A Kerani In The World

Thanksgiving

2010-11-26T05:30:00.000-08:00

Two links to share, both from Ta-Nehisi Coates' Thanksgiving thread. (I respect TNC's writing more than I like him, and I like him more than I like his comment section. But what he writes is frequently worth reading.)

First: Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Table. Idealistic, and still not present, but the world is getting better every day. I think what I like best is the Momma giving the little one what-for.

Secondly, for all of us who have ever spent a holiday meal with adult members of our families: Loudon Wainwright's Thanksgiving Song.

Update And a third - John Scalzi's Science Fiction Thanksgiving Grace.

***

Read as a lector, yesterday, for the first time in just over a year, and for the first time ever in this parish. As the only scheduled reader -

- first day, no other readers, NO LOCAL TRAINING SESSION! OH NOES!, and feeling just a hair knock-kneed, but at least I was there, which is more than I can say for the first time I was actually scheduled to read in this parish, about 2 weeks ago. (Someone signed up to read, and then didn't find the printed schedule until half the month was over. Someone is v. silly sometimes.) -

- the hardest part was, as always, figuring out when to stand and when to be where as the service moves from the homily to the prayers of the faithful, which, I think I should add, did NOT have the standard "we pray to the lord" at the end of each portion. (The lector reads the prayer, instructs the congregation with 'we pray to the Lord' and the congregation responds with 'Lord hear our prayer' or a similar phrase, often led by the choir in song. Our congregation likes singing. Sometimes the response is longer than the prayer-portion.) As all of my tiny brains had fallen out by that last part of my active participation, I don't remember what exactly I mumbled at the end of the prayer portion, just that, as I was trying to remember the right phrase and couldn't (despite have been told it twenty five minutes before, just before Mass) what ever it was that I said, it was different each time!

We-the-congregation muddled through. And I am a lector again.

***

Lovely Thanksgiving meal last night at the home of a friend with many other coworkers and the friend's family. We did something which I have not seen done before - we went around the table and gave thanks for what we had to be thankful for. "Good friends and family" were high on the list and frequently repeated, although 'that this year is almost over' also made an appearance!

I have too many things to name. But some of the largest ones are:

- Being in the USA. I haven't always been, and that's okay. I won't always be, and that, too, is acceptable, if only for making this year even more clear.

- For conflicts in perspective, values, and opinions, in both my nation and in my faith. For the leaders of America and of my Church are not, either one, oppressive tyrants, intent on imposing their will, and theirs alone. And because the people who are led, in my nation and my faith, are not witless sheep, blindly following the dictates of their betters.

- For the world getting better all the time.

- For good health amongst all I hold most dear - family, friends, and critters. For having ones to hold dear. For being valued in return.

- For not writing as much as I have in some other years - for my days have been full with many other things.

- For errors made and ignorance uncovered - for the world can still, delightfully, astonish me and there is no shortage of new things to learn.

- For having been granted the grace to let go of past angers and petty furies. Their warmth has not been missed as much as I had imagined it would be.

- For being paid good money to do a job I love, with people I like.

- For being able to do without that which I have not got.

***

Different strokes for different folks and all that, but after a lazy morning of looking after critters and puttering about re-shelving books, I'm a complete loss as to why anyone would go shopping today. You who do - may your foraging be successful and your traveling safe. I'll help by staying home and out of the checkout line.

CSFFBT: 'The Skin Map' by Stephen Lawhead (II)

2010-11-02T19:13:00.000-07:00

Traveling today, and the book not completely read yet, so today is even more brief.

***

The Skin Map continues to be quite engaging - partly due to the subject matter, but in no small part to the chapter structure. Especially in the beginning, the chapters are short, compact without being choppy, and leave the reader if not hanging from the cliff, at least jerking short at the top of a short hill, barely able to keep momentum from hauling one on down the other slope in a tumbling run.

The plot and characters have brought me around to wondering, again, what makes Christian fiction Christian?

I'm about a zillion percent certain that this has been debated before on CSFFBT (hint: links would be good). And I'm just as sure that I don't want to set up some sort of holier-than-thou litmus test for books of any sort.

(I'm reminded of a very acid internet exchange, some years back, when a magazine/website (can't even remember which one) published a list of books with 'Biblical world views' - and included Diary of Anne Frank. Jewish reader/bloggers were not amused. "Books about Jews can't be 'Christian Biblical'!" While I disagree, I can see where they were coming from, and don't begrudge them their indignation, esp in the case of Anne Frank and the way the Nazi party co-opted the German Church.)

Any road. Litmus tests are not what I'm going for, here.

I think that just as every person will respond to Christ differently, and that everyone would use different words to describe God to their friends and neighbors, that everyone's definition of what made a book 'Christian' will vary.

I think a definition along the lines of the old joke about 'if they made Christianity illegal, is there enough evidence to get you convicted' might be appropriate - ie, if 'THEY' were to start banning (or burning) Christian books, would this one escape the bonfire? (note 1)

Thus far in The Skin Map I haven't seen anything that would need bribery to get past a secularist censor. (There's been some reference to the grace of providence, and the main characters - in 1600 England - go to church, but that's it.) Not that I'm ready to write the book off. But I'd rather something more concrete than a general sense of joyful hope before I labeled a book as 'Christian'. There is enough mention of drinking and carousing, not to mention some ethically shady time-intervention actions, but next-to-zero sex.

I'm not asking for more sex in the book, but I'm going to be very disappointed if that turns out to be what defines the book as 'Christian'.

Note 1: Not advocating burning or banning books of any sort.

On Voting Day (politics and other stuff)

2010-11-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

Firstly - if you have not done so, please go vote, no matter who you are voting for. (Yes, I think it matters who you vote for. Yes, I want you to vote anyway. Improving the process is more important than getting a specific 'good' result.)

Secondly, if you have voted - start talking it up earlier next year/next election. Twice today I've come across people who have trouble voting because they didn't bother to update their registration when they moved - MONTHS AGO. If you show up at a precient where you are not registered, and they don't let you vote because you don't have proper ID showing that you're *supposed* to vote there - this is a feature, not a bug. Please help encourage people to get this stuff straighten out EARLY.

Thirdly - I'm not non-partisan. I have opinions and they are right, true, and correct and if you disagree then you are wrong. But. As I've said before - differing opinions doesn't mean we have to fight about it. And it doesn't mean we have to believe the worst about each other.

I'm not going to go all happy-happy-joy-joy, isn't-the-world-full-of-sunshine-and-flowers. There are demons, there are people who commit acts of horrific violence, there are people who thrive on injustice and smug superiority and looking out for number one, there are people who not demand mercy for themselves, but also validation, and who want not only justice but divine retribution for everyone else, and if God isn't up to the task, well, they'll help the old guy out.

But that's not most of us, and we need to assume that's not the people we live and work and pray and vote with. For our own sanity, if nothing else.

So...a few things to highlight, today.

Let Freedom (and Happiness) Reign - a book review in The New Yorker, about an illustrated wander through the country.

Special Arab/Muslim issue of Apex Magazine. (It's good that we have such stuff. It'll be better when such doesn't merit 'special issues'. Inbetween will be hard.)

How the Rest of the World Reports on the Tea Party in Foreign Policy - *shakes head* On the one hand, it's helpful, in a 'how do we talk about this' way, to know what other people think. On the other hand, it's frustrating to see that it's not just Americans who absolutely don't understand other people's cultures and backgrounds.

Continuing with the educational-but-not-helpful theme - I don't this this is the best answer to the idea of a writer using comics to popularize Muslim virtues. I think there's tons of room to discuss the on-going integration and interaction between 'the West' and 'Islam' - from between nations to between congregations to within those people currently living on the borderlands, including those people who ARE the borderlands - but I think comics (and art, and lit, including SF) are a way to discuss that, and *should* be used.

Heck, if it's good enough for Pope John Paul II, it's good enough for anyone.

(Part of the discussion should, I think, be focused on 'separation of church and state' as a Western/Christian ideal, and possibly not a universal human truth. But that's a sidebar, I think.)

A few days ago there was a horrific attack on a Christian church - during services - in Iraq. I think it worthy to offer prayers for those injuried, those dead, their families, and for the soldiers and police who responded. And for those who carried out the attack.

If you have not yet watched, I recommend this clip of Jon Stewart's finale speech at the Mall on Saturday. I don't agree with a lot of what Stewart says on most days. But I agree with a lot of what he says here.

And following on that: Brian Spears quit blogging about politics.

CSFFBT: 'The Skin Map' by Stephen Lawhead

2010-11-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a slightly different take on this month's Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. I haven't quite finished the book yet, and so will reserve more in-depth comments until tomorrow, when I will have finished it.

First, some notes first:

The Skin Map and
Author’s web site - http://www.stephenlawhead.com/

In short, about the book itself:

Lawhead is turning into one of those authors whose books I pick up with a sigh of relief, because a) I know it's going to be good and b) I know it's not going to make me crazy by proposing brain-breaking concepts.

(By 'brain-breaking' I don't mean twists on physics or large amounts of math - I mean things like "religion is for weak and stupid people" or "monarchies are great because of the order and stability they produce" or "carnivores are inheritantly evil".)

In The Skin Map Lawhead revisits one of the oldest of SF concepts - the alternate reality, visited by people from Our Earth. This has been used in a zillion ways, from Andre Norton's Here There Be Dragons (as well as the whole of the Witch World novels) through Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covanant to Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere as well as countless less notable others.

(This is not to knock other examples of the subgenre as being despicable - I have as a special love the Crossroads series by Nick O'Donohoe, which Amazon tells me collectible sets of the original paperbacks are going for ungodly sums, and which was not, imo, all that terrific a fiction series, despite my deep love for the subject matter. Ahem. Moving on.)

I mention Neverwhere in particular because it, like Skin Map, uses the backdrop of London as its launching point to Someplace Else. As an rural American by birth and inclination, I am afraid I not ever going to Get the fascination with the layers of history wrapt in London. Lawhead, though, makes a better-than-usual job of creating a believably complex modern metropolis as well as an alternative (1600's) reality that doesn't have me shrugging off suspension of disbelief as 'too much like work'.

And that's actually not being fair - I was well and truly drawn into this book and its plot, and look forward to finishing it tomorrow. Reading it was only complicated by the fact that I've finished three (and a half) other books in the last week. Between them - Kage Baker's House of the Stag, a partial re-read of CJ Cherryh's Gate of Ivrel, Lois McMaster Bujold's Cryoburn and Connie Willis's All Clear, I am full, to the shallowest hair root, of alternate realities and timestream convolutions.

So when a Skin Map character - just in passing, or so it seems - takes steps to advert a major historical disaster (and so save thousands of lives) my warning bells go on. (Danger Will Robinson, Danger!) Because no good turn goes unpunished, and no modifications of the plan go unnoted, and nothing is so good as it looks.

I haven't read far enough to know if the danger-adverting is just windowdressing, or is actually treated with more depth later on. I'm looking forward to finding out.

Two - no, three other notes:

- The character of Wilhemina is turning out to be, oh, eight or nine times more awesome than I had thought she was going to be. (I was, frankly, expecting another Neverwhere-esque non-entity.)

- The *concept* of a skin map is great. It even evokes that old classic The Illustrated Man. But in the context of WWII and the final solution, I'm a bit twitchy about things made from people skins.

- The cover - eye, strange symbols, pyramids and London, all in red-orange - is awesome.

As I said, hopefully more, later. Meanwhile, other CSFSBT participants are:

Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Jeff Chapman
Christian Fiction Book Reviews
Valerie Comer
Karri Compton
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
George Duncan
April Erwin
Tori Greene
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Timothy Hicks
Christopher Hopper
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Becca Johnson
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Shannon McDermott
Allen McGraw
Matt Mikalatos
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Gavin Patchett
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Kathleen Smith
Rachel Starr Thomson
Donna Swanson
Robert Treskillard
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Dona Watson
Phyllis Wheeler
Nicole White
Dave Wilson

Those other people out there that God also loves

2010-10-29T15:29:00.000-07:00

Still tip-toeing back into journaling. Which has been complicated by new&different things at work, and the threat of new&exciting things at work.

It's good to have work. It's good to have purpose.

Two days ago I wrote 501 not-very-good-and-not-very-connected words. This is a win.

Yesterday I started re-sorting books throughout the house. Still in progress, but with the eventual goal of 'make the books you haven't read yet accessible. Oh, and sort the non-fiction by subject. And the fiction by author, so you can get rid of duplicates.'

Today I actually opened up Google Reader to read the blogs I'm supposed to be following on this blog.

Of note: Neil Gaiman suggests giving away books for Halloween. Brilliant.

Anchoress on 'purging' Bad Catholics. Related (at least in my head): Becky Miller talks about godly writers writing about ungodly things. (Maybe it's related in my head because of the Elizabeth Moon stuff.)

...I don't have a good answer. There is the commandment to love each other. There is the responsibility to not let badly-acting companions tempt one into doing what one should not. There is human weakness and avoiding the near occasion of sin. There is keeping ones mouth shut if one can't say anything, and there is refusing to sit by and fold ones hands.

My guess is that Christ would have a separate solution for each situation. Which sounds like work.

Speaking of which - On Steve Colbert's Catholicism.

Oh, and NaNoMo is coming.

Talking to tax collectors without coming across like a Pharsee

2010-10-28T03:48:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday we had a guest ~~lecturer~~ priest - a missionary with Cross International. I can't speak for Cross International itself - this was the first I had heard of them - but the priest was straight out of the Catholic Worker "economic justice was Christ's first priority" school of faith.

For the record, I have never heard a rich person speak of the poor with the hate and loathing that many social justice advocates use when speaking of the rich.

I...have a hard time with that. [snip more in-depth comments as trending too close to the political] And I had a harder time with the presentation (taking the form of a homily). For me, who tithes a fair bit (although not as regularly or as much as I should) the homily nearly encouraged me to snatch money back *out* of the offering plate (metaphorically speaking.) And not because I don't doubt that there are people who need it - or that I am in need of giving it, regardless of the want on the other side. The homily was so much a one-sided (complete with cherry-picked scripture and tirades against 'rich corporations' who avoid paying taxes) blast against the wealthy (without, conveniently, defining 'wealth') that I was nearly (I hope) at the point of rolling my eyes.

The homily pretty much completely fit the label of "not helpful." It seemed to make the visiting priest feel better, though, and it did lead me to review my tithe schedule, so it wasn't completely a loss.

But I can't help thinking that maybe, given a different twist on the words, more could have been done.

There has been an on-going conversation in my house (for about five years now, on and off) about 'how to change people's minds'. And change their actions. How to fulfill the obligations of spiritual grace to admonish the sinner.

I don't have an answer, yet. But part of the answer is, I think, that yelling at people in righteous fury does more to make me feel better than it does to change the world. And, in this case 'make me feel better' is not in the sense of 'make me feel closer to God'. More is done, I think, by choosing the right words, the right time, and the right manner of speaking, in order to apply the right leverage at the right point in order to move a stone.

How to know the right words? Well, speaking to someone in French when all they speak is Mandarin is an example of 'not the right words.' Speaking disparagingly of treasured cultural icons of the listener is another. Speaking hatred instead of love is a third.

I have not found it easy to find the right words. It requires, I think, skill on the part of the speaker, a deep understanding of the message (so one can speak Truth and not just repeat a memorized magical script) and an understanding of the impact of particular words on the listener. So one must understand the listener. Usually by spending time with them, coming to understand what burdens they are struggling with, what their gifts are, what they value and what they hold lightly. Then one can more easily speak and have effect.

This is hard.

In part, it is hard because it means spending time with, and learning to put on the mind of those 'others', to better know how the message will be received. This not only means hanging out with 'horrid' people, but opens one up to the (wrong-headed) values that one was trying to change in the first place! Dangerous ground indeed.

Far safer, and easier, to stand at a distance and yell, than to step forward with open arms. And that's less of a metaphor than I would like, in today's age.

But it is also hard because it means we have to come to know and love the people we oppose. It means setting aside hate, distian and righteousness, and our own agendas, and taking on God's mission.

Tough stuff. I have never been able to pray St Francis's prayer ('grant that I may never seek so much to be understood as to understand') with ease - dadnabit, I'm right, can't you people see that? I do not trust easily. And I judge all too swiftly. I count it as a victory, now, years down this road, that I *know* I should understand, should forgive, should love, *first*, and not expect to only grant those gifts to those who have already understood, forgiven, and loved me.

It is only what the Man did - and expects of those of us who follow him -'love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself.'

Onward, with tentive steps...

2010-10-25T17:31:00.000-07:00

So, with a foundation down - not fully settled, not without a few cracks, but the road is clear, though rough in places. And if the rocks get thick, I have a staff to hand.

***

Via The Anchoress:

The Reapers Are The Angels. Zombies, which are at least not vampires.

Ron Rolheiser writes about crowds.

***

Walked to Mass this week. The number of joys and blessings wrapt up in that - that I can walk; that I will; that I found a house close to the church; that the weather was beautiful; that I have decent and yet practical clothes; that I have the time; that the world continues on as it has...too many to count.

If you want to hear God laugh, sit down and tell him about your plans

2010-09-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

I actually don't know if I'm back yet.

It's the first day of fall - an ember-gold harvest moon hangs in the east, giving lie to the heat that lay over eastern Virginia all day - which is an odd time for new beginings. But no stranger, I think, than six days past the winter stolstice.

I've been reading Word Among Us again. This month, the articles are focusing on Mother Theresa. One piece, written by Mother Theresa's biographer, emphasized that, for twenty years before starting her Calcutta ministry among the poorest of the poor, Agnes was a professed sister: praying, serving, living in community.

She didn't just wake up, at 21 years of age, and become the person she was to be, when she died.

I'm not the person I'd like to be, eventually. Perhaps I should get started on that, again.

***

It's very difficult, even on a long deployment, to make many major adjustments to one's life. Many years ago, starting a year-long assignment in a remote area, I was advised to pick three things to work towards, over the coming 12 months. I thought this was a bit low, but pick three things I did. I'll add some others in a few months, I thought.

At the end of the year, I found that I had accomplished one of the original three, and was very pleased with myself.

I think, as a trial, I will pick one habit a month, set a reasonable/sustainable goal, and focus on that one for that month. The next month, I'll add another, and try to keep the first one going strong. My intent is not to drop all the things I'm doing part-time and only so-so, but to establish a foundation, first, and let the others 'hang fire' for a day - or three - while focused on one issue.

