The folks behind the marketing campaign for Syfy’s new/returning show, Alphas, have been sending me lots of video links. I’ve decided to share those with all of you (by “share” I mean “use my blog space to point to things you might have found on Youtube if you had been looking”). If you have been watching the show, please let me know what you think in the comments. Here are the video promos:
Occasionally I will post a poem or some other piece of writing on my blog under the title “Adventures in …” Why? Because I like sharing and sometimes I write things that I don’t feel like publishing, for one reason or another. And if I’m not going to publish it through traditional channels, I might as well share it. The following poem is certainly not one of my best. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote it. But it is the first poem I’ve written with the note feature of my Zune HD. That’s pretty cool, no? Anywho. Feel free to let me know what you think. Here’s the poem: “Snow Globe” The dream slips into nothingness, the chasm a story that never ends and whips the world into a warped waking of minds. Who are we in the dream but the tender wisps of someone’s eldest aspirations? Who do we become in another’s dreams but the hope transposed over the globe of the soul. When we grow into our own snow globes we turn the dream upon itself to become the careful display of nostalgic longing. Until one day the new child forms from the chiasmic center of a hurricane ocean of imaginations. Until we become ourselves the makers of globes.
I’ve also started a new writing project, which I’m tentatively calling The Last Fable of Maxine Swansey, which takes place (currently) over three different time periods in a character’s life (1984, 2050, and 2155). I may add more time periods, and possibly other characters across the years inbetween. I don’t know. What I do know is that the writing style for this piece is nothing like anything I’ve written before. It combines stream of consciousness and a literary writing structure reminiscent of someone like Pynchon or Salman Rushdie (more Rushdie than Pynchon at the moment — these are just comparisons to give an impression of the style I’m working with, not an assessment of quality or an admission of copycat behavior). I’m not sure why I’m doing this, though I like how inserting stream of consciousness in the middle of third person does some interesting things to destabilize the narrative (in a way that I think works). We’ll see what happens as I continue to write this thing. Point is: I’m having fun doing something weird, but also mundane. There’s a lot of intersection between the everyday and the strange, and the often fuzzy border that exists between the two (the first chapter involves a character discovering a man in a random Spanish courtyard trying to convince people he has learned how to control animals through martial art dance — in this case, a bull — and there’s all kinds of other weirdness going on, too — coincidences upon coincidences, some strange technology, odd characters, and so on and so forth). And that, I think, is what I really need. I need to have fun just writing something. Something I can insert more of my life into, as writers are wont to do. Anywho. What are you all up to?
The net is abuzz with news that Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, has passed away after what appeared to be complications from heart surgery. He was 82. Perhaps it sounds silly to some, but I teared up after seeing this on Twitter and realizing it wasn’t a hoax. It’s hard to explain, but Neil Armstrong is one of those people you can’t help but look up to. A person who did something no other human being had ever done before. He fulfilled the dreams of writers and scientists and people sitting around in their living rooms watching black-and-white scifi TV shows. July 20th, 1969 will forever be a reminder of his achievements, and the achievements of his fellow astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. Like a lot of people, he was, in no small way, an inspiration for me when I was a child — if not directly, then by proxy. I remember watching a live broadcast of a shuttle liftoff as a kid and thinking to myself, “That might be me one day.” There’s something powerful about that kind of reaction, of believing you can do something — that you should do something. Health conditions made sure I would never be an astronaut, but the world Armstrong created by putting his feet into the fine dust of the Moon was one that made me long to go up there and carve out a piece of history for myself, however small. Perhaps that explains my obsession with space, and not just science fiction. It explains my desperate desire to go up there one day, even if only for a few moments. To feel space in my own way. To feel like I’m a part of some grander human experience. Armstrong made all of that possible. And in a weird way, I thought he would always be here. I know that’s insane, since we all must die. He was 82, after all; he lived a lot of years. But he was supposed to be there like some kind of great father, to watch over us as we journeyed further and further out there, to be there for us with all his wisdom. The world does not feel right without him — cannot feel right. There’s an emptiness now. We’ve lost a human being who meant so much to so many. A man who took us where no humans had ever been before, who uttered a line that will echo throughout history forever: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” You will have a special place in our hearts, Mr. Armstrong. One day, when some human being puts his or her feet on some distant rock, like Mars or maybe a planet around another star, they will think of you, your words, and what you meant to the world and mankind. And maybe they too will bask in the glory that you began all those years ago. Sleep well, hero.
It seems the furor over the would-be publication of the first chapter of Save the Pearls by Victoria Foyt hasn’t quite sunk in yet for Marvin Kaye, the new editor of Weird Tales. You can read my previous post and all the attached links to get a sense of what happened — if you don’t know already. To add to the mess, as Rose Fox of Publishers Weekly reports, Kaye has taken to defending himself in emails sent to individuals requesting to have their subscriptions canceled rather than posting a public response as “promised” by the publisher (the request Rose discusses was made by L. Grabenstetter here)(I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting the message here, though I strongly suggest reading both Rose Fox’s and L. Grabenstetter’s articles): Your wishes will be respected; I believe the publisher will handle that, I regret your decision, and can only say that after reading the book, I found it a powerful attack on racism, just the opposite from the charges leveled at it. However, I only recently saw the marketing of this book, and find it in terrible taste; had I seen it, I would not have read the book. As it is, we have decided not to publish the story. Regarding Scott Card’s story, I did not see any homophobia in it, or I would have objected, but for the record, I did not want to buy anything from him; the publisher, Tor Books, made it clear that if I did not include his story, they would not publish the book at all. MK I can’t help but wonder what is going through Kaye’s head. Whatever you think of Card, his Hamlet rewrite was thoroughly panned for, well, being rather homophobic and legitimating certain anti-gay stereotypes. How Kaye can defend Hamlet’s Father against these criticisms is perhaps indicative of his inability to accept what many are saying about Save the Pearls. While I have personally reserved judgment on Save the Pearls because I have yet to read it, the community has voiced its mostly-negative opinion. They are not happy, and the more I read about their reasons, the more I’m inclined to agree with them. Most people/organizations would see the anger being funneled their way and immediately go into damage control. But not Kaye. Rather than, if you’ll excuse the phrase, take his head out of his ass, he’s decided to suspend critical analysis in favor of further idiocy. At this point it doesn’t really matter whether Save the Pearls is racist; Kaye and the publisher have made a critical error, both in effectively lying to us about when they became aware of the depth of controversy surrounding Foyt’s work and in refusing to recognize what is happening to them (or, rather, what they have done to themselves) as a product of poor management, poor vision, and poor public relations. By sending defensive emails to subscribers, you don’t help your case. Just look at how poorly Progressive Insurance have handled themselves in recent weeks. The point is that as a member of a professional venture, it behooves you to maintain professional decorum, even if the Internet will not afford you the same courtesy. That means admitting mistakes when you make them, acknowledging and fielding counterpoints with respect, and so on (these are basic concepts of argumentation, by the way). Perhaps some people are being overly harsh to Save the Pearls, but you cannot make that case by, as I mentioned the other day, treating the opposition with condescension bordering on contempt. I’m not sure if Weird Tales can recover from these massive failures. With subscribers shedding the magazine and the SF/F community generally up in arms over it all, it will take an extraordinary amount of work to gain the community’s trust. And that might be an understatement.
I’m teaching an Introduction to Literature course this semester and cannot decide between two of Shakespeare’s plays. So I’m going to leave that up to the Internet. Vote away:
