Kindle and iPhone make friends

Amazon has announced a free iPhone (or iPod Touch) application that allows the iPhone to read Kindle eBooks.

Wow.

This means iPhone and iPod Touch owners don't have to shell out the money for an expensive Kindle device in order to purchase and read Kindle books. No doubt Amazon hopes this will create a huge increase in the market for Kindle books. I certainly hope this development will lead to an increase in the already impressive number of titles available in Kindle format.

For those who do own Kindles, the new iPhone software can synchronize your place between the Kindle and the iPhone. So if you read a few chapters on your iPhone while on the train, you can pick up your Kindle when you get home and not have to waste a moment searching for where you left off in your reading. As a Kindle owner whose device is strictly used at home, this opens up exciting new possibilities for never being without my book!

Dollhouse- Thoughts after the First Three Episodes

I've been a Joss Whedon fan since the very first time I caught a random Season Two episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the WB. My admiration for Whedon TV greatly deepened when he created Firefly, translating his special mix of comedy and drama, wordplay, and ensemble acting, from the horror realm to science fiction.

So I was pretty excited about the premiere of his latest series, Dollhouse. Now that the first three episodes have aired, it's time to think about how the series is living up to my expectations.

Dollhouse is not exactly what I expected. And, strangely, that's okay.

The first big departure from Whedon's previous work is a change in his recipe for equal parts comedy and drama. Dollhouse mixes action and intrigue (with some strategic drama). Is there any comedy in the series at all? A little- the comedy is sparsely sprinkled in, like raisins in a cookie you were hoping was chocolate chip.

Hand-in-hand with the departure of comedy's role is the absence of wordplay. Heroine Echo has no time to quip or bandy pop culture references with her foes- she is normally too busy racing across the screen on foot, on motorcycle, in helicopter. And the show's other characters are usually too caught up casting conspiratorial glances to produce either comedy or drama.

One of the three big hallmarks of Whedon TV stands firm in Dollhouse: ensemble acting. Whedon makes no mistake about his leading lady- like Buffy, Echo is core to the story, and without her the plot and the world would crumble. At the same time Whedon is slowly, carefully, filling in the backgrounds of other intriguing characters: an FBI agent obsessed by uncovering the Dollhouse, Echo's Handler (who echoes the BtVS Watcher- pun intended), fellow Active, Sierra, and the mysterious and dangerous Alpha.

I'm really looking forward to the next episode of Dollhouse. So far it has been a well-crafted blend of action and intrigue, with drama popping up where I least expected it- in the course of exploring Echo's temporary, imprinted personalities. The fact that Whedon draws drama out of a character who essentially arises from nowhere and disappears at the end of every episode, fascinates me.

My biggest concerns with the series are the depth of the world, and how Whedon will draw out and deepen the intrigue. Why does the Dollhouse exist- simply as a screenwriting convenience to explore a character like Echo? I'm trusting Whedon has deeper motivations in mind, that will draw his ensemble of characters into stickier and stickier moral territory.

So, am I disappointed by the changes in Whedon's yummy TV recipe? No. I'm tasting, I'm chewing, I'm tasting again. Of course I like chocolate chip cookies. But oatmeal raisin is pretty scrumptious, too.

Kindle 2

Amazon has announced that there are now over 230,000 titles available for the Kindle. My count today yielded 31 newspapers, 22 magazines, and 237,694 books. In books, Meyer's Twilight series still holds the top three bestseller slots, followed by Young's religious fiction, The Shack, in slots four and five.

The announcement was coupled with the news that the second generation Kindle is available for preorder on Amazon.com.

The form factor of the Kindle 2 has grown slimmer and lighter than its predecessor. Battery life is 25% longer (I do occasionally run out of juice while reading), page turns are 20% faster (although I'm totally used to the Kindle's current page turn speed), and of course it has more memory and can hold more titles. The most significant new features, in my opinion, are the 16 shade gray scale and the text-to-speech capability.

