Speculative Conclusions

"I remember"

2009-06-15T15:13:00.004-05:00

I meandered over to a Twitter search this afternoon (I'm still trying to get the hang of connecting on Twitter), and stumbled on the phrase "I remember". Wow, how the nostalgia hits. And so I decided to dedicate this session of "Speculative Conclusions" blog to some of my fondest SF memories.

I remember "Danger Will Robinson" - I despised Dr. Smith for his whining and complaining, but only recently realized as an adult that the whole reason the family was Lost in Space to begin with was because of his treachery. I wish I could watch the show all over again and hate him properly. And you know and I know Billy Mumy was the best actor of all of them.

I remember Moon Base Alpha - I waited with bated breath each week for "Space 1999", and my favorite character, Maya, the metamorph. I thought she was beautiful, even with her warty eyebrows, and I wanted more than anything to be the changeling kind of person she was. And I also remember thinking the year 1999 was a loooong way away.

I remember when Lt. Starbuck was Dirk Benedict - and I had a crush on him because he was underappreciated by all the girls my age who fawned over Capt. Apollo. I remember the monkey in the robo-dog suit, and how Lorne Greene seemed so wise and fatherly in that show, just like so many of his shows.

I remember the queue lines for "Star Wars" tickets. Yes, the original showing of the original film. Back when the special effects were bleeding edge. Back when the cheebogie chef on Saturday Night Live sang "Star wars, give me those Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars...give me them all."

I remember "Farenheit 451" - When my teacher assigned it for reading, and I was introduced to a world through Ray Bradbury's eyes that changed me forever. I remember thinking "someday, I want to write like that." And I remember "Something Wicked This Way Comes." And his vampire short stories. And thinking "I'll never be able write that like someday."

And I remember being the first family on the block with Atari for Christmas. Pong, to be exact. And text-based adventure games on orange-background computer screens. And struggling through Tolkein, but blasting my way through Orson Scott Card. And I remember my first SF convention, where people were speaking my language and I realized at last I found the tribe I'd been somehow separated from at birth; and I learned the name of this long-lost tribe: The Geeks.

And I remember feeling the tug of Fate on my sleeve, and how she smiled up at me, and gave me a nod, saying "You can stop wandering now, you've found them. Go make yourself at home."

Hypericon 5 - June '09

2009-06-08T16:54:00.005-05:00

It's so nice to attend a science fiction convention that's close to home; we didn't have to leave on Friday at dawn, and we had time to linger a little on Sunday afternoon in the con suite for hot dogs and friends, and still got home in time for dinner. Hypericon 5 was held in Nashville, June 5-7.

Dan and I attended as guests, representing our publishing business, Meadowhawk Press. The atmosphere of the dealer room rumbled with enthusiasm as fellow shopkeepers set up for weekend business. As I was settling into the rhythm of things, Fred Grimm (the head honcho organizer) found me unpacking. "You're on a panel in about five minutes." I panicked! I'd checked the schedule and thought I wasn't on a panel until much later. Fred gave me a benevolent grin and explained, "You didn't know about this one, it's the 'mystery' panel." Oh! Well, that's different. So I gathered up my book props and headed upstairs with D.A. Adams, author of "Brotherhood of the Dwarves", and joined other unsuspecting writers on a panel with surprise questions: Kimberly Raiser, "The Family Bones", Wrath James White, "Succulent Prey", P.S. Gifford, "The Curious Accounts of the Imaginary Friend", and James Maberry, "Patient Zero". We answered questions such as "Who is your favorite villain?" and "What's the hardest part about writing novels?". It was a great start to the weekend!

I also discovered a couple of artists of whom I've become a fan. Steven Gilberts is a darkish sort of fantasy artist that has the most unique talent! Since Meadowhawk Press is open for manuscripts right now, Dan is really jonesing for the right dark fantasy--because he wants a Gilberts cover! I also met Sarah Frary, whose 'tree people' really caught my eye. Can't wait to hang my new art in my office. She is also amazing with Sharpie tattoos, you just wouldn't believe what she managed to create. Check out her tattoos on her blog (mine is there! I'm the one with the tree woman): http://spiralunwinding.blogspot.com/

I had a blast hanging out with old friends Jason Sizemore (Apex), Evyl Ed, and of course, author Alethea Kontis (Princess of the Con). Plus I had the chance to get to know new friends like author Stephen Zimmer, who is really motivated and whose enthusiasm revived my own.

