Comic Panel Wednesday: Yeah, This is Weird

From Green Lantern 55, by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke. I'm not going to lie: this is the first time I've gotten misty-eyed over a red-ring empowered kitty cat that's swearing vengeance for his fallen mistress among the skulls of his enemies. First time... so far.

Must be from reading all those stories in Patricia Highsmith's The Animals-lover's book of beastly murder. The moral of the book? Treat animals with respect. Don't mess around with animals--they'll mess back, and they're not constrained by human social niceties.

Later Days.

G20 Follow-Up

I dunno if I'll get around to any Whovian scholarship today, but I thought I'd give the last post a bit of a follow-up for the sake of closure. Kudos to Scott for rising above and beyond in providing a counterpoint for my argument (see the comments in the last post, if you haven't already). And I'd like to express my admiration for friends who spent portions of the last few days in Toronto protesting and reclaiming their stuff from police seizure. I've got a lot of respect for anyone willing to take a stand for what they believe in. And finally, here's a link to a column in the Toronoist by Chris Bird, who was a journalist covering the G20. His frustration with the event captures my own, only expressed in a far more eloquent and informed manner.

Later Days.

Miscellany

I was flitting back and forth between three potential topics, so I decided to split the difference and do a paragraph on each. They're wildly different in terms of tone and scale, so bear with.

1) Squinty McGee rides again. Due to unfortunate circumstances over the weekend, my glasses have been rendered irrevocably unwearable. That means I've had to revert back to the circa 1990s model. They're largely inefficient, since I've gotten way more nearsighted since then, as well as bizarrely scratched, and, as I'm now recalling, pinch the right ear in a particularly unpleasant way. I've booked an eye appointment, but apparently thirty seconds after the optometrist opens is too late, as I was informed that the last slot for today had just been taken. They can fit me in on Thursday. I just hope I'll be able to order some new contact lenses immediately. The salt in the wound (besides losing an expensive frame) is that the missing glasses themselves were only meant to be temporary; if I had renewed my contacts as I was supposed to months ago, I'd have been wearing them, and everything would have been fine. I should probably count my blessings that I found the giant 90s glasses--the next step back after those is the 80s style glasses, which look a little something like Bill Haverchuck's spectacles from Freaks and Geeks. And note I got these 80s glasses in 1994. Today at Experimental Progress: how to be retro before it's cool.

2) G20 Summit. I've been publishing links to this site on my facebook status--I don't do it for all the posts, because I don't want to inundate people with the things, but I like to spread word when I think I'm talking about something interesting. This is the first time I've hesitated to post that link because I'm worried it may get me in trouble with a few friends; all I can say in my defense is that I'm not just baiting for the fun of it here. I've got some honest concerns, and I'm more than willing to listen to anyone's arguments to the contrary. So... here we go.
I've never been in a protest before, myself. There are a number of reasons for that, ranging from the pathetic (there's a part of me that's almost sycophantically loyal to a given system) to the practical (a protest in rural Saskatchewan is a protest of one, more often than not) to the honest (there's very few topics I don't feel ambiguous about at some level, and thus I'd feel uncomfortable protesting on either side). Being a disciple of the liberal arts, however, I've got some friends who have a pretty established history of protesting, including the summit, and I've got nothing but respect for their dedication to the principles and their actions. That said, let me go on to say something entirely disrespectful to protesters en masse: I've got serious doubts that they do any good. Especially in terms of the G20 protest--between the reports on violent protesters and violent police reaction (or preemptive violent police action, in some cases), I haven't really heard a clear statement on what they're protesting. Given the numerous different factions involved, I'm not sure there is such a statement.
It reminded me of Norman Mailer's account of the March of the Pentagon in 1967. In that case, the goal was a little clearer (anti-Vietnam), but there were so many groups involved that success becomes an uncertain thing to measure. Mailer's participation seemed to boil down to two main reasons: he was asked to raise awareness through getting a public arrest, and he wanted to prove some sort of point to himself about his own masculinity. Strangely, it's that second one that resonates most with me. Not the masculinity, so much--we all know you're a male, dear, stop fretting, it's starting to look silly--but the involvement because there's some deep personal goal or even quest that's being pursued. I don't know if there's many topics where I can claim that personal connection, but I've got a great of respect for anyone who is willing to follow wholeheartedly a cause he or she is passionately committed to following.
If nothing else, the protest has shown how draconian our police force can be, and if that's all that's all we learn (besides the relative inefficiency of the G20 concept, but we knew that already), that's worth knowing, and responding to. I'm pretty sure that Mr Harper et al will find that Canadians don't really like storm troopers in their major metropolitan areas, and hopefully, in the future, they'll think twice before volunteering to host the conference in our backyard.

Okay, that went on way longer than I thought it would. Seems kind of silly to launch into a review of the last season of Doctor Who. So... tomorrow, then.

Later Days.

Wednesday Comics: Real Heroes Make a Splash

I know this is kind of late, even by my standards, but... I think it's worth it. From Tick: the New Series 4. Soldier onward, brave Canuck.

Later Days.

