Apparently one car company is already thinking about the future, in which zombies take over the forest and force wannabe baseball players to run for their lives. Can you guess which company? I’d buy a car from them, that’s for sure… (Thanks to Grasping for the Wind for the original discovery.)
I posted a bunch of tweets about why I’m giving up talking about politics (or dealing with it), but the Google+ version more effectively says what I want to say here: I’m going to give politics a rest for as long as I can. That doesn’t mean I won’t talk about issues of gender or sexuality or race, because those are things that I am not willing to bend on when it comes to fair treatment, but I’m not going to play the Democrat vs. GOP vs. Tea Party vs. Socialists vs. Whatever Stupid Political Party B.S. that has been going on. Conversations among such groups are repetitive, pointless, mindless, and generally serve no function other than to make me angry. Intelligent conversation is dead in the realm of politics. I’m not wasting anymore energy on it. What I am going to do is write more, blog more, talk about things that don’t make me angry, do things that make me happy, and do everything I can to make my life as good as I can without screwing someone else over (on purpose). I’ve got science fiction and fantasy to write. I’ve got votes to cast. I’ve got a life to live. I’ve got children to have and a family to raise and lizards to tend to. Which means, from this point on, I won’t be following people who serve no purpose other than to babble about which GOP candidate is being a dumbass or which Democrat got his wang shot on camera or why Nancy Pelosi sold her womb to harbor the devil’s mutant offspring or why John Boehner is orange and smells suspiciously like Cheetoh’s. I’m not interested in politics as usual, because it’s infuriating what such things have done to this country, to the dialogue, to our ability to talk to one another about anything, to make REAL compromises on REAL issues that matter to REAL people. It’s time for a better world, and I’m going start making it better by not playing the Political Mambo anymore. You’re free to join me if you so choose. That’s basically where I’m at right now. With all that garbage going on in my life, I need relief, and I’m not getting it by participating in the world of politics as it currently stands. And so, I’m taking a break, if not forever, then at least indefinitely. Now it’s time to write…
I’ve been working on a post-cyberpunk space battle type story for Bryan Schmidt, who has an anthology coming out soon called Space Battles (presumably that’s the final title). The following is connected, distantly, to a cyberpunk universe I’ve been semi-developing via short stories. Those of you who have read my short fiction will know that “Once a Dream Did Weave a Shade,” “The Decisions of Gods” (which is supposed to be published at some point), and a few incomplete stories are all part of the same universe as “A Winter in Starlight.” The current project, however, is set several hundred years after the events in “Once a Dream Did Weave a Shade” (and even further distant than “The Decisions of Gods,” which is the more fantasy-oriented of all the stories). I should note that not all of the stories in this universe are cyberpunk. Many use features common to cyberpunk, but they lack the internal elements which make cyberpunk a politically-oriented subgenre. Anywho. I’ll shut up now. Feel free to let me know what you think: Forming up, she follows the other symbio-soldiers around Earth’s wide belly, admiring the wide green patches of forest, and the enormous, multi-colored oblong farmlands with their genetic stock. Fifteen billion mouths to feed. Twenty-two star systems to run. And then it happens: the lights flicker in her mind, warnings building up the tension in her muscles and stims filling her tongue with the faint taste of sugar. Two dots appear in her vision, red against a sea of greens and blues, closing in on her position. She flinches, pulling Castor into a wide arc, rolling her down and under to avoid the other symbio-soldiers engaged in similar evasive maneuvers. Castor’s external cameras track the energy blasts until one of the blue bulges crashes into a symbio-soldier, collapsing the inner chamber and ejecting part of a leg and entire walls of organic sinew. Ashland can feel it. Bright hot paint ripping into her spinal cord. A whimper sounding her mind, in all of their minds at once. And then Castor cuts it off with a jolt of stims. She licks her teeth and flicks to the subchannels.
