Question: What interests you about military science fiction?
As many of you know, I’ve been teaching The Forever War by Joe Haldeman in my Survey in American Literature course at the University of Florida. Yesterday was the last day of discussion, which led me to wonder what so many science fiction readers find appealing about military SF. I wouldn’t consider myself a big military SF reader, though some of my favorite SF novels happen to be military SF (The Forever War and Old Man’s War, for example). That said, I do find the attention to detail, the technology, and the action that often occupies military SF stories appealing. I’m a sucker for a good, logically-oriented battle (which explains why I prefer the space battles in the original Star Wars movies to the ones in the prequels). Military SF isn’t always about the battles, but I can’t think of any military SF novels which don’t include the actual action of military campaigns. But as much as I like action and excitement in my fiction, I’m not drawn to military SF exclusively for such things. Rather, I like military SF because it provides a gateway into the mind of the soldier, officer, or other non-civilian character. As a staunch supporter of military personnel in the U.S. (as opposed to a supporter of the war(s)), I can’t help wanting to understand what the nation asks of its men and women in uniform (nation is rhetorical here); military SF is one way to think about such things. The Forever War, for example, is one of my favorite novels because of the way it approaches its singular soldier character: Mandella. I’m fascinated by the ways he copes with what he is forced to do and how the novel allegorizes the processes of alienation that often affect soldiers returning home from the battlefied. Even the military jargon, the attention to military detail, and the discussion of tactics are fascinating to me, not because I like military tactics (I really know nothing about it), but because it’s all part of a kind of mindset. In a way, a book like The Forever War develops an authentic reality from its totalized military viewpoint, which makes for a consistent and fascinating book. If not for the problem of repetition, I would teach Haldeman’s book again in a heartbeat. Now I’ll throw the question(s) to you: What are your favorite military SF novels? Why do you like military SF? What do you dislike? Let me know in the comments.
How To Be Annoying On Twitter
Twitter is a pretty awesome place. But it’s also a network like every other social network: full of weirdos, annoying people, and spammers. Thankfully, we don’t have to follow such people! We can pretend they don’t exist (or make fun of publicly, because that’s fun too). My question is: What are ways people annoy you on Twitter? Let me know in the comments. Here are the things that annoy me: Retweet Bonanza Twitter is about contributing to the stream. But some people think that means they need to retweet every damn thing other people are saying or linking to, so much so that their streams look something like this: retweet, retweet, retweet, retweet, @ message, retweet, original, retweet, retweet, retweet, @ message, retweet retweet, original… I’ve never followed people who do this, because they’re not saying anything I can’t find elsewhere. They’re parrots, and parrots are only cute when they’re in feather form with a mute button. Link Bonanza Related to the Retweet Bonanza is another Twitter foul which involves posting nothing but links. No @ messages. No original messages. No links with some kind of opinion thrown in. Just links with the title of the article (and sometimes no title at all). Links are nice, but it’s better to have links with mini commentary and a little original stuff. Hell, posting a random question once in a while is a drastic improvement. Otherwise you kind of look like the guy who shows up at a political event shouting liberal or conservative talking points: brainless. Plug Molestation People who send you links to their crap without provocation (either via DM or @ message) are people who engage in what I call “plug molestation.” They come out of nowhere, they tell you about their junk, and then they pretend like it didn’t happen until they do it again. They’re like Jehovah’s Witnesses who show up at your house a second time and tell your mother that you asked them about masturbation, prompting you to hide in your apartment every time they show up (this is a true story, by the way). To which I say: eh, no thanks. Desperate-For-Love Plug-Streams Twitter is a great place for writers to learn how not to market their books. Seriously. Spend a good month wandering around from writer feed to writer feed and look at all the ways people approach marketing their book via the Twitter stream. Some of them do it really well. Others look at Twitter the same way alcoholics look at unused microphones on the stage at their best friend’s wedding: they’d think twice about jumping on stage and screaming something ridiculous and embarrassing…if they weren’t drunk. A great deal of authors think plugging their book or website in every single tweet is the same thing as saying, “Hey, I’ve got a book.” In reality, what they’re saying is something like this: Auto-DM Plug Molestation Not unlike plug molestation, auto-DM plug molestation is a special form of self-flagellation that causes me to unfollow faster than FOX cancels awesome TV shows. These annoying DMs show up in your box when you’re least expecting them and are never anything more than “hey, look at my blog/book/art/underwear” coupled with “I iz awezum and you muzt luv me!” The only person who has auto-DMed me and didn’t get unfollowed was George Takei, whose auto-DM is emblematic of his public persona and, therefore, damned cute. Good on you, Takei. Language Gaps Incoherent tweets and excessive use of vulgar language is never anything but irritating. I’ll break these down one by one: Textspeak is not the same as English. Let me put my pretentiousness on my shoulder for a second by saying that using textspeak in daily conversation, even on the Internet, is kind of like the lady in the courtroom who types in shorthand to record the proceedings talking to people in the same language. Textspeak is the new shorthand, and within the context of text messages and the like, it makes perfect sense. On Twitter? No so much. Twitter has a character limit, not an intelligence and language limit. There are good reasons to use “u” for “you” on Twitter, but not as a standard. (Using “lol” is less problematic than “im 🙂 irl BC i hv chez.”) If censoring your tweet for younger audiences ends up looking something like this: “Holy f*** s**t, c**tbag f***ing ***hole s***head!” Well, maybe you need to expand your vocabulary. Because all I see is this: “Holy f st ctbag fing hole shead” (which I translate as “holy fisit, cotbag fing hole shed!” As far as I know, that’s not a sentence…). S-E-OH! (and Real Estate Whores) There are three brands of idiots on Twitter: people who don’t now how to use it, people who think they are experts because they put “SEO” or other buzzwords in their profile, and people who follow other people who clearly have no interest in whatever they are peddling. All of these people are annoying for different reasons, but its the last two that make me laugh maniacally when I don’t click the “follow” button in return. After all, my profile makes clear that I am a graduate student, which, last I checked, translates fairly closely to “too damned poor to buy a house.” Of course, they probably think I’m going to say something like this: “Why yes, I do want to follow you because you’re an SEO or real estate expert. I can’t wait! Please fill me with your completely irrelevant information. I need it. Put it inside me…PLEASE!” In reality, I’m thinking this: “Hmm. How many ways can I kill you with a laser from where I’m sitting…” ——————————————————————– Do any of these bother you on the lovely Twitter?
