Well, if you didn’t know already, the sixth episode of the podcast I’m doing is now available to stream or download. The show is also up on iTunes, but it might take a little time for ep. 6 to appear there. In this episode we try to define science fiction and talk about Ridley Scott’s alien movies and the death of the rejection letter. Anywho. Thanks for listening!
It’s been a while since I last posted a Haul of Books. The following books are pretty much the last ones I have for an independent study I’m doing on Caribbean science fiction. Some of them are probably not actually SF, but I’m going with a fairly loose definition on purpose (otherwise I’d have nothing to talk about, because most Caribbean “SF” isn’t actually SF, but more like science fantasy). Still, the books are interesting, the class should be enlightening, and I might produce a publishable paper and Master’s thesis out of this. So, here’s the picture, followed by the descriptions (after the fold):And now for the descriptions, from left to right, top to bottom (taken from Amazon): 1. Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson The Caribbean-colonized planet of Toussaint celebrates Carnival in traditional fashion, and Tan-Tan, a young reveler, is masked as the Midnight Robber, Trinidads answer to Robin Hood. But after her father commits a deadly crime, he flees with her to the brutal New Half Way Tree, a planet inhabited by violent human outcasts and monstrous creatures known only through folklore. Here, Tan-Tan is forced to reach into the heart of myth and become the legendary heroine herself, for only the Robber Queens powers can save Tan-Tan from such a savage world. 2. Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson A new collection of short stories from Hopkinson, including “Greedy Choke Puppy,” which Africana.com called “a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf),””Ganger (Ball Lightning),” praised by the Washington Post Book World as written in “prose [that] is vivid & immediate,” this collection reveals Hopkinson’s breadth & accomplishments as a storyteller. 3. Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction edited by Nalo Hopkinson The lushness of language and the landscape, wild contrasts, and pure storytelling magic abound in this anthology of Caribbean writing. Steeped in the tradition of fabulism, where the irrational and inexplicable coexist with the realities of daily life, the stories in this collection are infused with a vitality and freshness that most writing traditions have long ago lost. From spectral slaving ships to women who shed their skin at night to become owls, stories from writers such as Jamaica Kincaid, Marcia Douglas, Ian MacDonald, and Kamau Brathwaite pulse with rhythms, visions, and the tortured history of this spiritually rich region of the world. 4. The New Moon’s Arms by Nalo Hopkinson THE NEW MOON’S ARMS is a mainstream magical realism novel set in the Caribbean on the fictional island of Dolorosse. Calamity, born Chastity, has renamed herself in a way she feels is most fitting. She’s a 50-something grandmother whose mother disappeared when she was a teenager and whose father has just passed away as she begins menopause. With this physical change of life comes a return of a special power for finding lost things, something she hasn’t been able to do since childhood. A little tingling in the hands then a massive hotflash, and suddenly objects, even whole buildings, lost to her since childhood begin showing up around Calamity. One of the lost things Calamity recovers is a small boy who washes up on the shore outside her house after a rainstorm. She takes this bruised but cheerful 3-year-old under her wing and grows attached to him, a process that awakens all the old memories, frustrations and mysteries around her own mother and father. She’ll learn that this young boy’s family is the most unusual group she’s ever encountered and they want their son back. 5. The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson Multiple award-winning author Nalo Hopkinson delivers a triumphant novel in the bestselling tradition of such literary greats as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. When three Caribbean slave women gather one night to bury a stillborn baby, their collected mournings braid into a powerful calling, and a deity is born. So begins the epic journey of a spirit who, in a desperate bid to discover her ownnature and identity, defies the limitations of time and place to inhabit the minds of living women throughout history. From Jeanne Duval, the seductive black mistress of 19th-century bohemian poet Charles Baudelaire, to a Nubian prostitute on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 300 A.D., the spirit gathers the power and the wisdom of the ages, only to come full circle on the island of St. Domingue. There, she is reunited with the very women who gave her life, and who still struggle to survive under the tyranny of brutal masters. And that’s that. So, have you read any of these before? I haven’t, hence my curiosity. Do any of them sound of interest to you? Let me know in the comments.
Some weeks ago I had to take my leopard gecko (Sweetie) in to have a growth removed. It turned out to be an infection, but the vets managed to get the stuff out and she seemed to be recovering nicely. Then a little over a week ago she stopped eating and became lethargic. We put her on some meds and some liquid food on Friday, hoping she’d start eating on her own again. I woke up this morning at 9 AM to find that she had passed on. And I’m not particularly happy… For those that don’t really know much about her, I can easily say she was appropriately named. She was really rather sweet. She never once bit me, though she certainly got fed up with me from time to time. She always had a cute look on her face too. She’s been with me for several years now and even produced an egg several years back, which gave me Little Buddy (who I lost last year). I hope she had a good life. Here’s the only picture I could find. I’m sure mother has more:
I brought a new friend home with me today. It’s a Boston fern (I think). A friend of a friend decided to dig one up out of the latter friend’s yard after hearing me talk about how I was thinking of getting a plant for my apartment. Now I have one, and I want your help.I want to name my fern. So, here’s what you can do. In the comments for this post, suggest one name you would give this fern. Only one. I will only count the first name you give, so don’t name twelve or thirteen. Think of some clever, unusual, bizarre, or downright hilarious names, because I want it to be unique (although if you wanted to name it Bill, I would be fine with that, because it’s funny and dry). Then, once the poll I have running on the left has ended, I’ll start up a new poll with a list of the names and let you all vote! Whichever name gets the most votes wins. Sounds easy enough, right? So, have at it! P.S.: In the event that there are too many names to put on one poll, I’ll run a series of polls in a semifinals sort of fashion and put the best choices in the final poll. Hopefully that won’t happen, but just in case.