In keeping with 'first things first', the first is to re-focus on my prayer life.

***

Via Instapundit - an interesting post on environmentalism as religion. Also includes some information on Christian 'Creation Care'.

CSFF Blog Tour - North! or Be Eaten, by Andrew Peterson (Part I)

2010-01-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

This is part one of what will hopefully be three parts of this month's Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour. The book of the month is North! or Be Eaten, by Andrew Peterson. It is part II of the Wingfeather Saga. The first book in the series is On the Edge of the Dark Sea, and I have not read it yet.

Actually, I haven't finished this one yet, either, as my order from Amazon took longer to get here than I had thought. (And I spent the weekend socializing instead of ~~working~~ being productive.)

This would be a good point to put in an FTC required disclaimer (The requirement of which is ridiculous, as print reviewers don't have to do this.) Anyway:

In conjunction with the CSFF Blog Tour, I have received no recompense or material from the publisher or any other person or entity.

What I can talk about:

The cover is beautiful - faux leather print, with ornate yellow typeset and a central illustration (in color) which strongly evokes (for this reader) the Golden Compass novels. I don't think this cover is aimed at the Christian Fiction Crowd, (for the extent that there is a CFC) but as a hook for the YA SFF audience, I think it's pretty smart.

(Other works evoked include Left Hand of Darkness and Thirty Days of Night, so make of that what you will.)

The interior is as striking as the cover, if not more so. Peterson uses interior illustrations (which appear to come from Barlowes - the Horned Hound is featured, among other interesting beasties) and short chapters. (As an aunt, I strongly approve of short chapters for reading to the younger set. Ten page chapters strain the throat.) He also uses footnotes, which I completely dig. (Not just on the cover, which has served Bujold's Baen-published Miles novels well, but inside the text as well.)

I will hopefully have more to say tomorrow, after I finish the book. Meanwhile, other members of the tour are listed below - check them out!

Brandon Barr
Justin Boyer
Amy Browning
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Rebecca LuElla Miller
New Authors Fellowship
Nissa
Donita K. Paul
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
Andrea Schultz
James Somers
Steve and Andrew
Rachel Starr Thomson
Robert Treskillard
Fred Warren
Jason Waguespac
Phyllis Wheeler
Elizabeth Williams
KM Wilsher

Links, Books,

2010-01-06T18:14:00.000-08:00

Links:

DaTechguy's Blog - Catholic blog, a bit more political than I like, but with some interesting SF commentary also.

Interview with Farah Mendlesohn - who has complied an book of crit on Joanna Russ. Most interesting to me for the commentary on different types of feminism - [those] who have grown up thinking of themselves as equal, and taking the rhetoric for granted, and then slowly realising that they've been sold London Bridge. (Which is...not the conclusion I've come to.)

The Black Hole Case - okay, not life science, but still v. interesting.

Books: (all as of yet unread)

The Book of Genesis, illustrated by R. Crumb.

Between God and Allah: What Christians Can Learn from Muslims - an examination of the points of alinement and divergence between the younger peoples of the Book.

Multicultural Medicine and Health Disparities by Satcher and Pamies

***

Had the course PT test this morning, and (contrary to what I expected) managed to score over 90% in all three events. Which, honestly, is much easier when you're an old gal.

It can be iffy, meeting a bunch of new people, esp if you're not great with people. So far in my group, there are a couple of people with a Russian language background, a gal who climbs, and a couple of SF geeks. (In amongst a wide spectrum of backgrounds and experiences.) It's actually looking very promising.

***

The day after Christmas, my family had the tv on a NCIS marathon, which I had been avoiding watching for no particular reason. This evening, I'm on my third hour in a row. Gibbs is particularly interesting, but all the characters have their moments. The action/details are occasionally...off (f'xample, the airborne jump scene had about a 100% deficiency in wind noise and turbulence inside the aircraft.) But so far, I can over look those.

...I really don't need a new show to watch.

Primate Medicine

2010-01-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Two links this morning for mainstream media health:

US response to H1N1 'appropriate' - which I think is correct, if less by design and more by luck. I find it interesting that the death rates for different flu strains are given in the article, but not for the typical 'annual' flu. (The death rates become important when one is trying to figure out how much money to spend on influenza programs, because the money usually has to get cut from something else - and it would be good to know if that something else was a greater or lesser risk than the one you were proposing to fix.)

Norway's response to MRSA - stop prescribing antibotics. I find this interesting for two reasons - firstly, because it shows a reduction in intervention in response to increased disease (which worked) and secondly because the primary influencing factor in human MRSA was demonstrated (overwhelmingly, in multiple regions) to be over-use of antibotics in humans.

(Yes, yes, One World, One Health. Everything that goes into the bioweb touches everything else. But let's hit the lower hanging fruit first, shall we, before harring off to stop animals from getting medical treatment?)

I am curious as to what sort of in-clinic, alternative care or counseling was given patients in lieu of an antibiotic prescription. Sometimes, if a provider (MD, DVM, whatever) declines to prescribe medication, the client/patient seems to take offense, as if the provider doesn't care/isn't trying to make the patient better. 'Tincture of talk' fixes many of these misunderstandings, but not all of them. A provider might easily decide that it is a better use of their time to write the script and go on to the next patient than to spend the time convincing the client to accept the more conservative treatment (which isn't making the provider any money anyway.)

Also of note is the variation in drug approval in different countries across the world. In many places I've visited - specifically Latin America - drugs that are restricted to prescription use only in the USA are available over the counter at pharmacies and animal supply/feed stores.

Resolutions

2010-01-03T17:24:00.000-08:00

Normally, I don't make these. (It's like telling someone the story of my latest plot bunny - it kills the damn thing, and I lose interest in actually writing the story.)

But the last year both showed the advantages of steady, incremental progress towards a goal and the low return on 'wishing', so I'm going to give the 'make a list of ideals and see how far I can get' method a try.

My rules for this: No getting worked up over missing a day. No frustration over lack of progress. Keep it simple, keep it sane. This is to help make life more enjoyable, not to make it more miserable.

1. Pray always.
-- Mass weekly
-- Daily Mass once or twice a week?
-- establish a regular (daily?) prayer habit
---- LOH?
---- rosary?
---- scripture reading?
---- other spiritual reading?
---- spiritual journaling?
-- participate in one or more ministries
---- lector? (easiest, perhaps)
---- soup kitchen/homeless support?
---- connect with the local Franciscans

Last year, I did some degree of all of the above (except for ministries - only did lector, and enjoyed that muchly) and found them all fulfilling, but difficult to sustain on a daily basis. So my resolution for this first quarter would focus on finding some combination that works for me.

2. Work out six days of the week.
-- find a workout buddy - or, failing that, a workout calender
-- try a few 5Ks? (one a month?)
-- try a mini-triathlon?

The 'six days a week' is a max - I spent the first three months of last year recovering from a strained ITB, and don't intend to repeat the experience. There are no weight loss resolutions associated with this, as I have realized, post-Airborne, that I could really care less what someone else things about my weight or body shape. I have a different metric now.

3. When I'm at work, work.
-- set calendar and goals
-- explore expertise-broadening opportunities
-- two hours of reading/CE work a week

One of the things I did not do well this past year was keep my head in the game, on the job, on a consistent basis. The new job has a computer nanny system that will help (ie, no checking personal email except during lunch!) I also need to work on staying up-to-date on job skills. (The two hour resolution above might be adjusted, depending on how things work out.)

4. When I'm not at work, play.
-- read for pleasure
-- write as I can
-- utilize the internet as a bridge to other writers/readers
---- do NOT let the internet hack my life
---- tighten my focus back into life science, SFF, faith, and writing
---- use CSFF Blog Tour to connect with other writers
-- create a space for living inside my house, and bring other people into that space
-- find things to do in the community (attend some sort event monthly? writer's group? go fishing?)

5. Stay in touch with family (and friends.)

Not going to talk about this here, including details about who I'm contacting when, but noted for completeness sake.

So. I shan't talk about #5, here, nor much of actual work (although bits of that may make their way here, suitably edited for public consumption.) I want to talk about the others, daily as the opportunity presents itself.

(*considers the coming year with intent*) Going to be interesting, seeing what happens.

An End to Travel; PT; Catholism and Environmentalism

2010-01-03T15:43:00.000-08:00

Have arrived, finally, at our destination in Texas. After dumping my things in the lodging room, I went for a walk-about on post. Everything was, more or less, just where it was last time I visited, only with browner grass and much less standing water.

The intervening two and a half years have also significantly changed my perception of "too far to walk". (To be fair to my physical fitness back then, it's also about 60o F less than it was then.) This time, I'm looking forward to wandering about on post, when I can't convince one of my classmates to give me a ride.

Back in my room (20 ft by 19 ft, including bathroom and kitchen area, woot!) I unpacked everything. The next nine weeks will be the longest I have spent anywhere since (*counts on fingers, then toes*) the middle of September.

Speaking of physical fitness:

An article on Fit for Combat by JD Johannes, is here. I know I've read Johannes's blog before, but I can't find it now.

During this class, we're supposed to be following the Crossfit method, about which my traveling companion/classmate is quite enthusiastic. (He's not so impressed with what he's heard of the implementation during this course - he spent his time deployed doing the 'real thing'.)

Me, I'm looking forward to a regular schedule and a gym within easy reach. It's been more than a month since I finished Airborne (and 2 months before that when I took my last PT test) and as I've gone running perhaps four times in that month, I know my physical capability has drifted downward.

***

Walking about, I found the post chapel (too late for Mass, alas, and they do not have an evening service now as I seem to remember from the last trip.) Picked up a bulletin, schedule, and assorted reading material, including a copy of this week's Our Sunday Visitor. The backpage editorial discussed Pope Benedict's 2010 World Peace message, which was released for the Copenhagen climate summit. The whole message can be found here.

I have the History Channel on behind me, playing Life After People - a fascinating exploration of what the earth would be if all of humanity suddenly left. Three of the films that have caught my attention this winter are Avatar, The Road, and The Book of Eli - each dealing with the end of the world and people's interactions with nature on different levels.

A website that I've linked to before is Catholic Conservation Center.

***

Two more "Best of" lists for the last year/decade: Ebert's Best Films of the Decade and Time Magazine's best movies, books and theater of the Decade.

***

The Saint of the Day is The Most Holy Name of Jesus. The concept - the power and magic and salvation embodied in a name - makes me shiver. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Another list of books; Noah's Ark

2010-01-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Still on the road, this time stopping in the great state of Texas.

***

From Amazon: Top ten editor's picks for 2009 in fantasy/SF - also links to top customer picks.

The editor's picks have less fantasy and far more short story collections.

***

Via Anchoress - Noah's Ark was Circular.

The ark story is a perpetual favorite among the Christian veterinarians that I know - with the occasional debates over the effects of genetic bottlenecks and how long one could have only two rabbits. (Time typically measured in seconds...) The idea of an ark also shows up repeatedly in SF, although my mind's blanking on all of them except Bulter's Clay's Ark.

The 'circular' ark of the article above reminds me of round buffalo hide boats used by American Indians of the plains for short distance river passage.

Saint of the Day: St Basil and St Gregory

New year...

2010-01-01T18:09:00.000-08:00

...new non-resolutions.

***

Traveling today, for work, and we stopped at a small motel off I-85 in Alabama. The desk clerk just called my room with a recommendation for Chosen Soldier: The makings of a special forces warrior, by Dick Couch.

She read a bit to me, over the phone: I heard the voice of the sovereign master say, "Whom will I send? Who will go on our behalf?" I answered, "Here I am, send me!"

***

Noted for later reading: Can Farming Save Detroit?

***

I have seen Avatar. It was the most beautiful, absorbing, action-packed retread of every. single. negative military cliche I have ever sat through - including some I saw for free. (All military vices were on display, and none of the virtues.) Also? Nectar-drinking mind-meld ~~unicorns~~ ponies!.

But beautifully done!

Related: Sane and intelligent thread on the 'white guy saves natives' movie/fiction trope. I think I respect Ta-nehisi Coats most for calling complete rejection of the whole sub-genre 'lazy'.

Staying with the movie theme: Don't forget Sherlock Holmes was one tough hombre - a defense of the new action-focused Sherlock Holmes movie. I've recently been (re)-introduced to the Granada TV series and I agree - Holmes was gifted (or trained) both physically and cerebrally.

I'd also like to point out that, at least in the Granda series (and reportedly in the new movie), Watson is no wuss either. Nor an idiot.

***

Sometimes staying off the internet is good - when it keeps you from wasting time you didn't have anyway, or when you're trawling around, looking for something to get cranky about.

(More than the time sink, this. I loathe that I use this cool tech for such a petty thing - to search for things to be unhappy about.)

Sometimes it's not so great, when you miss things that would make you smile or think. One good site for that is The Volokh Conspiracy, libertarian-leaning law collective which which also hits on SF-related items more often than you'd think.

Lately, Volokh brought me this piece on a religious freedom/accommodation judicial decision. (Double interest hit - a chicken processing plant vs Muslim workers - farming and faith.) Interesting implications for how the US government determines the limits of expression of religion.

Also via Volokh: Top Ten Pro-Liberty Books - which only includes two or three that I've actually heard of.

***

The Saint of the Day for today is Mary, Mother of God.

Last week of Advent, I had another of those my god, my God is awesome moments. God-as-Jesus spent about a third of his human life as a child, dependent on his mother, and loving her as fiercely, as jealously, as completely, as helplessly as any young child does the parents who cares for them.

Our love for our parents is not something we come by rationally. In order for Jesus to be fully human, I think, he had to be afflicted by this irrational adoration for a human woman.

Who made Jesus. Who was made by God. Whom God loves, helplessly, completely, fiercely, because that is how God made humanity, Mary, and Jesus.

And through whom, God loves all of humanity.

Just like Jesus loves Mary.

My God? Not afraid to work in circular equations.

My God? Awesome.

...about that being back...

2009-11-01T15:56:00.001-08:00

...right.

On the upside: back in the United States. (Nothing against the rest of the world, mind you.) Back in the South. (Nothing against the rest of the country, mind you.) Still employed. All family, friends, etc doing better than we deserve.

Downsides: Still employed, and in transition, which means less spare time than I thought.

(And having private(ish) access to the internets at all times? Not helping! New term I learned this week: lifehack - it's what the internet does with your time.)

So what is a gal to do with that time?

Sign up for National Novel Writing Month, of course!

God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.

News Reaction: What should be said, and when

2009-10-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've struggled with, blogging wise, is how (and when, and why) to respond to events in the news. And not just blogging - when, in daily life and passing conversation, does one bring up the latest insanity that's made headlines?

(Other people may have an easier time with this than I do - I argue with the radio in the car and mutter things under my breath at the tv playing in the caffiteria. Of course, I do this with TV shows and movies, too. Unquestioning consumption doesn't come easy.)

To add another wrinkle - much of the time, my reaction is negative - disagreement, fact-checking, and plain old 'look-at-the-world-we-live-in-it-these-kids-these-days'. I'm fairly well convinced that constantly spouting negativity is good for neither me nor who ever happens to be sharing my space. (And heaven knows the current state of political and social discourse in American society needs less divisive talk and demonizing, not more.)

And yet, is self-censorship ('if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all') the solution? Or is silence the same as agreement? No single person could possibly comment intelligently on every news article or blog post printed daily - even if they just limited themselves to things on which they had some degree of expertise! But just as the major networks, magazines and newspapers are accussed of bias in the things they talk about the things they ignore, so do we all pick and choose what we 'amp the signal' on, and what we walk past. (1)

Some things shouldn't be ignored. Some things shouldn't be given the dignity of a response.

And sometimes it's best to remember that God doesn't want me to be concerned about what other people do nearly as much as God wants me to be aware of what I'm doing.

***

Following that - this article about a Louisiana Justice of the Peace who refused to perform a marriage ceremony for an interracial couple has been getting traction, as they say.

The JP gave this reason for not performing the ceremony - that he felt the childern of interracial marriages had difficult lives and were never fully accepted into either 'black' or 'white' society. Instead of performing the ceremony, he referred the couple to another JP.(2)

I'm going to leave aside the legal requirements demanded of an elected official, and say that I can see where the JP is coming from - and that I don't disagree with his specific point, on the incomplete social integration in this country. There has been a great number of electrons spent on this point - the social, economic and health consequences of being African-American, Latino, or Native American in America.(3)

Much the same has been said, in fact, about the childern of single mothers, of Downs syndrome babies, of the childern of poor families, about the childern of women who have been raped - that they will be underpriviledged, unloved, and possibly abused. And because of this, the arguement goes, it is legitament for the mothers of those childern to abort childern in those situations, rather than carry them to term and let fate - or God - determine what happens then.

Both are rational, logical opinions that look carefully at the world we live in today.

And I reject both conclusions. We should not, I think, be looking at the world as it is, but at the world as we would like it to be. We should strive to treat people as though they were capable of reaching the highest potiential, instead of assuming they were pre-destined to some lesser capability.

Neither our striving to treat each other well nor our indivdual efforts to excell are going to be perfectly successful, and we should recognize that. But that should not stop us from trying.

***

Other items on a similar theme:

Journalist attempts shopping only at African American businesses (Actually, there is a whole movement behind this - check out here, here, here, and here. Note: I'm not convinced that selecting businesses based, first and most importantly, on the race of the owners isn't race-based bigotry.)

Slightly related to the above: 100-mile diet

Different definitions of racism

***

Notes:

(1) Something that gets throw out there - "Why are you talking about X when Y is obviously so much more horrible/significant/interesting/vital?" Different strokes for different folks - and just because H1N1 isn't Ebola doesn't mean that H1N1 is insignificant.

(2) This point - that the couple was sent to another JP, and that they were married shortly there after, so that the whole incident is less than two weeks old at this date - has been dropped from some news reports.

(3) This is an embarraessment for the land of the free. That we are still, imo, better at complete integration than any other nation on the planet doesn't change the fact that we can and should do better.

Back (Top Ten Heroes List)

2009-10-12T20:10:00.000-07:00

So. Back. (I think.)

From Alexander Field's post here:

Top Ten Fictional Characters I'd Like to Be

1. Torin Kerr. Excuse me, that should be Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr. From Tanya Huff's excellent Valor series (now complete, I think, in 4 books, and which I love like little else I've loved in SF ever.) Kicks @$$, but takes no names, because she isn't going to need to remember you, punk. Perfectly capable of winning an intergalatic war singlehandly in her underwear.

