January 2013

SF/F Commentary

“You Haven’t Read That, Teacher?” and Other “Not a Real Field” Fallacies (Teaching Rambles)

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I just had a rather strange short conversation with a fellow about The Iron Heel by Jack London.  That conversation went something like this: Guy:  Is that Jack London? Me:  Yup.  The Iron Heel. Guy:  I’ve never heard of that one.  I wonder if I have it on my reader.  (checks)  Yup!  I’m currently reading The Sea-Wolf.  It’s a post-apocalyptic book. Me:  I’ve never heard of that one.  Cool! Guy:  Why are you reading The Iron Heel.  A fan? Me:  I’m teaching it. Guy:  Are you an English major? Me:  Yup. Guy:  And you’re teaching a book you’ve not finished? Me:  Yup. Guy:  Good luck. (turns away as if annoyed) I don’t know anything about this individual.  Perhaps he’s an England major or just an avid reader or a philosophy major or whatever.  But it was clear from his tone that he found it rather distasteful that one might teach a book they haven’t read yet (if I didn’t plan to read the book at all, then I’d deserve the tone — keep in mind he had no idea when I planned to teach said book). Of course, he might think this because many people don’t know much about literature courses — particularly, surveys, in which you have less freedom for selection (thus, we end up teaching a few things we haven’t read simply because much of the study in any major literary field — American, British, etc. — has moved beyond standard canonical studies).  But we don’t select books in a vacuum (I don’t, that is).  When I select books, my criteria focuses first on my own personal readings, and second (and most importantly) on the critical literature.  In the case of The Iron Heel, I selected it because it fit into the themes of the course (Dystopia and American Anxiety) and because it appears in great detail in much of the critical literature on dystopian writing.  In other words, I know what this book is about, I know about its themes and issues, and I know much of the major interpretations of the work as they relate to the theme in question.  This isn’t a book I’m reading blindly.  It’s a book that I’ve practically already read, minus the fact that the actual pages have never flitted before my eyes.* And, surprisingly, this is not unusual in academia at large (I know many people who teach introductory courses in their fields who effectively teach from knowledge obtained elsewhere than the books they assign — the same happens in a lot of introductory college argument classes, since the general information rarely changes, though the structures and pedagogical practices do).  Part of the problem is the assumption that all humanities courses are entirely and utterly subjective, and that we come to literature simply from some ingrained interest or feeling about a work.  This is false.  Literary studies are far more than just “reading books and responding to them.”  It is a tradition and a body of research that transcends the limits of the page.  That literature has remained a major field of study for centuries is a testament to its validity as a scholarly field (the same is true of much of the humanities, including philosophy, religion, and so on). I can’t say for certain, but I suspect this false perspective derives from the teaching practices in the K through 12 system (everything prior to Uni for non-U.S. folks).  Much of my evidence is anecdotal, though I think the shocking percentage of students I’ve taught who don’t even know what “literary analysis” means is credible enough (at least a third of all students in the few literature classes I’ve taught, if not slightly more**).  In other words, if we teach literature not as a discipline of study on par with the sciences (in terms of its academic output, not necessarily in terms of its applicability to the everyday world), we might curb some of the misunderstandings that contribute to the nationwide attempt to devalue and defund literary study (and other humanities fields). If this narrative sounds familiar, it’s because a very similar narrative was used by literary scholars to disregard genre fiction — one of my major fields of study.  Just as those scholars didn’t understand the value of science fiction, so too do many universities and a portion of the public often fail to understand the value literary studies.  Some of that is undoubtedly because the people within my field have failed to convey the message about literature to the general public in a way that attracts interest and understandng (in particular, an answer to the question “Why should we take you seriously?”).  There is already a small movement in genre studies to convince scholars to attempt to bring their work to the masses, and no insignificant amount of push back by scholars from the old guard.***  I’m not sure if it will succeed, though McFarland Books is largely considered by many faculty to fulfill that role, more or less.**** Maybe what literary studies needs is a Neil deGrasse Tyson to play Literary Populist for everyone who doesn’t become an English major.  What do you think? ———————————————— *As a general rule, I do not fill my syllabi with works I have no read.  The only works I will include that fall in the “I know everything about it, but I haven’t read it” category are those works that I feel are crucial to the theme I am trying to explore. **This statistic is not meant as an insult to students or to education at large.  There are a lot of reasons why students don’t know X, Y, and Z, just as there are a lot of reasons why schools often can’t teach those subjects. ***I still recall attending a PCA/ACA conference wherein the keynote declared in his speech that genre studies must reframe itself for everyday folks if it expects to survive.  Some people were quite unhappy with that speech. ****Despite the image as a pop academic press, McFarland has

Book Reviews

Book Review: Birds and Birthdays by Christopher Barzak

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(Note:  This will be a long review.  If you want the short version, it’s this — go buy the book, because it’s bloody good.) In 2007, Christopher Barzak released One For Sorrow, a supernatural YA novel that so successfully encapsulated the terrifying experience of adolescence that it became one of my favorite novels of the 2000s.    While a drastically different work, Birds and Birthdays continues Barzak’s exploration of the multitudinous factors that form the basis of identity. Birds and Birthdays is, first, a conceptual collection.  The fourth chapter of the book offers a detailed account of Barzak’s research in the Surrealist movement (existing roughly in the space between the two world wars) and the women who were almost forgotten there.  As an experiment in feeding female artistic expression (painting) through literary interpretation (fiction), the collection draws parallels between the worlds of metaphor (the paintings) and the very real discourse of female identities in the wake of a patriarchal culture — this is part of the mission of the “Conversation Pieces” series at Aqueduct Press (to explore the “grand conversation”).  “Birthday,” for example, expands upon Dorothea Tanning’s painting of the same name by turning the unknown woman into Emma, who has spent her formative years taking on the identities required of her by her parents and the culture around her (53-54).  Thus, when Emma inherits her parents’ apartment complex, marries Joe at 21, and soon has a child (Jenna), she embarks on a quest to find an identify that more appropriately fits her inner self.  What begins as a series of cruel gestures on Emma’s part (leaving her family and her various lovers, one by one, by changing apartments within the same complex) quickly become the sympathetic acts of deliberate personal interrogation through others.  Perhaps the most disturbing of the three stories, “Birthday” is also perhaps the most profound in the collection as a work of neo-surrealist magical realism that draws into question the ways humans have been conditioned to accept identities for convenience. The other stories are equally compelling, but for drastically different reasons.  “The Creation of Birds,” — drawing upon Remedios Varo’s paintings, “Creation of the Birds” and “Star Catcher” — presents a modernized fairy tale involving the romantic opposition of the Bird Woman, who has the remarkable and beautiful ability to build and bring to life real and mythical birds, and the Star Catcher, whose namesake gives away his game (the Bird Woman remarks that catching stars and other things are a reminder that “[the Star Catcher] didn’t know how to love something he couldn’t own” (4)).  As a somewhat whimsical tale, “The Creation of Birds” is replete with period references to psychoanalysis (a field which is still practiced today, surprisingly) and stunning descriptions of the Bird Woman’s abilities — I particularly enjoyed the scenes involving the bird designs, if only because birds are, I believe, elegant creatures that would require painstaking detail to create from nothing.  But the heart of the story is her relationship to herself and to the Star Catcher, who seeks to “reclaim” her.  In this sense, it shares a relationship to “Birthday.” The middle story, “The Guardian of the Egg,” also questions our relationships and what they mean, but with a much more epic narrative.  Based on Leonora Carrington’s “The Giantess,” the story focuses on a what happens to the family of those who answer a “higher calling” — in this case, a mythical calling that draws parallels to the familiar “chosen one” narratives.  In particular, the story benefits from switching perspectives from “the chosen one” to an immediate family member.  The shift offers a fresh — though not wholly original — perspective on the now-traditional epic form.  Identity, of course, remains central to the narrative, but so too do the mythic forms upon which the narrative draws (similarly, I think, to “Birds”).  As a story, it effectively rides between an interrogation of those forms and of the roles others play within them.  But it is also a humorous tale, with dark references to our ability to turn people into “others” and a clever moment in which the main character must communicate with guardian geese. Collected together, the three stories have the effect of providing a range of perspectives/narratives that are each unique in and of themselves and each rendered with care and depth — a sense I draw from Barzak’s clean, minimalist prose, which he uses in service of a rather complex and specific narrative agenda. Birds and Birthdays, however, is certainly not a perfect work.  While I found a great deal of thematic material to draw on, the types of stories found in this collection are, I think, geared to a particular kind of reader.  With the exception of “The Guardian of the Egg,” none of the stories have “clean” resolutions (“Birthday” in particular), and all of the stories are heavily focused on the visual thematics of the original source material, thus producing works which are, in a sense, almost surrealist themselves — certainly a goal of Barzak’s.  For some readers, this might be too much, as surrealist works are, in my experience, frequently just that — too much.  Just like the surrealist films of the early 1900s (see examples at the bottom of this post), the stories in Birds and Birthdays are visually intense and cognitively detached.  “Birthday,” for example, relies more on its character’s peculiarities than it does on an ordered universe in which the containment of an individual’s many relationships in one apartment complex could not happen.  But those same peculiarities are what make the story a brilliant medium for exploring the “skins” we wear as social creatures.  Plot and pure resolution would, I think, detract from the message, just as removing the incomplete resolutions and estranging (read:  not cognitive estrangement) effects would do so for the other stories. In that sense, what I see as an at times compelling work of art, and at others a somewhat overwhelming vision, rests on the spectrum of work that you either love

SF/F Commentary

Say What? J. J. Abrams and the Star Wars Shuffle

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It’s official.  J. J. Abrams is going to direct the new Star Wars movie.  The good news?  He’s not writing it.  Nope.  That would be Michael Arndt, who is best known for Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story 3.  That’s good news indeed. When I set out to write this post, I imagined it would begin and end with a long diatribe about how many times I have been burned by J. J. Abrams since the travesty that was Cloverfield.  As a writer, Abrams is, in my opinion, no better than whoever Michael Bay pays to write his bloated scripts of plot-ological stupidity (Transformers 2, anyone?).  But he’s not a terrible director, given a good script, and he’s worked with amazing folks like Steven Spielberg. This post, then, will take a far different approach to whether Abrams is a good pick for the Star Wars universe (i.e., a randomly numbered string of equally random thoughts — sort of): 1) Considering what the Star Wars franchise has become, and the unlikelihood that Disney will make significant changes to the model, I can’t say that Abrams is necessarily a bad choice, given his work on Star Trek.  Star Trek, after all, wasn’t necessarily a bad movie in terms of its presentation.  It had a lot of the things that the franchise had been missing all lined up in near-perfect order; all of those elements are crucial to Star Wars movies anyway, minus glaring plot holes.  On this front, I agree with John Scalzi. 2) Whatever will happen to the Star Wars universe under Abrams, I can’t imagine it can end up any worse than Attack of the Clones.  The new movie won’t be another prequel, and is likely to take us away from the stock characters (not that I don’t like Skywalker and Solo or anything).  Even if the second half of that sentence isn’t true, at least we’ll have new stories to think about, with different writers and directors behind the helm.  At worst, Abrams can only offer a different look at a commercial franchise.  At best, he might actually make something that we’ll fondly remember. 3) I care more about the continuation and improvement of the Star Wars franchise in film form than I do about my well-documented dislike of J. J. Abrams.  In other words, I will see the new movie whether Abrams is a part of it or not.  That Arndt is writing the screenplay leads me to believe I’m not irrational to expect a decent movie. None of this means that I’m not apprehensive about the selection of Abrams.  I’d rather have a different director behind the helm, if I’m honest.  But the more I think about the selection, the less inclined I am to think, as I stupidly said on Twitter the other day, that Abrams will have a negative impact on the franchise.  Lucas kicked it when it was down well enough on his own… What do you all think?

SF/F Commentary

Distracting the Internet with Frankenstein, Dionne Brand, and Belated MLK Day!

