus of control. The locus of control has to do with how an individual feels his future will be determined- by external forces beyond his control, or by his own internal resources, and the conditions in which he chooses to live his life. As we learn in "The Private War of Private Jacob," Sergeant Melford's locus of control is a little more complex than we expected...

But on a much more literal level, Sergeant Melford is an "improbability locus" because battle, after battle, after battle, the men around him die, but he is never hit.

I found this short story particularly interesting, because it didn't read like science fiction. Oh, there were a few interesting weapons slid into the brutally realistic depiction of death and violence on the battlefield- but the story read like any mainstream war story. It isn't until Jacob's worst fears about himself are confirmed, that we really enter the realm of science fiction.

Concentration

Have you heard about the latest craze in reality TV? It's this show called Concentration. Contestants were chosen by lottery, then dragged off to a recreation of a Nazi concentration camp. The highlight of the broadcast is when the prisoners line up for review, and the weakest are chosen for the gas chamber.

Who is responsible for this inhumane fiasco? The prison guards who use the contestants for slave labor? Or the studio execs who thought up and financed Concentration?

No. Prissoner CKZ 114 was right. YOU are responsible for this program. You and every single viewer who tunes in to Concentration.

Fortunately, Concentration is not the brainchild of CBS- but of Amelie Nothomb writing her latest book, Acide Sulfurique. Though many of the francophone author's books have been translated into English ( Fear and Trembling , The Life of Hunger, and my personal favorite, The Life of Rain) those who don't speak French will have to wait a little while to read Acide Sulfurique.

In addition to studying with horrified fascination the public's participation in Concentration, Nothomb uses protagonist CKZ 114 to explore some themes familiar from her other novels: the power of beauty, the power of a name, and the ease with which an innocent girl can mistake herself for God.

For those who have been following Season One of Dr. Who in the U.S., you might remember that Part I of the final episode dealt with a theme similar to that of Acide Sulfurique. Each of the three main characters found themselves in the middle of deadly game shows. The Doctor was locked in a house in a Big Brother type show. Rose was playing the Weakest Link for her life. Captain Jack is getting a makeover with a chain saw.

Reality TV has become as prevalent in European culture as it has in America (when I lived in Italy Grande Fratello, the Italian version of Big Brother, was all the rage). Future extrapolations of reality TV, at least by European authors, tends to be very dark, indeed.

"Emergency Medical Hologram" May Be Less Futuristic Than You Think

This weekend I was playing around with Prolog- a logic programming language (developed for natural language processing) often used in artificial intelligence programs.

Now, my program wasn't very complicated. It was designed to help me choose which of three pair of shoes I wanted to buy.

The top portion of the program was dedicated to entering information about the shoes: their cost, what material they were made of, arch support, ease of washing, ect. The second portion was a set of rules and superrules.

The rules taught the program how to categorize the random bits of information. For instance- I taught the program that ecologically responsible shoes were not made of leather. Practical shoes are not too expensive, and can be washed. Comfortable shoes had good arch support. Cute shoes are blue or yellow, not black.

The superrules used the rules and detailed information to make value judgements. It learned to tell me that acceptable shoes met the criteria for ecologically responsibility and practicality. Optimal shoes meet the conditions of acceptable shoes and are also not too expensive (and possibly cute)!

That may seem like a lot of work for picking out your shoes. But just think of the enormous machines that filled the basements of universities- the original computers- which did with thousands of dollars and thousands of man hours what would take a calculator of the day no trouble to reproduce.

The power comes with what you can do with more complex questions. What if, for example, I was not trying to match shoes to my quirky wants and needs- but trying to match the bizarre symptoms of a patient to a disease?

Turns out this has already been done, using another logic programming language called Lisp. Mycin was developed in the 1970s to help doctors diagnose and treat rare blood diseases. According to wikipedia, Mycin's inference engine, loaded with information not unlike my standards for selecting shoes (though much more complex), accepted yes/no input from a long series of text questions, and then listed the likely bacterial interloper, complete with a list of other likely candidates ranked in order of its confidence in the diagnosis. Mycin outperformed general practice physicians in diagnosing these rare blood diseases, and held up pretty well against specialists in the field.

Mycin was the predecessor to CADUCEUS. CADUCEUS's amition was to diagnose more than blood diseases- extending to about 1,000 different internal medicine condtions.

So the "Emergency Medical Hologram" seen in Star Trek: Voyager wasn't as far out there as he seemed. We don't have any holograms that can wield a scalpel- but we do have artificial intelligence inference engines capable of flipping through every condition and symptom known to man, and making a guess at diagnosis and treatment.

I wouldn't want to give up my health insurance just yet- trained professionals will always be necessary to assess the patient and enter the symptoms, to review the findings, and administer treatment. But imagine what a difference such a system could make to a third world clinic staffed by one overworked doctor. Imagine how a system like CADUCEUS could help stumped doctors diagnose a condition with irregular symptoms. Imagine colonists far away from Earth, their physician killed, and decades left before the replacement will arrive.

The possibilities are endless...and they all begin with one little line of code.

New Studio Ghibli Convert

About ten birthdays ago I got these funny little white and grey bean bag creatures from a Japanese friend. She told me they were her favorite cartoon characters- and they sure were cute.

It wasn't until recently that I discovered what these little toys were. They are otedama: palm-sized bean bags that can be used for juggling or playing a traditional Japanese game. My particular otedama are very special. They are Chū and Chibi Totoro.

My husband wanted to see a Miyazaki film after hearing a screenwriter say that My Neighbor Totoro was his favorite film (and a good thing, since his kids wanted to watch it non-stop). We got a copy of My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro in Japanese), and I immediately fell in love with Miyazaki films.

Like all the greatest kids' books and films, My Neighbor Totoro appeals to both children and adults. Miyazaki uses the animated medium to reintegrate people of all ages with the sense of wonder that is our birthright as human beings. My otedama characters are tiny versions of the much larger Totoro- a sleepy forest spirit who wakes now and then to perform miracles like stirring the wind, turning seeds into trees, and helping little girls grow up.

If you have kids and they've never seen this film, watch it with them. If you don't have kids, watch it anyway!!

We were so impressed by Miyazaki and his production studio that we're eagerly seeking out and watching every film that has come from Studio Ghibli. A few of these films stand out as tremendous works of fantasy- so I'll be reviewing them in future entries.

Camouflage: on Humanity's Coming of Age and the Importance of Adaptability

The main title, Camouflage, is Joe Haldeman's. The secondary title is mine.

First let's talk about the actual title of Joe Haldeman's Nebula winning novel.

Here's what Webster's Online Dictionary has to say about camouflage:

1: the disguising especially of military equipment or installations
2 a : concealment by means of disguise b : behavior or artifice designed to deceive or hide

Camouflage begins like a classic, Crichtonesque thriller. For fans of nuts and bolts sf, fun physics and astrophysics facts abound, as not particularly well-characterized researchers go about trying to unlock the mysteries of an artifact found buried in the depths of the ocean. This fairly standard sf fare is made more intriguing by the "changeling," an immortal alien who presumably got its ride to Earth within the mysterious artifact. Third person omniscient narrating tells us that the "changeling" comes from a world of such harsh conditions, that it has learned to adapt to any environment- "not by natural selection, but by natural mutation." It can change the structure of its DNA-less body to adapt to any environmental conditions- extreme hot, extreme cold, bizarre chemical soup atmospheres, or no atmosphere at all. It can survive decapitation- when it is in a form that has a head. It can become a hammerhead shark, a beautiful woman, a floor tile, a TV set. It enjoys the taste of chlorine and gasoline.

After the "changeling" lands on Earth, it swims around in the ocean for a number of centuries, hanging out in the form of several kinds marine life. Then in 1931 it emerges on a California beach and makes its first attempt at taking human form. It soon finds that imitating the human body is a heck of a lot easier than imitating human behavior.

The story of Camouflage is the story of humanity's coming of age between the years 1931 and 2021. Haldeman, a Purple Heart Vietmam draftee, writes about the horrors of World War II as seen through the "changeling's" eyes when he is a Marine in the Bataan Death March of 1942. The Bataan experience is the "changeling's" induction to the human condition. From that point forward, the "changeling's" attempt to understand humanity reminds us just how fundametally the world has changed since the global crisis of World War II.

The first third of Camouflage is an exciting read, but I was frustrated by an inability to connect with the "changeling" protagonist. This is possibly the most ingenious part of the book: the "changeling" is not human, but gradually begins to take on some human characteristics. Its alien and predatory otherness slowly errodes, and as it is slowly surprised to find itself becoming more and more human, the reader gradually begins to have a grudging sort of empathy with it.