2. Rowan, from Rosemary Kirsten's Steerswoman series. Adventurer, chronicler, scientist. I don't remember another series that celebrates the scientific method nearly as much.

3. Ista Dy Baocia of Louis McMaster Bujould's Chalion series. An older woman in the service of God, and struggling with the position. Ista takes on the challenges thrown her way with grace and humor and preserverance.

4. Zoe Washburn, of Serenity. Laconic. Deadly. Strong right arm to her captain, devoted wife to another (demonstrating a remarkable ability to separate her day job from the rest of her life) stubborn and lovely.

5. Ardeth Bey of The Mummy series - cool face tattoos, beautiful horse, and doesn't have to support the girl after the credits roll.

6. Storm (aka Ororro Munroe) of the X-Men. (But only if I didn't have to wear the spike heels.) (And only if it's the version where Storm is played by, oh, Angela Bassett and not Halley Berry.)

7. Cordelia Vorkorsagan, nee Naismith - Bujold again, this time for her Naismith/Vorkorsagan novels. (And speaking of people that Angela Bassett should play in the movie version...) Cordelia is just a hair *too* awesome to be real (it doesn't help that the bulk of the series is told from her son's pov, and Miles really does think his mother walks on water) but she has been one of those fantastic swashbuckling/thinking characters for me for, oh, decades now.

8. Ellen Ripley - of Aliens. I'm hoping I won't have to explain this one. Long before Buffy, there was Ripley, slayer of demons.

9. Strongbow, from Elfquest - strong, silent, deadly, stubborn like the bones of the earth are stubborn.

10. Optimus Prime (from the recent movies) - I honestly don't remember all that much of the kid cartoon, so I'm going mostly off the movies. In which Optimus is not only awesome in the busting heads category, he also shows himself to be a wise and capable leader (but not all perfect.)

***

Making this list, I'm again reminded that I like to read books with heroes who have adventures and issues that I really don't want to have. Which includes nearly all the CJ Cherryh novels and my favorite SF series Farscape, as well as the Crossroads series by Nick O'Donohoe (the only SF/F series I've seen to feature veterinarians).

***

Yes, back, of sorts. Attempting to apply the butt in chair principle, in rotation with lovingkindness towards Other People On The Internet Who Don't Think Like I Do. (I'm kinda rusty on the last one, I don't think there is supposed to be as much gritted teeth as I'm employing. *sigh*)

Noted for later

2009-08-20T04:07:00.000-07:00

Article on health care reform:

How health care killed my father

It is not, despite the title, an angry article, but very well researched and argued.

August CSFFBT: Offworld, by Robin Parrish (III)

2009-08-19T07:16:00.000-07:00

This is the last of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about Offworld. Previously, I focused on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; yesterday, I talked about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and today I finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

***

Before I forget - added from yesterday: one more SF work that Offworld reminds me of: "Houston, Can You Read" by James Tiptree, Jr.

***

Faith, God, and Christianity in Offworld

- The faith and spirituality of Offworld is more subtle than other SF/F works carrying the 'Christian' marketing label (that I have read.) I'm good with this. I think it's vital that we have a range of spiritual expression in different works - if nothing else because people who might turn their noses up at the Creationist hero in The Enclave would cheer for Cordelia Naismith in Shards of Honor.

- Having said that - is it clear at any point that the God of Offworld is the God of Scripture? Is Christ implied at any point? I don't seem to remember anything (but I could be wrong.)

- If I was to pick a phrase that described the type of faith that was portrayed in Offworld, I would say something like, "Finding God in one another." The crew members, Mae, even Rowley and Parks - they all search for ways to serve something other than themselves. This is most apparent, I think, in the crew, and their continued bond to each other.

- The other theme that suggests itself is 'God works in mysterious ways.' I'm thinking particularly of Owen, who had been placed on Ares in case of some ill-defined contingency. That contingency never came - not during the mission, at any rate - but during the dash across the Gulf Coast, when a bad-ass super-genius was needed to save the world, there was Owen.

- I like travelouge stories. (Can't seem to convince the bookstores to sub-categorize stories as 'journey SF', though.) This links well with stories showing a person (or persons) traveling through a spiritual quest. Offworld contained not one, but two 'real time' journeys - one back from Mars, and one from Florida to Texas. I wonder if the crew thought of their trip to Mars - any of them, in any sense - as a retreat, a journey in to the desert.

- Mae - wow. The character and treatment of Mae - a soul, yes, but not a complete person, because she wasn't integrated into society. (Orphaned might be a good descriptor here.) I think I found this among the most affective of all the elements in Offworld. And - as I said earlier - I was impressed by the relatively low-key approach to the topic of abortion.

- Burke and his father: I wonder how much of a God-and-Christians analogy Parrish was going after, here. God as distant-seeming-father-figure, always demanding more work, taking the Christian child away from the fun in life, pushing the child towards a greater destiny that, in the end, the child will have to choose on their own. Even in my head, it's far from a perfect analogy, but I think it has some merit. I'm less sure this analogy resembles anything Parrish had in mind.

- Space vs Earth as Paradise: Depending on who is telling the story and when the story is taking place, 'Heaven' holds a shifting location. At least in the Western world 'Heaven' and 'paradise' is assigned to a stellar location. As our knowledge of physics and the solar system have increased, we shifted to a more extra-planar concept of God's domain. Still, the imagery of writing about space travel includes references to the concept of the stars as 'Heaven'. In the story, despite the hardships of the journey, the crew of Ares was ready to leave Heaven and come back to Earth. I wonder if future humans will continue to associate God's domain with planets or with the starry void.

- I find the attempt by Roston and his group to 'take away the causes of war and hatred' - in short, to create a paradise on Earth - laudable, but, in the end, tragically mistaken. Take away all the bombs, all the guns, all the tanks, all the swords...and we'd still have the rock that Adam's son used to commit the first murder. Joss Weldon used the movie Serenity to talk about a similiar thing - our impulse as humans (and irrespective of political stance) to legislate improved morality into people.

***

And that's all I've got. Next step, look for what other people wrote. That should keep me busy at the airport tomorrow.

***

Fine print:

Find Offworld at Amazon.

Robin Parrish’s Web site - http://www.robinparrish.com/
Robin Parrish’s blog - http://twitter.com/robinparrish

Other CSFFBT participants:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

August CSFFBT: Offworld, by Robin Parrish (II)

2009-08-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

This is the second of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about Offworld. Previously, I focused on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; here, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and (hopefully) tomorrow finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

Science

- I was fairly happy with the level of science included in the novel - especially in the first half. Actually, I should modify that - I was fairly happy with the advanced tech use in the novel - and that included the different sort of problem solving tricks that the crew used during their journey to Houston.

- The insistence that "we're going to figure this out!" - in the face of both opposition and uncertainty - was one of the things that kept me interested in the book. (This is as much a characterization thing as it is a plot thing - I love characters that keep on keeping on.)

- As noted, there was less inventing new things/discovering new things than there was adapting tools left lying about by other people. Granted, this is what nearly every immediate post-apoc novel does - follow the heroes as they wander about looking for a can opener. This trend continues even after the crew gets to Houston - they're just fighting with the Men In Black SUVs for the can opener. I would not have minded more *investigating* as they went - if it could have been done without sacrificing the pacing of the plot.

- I did like the electric cars and a couple of other notes that showed the difference between now and the future of the novel. It's a hard line to draw - how to make it enough different to keep up with the visible rate of change (*cough*Star Trek's clunky handhelds*cough*) and yet not overwhelm the reader with culture shock. I would have voted for *more* change in 35 years, but that's just me.

- That a portion of the internets was still up, much less GPS - I'm on the fence about that. On the one hand, it was only a couple months. On the other hand, it was a couple months!

- I'm afraid I wouldn't have bought the safe landing of the crew at Canaveral at all in a secular novel. In CSFF, I can say 'Oh, hand-of-God, okay' and ::handwave:: it that way.

Science Fiction

- I was also pretty pleased by the science fiction aspects of the novel - which, frankly, got a big boost from the absolute 'we're not in Kansas anymore' factor: I'm about as likely to ride in a space ship to Mars as I am to wander about a deserted Earth at this point.

- Of the many different sorts of SF, I thought this novel fell closer to being 'hard'-SF (physics, space, startravel), rather than the 'softer' SF that makes up psychology and social sciences, etc. I had this concept in my mind that most Christian or faith-driven SF was going to be 'soft' SF, and I'm not unhappy to be wrong.

- Extra-dimensional devices are also v. cool - even if they are, in part, driven by ancient glowy boxes of uncertain provenances. I particularly like how the incident on Mars was worked back into the main plot. (more about how the incident on Mars was handled from a faith angle in the next post.)

- Some sources that reminded me of this book/that this book reminded me of: Life After People - the history channel tv series, and World Without Us, a book by Alan Weisman. Of course, post-apoc books are as old as the bomb (ed: *cough*Revaluation*cough*) - or older! - and journeys through deserted lands are a stock part of SF, I think. Part of World War Z was strongly evoked for me, as was Left Hand of Darkness.

- For the space & Mars parts - Mars, by Ben Bova. I'm trying to remember something other than Space: 2001 that actually featured free-fall space travel.

***

Again, fairly shallow. (Doesn't help that I'm on the road, again.)

***

Fine print:

Find Offworld at Amazon.

Robin Parrish’s Web site - http://www.robinparrish.com/
Robin Parrish’s blog - http://twitter.com/robinparrish

Other CSFFBT participants:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

August CSFFBT: Offworld, by Robin Parrish (I)

2009-08-17T07:00:00.000-07:00

This is the first of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about Offworld. This one will focus on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; in following posts, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

(If I actually manage to do all those posts, it will be two months in a row, which is a trend. ooooo, I'd be trendy!)

What you need to know about Offworld: Space-exploration-centric SF/action, set on Earth. Multi-gender, multi-ethnic cast. (Well, kinda. Sort of. The characters aren't all Caucasian males! And the parameters of the story actually support those choices.) Part-Gulf-Coast traveloge, large part post-apoc thriller, small part X-files tie-in. Adult relationships, but nearly zero sex/erotica. Large amount of gunplay and skull-duggery. Fast-moving, once it gets going.

Packaging: - Slick. Very slick. About as proffesionally sf-ish as you can get. (The cover reminds me a great deal of Neil Gaiman's American Gods.) (Also of This Present Darkness). Tri-crome cover (black, grey-blue and ivory)shows an empty highway leading across a flatland to a skyscraper city. Back cover is mostly black. Title - and this is the kewl part - title is one word, centered over a sliver of a arc, as if a sphere (or a planet!) edged by an approaching dawn.

Short, non-spoilerly reaction - I liked this one. (Not loved, not adored, liked.) I didn't have to work at liking it. The action was uneven, and I would have spent more depth on the travelouge part of the book. The characters were engaging, if a bit stock, and I appreciated the fair-but-negative treatment of the villian(s). There were adult (note: term includes more than sex) aspects to the characters and their relationships that I greatly appreciated. Christian/faith elements were present but not overpowering.

Longer reaction, with spoilers

What I liked:

- I do like post-apoc books. And this one is all that in spades.

- And space exploration! On other planets!

- The plot managed to anticipate several eye-rolling moments (sample: oh, for crying out loud, why is the magic glowy cloud in the USA? there is the entire rest of the world to explore! and turn them around into integral parts of the story. Ditto the 'lost guy on the surface of Mars' subplot. Good job on that!

- I really liked the tensions and stupid fights and testosterone duels and saving-each-other-right-back of the crew. I really liked that. They were a team on a mission, and the story never lost track of that. Plus, they made me laugh more than once.

- The bad guys were trying to do the right thing. I appreciate that. They were very very wrong, but they weren't doing it to be rich or famous. (Just trying to be God. If you're going to fail, fail big.)

- I like traveloge stories, especially ones about the South.

- The inclusion of Mae, and who she was, was awesome. To top it off, I thought the topic (abortion) was very well handled, without demonizing.

- Low-key hand of God: Sometimes, like in the book of Ester, you see God most clearly when He's hard to discern. This book was like that.

- Multi-pov stories can be a pain. So can multi-threaded plots. Parrish handled both of them well, I thought. In particular, I was kept 'hooked' on the book by the bits that each character thought or did out of sight of the others.

What didn't work so well for me:

- Stock characterization: The characters seemed a hair too predictable: Hard-nosed commander, tough-as-nails loyal second in command, clown/younger brother, wildcard. There have been books where I *knew* what a character was going to say/do, because the author had made that character live so well for me. Offworld was a bit closer to knowing what the character was going to say because I'd read this book before a dozen times.

- Not enough science love. (I'll hit on this in more depth in a later post.) This was one of the big weakness of the book for me - mostly because it seemed to be a weakeness in characterization of all the astronaunts.

- I would really have liked more introspection from the characters on the landscape they passed, instead of just barreling down I-10. (But that's just my pref. I suspect it would have bored other people to tears.)

- While the action kept me reading, there were a couple points (like the jumping from the lighthouse) (heck, like the run for the lighthouse!) that had me just shaking my head, going it would never happen like that. Also, I never figured out how the storm surge/flooding was supposed to work. There were a couple of other places where the strength of the story was insufficent to overcome my disbelief of what I was being told.

- I loved The X-Files, back in the day. But TXF was not SF. Ancient mystical boxes that power universe-shifting machinery make my eyes roll. (Sorry.)

***

Hmmm. This is a bit shallower than I thought it would be. Might add more later, if deeper thunks happen.

Or I might just go check out what other people have to say.

***

Fine print:

Find Offworld at Amazon.

Robin Parrish’s Web site - http://www.robinparrish.com/
Robin Parrish’s blog - http://twitter.com/robinparrish

Other CSFFBT participants:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

My basket is full of things

2009-08-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

One of the books I've been going through lately is Following Francis: The Francisican Way for Everyone. The author, Susan Pitchford, is a NorthWest American college professor, and part of the value of the book for me has been the way the author's values and mine don't overlap.

This week's section has been on Obedience - about what submitting to authority means. I'm one of those people who really likes rules - they give structure, they make a foundation, they set boundaries and make a bowl so life doesn't slop over the sides and get wasted as you're mixing things up. I follow rules (like walking on the sidewalk and not the grass) even when there's no sign posted, and I fret internally when I don't follow the rules.

(Don't get me started on what I think about people who delight in rule-breaking. It's far less charitable than I should be.)

Some people have nightmares about the Nazis coming for them. Me, I sometimes have nightmares about shoving people in ovens. Because that's where I'd fail - to not have the courage to examine what I'm doing.

***

Other parts of Following Francis have dealt with Simplicity and Poverty - dealing with not having things that we want. Which - hmm. I've traveled a fair bit, so I understand that people's perceptions of what is needful vs nice-to-have can vary quite a bit. (Right now I'm still hung up on indoor flush toilets.) But I travel - and even before airtravel became a global warming beating boy, world travel has been a sign of (a great deal of) disposable wealth. Even when you're doing missions-related travel.

So I read with interest this BBC report on average home sizes across the globe. And this article about different ways of measuring healthcare across the globe. And this article about the outrage over an op-ed by a Whole Foods CEO - people who regularly buy very high-priced foodstuffs are outraged by the suggestion that present schemes for reforming health care aren't the best option. (Connected to that: an article on the limitations of Fair Trade schemes.)

One of the most frustrating things about "the current political climate" - although I'm not sure this was ever *not* true, as my memories of calm harmony probably had more to do with ideologicial isolation than of actual peaceful discourse between people of different stances - is that people seem to insist on "litmus tests" of ideology (government control is bad, fair trade is good, health care reform is needed NOW, war is bad, gun control is bad) without allowing for degrees of difference.

***

Speaking of traveling and staying healthy and different priorities: here is an article about working out while Muslim and female. And an article about different cultures responding to facial expressions was very interesting - if a pretty good example of a not-very-good study: 13 subjects in two groups means not a terrific setup. One of the issues with communication is that so much of it is non-verbal. Imagine if a nod or a frown means different things.

(Critters do this too - Scottish fold cats have permanently bent over ears, that make other cats think they are angry. Rodesian Ridgeback dogs have spiky hair on their backs that mimics an expression of aggression. Dogs that want to play wag their tails, and lift a forepaw - both of which are expressions that cats use to mean "go away, I don't want any.")

***

One last thing, to end on a "the world is getting better all the time" note: Elephant gets prostetic limb.

Links on Saving the World

2009-08-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

Got called out late yesterday afternoon for an incoming flight with a "sick dog" that turned out not to be as advertised: the flight was six hours out, not 45 minutes, and the dog was lame, not sick.

Sick, if it included 'collapsed' or 'vomiting' or 'passing blood' could mean any number of life threatening issues, for which I would want to be there right then. Lame, on the other hand, is rarely life threatening, and generally isn't an emergency, technically speaking. (Although a very severe fracture could require bandaging before travel to immediate treatment to prevent severe limb impairment.)

In a way, it turned out for the best, as the aircraft was arriving at the more distant airport, and not the close one. So we got to practice emergency response (verdict: we need more practice) and still got done with work fairly early.

***
Grand Rounds Blog Calender - I love Grand Rounds, even though it's nearly all heavily human-medicine oriented.

Ten Ways the American Health Care System Is Better Than You Think - doesn't cover care of pre-term babies, (and I'm too lazy to look up links right now) which is another area in which we excell. (We just have too many pre-term babies, and not enough of a handle on how to prevent this significant risk factor.) (I will also note how easy it is to cherry-pick data comparing one country's sytem to another.)

Grant System Encourages Cancer Researchers To Play It Safe - So far, grants haven't helped find treatments. That's a bummer.

Catholic Conservation Center - like it says on the wrapper - Catholic-pov-driven conservation/ecological movement. Perhaps a hair too anti-pagan in tone, but otherwise a site I intend to spend more time looking through.

Blog post discussing recent UK study finding no added nutritional value to 'organic' food. I don't support organic animal husbandry, because sick things shuold get medicine, and I don't support large scale organic vegtable and grain production, because pulling weeds for a living sucks. But I have no problems with people indulging in organic methods for backyard produce, and I am opposed to non-organic lawncare.

***

Note for writing later: New Kind of Beanstalk

News of all sorts

2009-07-31T08:42:00.000-07:00

The good news: Starting last Saturday, I suddenly had a couple extra unclaimed hours in the day.

