Elizabeth Sandifer

I mean, this is all in posts sitting not far below this one on the site, but hey, those posts went up the weekend after Christmas and were easy to miss, so here we are again.

First off, Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons, my sprawling anthology about science fiction in 2015, from the Sad Puppies to the anthropocene extinction to Kabbalsitic enlightenment at the hands of Doctor Who, is out. Here’s the US link, here’s the UK link, here’s the Smashwords link. I genuinely think this is my best book ever, and encourage you to buy it. And if you’ve got it, please consider leaving a review, as those sorts of things are important. 

Second, the annual sale on my back catalogue is going on until January 2nd. Details on that are in this post.

Finally, just so that there’s some content, this essay on Donald Trump, white supremacy, and Adele’s “Hello” is the best piece of criticism I’ve read this week, and you should totally check it out.

Back… probably this evening actually with comics reviews, just based on how my day is likely to be shaped. 

Oh, hell, let’s make it an honorary waffling post: how was Christmas? (Whether you celebrated it or not.)…

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Right. Loads of stuff. First off, just a heads up, I’m bumping Last War in Albion one more week because I decided I don’t want to launch a new chapter on a holiday and then drop a Sherlock review on top of it later in the day. There’ll still be Friday morning content though.

Second, James Taylor has posted his usual process blog for the Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons cover which is, as usual, fascinating and worth reading. And of course you can still buy that book right here if you’re in the US, or here if you’re in the UK, and I hope you will because it’s lovely.

But for our main event, I’m joined by the brilliand Andrew Ellard for the last of our Doctor Who Series 9 podcasts to talk about The Husbands of River Song and then to go meander over a season recap because why not. You can grab that right here.…

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We’ll start with the stories ranking, with letter grades assigned, and then finish with some general thoughts on the season.

Under the Lake/Before the Flood

There’s really no way to avoid this being the stinker of the season. I’m not going to rehearse my basic criticism of Toby Whithouse’s output from about 2012 on at great length, but man I hope he starts displaying any instinct towards varied character arcs soon, preferably by writing stories about things other than protagonists who are mildly uncomfortable with their own moral ambiguity. That said, watched in the context of the rest of the season it improves, and in ways that serve to highlight the overall structure of the season.

To take a page from Jane’s usual collection of interpretive tricks, this is a season built around mirroring, both in its structure of two-part episodes with paralleled titles and in the sense that in various ways each story rehearses the events of Hell Bent. And this story is a part of that, and a significant inversion in that it’s the one iteration in which it’s the Doctor who seemingly dies instead of Clara. Most notably, Clara’s furious refusal of the Doctor’s death and her insistance on not being abandoned puts the lie to her eventual claim that she never asked the Doctor for a duty of care (though not nearly as much as his entirely sensible point that you shouldn’t have to ask in Face the Raven).

But it’s a clumsy and half-conceived of version of what the season is doing – one that becomes clear when rewatched in the context of the larger whole, but still only as something that doesn’t really take the place because the story is inexplicably of the belief that “ghosts on an underwater base” is a premise with inherent weight and doesn’t seem to grasp that i you’re going to do an extended procedural stretch of Doctor Who you need to actually have the key steps of the procedure make sense and be set up. Some of this is explained by the fact that this was made while Moffat was busy doing Sherlock and before the rest of the season actually existed. Other bits are explained by the failings of Toby Whithouse. None of that removes the basic fact that this sucked.

D

Sleep No More/Face the Raven

My decision to make this a two-parter on my initial ratings list was mostly a joke – a stubborn insistence on the “season of two-parters” tag in the face of its obvious counterexample. But I decided to watch them back-to-back for my rewatch as well, and was bemused to see that they actually work thematically, if not on any plot grounds, both in how they quietly break the two-parter structure in a way that’s important for the finale (I’m much more inclined to argue that Heaven Sent and Hell Bent are separate stories than that they form a three-parter with Face the Raven) and in that they are both stories in which the Doctor loses.…

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As usual, we’re doing a one week year-end sale on our back catalogue.

Unsurprisingly, given that it’s been out for a day, I’m not putting Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons on sale. But it is for sale, and if you buy just one book it’s certainly the one I’d prefer. Details on that one are here.

But the discounts! As usual, I’m doing this via Smashwords, so click through and use the following coupon codes at checkout as you wish.

A Golden Thread: An Unofficial Critical History of Wonder Woman: $3.99 with coupon code PS59U ($4 off)

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 1: William Hartnell: $1.99 with coupon code VY72U ($3 off)

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 2: Patrick Troughton: $1.99 with coupon code NS69E ($3 off)

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 3: Jon Pertwee: $1.99 with coupon code FZ67Y ($3 off)

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 4: Tom Baker and the Hinchcliffe Years: $2.99 with coupon code QQ79H ($2 off)

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 5: Tom Baker and the Williams Years: $2.99 with coupon code NC66G ($2 off)

TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 6: Peter Davison and Colin Baker: $3.99 with coupon code SM92M ($1 off)

Enjoy, and thanks for another year of kind support.…

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Box Day, as it were.