Friday Quotations: A Proust Triad

"Every love is an exercise in depersonalization on a body without organs yet to be formed, and it is as the highest point of this depersonalization that someone can be named, receives his or her family name or first name, acquires the most intense discernibility in the instantaneous apprehension of the multiplicities belonging to him or her, and to which he or she belongs. A pack of freckles on a face, a pack of boys speaking through the voice of a woman, a clutch of girls in Charles' voice, a horde of wolves in somebody's throat, a multiciplicity of anuses in the anus, mouth, or eye one is intent upon. We each go through so many bodies with each other. Albertine is slowly extracted from a group of girls with its own number, organization, code, and heirarchy; and not only is this group or restricted mass suffused by an unconscious, but Albertine has her own multiplicities that the narrator, once he has isolated her, discovers on her body and in her lies--until the end of their love returns her to the indiscernible."
--Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "1914: One or Several Wolves?"

"But Dad was always reading something. Should we have been suspicious when he started plowing through Proust the year before? Was that a sign of desperation? It's said, after all, that people reach middle age the day they realize they're never going to read Remembrance of Things Past." Alison Bechdel, Fun Home.



Later Days.

Wearin' next to nothing 'cause it's hot as an oven

I was going to do another book review, but decided not to for two reasons: 1) my only two finished books at the moment are Seth's "It's a Good Life if You Don't Weaken" and Douglas Coupland's "Generation A." One I'm not entirely sure how I feel about, and one I hated a great deal while grudgingly acknowledging its value. Either way, the review required a weekend post, because it's going to take a while. 2) Since returning from hiatus, I've dipped into the Book Review well pretty deeply.

That's largely because I'm not doing a lot else at the moment. I won't be teaching again till January or so, my course work is over, my studying is over, there's no conference on the horizon, and there's not much to report on the running front. (For the record, I've been taking some time off after pulling a muscle in my foot. Lame, I know, but when walking causes you to scream-slash-swear in pain, it's time for a fortnight break.) The reading is the majority of my time--reading for my dissertation, and reading for myself. I mean, I could talk about how the comps went, or how the move went, or how the trip to Montreal went, and I will, at some point, but for the moment...

For the moment, it's too damn hot.

Understand that I have spent most of my adult life--from about seventeen on--living in basements. My last year at home, I moved into the basement bedroom. My second year at rez I lived in a basement dorm room. My first two years living with my brother, I lived in a basement apartment. My final year in Saskatchewan (to date), we moved into a house, and I got the basement bedroom. And then I moved to Ontario, and got a basement apartment that I lived in for nearly two years. And then I moved in with two lovely fellows and suddenly I'm not in a basement anymore.

There are some disadvantages to a basement dwelling. It's easy to slide into hermitism, for example. If there's flood damage, you're the first to get the worst. But what I never appreciated until I left mine was that it also protects you from one of the most horrible truths that humanity does its best to ignore: Summer is the worst.

Don't get me wrong. Generally speaking, I like the heat. I like summer outfits, and ball games, and sitting on the patio, and the summer sports. After a childhood of complaining very loudly, I'm even starting to see the appeal of the summer camping trip. But when you don't have a basement dwelling place to retreat to, you start to realize the awful truth: summer is frickin' hot.

And my room seems to be the hottest of all summer locale. It is significantly hotter than anywhere else in the house. I've tried everything to cool it down: a fan for circulation, keeping the doors and windows open during the night, and the window closed during the day. Operating on the theory that my computer hard drive was the culprit, I even turned off the machine for hours and hours yesterday. Nothing makes a difference. On average, I'm consuming at least half a liter of water every night because I wake up every few hours sans blankets, covered in sweat, and severely dehydrated. It's not entirely unbearable, because, well, I'm bearing it. But it does make me think that maybe all those cave-dwelling dwarves from Lord of the Rings were onto something. Until they hit that Nazgûl, anyway.

Later Days.

Book Review: Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen

"What are these berserkers? I know they're something terrible, but.."
"Well, they're machines." Derron sipped his tea. "Some of them are bigger than spaceships that we or any other Earth-descended men have ever built. Others come in different shapes and sizes, but all of them are deadly. The first of them were constructed ages ago, by some race we've never met, to fight in some war we've never heard of.
"They were programmed to destroy life anywhere they could find it, and they've come only the Holy One knows how far, doing just that."

--Brother Assassin, Fred Saberhagen

First, take a moment to appreciate the solemn awesomeness that is the name "Fred Saberhagen." No other name even comes close. Okay, maybe Frank Stilettocloditz, but that name was made up by me a few seconds ago, so it doesn't count. Mr Fred Saberhagen is a sci-fi/fantasy writer. While I've heard the name before, I've never actually read anything by him. Judging from "Brother Assassin," Saberhagen specializes in the "pulp" section of science fiction, as this book, billed as the second in the Berserker series, is one of the pulpiest sf's I've read in a long time.

