Eruditorum Press

October 18, 2016

Pex Lives 36: The Curse of Peladon, or, #imwithher

We’re pleased to announce a new episode of Pex Lives. The description follows:

Look! Just when you thought we were down and out, we leap off the canvas and throw a few more hits.

We spend our first half catching up, then have an extended chat about Kevin’s hero Mike Love of the Beach Boys before dropping into ever cheerful Current Events. After that, we talk about a western from 1951 called the Furies and then just a little sprinkling of your Doctor Who content with the topical Curse of Peladon.

You can download that here.

…

October 17, 2016

Cultural Marxism 5: Excession

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Reflecting on the fact that his last book was going to turn out to be the relatively slender and small-scale The Quarry, Iain Banks made the observation that “the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel.” It’s difficult to imagine he didn’t mean Excession. Like The State of the Art before it, Excession is a novel about pushing the premise of the Culture to a breaking point. But where The State of the Art picked an approach to this that was fundamentally a dead end, Excession comes up with one that’s thrilling in its boundless possibilities. Ironically, it basically does this by taking the premise of The State of the Art and turning it on its ear. Where that novella asked “what if the Culture met us,” Excession asks “what if the Culture met a race even more advanced than itself?”

This leads to Excession’s – and arguably the Culture’s – most enduring contribution to the broader culture, namely the phrase Outside Context Problem. The passage where Banks describes this is very possibly the most-quoted paragraph of his career, and with obvious reason:

The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you’d tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass… when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you’ve just been discovered, you’re all subjects of the Emperor now, he’s keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests.

There’s a lot to love here. Banks has always been a witty writer, but here he’s visibly taking on Douglas Adams as a major influence (also apparent in the book’s other great line about Outside Context Problems, namely that they’re something “most civilizations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop” – the performative hesitation of “rather in the same way” prior to the sentence metaphor is a dead giveaway, as is the oblique turn of the metaphor, which is in the same basic vein as Adams’s famous “hung in the sky in much the way bricks don’t,” although the harmony of form and function involved in having the sentence end with “a sentence encountered a full stop” is a bit of sparkle above and beyond the obvious influence). But he’s also just got a damn good idea there. Contact between civilizations of wildly differing technological capabilities is a sci-fi standard, but discussions of the phenomenon are almost always framed from the perspective of the technologically superior species – “first contact” and “the Prime Directive” and the like.…

October 16, 2016

Big Damn Shiny Heroes (The Reboot): Serenity

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Shana has officially unceremoniously kicked me off of the Firefly podcast, mostly because listening to me kvetch about sci-fi westerns and the American Confederacy is way more fun for me than for her, but thankfully for all listeners she’s replaced me with the wonderful Jessica from The Web of Queer, who will give the series the more sympathetic (or at least fannish) reading it (arguably) deserves.

This episode introduces the podcast audience to Shana and Jessica’s history with the series, then dives into a nice discussion of the kinds of themes surrounding gender we’re going to be dealing with over the course of Firefly‘s run. Kaylee’s love for strawberries, Inara’s profession, and Captain Tightpants, er, tight pants are all subjects of discussion. Also, some spontaneous singing of the theme song?

This should be a monthly-ish addition to the Oi! Spaceman family, and don’t worry, one of these days when I have the energy to write again I will come back to an examination of the Confederacy within the sci-fi Western in essay form. Maybe this will force me to watch the new Westworld series? …

October 15, 2016

Saturday Waffling (October 15th, 2016)

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Long time no waffle. Let’s see. First off, promotional considerations, which is to say that Jed Blue’s got a Kickstarter for an essay collection of his writings on anime. Jed’s a longtime friend of Eruditorum Press and a hell of a good critic, and if anime’s your bag I have zero doubt his book will be phenomenal, so please check it out.

I should also probably mention, since we’re a week away from the premiere, that Class reviews are still $13 from happening on the Patreon. But if we fail to meet that goal, I’ll still write short reviews of every episode for $2+ Patrons, so if you back the Patreon at $2 a week you’re guaranteed reviews either way. If you need to cap your pledges at <5 a month (the most I’ll ever end up charging you for) then that’s cool too – if you can avoid capping at just one pledge a month I’d appreciate it, but all support is always welcome.

As for where I’m at… Getting towards the end of “Theses on Trump,” which may end up having a different title at the end, but which I’ll refer to that way until I publish. It’s good stuff – I feel like I’m continuing to get a different read on the most oversignified topic in the world right now. Which is the key thing. And it’s not a piece that’s going to date instantly after the election, although I’ll be getting it up before the election.

