Eruditorum Press

This machine mildly irritates fascists

Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

Eruditorum Press: A Manifesto

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People of the universe, please attend carefully. The message that follows is vital to the future of you all.

Welcome to Eruditorum Press, a group blog and small press dedicated to innovative and intelligent cultural criticism. I suspect most of you, at least right at the moment this posts, have come from Philip Sandifer: Writer. Hi, I’m still Phil Sandifer, and whatever it is you came here for is still here and will continue to be here, unless you came for that monochrome paisley, in which case your life will now be an endless sea of disappointment. I’ll still be doing weekly comics reviews, Last War in Albion, and a rotating project a la The Super Nintendo Project, as well as hosting Weird Kitties. There’s also going to be a lot more.

We, or at least I, am acutely aware that there is no shortage of pop culture analysis sites on the Internet, all of them claiming that they’re different and unique. We, however, think that we are different and unique. For one thing, we’re a somewhat more personal affair. We’re still funded by the same Patreon the site has been funded for a year now by you, dear readers, although some of that money will be going to people other than me now. (Everyone is either paid a modest sum or stubbornly refusing my money here.) And there’s a new milestone goal called “Phil stops losing money on this idea” that I’d love to hit, by the way. But more than that, I think we offer a perspective that’s unlike what you can get from any of the other sites in this vein. And that perspective is… well… hmm.

One of the most absolutely satisfying things about my blogging career over the past few years has been the fellow travelers I’ve met and befriended. I’ve become a part of an intellectual circle of critics, not through any active attempt to create a critical empire, but just because I’ve had the honor of meeting cool and brilliant people doing cool and brilliant work. Which, now that I think of the implications under late capitalism, is appalling. I should absolutely have a critical empire, dammit, and so now I’m making one.

More seriously, I don’t want to be so crass as to define the terms of this intellectual circle or anything. I’m sure that if you asked the other contributors what the vision or mission statement of Eruditorum Press is, you’d get different answers, which is as it should be. Indeed, you’ll get different ones, of varying degrees of sincerity and coherence, every time you refresh the page. But it’s traditional, when christening mad endeavors like this, for the editor-in-chief (oh fuck, that’s me) to offer some sort of confident mission statement as to what it’s all about. So here’s a faltering attempt at, if not a manifesto, at least a description.

Obviously, we’re most easily united by common interests. This is not a Doctor Who blog, and some day I may even hire someone who doesn’t like Doctor Who, although it is obviously always going to have something of a special place within Eruditorum Press, as will British culture in general.…

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You’re On the Global Frequency (Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge)

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Comments are going to be temporarily disabled across the site for a few hours this evening due to some site maintenance. Relatedly, you should be sure to check back here tomorrow.

I had three great loves in childhood, and though I have forgiven them, they all betrayed me. Doctor Who I have, of course, written about at length; it turned on May 12th, 1996, the day before Super Mario RPG came out. Comics, a topic relevant to this game, were a more gradual process, with no clear moment the line was crossed from a certain tension between us to outright betrayal. The beginning of seventh grade, in any case; around my twelfth birthday. Mortal Kombat II, perhaps, or Final Fantasy III. And then there are video games. 
It’s hard to count how many times I’ve been betrayed by video games. There is, after all, a high potential for it. We’ve discussed already how the basic model of business games relies on the idea that they’ll be fun for a decent number of hours. There is nothing, then, quite as awful as the phenomenon of the shit video game. To buy a game is not a small thing; there are ultimately a finite number of moments in a year where you’ll get to do it. Picking a bad one is awful.
Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge is an example – a crushing, awful disappointment waiting to sting anyone foolish enough to be seduced by its branding. It is as though they took two-level demos of five games deemed unworthy of further development, reskinned them to include Marvel characters, and released them as an omnibus. The connections between levels and the five playable superheroes are often tenuous at best. Cyclops is randomly thrown in a mine-cart level. Storm is trapped underwater, seemingly mainly so nobody would have to figure out how to get good controls for a flying character. Wolverine is fighting evil clowns. Controls are sloppy and imprecise.
But in another sense, video games betray you from the start. It’s how they work; their central dynamic. The resistance of rules to will. We bind our very nervous systems to them, and they twist away and sever us, leaving us staring at the sudden amputation of the Game Over screen. Even today, Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge exists within me. I have not touched it in a decade at least, but when, in the first level, I drop down a shaft and find three paths that I can go down, there is an deep instinct, beyond even a memory, of what order to go in. In yet another, then, it’s only ever one big betrayal: an ongoing process of being repulsed by what defines you. 
I am about fifteen minutes from most of the places I grew up, halfway up Morris Ridge, overlooking downtown. Summer is breaking on the shores of the shrinking days, but retains the high ground for now. The sense of oddness that has permeated the weather for years persists; it feels as though it didn’t used to be this hot in early September.
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Weird Kitties Reviews, Batch Two (Frankenstein, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Full Disclosure, The Race for Space)

