Vampires for Change (Monsters with Human Faces)

Most spec fiction writers I know have posed this question, in one way or another:

Vampires: Why are they so popular? Didn't we, quite recently, already do vampires? So why is everybody into vampires *again*? And when will it stop?

One version of this authorial vampire angst was left as a comment right here on my blog.

The answer I usually give to this question is: sexuality. The vampire myth, with its exchange of bodily fluids, is a great metaphor for sex. As each new generation goes through its sexual awakening, vampires stories are a great way to explore sexuality. But this answer rings a little hollow. After all- adults hop happily onto the undead band wagon when vampire stories surge in popular culture.

A better answer to "why vampires, *again*!?" came to me yesterday, when my husband sent me a link to the plot synopsis of True Blood (True Blood is a vampire series currently on HBO- my husband wants to talk me into subscribing to HBO so he can watch Flight of the Concords).

Vampires are super popular now, and were super popular several years ago, not because of the sexual connotations of their mythos, but because vampires are monsters with the faces of men.

Probably one of the best books I've ever read by Stephen King wasn't a work of fiction, but his Danse Macabre, in which he explains the psychology that makes his craft work. He talks about the sci fi and horror movies of the 1940's-1960's, and explains that fears of the American mainstream were expressed and digested in the form of genre fiction films.

King says there is a reason that aliens in sci fi flicks of that era have Asian features- because aliens from outer space were standing in for American fears about aliens from across the sea. He talks about fear the adult middle class felt toward the rising independence of the teenager in the 50's (read teenage werewolf film), about fear of air raids and bombs dropping (meteors and alien space craft crashing down from the sky). King posits that successful horror and sci fi film makers took fears of the American middle class, and turned those fears into monsters- into tangible bogeymen who could spook us, attack us, horrify us, but eventually be overcome.

So if vampires are the bogeymen of modern-day, mainstream American fears...what are those fears? I'd like to posit that vampires are the bogeymen of changing cultural mores.

The last vampire craze which many thought was "over" had a purpose. The purpose was to find the humanity in people who are "not like us-" in other words, finding the human face of the monster.

As the scope of mainstream American vision expanded, it feared the bogeymen of foreigners, people of different religions, homosexuals. The challenge for mainstream America at that moment was to look at the face of the other- the "monster"- and see not foreigners, heretics, or degenerates- but to see people.

During this first wave of modern vampire popularity, all we were asked to do was to look, to see, to generate compassion and appreciate that the "monster" could have human feelings. Reading Interview with a Vampire (a 1976 book that was still popular and churning out sequels in the 90's and beyond) we came to feel for Louis's suffering. Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer we were captivated by the idea of Angel, a vampire with a soul, a conscience, and we felt compassion for him. This theme repeated with Spike's character- as he, too, became someone the audience could feel for, care about, even love. The theme of the humanized vampire was so strong it supported a successful spin-off series, Angel.

In this first wave of the modern-day, warm-fuzzy vamp, all the audience was asked to do was generate compassion, to find the human face of the monster, and recognize that it existed. Mainstream America had only been asked to admit that homosexuality existed, to admit that there were people from other lands, with other traditions and spiritual beliefs. They had not yet been asked how they were going to integrate these "monsters"- these agents of change- into their everyday lives.

But of course recognizing the humanity of the "other" is only one step in the process. Next we learn to live together.

Nowadays when Joe Middle America needs technical support, he's likely to talk to someone with a strong accent from overseas- and that person may have recently immigrated to the U.S.- or may actually be overseas at the time of the call. Joe Middle America's kids may play games or hang out at social network sites in which they chat with people from the Ukraine, or Argentina- or practically anywhere in the world. It is not so unusual for folks to have a Hindu or Muslim colleague. Gay marriage is slowly legalizing from state to state.

Mainstream America has recently had to make a big jump- from recognizing that the "other" is a person, too- to living elbow to elbow with the "other," to integrating his presence into our sense of community. As with any change, there are feelings of uneasiness, and repressed fear. So fiction lends its helping hand, brings the vampire puppets out of the toy chest, and puts on some more shadow plays to help people cope, adjust, digest the new.

The amazingly popular Twilight series, from what I have read so far, asks the question: if a human girl and a vampire boy are going to have a relationship- how will it work? How will they be together? How can they be a couple? Now as I read more books in this series, I'll be looking to see how Meyer answers this question. BtVS asked this question too, but the answer was a resounding- they can have feelings for each other, but a life together is impractical. As the realities of what folks need to cope with changes, so does fiction's take on the vampire.

The real clincher for me, as I think through the relationship between mainstream America and vampire fiction, is the plot of True Blood. In the True Blood universe some scientist has eliminated the needs of the predator, so that vampires and humans can live and work together. Vampires are being integrated into regular society. I'm quoting from the website, here:

"Vampires have progressed from legendary monsters to fellow citizens overnight...[however, many humans] remain apprehensive about these creatures 'coming out of the coffin'."

"Coming out of the coffin" reads "coming out of the closet" to me. But I think the current crop of vampire tales hits a fear spot that is trying to cope with more than just homosexuality, but a whole bunch of changes about who is a friend, who is a neighbor, what is community in a globalizing world?

Change is unavoidable. Change is wonderful. Change is exhilarating...and also a little bit scary. American pop culture has worked through fear of change in some pretty unexpected ways- drowning the fictional world in vampire stories is only one of them. Still, no matter how sick and tired of vampires many spec fiction writers may be, I'm willing to let folks wallow in the vampire mythos as long as they need to work through their fears, digest the change, and come out stronger and more tolerant on the other side.

Intimacy Calling

It's my first winter living outside a city in a long time, and I'm cold. I'm used to apartments with few windows, in which someone else controls the heat and cranks it so hot that I pad around in shorts and a t-shirt. But here in the snowy Northeast, living in a house that has windows on all sides, I feel like a tiny plastic Christmas caroler anchored in a snow globe. And just the sound of the wind rattling the double-paned glass windows makes me cold.

From years of musical training, I know that sound comes in different temperatures. Different instruments have different timbres, and I have always been attracted to instruments and instrumentalists that have a "warm sound." I guess it's no surprise that during these chilly days I've been listening over and over again to one of the warmest sounding albums I know, Intimacy Calling - Standard Time Vol 2 by Wynton Marsalis.

The first track, "When It's Sleepy Time Down South," sets the mood for the album. Vol 2 is full of what I like about Marsalis- expressive articulation, a sense of humor, amazing control of the instrument. But the really great thing about "When It's Sleepy Time Down South" is that it's like a crackling fire. "Indelible and Nocturnal" is a friend's warm hand. "Yesterdays" is a cup of hot chocolate.

Calling Intimacy Calling a "warm" album isn't just my subjective impression. One look at the album cover, snow falling outside the window, shows that Marsalis intended Intimacy Calling as music to warm you up when it's cold outside. So what exactly is this timbre stuff, and how does it get to be different temperatures?

The timbre of an instrument depends on both the instrument's construction and how it is played. What musicians call a "warm" sound actually describes the amount of overtones present when a pitch is played. Overtones are tones above and below the actual pitch, that lend richness and character to a sound. Overtones are the reason we hear a difference when a C is played on the piano, strummed on a guitar, or sung by Pavarotti.

So how does Marsalis intentionally make his sound warm? His technique- and playing any instrument- is very much like the field of behavioral medicine, using the mind to create measurable effects on the body.

Medical researchers are learning that the mind has the power to effect the body. A patient with hypertension can practice techniques such as visualizing a relaxing scene, and eventually lower his own blood pressure. After years of meditation, Tibetan monks can consciously raise or lower their body temperatures. The idea is that the body has its own wisdom, knows how to do a lot of amazing things- and that the conscious mind can access that wisdom through symbolic visualization.

