February 2010

I have finally settled back in from my trip to the SWTXPCA conference. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I had a blast at the conference and expect I will attend it again in the future. There’s one more post about the SWTXPCA coming, by the way. Having returned, I will be resuming regular programming here at WISB. I have no idea what that will mean, but I assure you there will be a post about my existential crisis brought on by Star Wars and some other curious things. Perhaps the most important and interesting bit of news, however, is that I have begun work on an urban fantasy musical comedy tentatively titled “The Last Temptation of Susan B.” The main character, Susan B., lives in a world dominated by fantastic creatures and people with fantastic powers, but has no such fantastic elements herself. She’s essentially useless. So far, I can only provide sparse details about the narrative (since that’s all I have at this point). The musical will contain: –A vampiric Texan named Ted–A shirtless, muscular werewolf name Pistachio–A song cleverly titled “Fang Envy”–A talking goose named Colonel Gander More details will come as I come up with them. You’re welcome to leave a comment with your opinions. Now, having said all of the above, I think it’s time to get back to normalcy. Cyborg out…or something less dorky…

The second day at the SWTXPCA proved to be one hell of a long day. I’m going to split it all up by sections, since a lot happened. PanelsAnother big day for panels; I spent most of the day visiting the science fiction folks, rather than doing what a true academic does by filling his head with things from various other departments. Here are some highlights:–Witnessed a curious paper on the issues of balance and eco-feminism in LeGuin’s A Wizard of Earthsea, with a particular focus on what you might call an “Eastern influence” (yin/yang). There was some talk about the destruction of the self ego, too, but I didn’t press further on that.–Had the pleasure of hearing a short version of the history of Steampunk and its rise to popularity. I knew most of what was discussed before, but it was nice to hear a little deeper discussion about it. I asked the author how she would situate the figure of the “punk” in her assessment of Steampunk, but she seemed to agree with most that the punk postfix is primarilyy meaningless.–I saw a really fantastic presentation that analyzed various forms of imagery within the movie A.I. I would have liked to see the paper taken further, but I really enjoyed how the presenter incorporated video into his presentation. It worked very well and was quite beautiful.–I also attended a panel on Darwinism, which included a lot of discussion of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. One of the panelists showed some hilarious clips from old adaptations of the book; we had a good laugh.–The keynote speaker was a fellow named Adilifu Nama from the University of California, Riverside. He’s the author of an interesting book called Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film. His speech wasn’t so much about his book than about how academics in the field of popular culture can go about reaching out to the general public to bring them into the discussion and put academic work more into the public sphere. It was a very interesting argument. I plan to purchase his book soon.–The day came to a close shortly after I attended a really interesting panel about science fiction and history. One particularly curious panel involved a critique of the belief that Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is racist and, thus, an indicator of the author’s racism. I wasn’t aware that such things were being said, but I guess the world is a strange place, right? Evening Movie Showing: Once More, With Feeling (Buffy) and Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along BlogI had never seen either of the aforementioned musicals. Everyone tells me Dr. Horrible is amazing, and, to be honest, I think that’s an understatement. The Buffy episode aside (equally as entertaining, I think), Dr. Horrible is all kinds of brilliant. The cast is amazingly perfect, the music is memorable and fantastic, the singing is actually on par with most Broadway musicals I have seen/heard, and the story is both funny and tragic, in all the right ways. If you haven’t seen it, do…please. I feel like it changed my life. That said, “Once More, With Feeling” is also quite fantastic, although I think it works more as a gimmick episode than as a legitimate musical. The music is sometimes so-so, and obviously the actors are not always particularly strong singers. It’s more a “fan” thing than anything else. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the musical episode and will continue to do so for years to come. Probably the most entertaining aspect of seeing these two films back-to-back is having the pleasure of being a part of an audience that is deeply connected to what is being displayed. Pretty much everyone sang along; it was like going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but without transvestites. Additions to the New Reading List–A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin–Phenomenology of the Mind by Hegel–Barrow (on machines/humans/etc.)–R.U.R.–Crashing the Gates of Insight–Kelheffer (on Steampunk)–Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld–Aviator/Aviatrix (concept)–Astrofuturism by Kilgore–A.I. (watch)–Moon Watchers (watch/read)–Travels in Hyperreality by Umberto Eco–Contact (watch)–Cocoon 2 (watch)–John Moffet (on extraterrestrials)–Close Encounters of the Third Kind (watch)–Valis by Philip K. Dick–Solaris by Stanislaw Lem–Pearl White–Child Loving by James Kincaid–Black Space: Imagining Race in Science Fiction Film by Adilifu Nama–Necronomicon (H. R. Giger)–Pushing Daisies (watch) And that’s it. Hope you all had a good day!