Empathy with the "changeling" is further heightened by its foil, the "chameleon." Like the "changeling," the "chameleon" is an immortal, adaptable being- but not quite so adaptable as the changeling. The "chameleon" can alter its appearance to look like a variety of human males, but is unable to become a woman or a non-living object. The "chameleon" war hops through hundreds of years of human history, always on the lookout for another being like itself. Unlike the "chameleon," he never drops his predatory, inhuman instincts.

The foil of the "changeling" and the "chameleon" seems to suggest that the more flexible and adaptable the creature, the better the possiblity for empathy and compassion with other beings. But which of the two models is best suited to survive? And how can humanity participate in the revolution of adaptability? Haldeman answers these question, but I don't want to spoil the exciting conclusion of the book for those who haven't read it.

If you look through the titles of Haldeman's books, you can begin to see a definite theme: The Forever War, Study War No More, Vietnam and Other Alien Worlds, War Stories, A Separate War, and let's not forget his debut 1972 short novel, War Year.

I don't mean to suggest that Haldeman is a one-note Johnny. My favorite Haldeman book, The Hemmingway Hoax, is caught up with a very different subject (a certain famous lost valise). But there's no denying that Haldeman's Vietnam experience informs his writing. Vietnam isn't just coloring the way he can describe the smell of miserable prisoners packed in a train and headed for slaughter- it makes up an important part of what he has to say. Camouflage asks big questions about humanity's develoment as a species since everything changed in World War II. What is the role of compassion in our survival as a species? How adaptable have we been and can we be to changing circumstances?

What does it mean to be human?

That's hardly a new question- but it's such a good one, that it seems worthwhile to keep asking it. The possible answers seem to be as varied and numerous as the men and women suggesting them.

Pink Elephants on Parade

A friend of mine from Bangalore, India sent me a link to a Discovery Channel program called "The Lost Temples of India." The first temple to be explored is the Tanjore Shrine built by Rajaraja Chola I. If you've ever seen one of these Discovery Channel shows on ancient wonders, you know it's almost obligatory to do a modern day recreation of some architectural feat to understand how it would be possible for an incredible structure, such as the Tanjore Shrine, to have been built without the aid of modern machinery.

It turns out that Rajaraja kept a whole herd of war elephants, and historians speculate that these massive animals helped move the stone from the quarry to the building site. Think Flinstones, but with elephants instead of wooly mammoths. The recreation on the Discovery Channel program showed two elephants dragging a massive piece of stone over logs. Men ran behind them, grabbing the logs left in their wake, and using them to create more rolling track ahead.

But what really caught me about this documentary was not the fact that these creatures could move enormous weights- it was the bit of the film that talked about the Rajajraja's use of elephants in war. They immediately brought to mind Tolkien's oliphaunts.

First, to please Professor Tolkien, let's talk a little about the etymology of this word. In Middle Earth, it is only hobbits who refer to these enormous creatures as oliphaunts. They are known to Gondorians as mûmak.

But it is the word oliphaunt that sticks with us, probably because it sounds quite a lot like elephant, and because we identify most easily with the hobbits.

We can be certain Tolkien was familiar with the olifant horn, a battle horn made from the ivory tusk of an elephant. The olifant played a critical role in the Song of Roland, in which the hero is too proud to blow his olifant for help in battle, until it is too late.

"Oliphant" still survives as a Middle English word for elephant. It came down to the English tongue through various roots describing both camels and elephants, having roots of elef- in Greek and Latin languages, and having roots of of olb- and ulb- from Germanic languages.

But no matter how you spell it, there is no doubt these were powerful, dangerous creatures in war. So, back to historical war elephants to learn a little about how they were used.

Trained for battle by mahouts, war elephants were something like modern day tanks. They could move armies at incredible speeds toward battle, and cut through ranks of enemies with the razor sharp blades on their trunks. They could trample cavalry without even trying. Spear throwers on their backs struck at the mounted and foot soldiers below.

But don't forget that these war elephants had it pretty tough. They were beseiged by a number of horrors. First of all, hundreds or thousands of screaming, armed men were surrounding them. War elephants were an obvious first target, a tactical target to be taken down straight away. Enemies would swarm to strike the elephant's legs and bring them down.