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I do not anticipate needing any more Best Dramatic Presentation reviews in the immediate future.

 

Frankenstein, by the Mechanisms
Reviewed by William Shaw

Eligible for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, and available here.
 
If you’ve ever thought that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein would have been better as a prog rock ballad, this new song from the UK-based steampunk folk band The Mechanisms looks to have you covered. Retelling the classic gothic tale as a ten-minute song about a rogue AI, Frankenstein, while perhaps the least grandiose of the Mechanisms’ projects to date, is still a wonderful piece of work, and crackles with the same energy as their lengthier albums. 
 
The story is told in one long song, with linking narration putting one in mind of a geekier version of Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. The tale concerns a far-future world where a scientist named Victoria Frankenstein creates a revolutionary AI, and… honestly, you know how the story goes from there. 
 
Initially it might seem a bit of a disappointment, after three albums of giddy textual play in established musical genres and mythical traditions, to see the Mechanisms doing a straight pastiche of a specific text. But the band, to their credit, seem to realise the dangers of this approach, and turn them to their advantage. At ten minutes long the song is tight and focused, avoiding the slightly slipshod nature of their longer and more complex albums, and dialling back a bit on the usual self-indulgence. There’s also a genuinely clever twist at the end, which manages to convey a sense of shock as well as ironic inevitability.
 
But what really sells it is the technical side of things, which is excellent. The singing and instrumentation are both top-notch, with the shifts in tone handled deftly by the introduction of new musical techniques as the song goes on. As ever, the Mechanisms manage to turn what could easily have been a one-gang premise into magnificent entertainment by sheer skill and chutzpah. 
 
 

This is a song which has clearly had a lot of thought put into it, as well as an awful lot of effort and talent And it’s that sense of passion which makes this song such a worthwhile piece of storytelling. These a clearly a group of people who care deeply about what they do, and long may they continue to do it. 

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Reviewed by James Wylder

Eligible in Best Novel, and available here.

Fanfiction as a genre is barely appreciated as an art form, so its hard to go too far stating exactly how Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality needs to be read and appreciated, as it has opened up the genre in a bold new way. Eliezar Yudkowsky has crafted a massive work that redefines the relationship of fanfiction to the work it stems off from in exceedingly fascinating ways.

The premise: that Harry Potter is not raised by the abusive Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, but by Petunia and a different man she married: an educated man well versed in science, who does not mistreat Harry, but provides for him as well as instilling the scientific method deep into his worldview.…

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Weird Kitties: Best Short Story Open Thread

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Got an interesting batch of reviews up for you tomorrow, including a number of candidates in Best Dramatic Presentation.