I forgot to mention that I had the opportunity to see the most excellent Mexican science fiction film called Sleep Dealer. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s certainly not a perfect movie (the ending is kind of silly), but I think it is one of the best foreign SF films currently in existence, and it definitely questions a lot of the problems of the world we live in today, as all SF should. And that’s all I have to say on that. More updates to come!

What a great way to begin a conference. The SWTXPCA Conference (31st Annual) began on Wednesday, but, due to my school schedule and other obligations, I couldn’t leave for Albuquerque until the first day of the conference. Silly me for thinking that airline travel would go smoothly. To start things off, my flight was canceled and nobody at U.S. Airways told me until I arrived to check my bags at the lovely Gainesville airport. Thankfully, they shoved me onto a different flight, which had one less change, and no airline switching. That meant that my professional early arrival (two hours before my flight) ended up being an extra two hours. But, I made it to Albuquerque at around midnight and proceeded to put the finishing touches on my paper, since I had to present it at 8 in the morning (apparently it’s a great idea to put Battlestar Galactica at the ass-end of the morning). The presentation, however, went well. There were four of us, and when all was done and over with, there were a lot of questions and folks seemed generally receptive to my argument. Mixing Philip K. Dick with Battlestar Galactica really opens the discussion and I received some excellent suggests for how to take the research further (such as looking deeper into the cosmopolitan or rhizomatic figure–for non-academics, that means a person who is kind of between spaces/worlds, such as Helo from BSG). After that, I attended several other panels and had the pleasure of hearing some amazing papers. One in particular by a student from Lakehead University up in Canada dealt with how Futurama’s future representation is, in the end, still a reaffirmation of (American) patriarchy–a fascinating paper indeed. Pretty much every panel I attended had something fascinating going on, from discussing the problems of race in Battlestar Galactica (now I can’t think of Duala as removed from the “magical negro” trope), to a humorous, but serious look at the apparent rules to surviving the apocalypse (post-event), to representations of religion and homosexuality in 20th century young adult literature and the idea of “girly culture,” to a very fun look at Whedon’s various universes, which included an interesting discussion of the frontier “myth” in Firefly and Serenity. Needless to say, I learned a lot the first day, and feel very much like I’m at the equivalent of an academic version of a science fiction convention (with the exception being that not everything being discussed is science fiction). The only thing I wish they had more of was academic booksellers; there were several fairly important sellers at the convention, but it would have been nice to see it extended to other companies (like Routledge or Wesleyan) and to wider subjects (much of what was available focused entirely upon popular culture things; I would have liked to see some inclusion of theory that has been used in popular culture, though). I did purchase two interesting books, however: –Twain and Freud on the Human Race: Parallels on Personality, Politics, and Religion by Abraham Kupersmith–The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii: Fantasy, Technology, and Politics by Dani Cavallaro In closing out this discussion of the first day, I’ll leave you with my new reading/watching list:–Foucault and Gramsci (on the hegemonic principle)–John Locke and Schumaker (on personal identity)–Peter Singer (on suffering, which I’ve read before)–Crip Theory (or Crypt Theory)–Slave of the Thirst by Tom Holland–Herland–Jericho–Jeremiah–Zombieland–Third Space Feminism–The Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway–Sandoval (on cyber-identity)–Newly Born Women by Helene Cixous–Futurama–Strange Days–The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault–The Fatal Environment And that’s it from me for today!