Secondly, it was common practice to send animals with lit straw on their backs charging and smoking at the elephants in order to frighten them. I read one report (Roman) in which live pigs were doused in sticky oil and lit afire. Their shrieking was known to cause intense terror to the elephants (poor pigs, too!!!).

So how did the mahouts get the elephants to plunge into the terror of battle? Just as a human warrior might bolster his courage with a little alcohol, the elephants were given fermented rice liquor before they were driven to fight. The mahouts quite literally got them drunk.

So, as I sat thinking of war elephants, and the great vats of rice liquor into which they must have thrust their trunks, do you know what started going through my head?

That's right: Dumbo. You know the scene where he gets a little tipsy? There are a million cartoon elephants dancing in bubbles around his head, and they play the song "Pink Elephants on Parade."

Goofy? Sure. But it's a heck of a lot more fun to think about than those poor pigs! And you've got to admit it's a catchy tune.

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch!

"Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!"

Can anyone guess the source of the quote? Who is this hideous monster, Moloch? And who wrote about him?

Points for trying if you said The Bible. Close, but no cigar.

If, like me, the first thing you thought of was "I Robot, You Jane" (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1), you don't get any points at all.

The winner is: Allen Ginsberg writing Part II of his famous poem, Howl. Yes, you've heard of it. Let me quote the more famous opening of Part I:

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked."

And if all that brings to mind is "I Should Be Allowed To Think" by They Might Be Giants, then you really should read Howl in all its depressing Beat Generation rage.

So, if Ginsberg isn't referring to Buffy or They Might Be Giants, who is this Moloch he's talking about?

Ginsberg's reference to Moloch no doubt comes from The Bible. Moloch had his origins as an old tribal god, whose various names float around the letters "M," "L," and "K.". Moloch's favorite supper was roasted baby- and the Old Testament does its best to discourage the Sons of Israel from letting Moloch burn and devour their children. As a result of his bad reputation in the Old Testament, Moloch became associated with demonology.

So what is Moloch doing stalking the streets of Manhattan in Howl? Well, my husband and wikipedia both agree that Moloch is standing in for American consumerism. I'd agree...but I'd say Moloch the Corrupter runs even deeper than frustration with capitalism.

Human beings have to do a lot of disagreeable things in order to survive. True, the skyscrapers, electricity, and banks mentioned in Ginsberg's poem are particular traits of American consumerism. But what about those armies? Even back in the Old Testament we read about fighting wars. Money is hardly new, and even banks have been around for a good, long while. So, humanity has always been making compromises- killing animals for food, killing other men to defend their families, struggling day-to-day to survive conditions of "filth" and "ugliness."

There's no doubt that the American lifestyle beginning to make itself evident in the 1950's was taking the old Moloch and turning him into a huge, smoking, mass-produced nightmare, so big that he was impossible to ignore. I don't doubt that it was enough to make Ginsberg scream- and he chose to do it in meter.

One last point before we get too hard on the U.S. of the mid 1950's. Let's remember that a certain Englishman by the name of Tolkien was publishing The Lord of the Rings right around the time that Howl was first performed and published. Tolkein's cry for the lost innocence of an unindustrialized civilization in England was rendered far diferently than Ginsberg's howl at American consumerism- but both men were reacting to the same contemporary problems.

The Brief History of the Dead

"How many people was any one human being likely to remember? A thousand?...Ten Thousand? A hundred thousand? A million?"

This is the question posed by Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead. Brockmeier postulates an afterlife in stages, a sort of pleasant purgatory in which the departed live in "The City," going about their daily business: drinking coffee, going to work, reading the newspaper, dating, eating, and going to the movies. The only unusual thing about life in "The City" is that its inhabitants never age- they simply fade away at the death of the last person who remembers them in the world of the living.

Most residents adapt to life in "The City" pretty well. They set up shops, find roomates, and swap stories about their deaths. It is not unusual for new arrivals to find departed friends and family members. The reunited can have another chance to spend their lives together for forty or fifty years- or until there's no one left alive who remembers them.

But what happens when a pandemic strikes the world of the living? At first there's a surge of newcomers to "The City." Then, as fewer and fewer people are left alive to remember the dead, "The City" becomes a ghost town.

At this point we get down to the question of how many people one human being can remember- because that's exactly how many people are left alive: one.