Teaching Science Fiction: The Definition
Today was one of the more surprising days in the American Literature course I am teaching this summer. What surprised me wasn’t their responses to the assigned reading (the first 68 pages of Haldeman’s The Forever War, one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time); rather, I was surprised at how they defined science fiction when I asked them to do so (prior to my actual lecture on the topic of definitions). None of them approached the genre via its tropes. That is that no student said science fiction was defined by the prevalence of robots, spaceships, common themes (space wars, AI gone wrong, etc.), or other common features often associated with the genre even when the product in question is internally everything but science fiction. While they didn’t quite get the definition “right” (insofar as there is a “right” definition), a number of students suggested very compelling and rather sophisticated ways to explain how science fiction functions as a genre. The two primary examples were extrapolation upon technology and speculation upon real world “things.” I am, of course, paraphrasing their arguments, but it’s quite unusual, in my experience, to speak with anyone who isn’t rooted in SF culture and receive an explanation of the genre that tries to get at its functions rather than its tropes. To think of SF as an extrapolative genre doesn’t necessarily get at the heart of what makes SF such a potent literary form, but it comes pretty close (which is that the supposed “extrapolative” elements are more accurately envisioned as adaptations of the present transplanted into advanced, if not futuristic, settings in which some cognitive shift has taken place — think of this as a merger between Suvin’s cognitive estrangement and the common (and wrong or simplistic) critical association of SF with “future history”). I’ve been wondering all day why my students didn’t fall for the trap I had set up for them (a humorous trap, not a cruel one). I expected that they would provide the cliche answer, but instead they gave me something that seemed to wave hands at all the SF icons that permeate their entertainment lives. What would compel them to think differently? Was it the fact that I mentioned, however crudely, Suvin’s cognitive estrangement the week before? Was it the fact that we didn’t talk about SF as a genre until after we had read Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and two science fiction short stories (“The Comet” by W.E.B. Du Bois and “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler)? Whatever the reason, I’m quite pleased with their responses. I suspect that most of you don’t teach literature courses, let alone courses with science fiction in them. If I’m wrong, perhaps you could de-lurk and throw in your thoughts on the subject. I know high school students are being exposed to more and more science fiction in schools and in the real world, but I can’t imagine high schools are going through the definitions and theories of SF with such students. Granted, talking about HS is kind of pointless when my students are overwhelmingly juniors and seniors at a university. And with that, I’ll shut up. (I may make this part of a series of posts about my experiences with teaching SF. We’ll see.)
The Skiffy and Fanty Show 4.6 is Live! (Torture Cinema Meets War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave)
The movie is bad. Really bad. Seriously. Don’t watch it. Listen to us talk about it instead, because otherwise you might become an alcoholic or start smoking crack. Don’t. Do. It. If the title isn’t any indication, the latest episode over at SandF is our extended, slightly humorous review of War of the Worlds 2: The Next Wave (a movie which will live in infamy, or something like that). Feel free to let us know what you think of the show. iTunes reviews are always welcome. Anywho!
WIP Snippet: “The Dream Machine”
The following is from a science fiction and fantasy mashup short story I’m working on, which I’m called “The Dream Machine.” I’ll likely change the title later. We’ll see. This is the first paragraph: A shadow swam across the frame of his vision, obscuring the charred hills beyond and turning the flames licking the sky into crimson eyes in a black mask. Where was he and what was he doing here? He knew those hills as if he had been there before, as if his feet had stood on this very spot, toes playing with the ash carpet, churning the dirt and spilling seeds into the renewed mud. The chutes of grass and little sunflowers sprang up between his toes as if in greeting. What do you think?
Video Found: H+ (Web Series by Bryan Singer)
It seems fitting that a show about new social networking technology gone wrong would be announced weeks after Google+ graced our screens. It’s almost like Singer knew + was coming. Like a conspiracy… In any case, if you want to learn more about the series, go here. Otherwise, enjoy the video: It looks pretty awesome, doesn’t it? (Thanks for SF Signal for the find.)