Sunday closing ceremony came too soon, but the good news is that I'll see many of the same faces again at upcoming conventions. If you've never been to a science fiction convention, you should! And if I'm there, come find me in the dealer's room (I'm usually easy to find, surrounded by books).

Life and Times in Bookland

2009-06-02T18:43:00.004-05:00

I'm so excited. I've just arrived home with a treasure! I picked up the just-released novel "The Strain" by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan, which I can hardly wait to crack open and get reading. I've been a fan of Del Toro as a director for a long time, I'm hoping I can be a fan of his writing as well! As a visionary, I think of Del Toro as a cross between Jim Henson and Tim Burton, two artists of whom I'm also an admirer.

I'm not sure how much reading I'll get done this week, since I'm gearing up for Hypericon in Nashville from Friday to Sunday (June 5-7). Meadowhawk Press will be in the dealer room, plus my hubby and I will represent on a couple panels; I'll be talking about villians and dragons, which can sometimes be the same thing!

And I'm coming around the final bend for word count on my WIP: a time-travel/alternate history short story-turned novel that's got about 5,000 words to go to the end. It's been a long time coming, and I'm hoping to hit my personal deadline in a few days. I've been working at the story for well over a year, nibbling away at it in between other projects, and it's going to feel great to type The End. Which is really just the beginning of the next phase.

Lots to do in Bookland, where I spend most of my time; writing, editing, reading, formatting, accepting, declining, and publishing. But I'm here because I love it, and not just for the scenery, but also for the neighbors. It's prime real estate, and no matter how full the block, there's always room for one more.

Read a book, and move on in.

"We" - by Yevgeny Zamyatin

2009-05-28T18:37:00.004-05:00

I've only just closed the last page of this fascinating book. I feel as breathless as D-503, the journalist and main character of the story, as he searches for his grip on his reality. What a ride.

The story is chronicled by D-503, a cipher of the One State. He is happily obedient as worker-mathematician, toiling for the Benefactor. But by the meddling in his head of a woman, I-330, he becomes ill with a "soul" that torments him with feelings, laughter, confusion...love.

But she's no ordinary cipher, of course. She has designs. And D-503 finds himself dragged toward his own destruction by the ring in his nose. Has he replaced one dictator for another?

Zamyatin was no stranger to Totalitarianism. This novel emerges from the time of revolutionary Petrograd. It took the Czechs to manage getting it to print. He'd been arrested and exiled from Russia, arrested and internally exiled (when they couldn't keep him out), and put before a judge again who kicked him back out. All for his revolutionary writing.

The claim has been made that Zamyatin is the inventor of the Dystopia, and that might possibly be true in fiction, This book is rife with "cliche" plot twists and turns, but at its time of writing, it hadn't become cliche yet. It was pioneering.

The novel does often read almost as a stream-of-consciousness tale, and at times I truly struggled to tell the difference between D-503's imaginings and what seemed to be reality. Which isn't exactly a departure from what D-503 himself experiences, so I found this forgivable. I've been told the translation can make an astounding difference as to language, tone, and effect, and so I'll share that I read the translation by Natasha Randall, and I found it to be poetically breathtaking.

I struggled for some time to find a tea companion for this novel that truly fits. And I discovered a wonderful new tea at the same time; one I find particularly true to the flavor of "We". Numi's "Golden Chai"-- http://www.amazon.com/Numi-Golden-Spiced-Assam-18-Count/dp/B000FFS91M --is a beautifully delicate balance of traditional chai with a clearly defined ginger overtone that complements the tragic, but septically clean, life of Zamyatin's ciphers with living at the mercy of the One State.

Try both, the book and the tea, and let me know what you think!

AI: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)

2009-05-25T17:30:00.004-05:00

This afternoon, rather than spend valuable time reading a book, I chose to watch a science fiction film I've heard so much about over the years, but hadn't actually seen before. I watched AI: Artificial Intelligence - Steven Spielberg.

And I'm practically speechless at the sheer waste of time. But I think I can manage a few words.

It started out promising enough, if not spoon-fed. In the opening scene, William Hurt addresses a room full of cybernetic engineers for his company, introducing his concept for a child robot (mecha) who is programmed to love. An engineer poses a question, "But can a human come to love a robot in return?" I would have liked the movie to pose this question as plot, and allow the story to answer it, but apparently Spielberg was in a hurry to get it out and move on.