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Wouldn’t it make the world a better place if we all randomly searched through our grandparents’ stuff and one day discovered some super important antique book signed by the author?  We could all share our magic book stories with one another, hold hands, and frolic in fields of emerald grass… Or we could just sell them to one another and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is what this guy did when he discovered a copy of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in his grandfather’s house (one of two inscribed by the author to have survived the evils of time).  We don’t know how much he sold the book for because the final auction price has been kept private (it exceeded his asking price of £350,000 ($567,000)).  That’s a lot of money, no? This guy is way cuter than I am, but it’s all the book.  Honest. The question, for me, is whether I would have sold the book if it had appeared on my grandmother’s shelf.  I’m not sure I would, to be honest.  A good chunk of my book collection is, well, collectible.  I’ve got some 100+-year-old books, lots of signed and personalized ones, and so on and so forth.  I even have a 1st Edition of the U.S. edition of the Silmarillion floating around in this apartment of mine (I think that’s important, but it’s probably not).  But no Frankenstein.  In fact, the most exciting discovery I recently had was realizing that my copy of Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Return had been signed by the author.  See? This is me trying my best creepy stalker / seductress pose.  Any tips? In any case, we now have two sexy copies of Frankenstein to hoo and haa over.  Hopefully I’ll get a chance to see one of them before I die… And on a completely random note, this: It’s now Thursday, but Monday was kind of an important holiday for us American people — Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  MLK, I think it’s fair to say, is one of the world’s greatest heroes — I still tear up when I hear his “I Have a Dream” speech. He also has a unique connection to the genre community through Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura on the original Star Trek.  You can hear her talk about her brief interactions with MLK Star Trek on this repeat episode of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast.  I just thought it was worth mentioning on this blog, even if the day is over. What nifty stuff has been going on in your worlds?

SF/F Commentary

Guest Post: Sassy Gay to Super Gay — Marvel’s Re-Definition of the Supporting Gay Character by Benjamin Kissell