Here’s a couple of novels that got mentioned more than once in last week’s thread. I’d love reviews of any of them if you’ve read them – send those to snowspinner at gmail: 
  • Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings
  • N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season
  • Terry Pratchett’s The Shepherd’s Crown
  • Jo Walton’s The Just City and/or The Philosopher Kings
  • Naomi Novik’s Uprooted
  • Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest
  • Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora
  • Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant
  • Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Shattered Wings
  • Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory
  • Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown
  • Max Gladstone’s Last First Snow
  • Joanne Harris’s Gospel of Loki
Meanwhile, tell me of good and Hugo-worthy short stories you’ve read. I’m monstrously behind on this category – I’ve not even gotten to the eligible Charlie Jane Anders or to pouring over China Miéville’s Three Moments of an Explosion to pick something. (Actually I’ll probably just read whichever one Jack tells me is best and nominate it, and save the rest for later.) 
Ooh, and I should see what, if anything, of Trigger Warning is eligible. 
Check back tomorrow for reviews. 
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She was just somebody who felt cramped by the confines of her life. (The Last War in Albion Book Two, Part Nine: Mr. A and Superfolks)

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Previously in The Last War in Albion: In its earliest development at DC, Watchmen was based around a set of fairly generic superheroes DC had acquired from the defunct Charlton Comics, leading many people to suggest that Moore’s claims to the book’s originality are overstated. But this accusation misses the ways in which Moore transformed and commented on the Charlton characters, most obviously the Steve Ditko-created character the Question and, indirectly, Ditko’s Mr. A, whose ruthlessly Manichean worldview is echoed by Rorschach in lines such as “there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of armageddon I shall not compromise in this.”

Figure 872: A 1972 color page of Mr. A, with Mr. A himself remaining, inevitably,
in black and white. 
But there is more to this than might be immediately apparent. Mr. A, as a character, reflects Ditko’s larger investment in the work of Ayn Rand; his name, for instance, is a reference to her emphasis on Aristotle’s maxim “A is A.” Rand was a novelist and popular philosopher whose overt and insistent pro-capitalist position (forged when her wealthy Russian family lost their businesses during the October Revolution prior to her emigration to America) gave her considerable success among the political right; a New York Times article the same month that the first collected edition of Watchmen was released, for instance, talked about how the incoming Secretary of Commerce was an admirer of Rand’s work, as was newly installed chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, calling her the “novelist laureate” of the Reagan administration. (Rand, the article notes, was not a fan of Reagan, saying that “since he has no program and no ideology to offer, his likeliest motive for entering a Presidential race is power-lust.”) 
 
Figure 873: Two differing visions of humanity. (By Steve Ditko, from Blue
Beetle #5, 1968; panels not consecutive in original)
Rand’s influence plays a significant part in Ditko’s work on both Mr. A and The Question – the second Mr. A strip, for instance, opens with a monologue about the absoluteness of good and evil before segueing into a lengthy discussion of how “only fools will tell you that money is the root of all evil” because “money is the tool of exchange” and how “for people who can exchange their abilities for an equal value – money and that money is exchanged for an equal value in products and services provided by other men’s abilities,” a viewpoint with clear roots in Rand’s vehement pro-capitalism. And the Question story in Blue Beetle #5 focuses on two paintings one described as representing “man’s inhumanity to man” by showing a man sitting in a gutter next to a used cigarette butt, and the other showing a strapping laborer standing near some jutting rocks. The plot tells of an art critic who hates the second picture for the way it “keeps accusing” him and reminding him of some unpleasant past experience, and of the criminal lengths to which the critic goes to try to destroy the painting (which Vic Sage has bought, in spite of the critic’s denunciation), a plot that has clear roots in Ayn Rand’s sense of aesthetics and the nature of man.
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Comics Reviews (September 9th, 2015)

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This is a hugely important piece about the comics industry. You should read it.

And now, from worst to best of what I bought. Much of it by Kieron Gillen.

The Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows #5

A comic that presents itself as an argument for the merits of a married Peter Parker with an awesome superhero daughter, which is fine save for the tacit overlooking of the fact that it all gets reset at the end, and so it’s an argument for something it flatly refuses to give.