The Brief History of the Dead follows the one surviving human on Earth as she struggles to eke out one more day of existence, then another. Her chapters alternate with the breathless wait of those in "The City" who depend on her survival for their very existence.

I can remember being asked to do a writing excercise, in which the first step was to write down every person I had ever met. It didn't matter if I could remember all their names: the smiling girl at the bagel shop, or the man with the earring who sells newspapers, was fine.

If you've ever compiled a list like this, as City resident Michael Puckett did, you might be not only surprised, but overwhelmed by the number of people who have intersected your life.

Michael Puckett went about making his list like I did: immediate and extended family, schoolmates, teachers, childhood friends, people you knew in high school and college, neighbors from every place you've lived. Co-workers. People you met in social and religious groups. Old girlfriends (boyfriends) and the people they knew. Friends of your children, people you met attending a wedding reception. Business contacts (like your insurance man, house contractor). Commercial contacts (that girl from the bagel store). As soon as Michael thinks his categories are complete, he remembers his Boy Scout troup, some guys from the gym, a woman he had seen at the library once "and for some reason had never forgotten." His dentist.

At the end of several days of trying to write down every single person he can remember, Michael did what I did: came across some family members he was very embarrassed not to have thought of right away, then tallied his list. Interested in Michael's census? He came up with the number forty-two thousand.

Whether this final total was inspired by the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, is subject to debate. But this staggering total is definitely the "answer" to this book.

What happens to us after we die? I don't know, and neither, I suspect, does Kevin Brockmeier. The deep chord struck in this book is not in speculating about the afterlife; it is the reflection of how we effect and are effected by the hundreds and thousands of other human beings passing through our lives. Memories of the people we've known haunt us- even when they're not dead.

Sit down and don't get up until you've filled three notebook pages with the names or descriptions of all the people you can remember. You'll see what I mean.

Metamaterials

Not quite Harry Potter's invisibility cloak, but not far from the cloaking devices envisioned by Star Trek, metamaterials are in the news this week.

The first thing to understand about invisibility, is the kind of invisibility you are talking about. When we're thinking of Harry Potter's cloak, we're thinking of invisibility to light waves. If we go the sf route, we could talk about being invisible to electromagnetic waves, sound waves, microwaves, radar waves, infrared waves, ect.

Light wave invisibility, the kind of invisibility that would fool the human eye, is theoretically possible. How does it work? Metamaterials have a negative refraction index. In laymen's terms, this means they can form a shell around the object to be hidden, then act like light wave crossing guards, ushering the light waves away from the hidden object.

Before you get too excited, keep in mind that whatever form of radiation is blocked from "seeing" the hidden object, also prevents the hidden object from "seeing" out! If you're using your metamaterial shell to hide your "Ancestral Recall" MtG card from your brother, no problem. But if you plan to wrap a metamaterial shell around yourself to sneak out of the house, think again. Your mom couldn't see you, but you couldn't see where you were going. You'd be falling down the staircase and stepping on the family dog- unless you had a reliable navigation system in place, using sonar waves, for instance, to make up for your inability to see light waves.

One more caveat- this more important in military use than for sneaking out of the house (unless Mom has x-ray vision or super hearing)- to be truly, completely invisible means to be undetectable. That means the metamaterial wrapper must be able to hide what's inside from all the types of radiation (electromagnetic, sonar, radar, ect.) that could possibly detect it. To quote David Schurig from Duke University:

"If [you] want to cover the whole visible spectrum, that would [be] a tall order."

Dobby Stones

I was doing some research on Creatures of English Folklore for a fantasy short story, when I came across an entry for "Dobby: A hobgoblin belonging to Yorkshire and Lancashire." The site also mentioned a "Dobie" as a type of brownie. Indeed,the wikipedia entry on J.K. Rowling's character, Dobby, claims the brownie definition.

But one more thing, before we say Dobie, Dobby, who cares...there is also something in UK folklore called "Dobby Stones." I did some quick research on them, and they appear to be stones with holes in them. The holes hold offerings to the fairies.

In Scotland, Dobby Stones are believed to hold milk offerings to Grugach, goddess of the well-being of cattle.

I've even found Dobby (or Dobie) referenced as a "bogeyman." Fearful folk thus hung Dobby Stones over their doorways for protection from Dobbies, with or without the extra b!

No doubt Rowling intended the more friendly, garden-variety UK sprite as basis for her character.