We don't have to consciously control the physical and chemical interactions of our body to slow our heart rate- it can be accomplished by imagining a grassy meadow. And it's not just Tibetan monks who figured out how to access this power before the field of behavioral medicine had been invented- instrumentalists have been using this mind-body connection for millennia. A trained instrumentalist can be given any variety of seemingly abstract ideas- such as tender, grandiose, tremulous, fiery- and translate these imagined states of emotion into amazingly complex manipulations of the overtone series. Each of these manipulations is effected by subtle physical alterations of the body and its interaction with the instrument.

So, how does a musician learn to use visualization and imagination to manipulate his sound? Practice. Practice. Practice. Years and years and years of practice. He dreams, he plays, he listens. Then he does it again. And again. And again... until his thoughts come out the instrument as sound.

That's why Wynton Marsalis can warm you up like fuzzy slippers and a cup of tea. He put in the time and effort to be able to tell you any story he wants, to create any mood he can imagine. So if you're feeling kind of chilly this winter, I highly recommend Intimacy Calling.

Word Warp

Over the holiday break my husband and I became total addicts of a simple anagram game for the iPhone called Word Warp. Believe me, we had plenty of high tech gaming options, but we spent long, happy hours huddled around the iPhone, dreading the moment when we would fail to find the six-letter word that separated us from moving on to the next level, or Game Over. Although the game had options to extend our time limit, we kept to a strict two-minute timer. Our best game ever spanned two days (even addicts have to pause to eat and sleep), and we scored a whopping 51,680 points!

Word Warp is generally pretty good about making sure the all-important, six-letter word is vocabulary the average person would know. But we did discover a set of little three-letter words that we had never heard of before- and they came up over and over again.. We memorized these three-letter oddities, and it wasn't long before we had to know what they meant. Often these rare words were the names of birds or fish- not super interesting. But here were some of our favorite obscurities, a few of which have begun to come up in our everyday conversations:

ted- to spread out to dry (as in damp straw to dry for animal bedding)
ret- to soak to loosen the fibers of fibrous materials
ort- a morsel or scrap of leftover food
lea- meadow, pasture

A lot of these older, out-of-use words are related to farm life. But who among us never has some orts to scrape off the plate before loading it in the dishwasher? It's fun to get some use out of these old, three-letter gems.

Angel goes out with the old

Although the final episode of the TV series, Angel, aired in May 2004, I just got to the final episode last night.

As I've said before, I'm a huge Joss Whedon fan, so why did it take me four and a half years to catch up with his series? For one thing, I was out of the country for the last several seasons of the show, so I had to wait for the DVDs to come out season by season, then import them. But the DVD of the final season had been collecting dust on my shelf for quite some time, and I'd been watching it in fits and starts, never finishing it.

Although I enjoyed Angel, I never had the same affection for it I felt for Buffy. With Buffy, every episode that aired was like unwrapping a chocolate I'd never before tasted- only it lasted for one whole hour. But Angel had its great moments, one of my favorites being "Smile Time" right off Disc 4 of the final season. Those DVDs weren't gathering dust because I was reluctant to watch Angel. I couldn't face giving up the last few episodes of virgin, never-before-seen Buffyverse TV.

But last night, on New Year's Eve, it was time to watch the final episode.

The penultimate episode had left me squirming. The writers had just set up a juicy plotline which, in my opinion, could have easily carried them through a sixth season. I loved the intrigue, the deepening conflicts surrounding the idea that good is not innocence, and doing good requires us to make tough decisions, and get our hands dirty. I think those ideas are apt for facing our challenges today. And I especially loved the name and the symbol of the secret society spinning the wheels of intrigue, the Black Thorn.

When I put the final disc into the DVD player last night, I had no idea how the show could wrap up such a huge plot thread in one single episode. I remembered thinking that Whedon had not been ready to let the show go, and I was worried about his ability to take aborted dreams and bring them to a satisfactory conclusion. Yet "Not Fade Away" was a beautiful final episode, not just for the Angel series, but for the Buffyverse as seen on TV.

And, to soften the blow, my husband was waiting for me with Volume 1 of Angel: After the Fall. In this graphic novel, as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, the Buffyverse continues in comic book form.

2046

The first thing that struck me about the film 2046 was that it kept switching between Chinese and Japanese. I understand just enough Japanese to know when I'm hearing it, and for a moment I was really confused as the actors hopped from one language to another. It turns out the film takes place in 1960's Hong Kong, and the languages do indeed swirl around between Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese.

The language confusion was just the beginning of the dream-like, slightly confusing experience of watching 2046.

Spec fiction fans will understand perfectly when I say that although it is not a sequel, 2046 does share the same fictional universe created by Wong Kar-wai in two of his previous films. It's a little harder to explain how the sci-fi element fits into the picture. 2046 actually looks back in time, yet the reveries of its protagonist are filled with femme-fatale androids and a train which, once boarded, becomes almost impossible to escape.

2046 is a gorgeous film. The cinematography is only matched by the music, which is haunting, appropriate, and so thematic as to become a major part of the storytelling. The acting is also superb. Ziyi Zhang, an actress I've mentioned before (see my review of The Road Home) is involved in one of the more deeply explored liaisons with the leading man, played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

2046 wasn't created from a polished Hollywood-style script, in which conflict and character are artfully balanced to take the viewer on a digestible hero's journey. Wong Kar-wai seems to be more interested in creating an atmosphere, a mood linked to time, place, and circumstance, in which the viewer becomes intimately involved with the characters. Almost any element of the film could stand on its own to tell the story- the dialog, the acting, the camera shots, the lush soundtrack. And when all these elements come together, complementing one another, the viewer ends up not just with a film, but with an experience.

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime

Where we're working in a mine
For our robot overlords
Did I say "overlords"? I meant "protectors"

-Jonathan Coulton

You may already know Jonathan Coulton from his famous song "Still Alive" at the end of the Orange Box video game. Or you may know "Code Monkey," theme song for the animated TV show of the same name. If you don't know Coulton, let me introduce you. He's a real treat for spec fiction fans and music fans, alike.

Coulton writes decent melodies and has a decent voice. But I wouldn't be blogging about him if it weren't for his lyrics, because the lyrics are where he really shines. I can listen to his songs over and over, because the disarming tunes do such a fantastic job of highlighting the lyrics- most of which never fail to make me laugh. Coulton writes songs about being a programmer, being a husband, and the drudgery of office life. But sometimes he puts a fun spec fictional twist to the tune, as in "Chiron Beta Prime" and, my personal favorite Coulton song, "Re: Your Brains," in which a zombie supervisor attempts to negotiate with the surviving human workers barricaded inside their office building.

Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime!

Twilight- Does it Suck?

A few weeks ago, when I saw Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga series books topping the Kindle bestseller list (including fiction and nonfiction!) with only the president elect's books as company, I decided I had to try the series. Today as I write, Meyer has four of the top five bestsellers on the Kindle's bestseller list. The author is also topping out Kindle bestsellers in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Children's Chapter books.

This last category is what I really want to focus on today. Young adult genre fiction has made a big splash in the adult market. As I read Book 1 of the Twilight series, I was watching to see how this young adult vampire romance would appeal to a more mature audience. Based on the sales ranks, it's hard to believe grown-ups aren't participating in the series' success.

I've rubbed die-hard fans the wrong way in the past when I don't emphasize where I'm coming from in a review about a much-loved author or series, so here are a couple of caveats:

1. The only book I have ever read by the author is Twilight Book 1. All my comments are related to this book, alone.
2. I haven't seen the movie.
3. If you're a young adult reader, please have tons of fun with this series, and don't bother reading further. This review deals with the book's appeal to adults.
4. There are some spoilers below.
   