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I remember being 9 years old and buying my first issue of Uncanny X-Men; my Mum had worked in a bookstore when I was little and had brought home rare gems, well-worn back-issues and cover-less comics [she couldn’t stand the sight of any book, comic or otherwise, being tossed into the garbage] so the sight of them on a newsstand was nothing new to me, however, this was the first issue I had bought of my own volition with my own money. And it? Was glorious. Newsprint paper supported an array of colors most reminiscent of the Kirby-era, bold primes leapt off the page, and the cast of characters? Larger than life. A vibrant team of misfits and underdogs – each imbued with fantastic powers which set them apart from the everyday, yet personalities which connected them to people I knew, even in my suburban Virginia daily life in elementary school and daycare. Their leader Cyclops, in bold blue and red; the mischievous Nightcrawler in India Ink wash and swashbuckling indigo; the stalwart Colossus in naked-comic page-white, yellow and red; the cantankerous Can-nucklehead himself, Wolverine, in his distinctive yellow/blue costume and, of course, Storm commanded the page in her diaphanous black and yellow ensemble, her cascading white hair billowing in the Cockrum-inked wind. I couldn’t put it down, the introduction of Alpha Flight, a super-hero group from that far-off cousin of ours, Canada [What, I was 9? The furthest I had been at that point was to the various Smithsonian Museums in DC and the Baltimore Aquarium – Canada was foreign AND mysterious. Plus? It was the end of the ‘80s, who didn’t think Canada was cool back then?]. I instantly had to get my hands on more comics show-casing these unique team members. True, Snowbird’s costume and diadem were like a white-chick knock-off of Storm, but, who didn’t wanna emulate Storm? I mean, she’s STORM! And Vindicator was a prick, but … Northstar’s douche-y ‘tude, Sasquatch’s cool-as-all-get-out look and Snowbird’s awesome powers made this team something to read and watch in-action. After devouring the issue and reading it three times through, I snuck into Mum’s Sewing Room where she kept her stash of comics. Found, bought, rescued – her collection may not have put the fear of foreclosure in the hearts of comic book stores, but to my eyes it was a Solomon’s Gold Mine. A veritable treasure-trove of new reads [I’ve always been a voracious reader, books, comic books and mini-comics that came with He-Man or She-Ra toys] with art that leapt off the pages and pulled me into the worlds Marvel and DC built for me. Mum found me, several hours later, splayed amidst a sea of open, half-read and varying titles and chuckled at the sight. Issues of Amazing Spider-Man [Cool art from Charles Vess], Uncanny X-Men [Classic X-Men re-prings as well as the Silvestri-era in the Australian Outback! Which of course I’d long-since read … repeatedly], ElfQuest, The Dark Knight, House of Mystery, Detective Comics, Rom: Space Knight and others ringed me. But what held my attention most? Two comic titles sat in my lap: The New Defenders and Alpha Flight. These two ended up holding my attention, not merely because of interesting stories and art, thank you John Byrne, but because of the rich (and confusing) development of two separate characters in their respective titles [tho’ Alpha Flight writers, what were you thinking with Marrina? Seriously, I’ve never understood that, even 20 years later]: Moondragon and Northstar. Moondragon was a Persis Khambatta-esque beauty [if you don’t know who that is, Google Star Trek Ilia]; powerful, intense, brave, with a touch [*cough*] of smug and a whole lot of re-writes. In the 20-ish issues Mum’s collection allowed me access to she bounced from angry-scorn-filled martial artist to floating-dragon-thingy to bisexual female all on top of fighting off bad guys like Thanos and dealing with young adult angst while the team tried to lived together. This soap opera was not to be missed. If I’d been of the mind [read: not so lazy], I’d have grabbed some popcorn and just sat back to watch/read it unfold. Marvel’s writers weren’t afraid to see where this character development would take her – and they ran with it. True, she did fit the cliché as a mildly butch non-heterosexual woman skilled in martial arts and mildly man-hating (she really just didn’t like much of anyone, to be fair), however she ran around in what can affectionately be called a costume consisting of cape, gloves, mid-calf high-heeled boots and a open-bodice one-piece thong [ouch] much like her completely off-the-rack heterosexual counterparts. The writers allowed her character to explore a range of highs and lows in those few issues – including her mind-violation whose effects were tempered by the love of a fellow Defender, Cloud [who had her/his own sexual identity issues – Oy vey]. I sat there confused, yet felt an odd kinship for this angry, lashing-out-at-the-world and oft-times lonely character. From the pages of that classic Uncanny X-Men battle, the French-Canadian Northstar caught my eyes (for his complete and total unlikability). In the first few issues I read I couldn’t help but mutter under my breath how much of a freaking asshole he was, but, those Marvel scripters are crafty bastards – it wasn’t long before I was rooting for the jerk [despite his first appearance having him deck Storm – my admiration/mild comic geek obsession with her should be discussed elsewhere] and when, to my surprise, the Olympic-medal-holding skier came out of the closet? Well, I was already 7 random issues in. And I was well-and-truly reader-hooked. The writers had created yet another well-layered character whose sexuality was not the issue, yet set him apart. He did not fit the cookie-cutter gay-best-friend-full-of-lonely-angst-and-fueled-by-catty-remarks-who-dresses-better-than-you-ever-could so lauded in literature and movies at the time, he was an athlete held in esteem and admiration for his feats of national heroism. Yes, the writers had him quipping bitchy and caustic remarks, but let’s just

SF/F Commentary

Science My Science Fiction: The Future of the Deaf and Blind? by Adam Callaway

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One of my favorite things about the nonstop progress of technology is how it assists the less fortunate to interact with the world on a more complete level. A lot of these technologies — DARPA’s advanced carbon-fiber limbs, implantable retinas, brain-computer interfaces — try to correct disabilities so these people can live a “normal” live. But is this the best way? This article is about a new way for deaf-blind people to communicate, and also to use the internet in a way that will only be native to them. It allows them to interact with non-disabled people using a method that only users of this technology will understand. In essence, they have passed a type of singularity and have become true transhumans. Users of the TacTic will be able to communicate with each other more easily than with non-users. These users will have a constant, tactile link to the internet; something beyond even those with smartphones can experience. And the thing is: TacTic is just an input device; a translator. It can be used for things beyond surfing the internet. It could issue commands to a vehicle or a house; service animals can become that much more useful. More than anything, though, TacTic will allow people with disabilities to communicate more effectively with everybody around them, and that will create a higher standard of living. But is technology getting to the point where instead of creating compensation devices, scientists begin to tailor devices to the specific disability where, with regular use, the disabled may exceed “normal human” levels of interaction with the environment? If that did arise, would people chose to maim themselves to get access to the technology. ————————————————– Adam Callaway is an SF/F writer.  His work has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Flurb, and AE.  You can find out more about him on his website or twitter.

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