The bad news: I have extra hours because my home internet went out. Doesn't appear to be fixed anytime soon.

Upside: more time to read, reflect, watch Alias re-runs and work out.

Downside: I was just getting back into the blogging thing.

I've got a work-around figured out (local internet cafe and a thumbdrive) but haven't ironned out all the bugs. Plus, there is all this extra time...

***

Daniel Drezner posted a list of Top Ten Books to Read about International Economic History. Given the Pope's recent teaching on Charity (which I am still working through) some background might be helpful.

(I whole heartedly second the recomendation of Guns, Germs and Steel as a noteworthy arguement for why the world looks like it does now. And I find it interesting that Thomas Friedman ("Lexus and the Olive Tree" is not listed. (Perhaps the book is less about economics than I thought.)

CSFFBT Roundup

2009-07-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

So.

My first Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour is done.

That was fun! Also, tiring. My crit toolbox had been getting dusty, and it took longer than I thought to put my thoughts in order. Adding to the crunch, I didn't get the book (bought on my own, not through the tour, not their fault) until the week before. So instead of having the posts atleast well outlined before hand, I was frantically typing on the day of posting. Which means that I forgot at least one thing on the third day that I had made a note of, on the first day, to follow up on later.

And on top of that, a last-minute work trip came up, so I was away from my usual haunts overnight. ("No, boss, can't go to the other location overnight, I have this non-work related post to finish drafting!" Right. I like my job.)

And I still don't know why that computer was only spellchecking in French.

It all worked out. I had fun. Very nice and SMART people - including the author, OMG - dropped by, I read a few other posts, and I did post all three days.

Next time, I really want to have what I want to say already drafted before the tour starts, so that I can spend that time reading other people's posts and commenting there. I really feel like I missed out on half the blog tour experience by only checking out a few posts.

(My intent is to try to catch up on that over the next week. I hope.)

(Had a former boss who told me that 'hope is not a method! hope is not a plan! you better have some other way of getting that accomplished!'Never asked him, at the time, what he thought of prayer as a method.)

Anyway.

Had fun, want to do it again. This time with double checking the spelling of character names!

***

Thunk for the day, from Ron Rolheiser:

Daniel Berrigan once quipped: Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider carefully how good you are going to look on wood.

Yeah. 'Never promised you a rose garden.'

July CSFFBT: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (III)

2009-07-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

This is the third of three posts on Karen Hancock's The Enclave, this month's CSFFBT's selection.

Previously, I talked about the book in general and the science and science fiction parts of the book.

Today I'm going to look at the Christian elements of the book.

In a way, this is more difficult than the first two posts: each of us interacts differently with God. I feel much more comfortable making definitive statements about elements of style and treatments of science in a book than I do about how I see the Christian elements, and what impact those elements had on me.

However, I think that one of the valuable aspects of Christian science fiction is the ability to use the genre to both examine and spread the Word.

So here it goes:

Christianity as practiced by Characters

- The first page isn't over yet, and already Our Heroine is stepping back from condemning a co-worker (Our Hero, but we don't know that yet) because it isn't right to be angry at other people. That's one of the things that sold me on this book. The theme of forgiveness was something I could follow throughout.

- Lacey's struggle between reaching for shiny things - including the fulfillment of her professional dreams - vs reaching for God seemed real and was something else I could relate to. I also appreciated the candor of her doubt - she wasn't even sure that she did believe [in the Bible] anymore.

- It was somewhat disappointing to me that Lacey's reaching for God didn't seem to include reaching out to other people. Nor does the charity expressed in the first page really get applied to people who are not Cam. I'm not sure how much weight I want to give this, because it would be really beyond reasonable for me to expect Lacey to develop - over the course of even a 500-page novel - into a person who tries to express Christ-level love for everyone, including people who kidnap her and try to use her as an incubator for human-monster hybrids.

- Lacey looked up stuff in the Bible. This is probably a small thing, but I love it. When in doubt, read the citation yourself.

- Cam was actually the character whom I found most accessible, and I greatly appreciated his attempts to live his faith. The combination of "I'm here to try to bring the Good News to these people" with "What am I thinking? I'm such an arrogant idiot for trying to take this on" seemed spot-on.

- I also loved that Cam was shown to be as much a research geek in his faith as he was in his work. I think that was about perfect, that Cam would try to dig very deep into Biblical scholarship, and would read weighty books with lots of footnotes in Latin about the Bible and Christian thinkers. (Note: This might not have been exactly what the author intended me to think.)

- That both Cam and Rudy accepted the orders given to them - and the roles set out for them by God - echoed for me the centurion's response: I am a man under orders; give the word and I know it shall be done.

- Cam's willingness to accept that Gen might yet come to believe in God, too (at the very end of the book) was another appealing part of his character.

- Cam's Creationism: ehh. I'm...disquieted, here. In the 'public stoning' - where Cam is dragged in front of a group of his peers and forced to defend his faith - Cam is asked why he became a geneticist if he believed that the modern diversity of life had not developed along evolutionary lines. (Heavily paraphrased.) Cam's answer is "Maybe I wanted to prove it false." On the one hand, that's not really an answer. On the other hand, it's an indication of lack of integrity - going at something (and working for someone) under false pretenses. On a third hand, it's not as though Cam was hiding his bias.

- Cam got up in front of that crowd to defend his faith.

- One of the interesting and very close to awesome parts of the book was Zoan's interactions with God. That Zoan was looking for God before even knowing what God was, that was really kewl. That sequence - Zoan's questioning of the world around him, and his quest for answers - that also hit home.

- It bothered me, how easily the main characters dismissed the Wives and the K-J technicians and security guards and all the others killed in the Nephilium attack. One of the things that makes me twitchy in books and movies is a callous attitude towards collateral damage. Spear carriers are children of God as well. If I have to pick my main issue with Christianity as depicted in this book, it would be that - the relative self-focus of our two main characters.

Christianity as shown in the book

- A couple things seemed a little off, like the attention paid to the fact that Cam's church community advocated 'daily bible study.' (I wonder what the executives at K-J would have made of a Catholic who wanted to attend daily Mass!)

- As I said previously, it has not been my experience that a whole group of scientists would have been either vocally hostile or silent while others were hostile towards people of different religions. Particularly because there are so many different levels of 'living your faith out loud' - someone might be very committed to demonstrating the gospel at all times, just not in words.

- It's been suggested that the strong anti-religion feeling among the scientists happened because Swain & co all picked anti-religious scientists for the Institute. This seems reasonable.

- Jade's dismissal of the Bible as "an old book that ought to be dead by now" seemed...extraordinarily ham-handed, for a person who hadn't shown a great deal of capacity for thoughtlessness up until then.

- On one hand, it was a relief to see an Evangelically-toned book with a negative portrayal of a separatist cult. On the other hand, part of the Enclave's activities seemed to mirror Catholic (or High Church) rites. On one hand, it might be difficult to create a rite that didn't seem to reflect Roman Catholic tradition. On the other hand, I might just be overly sensitive here.

- I would have liked to have seen more discussion of Swain's pov on the Bible and God - his true, real thoughts - given the proven existence of the Nephilium. I think it was telling that he referenced Genesis in his presentation.

- When God said, "You think I can't handle that?" to Cam, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. God is capable of extraordinary mercy and beauty, but I really appreciate that this book took the opportunity to show God's power as well. Plus, thunderbolts!

- I liked the depiction of the clones (Zoan and his friends, at least) as perfectly normal people. This contrasted with the feeling of abomination I read into the descriptions of the Wives and the clone/hybrids. I can see a number of reasons for not going into details of the lives of the Wives, but part of me thinks this was an opportunity for more examination of the meaning of humanity. Surely a child with golden skin or a third eye or neck quills is no more an abomination than is a leper or an AIDS patient.

***

Well, I think I've come to the end of my notes. I really appreciate anyone who's taken the time to read all this.

Time for the fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

July Blog Tour: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (II)

2009-07-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

This is the second of three (intended) posts on The Enclave, the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour selection for the month of July.

[My deep apologies for spelling errors throughout - I am away from my usual computer and this one's word processor's spell check is set for French. (And not for any interesting reason, either.) I hope to correct this tomorrow.] Fixed now!

Thanks to everyone who commented so far - I haven't had a chance to read other people's posts yet and it's making me nuts.

First post is here, and covers my general likes and don'ts, packaging, writing strengths, etc. Today I want to focus more on the science and the science fiction in The Enclave.

Short version: there wasn't enough of either in the book.

That doesn't mean I didn't get wrapt up in the last 200 pages and that I didn't enjoy reading the book. (And the book does get a partial pass because it is billed as 'science fiction/fantasy'.) Just that I didn't think the book I was reading was science fiction. And I think that - especially for a book dealing with cutting-edge biotechnology - there wasn't much science in it.

(And here's where I think I have to say what SF is - aside from 'what I'm thinking about when I mean SF'. So I will turn to wikipedia, that last refuge of the despairing, and say look here.)

Science Fiction

As I said in my first post, the book had less science fiction than I would have preferred. While just what kind and to what extent any particular book is going to be science fiction rather than mystery or action or military adventure or even literature (to use a wildly non-specific word to describe a work centered on beauty and use of words in the act of story-telling) will vary from book to book, I feel comfortable in saying that The Enclave doesn't fit the genre well.

In The Enclave, there were several avenues that I think could have been pursued to increase the "sci-fi" feel of the book, and still told essentially the same story.

1) Lost World/Secret Society - With the character of Zoan and 'the enclave' itself, there existed the opportunity to dig deeper into the culture and mannerisms of the people living there. (Sci-fi is really pretty good at sociology thought experiments.) While the society itself was quite young - the oldest were no more than their early twenties - I think there was plenty of time for language drift and for the development of traditions and rituals, especially among the children. Some of the culture and daily life of the Enclave was shown, but most of it was top-driven, not organic, and not 'new'. A bit of punching up - especially of the post-apop feel of the enclave - could have helped. So could have more details about the lives of the Wives.

2) Inventions of (- and applications of -) New Things - Swain's stated goal was to "change the world and make everything new". Yet there was very little made new in the story. When new things were shown, as when Swain showed Cam the 'failed' clones through the doors as they passed, it was as end results and not as a process. Swain's presentation, as well, made very little mention of present day genetic advances and listed nothing that his institute had done, except for the not-yet released fast-healing technique. Cam was introduced as a brilliant geneticist, but I can't find where any of his accomplishments were noted. (If anyone reading this knows where I missed this information, I'd appreciate it.) The only kwel new stuff shown were the clones themselves - and all without discussions of any other sort of cloning - plant or animal.

(It's possible this was part of a deliberate choice on the part of the author - perhaps the message was only God can create new things. Which would be fine, if we didn't already have wheat with salmon anti-freeze genes, off-the-shelf insulin made from GM bacteria with human insulin genes, and cloned sheep, cats, and dogs.)

3) Sense of Wonder - For this reader, in science fiction and fantasy both, this is big. I want the story to amaze me, to make me want to see in person what is on the pages, to actually be there. Except for the scene where the Nephilium hatch (and a few of Cam's flash back scenes) the sense of wonder was mostly absent. Part of this, I think, is that, except under the influence of either Swain or God, the main characters weren't awed or amazed.

Science

Okay. I am not a research scientist. I am absolutely not a geneticist. But I have conducted (and written up) more than one post-graduate experiment (all in life sciences, mostly in animal medicine) and visited institutes of higher learning as well as commercial research labs. I saw that Our Heroine (Lacey) AND Our Hero (Cam) were researchers - geneticists, even - and I was anticipating a book that dug into their lives and used their work - their professions - as integral parts of the plot.

For me, The Enclave didn't deliver on this. Now, there's possible reasons for this - the author wanted to focus on the faith parts of the story, and weave in the might of God through the Nephilium, and for that purpose, Lacey and Cam could have been computer network administrators or energy plant technicians or public relations experts instead of researchers, and they could have found the same shady goings-on of Swain and co. The story didn't have to be about research scientists. (Note: It's partly my fault for setting up expectations about what the story should be instead of letting the author tell the story.)

Here are some of the things that jumped out at me that seemed to be significant shortfalls in the science story telling or just didn't seem right:

- The loose frogs all over should have seriously wrecked someone's experiment - either by mixing up batches of different frogs, messing with their environment to the point of invalidating any findings, or just altering their growth/aging time line by the different light and heat. Lacey should have made some note of this - even if only thinking "thank goodness that it's not the experimental tank that got left open, just the new incoming frogs".

- As mentioned above - just what did Cam do, to make himself such a hiring coup? Maybe he had excellent benchside technique (not likely, given the Frog Tank Incident) but possible. Maybe he had taken some previously over-looked genetic code and, in sequencing it, established a new sequencing protocol. Maybe he'd cloned some knock-out frogs with a really useful set of characteristics.

- What, besides freezing people, did the health spa do? Was it feeding some extra-enriched food? Sun filters?

- Lacey as Frog Girl is the care-taker for the animal rooms. What does this entail? Does she feed the frogs? If so, what? What sorts of things are being done, experimentally wise? What kind of animal care schedule does she have to keep to? Does she get attached to different frogs?

- Cam as flightly but brilliant scientist - what was he doing with his frogs and gels? He kept checking them, but I missed the part where even an outline of the purpose of his experiment was given. Don't remember what the other scientists were going after, either. Some researchers I met were very quiet people. Others, you couldn't get them to shut up about their latest project.

- While I agree that reading abstracts and writing up journal articles takes about a zillion more hours out of a scientists year than the general public realizes, I was disappointed that this was about all the science 'work' shown in the book.

- I wanted more details about the general maintainence in the Enclave - water pipes, animal health, what they grew for the animals to eat.

- Cam, who in the book was already established as an overly-thinky sort of guy - what did he think about as he watched frogs metamorphosing from swimmers into hoppers? This would have been a great place to merge his thoughts on science, and the influence of genes as we know them to work now, and the wonder of the cosmos God made, and the transformation of fallen humans into saved. (More on this when I talk about the Christian aspects.)

- The clones, the Nephilium and the Nephilium/clone hybrids: I didn't really buy this. Partly because I'm a hard sell on "rediscovered secrets of the Ancients" and "amazing off-world technology that we miraculously learned how to reverse engineer without killing ourselves" -

- although, you could argue that in this case, Swain failed to manage to not kill himself -

- and partly it's because there wasn't enough buildup. I could have bought the magic third eyes that killed helicopters if I'd seen, say, frogs with third eyes, or golden skin, or something similar. Starting small, building up. Get me past the "there ain't no such critter" and then bring out a human with a third eye. As for the clones - there wasn't any hint (that I caught) that the experimental animals (frogs) were cloned, so the human clones came out of left field. Further more, even though the book is placed about a decade into the future, Zoan's age meant that basic cloning would have to have been started well before Dolly the sheep. Again,that's a step too far, too fast for me to buy in this story.

***
This part of my review has come out rather negative, I'm afraid. The up side is that I was really more pleased with the faith/Christian aspects of the book. That, and the over-all positive things I talked about last post, mean that I think the book was still a good read, even if it wasn't told how I would have told it, or written to specifically please me.

If there are other life-sciences oriented people out there, I'd be interested in hearing if they were bothered by the same things - or if they weren't! Karen Hancock is described in the back blurb as having a degree in biology. Jason commented yesterday that he had done an interview with her - I hope to get over there tomorrow and check that out. Perhaps there were comments on the science/SF parts of the story.

Again, fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Technorati claim post

2009-07-20T07:48:00.000-07:00

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...this really feels like some sort of internet hoax...

July Book Tour: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (I)

2009-07-20T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is the first of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about this book. This one will focus on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; in following posts, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

What you need to know about The Enclave: near-future action-adventure centered around mysterious goings-on in a cutting-edge genetics lab. Post-apocalyptic elements. Set in southwest USA. Mild romance. Threat of sexual assault. Lots of gunplay and explosions. Military characters shown in sympathetic manner.

Packaging: Professionally presented trade paperback, with attractive cover (more on that in a sec) and larger-than-usual print face, making it a very thick book (500 pages.) Cover successfully combines suspense (two out of focus figures running down a tunnel) and characterization (pretty lady with rumpled hair, flawless skin, groomed eyebrows and expensive-looking complex earrings.) Back cover is much more subdued, includes a chain-link fence in a desert setting. All in all, I think the cover sells the book and does so accurately.

Overall Reaction (short version, light on spoilers): An engaging story (although slow to start) illustrating Christian principles and Creationist themes. Multiple storylines end up gelling nicely. Multiple POVs that sometimes switch in the middle of chapters, but are generally clearly delineated. Writing is competent throughout and frequently engaging. Sympathetic characters are vividly drawn, if somewhat more thought-driven than skin-driven. I was particularly struck with how the main characters were given to indecision and second-guessing - as well as fumbling through their plans in a fairly realistic manner. Opposing characters (ie 'the bad guys') were less completely handled. The author appeared to engage in anti-scientist stereotyping. Even though the setup is somewhat lengthy, the action, once it gets going, is engaging. There was far less science than I would have liked. Most of the science present was of the X-Philes variety (depending on intervention by aliens/ancient technology rather than the application of the scientific method.) The story was set in the universe of an actively interventionist God, but this due ex machina was believably presented.

More complete reaction, complete with SPOILERS:

What I liked:

The Enclave, while presented at CSFFBT as 'science fiction', to me seemed to be more along the lines of the present-day/near future techno-thrillers (or suspense-thrillers) of Tom Clancy, Micheal Crichton, Dean Koontz, etc. However, it worked better than many of that genre, in that the characterization was decent throughout and (esp) the multiple storylines came together well.

I have a particular weakness for stories in which the author speaks through a character vividly enough that the dual vision (character that has never seen a horse sees a creature that I the reader recognize as a particular breed of horse) is nearly seamless. Hancock is not stellar at this, but she is more than competent, and I enjoyed learning about Zoan's underground world through his eyes. There were parts that worked less well (sometimes having Zoan or his friends bring up something entirely new about the Enclave was interesting and refreshing, other times it seemed more of a cheat.)

The Enclave portions of the story also gave the book a bit of a post-apocalypse feel, which is another thing I tend to like in SFF. And it had goats! Goats always make a story better. (No, not kidding.) (Yes, I am punny sometimes.)

Our Heroine, Lacey McHenry, is a scientist! Woot! Well, not actually, but she is a female trained in life sciences.