When I downloaded the first chapter of Book 1, I was impressed. The beginning of the novel does a great job setting up the protagonist's situation and introducing character and setting, all the while keeping the reader intrigued with a sense of mystery as the protagonist is inducted into the world of the occult. I am embarrassed to say that despite being fluent in Italian, I skipped right over the obvious hint of the protagonists name (Bella, Italian for beautiful) and bought into the fact that she was a clumsy, pale, not particularly attractive teenage girl. The voice was so genuine, so down-to-earth, that I believed the unreliable narrator. That alone earns Meyer my genuine kudos.

But, of course, Bella is actually drop-dead gorgeous- and lives out the teenage girl's fantasy of discovering she is not ugly, but instead the boys at her new school are practically brawling for her affections. As an adult reader I was a little disappointed at this point. I was all set for a book in which the not-so-pretty heroine is swept off her feet by the handsome vamp because he's that attracted to her unique smell, and could care less about her physical charms. Meyer didn't choose to go this route, but she did keep beautiful Bella so clumsy as to make me feel like a ballerina. So I kept reading.

There followed some actual interesting mythology- the slow revelation of Meyer's take on vampire lore, and setting up a rivalry between the local vampires and the tribal clan of werewolves native to the region. Meyer had given enough seeds for a promising spec fiction world, and her writing style was holding up with a good balance of decently-crafted prose and narrative warmth.

Then the mystery between Bella and her vamp boyfriend dissolved, and with it, a lot of my interest. There is a portion in the middle of the book in which the only tension is a sort of virginal romantic anticipation of a relationship between Bella and her boyfriend. This section involves a lot of swooning, dizziness, and collapsing into vamp boyfriend's arms- and as readers, we had already been subjected to a lot of swooning and being carried to safety in previous chapters. All that fainting was getting a little repetitive. The only thing keeping this portion of the novel afloat for the adult reader is the ominous suggestion that Bella's "number is up," that she seems to be in constant danger of death, a danger from which only her vamp boyfriend can defend her. Of course, it is just as likely vamp boyfriend will lose control, and be the cause of Bella's death, himself. That conflict was just enough to carry me through the multiple swoons.

The final third of the book involves a prolonged action scene, in which we get to meet a bunch of other vampires, and Bella proves herself to be more than just a pretty face, but an excellent strategist, as well. Bella's character development by the end of the book shows promise for new adventure in the rest of the series, but if the book were simply a stand alone, her character arc would not have been completely satisfying.

Book 1 ends with a high school prom, Bella dancing with her vampire date. The scene mirrors one of my favorite scenes in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. Comparing the two teenage vamp romances, there is no doubt that Twilight Book 1 offers less appeal for adults than Buffy. In the Buffyverse we get a lot of action and adventure, with corny moments of romance that are sweet in the context of the world and well-developed characters. Without the contrasting high stakes in both action-adventure and character conflict, Twilight's corny romantic moments come off, well, a little corny.

There is a definite kernel of promise in Twilight Book 1, characters and situations that could produce fun stories. I was impressed enough that I'd try Book 2. Whether or not I go on to Book 3 will all depend on Bella, where Meyer is willing to take her protagonist in this romantic, young adult series.

The Wordy Shipmates

Sarah Vowell's endearing obsession with American history brings us another fun read. The Wordy Shipmates delves into the story of the "other Puritans-" the ones no one cares about because they didn't come over on the Mayflower or land at Plymouth Rock.

As always, by the end of the book, Vowell's infectious enthusiasm for her subject has not only spread to her reader, but she has made relevant and sometimes startling connections between events of the past and what is happening today. By delving into the history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Vowell shares her personal thrills and chills at John Winthrop's metaphor of the "city upon a hill," and examines the heights and depths to which this sparkling ideal has led her nation.

The Graveyard Book- Hauntingly Beautiful

Neil Gaiman's latest release was everything I love about Gaiman. It was charming, but a little creepy- quaintly British, yet flesh and blood modern- and the illustrations (by Dave McKean) were magical. How could a black and white drawing of a cup of tea send chills down my spine? Yet McKean's steaming cup did just that, and did it for a reason.

Gaiman's storytelling was no less artful than McKean's drawing. Gaiman built a magical world with very specific rules, and those rules stayed firm throughout the tale, whether to help the protagonist, or to send him toward an almost certain death. Gaiman's skill and attention to detail make for a very satisfying read.

A note for art conisseurs- if you intend to read The Graveyard Book on the Kindle, download the free sample chapter to be sure you are satisfied with the rendition of the drawings. I found that the grey, slightly ethereal drawings as viewed on the Kindle added to the atmosphere of mystery, but some may prefer a paper copy for clearer, darker illustrations.

Tasting Cheddar in the key of D-flat

Today I've been reading This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin. I was calmly digesting the differentiation of neural circuits into linguistic and musical pathways, when a sentence in the text hit me right in the solar plexus. Levitin was defining synesthesia, or the rerouting of a sensory impression from one of the five senses to another. For readers, like me, encountering the concept of synesthesia for the first time, Levitin likened the phenomenon to a "psychedelic union of everything sensory" in which one might "see the number five as red, taste cheddar cheeses in D-flat, and smell roses in triangles."

As story ideas about synesthetic aliens crashed thorough my head, I dropped my book and ran to Wikipedia to learn more about synesthesia.

My first surprise was how many of my favorite composers and musicians have synesthesia: Duke Ellington, Rimsky-Korsakav, even John Mayer. I was also interested to learn that adults with synesthesia normally map one specific sense to another, such as sounds to color, or words to taste.

I am hardly the first writer to be struck by the poetic juxtaposition of tasting cheddar in D-flat or smelling in triangles. Wikipedia noted that Mary Shelly used synesthesia to describe the mental state of Frankenstein's monster before he grew fully self-aware. In Dune Frank Herbert attributes synesthetic perceptions to Paul Atreides. The melding of the senses is a mind-blowing cosmic metaphor, the union of what we perceive representing a sense of unity between the individual and the universe.

The fascination of synesthesia for me, and I suspect for the dozens of authors who have used it to describe a character's state of mind, is exactly that power of perception. Every author builds the relationship between reader and character through the use of sensory details. Readers see what a protagonist sees- hears, tastes, touches, and smells what the character does. Tampering with the reader's expectations of the character's sensory mapping, plunges the reader farther from the world as he knows it, and deeper into the experience of the protagonist.

SF and mystery mags now available on Kindle

Dell Publications has joined Amazon's Kindle subscription list. Now you can subscribe to Asimov's and Analog on the Kindle. For mystery lovers, Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen are also available.

TV: the new hearth

This week the theme of This American Life was television. During Act One, David Rakoff, who literally hadn't taken the TV out of his closet since college, explored what happened when he dusted off the set and tuned back into mainstream American life. Rakoff concluded that what made him uncomfortable about television wasn't really the content of the programming or keeping up his intellectual image, but the fact that he lives alone. He concluded that watching TV was fine for people with spouses and families, but for people who live alone, well...he recounted the story of an elderly man found alone in his apartment. The man had been dead for almost a year, and he was still watching the channel that was playing when he died.

The funny thing about Rakoff's conclusion is that I feel exactly the same way. I enjoy watching a program with my husband, but when I'm home alone, I feel uneasy turning on the TV. To me television is a communal activity- fun together, sad alone.

Since I haven't met a lot of other people who feel this way, I figured David Rakoff and I were just mutant writer weirdos. But this morning Barbara Freese chimed in with the answer to our lone viewer malaise.