So, it’s not exactly news that this has been coming, but Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons is now available. Purchase links below. As always, I have no preference where you buy.

US Kindle. US Print.

UK Kindle. UK Print.

Smashwords (epub version).

Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons is my end-of-year collection, which is to say, a collection of my best work in 2015. For what it’s worth, which is, I hope, either $6.99 or $19.99 depending on your choice of formats, I think it’s also just my best book outright. Plus it has a space ship on the cover.

It’s not a book about Vox Day. It’s a book that starts with Vox – indeed with a revised and expanded version of the title essay. If you liked it before, and lots of people did, you’ll love it now. The background is more thorough, providing a pocket history of the Hugos and a full history of the Puppies. The definition of fascism is more rigorous (I use Umberto Eco’s “Ur-Fascism” for it). The analysis of Vox Day is more substantive. And I talk a bit about Ursula Vernon’s “Jackalope Wives” and contrast it with a John C Wright story, which is really funny. And it’s got my interview with Vox, the Shabcast “afterparty” (Jack is very happy to have himself saying “fuck you, Vox Day” in print in an actual book; page 167, incidentally) and some other stuff that mentions him.

It’s also got a preview chapter of The Last War in Albion Volume 1 (the V for Vendetta chapter), a sort of best-of of The Super Nintendo Project, and the complete text of Recursive Occlusion, which also marks that book’s debut in ebook form. And a ton of stand-alone essays, including my big guide to Janelle Monae’s Metropolis Suite, my piece on True Detective, Hannibal, and the anthropocene extinction, and a short story in which I casually propose how to end capitalism. Oh, and an exclusive twenty-five page interview with Peter Harness about The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion in which he reveals his rejected Doctor Who pitch featuring “beheaded medieval bishops, gigantic wicker men, and Scottish nationalism.”

But none of this quite describes what the book is.

Warren Ellis, in one of his frequent bouts of profound wisdom, describes the job of the writer as just looking up, at the world, and describing what you see. 2015 was a year where the progressive science fiction tradition I ply my trade in came under a sustained attack. We fought back, and we won, but it was an ugly, harsh year. And that’s the sort of year where it’s important to do that. And that, more than anything, is what Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons is: an attempt to take stock and say “here’s where we are” in the wake of a hell of a year. An effort that starts by dealing with the right-wing zealots, but that moves on to far bigger questions like “other than opposing the fascists who explicitly want a scorched earth policy where the world is devoid of any expression of progressive values whatsoever, what should we be thinking about?”…

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An effective holiday farce that serves as a fitting end to the story of River Song. It’s not much more than that, but it makes no claim to be, and you can hardly fault a Christmas special for its froth. So, all told, good episode.

What really jumps out, though, is an idle comment Moffat made about writing it with the knowledge that it could be his last Doctor Who. He walked it back in a later interview, saying that he thinks that every Christmas, but it’s hard not to notice the lack of any forward-looking elements in the last few stories. This is the first time in ages a season has ended with essentially no lingering plot threads. Clara is sorted and departed, Gallifrey is found, the Hybrid is presumably dealt with. And with The Husbands of River Song we get a story that seeks active closure on River’s story, in a way not even Name of the Doctor did. It’s not that there’s no possibility of further stories, although at this point they’d have to take place post-Silence in the Library. And we still don’t actually know the circumstances under which the Doctor could tell River his name. But we’ve seen them live happily ever after, an explicit accepting of endings.

Obviously the reality is that Moffat’s not going. And I’m certainly not unhappy about that, although I wouldn’t have been unhappy had he gone either (unlike last year). But there’s a mindfulness to the possibility of this being an ending – a clear sense that Moffat made sure he’d be happy with this as an ending, as opposed to just knowing it theoretically might be.

So unsurprisingly, if he’s going to maybe go out on Christmas, Moffat does farce. Which is his most elemental state as a writer. His puzzle boxes and mysteries have always, in key ways, been farces with the jokes taken out, or, as in Let’s Kill Hitler, with the jokes left in. And he’s very good at it – probably the single greatest practitioner of it over the last quarter-century of television. All of this is on ready display here, with a wealth of well-executed comedic set pieces about River not realizing who the Doctor is. The “bigger on the inside” sequence is probably the funniest single one, although I think my favorite bit of farce is the “oshit the worship the guy who’s head we have in a bag” moment.

But the result is an episode that’s a bit lopsided; much as I loved that bit, almost everything after they land on the spaceship left me impatient for River to figure it out already. It wasn’t quite to the point of being bored – that’s more a Sleep No More or Before the Flood sort of problem – but it was definitely more than the Doctor and River doing a “she doesn’t know who he is” farce while being chased by a generic robot can strictly speaking sustain.