Action, explosions and people creeping their way into dark tunnels: this book had it in spades, especially as the end got rolling. I'd love to see parts of this filmed.

Our Hero - Dr Cameron Reinhardt - that's Dr Reinhardt to you and me - is a likable guy, (although I have mixed feelings about his Tragic Past). I did like how the military part of his background was used to elevate his competence without making him into G.I. Joe, Super Special Forces Ninja Ranger. (I do believe that there are a couple science-minded guys out there who could rise to high levels in their branch of research AND still be deadly ninja rangers after a 10 year break...but no more than a couple. Cameron was much more realistically portrayed.

Connected to this: The camaraderie between Cam and Rudy worked well for me.

The writing itself was well-crafted - while there weren't any parts that I re-read for the joy of the language itself, nor were there passages that I had to go through twice, scratching my head and muttering what did that mean? (Suspense and misdirecting the reader as part of the plot is okay. Confusing the reader because of poor sentence or paragraph structure is not okay.) While I would have liked language that was a bit less prosaic, less work-man, that's an individual taste thing, and it would have pushed the book out of its genre.

Aliens (the awakened Nephilim) were cool. Okay, in my head, they looked a great deal like Giger's Aliens, but still, they were cool.

Things that worked less well for me:

Despite the relatively active beginning (the first line, paragraph, and page were all solid as far as 'hook' went) it seemed to take forever for the story to get rolling. The introduction of the scientists and their work wasn't presented in a terribly interesting fashion and was made worse, I think, by the quick establishment of the 'bad guy' Swain. Perhaps some hesitation before he started threatening Cam would have helped.

Connected to this, I would have liked to have seen more of the other scientists and their personalities. I think that if the characters could have been divided into 'good guys' (or 'pov characters') and 'bad guys' AND 'other people whose part hasn't been established yet and might be good or bad but we don't know yet' that it would have helped draw me more into the book early on.

Which brings me to one of my major beefs with the characterization in the book - the relatively flat, simplistic and somewhat hostile depiction of nearly all the 'extras' among the scientists. The caricature of the scientists as being bitterly anti-Scriptural and bigoted towards Christians has not been my experience. (Yes, there are those individuals out there. And scientists have their share of egotists, and egotists tend to run their mouths and run people down.) The failure to make mention of any sort of spiritual leaning among any of the other scientists was a fault in the book, I think.

Connected to that, I'm not really crazy about the 'Christian as Lone Gunslinger' (meaning Shane, not X-File's Lone Gunmen) motif. (I'll go more into this when I talk about my take on the Christian elements of the story in a future post.)

Which brings me to the characterization of Cameron - I had mixed feelings about his Tragic Special Ops PTSD-Inducing Past. Especially with the child that died wrapt up into it. On the one hand, it worked because it helped justify Cameron's intellectual, overly-thinky decision processes. On the other hand, it made this reader aware that the author was female, writing a male character. Not so good.

A lot of the story focused on the glamorous nature of the bad guys - how pretty/handsome/well preserved they were, the cost of their clothes, the six-inch heels on the head bad gal. It gave me two impressions - firstly, it made all the characters seem overly concerned about surface appearances, and secondly, it was another form of stereotyping - rich beautiful people are evil.

In fact, to me, the main characters, even the 'good guys' seemed to be overly self-focused in their struggles and especially during the final sequences - bystanders, innocent or not, fall mangled and dead and are ignored in a manner more typical of the most mindless Hollywood violence. Even when our heroes are shown trying to save people, the attempted rescue happens 'off-screen' and then the story goes back, 'in real time', as our heroes run away.

Finally, I would have liked to have seen more actual science being performed. Testing, perhaps. Experimental design discussion. Heck, even feeding parameters of the frogs. (More on this when I talk about the book and science fiction.)

So. That's about all I had to say on the book structure, plot, etc. In my next two posts I intend to talk about science/science-fiction aspects, and then about the Christian aspects of the work.

The fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Recent (and not recent) Links: Religion

2009-07-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

An important part of being Catholic, for me, is the international nature of the Church. This came home to me again when I visited Norway - most of my fellow co-religious were non-European. (Including the lovely daughter of a weary and harrassed looking mother in the pew in front of me in Oslo - a restless little nymph in a shining white dress and sneakers with red LED lights that lit up when she stamped her feet. She reminded me so much of my little brothers (years back, you understand) that I hardly kept from laughing outloud during the readings.)

Anyway. Being Catholic is one of the ways I am definitely a part of the whole human race.

From Brazil: Two stories (here and here) concerning an abortion case. The mother in this case was a 9 year-old girl, impregnated by her foster-father. The local Bishop, in accordance with doctrine, excommunicated the 9-year-old's parents and the doctor who performed the proceedure.

What a horrific situation. Hard cases make bad laws. On some levels, it makes me nuts that this is an abortion news story about the Catholic Church, and not a child abuse story about the case of the rape of the girl.

It's hard to live with either solution - a child, already victimized by an adult she trusted, dealing with the physical and social reprecussions of carrying the baby to term. (The Catholic option suggested was cesearian section, not the (likely lethal)option of letting the girl go through labor.) Or, a child, already victimized by an adult she trusted, dealing with having been forced into an abortion. (IMO, if a child can't legally agree to sex, they can't agree to abortion, either.)

The idea that it would be better to go ahead with the abortion, and just let the child and her family get on with their lives hinges, I think, on the supposition that it's not an actual person that is killed during abortion. Which is...hard.

***

Vactican statement may put pressure on Catholic judges. Interesting. One of the not fun parts about being an American and being a Catholic is the inherent conflict between the two. It appears that the Church may have just upped the ante.

***

Top 10 Religion Stories of 2008; according to Time magazine.

As a bit of a counter point - an older article about Top 25 Evangelicals in America. I didn't focus too much on the personalities of the religious leaders in previous administrations. (To some extent, I was more concerned with people living principles, not preaching them. To other extents, I didn't care.) I will have to look further into the Catholic personalities mentioned. (Richard John Neuhaus)

***

Drug Dealers for Jesus In Mexico - As presented in the article, it's less a religous movement and more a "red-neck" outfit - where religion is part of what makes up "La Familia Michoacana" into a self-contained community. Narcotics smuggling is not on my list of "things to do for the glory of the kingdom of God." My sympathy is not with people who kill cops.

But. It's beyond the scope of this post to go into the righteousness of doing an ugly job with compassion and integrity. I'm not sure that applies here, but it bears considering.

***

Barbara Hagerty Interview: An NPR journalist talks about looking for God. My faith is the prism through which I look at the world and make moral decisions.

***

And a last one, not exactly religious, but keeping it SFF - Muggle Activists - Harry Potter fans unite to change the world. I'm not a Potter fan, but I'll say about this what I said about the books - anything that gets huge numbers of non-reading kids to read multiple lengthy novels is not all bad.

A Writer on Star Trek

2009-07-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

I picked up a May issue of Newsweek at the gym because of the cover - "To Boldly Go ... How 'Star Trek' taught us to dream big" - and found a handful of interesting articles.

(It's fun to read short-cycle media multiple cycles after it's been posted/published - much of what consituted 'news' ends up forgotten. My father used to say that one should always read the back pages first - the short bits on 'obscure' happenings end up being relevent longer than what ever is on the front page.)

I was most enthralled with Leonard Mlodinow's "Vulcans Never, Ever Smile" - a recollection of his time as a scriptwriter for(post-Original Series) Star Trek. A physicist, Mlodinow thought that he was responsible for 'putting science into science fiction.' Instead, Mlodinow relates, he learned:

The fun in Star Trek didn't come from copying science, but from having science copy it. My job wasn't to put real science into Star Trek, but to imagine new ideas that hadn't yet been thought of.

I pretty much agree. A fellow geek friend of mine from university days reminded me that the sliding doors common in hospitals and most public areas (and which show up in sci-fi-ish movies such as Sliding Doors) that respond to approaching masses and not a button were invented because a guy saw them on the original ST and took the concept as a challenge. That, said my friend, was what SFF is about.

(It's arguable that one of the big differences between fangirls and gameboys is this: gameboys want to know about the sliding doors, fangirls want to know about the people who walk through the doors. Generalizing and sterotyping, of course.)

The article has a number of insights, including interactions with Gene Roddenberry and his perspective on the evolution of human nature. (In a sort of point/counter point, another article in that issue of Newsweek discusses altruism and charity, while the concept of the role of science in SF gets a different look in Biology in Science Fiction's recent post Hollywood Science and Unscientific America.)

Something not covered in any recent discussion of ST (that I've seen so far) has been the role of religion in ST, and how, after being dismissed as superior tech in ST:TOS, faith gradually made a comeback in later renditions.

***

One of the movies I saw on vacation was the new Star Trek, which I greatly enjoyed - more than I expected to, in fact. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in front of Star Trek product. (This despite the fact that Eric Bana and Karl Urban were the only actors even remotely in my age demographic.)

I've put off posting about the movie because I wanted to have some deeper thoughts about it...but no such luck. I enjoyed the movie. Thoughts have been entirely shallow, affectionate, but without much passion. (Okay, I have exactly one deep thought, and that relates to the potientally different role of the Vulcans in this (new) ST cosmos - going from, say, representing France to being Israel.)

***

On a less-happy-about-the-future note - and one which doesn't support Rodenberry's theory of change in human nature - the Newsweek issue also covered an internet privacy/censorship legal case - in which a family was fighting to restrict the spread of photos of their daughter's fatal car accident.

The grisy photos have been passed from person to person - and even have been emailed back to the family. One could ask, what kind of person does that?!?!

One of the answers postulated by the article was 'the kind of person who feels empowered by the anonymity of the internet'. Which I can readily agree with.

If, on the internet, only God knows it was you doing hateful things...

***

One last thing to close the post on a better note: I could have sworn that John Hannah, who was in the above mentioned 1998 Sliding Doors, played Scotty in the new ST movie. Which would have made a great 'close the loop' for this post. Alas, it was Simon Pegg - of Hot Fuzz - who ALSO did the voice of "Buck" in Ice Age III. So.

You learn something new every day.

Book Review: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, by Anne Rice

2009-07-13T10:26:00.001-07:00

I did not think that I would like this book.

Back in the day, I read Rice's Interview with a Vampire slowly and painfully - the writing was hyper-Tolkienesque in density, the characters were not easily liked, and the action seemed excessively slow. I never saw an reason to pick up another book in the series. In addition, I heard enough third and fourth-hand about Rice's attitude towards fan-fic writers and towards editors ("I write and rewrite every page until it is how I want it to be, and I don't need editors to give me their feedback") to harbor a low level of hostility to the woman and how she conducted her craft.

And when word came out that Anne Rice had (re)found God, and was only going to write Christian fiction, I joined with other people in mocking and sneering at her pretension. (I regretted this since.)

It was a bit of that regret that drove, in part, my picking up the paperback from the rack in the department store. What the rest of my motivation was, I can't say. I will say that I bought the book practically without opening it, which is not usual for me. (Reading the first page is a decent litmus test to see if I will like the book at all.)

Starting on vacation, I pulled it out when I got to the airport. And by the end of the third page, I was hooked on the language and the voice Rice used for Christ.

If it were not for the name on the cover, I would not have know the book was written by the same person who wrote Interview - this book was written lightly, in spare language that was no less carefully chosen, but also infused with a joy and appreciation for the world that had been lacking in the vampire book.

Road to Cana is the second book in Rice's series, and covers a season in Christ's life just before and after he meets his cousin John at the Jordan.

Rice does some remarkable things in this book - she recreates the feel and rhythms of turn-of-the-age Palestine, she unravels what is known and guessed and proclaimed about the Holy Family and reweaves it into a cloth that is at once familiar and brand new, and she presents a Christ that is both God and human, and struggling with His role - and yet never ceases to be either.

This Yeshua can be seen as perfect, but he does not live in a perfect world. The faults and follies and festering anger of the people of Nazareth are drawn clearly, if sympathetically. (There are no hopeless evil things here - only humans who have done wrong.) The politics of the larger world still go on, and the ripples reach out to Palestine. The society of the time is closed in, dependent on manual labor, and tightly segregated by gender, family, and class, but the people who live in that society are not presented as caricatures. I was well satisfied not only by the world-building and the plot (which I did not guess all the details of before hand, even though most of the world knows how the story goes) but also by the care given to crafting all the secondary characters.

One of the things I appreciated best about the book was the way the rest of Nazareth treated Yeshua - they called him 'the sinless', but it was as much a weary confusion and a mockery as it was a praise-name. Yeshua confuses and disquiets these people - as, I think, he would those who knew him in any age.

In flaws I have only three major items: one, that the first two paragraphs were not the best hook, and I didn't start getting intrigued until the second page; two, that the repetition of names (while not the fault of the author) was confusing throughout (too many names starting with 'J'!) and finally, that the book lost some steam in the last couple of chapters, as Yeshua started gathering disciples. But these are minor things.

I have ordered the first book (Out of Egypt) and am looking forward to the third in the series.

Roads Less Traveled

2009-07-12T05:32:00.000-07:00

Ulvik is a small town in Norway, located on Hardangerfjord. It is a lovely place in early summer (heck, most of Norway is) with the quiet atmosphere of an out-of-the-way place.

Ulvik was our second walk, and our only 'walk to get there' trip. We got off the bus at Granvin and turned uphill. (This part - "turning uphill" - was a constant part of our trip. Really constant.)

The path began as a single-lane asphalt road, became a narrow unmarked asphalt road, twisted and turned, became gravel, and then we turned left off the road, and were on the trail.

It was called "the post road" because, until Ulvik got its own post office, the people used to walk over the mountian to check their mail (which came twice a week.) One way, the trip took three hours.

***

A few months back, a storm of protest arose on the internets in the space of 24 hours, because Amazon.com mis-labeled a whole stack of books, making them difficult to find on the webpages, and then (most horribly) failed to swiftly correct the problem. This storm arose on Easter Sunday.

***

As a long time reader of The Tightwad Gazette, I have found the recent spate of articles on 'living on a budget' interesting, and even occasionally helpful. Most of them echo the age old advice of "don't buy it if you don't need it' and 'pay your bills on time'.

Some articles go a bit further.

CNN linked earlier today to an article on 'disconnecting' - electronically, at least - and 'living simplier'. The thoughts shared in this article share a thread that keeps re-appearing in much of my recent reading on monks and other religious - that the distractions of modern life can help make us unhappy. You don't need stuff to make you happy.

I asked for all things so that I could enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

In the current economic situation - which many blame on the greed of lenders and bankers and/or the foolish materialism of those who bought things (including houses) that they couldn't pay for - not to mention the climate change debate which seems to hinge on condemning wasteful 'progress' and the pollution from industrial development - there seem to be many who agree. And yet...is it not a crisis because we don't have stuff? Because we don't have money to pay for stuff?

I think that one of the great gifts of modern civilization is all the 'stuff' we have - including the internet, post offices in our town, and paved roads. Oh, and open-heart surgeries, electric lights, and airplane travel. I think that having certain levels of 'stuff' - esp. food, shelter, physical security, and ways to learn more - makes us better people, and makes it easier to follow Christ, just as having a good night's sleep makes it easier to not scream at people who are annoying you. And let's hear it for things that make it easier to communication, like literacy, education, cheap paperback printing, telephones and the internet.

But I agree that the quest for getting more 'stuff' just to have 'stuff' is a distractor - and that it can make it hard to identify the most important 'stuff' for an individual person. And I think that individual choice is important. The publishers should go on printing tons of romance novels, even though I'll never read them, and there should be enough peas grown and harvested for people who like green peas to eat them. (I'll stick with SF and mysteries, and lima beans, thank you.) Ditto good cars for people who care what they drive, and big houses for people with big families.

We all, individually, need to pick what we need, and be willing leave lay what we don't. How learn this - and how to teach it, without denying access to things we don't think needful, but others might - that's a bit easier to say than to do.

***

Somewhat related: 100 Geek Skills. Also somewhat related: Heinlein's list of life skills.

Too Kwell: Human Genre Project; Cool Horses

2009-07-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

huge hattip to Biology in Science Fiction - HUGE

The Human Genre Project is a (proposed) collection of fiction, flash fiction, and poetry relating to the human genome - yeah, that genome, the one they've just finished mapping. They're still taking contributions.

This is so cool.

(Related: Micheal Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction)

A different post on the Biology in Science Fiction had me scratching my head to remember the title of a book I'd read -

- read at least part of, and that twenty odd years ago -

but could remember nothing of the title or author's name - but possibly what the cover looked like.

The cover I remembered was Rowena's Project Pope. Do you have any idea what fraction of Rowena artwork sites come up as listed under 'pornography'? (Not that I disagree, but sheez. All I wanted was a perfectly clean pic of two fully dressed robots - one in bishop's robes, for crying out loud - and I kept getting hit with 'your filter blocks this site.') And those that weren't so listed (yet!) generally didn't have titles associated with the pictures.

(There's a joke about looking at art for the text in here somewhere but I can't make it come out straight.)

And that wasn't the right book (Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak). So I thought some more, and the idea of a human confronting a man (robot) on a rearing mechanical horse came into hazy focus. Back to google I went.

And I eventually found it, via TV Tropes and it's Cool Horse page. TV Tropes is a listing of plot elements used in TV, literature, movies, just about anywhere. In addition to cool horses, they also discuss Hell Horses, Mechanical Horses, and Horses of A Different Color.

This is just neat.

(The book I was looking for was James P. Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker. And yes, one of the old mass market books had a man in a space suit confronting a robot on a rearing mechanical horse. Success!)

Cats, Fat and Otherwise

2009-07-09T23:27:00.000-07:00

I will not post cat pictures in this blog.
I will not post cat pictures in this blog.
I will not post cat pictures in this blog.

(I have no idea where my camera cord is right now, so I can't post cat pictures in this blog.)

***

I worked for quite a while for an outstanding feline practitioner, but I am not a cat person. And small animals are not my primary interest.

I still ended up with four household cats.

The story of how I ended up with four cats is too long for this space. I'll just say that it involved 9 years, Italy, a genuine crazy cat lady, two roommates, a series of vet clinics, and three couches.

***

You find all sorts of things on Amazon: Is your pet fat?

The answer, if you live in the USA, could easily be yes. And it's as damaging for our pets as it is for us humans. True malnutrition is fairly rare in the USA for pets, due to the multitude of well-balanced commercial diets that are all most pets eat. But excessive body weight due to too many calories is not uncommon, and in cats can lead to a multitude of issues, including joint problems and diabettes.