In her book Coal: A Human History, Freese writes that Americans (as their English counterparts before them) strongly resisted changing from the open hearth to the stove, despite the stove's overwhelming practical advantages. To explain the stubborness of our predecessors, she points out that "flickering light...had been the daily focal point of our species' domestic life since before we were fully human" and explains that it was distressing when the warm glow of the open hearth disappeared into the bowels of a stove. Freese then goes on to speculate that the loss of the flickering open hearth "helps explain why a substitute form of flickering light, in the form of television, would be so warmly embraced a century later."

So, for some of us overly introspective people, watching TV alone is equivalent to curling up in front of the fire without the person we love- and it just isn't the same.

The open hearth gave us food and warmth; the television entertains us. But both offer something else just as important: a sense of comfort, a place to gather, a center for our family existence. It makes me wish the Yule Log, the crackling open hearth broadcast on a NYC television station for Christmas, could pop and smoke on my LCD flat screen all year long.

The RepRap Project

Science fiction is quickly becoming fact thanks to the desktop manufacturing RepRap project. For some time authors such as Cory Doctorow have been spinning tales about technology that allows individuals to cheaply manufacture items they design (or whose design they download for free, purchase, or steal). Doctorow's short stories "Printcrime" and "After the Siege" (see my discussion of the stories) go into great detail about the trouble we could get into when such technology becomes commonplace. For now, let's just bask in the shiny, new hope for a better tomorrow and the really cool technology.

How does the RepRap work? Using the desktop printer as a model, the RepRap "prints" layered pieces of plastic that can be assembled into a finished product. The use of metal and other materials are also under development so that more complex parts, such as circuits, can be manufactured.

One of the neat things about the RepRap project, is that their current milestone goal is to ensure that the RepRap can manufacture itself. Users who can ante the 400 Euros for raw material costs will be able to use the RepRap to build a copy of itself. The project intends to give the design for self-replication away for free using an open source model.

Dune, Doom, and Destiny

It's embarrassing. How many times have I conversed with science fiction fans and writers, only to stop short when they assume I have, of course, read Dune.

I actually read the opening chapters of Dune several times. On each read, as Paul Atreides arrived on the desert planet Arrakis, and as the sense of doom surrounding his father and family built to the point of no return, a parallel sense of doom built in my personal life. Nothing truly awful ever happened to me. Usually my personal doom was an impending move, or a life change that made me anxious. In most cases the life change physically separated me from my paperback copy of Dune, which ended up packed in a cardboard box for so many months I lost the thread of the narrative. Dune became a source of superstition for me, a book that, when paired with me, lead to shaky and uncertain times.

To break my string of bad luck, and since my paperback copy still hasn't found its way back to me, I bought Dune in audio book format, and savored the whole novel slowly, with great pleasure. Even now that my life is tranquil, my heart still beats to the sense of doom Herbert builds in the opening chapters. The sense of doom surrounding Paul's father, and the escalating sense of Paul's inevitable destiny, rise to a fever pitch. So when it's finally time for an old life to collapse and a new future to rise out of the ashes, the effect is cathartic.

The inevitable sense of destiny, set in motion by a doom so heavy the hero cannot possibly escape it, is a critical element of any epic story. Empathy with the hero strengthens as the reader mentally squirms to find a way out of the inevitable. Herbert built this sense of empathy so well, and I empathized and identified so strongly, that it took me over ten years to accept my fate, and to finish Dune.

A Temporary Matter

I started my Sunday by reading an article about Earth Hour, which took place yesterday at 8:00 p.m. around much of the world. In honor of Earth Hour, national landmarks across the globe dimmed their lights. Citizens were encouraged to turn off any non-essential lights, computers, and appliances. People in many countries turned Earth Hour into a celebration. In Greece folks strolled through the streets with candles (that must have been pretty). Australians enjoyed candlelit dinners and beach bonfire parties.

The next thing I picked up to read was "A Temporary Matter," a short story from Jhumpa Lahiri's collection, Interpreter of Maladies. The premise of the story revolved around a scheduled blackout. In order to repair local power lines, a young couple would be without power starting from 8:00 p.m. for exactly one hour. The similarity of the couple's situation to Earth Hour struck me (although unlike Earth Hour, this blackout would be repeated throughout the week until the lines were repaired).

For the characters in "A Temporary Matter," these scheduled hours of darkness were the time when they came to terms with a tragic event that had damaged their relationship. Being alone in the dark together, lighting candles, telling stories, reconnected them. Now, the morning after Earth Hour, we read that the globally scheduled hour of darkness not only represented environmental responsibility and hope for the future, but that it brought people together on both a global and local level.

Why is it so much easier for human beings to connect in the dark, their meeting lit only by flickering candles? Something about the darkness makes us shed just enough of our individual defenses to connect with others. Perhaps our reaction is simply a throwback to our primitive past, huddled in the darkness with only a fire and our companions for warmth. And certainly part of the answer is that when we are cut off from the distractions of our modern lives, and have nothing to pay attention to but the people around us, we suddenly realize that they're there.

Find the lost ring

The ARG, or alternate reality game, is a new interactive way of telling stories that became popular with the I Love Bees ARG promoting the release of Halo2. Now the producer of I Love Bees has set another ARG in motion, this one called The Lost Ring.

A look around The Lost Ring website reminds me of a series of mystery puzzle game books I enjoyed years ago. Those books were filled with photographs of newspaper clippings, theater tickets, bloody handkerchiefs, and other random clues which, with the help of disjoint textual description, the reader had to organize and use to solve the mystery. The Lost Ring site is the HTML version of those old puzzle books- which means that you can zoom in on the photos and scraps of paper, and nearly all the clues are linked to other clues, or to web pages that contain further information. Many of these links take you to "real world" websites, so that an ARG character tells some of his or her story on his blog, Flikr page, or has uploaded You Tube videos related to the game.

But The Lost Ring is more than an evolved You-Solve-It mystery book. The game is well-endowed with ARG hallmarks- a spec fictional story element, timeliness that makes the story feel live and relevant, tied to the time in which it is played, and interactivity that connects players of the game.

A sense of the spec fictional is conveyed through a combination of the mystical-historical with the scientific, an aesthetic you can grasp by the images on the clues (owls, old statues, brain scans). The sense of timeliness was created by linking the story to the upcoming 2008 Summer Olympic Games in China. This sense of timeliness makes the story experience unique- something that only makes sense to participate in during the spring and summer of 2008.

The element of The Lost Ring that first caught my attention was its use of Esperanto. In the opening video trailer for the game, I noticed a mysterious tattoo that read "Trovu la ringon perditan" (Find the lost ring). Many of the clues are written in Esperanto. In addition, the six main characters in the story speak six different languages! This adds an interesting layer to the interactive element of the game. Since it is unlikely the average participant can speak Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, German, French, Portuguese, and English, cooperation between players of different national and linguistic backgrounds is essential to unlocking the mystery.

ARGs already have a history of interactivity- people meeting at phone booths to receive an important clue, participants blogging, creating wikis, and working together to solve the puzzles. The Lost Ring has taken that interactivity one step farther. By encouraging interaction between people of different cultures, The Lost Ring becomes more than a game, more than a story. It's becoming a global event.

Arthur C. Clarke

16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke

The Road Home

A friend loaned us The Road Home (Wo de fu qin mu qin) to watch over the weekend. Spec fiction movie lovers may recognize the film's leading lady, Ziyi Zhang, from her role in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Don't expect any fantastical fighting in The Road Home- this film isn't speculative, but it is extraordinarily well-made and beautiful. Contrast, in color and in motion, makes The Road Home a memorable and emotional experience.