Yesterday was a shit day, to put it bluntly. Most of you know that one of my leopard geckos has been suffering from an eye infection for a long time (the better part of three years, if not longer). He’s been to the veterinarian so many times since I moved to Gainesville that almost everyone at the office knows me, if not by name, then at least by face or through Noodles. A couple weeks ago, things took a turn for the semi-worst and he had to have his eye removed. The surgery seemed to make things better. The scar was healing well enough, the bad eye was gone, and he started becoming a little more active after he went off the pain meds. Then things went south, and fast. Earlier in the week, he had several muscle tremors — tail twitches and lower body convulsions. I took him to the vet, they weren’t sure what was going on because he didn’t display the twitching there, and I went home with the order to watch for more activity and to record everything if I could. Then on Friday (yesterday) morning, he had a massive seizure (or something that looked like it). His tail and head went back and forth uncontrollably. His mouth was open, either in pain or because he also couldn’t control the motion. And then it stopped and he seemed to lose strength in his body, much like people with seizures sometimes lose strength or control in parts of their body. The event made clear to me that he wasn’t going to make it. Late Friday morning, after my vet had looked him over and come to the same teary-eyed conclusion, I had Noodles put to rest. Needless to say, Friday was one of the worst days I’ve ever had. I’ve been through so much with Noodles. I don’t care that he’s “just a lizard.” He was one of the best damned lizards to ever live. I’ve had him since he was a little tyke and everyone who knew him thought he was the cutest, sweetest little lizard they ever knew. I’ve spent several hundred dollars on medications, thousands on medical bills, and hours and hours of my time. I’ve put off vacations. I haven’t seen most of my family in two years, because I always needed someone who could administer his medications (sometimes as many as five medications at once). And after all of that, it doesn’t seem fair that he couldn’t have five more years of healthy life. He never did anything wrong. He was sweet and wonderful and the best anyone could ask for in a lizard. And he went through hell with eye infections and medications and me poking and prodding to get him to take meds and food and what not. I think it’s all really hitting me now because I’ve lost so many leopard geckos in the last two years: Little Buddy, Angel, Sweetie, Taj, Herbert, and now Noodles. Six leopard geckos. Six friends. And worst of all, six the sweetest little geckos I’ve known, most of them I raised either from the egg or from a few months after hatching. It’s not easy being so involved in a pet’s life and then losing them. And it’s not easy losing Noodles, because he’s the only gecko I still have with me who has been with me since I began keeping lizards in my house. My mother begged me to keep Mellie with her in Oregon (my first leopard gecko) and she also stole my bearded dragon (I say that jokingly, because really Che Che has the best life a beardie could ask for, since my mother and her partner have built him a personal garden). And, of course, I’ve just been through so much with Noodles. He was a great lizard and a great friend. Now he’s gone… In case you all want to know what he looked like, here you go (after the fold):
The next chapter is finally up. “The Golden Path and Silhouettes” continues James’ journey to Arnur as he and his companions attempt to escape Luthien’s forces and survive the unexpected terrors of a world gone mad. Now they have to find the Golden Path, which will lead them safely to Arnur. Some things, however, aren’t easily found… Chapter Fourteen — Download (MP3) Thanks for listening. Please give WISB a review on iTunes! There’s an extended apology at the end of the episode (in case you’re wondering why it is so late). The short of it is: school (as expected), more surgery (unexpected), and…yeah. (Don’t forget to check out what I’ve done to sweeten the pot for anyone who donates to the project. Plenty of free things are available, from ebooks, paperbacks, random letters from me, and even a character written about you into the world of WISB. Please consider donating!) (All podcast chapters will be listed on the Podcast page.)
Follow science fiction long enough and you’ll notice a trend: most people, by default, associate the various generic traditions of SF with aesthetic or visual qualities. We see a spaceship or a robot or an alien species or a ray gun or whatever and immediately think “this is clearly science fiction.” In many respects, this is how fantasy with spaceships comes to be placed within the genre, despite lacking all the formal qualities of SF. No subgenre suffers this fate more so than cyberpunk. I’ve often wondered why cyberpunk gets dumbed down so excessively. Much of the genre’s history (where it came from, what its authors were responding to, and so on) is not exactly hidden from the public eye. Yet we can talk about the formation of SF in the early 1900s and its immediate precursors in the late 1800s more accurately than we can the formation of cyberpunk — this despite having far less information about those periods than we do about the late 70s and the 80s (that’s not to say we don’t have a lot about the early 1900s and late 1800s). The latest example of this dumbing down hails from two episodes of Writing Excuses (w/ Brandon Sanderson, Dan Well, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Howard Taylor). The first episode is an attempt on their part to define cyberpunk, while the second is an exercise in constructing a cyberpunk tale. It’s the first I have issues with, since the hosts spend so much of their time applying aesthetic and visual objects to the genre or otherwise dumb down the heavily political momentum that made cyberpunk possible. The hosts also apply a number of stories to their definition, many of which are falsely associated with cyberpunk precisely because they only bear visual resemblance to the subgenre. Blade Runner, for example, is, at best, a proto-cyberpunk story (which one of the hosts, I think, points out), in part because the only things that tie it to cyberpunk are the environment and occasional bits of machinery, all of which are, once again, falsely associated with cyberpunk. While cyberpunk is a very visual medium, it’s not the surface level of the subgenre that matters, but what lies beneath. Any story can contain noir elements, hackers, evil corporations, and so on. But just as having a spaceship does not make a story science fiction, so too do the surface level visuals not make something cyberpunk. Akira is a cyberpunk movie; The Matrix is not. Neuromancer is cyberpunk; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is not. The only thing the folks on Writing Excuses got right was the fact that cyberpunk is a near future genre (post-cyberpunk is not, since it tends to transplant the formal qualities of cyberpunk into broader spaces of engagement, such as other planets, space stations, and so on). But they missed the crucial point that makes cyberpunk such a valid form of literature: we live in a cyberpunk world. Africa is cyberpunk with its manipulations of technology, its relationship to global capitalism, and its complex and troubled social conditions (and the interactions between all of these elements). Many parts of the western world are cyberpunk too. All you have to do is look around you to see cyberpunk in action. But you also have to be careful with such real world associations, because so much of what is problematic about defining cyberpunk can be unfairly applied to the now. Cell phones and text messaging and phone hacking aren’t cyberpunk activities. Anonymous is not a cyberpunk group. It’s the “punk” that really matters to the “cyberpunk” label. And if you don’t know what a “punk” is, then you really can’t talk about the “cyber” part… (For the record, I’ve written a bunch of stuff on the “punk” in cyberpunk and the formal qualities of the genre: here, here, here, here, and here.)