As I noted in my review of The Graveyard Book, art display quality- even on gray scale sketches- wasn't quite up to snuff on the Kindle 1. I'd be interested to see what a gray scale graphic novel looked like on the Kindle 2. Several years ago I had my hands on a Sony eBook reader at a Barnes and Nobles in Manhattan- and was shocked by how beautifully it displayed the art.

Now to discuss the text-to-speech feature. Text-to-speech takes the printed word and reads it aloud as audio. Readers can choose between male or female narrators, and can dial up and down how fast the narrator reads. The brief text-to-speech sample on Amazon's video demo reminded me of Hal from 2001- although, to be fair, the voice was a little less fluid than Hal, and a little less creepy. I'd be curious to hear how well the computerized narrator pronounces proper nouns and foreign words.

Beyond the quality of the narrator, I was wondering who, under the age of five, would want their print book read out loud to them? Then I realized text-to-speech is probably fantastic for commuters. If you're reading on the train, then want to continue your story driving from the park and ride back home- you can do so with no interruption of continuity, no searching for your place- and no second book to buy in audio format. All my life I've had the avid reader's nightmare illness- extreme car sickness whenever I attempt to read in motion. So I can definitely see the value of text-to-speech. On the other hand, I never buy an audio book without first listening to a sample of the narrator. The narrator can make or break the reading experience. So I'll be interested to see whether or not Kindle 2 readers actually use the text-to-speech feature.

F&SF goes bimonthly

This morning on Slashdot I read that the March 2009 issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction will be the last monthly issue published. From now on, the magazine will be a little longer, and will only come out every two months.

You can read Gordon Van Gelder's explanation for the change in format here.

But the Slashdot article I read, titled Difficult Times for SF Magazines, was actually announcing that Realms of Fantasy has folded.

It's no news that speculative fiction genre magazines haven't been selling well. I've seen theories for the decline from editors and fans blaming everything from the economy to the short attention span of the TV-internet generation. But I think an even bigger problem is that many magazines have misunderstood their audience.

Spec fiction fans are usually technophiles. They're excited about the future, the latest technologies, the coolest new ways of reading books, watching movies, and experiencing their favorite fictional worlds.

Mass market genre fiction magazines seem to think, for some reason, that their readers want to walk into a brick and mortar store, pick up a dead tree magazine off a rack, and purchase it. Or that they possibly want to wait for their magazine to show up in their mailbox, slightly dirty and dog-eared- and often after it is already available for sale in bookstores. Old-fashioned distribution is simply not cool enough for people with their eyes on the future!

Asimov's Science Fiction isn't folding or going bimonthly. Their homepage offers me a free podcast of a story read by the author. Their special e-Asimov page lets me know that I can get their magazine as a Fictionwise eBook, or on the Kindle. Oh, and the free podcast pointed out that their favorite authors have plenty of short story content on audible.com that I can enjoy on my iPod.

F&SF had to go bimonthly. F&SF is not available on the Kindle. There are links to eReader, Fictionwise, and Audible on the F&SF home page- but the links are at the very bottom of the page, and I didn't even see that the links existed until I got a comment on this post from the magazine's editor pointing out my error. Maybe it was just me who missed those links, but there's no doubt the Asimov's webpage draws more attention to their electronic formats at the top of their page.

The folding Realms of Fantasy isn't even on Fictionwise- at least, when I searched for the magazine on Fictionwise, the results yielded nothing but an erotica novel. Realms of Fantasy is not available on Kindle.

Perhaps the problem of folding and shrinking magazines isn't the state of the economy or an unwillingness of spec fiction fans to read. Perhaps magazines are offering content in an outdated format inappropriate to their audience, and could do a better job marketing toward their technophile target fans.