Star Wars: Shattered Empire #1

Bought because of Rucka and because I figure I’ll see The Force Awakens, so this sounds neat too. Tied very tightly to the end of Return of the Jedi, however, which I haven’t seen in probably twenty years, so that kind of lost me, though through no real fault of its own.

A-Force #4

I suspect I’m going to be much more excited about this book when it’s not in Secret Wars continuity anymore, but right now my Secret Wars fatigue is crushing this. And I’m not sure I parse the cliffhanger; the state of the Wall and the Deadlands is clearly in different places in different books right now, and I think several of the tie-ins are ahead of the main series.

Darth Vader #9

Quite like the interplay between Vader and Thanoth, which kept this a fun, entertaining read for most of it. Found the entire section with the twins a bit of a slog. Still, fun book. I bet if I cut some of the crap from my pulls I’d enjoy things like this more.

1602 Witch Hunter Angela #3

A decided uptick for this book – indeed, I think I liked Bennett’s main story more than Gillen’s substory. And the final page is a hoot. I don’t think the post-Secret Wars Angela title is currently in my pulls, but this issue makes me reconsider that a bit.

Siege #3

The weakest issue of this so far, plagued with an excessive quantity of hope and optimism, and the continually idiosyncratic art of Filipe Andrade. Also, what’s with the house ad gatefold in the middle of Juan Jose Ryp’s double page spread, Marvel? Ah well. I’m sure it will all turn dark and tragic for #4.

Mercury Heat #3

This picks up quite a bit – the rhythm of the investigation is finally forming, as is a bit more of a sense of character. I quite like Luiza asking for a tape of the bad guy getting her spine ripped out; that’s a wonderfully interesting and macabre character beat. And it’s a good cliffhanger too. Still looking a bit like a minor work for Gillen, but fun.

Injection #5

The bulk of the pieces here are finally on the board. So, basically a sort of reverse Planetary then. I won’t lie, I’m a mite disappointed by the series on the whole. It’s smart and clever, but more than just about anything I’ve seen Ellis do recently, it feels like Ellis by numbers; like the most obvious thing that Ellis could be doing at this point.…

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Fight Every Fight Like You Can Win (Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest)

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By Anna Wiggins

So here we are. Final Fantasy. I often say that Tolkien was my “first fandom”, but I don’t actually know whether I was introduced first to Bagginses or Chocobos. At any rate, Final Fantasy is a part of my personal mythology, signifiers and metaphors that are wired into the way I think, stirring oddly specific sense memories during my mind’s idle moments.
The Final Fantasy franchise is peculiar. Despite the games (mostly) bearing sequential numbers, the games in the series are not sequels of an ongoing narrative. For the most part, each game takes place in a different fantasy world, with its own cast of characters and internal logic. There are occasional references between games, but these are more akin to easter eggs than any attempt at continuity. Instead, the Final Fantasy games have a shared iconography that grows over the history of the series. Crystals, giant riding chickens, magic that comes in colors, astonishing liberties taken with world mythology; Final Fantasy is a set of common stylistic elements that is eternally being rearranged into new shapes.
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is the first Final Fantasy game I have detailed memories of. I know it wasn’t the first Final Fantasy I played; I have vague memories of Final Fantasy II and even Final Fantasy. (And its contemporary, Dragon Warrior. There’s a secret history there, a moment in 1989 or so when I swore fealty to one of two rival houses without knowing it. But that’s another story.) But practically speaking, Mystic Quest was my jumping on point. And I remember being excited about Mystic Quest because it was a Final Fantasy game. Luckily for me, in 1992 I hadn’t really developed the ability to discern quality yet.
Because Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is not a good game. Playing it, I get the impression it isn’t even trying to be a good game. The story is thin, even by the standards of early 90s poorly-translated RPGs. The visuals are less detailed and interesting than earlier games from the same company. Instead of being difficult and rewarding tactical thinking, skill, or even memorization, the game punishes the player arbitrarily, with unavoidable instant- or near-instant death doled out according the whims of the random number generator. There are few choices to make, and the overall experience feels hollow and pointless. It is impossible to feel any sort of connection to these characters or events.
(What I didn’t know at the time is that this game was created to be an ‘entry-level’ game, an attempt to make the Japanese-style RPG experience appealing to Western players, where the genre was faring poorly. Whether Squaresoft executives actively thought Western players wanted less story and characterization, or if this was just a phoned-in effort, is unclear.)
And yet 8-year-old me was riveted by this game. I had to realize, on some level, that this game was not as interesting or as fun as its predecessor. And yet I played this game eagerly, consumed it.
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Weird Kitties Reviews, Batch One (Elektrograd: Rusted Blood, The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Just City, and Strong Female Protagonist)