Once that’s wrapped and I’ve got the Neoreaction a Basilisk books sent out (having a few hoop jumps with Lulu in pursuit of saving myself a couple hundred bucks, but looks like orders will go out next week) I’ll finally put the last formatting touches on Last War in Albion and open pre-orders for that, with books shipping in time for the holidays. Safe to assume I’ll release the long-embargoed next chapter around then, and probably start on chapter 7 too, as I’m starting to get itchy on that project again. Which is nice.

Blake annotations are delayed a bit, as my head’s been turned by a different project that’s more timely, but that also satisfies some of the “do something with a clear traditionalist streak” urges that I’ve been having in the wake of Neoreaction a Basilisk. Right now it’s firmly in the long slow research phase as I watch/read a whole bunch of stuff. Including, for the first time in any substantial project I’ve done actually, a whole bunch of anime. So speaking of which, I should go back Jed’s Kickstarter myself…

Actually, hell, I’ve been talking about it a fair amount on Tumblr, so let’s just put the cards on the table: I’m leaning pretty hard towards my next bespoke project being a history of cyberpunk, specifically one that avoids getting bogged down in proto-cyberpunk and instead treats the genre as basically starting with the twin punch of Neuomancer and Blade Runner in the mid-80s (with a soft start in 1980 along with Gibson’s career).…

October 14, 2016

Bob Dylan Is Not A Fucking Poet (But He Still Deserves His Nobel)

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I am not a huge Bob Dylan fan. Was into him for a couple months in high school/college when I was in a big folk music phase, but I liked folk music for being melodious and pretty, and that tended to mean that I preferred Dylan when someone like Peter, Paul, and Mary were singing him. Still, for the most part I’m even less of a fan of the arguments against him winning the Nobel Prize for literature, which tend to fall into two camps, both fairly appalling. The first is the outright snobbery, whether in its hilariously cliche form of “but what about Philip Roth” or in its more jocular but still fundamentally wrong-headed “does this mean X can win a Grammy?” My distaste for this position isn’t going to surprise anyone. Indeed, I consider it actively evil, albeit in a smoldering, unremarkable sense as opposed to something pernicious and large-scale like, say, Donald Trump.

The second is what you might call the populist snobbery – a position exemplified by, and I’m just going to go ahead and throw a friend under the bus here, Noah Berlatsky’s hot take, which manages to get it completely wrong almost without actually being wrong at any specific moment. In this position yes, of course it’s valid to give a Nobel Prize to someone from popular culture instead of just giving the middle finger to the American literary establishment year after year by picking people 99.9% of Americans have never heard of. It’s just that there were better choices than Dylan. Which, yes, of course there are. But this is still the Nobel Prize for Literature, an award that combines stodginess and highbrow snobbery in higher degrees than any other major award. It was never going to go to Leonard Cohen or Alan Moore or even Ursula K. LeGuin. Dylan is the available compromise – the step towards populism that the Nobel Prize could plausibly take. I would love to see it take more (and I’m sure next year’s award will be an ostentatious reaction against this one), but you’ve got to walk before you run.

But what I really want to talk about is one of the positions wheeled out by those supporting his victory, which has been to call Dylan a “poet.” Indeed, “is Bob Dylan a poet” seems at times to be a stand-in for the question “does Bob Dylan deserve his Nobel Prize,” with plenty of the outright snobbery folks sniffing that he’s not a real poet. And this is more than faintly strange, because the question should be straightforward: of course Bob Dylan isn’t a poet. The Nobel Prize committee has not made any sort of assertion that he is a poet. The Nobel Prize for Literature is not a poetry award. It’s a literature award. Giving it to Dylan meant acknowledging songwritng as a form of literature.

There is, of course, a purity discussion to be had on whether songs are a form of literature. Like most purity discussions, however, it gets stupid quickly.…

October 13, 2016

Shabcast 26 – Dark City

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Shabcast time again. Listen and/or download here.

This time I’m once again joined by Jane, Shana, and Daniel. We talk about Dark City, the classic surreal-SF-noir from 1998… which you really should see, if you haven’t already. Trust me on this.

Also, my tetchy, strident, and highly-opinionated Bengal cat Quizzy joins in at several points. Which kept us all on our toes.

If you’re interested in Dark City, TMBDOS also did an episode about it, way back when. Here.

Oh, and Jane recently did a stellar guest turn on Kit Power’s Robocop podcast, here.