Computer Technology in "The Greening of Bed-Stuy"

It was 1984 when Frederik Pohl published "The Greening of Bed-Stuy". War Games had just been a 1983 movie hit, portraying the cracker as anti-hero. More anti-hero cracker movies followed in the early nineties, including Sneakers (1992) and Hackers (1995). That same year, The Net became a smash hit, portraying the cracker not as an anti-hero, but as the villian in a thriller movie. It isn't a surprise that movies about crackers were popular in 1995, when the world wide web was becoming a common term in the average American household (see The Creation of the Internet). Nor is it surprising that the movie-going public was willing to see computer geniuses as both loveable anti-hero nerds and serious potential threats.

But why, in 1984, did Frederik Pohl write a movie in which the cracker was a villian? Was he worried about evildoers messing with his Gameline Atari 2600 system?

"The Greening of Bed-Stuy" struck me as a story without a coherent POV or plot. We are engaged in the adventures of a Brooklyn elementary school student playing hookie, a dying woman, a blind man, an escaping convict, and an ex-hooker. Pohl loosely ties these people together, mostly by family relation and circumstance. But often he spends pages on a scene that has little, if anything to do with the plot of the tale.

For example, early in the story we're drawn into the pathos of a woman whose body is practically dead. She is kept alive by machine. Her vocal chords are gone, and a computer must read her brain waves and turn her thought into speech. Her brain is being slowly poisoned, she is on the verge of death, and she must make an important decision about whether to live the last anguishing days of her life, die, or be frozen in hopes of finding a future cure.

Next we get some insight into the life of a blind engineer. His biological visual apparatus is so ruined, that there is no way his eyes can be repaired. Machines will have to do all his seeing for him. To keep him from bumping into things, his head is fixed with a nifty sf device that allows blobby shapes to be sent into his brain. At work, he is able to continue being productive using a machine that cost him a small fortune to manufacture. It has a camera that turns a picture into a detailed topography that the blind man can caress with his hands, allowing him to "see" the progress of his construction site, to "see" the changing emotions on a person's face.

Do you see the correlation between the dying woman and the blind man? They are both physically deformed, and computers (technology) have to help their brains interact with the outside world.

Then the plot moves to a prison break. We learn about a cracker who has embarked in a life of crime out of sheer boredom. He can make a computer do anything, and lawful employment in the technology field is simply no challenge. When he gets caught, life inside the big house converts him from a bored computer genius to an actual criminal. The cracker is being held in a high security prison. Escape is impossible because of a high-tech, computerized surveillance system. Prisoners can't move from place to place without the ID tags on their ankles being read by scanners. The computers will alert the guards if an inmate takes a single step anyplace he isn't scheduled to go. This computer-reliant system makes escape impossible for most prisoners, but not for the cracker.

There it is again- the insertion of technology between a human and his environment- in this case between human and human. "Shouldn't it be the guards' responsibility to watch the prisoners?" Pohl asks between the lines. "Why is there a layer of technology getting between the human guards and the human prisoners?"

Once seen in this light- as a cautionary tale about what can happen when our thoughts and actions have a computer as a go-between, the disparate concerns in "The Greening of Bed-Stuy" begin to form a coherent story.

Beyond Imagination:
The World of Science Fiction Fantasy and Art

This Saturday, University College London is hosting a conference for science fiction and fantasy artists. The conference, called "Beyond Imagination," is being organized by The Association of Illustrators.

Keynote speakers whom I immediately recognized were Alan Lee and Dave McKean.

I recognized McKean from his work on MirrorMask (see my post on MirrorMask).

Alan Lee, of course, is the famed Tolkein illustrator who teamed up with John Howe to create the splendid conceptual artwork for Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Perhaps my husband made me watch the special features disks of the Trilogy one too many times- but I have come to believe that the cinematic success of these films is largely due to Alan Lee and John Howe. These artists were able to translate the historical backstory that fueled the books into a visual backstory, which fueled the film.

I was also vaguely familiar with the name of another keynote speaker: Fred Gambino. Turns out he's done, among other things, a ton of cover art for Asimov's and Interzone.

Born without the ability to draw a stick figure, I am in awe of people who create fantasy scapes out of pigments and parchment. I think they're magical, and the field of speculative fiction would lose some of its magic without the visual arts.