And then of course there’s the end, which is wonderful and perfect.…

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Chew #53

An odd issue that feels borderline like just establishing a new premise for the book seven issues from the end, which is an odd feel. Not really sure what to say about this book as it runs the clock out; it’s in the critically odd position of having been a book with promise that never quite fulfilled it and is heading towards conclusion and a permanent midlist obscurity. Which is a recipe for anticlimax, and this issue exemplifies that. Nothing objectionable, nothing exciting.

Nameless #6

Grant Morrison tries his hand at killing the moon, and ends up with something that frankly reads like a grimdark parody of Grant Morrison. The mind frankly reels at him complaining about the writing in Promethea and then turning out this laundry list of occult references wrapped in a plot that has to be obscurantist to remain at all interesting. A comic that aims to be about nihilism and ends up being about nothing.

Saga #32

This continues to read like a book that will read really well in trade, which is more than you can say for Chew. As a single issue, this one rumbled along pretty well in a welcome return to the characters that first grabbed you in the book. Fiona Staples remains one of the best talents in comics, Vaughn continues to write perfectly adequate serialized comics, and this remains a fun exercise in wishing I knew what was going in.

Darth Vader #14

Gillen basically has all the toys to play with here – the Star Wars cast, Vader, and his own Aphra/0-0-0/BT-1 team, and he relishes it. Being part four of a crossover it’s more setup than fireworks, but it’s another fun, satisfying romp with good bits for several characters, and particularly for Leia. Only real flaw is that Larocca is not well-served by the photo-referenced characters, ending up at his most static and awkward. Also I forget who the guy in the cliffhanger is.

The New Avengers #4

The New Avengers fight space-Cthulhu, which they call exactly that, in a delightful slice of Claremont-style big team soap opera that feels as “now” as it gets, with the horror ideas of Nameless, a Hot Chocolate quote, and a major plot thread of Young Avengers resurrected. Plus Squirrel Girl. Basically, the Platonic ideal of a certain type of Marvel book in 2015. Well done.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #2

Basically the best thing ever; a joyful mad science romp with evil monkeys and dinosaurs and glowing green magic technology stuff. This is firmly Marvel recreating the formula that made Ms. Marvel work, and they’re doing it in fine fashion, creating a hero whose world is vivid and compelling and feels real precisely because of its majestic silliness. Really a highlight of the current market.…

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A guest post by Jill Buratto

I’m not quite sure what more needs said about this. The episode rather says it all. Maybe discussing the differences between the death of Donna and the death of Clara made sense after Face the Raven (when Phil first asked if I would write this) but, let’s face it, Hell Bent was just such a lovely and succinct “fuck you Russell, that was fucked up” that I’m not sure there is much ground to cover. But this is a thing I am passionate about so forgive me a little redundancy. 

Because, ultimately, Hell Bent is an overt challenge to Journey’s End and the horrific violation of consent contained. It explicitly nods to the Donna mind wipe incident and challenges the very premise of it. “Tomorrow is promised to no one, Doctor, but I insist upon my past.” And, this time, the Doctor agrees, backs down, acknowledges that right. And in that nod to the Donna debacle, implicitly acknowledges the past mistake. 

And it’s not just Journey’s End. Davies doesn’t have a great track record with agency at the end of stories in general. It’s not just Donna, though the forced mind wipe is the most egregious example. Ignoring her informed consent and performing a procedure she flatly stated she did not want was nothing short of reprehensible and still makes my skin crawl. But it happens with Rose too. Both times really. In Doomsday, her decision to stand by the Doctor is first ignored by the Doctor himself, slipping the teleport medallion on her without her knowledge and sending her to the parallel universe. Once she finds her way back, her decision is once again undermined by her own father, pulling her with him through the closing Void. Both times, her choice was overridden by Those Who Know Better. And, to a lesser degree, this happens to her again in Journey’s End. Having finally reconnected with the Doctor, all she wants to do is stay with him and, instead, she is given the consolation prize/baggage of a newly formed Donna/Doctor clone (a hybrid, you might say). Instead of continuing her adventures, she is saddled with a dark, angry and unpredictable new life and essentially told to figure it out because the Doctor says so. It happens to Jack the first time, when he is left alone on a decimated space station with the dust of corpses and a new immortal life to figure out without any guidance or explanation. Again, none of these moments are quite as stomach churning as watching Donna beg and plead to keep her memories to no avail but still contain remove any element of choice from the companions who are exiting.

And it has been said before, but the biggest problem with the scene is that you are supposed to empathize with the Doctor. He made a hard choice for someone he cared about, he is the hero and his actions are justified. His motives and actions are not questioned by the narrative, it was just the thing to do and we know he is tortured by this decision because he spends some time crying in the rain.…

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Happy almost solstice.

Behind on everything, like one is before Christmas. The conspicuously delayed next Last War in Albion chapter is proving very thorny. I think it will be good, but the punishing nature of writing it is making me eye Fearful Symmetry nervously, lemme tell you.

We recorded the Christmas Special Shabcast this afternoon, and by we I basically mean everyone. That’s very silly. Thursday I believe?

Here’s one that ought be interesting: under what circumstances will you be watching The Husbands of River Song?…

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