Color: Scenes from the modern day portion of the story, in which an elderly woman mourns her recently deceased husband, were shot in black and white. In contrast, the flashback to the courtship of the woman and her husband, blossom into full-blown, gorgeous color. All the hope, youth, joy, and promise of the woman's life are portrayed by her bright red and pink coats, the striking green ribbons tied at the ends of her pigtails, the red banner she weaves, even the vibrant colors of the birch trees in the beautiful autumn countryside. Color remains an important part of the plot, as red becomes the color that first attracts boy to girl. When the love story ends, the viewer is brought back to the present, brought back to black and white.

Motion: Since I don't speak Mandarin, I watched the film subtitled in English- yet I could have almost watched the flashback portion of the film with the sound and subtitles turned off. Ziyi Zhang portrayed most of her character's longing, hope, despair, and joy by running through the village, running through the woods. Whether to catch a glimpse of her would-be lover, to let him catch a glimpse of her red jacket, to bring him food he might or might not eat, The Road Home told much of its story through the act of running motion. This makes the moments when the protagonist stands still heartbreaking and poignant.

Cinema is moving picture, and director Yimou Zhang combines motion and skillful manipulation of colorful image to turn the story of a village woman into a memorable cinematic experience.

Duma Key had me at hello

Several weeks ago when I posted about the Kindle's bestseller lists in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, I mentioned that King held three of the top five places in the list. Now he holds two of the top five (his number five usurped by Scott Smith). But King's latest novel, Duma Key, still holds strong at number one. Duma Key also ranks #2 in horror in Amazon's paper bound bookstore.

There's no doubt King's well-known name helps Duma Key climb bestseller lists. Yet I can't help but wonder whether the extraordinarily strong opening of the book isn't responsible for a lot of those sales. Whether readers downloaded the first sample chapter of the novel on their Kindle, downloaded the free PDF sample from Amazon's product description page, or flipped through the first chapters in a brick and mortar store- there's no doubt that something magical was going on in those first few chapters, and I'll bet readers sensed it. To quote a favorite saying of Melinda, eldest daughter of Duma Key's protagonist, this novel "had me at hello."

I think King's depiction of his damaged protagonist in the opening chapters is some of his best writing. The horror element of those initial pages isn't supernatural in the least- hospital beds, blinding pain, rage, confusion- are all very real. Details, such as the words printed on the seat belt that pressed near the protagonist's face during the accident that ended his "first life," are just as terrible, perhaps more terrible, than the supernatural horror story that follows.

Can such a strong beginning sustain so high a level of quality through nearly 600 hardcover pages? In the case of Duma Key, the answer is no.

As the protagonist began his journey of rebuilding his "second life," King began to use the familiar (and fun) patterns of supernatural fiction writing, and some of the raw energy of the opening was lost. One of the strengths of the body of the novel was repetition of themes embodied through specific details of everyday life. The novel's biggest weakness was a long stretch of "too good to be true" fortune and friendship forging, that bordered on too ideal and too sweet for me, even if King constantly held the threat of ominous mojo coming to ruin it all.

And, though the climax of the novel held my attention and made me hold my breath, I could almost see the bones of the story outline poking through the flesh of the narrative. King brought the story to a satisfying conclusion, but he didn't get the job done with anywhere near the skill and insight that he used to open it.

Although the stunning quality of the opening waned, Duma Key is still one of my supernatural fiction favorites. It was a fun, satisfying read. My criticism is that the superb opening made me expect something more of the middle and the end.

Oh- and I may never be able to face a rag doll again. Especially if its hair is RED.

The King of Kong and the Art of Conflict

I was less than thrilled when my husband announced that our movie night featured a documentary about video games. The documentary would cover two gamers fighting for the record high score in the original arcade classic, Donkey Kong.

The King of Kong turned out to be an engaging and memorable story, one that generated a lot of conversation and speculation after the film, and that days later is still on my mind. Given that I am not a classic video game fanatic, why did I get so excited about this documentary?

The King of Kong used conflict as the combustion engine of its story telling machine. But this conflict was made even more interesting by using three techniques:

1) The makers of the documentary clearly picked a "hero" and a "villain." As a viewer, I was rooting for the newcomer on the arcade gaming scene, Steve Wiebe, to overtake Billy Mitchell's long-standing high score record. Mitchell's machinations to preserve his record and shun Wiebe's acceptance to the arcade gaming community, made me feel that Steve Wiebe was a hard-working, genuinely nice guy, and that Billy Mitchell was a jerk.

2) Although they had clearly sided with Wiebe, the makers of the documentary left one niggling doubt about Wiebe's integrity. They also kept the conflict balanced by demonstrating that Mitchell was an extremely skilled gamer, and by including a sub-plot (coaching an elderly Q*Bert champ), in which Mitchell could show his human side.

3) Walter Day, the arbiter of the conflict (who was shown throughout most of the documentary in a black and white referee costume), faced trying to balance fairness to Wiebe and loyalty to Mitchell. Day's difficult emotional journey showed that successful resolution of the conflict was vital to more than just the contestants.

These techniques kept me engaged in the conflict and rooting for the hero. At the same time, I was intrigued by the possibility that Mitchell might have some honest (or at least not so blatantly self-serving) motivation for shunning Wiebe. I was also intrigued to watch Day's journey, as he made mistakes, agonized, then tried to live up to his pledge of integrity.

Invincible Banana fails to say it all

My husband was sorting through the flotsam of papers on my desk in search of scratch paper. He picked up one of the scraps, read it, then asked,

"What does invincible banana mean?"

I remembered writing Invincible Banana on a sheet of paper one night shortly before bed. It was one of those flashes of story ideas that hold a lot of promise when I first think of them. Usually I jot the idea down somewhere, think about it for awhile, and decide if I can develop it into something exciting. I know I had some pretty concrete ideas about a story I would title "Invincible Banana." Unfortunately, other than the title and the memory of my own excitement, I remember nothing useful about the story- like the plot, situation, characters.

I learned several things from this experience: 1) clean my desk more often, 2) don't leave crazy stuff around where my husband can read it and laugh at me 3) make more detailed notes even if I have a mouthful of toothpaste, and 4) "Invincible Banana" was probably not a good story title, because the title tells me (and the reader) nothing about the story.

I blogged earlier this week about a story called "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell. The title encapsulates the magical realism element of the story (something normal, something fantastic), describes the setting (St. Lucy's Home), describes primary characters in the story (girls raised by wolves), and even hints at the story's main conflict (civilization vs. the wild life). Wow, now that is a title that would make sense unearthed from scraps of grocery store receipts and junk mail- and, by the way, it would also make a lot of sense to a reader about to embark on the story.

Listening to T.C. Boyle read Tobias Wolffe's "Bullet in the Brain" in a New Yorker Fiction podcast, I was struck by the story's title. "Bullet in the Brain" is a very short story, and approximately half the drama happens before the critical event of the bullet entering the protagonist's brain. So I asked myself: wasn't Wolffe cutting the tension of the drama by telling us what was going to happen before we even started the story? Well, having heard "Bullet in the Brain" read out loud, my response was that the "giveaway" title didn't do anything to destroy the drama. Why? Part of the answer is that the heart of the story occurs after the bullet has breached the skull of the protagonist's brain. But there is also an element of tragicomedy present in the first half of the story, that makes the tension of the moments before the bullet is fired worse, because we know (or strongly suspect) what's going to happen. Since readers know the protagonist is going to get shot in the head, we're biting our nails as the protagonist goads the gunman. If the reader believed the protagonist might somehow escape his fate, the tension would be lessened.