The plot is that the Berserkers, a race of alien-made machines, are bent on exterminating all life in the universe, as the quotation above suggests. This book chronicles three of their attempts to destroy the people of Sirgol. The catch is, by the beginning of the book, they've almost already won. The surface of the planet is uninhabitable scorched earth, with the surviving 10% of the population dwelling in caves underground. They can't beat the berserkers, but the berserkers can't get to them. The stalemate is broken when the berserkers realize the unique thing about Sirgol--its composition allows for localized time travel, so the berserkers can defeat by humans by travelling back in time and disrupting their history enough so that by the time the beserkers start their attack on the planet, the people are so technologically behind that they can't muster any defense at all. The story, then, has the berserkers attacking at three key points of history: the invention of the written language, the consolidation of territory by a past king, and the publication of a paper on physical dynamics.

First and foremost, then, what we've got is a time travel book. The presence of time travel creates a few necessary plot points for Saberhagen to clog up. First, he establishes that the very first colonists of the planet accidentally fell back in time in a process that erased their memories--this mechanic begs for presence of a few amnesiac/presumed time-travellers, and thus we have the love-interest, Lucy Gray. Second, if the Time Corps can find the exact moment of intrusion of the beserkers in the time stream--the keyhole, they call it--then they can send their own forces back to prevent the total collapse. Thus, the beserkers can't attack in any point, and need to act subtly if their presence isn't to be detected. Finally, due to some sort of time rule, people from the present can only be sent so far back into the past before they have to use mechanical proxies. Think Avatar, but clumsier.

The third element comes into play in the first and second stories. In the first one, the lead character, Derron Odegard, first saves Lucy Grey in the present, then travels via robo-proxy to the far past to save literacy from the Berserkers. Once there, he enables one of the locals, Matt, to save the day, and takes Matt back to the future with him, to save his life. Sadly for Derron, Lucy is strangely attracted to dynamic verve of this past-dweller. Thus ends part 1. In Part Two, Matt is convinced to take the place of King Ay, a royal ruler that was supposed to consolidate the Sirgoloids before a Berserker ate him. (In fact, due to the entirely plot-constructed time rule above, Matt is the only one who can do it--no one from the present can be present in the far past that long.) Think The Prisoner of Zenda, but with a giant robot. Finally, in Part 3, Derron himself goes back to preserve the life of Vincent Vincento, a Galileo analog who must be convinced to recant his paper, in order to write a more significant one later, rather than be burned at the stake for heresy.

The book gets increasingly more complicated and cerebral with each subsequent adventure. The Part 1 is a reasonably straightforward fight scene. Part 2 introduces a wrinkle in the motivations of the parties involved--the Time Corps are trying to get Matt killed in order to pinpoint where the keyhole is, and the Beserkers are forced to preserve him for the same reason. And Part 3's resolution revolves around Vincento's ego, the Foucault Pendulum, and a false feint, as the Berserkers' real target shifts suddenly. While it's still pretty "us against them," there is a move towards sophistication that's welcome.
The characters, on the other hand, are pretty stock fare. Matt, Derron, and Lucy are all pretty standard sci-fi tropes. Matt is the man from the past who is more in tune with what's "really" going on than his futuristic forebearers; Derron is a detached man from the future who needs to learn to love again; and Lucy is essentially a trophy for the last man standing.
The Beserkers are slightly more interesting, and I like how Saberhagen brings them into the plot's theme. One of the benefits of fiction is that you can create an entirely unambiguous evil onto which all fears of the Other can be projected. The Beserkers have the cold, heartless mechanics of machines, but also the mindless destruction implied by their name. The Time Corps, it's implied, have started to move towards the Beserkers' soulless detachment, as evidenced in their callous treatment of Matt and Derron's general detachment from everything. The emotional climax of the story comes when Derron takes a page from Matt's book and learns to love again (no, really, that's what he learns), and the fight against the Berserkers climaxes at the point where one Berserker has been made so versatile that it becomes susceptible to emotion.
It's perfect solution to the robot problem. Sherry Turkle, in Life on the Screen, argues that machines have replaced animals as the Other than humans compare ourselves to in order to define ourselves. Specifically, we see how our machines that are like us, reject them, define exactly what makes us different, then slowly allow machines to cross over that newly defined line, and start all over again. It's the exact path Saberhagen takes: the Berserker is defined as different because it lacks the capacity to feel, then it gains that ability and rises to the human level.
Two final points: First, given that it's a time travel story intimately connected to a planet's history, I wonder why Saberhagen didn't just make the whole thing Earth to begin with. Why re-invent the wheel (literally) when you already have a perfectly good planet? If it was a new history, I could understand that, but the Sirgolins seem to follow Earth's development pretty closely. The only reason I can think of is that it allows him to fudge some of the details to fit the plot, when he sees fit. Second, the moments of history chosen--the development of the written language, the rise of the medieval leader/conqueror, the triumph of humanist science--creates a very interesting reflection on exactly what ARE the key moments of history. Again, using a different planet allows Saberhagen to hand-wave a claim that these aren't necessarily the important bits of OUR history, but they do present a very humanist/Eurocentric/positivist kind of world view.

Bottom line: there's not a lot of depth to the story, especially character-wise, but there's just enough going on to make it interesting as it progresses. And at 220 pages, it's not like it's asking for a huge portion of your time.

Later Days.