***

Are cats really domesticated? - Not really, according to the study cited in this article. The theory (which I've heard before, and think is sound) is that cats are actually niche-dwellers, and their niche is 'within the physical environment controlled by humans'.

Which reminds me of a joke:

The dog and the cat are contemplating their lives as members of a human household. The dog thinks: "The humans feed me, care for me, provide for my every need, and I sleep on their bed. The humans must be gods."
The cat thinks: "The humans feed me, care for me, provide for my every need, and I sleep on their bed. I must be God."

***

There is another difference between dogs and cats: in my travels around the world, people's reactions to dogs can vary widely. Some places (America, for instance) people readily take dogs into their house and even refer to them as 'kids' (much less 'man's best friend'.) Other places, such as large portions of the Arab Muslim Mideast, many people treat dogs as vermin, barely more tolerable than swine. In parts of Asia, dogs are a traditional food animal.

Just about everywhere, people are okay with cats in a vague, stand-offish sort of way. A moderate like or tolerance, but not the passion that dogs evoke.

Which is probably just how the cats want it.

Book Review: 'Tuck' by Stephen Lawhead

2009-07-09T09:16:00.000-07:00

This was the Christian Science Fiction Blog Tour's book of the month for May...which I did not finish in time to post during the tour. Or during the month of May.

What you need to know about Tuck: Fantasy/Historical fiction; Medieval European setting; third in a trilogy. Basic story overtly mirrors that of the traditional 'Robin Hood' legend. Elements of warfare and spycraft, strong religious elements, including conflict between religious groups, light romance, little sex, light on foul language.

What I liked about Tuck:

- The cover is rilly cool. Same motif as the first two in the series, but with differing details. If I bought books for the cover (which I don't, except if it's a Micheal Whelan cover, and even then I've learned to think twice) I would have bought this one.

- Rather than being a generic 'European' setting, Tuck takes place in a definite era and a specific geographic location that is important to the plot. Likewise the characters, rather than being just 'European', also belong to specific ethnic groups.

- I am generally a sucker for Robin Hood stories, and this is the first one I have heard of that revolved around Friar Tuck. (At least, this volume did - previous ones (which I have not read) focused on Robin Hood and Will Scarlet.)

- There is struggle and conflict between the protagonists (the good guys) as to the proper actions to take. While it might have resolved too easily (everyone is friends at the end, and everything turns out well) but there was conflict, and people being stubborn and people having significantly different goals.

- Some sections were quite full of action - here I'm thinking of the 'man-hunt' chapters especially.

What I thought worked less well:

- For a supposed classically trained medieval Saxon monk, Tuck prays like a Baptist. "Great of Might, I'm just asking you..."

(If I'm wrong, and there is a historical tradition of prayers being offered in this sort of wording from that era, then I stand corrected. But to this Catholic's ear, it just sounds off.)

Another element of disconnect - I was taught that the reason for the screened confessionals was to prevent graft - you can't pass money through the screen - not (as Tuck thinks) to make the confessor invisible. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the impact of French Norman Christianity on the faith of the native British to really comment on Tuck's perspective.

- Despite the different ethnic groups, I thought that more could have been done to show different values amongst the different groups represented. (And here I mean different positive values, not just that the good guys fought fair and the bad guys didn't.) There were some elements of this in the Norman (French) perspective on the (so-called) barbaric Welsh, but I thought this could have been further developed.

- Not nearly enough sense detail.

- In the end, it didn't 'grab' at me. I was engaged on an intellectual sense, but not emotionally. I'm not sure why this was...it could have been coming in at the end of the series, it could have been the reserve of Tuck's character, that the female characters pretty much entirely didn't resonate with me (note: they weren't bad, I just didn't identify with *any* of them, which is pretty rare for this reader) or something else entirely.

To sum it up - I thought the book was well written (didn't expect any different from this author) but paced slower than I liked. Despite my best wishes, I didn't 'fall in love with' the pov character (Tuck), and the world building wasn't in depth enough to engage me on its own. I don't think I'll pick up the other books in this series, or another Lawhead book on the strength of this one, but I'm still left mostly positive towards this author.

Faith in Action

2009-07-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

A short post, with two links:

First, Pope ~~Bebeduct~~ Benedict (sorry, can't spell today) XVI's Caritas in veritate - Charity in Truth - his most recent (and third) teaching document. It's long, it's complex, it's highly footnoted, and it reads like a German wrote it (duh.) So I'll be digesting it slowly.

(It's always better to read these things yourself rather than let the media summarize them for you. But props to BBC for linking to the whole document off their site.)

There are a few lines that jump out at me, in the first few paragraphs:

Charity goes beyond justice, because to love is to give, to offer what is “mine” to the other; but it never lacks justice, which prompts us to give the other what is “his”, what is due to him by reason of his being or his acting. I cannot “give” what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice. If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity[1], and intrinsic to it.

...which is not how I typically think of justice and charity. I have thought of charity as, in some senses, denying justice, because it fails to give the recipent what they deserve. (Like most people, I think, I'm pretty big on charity (or mercy) for myself, and justice for everyone else.)

The Pope's message will be, I bet, heavy on how a Christian is to live out their faith in their own life. As in - this is a garment for the working day, not just for Sundays and feast days.

Which brings me to my next link: British Medical Association doctors have voted down a proposal calling for them to be given a right to pray for patients without facing disciplinary action. Which leaves me...uneasy. On the one hand, I strongly feel that one should be able to 'discuss religion' - particularly as part of a whole patient care system - without being afraid of being accused of harrasment. On the other hand, none of us are as smooth handed as we would like to be at all times, and I can easily see how an offer to pray for a patient could come across entirely wrong. Complicating this, the BMA members are overwhelmingly part of the British goverment, as employees of the NHS, as well as being individuals with their own souls and minds.

My gut feel is that it is generally better to try and sometimes do it wrong, than to always fail to speak about faith. For me, that the NHS does have a chaplain section tips the balance over into an unhappy acceptance of the BMA's decision, instead of a sense that they made the wrong call.

Not an easy decision.

***

On tap: movies I saw on vacation, a few books I read, and stuff about vacation.

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

The best part about being out of the country on Independence Day is that you wish you were home even more. (At least, it works that way for me.)

***

"In my opinion a few pacifists are inwardly pro-Nazi, and extremist left-wing parties will inevitably contain Fascist spies. The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult. The atmosphere of hatred in which controversy is conducted blinds people to considerations of this kind. To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like. It is this habit of mind, among other things, that has made political prediction in our time so remarkably unsuccessful."

- George Orwell, quoted by Eugene Volokh As they say, read the whole thing.

***

One of the unexpected nice things about the trip (which I will say more about later) was seeing Norwegian flags flying just about *everywhere*. No matter who we talked to, they like their country quite a bit, in the healthy 'yah! we're great' way that doesn't depend on running anyone down.

Lots of great things on this trip - seeing cool movies with friends, great hiking, beautiful countryside, holy places, all that. No writing, but the sort of experiences that writing comes out of.

***

Speaking of flying the flag - i09 has an article on American Superheroes. It misses out on Martha Washington of Frank Miller's Give Me Liberty, though.

Traveling again tomorrow.

Vacation

2009-06-20T01:22:00.000-07:00

I'm in Oslo, drinking cappucino, and doodling on a sukodu book (a Turkish sukodu book, mind you) whilst waiting on the train, and absolutely convinced that the world is wonderful.

A Responsibility for Joy

2009-05-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

The last few days I've been struggling with a case of the funk. Some of it has been due to recent reading - Emma's War's lack of heroes and positive outcomes has been pretty typical for the non-fiction I've been reading lately.

World news hasn't exactly been a fount of hope and joy, either. (North Korea, what are you thinking?) Memorial Day is a downer of its own - either I'm thinking of people gone, or wishing I was celebrating the day in a more traditional fashion (ie, beer and BBQ), or getting grumpy with people who are enjoying themselves this last weekend -

- and seriously, while I don't want to speak for anyone else, I would like to think that the veterans we honor on Memorial Day would want people to be celebrating and happy. I don't think they'd hold it against us -

- which is truly not the best way to look at things.

I've started and abandoned a handful of posts on this theme - about how everything is horrid and miserable and I'm going to go out into the garden and eat worms.

I even had a list of worms I was going to eat - links to all sorts of things that made me sad and unhappy.

Then I went to Mass this evening.

Today is the feast day of St Phillip Neri - a man who abandoned his studies for ordination and became a lay leader of the church. His attributes were humility and gaeity, and he, like St Francis of Assisi, was one who delighted in God.

In that spirit - in the spirit of Christ who is ever willing to look past our failures, our anger, our laziness and our indifference, and passionately pour out his love on us all, a short list of things which are more butterfly than worm:

Amy Deanne at 160acrewoods posted book review of Faith to Faith - about conversations and commonalities between Christians and non-Christians.

Another book - Shop Class as Soul Craft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work - which might have implications for those who are trying to find a balance between work and prayer. (Or it might be something else - haven't read it yet.)

Some others may also remember Sister Wendy (the art nun) judging the Jesus 2000 painting contest, and the controversy surrounding the winning portrat. I managed to come back across the painter's web site: Jesus of the People painter. I think it really is a glorious piece of work.

A Happiness Project

And if all that is insufficent: I Can Haz Cheeseburger - I find the ongoing references to Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat funny and frequently (if accidently) profound.

Finally: Where the hell is Matt? - out in the world. Dancing.

The internets are out to get me...(Book review: Emma's War)

2009-05-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

...or, at least that's what it has seemed like this afternoon. I have a whole list of interesting links saved on a draft email that I can not get to.

***

Recently finished: Emma's War, by Deborah Scroggins. Non-fiction account of the 80's and 90's in Sudan, as seen via focus on a British aid worker who married a south Sudanese warlord.

Emma McCune was born and raised in Yorkshire, England, but fell in love with the idea of Africa. In tracing her path through the tangle of Western relief agencies, end-of-the-cold-war international politics, and the hair-tearing snarl of Sudan's civil war, the book is part history lesson, part cautionary moral fable, part biography, part travel-writing, and part romance.

It's about as confusing, frustrating, and anti-inspiring as you would think. Quite gripping writing, and the people involved are facinating. But I remember enough of the famines of east Sahara to be furious that nothing better came of the fighting, the relief efforts, and the aid shipped in by Western nations.

Emma's War asks more questions than it answers. It fails to have a happy ending, it fails to show the good guys winning, and in some ways it has neither good guys nor an ending.

As a sidenote to the larger drama of Emma McCune's life, the author makes note of a family of British Quakers, Chris and Clare Rolfe. The Rolfes came to the Sudan to start a micro-loan program among the refugee camps, as they had in other famine-struck regions. They were killed in 1988 in a bombing carried out by Palestinians connected with AQ. There were seven people killed - among them five British - by a bomb thrown into a hotel dining room.

Four of those British were the Rolfes - Chris and Clare, and their three year old son, and year-old daughter.

The suspects were caught, tried, and convicted. Sudanese law offered two choices - a blood price to the families of the dead, or execution. The Rolfes' families - non-violent Quakers - refused both. The families of the Sudanese killed accepted the blood price, and the convicted murderers walked out of the courthouse free men.

***

I don't know how to start praying about that. Or about the larger scope of the wars in Sudan. Or Afghanistan, or any of the dozens of little ugly wars that never make it to the headlines, so that I can walk through the day, unware of the specifics of other people suffering, dying, torturing, and killing.

***

Catholic Bridge - an information site about the Catholic faith, aimed mostly at non-Catholic Christians and intended to unwrap some of the questions that divide us.

Non-Review: Stephen Lawhead's "Tuck"

2009-05-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

...I can't review it because I haven't finished it yet.

What I can say so far is:

This is the first Robin Hood book I can remember reading that worked (mostly) from Tuck's pov.

This is not my favorite Robin Hood book. (Outlaws of Sherwood, by Robin Mckinley)

I think the writing is solid, I'm not so sure about the place-setting, it's not nearly as grim/realistic in sense detail as I tend to like, and man, there's an awful lot of talking in this book.

More, later, I hope. Meanwhile, Christian sf Book tour has some actual reviews.

Stem Cell Research

2009-05-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

(Touches on that Great Evil of Our Times, Politics. Feel free to walk on past.)

I wouldn't be posting this, if Neil Gaiman hadn't put up a post here that (IMO) misrepresented the stance of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on stem-cell research.

I am a strong supporter of scientific research. I strongly support research into inovations in health care and cures for chronic disease. I'm in favor of the space program, GM crops (to include animal crops) and the rational use of experimental animal models (which means I am in favor of testing medications and techniques on animals.)

But I think all of those should be pursued with caution and with strict attention to the moral and practical effects of the studies in question. (Including as simple a question as "is this the best thing for our money to be spent on today?")

I do not support the destruction of viable human ~~embreyos~~ embryos in scientific research. I think that - even if *no* study options were available - this practice is a long step down the slippery slope that leads to endorsement of euthanasia of the unwanted. (As a veterinarian, I recognize, respect, and use euthanasia as the valuable tool that it is. I do not support extending that tool to humans.)

I also feel that this is not an either/or arguement, that adult stem cells have been shown to be of medical use.

Because of this, I object strongly to the use of federal funds to support stem cell research that depends on the destruction of viable human embryos. If you agree with me, may I suggest that you contact and express your opinion?

Books - read, found, and so forth

2009-05-15T06:04:00.000-07:00

Ye gods, that's what I get for nattering about 'omg, back to writing, woot!' -

- work dropping in with a vengence.

***

I love my job, and I'm thankful to have a job that I love. I just wish there had been less of it to love, these past few weeks.

***

Books - recently read, and other wise:

Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia by Jo Ann Kay McNamara. Lengthy, indepth history of Catholic female religious. (650 pages not counting the footnotes, not light reading.) And not as indepth as one would think - the scope of McNamara's book means that she skimmed over a great deal of Christian (and world) history. I can't argue against the skimming (650 pages) but I think my understanding of the subject would have been better if there had been more cross-references to secular/mainstream Church history. The sheer scope of the book was daunting, and the scholarly effort that went into it impressive. However, I kept being thrown out by the author's bias...McNamara wrote a book about religious women, but the primary opponent for this 'band of sisters' was men - not the devil, not their own natures, not the temptations of the world. I think I would have gotten more from a book with a less secular author pov and with more focus on the female interpetation of Christianity.

Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi by Donald Spoto. Brief but equally well-footnoted biography of St Francis. Presents the saint as a man undergoing constant conversion and conversation with God, and places him firmly in the context of his time. Manages to wash away the fairy-tale glitter to reveal the stunning stonework underneath the life of my favorite saint.

Now I'm working on The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain by Fernando Cervantes. Dry but fascinating.

Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction by John Rieder. A Marxist treatment of early SF. Intriguing, but the author keeps using words in a manner that I don't quite follow. Being read in bits and drabs.

Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction edited by Jeff Prucher. Fun and educational. Not exactly enlightening, but I like the methodology of using citations.

The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World by Thomas M. Disch. Haven't read all of this yet, but I haven't come across a work cited yet that the author doesn't skewer in some form or other. (Same goes for authors.) Some of the ranting gets pretty brutal - Le Guin's politics are not treated kindly, here. Refreshing for its mostly even handed battering of all types and forms of SF. (I get the impression that the author loves SF, deeply and truely, and too much to not be honest about the genre.)

From the fiction reading pile:

Horizons, by Mary Rosenblum. Near-future LEO multicultural SF. Lots of action, well-fleshed out characters, few-to-none cheap grandstanding of ideals. Don't love the book, but I'm having a good time reading it. Assuming the last third holds up, I'll gladly read more by this author.

Draco Tavern, by Larry Niven. Near-future alien contact. A collection of short stories, which means some of the themes get really short shrift. But the wrting is nearly invisible, the infodumps kept to a minimum, and I keep wanting more.

(Side note: the short story "War Movie" deals with an alien race who visited Earth to make documentary movies of us killing each other. One alien, bitter at the failure of the enterprise (now that peace had mostly broken out across the globe, post-contact) tells his sob story to a human in a bar. A human woman. And I was part way through the story when I realized that in the universe of the story (and possibly the author) there was no way this human woman was military. Which...anyway.)

The Black Company by Glen Cook. Read this one first in a SFBC edition, and I'd forgotten how good it was. (Although I seem to remember later books wandering a bit.) Also - I was talking with some one about military sci-fi, and wondered if there was military fantasy. Which, yes, there is - the Black Company novels, several Turtledove novels, Mary Gentle's Ash: A Secret History, and others.

Recently found/rediscovered: Dossouye, by Charles Saunders. Published last year (Jan 08) - why don't people tell me about these things?!?!?! Sword & Sorcery, set in Africa, Dossouye is a warrior woman who rides a bull. Short stories first appeared in Amazons years - YEARS - back.

***

And now to try to do some of that writing thing.

Links - H1N1 and otherwise

2009-05-03T06:15:00.000-07:00

It's been quiet because I've been busy.

(Not, alas, writing - note to self: soon as you say woot! been writing again!, life will eat you again. Best to keep it on the QT.)

Links related to ~~work~~ the H1N1 outbreak:

The best discovery I've made in relation to the outbreak is Virology Blog. (No, I don't follow everything in the more technical posts.) Check out the interview they linked to in Science Magazine - with the CDC.

A Washington State biosecurity firm reportedly warned of the Mexico flu spike two weeks before WHO picked up on it. (I tend to think that this is over-inflated, and doesn't give WHO enough credit.)

(Also in the out-there-but-possible theory bubble is an identification of a pig farms in Veracruz as the location of animal-to-human transmission. Making Light linked to an essay that seemed to point this as fact - looking at the source blog (another great find) I'm not so sure. The head of the Mexico Epi labs (interview here) casts doubt on the identification. FAO personnel are on-site, testing. Time will tell.)

Not as charitable a pov as some, but a thought worth considering What are our individual rights in time of plague?

Not charitable, but practical - Megan McArdle discusseslack of extra capacity in the USA healthcare system - specifically doctors and nurses. Which means - if we make it a point to provide more services to more people, we need a bigger factory to do so in. Especially if we are going to do more preventative medicine, which has a greater capacity to increase life and quality of life than pure intervention. (Comments to this post are occasionally acid but interesting.)