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Here’s the first batch of reviews. I’m still taking submissions for the next batch, to go up next Sunday. Send them to snowspinner at gmail.com. Short fiction reviews especially wanted.

Elektrograd: Rusted Blood, by Warren Ellis
Reviewed by Philip Sandifer

Eligible for Best Novelette, and available here.

The second of Warren Ellis’s current experiments in self-published shorts, this is a police procedural set in a now-crumbling early 20th century city of the future. It’s impossible not to compare it to Miéville’s The City and the City, especially given the way in which Ellis uses iconography of Soviet Russia to signify “failed 20th century utopia.” Which is a good angle, treating it, robotics, and AI as essentially interchangeable images of abandoned futures.

Stitching it together is a capable and unflashy cop drama. Ellis is good at these, having written both mysteries and police procedurals (two subtly different categories) several times. This isn’t where the story earns its wings, as it were; its purpose is to let Ellis work efficiently with the plot, getting in and out of his strange world. This makes for a story that spends less time dwelling in the particulars of its ideas than many of Ellis’s stories; those who love his knack for Stephenson-esque exposition about ideas will not find this to be their favorite thing he’s done. But it’s a tight-knit aesthetic experiment. Ellis talks in the postscript about wanting to write about architecture, and it’s an effective way to bind the iconography together.

Basically, a murder mystery about a rusting old future. Lovely stuff.

The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Sam Maggs
Reviewed by John Seavey

Eligible for Best Related Work, and available here.

I was going to start this review off with a satirical rant about this book being a perfect example of the way the SJWs “get you”–they start out with shipping and OTP and fanfiction, and then when you’re hooked, they start in on the feminism! But then I remembered Poe’s Law and decided to truncate that part significantly.

It is true, though, that Sam Maggs uses this book to walk women from the very basic points of fandom, such as identifying the things you love and finding other women who love it just as much as you do, up through to the point of having a social conscience about the things that you enjoy and critiquing them as items of cultural significance with potentially problematic subtexts. Most impressively, she does it without ever losing the casual tone, the warm-hearted atmosphere of acceptance and welcoming, and the inspirational message that embracing the things you love is unconditionally good and you should never feel ashamed of being excited and enthusiastic about them.

Along the way, the book takes in topics like, “What is a convention and how do I have a good time at one?”, “How do I deal with online trolls?”, and “How do I, too, write smutty fanfiction featuring my favorite characters?” It also has a few short interviews with various female creators, which was one thing I thought could have been expanded greatly, but the book does have a lot to take in, after all.…

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Weird Kitties: Best Novel Open Thread

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These’ll be replacing Saturday Waffling for a while.

Right, so, the party continues. I’ll sort this into a landing page and a self-contained website eventually; there’s a whole site redesign coming, and Weird Kitties will get a clear place within it. Until then, you can track this tag. For now, let’s get this show on the road.

Some of the Hugo categories are easier than others. Lots of people read enough new sci-fi/fantasy novels in a year to fill out a ballot. Best Novel was one of the few categories where the Puppies failed to get things on the ballot as opposed to leaving open slots; two, and ultimately three actual candidates made it all on their own last year.