Social networks and charity

Flipping through the pages of a local history book, I noticed that American communities in the early twentieth century relied heavily on service clubs (such as the Lyons Club, Rotary International, and the Shriners), to accomplish charitable works and large-scale community projects. When I was growing up, these kinds of clubs barely caught my notice. I remember parades where funny guys in fez hats rode around on little cars (Shriners), I was vaguely aware that Rotary funded exchange students, and I knew of a few lady's clubs that gave out scholarships. This is in no way to diminish the great work these clubs have accomplished, but simply to note that their membership and prominence in the community has definitely declined since the second half of the twentieth century.

As I was chewing on all this information, I was struck by an idea. Service clubs are about two things: service to the community, and social gathering. People enjoyed hanging out together, and they used their friendly, social time to plan and act for the greater good of the community. Given the symbiosis of social gathering and charity that founded these service clubs, why don't service clubs today use the online social network model to keep their clubs alive and well?

No sooner had I formed this thought, then I began noticing social networks geared toward charitable causes. Change.org is a prime example of charity and social networks interacting- as members can join, affiliate with causes and specific non-profits, or simply read or talk about the causes that interest them. I am certainly not the first person to notice that online social networks and charity have an affinity similar to peanut butter and jelly.

Still, when I visited the home pages for the Shriners, the Lyons Club, and Rotary International, I didn't see any evidence that they were using online social networking. Their pages were oriented toward accepting donations, making their good work known to the public, and helping potential members find local chapters.

I don't think it's such a big leap from walking downtown to the lodge, to logging into a social networking site, where members from all over the world can meet for fun and to make the world a better place. I predict that the service clubs who are willing to incorporate social networking technology into their club culture will still be making the history books, and maybe still be making a difference, many generations from now. I fear those clubs who insist on local, exclusively face-to-face member interaction may be lost to dust and yellowed pages.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

Today when I checked the Amazon Kindle bestseller list, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was at tenth place, below the first four books of the Twilight series (all in the top four slots), The Shack in English and Spanish, and three "New Year New You" self-help nonfiction. We know that the Twilight series is vampire fiction. The Shack is religious fiction. So what is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle?

Amazon categorizes Wroblewsi's book as "literary fiction" or "contemporary fiction." Fair enough- there's probably not space in their categorization system for thriller/espionage, coming of age story, historical, magical realism, ghost story, and murder mystery. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was all this, and literature, too.

When I first downloaded a sample of this book onto my Kindle, I read part way through the sample, then decided to pass on it. At first I was entranced by the prose in this book. The scene Wroblewski described was so vivid- every word a color, a texture, a taste, a smell. The problem was, that the book was clearly a thriller set in South Korea during the Korean war. Of course there's nothing wrong with an historical espionage book- but that's just not the kind of book I wanted to read. And, far worse, I could see that the plot was heading toward cruelty to a dog. I'm a huge softy for animals. I decided not to buy the book.

A few months later I was browsing the Kindle bestsellers and came across The Story of Edgar Sawtelle once again. The synopsis made it sound like the coming of age story of a boy in Wisconsin. What? I went back to the sample on my Kindle, muscled through the horrible scene with the dog, and met Edgar.

Wroblewsi refused to pick a genre and stick with it when he wrote The Tale of Edgar Sawtelle. I was surprised again and again, as the book took turns into fantasy and thriller that seemed so at odds with the lives of the plain-folks dog trainers living on a family farm. But it wasn't only the genre that morphed to suit the needs of the story- Wroblewsi's language also transformed to meet every mood necessary to tell his tale. I could tell when something important was about to happen- the prose became crystal clear, detailed to the point of painfully beautiful. When it was time to get to know Edgar, things slowed down, we approached the world in a more plodding, plain prose. The chapters through the eyes of Edgar's best friend and dog captured the character of a devoted animal with more skill than I would have thought possible.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is selling well- it has Oprah's endorsement, and today rests at #10 on the Kindle bestseller list, and is Amazon's 26th overall best selling book. Yet the genre confusion at the opening nearly lost my sale. Maybe I just need to loosen up my genre expectations...but with the advent of the downloadable sample chapter, should writers be thinking more about how the first few pages set the tone of their book?

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.