As much as I enjoy the koan-like sense of wonder evoked by the two word titles of J-Pop bands like Swinging Popsicle, Crispy Park, Berry Roll, Browny Circus, I have my doubts about this kind of ambiguous , two-word title for a short story. What makes these band names cool (at least for me) is that they open up my mind in the attempt to figure out what the heck they mean. But in a short story every word counts. In most cases, something as important as the first words should focus the reader's mind, or do something to help the reader grasp the context or content of the story. And in instances like "Bullet in the Brain," the title can manipulate building tension in the plot.

Of course, I'm sure there are great short stories out there with intriguingly vague titles. I'd like hear about some of your favorites.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

Listening to a recent PRI Selected Shorts podcast I encountered a delightful example of magical realism. The short story's title, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" practically defines magical realism: a fantastic premise treated as casually as any normal part of life.

The premise for the story is classic spec fiction stuff, and could easily produce a fantasy, science fiction, or even supernatural or horror tale. But instead of spinning the speculative premise into fictional world, Russell inserted the fantastic premise into the real world- then made it squirm to fit in. The conflict of the story becomes whether or not these weird, wild little girls will be tamed by the sisters of St. Lucy's, and eventually be able to adapt to normal life.

Strengths of the story include the use of concrete detail to make the girls raised by wolves and St. Lucy's Home seem equally real. And a liberal use of humor endears the protagonist and her sisters to the reader through her innocent, and often funny candor. But I think what really makes the story tick is that magical realism is so central to its conflict. The bizarre isn't simply present in the real world- the bizarre world and the normal world actually vie for the girls' fates. I'm interested to read some further magical realism, and to see whether this conflict between the real and the fantastic is a core convention of magical realism.

Kindle sci-fi and fantasy bestsellers

We had a request to follow up on what's happening with the Amazon Kindle's spec fiction bestseller lists. It is three months to the day I posted about the front runners at the Kindle's launch, so it seems like a good time take another look.

In science fiction, classics continue to dominate the top sellers, with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five occupying the number one slot, and Orwell's 1984 right behind at second. In November these two classics rated in the top 300 of overall Kindle sales, and both have now moved up to around the top 200 in Kindle sales. Video game tie-ins have given way to the newest military SF by Nebula winner Elizabeth Moon, and yet another science fiction classic, Brave New World.

In fantasy, Gregory Maguire's Wicked continues to hold its own near the top of the bestseller list. Wicked has fallen from #1 to #2 in fantasy, and has fallen from the top 150 to the top 250 in Kindle's overall sales. Number three in fantasy is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks, and number four is Gaiman's Stardust.

Here's an interesting piece of zeitgeist: the stunning success of the Dresden Files series on the spec fiction Kindle bestseller lists. Author Jim Butcher's Storm Front occupies the number 4 slot in science fiction and the number 5 slot in fantasy. Not only that, his White Night: A Novel of the Dresden Files is number one in fantasy. Not too shabby.

In horror, King continues to dominate, with three of the top five bestsellers. King's novels alternate with books by Kim Harrison.

The Taste of Tea

I've been having a lot of fun watching Japanese films. I'd begun to see a few themes emerge (life in Tokyo vs. rural life, connection with nature, connection with community, and, unexpected to me, a fascination with music and dance). Then I popped Cha no Aji (The Taste of Tea) into the DVD player and was dropped into a whole new experience of Japanese culture.

In a way The Taste of Tea was more what I was expecting out of a Japanese film: characters who are anime artists, bizarre events of the type I'd expect to see animated in a manga. When these fantastic elements are combined with an exploration of what it means to be human, the result is a film that can look at disappointment and loss with a gentle playfulness.

I had heard The Taste of Tea called a "surreal" version of Ingmar Bergman. Maybe its the last vestiges of my Midwestern upbringing, but I'd say Bergman has his own claim to surreal. I'd call the Taste of Tea a "happy" Bergman. It's an oversimplification, but where Bergman plays with his idea of what it means to be human on the dramatic stage of the creepy and macabre, The Taste of Tea approaches the same theme with childlike excess and humorous fantasy.

Who is Dagny Taggart?: a love story

It took me a long time to read Atlas Shrugged- no surprise, since Wikipedia counts it at 645,000 words. It also took awhile for me to shake out of the polarized morality of Ayn Rand's world and get a grip on what I'd read.

Atlas Shrugged is a romance novel. Set aside what you've heard about Rand's philosophical masterpiece and look at the protagonist's path. Our beautiful young heroine, Dagny Taggart, is torn between her ardent lovers. All three men want her desperately. But when Dagny first encounters the man of her dreams, she swoons, and he holds her in his arms and gently carries her to his bed.

The difference between Atlas Shrugged and the typical Harlequin romance, is that Dagney runs a railroad. Dagney's profession isn't just a way to get our heroine into a demure gray suit that she sheds to show her stunning sexuality in a black party dress (although that does happen). And her profession is not meant to later attest to what's "really important" to her (ie., her femininity and role as a lover and wife). In fact, Dagney's profession is so intrinsically bound to her personality, her character, her essence, that Dagney is her profession. What's more, the men who fall at her feet, one by one, are in love with her precisely because she embodies the spirit of competence and professionalism.

Turns out Dagney embodies one more important ideal, the ideal beyond Objectivism that lies at the heart of the book: Dagney represents the potential of the individual to love herself.

The magic of Atlas Shrugged is the fact that Rand was able to embody her ideal in her main character, and at the same time, make that protagonist so human, so real, so worthy of the reader's understanding and compassion. Dagney's journey is the journey of coming to embrace the ideal of self-love, and at the same time, she has always been the ideal. It's beautiful and skillful writing.

Unfortunately, as Rand builds to the climax of the novel, she devolves into droning, boring exposition, in which Galt gives a speech to extemporize Rand's philosophy (Wikipedia counts this dreadful speech at 56 pages long, and though Wikipedia mentioned Atlas Shrugged is one of the longest novels ever written, it fails to mention this is one of the longest chunks of exposition anyone has ever been forced to read). Rand's attempt to explain her philosophy in prose deadens the innate feeling of "rightness" she had cultivated in the reader by simply following Dagney's journey. This made the ending of the book resonate a bit less for me. But the self-discovery journey in which Dagney learns what she is truly worth, learns that she is Love, was intense and captivating.

Neverwhere

My copy of Neverwhere ended with an interview of the author in which he mentioned that I had just read the American version (as opposed to the UK or international version) of the book. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the book for me concerned descriptions London's geography, and in fact Gaiman embellished these for the benefit of those who aren't intimately familiar with London.

Neverwhere was originally written as a television script, and Gaiman saw the novelization as an opportunity to more fully realize his own vision of the tale. For me the book felt like one of the coolest plot outlines I've ever read, but, the novel failed to feel fully fleshed out. Epic events took place in the space of a few pages. Based on the book's intriguing premise, the compelling direction of the plot, satisfying world building details, and what Gaiman had told us about the characters, I often perceived the weight of a scene intellectually, but failed to feel the tightness in my chest, the wrench in my gut, that meant I had connected with the characters on an empathetic level.

In his interview, Gaiman mentioned that his protagonist was meant to be an Everyman, dull and plain, with a good heart and good intentions. Richard Mayhew fits the role Gaiman intended so well, that parts of his anatomy could be snapping off and I found I simply did not care. Door, the girl for whom Mayhew gave up "his life, his identity and everything else" is described by Gaiman as heroine, "for want of a better word." With the exception of a scene in which she walks through her murdered family's magical home, and in which she has a necklace made by a blacksmith, Door certainly didn't seem like a heroine to me, and rarely seemed worth all Richard's trouble.

The ideas, the world, and the main plot points of Neverwhere were the stuff of an enchanting adult fairytale. These elements deserved a longer treatment, with more engaging protagonists and pacing that took the time to make the reader squirm.