So it morphed into a story about a creepy kid who imprints a mother who struggles with what to do with him, and just as I was settling into this story WHAM!

It became a story about a lover model AI framed for murder. Boy was he in a lot of trouble.

But wait, no...it became a story about the lover model AI who discovers the friendship of a young boy robot who can believe somehow in fairy tales, and teaches this lover model AI about--

No, no...switch again. It's a quest tale about a young boy robot and his cynical but trustworthy lover model AI who embark on a journey to find the blue fairy--

Er, wait. It's the story of the scientist who lost his son and created a whole line of supertoys named David in order to keep his son alive--

Or, a story about man's greed and the end of the world--

Tired yet? I was too, and it wasn't anywhere near the end. About the time the robot boy David got trapped inside a submersicopter at the bottom of the ocean, staring up at the statue face of the blue fairy from Manhattan's flooded Coney Island, I was squirming for the thing to just come to a point. Any point. Pick one from the above list and be done already.

But it's Steven Spielberg, folks, and he couldn't leave it there without aliens. Cue narration, and fast forward two thousand years.

An alien species breaks David the robot boy out of the ice and manufactures a pretend world where he can have his mother back for one day only. And the explanation was something like this:

Blue Fairy(voice of Meryl Streep): You have been searching for me for a long time.

David: My whole life.

Blue Fairy: And what would you ask of me now that you have found me?

David: I want you to make me a real boy.

Blue Fairy: Oh, dear David. I would do anything in my power to help, but I can not make you a real boy.

David: But, but!

Blue Fairy: But I can do something else. I can bring back other people from your past when you are lonely...we scavenge the wreckage of the world for parts of people and use them to recreate humans.

David: Then bring back my mother!

Blue Fairy: Oh, but dearest, sweetest David. I would need something of her body; a bone, a piece of fingernail...

It was at this time I realized Steven Spielberg was channeling Ed Wood.

But have no fear, David had a lock of his mother's hair, so thank goodness the movie could keep going. And it did. Giving the scrawny, glass-like aliens a chance to preach a little and explain that David would only have his mother for one day. To which David replies, "Maybe that one day will be like the one in the submersicopter. It will last forever."

Again, I could swear Ed Wood was in the room.

But apparently Spielberg ran out of budget or film, because it did end. With smiles on their faces, David and his mother slept on forever in the place of dreams. Or something. He'd lost me back at "fingernail".

Final analysis? Not tea-worthy. Not even the Lipton Instant kind. Not even close.

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

2009-05-14T16:37:00.003-05:00

A sleepy village in rural England loses contact with the world for an entire day. Strange and mysterious, yes, but alarming? Not so much, for a bunch of proper British folks who wake up and manage to go about their day; cold, but determined. However, a few weeks later, all the females of childbearing age find themselves pregnant, virgin or otherwise. And the babies all share the same feature: golden eyes. And as time goes on, the village discovers that's not all the children share.

The novel is a classic from 1957. It's a little tricky to get hold of, but well worth the effort. It's one of my personal favorites, written at a time when Science Fiction writers were coming into their own. Wyndham is a little ahead of his time as he writes of moral implications and cultural effects. His style is straight-forward and charming, with little mind to the science of the happening, and more on the results in the lives of people.

The title is intriguing! The immediate association, I think, is "Cuckoo" as though "Nuts", or "Wacko", and it certainly fits. However, as a bird, the cuckoo often lays its eggs in another bird's nest...

And the perfect tea companion to this tale of surrogacy is Irish Breakfast Tea: http://shopstashtea.com/050320.html . The tea is also a little tricky to get hold of, but well worth the effort. It's a black tea, strong like English Breakfast, but with an undertaste of malt that comes along after the initial taste to really deepen the experience. Cream and sweetener make this almost a dessert.

"Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne

2009-05-11T16:29:00.003-05:00

I find the classic novel a mixture of charm and density of detail. I read in a biography of Verne how he would spend hours in research, and I certainly see the results of that in this particular tale.

The story is told by Axel, the nephew of Professor Otto Lidenbrock, who reluctantly joins his uncle and an Icelandic guide into an inactive volcano--an opening to a pathway that leads to the center of the earth. Axel disbelieves each step of the way; his uncle is a force of determination.