A friend sent this question to me the other day, along with a bunch of others. I couldn’t answer them all in one post, but this one in particular sparked my curiosity. One thing that has to be decided is what the word “liberal” means in a political context (since that is the context in which the question was asked). It would be nice to look at American politics, but the more you look into that, the more the lines blur. What is an American liberal or conservative? Is it a raging socialist vs. a mouth-foaming Tea Bagger? Can we reduce the political parties to less government vs. more government? For the purposes of this post, I am going to take liberal to mean a belief in reform, progress, equality in a broad sense, environmentalism, and moderate to significant government intervention to achieve social cohesion; conservative will, for me, represent a disinterest in change (i.e. maintaining traditional values), individual liberty over sanctioned equality, and valuing profit and capitalism over people and the environment. These are all debatable, but this is the closest I can get to addressing the liberal vs. conservative argument in SF without bringing in irrelevant stuff. For example, while liberals are typically for abortion (if not in every form, then at least on a basic level) and conservatives are typically against it, it isn’t an issue that regularly appears within SF (I can’t even think of an example right now). Other liberal/conservative issues are the same, and so I’m not including them in the definition. Now to the answer:Having read and watched loads of science fiction books and movies, and dabbled in writing the stuff myself, I consider myself well-versed in SF. Yet, when I think about this question it occurs to me that the liberal/conservative issue has never seemed to be, well, an issue. I’ll read most anything in SF, and have wandered around enough in the SF landscape to be considered an SF slut. But looking back at what has been applauded by the SF community, or enjoyed fervently by me, it does seem that the majority of SF stories are to the left of the political scale. James Cameron’s Avatar, whether great or terrible, is undoubtedly liberal; its messages range from environmental to racial and so on, with the bad guys clearly marked as the wicked militaristic capitalists, and the good guys the soon-to-be-tree-hugging whiteys (and the giant smurfs, obviously).Examples of similar liberal leanings exist throughout SF film: Star Wars, WALL-E, and so on. There are exceptions: Metropolis both critiques industrialization and scientific/social progress (after all, the workers’ revolt in the end leads to the workers’ city being destroyed, which is not exactly a positive for the anti-industrialization crowd); Aliens isn’t altogether clear what it is (on the one hand it’s about the evils of the company/corporation, but on the other it’s about the gung-ho “shoot before asking” mentality that exemplifies the rather conservative old west more so than the probable more liberal future); District 9 only sort of supports liberal anti-corporate interests in the end, but the rest is only liberal if you don’t agree with the point of view being presented (which is exactly what happens in the real world in Africa, in terms of corporations dictating what goes on); and so on. Literature is no different. Regularly SF novels play the liberal vs. conservative card (defined generally by the present-day political climate). Edward Willett’s novels Marsegura and Terra Insegura pit genetically augmented fish people against a rabidly religious post-apocalypse Earth; issues of race, religion, tradition, and so on appear in the novel and, despite some ambiguities towards the end of the second book, present liberal values as the “good” ones and conservative values (albeit of the most extreme kind) as the “bad” ones. There are certainly plenty of other examples, most less obvious than might be found in Willett’s work or in the work of the infamous Kim Stanley Robinson.Some examples of conservative SF do exist, though: Frankenstein (against unfettered scientific progress; 1984 (an easy choice, since it is a critique of extremist liberalism); some of Heinlein’s work (entrepreneurs fighting government restriction, and so on); and many more.The interesting thing about SF literature is that its political leanings are somewhat easily isolated by genre. Military SF, for example, tends to be rather conservative compared to other forms of SF, mostly notably because the military often is perceived as conservative (even if that perception is inaccurate). Most of this is hearsay, to be honest, since I am not altogether familiar with military SF as a reader (just as an academic). But (and this is a big but) none of this proves that SF is inherently liberal. It does demonstrate that much–perhaps most–SF is liberal, sure, but that is an entirely different thing that what is implied in the question: that a liberal view of the world is an essential characteristic of SF. There are only a handful of things that I would be comfortable saying are inherent to SF, but a liberal view is not one of them. The other side of this is somewhat more complicated: even when liberal views are present and emphasized, they are often in league with conservative values. This seems to reflect the wishy-washy way in which Americans deal with politics, because most of us are a collection of liberal and conservative ideals, with one seemingly more pronounced than the other. SF, in my opinion, is less about the flaws of any particular political position or belief than about human flaws, and if you think about the extreme future of any human flaw, you’ll end up with something worth critiquing. I think the much more interesting part of all of this is the relative paucity of conservative SF in film and literature. Are conservatives less able or less inclined to think about their own future? Are writers more often than not of the liberal persuasion? You’d think that the answer to these two questions would be
It’s time for a new poll! On the left side there you’ll see a little box where you can vote (science fiction, fantasy, horror, or other). I want to know what your favorite genre is. If you want to tell me why, feel free to leave a comment here. Otherwise, the anonymity of voting on my polls should be fun enough. So, what is your favorite genre?