It's worth checking out the Association of Illustrator's website. They have browseable portfolios up online- what fun! My personal favorite portfolio was Jenny Lloyd's. I loved the Eastern aesthetic of her art, and the way she used simple designs to create a sense of wonder.

Isn't evoking a sense of wonder what the field of science fiction and fantasy is all about?

Enkidu is Dead

Is anyone surprised that the world's oldest story, Gilgamesh, has the makings of a great speculative fiction tale?

Translator Stephen Mitchell writes:

"The hero of this epic is...a superman. [By] attacking a monster, he brings on himself a disaster that can only be overcome by an agonizing journey."

That sounds like the synopsis of a fantasy story. And let's not forget that Gilgamesh also boasts the world's first really nasty monster:

"Humbaba, whose roar booms forth like a thunderclap, whose breath spews fire, whose jaws are death."

It takes not one, but two supermen to go up against the likes of Humbaba.

Older than the Bible or the Illiad, Gilgamesh comes to us from engraved cuneiform stone tablets unearthed in Nineveh around 1844. One of the first bits to be translated was the account of Utnapishtim- a man who got warning of a Great Flood being stirred up by one of the gods to punish "sinful mankind." Fortunately, the gods gave him detailed instructions on how to build a great ship, capable of holding Utnapishtim's family, and "animals, wild and tame...of every kind." After raging for six days and seven nights, the storm and rain die down, and Utnapishtim sets a series of birds free from the ship. When the last bird, a raven, does not return, he knows dry land has been found.

Sound familiar? Utnapishtim gets a much better deal for his trouble than Noah did. Utnapishtim is rewarded for his journey with the seaweed equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone- the consuption of which grants him eternal life. As it so happens, eternal life is precisely what Gilgamesh is questing for.

Is it just me, or would this epic make a great MMO?

A Gilgamesh MMO would call for major parental guidance. Gilgamesh is no pre-Biblical religious tract- it's an adventure story, and sexuality enters frankly into the tale. No coy allusion to be found here- forget symbols of snakes and apples. When the storyteller wants to name a body part, he names it.

Enkidu, Gilgamesh's superhero double, is brought to life by the gods, but he is brought to civilization by a one of the priestesses who "give their body to any man". Here are the instructions given to Shamhat:

"Now use your love-arts. Strip off your robe and lie here naked with your legs apart...touch him, excite him, take his breath with your kisses."

I selected this as a mild passage in the Enkidu-Shamat scene. It gets much more graphic.

I could go even crazier here and suggest that Gilgamesh's passage to the underworld reminded me of 2001, but there's no need to go nuts. I think fire-breathing monsters, prototype superheroes, the mystical appearance of an "other self," magic plants, and a quest for eternal life, all fall easily within the scope of speculative fiction.

And throughout it all, Gilgamesh keeps asking something human beings have speculated about, apparently, since the beginning of time:

"Must I die too? Must I be as lifeless as Enkidu?"

An Introduction to Heechee

"Before Gateway came 'The Merchants of Venus'."
-Platinum Pohl

It turns out I'm reading about the Heechee in the same order that Frederik Pohl wrote about them- though not, interestingly enough, in fictional chronological order. The 1976 novel explains how human explorers discover ancient Heechee ruins on Venus. This 1972 short story takes place when treasure hunters long for the day when there were still Heechee tunnels left unexplored.

"The Merchants of Venus" (no pun on the Shakespeare play intended) portrays Audee Walthers struggle for survival. On Venus no money means no food, no water, no oxygen. Ouch. To make matters worse, Walthers has no Medicare, and if he doesn't get together money for medical treatment in a matter of months, he'll die.

Enter rich tourist Boyce Cochenour. He's a ninety-year-old from Earth who looks forty, and is running on more replacement parts than original organs. He looks good enough to attract the attention of a young and not unattractive companion, Dorotha.

Boyce's "been there done that" boredom makes him the perfect sponsor for a treasure hunt. Audee thinks he's got a map to buried treasure- which on Venus means an unexplored Heechee tunnel, hopefully laden with Heechee artefacts that will revolutionize human technology and make him rich enough to afford that liver transplant.

Of course, the chance of finding an unexplored Heechee tunnel is about equivalent to winning the lottery. But for Audee, it's his last chance to keep breathing.

Exciting, humorous, and gently cynical, "The Merchants of Venus" isn't Shakespeare, but it's an awfully fun read.