The novel reads much like a geography lesson. There are frequent pauses for the professor to divulge paragraphs of scientific argument (I kept envisioning Verne as the writer, determined to "prove" to his readers, by way of Lidenbrock, that he knew what he was talking about). Perhaps it was due to his time, knowing though the novel was fictional, it would yet need to stand up to the scrutiny of the ever-expanding scientific knowledge of Victorian England.

What spares the reader from being completely buried beneath the science lesson is Verne's ability to use his skill for detail on the characters. The fiery temper of Professor Lidenbrock is true-to-form through the entire story, and even the landscape itself takes on a personality that carries throughout.

So what sort of tea might one drink for the reading of "Journey to the Center of the Earth"? I suggest a fruity herbal--a reader will need patience for this tale, not the effects of caffeine. Be ready to slow down, take the novel at the pace with which it's written. And a light flavor is best, something of a berry blend: http://www.celestialseasonings.com/products/detail.html/herbal-teas/black-cherry-berry , to contraindicate the dark depths to which the characters descend. And don't forget the sweetener! I think you'll need it.

The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells

2009-05-07T15:33:00.005-05:00

viv·i·sec·tion

(vĭv'ĭ-sěk'shən, vĭv'ĭ-sěk'-)
n. The act or practice of cutting into or otherwise injuring living animals, especially for the purpose of scientific research.

"The Island of Dr. Moreau" is the fourth in a long list of novels by Herbert George Wells. Wells's voice is as strong in this as any many of his early books; full of meaty imaginings and the kind of view into humanity that makes one wince (see: vivisection, above).

In the story, a shipwrecked man named Edward Prendick journals his experiences as he's stranded on an island with an odd sort of right-hand man and Dr. Moreau, a man of science and questionable sanity. But the three are not the only island inhabitants; animal-human creatures Prendick calls the "Beast-Men" populate the ravines and shadows. How these Beast-Men have come to be is told best by Wells (pick up a copy of the book, if you haven't read it!).

It's been theorized that in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" Wells has made Dr. Moreau God, and drawn parallel religious lines along that theme throughout. But I think that's a too-easy answer. Certainly, Moreau thinks of himself as a kind of god, but Prendick makes no such leap. He falls into some posturing as such, when it becomes a matter of life or death, but is well aware of what's going on, and why.

In fact Prendick ponders on deeper questions later in the book. He's a man who struggles to return to life-as-it-were before he'd glimpsed into something of the truth. He sees fellow man with a kind of veil lifted, and intimates a wondering at the base of our existence. Who are we? And who are we without God?

But nothing deepens the experience of reading a good novel as much as sipping tea while doing so. And my personal recommendation of tea for such a writer as H.G.Wells is Yorkshire Gold: http://www.englishteastore.com/yogo40teaba.html . It's a stout tea, full of body like coffee, but smooth and without bitterness. Did I mention it's stout? One bag will brew 6-8 cups of tea. I brew mine through a coffeepot, couldn't be easier. Add some sweetener and bit of cream, and you've got one terrific taste of Wells-in-a-tea.

Focus on: Trillion Year Spree

2009-05-04T21:14:00.001-05:00

Brian W. Aldiss has written a fantastically exhaustive history of Science Fiction. The first edition, titled "Billion Year Spree" was published in 1973. This latest, from 1986, isn't just revised, it's nearly rewritten and twice the original length.

I have to wonder at the possible length it might be were it expanded yet again to include the last 15 years of speculative fiction, and the current--shall I say meteoric?--rise of of the latest names.

Nevertheless, it's a good reference, and what it lacks in direct plot it makes up for in opinionated narrative. His is a viewpoint of science fiction as literature, if it meets the prescribed convention, and suggests we can mine centuries as far back as the 17th to find bits of scientifiction trope.

It's too easy to think of SF as a most recent blip on the literary radar. To place its beginning with "Hugo Gernsback's lurid magazines in the nineteen-twenties" might serve well for nostalgia's sake, but man, specifically writing-man, has been imagining himself among the stars (or beneath Earth's surface), expanding and contracting against his mortal confines for far longer, of course.

One might say SF is the stuff of myth or legend, of science and environment, of exploration and conquer. It has solidified into a genre in the late half of the century, the "fiction of a technological age". But I like the way Mr. Aldiss sets a parameter for it. In his own words: "Science Fiction must call to account our deepest fears and aspirations."

Isn't that really the best of all literature?