London Smog

When the yellow pea soup of London's famous fog came up in two different books I was reading this weekend (Neverwhere, Niel Gaiman and Thunderstruck, Erik Larson), I had to look into the phenomenon.

The most interesting article I found on the web was from the EPA. The EPA was less interested in yellow pea soup as grounds for creepy historical ambiance than as an early environmental crisis. London's noxious fog was produced by burning soft sea coal- a cheap alternative to burning wood (or later, the harder anthracite coal). The soft sea coal gave off about as much smoke as it did heat, and belched out the chimneys of homes and factories to blend with the hovering water vapor, and coat the city in thick, yellow smog that sometimes lurked for days.

The EPA article cites London's first environmental legislation at 1272, when King Edward I banned the use of sea coal literally on pain of death. But the EPA article points out that by then wood was scarce (forests had already been plundered to build the city and to heat its dense population's wood burning stoves), and because wood was scarce, it was expensive. Despite the fact that Edward actually had the first sea coal-burning offender put to death, folks kept on using sea coal. See, the king couldn't kill the whole swarm Londonders who didn't have the money to keep warm any other way. The pressure of their need and numbers overrode environmental legislation, and continued to do so until 1952, when a four day immersion in yellow pea soup killed about 4,000 people.

The deaths, the phenomenon of indigent children hired to light a pedestrian's way through the fog, and the pea soup nickname, have become a way for modern writers to evoke the ambiance of London's past. But imagine living through that smog. Imagine being Tolkien, imagine being Shakespeare (The EPA article points out that Shakespeare lived through these fogs, and its influence is evidenced by Macbeth's witches: "fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air"). Pea-soupers weren't some quirky phenomenon from the past, they were the smelly smoke of poverty, of deprivation and environmental catastrophe that you could taste on your tongue, wipe from your skin. It settled in your clothes and hair, penetrated lungs and brought out great coughing wads of mucous. It was the cost of building a great city, and the cost of surviving there and maintaining a decent standard of living.

Talk Talk

Don't let the title of T.C. Boyle's 2006 novel fool you. The book isn't about talk, it's about communication. Boyle uses a deaf protagonist to show how words can get in the way of human understanding.

In harmony with his theme, Boyle uses reference as his main means of communication with his reader. I could relate to each and every one of Boyle's references. From the J.A. Henckels knives I thought about buying around Christmas, to my favorite new white wine (Sauvignon Blanc), to a reference to Diana Krall, Boyle didn't refer to a single aspect of modern life that didn't resonate with me. The literary magic of this book involves placing the reader in the shoes of his hero (and anti-hero) by referring to locales, situations, objects, ideas, and states of mind familiar to the reader.

This contemporary fiction magic is made more poignant by its mortality. Cultural references change so quickly, will Boyle's novel mean anything to readers ten years from now? Twenty? Fifty? Not unless it children are forced to read it in school, and buy Cliffs Notes that explain the socioeconomic implications of the references at the time Boyle wrote. Even still, the barrier of time will remain between author and reader, leaving Boyle's audience with an intellectual understanding, but not the visceral understanding that made Talk Talk something special.

Instant asynchrony

I've really been thinking about letter writing lately. Maybe it was writing holiday cards, or maybe it was listening too many times to "From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)," a song in which the Decemberists keen "Mr. Postman, do you have a letter for me?" The Decemberists' tune brought back memories of listening to "Please Mr. Postman-" the version by the Carpenters my parents used to play when I was just a tater tot. I remember really connecting with that song, because when you're three years old, mail addressed in your name is a really big deal. I used to long along with Karen for someone to seal a message in an envelope, mark it with my name, and send it through mysterious channels to reach my front door. Magic. Slow motion conversations.

Now that I'm old enough to send and receive letters, I mostly use email. Sure, the delivery system is different (email has no yucky envelopes to lick) but letter delivery technology has a history of changing with the times- think back to the Pony Express (later replaced by the First Transcontinental Telegraph), or the pneumatic tubes that delivered mail twice daily in Paris. What interests me about the modern letter isn't just the technology used to deliver it, but the persistence of the letter through the dozens of way we now have to communicate.

Telephone, fax, mobile phone, SMS, chat room, message board, instant message, sites that allow users to share photos and video, blogging, online games, voice chat, and video chat. We have the technology to talk to each other across great distances face-to-face, real time, and to call each other anytime, anywhere. So why is so much of modern communication conducted as letters, albeit mailed electronically?

Email offers us instant asynchronous communication, and gives us the power to control the pace of our slow-motion conversations. Recipients can take as long as they want to reply to an email- hours, days, even weeks or months. But they also have the possibility to reply within seconds- which gives email superpowers that the guys running the Pony Express never dreamed of. I have written email to my husband while he is sitting in the same room with me. Why would I do that? The power of asynchronous communication is all about time- the summary of my research on feline nutrition may not be best communicated to my husband while he's battling the final board of his favorite video game. You might decide to email a colleague a few feet from your desk. Let my husband- and your colleague- get to your email when they have time to process it.

Asynchronous forms of conversation also leave a record- whether we're blogging, posting to a message board, or sending an email, it's pretty easy to re-read what we've written and how others have responded. The likelihood of finding a record of a conversation is in direct proportion to the asynchronism of the form of communication. I can pull up an email from 2004 with a few keystrokes. I can scroll back and re-read something a friend has written in an instant message window. Although it's certainly possible (and a little creepy) to record a telephone conversation, the content of a conversation isn't very searchable unless I keep written records correlating each conversation to its specific content.

The speed of interpersonal (and business) communication has an effect on our artistic expression. The epistolary narrative of Dracula was born in an era when people kept in touch by writing letters that took a long time to reach the recipient. Bob Newhart developed his famous stand-up routine (and later running TV gag) of one-ended phone conversations when it became possible to telephone people across incredible distances. The mobile phone has become a staple of modern action movies, to show the hero receiving critical information in the nick of time.

How is the instant asynchrony of the ubiquitous email affecting artistic expression?

Brandon Sanderson to write A Memory of Light

Today TOR announced that Brandon Sanderson will be writing the last book in Robert Jordan's epic fantasy Wheel of Time series. In an interview posted on WoT fan site Dragonmount.com, Sanderson talks about his "Characters first, everything else second" philosophy, tells us his favorite character and his favorite scenes in the series, and discusses why he thinks he was chosen to conclude the Wheel of Time. Both the announcement and the interview discuss notes Jordan left- some written, some audio recordings- with detailed explanations of how the book (and series) will end.

A Memory of Light is scheduled to be published in Fall 2009.

Wicked #1 on Kindle's Fantasy Bestseller List

My last two posts (The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Kindling the revolution of reading) are meeting up on on Amazon's Kindle Bestseller list. Maguire's Wicked has been the number one seller in the fantasy section of the Kindle store for at least the past two days. Today it rates #136 on the Kindle's overall Bestseller list.

Three of the top five leaders in science fiction are sf video game tie-ins (Halo and Mass Effect). The remaining top five include Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut, #2) and 1984 (Orwell, #3). Horror is topped by King's Song of Susannah.

What's interesting to me is that Wicked scores in the Kindle Store's overall top 150. The two sf classics are in the top 300. The King book at the top of horror comes in at only #640 overall.

I'll be keeping my eye on how these trends develop.

The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

This autumn I can't walk in New York without bumping into some reference to the Wizard of Oz. On Halloween the whole staff of our local bakery dressed as Dorothy and company (the blue grease painted Munchkin was especially impressive). Bus stops in Manhattan are plastered with notices of the Sci Fi Channel's premiere of Tin Man this Sunday. Approachig Times Square, I was overwhelmed by the amount of advertising for the musical Wicked, based on Gregory Maguire's book of the same name (although last week's New York performances weren't held due to the stagehand strike).