Links NOT related:

Sci Fi Catholic talks about an article in SF Signals dealing with religious systems in fiction.

Phil Carter - ex-Army Officer and lawyer - has a new job. I followed Carter's Intel Dump back when he was still in Law School. Don't agree with everything he says, but his perspective is valuable.

Via Instapundit, 50 Tools Everyone Should Own. There's a place for a post about this - about what it means to have those kinds of resources, and about how it would be different if the list dictated "Books Everyone Should Read" or "Places Everyone Should Visit" or "Clothes Everyone Should Wear" - about how some sorts of things are more vital than others, who makes those decisions, and what will still be important in 50 years. Don't have time for that post, though.

Also don't have time for posting about this post on...racism and science fiction/fantasy and SFF publishing and SFF fans. But. I found this post (and comments) about 100% more helpful and on-target than the bits of the LiveJournal conversations that have gone on in the last few years. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but making long strides towards being something that fixes the problem, rather than just providing a platform for yelling.

...And that will be it, as I have intentions to go write.

Links & Writing Update

2009-04-24T05:42:00.000-07:00

Micheal Yon - an independent Mideast reporter. Worth reading.

Michael Z Williamson talks about his latest book, over at John Scalzi's place.

Scientia Pro Publica 2 - Science, Nature and Medicine Carnival - *lots* of cool links.

Ron Rolheiser - does a weekly column on theological topics. Well worth the read.

***

After a dry spell that lasted most of three months, I started writing again. Only a few hundred words a night, and they're not very impressive words, but they're written.

As a reward, I got hit with another plotbunny. God is good. *g*

(When I say 'dry spell' - this was strictly creative writing. Work writing (which can occasionally be very creative, especially when I'm trying to find a nice way to say "what you're suggesting is illegal and ill-advised and no, I'm not going to waste my boss's time by discussing it with him" to the heads of other sections) doesn't count, and I'm not counting the prayer/reflections journal either.)

Near as I can figure, the itch to write again (which, like all good addictions, never really went away) worked its way into action when I started blogging again.

Which is odd, as one of the reasons I stopped bogging was to concentrate on writing. Huh.

Book review: The Counterfeit Man, by Alan E. Nourse

2009-04-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

I've been read a lot of older SF lately. Stuff that I think has been called "golden age" SF - you know, the old, pure stuff before it got diluted by politically correct thinking and 'fuzzy' pseudo-science.

My hat's off to the readers of the golden age, for sticking with this genre until it actually got good.

(It's also possible that I haven't been reading the right stories from previous eras.)

***

The latest collection is The Counterfeit Man and Other Science Fiction Stories by Alan E. Nourse, who I had never heard of before picking up this book from a stack of possibles. The book contains 11 short stories published between 1952 and 1963 in magazines such as Orbit, Galaxy, and Imaginative Tales.

I had expected SF of that age to be more...bound to the limits of the possible, of scientific expansion. And indeed, four of the stories dealt with inter-planetary travel, while a couple others addressed medical science. But a good third of the stories dealt with psychic powers and other elements that (for me) tended to fall a good deal closer to fantasy than SF. (And here I go with labels again...maybe this has more to do with my expectations of what I thought the stories would be about than it does with the stories themselves.)

The use of scientific language was archaic (miles for distance, which is only to expected, I think, given the time) and limited (vague switches and 'controls', which I find an annoying short-cut that cheats the reader (this reader) of real immersion in the created world.) And at least one of the stories ("The Link") depended on a 'gotcha' at the end which I had to read three times before I figured out what the writer meant.

(Sometimes I have to do this because the writer's that good, and I'm that dense. This wasn't one of those times.)

Having said all that - I enjoyed 'The Canvas Bag' (about a traveling man who tries to settle down) quite a lot, and liked 'Circus' as well (a writer is approached by a man who claims to be from another world.) 'Canvas Bag' is probably going to stay with me for a while. I can't say that I reccommend the book to any one, but it wasn't a waste of time to read.

Another day of links

2009-04-19T05:37:00.000-07:00

Poking about the internets again - this time adding blogs to 'blogs I follow'. The adding is haphazard at the moment - I expect to go through later and tweek the list.

Some things found while wandering:

An article on honeybee colony collapse and possible fixes.

Oxford English Word of the Day

Spanish Word of the Day

Poetry Daily

***

I also ran across mention of "Amazonfail" - if you don't know what it is, that's what google's for - Neil Gaiman had a couple good posts on it. Which tied in with some thoughts that have been kicking around for a week or so on time.

Measures of time. As in - from who's perspective?

We are not living in a universe that exists at a rate tied to human perception. Either a faithful perspective or a science-oriented one (and these two states don't exclude each other) will say, there are larger things in motion than you.

It is an amazing thing, this internet, and the information that flows so swiftly along it. It is awesome, how fast our world continues to change.

It would be a mistake, I think, to assume that everything changes so fast. Or needs to.

Links and bits and parts

2009-04-17T03:58:00.000-07:00

Today I'm just dinking around the web, trying to remember all the cool things I saw when I was at work, and adding the things people have sent me.

Writing Things

From Micheal J. Totten, an independent Middle East reporter, a plug for A Free Lancer's Guide.

Top Ten Writing Top Ten Lists!

The Talent of the Room - I found this via Winds of Change, which is also where Micheal Totten hangs out, sometimes.

Medical/Science Things

Why Health Care Reform Is Hard - a look at the economics of trying to save lives. Which is a hard discussion that we need to have.

I forget the exact verse, but there is a phrase in Scripture about planning out one's costs and resources before building a tower, so as to not leave it half-finished, and look the fool. Wise choices by leaders and managers have a role in providing for the poor and underserved, as well as the front-line medical providers, nurses, and technicians.

Bed Bug Epidemic This article is from the NYT, but BBC had an article a couple days ago, and I've been seeing mention of links to Craigslist give-aways for some months now. Which is a shame.

It's also an indication that some solutions that look good in controlled environments don't do as well "in the wild". Megan McArdle talks more about this here.

The Value of Hospital Chaplains

Other things

Instapundit has a great many links to Tea Party Protests over the weekend. My people are speaking. I really, really, love democracy. (It helps, when they - my people, my fellow citizens - say things I agree with. But I do love it even when they don't.)

Easter

2009-04-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?

- The Gospel of Mark, 16:1-3

***

The best thing about digging into my faith, for me, is that every year, every day, there is something new to learn.

***

Sometimes, you can't do everything. But if you're not on the road, heading to the tomb, why would God roll away the stone?

Self - get on the road.

Keep walking.

If the rock's still there when I get that far, I'll figure it out then.

The Wonders I've Seen...

2009-04-12T05:20:00.000-07:00

In a post here, Alexander Field writes about fictional places he'd like to visit.

(Do check his list out - he has v. nice pics to go with his choices.)

Added later in the day - A few thoughts on what makes a world memorable...I really like sense detail, and that's really important. And if I didn't like the characters in the story, I'm not likely to really enjoy the setting. (There are exceptions!) But what I think I want most from a fictional world is a 'sense of wonder' - something that I associate with, say, the TV series Farscape. Among others. End addition

Here's mine - not an exclusive list, and subject to change tomorrow. (About the only restriction I put on the list is that all the places are from books, not movies/tv/ect. Otherwise, we'd be here all day...)

1) A China That Never Was, But Should Have Been: Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart. Fantasy, set in China, full of delightful characters, wild adventures, and thousands of plot twists. In the voice of Number Ten Ox, Hughart's narrator, the landscape and heavens and history of the world come alive, both eternally foretold and ever new.

2) London Below: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. Urban fantasy, set in London. (TV series, novel, and graphic novel - I prefer the novel.) Not a journey to be made lightly, for travelers don't always come back from that place. But the roads and alleys of London Below are like nothing in London Above - except when they are.

3) The Outskirts: The Outskirter's Secret, by Rosemary Kirsten. SF, medieval setting, other planet. Read The Steerswoman first, because otherwise you'll miss the opportunity to figure out the story. The Outskirts are a wild place, as dangerous in their way as London Below. The wandering Outskirters and their herds travel through a wilderness full of demons and armored swamp monsters, and a landscape as deadly as the creatures that inhabit it.

4) The City of Tai-Tastigon: God Stalk, by P.C. Hogan. Fantasy, medieval setting. Another city, one full of warring guilds and fantastic treasures; trembling rooftops and crumbling stone and secret passages - and temples for every God in the world.

5) Omelas: 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", by Ursula K. Le Guin. SF, utopia/thought-experiment. I'd go here just to see how the utopia works, with its public orgies and happy drugs and beautiful trains and cute ponies and soft misty mornings, with no hard labor or untimely floods or shortages of any sort.

6) The Majat Worlds: Serpent's Reach, by CJ Cherryh. SF, future, otherworld. Specifically, the world of the hive-mind Majat, but only if I could see it through their eyes. One of the various reasons I love CJ Cherryh's writing is her ability to craft worlds and cultures. The Majat - jewel-encrusted and many-bodied - have been described as 'the first sympathetic hive-mind in SF'.

7) Ballybran: Crystal Singer, by Anne McCaffery. SF, future, otherworld. Ballybran is the only source of Crystal, a material used to power starships and link worlds together. I am not musically inclined, but I would like to see this world, where light alone can bring forth music from the stones, and gifted musicians drive themselves to madness in the quest for sound.

8) Mirabile: Mirabile, by Janet Kagan. SF, otherworld, colonization Mirable is a colony world, settled by humans who brought all the species of Earth with them - by encoding the genes for, say, a tyrannosaurus rex into the sequence of a sheep. These wild sports - called Dragon's Teeth - are culled and contained by specialists known as Jasons. It is a hazardous world, but there is *always* some new wonder to behold - so long as you see it coming first!

9) The Smoke Ring Integral Trees, by Larry Niven. SF, future, otherworld. A gas world, encircled by a floating ring of enormous trees, in whose branches whole tribes of humans live and die in continuous free fall.

10) The Jungle of the Free People: The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling. Another world that never was, but perhaps should have been. Oh, to hear the call look well, ye wolves, to see the kites circling overhead, to feel the little bald spot under Bagheera's chin...

...and I'll stop there. This was fun!

Good Friday

2009-04-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

But I tell you: Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.
- Matthew 5:44

***

I am a part of a group that meets once a week, for breakfast, a brief scripture reflection, and a request for prayers. We talk about the things we're struggling with at the office and back at home, about loved ones in harm's way and struggling with medical issues. We offer counsel for difficult situations and congradulations on obsticals overcome. We ask God to heal sicknesses, to provide strength, to grant wisdom, to give insight. Often - but not quite often enough, we even ask that God's will be done, and not our own.

Prayer is...not as easy as it sounds.

***

But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
- Luke 7:27-28

***

Unless you are a far saintlier person than most I know, there are at least one or three people that you interact with regularly that you loathe. Might be someone at the office, a guy who works out at the same gym at the same time, a gal in your internet circle, someone at the job who's arrogant or incompentent or lies or has the b.o. of a skunk ape.

Someone whose mere presence or every word is like sandpaper on your eyeballs. You might not go so far as to say you hated that person, but if you never saw them again, you'd surely not miss them.

And when you say 'Good morning' to that person, you surely don't want them to have any thing pleasant at all.

I have a person like that - heck, I have a list.

This is, for me, the hardest part of being a Christian.

***

"A car rigged with explosives detonated Thursday in a market crowded with women and children in northern Baghdad, killing 16 people...Residents said a driver left the yellow Renault parked along a street lined with shops and stalls parked along the curb. They said the man walked away with a limp and five minutes later, one small explosion was heard, then a devastating blast before noon."
--Washington Post http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/detail.jsp?key=367233&rc=na

***

What would it take to pray for that man - to pray that his limp be healed, and that he be able to walk sound, run after a child, kneel and stand to pray with ease?

What would it mean, for a Christian to pray for the salvation of the soul of Aldof Hitler?

Who could pray for Osama bin Ladin to be recieved back into his family, embraced the prodigal son of parable, accepted again, beloved again? Who could ask God that he have grandchildern to hold on his knees, and nephews to ask him for stories? For an old man to have the aches in his bones depart and his hands be strong again?

To beg of God that this one person, whom you loathe, be awarded a promotion at work, win the lottery, be healed of their corns, recieve good news from a loved one?

I can't do this. Not often. Not at all, most days. And every time I try and fail - either fail to form the words, or change into something half-hearted and self-centered - God, just bring him to see that I'm right. God, make it so I don't have to fight with her today. God, just make them leave me alone. - every time I wonder if I'm going to be able to try again.

***

When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified Him, along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The Gospel according to Luke, chapter 23, verse 33-34

The Guardian SF book Meme

2009-04-06T06:26:00.000-07:00

A meme, ~~stolen~~ borrowed from Biology in Science Fiction.

Bold indicates books I have read.
* means I've heard of this book
# means I've seen the movie

1. Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) - I read this within a decade of publishing, and it is still one of those that will turn my mood from 'sour and grumpy' to 'rolling on the floor laughing'.
2. Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)
*3. Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951) - No, I haven't read it.
4. Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)
*5. Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
6. Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)
7. J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)
8. J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)
9. J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)
10. Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)
11. Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)
12. Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)
13. Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)
14. Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)
*15. Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)
16. William Beckford: Vathek (1786)
17. Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)
18. Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953) - I dunno if it's fair to put high school required reading books on the list
19. Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)
20. Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)
21. Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)
*22. Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966) I own this, from a SFBC edition way back in the day. Never finished it.
23. Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)
*24. Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)
25. Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)
*26. Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912) A gazillion Tarzan books - yes. Barsoom - no.
27. William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)
28. Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979) - I would not have picked this fairly staid cross-time translocation novel to represent what Butler is capable of.
29. Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)
30. Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)
31. Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)
32. Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) - parts
33. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) ditto
34. Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)
35. Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)
*36. Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)
37. Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)
38. GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)
*39. Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004) I own this - and have started the first chapter. Eight months ago.
40. Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)
41. Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)
42. Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)
43. Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)
44. Samuel R Delany: The Einstein Intersection (1967)
*45. Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
*46. Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)
47. Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)
48. Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)
49. Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)
50. John Fowles: The Magus (1966)
51. Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001) - On my rec list for, oh, *everyone*.
52. Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)
*53. William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)
54. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)
55. William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)
56. Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)
57. M John Harrison: Light (2002)
58. Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
*59. Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)
60. Frank Herbert: Dune (1965) - And I quit the series somewhere around 'God-Emperor'
61. Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)
62. Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)
63. James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)
64. Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)
*65. Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)
66. Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)
67. Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)
*68. Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898) But you couldn't get me to read another Henry James novel for all the gold in the world, with love thrown in besides.
69. PD James: The Children of Men (1992) - Not a bad SF novel for a mystery writer who never read much SF. The movie, btw, was awesome.
70. Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)
71. Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)
72. Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)
73. Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966) - Again with the high school required reading list.
*74. Stephen King: The Shining (1977)
75. Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)
76. CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) - again on the highly reccommended list
77. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)
*78. Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961) - Didn't see the George Clooney movie, either, which I'm still a bit surprised about
79. Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990) - Actually, I didn't read the 1st and 3rd novels.
80. Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) - an old favorite, a great journey novel
81. Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)
82. MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)
83. David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)
84. Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)
85. Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)
86. Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)
87. Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954) - The Will Smith movie was, in many ways, much better.
88. Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
89. Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)
90. Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006) - Brillant prose, lousy science/world building, and in an alternative, hyper-politically-correct world, banned due to sucicide-inducing-tendencies.
91. Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)
92. China Miéville: The Scar (2002)
93. Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)
94. Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) - classic, and worth the read, even if you're not into post-apoc novels
95. David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)
96. Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)
97. William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)
*98. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987) - I slogged my way through 'Sula'. Not reading more Morrison.
99. Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)
100. Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)
101. Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)
*102. Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970) - I keep getting this one, Farmer's 'Riverworld' novels, and 'The Integral Trees' confused.
103. Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)
104. Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)
105. Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)
#106. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
107. Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)
108. Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)
*109. Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946) I own the trilogy. One day I shall use it for something other than propping up other books.
110. Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)
111. John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)
*112. Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) Everyone wants me to read these
113. Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)
*#114. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000) Very iffy on this one, based on the anti-Catholism mutterings and the movie.
115. François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)
116. Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
117. Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)
118. Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002) - Extremely cool idea, that broke down into exposition at the end.
119. JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997) - And I quit reading then.
120. Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)
121. Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)
122. Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)
123. Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943) - I have no clue why this one is on the list, but I loved that book. "It has done me good," the fox said, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
*124. José Saramago: Blindness (1995) - own. In Spanish. Trying to finish the Alf collection first.
125. Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)
*126. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)
*127. Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)
128. Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)
*129. Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992) Own
*130. Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)-don't think working as crew for a small town theater adaption counts as actually reading the book
*131. Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)
132. Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)
133. JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)
134. JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) - yes, both. yes, before the movies came out.
135. Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889) - And if Twain wrote SF, there's dang little 'weird' about it.
136. Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)
137. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)
138. Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)
139. Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)
140. Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)
*#141. HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895) - Think I started this one, once.
#142. HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898) - The Tom Cruise movie was...disapointing.
*143. TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)
144. Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)
*145. Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83) Started the first book.
*#146. Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)
147. John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951) - but so long ago I couldn't tell you anything about it.
148. John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
149. Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

So, out of 149, I've read 27, (and have read something by 37 of 135 authors) and have heard of other 31 novels.

The list is...odd - UK heavy, naturally, given the source, but so many are borderline SSF. Very many of the authors listed are mainstream authors represented by their one venture into spec lit. The part of me that likes things tidy and in the proper boxes is...disquieted.

...and now I want to go buy books. Botheration.

Military SF; Wheat Rust

2009-04-04T08:27:00.000-07:00

First the MilSF-

I have a weakness for this sub-genre, so I was very pleased to see this article here in i09. Andrew Liptak gives *a* list of 'the most realistic military SF'.

Liptak does not claim military service, and while that does not prevent him from making a judgment on the realism of the works in question, it does (for me) raise the question of how he makes that determination. If it had been me, in that situation, I would have chosen a different yardstick - although I would have probably fallen back on that old and barely meaningful descriptor 'best'.

In addition, I'm not sure how useful 'realistic' is as a single yardstick for the judgment of fiction. Important? Oh, my, yes - perhaps more so for SFF than for mainstream western lit, because we are dealing with suspension of disbelief, and there is little more than careless errors of fact (or significant misconceptions of reality) to jerk the reader from the invented world of the story. And that goes double for the sort of SSF that is attempting to question reality or teach the reader - it is easiest to convince the reader/viewer of the truth of one thing when the rest of the environment is accepted as true.