So far, for my part, I’ve gotten through Seveneves, which I thought a good but not great Neal Stephenson novel, and am about a third of the way through The Vorrh, which is very much the sort of novel you’d expect Alan Moore to call “the current century’s first landmark work of fantasy and ranking amongst the best pieces ever written in that genre.” The latter will almost certainly make my ballot; the former could be knocked off without too much trouble. I’ll probably not get to The Shepherd’s Crown, since I’ve not read a Discworld novel in decades, but may well nominate it just because a Hugo ballot without it would just feel wrong somehow.

So what novels have you read so far this year, and what did you think? Anything you’ve already pencilled in for your ballot? Any you’ve already penned in?

Here’s the Hugo Nominees 2015 Wikia’s list to get us started.

Next week’s category for discussion will be short story, by the way. There was a Twitter hashtag a few days ago that listed several things one might have a glance at before then. I’ve got Charlie Jane Anders’s latest in an open tab, personally.

And I’ll be back tomorrow with the first bevy of reviews people have submitted, including one from me about Warren Ellis’s eligible Novelette Elektrograd: Rusted Blood. It’s not too late to send me one. Ones you’ve already posted elsewhere are fine; I’m happy to run them with links back to the originals.…

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She wasn’t anyone special. She wasn’t that brave, or that clever, or that strong. (The Last War in Albion Book Two, Part Eight: The Charlton Characters)

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The omnibus version of this chapter will be sent to backers in the next week or two.
Previously in The Last War in Albion: The god of Watchmen was revealed to be comprised of negative space; a tangible lack within it; a gap that demands to be filled in on the map of its psychic territory, to be named and outlined, as though doing so will finally, at last, serve to snap all the pieces into place and explain everything.
This is, perhaps, why so much ink has been spilled within the War on attempts to argue that this gap, in effect, does not exist – that Watchmen can be understood purely, or at least primarily, in terms of its influences, thus allowing those living in its wake to exist as though they are free from its vast and monolithic splendor. It is, after all, the easier option; it does not require staring too long at the cavernous depths within. It gives the comforting illusion that Watchmen is, at its heart, an easily solved mystery – a question with a definite answer. Nothing could be further from the truth, but for those who would otherwise find themselves caught in its blast, reduced to mere shadows cast by its incinerating radiance the idea that the book is simply some inevitable consequence of what came before is a useful delusion.
There are, of course, other factors involved in the particular obsession with Watchmen’s influences, most notably the fact that Moore and Gibbons have both asserted consistently that Watchmen was envisioned as a creator-owned book, a claim that makes the degree to which its ideas originated with Moore and Gibbons relevant. More broadly, the fact that Moore has made a number of provocative statements about the ways in which DC Comics and, more specifically, Grant Morrison have profited off of the recycling of his ideas has led to a small cottage industry in attempting to demonstrate Moore’s hypocrisy. And since Watchmen is both Moore’s most prestigious work and one with several well-documented influences, it has long been Exhibit A for these attempts.
Most attempts to argue that Watchmen can be explained primarily in terms of its influences have focused on its relationship with characters DC acquired from the failing Charlton Comics. As a company, Charlton was formed in 1944, and published comics in a number of genres. But for the purposes of Watchmen, only six of Charlton’s characters are actually relevant: Captain Atom, Thunderbolt, the Blue Beetle, the Question, the Peacemaker, and Nightshade. These characters come from a fairly narrow set of sources. Three of them – the Peacemaker, Nightshade, and Captain Atom were created by the astonishingly prolific Joe Gill, the latter two alongside Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, who also created the Question. They also generally originated in a fairly narrow band of time – Thunderbolt, Nightshade, and the Peacemaker all debuted in 1966, while the Question debuted in 1967 and Captain Atom in 1960. Only the Blue Beetle forms something of an exception, having existed in two forms – a Golden Age version that predated Charlton, created by Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski in 1939 for Fox Comics, and the Silver Age version created for Charlton in 1966 by Steve Ditko. 
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