There was no question why I suddenly had the urge to read Wicked, the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The reminders of my childhood days in Oz were too in my face to be subliminal.

What I admire most about Maguire's book is its dramatic structure. If a creative writing teacher asked Maguire what his protagonist wanted, I know he could answer in a heartbeat: the Wicked Witch of the West wants forgiveness.

Forgiveness for what? Plaguing Dorothy? No, no. All that Dorothy business comes late in the book- perfectly timed to synchronize events from Baum's well-known tale to the thrilling end of the Witch's personal story. Wicked begins before the Witch's birth, and describes an Oz quite different, I think, from the one Baum envisioned. Yet Maguire selects a few haunting aspects of Baum's mythology, the tiktok mechanical creatures, the ruby slippers, talking animals- and uses them as conduits between his created universe and Baum's.

The question still stands: the Witch wants forgiveness for what? Well, that's kind of the point of the story, getting inside the Witch's oiled green skin and finding and losing sympathy with her as she finds and loses sympathy for herself.

Kindling the revolution of reading

The largest bookstore in the world has announced its own eBook reader, the Amazon Kindle. More than just a device, the Kindle is supported by a huge (and growing) catalog of eBook titles, and by the Whispernet wireless network. Amazon pays your Whispernet connection, allowing you to free wireless shopping and downloading of for-purchase content. Oh, and they threw in free wireless access to Wikipedia, too.

My first glance at the Kindle gave me a tickle in my stomach- I had the sense this was more than a cool gadget, it was a glimpse at the future of how writers get content to readers. Newsweek enthusiastically agreed with me about the Kindle's potential, and as I read Steven Levy's "The Future of Reading" I got more and more excited. Projecting from current trends in blogging and digital media, Levy envisions a future when the book is liberated from its cover. The possibilities are intriguing, and many of them point at changing the role of the author.

Imagine a book that could be instantly updated or corrected- or revised by the author based on reader feedback. Levy predicts serialized novelization (alla Dickens and King's Green Mile)- except that readers would be able to interact with the author in between installments. This situation would create a collaborative environment where the author is no longer master of the universe, but guide through a participatory adventure.

Levy also extrapolates the role of the Kindle's digital annotation system. If readers can upload and share their annotations overlaid on the text of a book, annotations become a forum for disagreeing with the author, whether for fun, or to pose serious political protest. And one of my thoughts based on this model, what about using annotations to create derivative works of art (kind of like playing The Wizard of Oz to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon) or as a new form of fan fiction?

In one more possible affront to the omnipotence of the author, Levy points out that the Kindle is always connected, always online and ready to connect to other books (not to mention Wikipedia). So if the reader questions something the author wrote, or simply wants a different perspective from another writer, he is just a few seconds' download away from having another author's take at his fingertips.

Will the Kindle ignite a brave new world of authorship and publishing? I can't wait to find out.

Stranger in a Familiar Land

Whenever anyone asks me my favorite science fiction author, I reply: Heinlein.  This gets mixed reactions: from understanding approval to poorly hidden disgust.  Heinlein seems to evoke strong love or hate emotions in his readers.

But love or hate, most of my interlocutors can't mention Heinlein without talking about Stranger in a Strange Land- a book I have never read because it couldn't hold my interest past the first few chapters.

On a quest to understand whether or not books whose first chapters don't grab me are or are not worth reading (see my post Stardust in our eyes), I picked up Stranger in a Strange Land.  I muscled through the first several chapters, and read through to the end.

The result of the experiment was clear.  My feelings toward the book softened a little as I continued to read, got to know the characters and situations better, and to recognize certain Heinlein characteristics that I've come to know and love.  But I never felt a fraction of the warmth toward the book that I did toward Heinlein's Friday (read five times and counting), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, The Number of the Beast or the adventurous sf Heinlein books geared toward children.  

The first few chapters of Stranger in a Strange Land didn't grab me, and neither did the rest of the book.

How to earn $40 for reading science fiction and fantasy

Today I got a surprise check in the mail. I had completely forgotten that, a few weeks ago when I had jury duty, the county was obliged to pay me for a day of warming a bucket seat chair and reading The New Yorker and the July 2007 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Hey, if you thought it was likely you'd leave your reading material behind on a park bench or subway car, you'd take an old issue with you, too.

My big civic participation day began by watching a video, taking an hour to fill out a form I had already filled out at home, then doing a lot of waiting. I read about a new stamp commemorating jury duty in The New Yorker, feted by a shindig whose celebrity attendants had never served. Then I opened up F&SF and started the first story- "Daughters of Prime" by Lawrence C. Connolly.

It was awful. I found myself reading the same sentences over and over again. I couldn't concentrate. The story just didn't interest me. Was I really that nervous about hearing my name called? Had the juror's video dramatizing trial by drowning in the middle ages dulled my appetite for fiction?

Next came the book columns, De Lint's "Books to Look For" and "Books" by Elizabeth Hand. I was reasonable engaged, enthused about checking out one or two books. So, I could still read, just not fiction.

I turned the page and landed right in "Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard, and I was reminded what speculative fiction is supposed to be: fun, engaging, the kind of story that made me turn pages and even laugh out loud, much to the disconcertment of the jurors on either side of me.

I went back to look at why one of these stories couldn't hold my attention, while the other was so thoroughly engaging.

Connolly's "Daughter of Prime" was all about time: how long would the protagonist live before her successor took over her work? The big mysterious engine running the heart of the story was, in essence, about time. Had the protagonist been expected to arrive on this foreign planet for generations? The problem was, I really didn't care about the protagnist's fate or the fate of the natives on the planet. I just didn't know enough about them to care.

Shepard's story was all about a community. Black William, PA was a small town with an intriguing past. Shepard built the town using solid geography- I could almost draw a map showing where the library, pub, mill, spooky statue, and Chinese restaurant were located. There wasn't space in the story to know everyone in town, but we did get to know the protagonist, his ex-girlfriend, his best friend, and a creepy outsider staying at the protagonist's house. The story was so realistic, that when weird stuff began to happen, it actually gave me the chills.

Or maybe it was just the A/C in the juror's waiting room.

The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett made a founding contribution to the hard-boiled detective genre with his 1930 novel, the Maltese Falcon. I've carried around the title of the book in my head, along with the image of a femme fatale sashaying into a run-down detective's office, but had never read the book until this week.

A close look at the genre conventions shows that protagonist, Sam Spade, has all the ingredients of a hard-boiled detective. What I found more interesting than the particulars of the detective conventions, was Hammett's narrative voice.

Hammett's narrator was like a movie camera. The narrator never penetrated Sam Spade's tough armor to pierce through to his inner thoughts and feelings. Everything was reported as though a court stenographer was witnessing it and writing it down- except that every single surface detail Hammett chose to report was carefully selected, meant to color our view of the events and characters.

At first I was put off by this style. Why the heck should I care about the angle of Sam Spade's head as he rolled his cigarette? Descriptions of femme fatale, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, bordered on the teenage obsessive, reporting each twitch of her lips, lean of her head, and minute gesture.

But when the author refuses to let the reader into a single thought or feeling of any character, and the narrative voice is as neutral as a black and white photo, the only means of expressing character is through dialog and action. All the minute details of how cigarettes were smoked, coffee drunk, and eggs eaten, add up to build a character.

This approach to characterization makes the reader experience the same sense of ambiguity as the characters in the story- the reader feels at once as though they know Sam Spade and Brigid O'Shaughnessy very well, and at the same time, wouldn't want to bet their lives on what either character will do next.

However, Sam and Brigid are betting their lives on how well they understand each other's character and motivation. It is this suspense, not the particulars of the mystery, that powers the captivating tale of the Maltese Falcon.