And I'm on the side of more realism rather than less - I adore sense-detail in writing, and appreciate depth in world building.

But if realism was all-important, we'd not be talking about dragons and FTL, now would we? Beyond which, there are a whole slew of writing rules which advise on adjustments to reality - "truncate conversation" "real life can get away with things that fiction can't", and so forth. There are other elements of story-telling - pacing, theme, characterization (although realism in characterization can also be significant) which can draw (or lose) the reader.

Which is enough grousing, I think, about the establishment of such a list. On to recommended additions:

To his list, I would add David Drake (Counting the Cost, although any of the Slammers books would count). As others noted in the comments, it really is *odd* to see Drake not represented on that list. CJ Cherryh (Rimrunner and 'Scapegoat'; as well as some fantasy work) has proven herself well in depicting both space wars at both the strategic and the personal level. SM Stirling (Marching through Georgia - but not for the faint at heart), like David Drake, writes gritty, dirt-in-your-teeth war, both in fantasy (Snowbrother) and the earlier-mentioned Draka novels. (Again, not for the faint of heart, or those who demand political correctness from their fiction.) I think that Gordon R. Dickinson absolutely should be mentioned for his Dorsia novels, with Three for Dorsia being a favorite. His fiction tends to be be more of the bloodless sort, which is why I list Three for Dorsia. Finally, for those who would protest that all these are "old" - Tanya Huff's 'Confederation' novels are a must-read - Valor's Choice being an excellent start.

I'd also throw Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor and Barrayar on the stack, although that one is reaching a bit.

Despite my reservations, it's a good list, (nothing that includes Aliens is all bad!) with lots more options in the comments.

***

Wheat Rust on the Rise - I wouldn't call something that was in Africa, the MidEast, and Asia "isolated".

What is pointed out in this article - and yet was missing from a similar article I saw about a year ago - is the mention of decades-past Nobel-prize winning work on breeding rust-resistant strains of wheat.

Diseases like rust are have been with humanity since we started pulling weeds and bandaging sick sheep instead of just eating them first. It is not a struggle we can expect to win, permanently, ever. And we need every tool in the box - from under-performing 'heirloom' breeds through GM and the judicious use of vaccines, pesticides and antibiotics, on to things we don't have names for because we haven't invented them yet.

...and I'll stop there before I get on a pro-food-and-health-tec rant. The internet should be for things we are happy about, moreso than rants. *g*

A Lent Story

2009-03-29T03:43:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that I haven't put much faith-centric material up here.

So. A story.

Once upon a time, a hard working blue-collar guy by the name of Bubba lived in a neighborhood that was largely populated by Catholics. Bubba was a hunter who always had a freezer of venision steaks. It was his habit on Fridays, after work, to fire up the grill and cook steak. The delightful aroma would float through the neighborhood.

It was less delightful during Lent, when observant Catholics were called to forgo meat. Several of the families were so upset they went to the parish priest. The priest visited Bubba and suggested that Bubba - who spoke approvingly of his neighbors and their taste in beer - consider becoming Catholic.

Well, after several sessions with the priest and much study, Bubba finally presented himself before the bishop and was confirmed a Catholic. As Bubba knelt at the altar during Easter Vigil, the Bishop sprinkled him with holy water and intoned: "You were born a Baptist, you were raised a Baptist, but now you are a Catholic." Bubba attended Mass the rest of the week, continued to join the congregation regularly, and was even seen to help out the local Catholic high school's baseketball team.

All seemed well, until the very next Lent, when, on Friday, the tantalizing scent of grilling venision wafted through the neighborhood. The neighbors called the priest in distress, the priest rushed to Bubba's house, stole and rosary flying. As the priest came through the side gate, he spied Bubba at the grill, a bottle in one hand and grilling tongs in the other. As the priest advanced, prepared to admonish Bubba, he stopped, struck by the actions Bubba performed.

As Bubba raised the little bottle of holy water, he chanted: "You was born a deer, you was raised a deer, but now you is a catfish."

***

No, that's not how a non-Catholic becomes a Catholic. And no, it's not typical anymore for neighborhoods to call in the priest to settle disputes.

But, seriously, if God can manage to save the crooked timber of sinful humanity, and do the whole water-to-wine thing, I would think a little deer-to-fish transformation would be a piece of cake.

***

Noted without much comment: Sec State Clinton visits Mexico, shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I'm glad she visited. I hope it gives her the opportunity to learn more about Catholism, and the Church in America, and in Mexico.

Books: Northwest of Earth, by C. L. Moore

2009-03-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

C.L. Moore is one of those 'seminal' SF authors, frequently listed as the 'first' female writer of SFF (unless, of course, your accounting of the genre starts with Mary Shelly and Frankenstein.) Planet Stories recently released a collection of some of her short fiction, including the oft-republished "Shambleau". I picked up the collection - frankly, as much for CJ Cherryh's name on the introduction as for Moore's writing.

It turns out that Moore's stories are Not My Sort of SFF - she specialized in 'weird tales'; that blend of magic and paranormal phenomenon that was carried forward by Anne McCaffery and others. Space flight is hardly touched upon, the scientific method hardly not at all, but there are 'other worlds' aplenty. All populated by aliens with strange mental powers and the ability to shift through the panes separating our sphere from the rest.

Aside from that, I found Moore's treatment of women characters...disquieting. It's hard to say just what was off-putting - and harder for me to say what was something particular to Moore's writing and not just overly visible in this collection of stories. (The collection was gathered around Northwest Smith, he of the rangy build and colorless, gunmetal eyes, outlaw of the spacelanes.) The women were servants of evil forces, or evil forces themselves - more frequently victims but not without tenacity, self-sacrifice, or determination. The women were neither powerless nor inconsequential to the plot. But they were not the heroes, they frequently died, and they were too often girls, not women. (Even Jirel of Joiry, whose appearance was an unexpected delight, fell into this trap of labels.)

More off-putting was a tendency of Moore to use ethnic/racial labeling in her work. Characteristics were given as those of an individual's planetary or ethnic group, not as something specific to the individual. While there was very little of what I could call racial bigotry evident, this reliance on racial characteristics as a substitute for specific traits seemed out of place.

One final critical note: with the exception of one story ("Werewoman") the collection as a whole depicted religion and faith as springing from not the Deity but instead from the influence of strange and (mostly) evil alien forces. Human reverence was shown as fear, not love, and certainly not respect. This was so pervasive that the appearance of a cross in the 'Were woman' story acted like an electric shock, so unexpected was it.

Having said all that - there were stories that I enjoyed in the collection - the above mentioned 'Werewoman'; 'Nymph of Darkness', 'Cold Grey God'; and 'Lost Paradise' (which was worth it for the images of New York alone) among them. I'm not entirely sure, however, that I'm going to search out more of C.L. Moore's writing.

***

Not light-and-fluffy: Michael J. Totten Mideast reporter.

More light-and-fluffy:

Casual wear for the low-profile Browncoat: I aim to misbehave tee-shirts.

Links

2009-03-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

Christian Writers Genesis Writing Contest - I think it is over for this year, but I might remember it for next year.

Science Fiction Writers and Religion - listing of various SFF writers, divided by religious affliation.

Speculative Faith - one of a long list of contributors at Science Fiction/Fantasy Christian Blog Tour

I'm working my way through that list of contributors, just lurking for the moment. Eventually I'll start commenting. Eventually. (Really!)

It seems there are many (a third, perhaps?) of the listed members who aren't posting regularly - or who have not in 2009. Which is...well, it happens. Life happens.

And on that note, I'm going to go enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.

Randomness in Print

2009-03-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

One of the books I should have included in the last post (about space SF I liked) was Mary Russel's The Sparrow and Children of God. The tag I remember as best describing The Sparrow was "Jesuits in...SPPPAAACCEEE".

There was a bit of a dust up, if I recall correctly, about The Sparrow being 'real' SF or not. (IMO, any thing with problem-solving space travel, unknown worlds and two aliens species is SF.) The world building is on the weak side, I think, and the earth-like biology of the alien world just a bit too pat. But Russell's characters were very well drawn, heart-rending in their humanity, and the story was full of a sense of discovery. It was also one of those rare SF novels that was very comfortably set in a world where faith and God were real.

***

About ten or fifteen years back, I read a short story in one of the SF magazines about the concept of 'leap of faith'. The story's protagonist was a preacher who survived the crisis literally by making a physical leap into the unknown. The background was a world whose native species could not see the stars in the nighttime. The theory was that the natives, who developed neither religion nor space flight, were prevented from doing so by lack of the sight of stars - that is our knowledge of 'unknown', our concept of 'out there, beyond' which drives both our outer quest for knowledge and our inner quest for God.

Or, at least, that's how I remember the story.

***

Law article: Is it really possible to do the kessel run in less than 12 parsecs? And should it matter?

I think, yes, it does matter when movies (and tv shows, and novels, and even poetry) get things wrong. (I'll also argue that Solo was trying to be a wiseacre at the farm boy, and I think the look on Kenobi's face showed he caught the error, and wasn't amused.)

Literature - which I will use to cover both print media and film, and which can probably cover a lot more - has a remarkable ability to influence our perceptions and shape our thoughts. I'm not about to call for factual accuracy in every fragment of writing or theater - that would be boring, and, until we actually can film Star Trek on location, far too limiting. But we-as-writers need to be aware of our power.

It's not for nothing that they say "the pen is mightier than the sword".

NASA and President Obama's Space Policy

2009-03-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

An article here gives several suggestions ("musts") for the American space program.(via Instapundit)

Despite having grown up on the Space Coast and having the occasional impulse to become an astronaut when I grew up - and as I was in high school when Challenger went down, that's a ship that sailed a long time ago - I haven't ever closely followed the particulars of NASA politics and aims.

We were in space, and that was what mattered.

Now, though, "we" are barely out of the atmosphere, and the USA isn't the only player in the game. (Possibly another opportunity we wasted in the '90's.) It's disquieting that I find Iran and North Korea's launches to be more distressing than encouraging. Whatever the near future holds, it doesn't seem to be Roddenberry's utopia.

***

Space-set Sci-Fi that I have loved, the very short version:

CJ Cherryh's Merchanter Universe (novels) Start with Downbelow Station and go from there.

Battlestar Galactica (TV). Some of the best dang TV ever made.

Farscape (TV). Less political than BSG, and, for me, more fun because of it.

Susan R. Matthew's Judiciary Universe (novels)(Exchange of Hostages) Not for the faint of stomach. Great characters.

David Brin's Uplift Universe (novels) Startide Rising is probably the best.

Pitch Black (movie) Aside from having Vin Diesel in it (I've watched some fairly lousy films for just this reason) this is an excellent film about humanity and redemption.

Lois Mcmaster Bujold's Naismith series (novels) Start at the beginning, which is Shards of Honor. Accessible writing, great plotting, packed with characters to love, and great fun all around.

Firefly (TV) and Serenity (movie) - Some of the science ain't quite right, but the characters and the story are not to be missed.

(This list is lacking in two points - one, that I haven't given any details on what the SF listed is about, and secondly, that I would think anyone who reads SF would already have seen those. I'll have to do better.)

Book review: Elizabeth Moon's "Speed of Dark"

2009-03-08T01:48:00.000-08:00

Bottom Line - This is probably my favorite of Moon's work, and it is every bit deserving of the Nebula it won.

More details:

- Although SF, this is not a space opera, like most of Moon's recent work. (I'm a little sad about that - I would like to read more space opera that grabbed me the way this book did.) Nor does it feature a female protagonist, again, like most of Moon's work.

- The novel has been compared with 'Flowers for Algernon'. I don't think that's fair to 'Flowers'.

- The novel's main character is an autistic man. Moon has an autistic son. The potential for an over-dose of author-insertion is there, but I believe that Moon avoids nearly all of this.

- A highly character-driven novel, 'Speed of Dark' struck me most vividly with how well each supporting character had been drawn. There are very few flat characters here, and everyone has a chance to grow - not just 'our hero.' I was especially pleased by how well the police and military characters came out. (Not surprising, given Moon, but still good to see.)

- Watch out for family values. If you're not careful, you'll get blind-sided by the emphasis on courtesy, family bonds, loyalty, and general decency.

- The story-telling was deft and the language vivid, and, despite the largely internal story, moved right along. I'm also reading a space opera by a different author, and finding myself far more frequently bored.

- This book has been out for nearly five years now. I feel silly for not reading it sooner.

More thoughts:

It's been a while since I read a book this heart-warming. Moon treats all the characters...fairly, I suppose, might be a good word. The main character is disadvantaged, to put it bluntly, in terms of dealing with mainstream society. But Moon does not let the reader think of Lou as a victim. (Lou doesn't either, more credit to him.) The 'normals' are not presented as oppressors, either - someone are rude so-and-sos, some are afraid, some are friends, some are well-meaning but clumsy. And some are very close to being saints. The humanity of the best of them is well depicted - in addition to showing the struggles Lou has in his day-to-day life, trying to navigate a confusing web of human relationships, Moon also takes time out to show how life is no picnic even for those who don't share Lou's handicap.

But it's Lou's work ethic, his unique outlook on the world, his honesty, his struggle to selflessly care for the people around him, and his tenacious problem solving that made the novel most appealing to me.

I'd like to see if Moon can bring this kind of writing to her space operas next.

***

Addded 5 April 09 - Another review of Speed of Dark here: Biology in Science Fiction.

On 'Going John Galt'

2009-03-06T02:57:00.000-08:00

In a post here, Dr Helen Smith gives the background on the phrase 'Going John Galt' - as I read it's a 'slow down strike' for people making more than miniumn wage.

The idea comes out of Ann Rand's writing, which, unfortunately, makes it suspect in my book. (I managed to slog my way through 'Anthem' and didn't leave anything there I felt I needed to go back for. Others, I know, have found Rand much more personnally meaningful.)

This 'slow down, don't chase the dollar, why keep on working more than you have to' idea is not new to me. I've heard a similar theme from various people - from back-to-the-earth-organic-or-bust types, from vowed religious, from just about everyone who has ever looked at the wealth of the developed world and thought too. much. stuff. Can. not. COPE!!

A more simplistic lifestyle is one thing. I have a great deal of admiration for those who can engage in a perpetual Lent, forever aware of what they want, and deliberately setting their wants aside. In the same way, people who try to reduce their impact on the earth, or who give generously to charities, or otherwise 'fast' from consumption - nothing wrong with that, I think.

But last time I checked, we didn't have enough skilled surgeons, enough dedicated teachers, enough honest lawyers or straight cops. In fact, thinking on it, I'm not sure if there is a profession out there, from ditch-digger to rocket scientist, where the career as a whole would be helped by the self-removal of competent professionals with integrity and dedication.

It's one thing to step back, slow down, and spend more time off in order to save energy, support a loved one, go back to school, or save your sanity. But to do so in order to 'punish' the rest of society? Particularly in such an unfocused, generalized manner?

Of course, there's another option, for those whose intent is to produce less, but not undergo the restrictions that lowered effort generally produce. In my home town, it was called 'being a county employee' - once hired, you were impossible to fire, no matter how little you actually did.

I'm thinking those who propose 'going John Galt' really don't want other people to draw that corellary.

Space & AIDS links

2008-06-14T14:41:00.000-07:00

Space links (via Instapundit)

Test of SpaceX's Falcon 9 engines. (Link to video)

What do we do with the moon when we get there? Me, I'd start with don't quit, keep on moving. Secondly, I'd like to see if things like "smoke whiskey" could actually be made in low g. (Other content here.)

Must go faster! Faster would be better!

***

It is *very* good news that AIDS will not be a wide-spread panepidemic over most of the world. (Assuming the predictions hold up.) The situation, as it is, is horrific enough. I don't think we need to add total doom of the human race in order to make the issue more meaningful.

My thoughts on this one are several, but I'll stick to two: firstly, the attention paid to the areas of "failure" in the AIDS fight - there is still a long way to go, and we seem to keep retaking the same ground. Secondly - how does this (qualified) good news affect the predictions for world population? There is no cloud without a silver lining, and everything that goes up must come down.

JK Rowlings's Harvard Address, WSJ War Poetry

2008-06-08T19:53:00.000-07:00

Via Instapundit - the text of Rowling's commencement address at Harvard.

My first thought was along the lines of "wow, that's *cool*." I'm not sure who it was cooler for - Rowling's, giving the send-off speech for 'the' premier American college, or Harvard, having a world-wide icon talking for them.

Probably cooler for Rowling. I imagine Harvard can get pretty interesting people most years.

What I found notable about the speech was the outward focus of it. I suppose that one might have guessed at this (would a British citizen really come to America and urge a group of graduates to ignore the rest of the world?). But Rowling did not stop there - she explicitly urged the graduates to "imagine" the lives of other people living under oppressive regimes. Granted, she framed this within the context of being exposed to first-hand accounts of oppression, but still - the idea that we can (and should) make assessments of the lives of people in other cultures (and, where applicable, judge those lives wanting) was refreshing.

Equally interesting was the supposition that those Harvard grads had not yet failed at much of anything. Which...might well be in the eye of the beholder. No matter how successful those students might appear to the rest of the population, I reckon there are more than a few who count their losses as legion.

As satisfying as it is to imagine the verbal smack-down to a group of over-wealthied, hyper-attaining, well-positioned Ivy League graduates - you have been blessed all of your lives, no matter if you admit it or not - I think it's not quite right to sneer at these kids for 'not failing like the rest of us have.'

I don't think world is not often changed by those who use an ordinary standard for 'good enough'.

***

Via Bookslut: Wall Street Journal's pick of war poetry.

Any list that includes Kipling is, I think, on the right track. Owens is another good choice.

I have noted a tendency in the poetry readings that I have attended these last few years - bright earnest college kids, college-bound kids, and a handful old enough to be grandparents to me. A few veterans. A few whose work - even when I disagree with the argument - is break-taking in impact.

Most though - most single a single note at the microphone.

The poet says , war is bad.

Really, say I. For I have heard this: war is bad, water wet, fire hot, and gravity makes things fall down. There's an insufficiency of poetry in that, and a paucity of fact. Even worse, though, is war poetry which states there is nothing worse than war, combining a grievous lack of imagination with the lesser sin of falsehood.

War is bad, the kids say. Very, very bad.

Indeed, I say. Tell me more.

Testing

2008-06-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, is this thing on?