Thanks for listening, as ever.

…

October 12, 2016

Comics Reviews (October 12th, 2016)

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Deathstroke #4

Fine such as things are, with the book’s usual problem that Priest’s out-of-sequence storytelling can get in the way. But I’m dropping the book because when I got to page three of Comixology today I found myself staring at Doom Patrol #2 and Britannia #2 and going “well shit, those were both good books but this is already a big week.” Which is an old complaint, but still a big one – a six-book week fucking hurts when $3.99 is the normal price of a book. And when you have three that are $4.99+ it’s brutal. And frankly, this was the disposable one – being a perfectly nice and fairly clever superhero book just isn’t enough. There are addictions I’ll grudgingly feed, but frankly Deathstroke isn’t one of them, and it kept me from being able to afford a probably better book by dint of coming up too early on the list of new releases. So it’s dropped. God I hate comics.

Doom Patrol #2 (Bought by a reader)

The excessive weirdness of the first issue settles out, but it leaves a distinct “Grant Morrison fanfic” vibe in its wake. Inoffensive and even a bit fun – probably a better comic than the first issue by any reasonable standards. But its not even trying to be interesting to anyone who hasn’t read Morrison’s Doom Patrol. Probably done with this. (Oh, and dear reader who bought the comic and wanted to chat with me about it – send me an e-mail if you would.)

Cinema Purgatorio #6

An off issue for me, with the title story not really doing anything for me (or perhaps more accurately doing too many things to actually have any of them land particularly well), Code Pru being weak as well, and the backing two being their usual ballasty selves. Modded’s great, of course, but this is a $6.99 book on a week I’m already bitter as fuck about what my comics cost, so yeah, kinda stuck resenting this for existing this time around.

Darth Vader #25

In no way helped by the delay to its publication, as it means that a somewhat slender conclusion that could have worked coming off of momentous pace and a brilliant, weird previous issue is instead just somewhat slender. Aphra’s resolution is nice. Really, it’s all nice – a solidly OK stick-the-landing conclusion to what’s never been my favorite Gillen book anyway. I look forward to the inherent lunacy of Aphra’s solo series.

Lazarus #25

A solid, focused issue hingeing on a single character interaction between two developed-enough characters that it would be hard to screw up. Sure enough, Ruck and Lark don’t, and if there’s a shred of honesty to Joanna’s spiel to Forever there’s even some interesting ways for the book to move forward from here. I suspect this book is done surprising me, and I admit I’ve gone off Rucka a bit between being sorely disappointed by Black Magick and Wonder Woman, but this is still solid more months than not. …

October 12, 2016

Permanent Saturday: All cats can see futures, and see echoes of the past

Forest of Illusions Garfield, Permanent Saturday 5

With deepest apologies to Chris Stangl, Permanent Saturday is a semiregular critical exploration of Jim Davis’ comic strips Garfield and U.S. Acres/Orson’s Farm.

In Garfield, the space-time continuum is an arrow that moves from left to right. Movement across comic panels corresponds to movement through both time and space and, while it is often played with, the law itself is inviolate. So Garfield’s physical positioning within the strip itself reinforces the central joke of this strip: With his eyes closed, the cat faces left and declares that he is “contemplating the future”. But because he is facing left he is, in fact, looking into the past. Indeed, as this is the first panel, he’s looking so far into the past it extends into his own prehistoric deep time, as the only thing to the left of the first panel is the first border of the strip itself, the boundary of his own reality. Garfield realises his mistake in panel two: Note how while he’s still facing left, his eyes are now open, and, as this is the second panel, he is explicitly gazing into his own immediate personal history.

(My fellow Alice Aficionados may catch some subtle Looking-Glass motifs here that also tie into the central joke, but while Garfield can and does play with Alice on occasion, I don’t think it’s as pronounced, or really relevant, in this particular instance.)

The unfolding present only becomes the past once we stop to reflect on it (and let’s flag that to return to later). The first punchline, the humourous dissonance and absurdity of a cat who can’t tell the difference between the past and the future, is subsumed and undercut by the winking acknowledgment of the rules and realities of comic strip time. And indeed, without missing a beat, the feline sage delivers a second by confessing that his pasts and futures “look a lot alike”.

The two biggest criticisms of Garfield and Jim Davis’ writing are, curiously enough, the two most mutually incompatible. According to its critics, Garfield is somehow simultaneously a boring, unfunny, patronizing hack job blatantly only written to cynically pander to cat owners and start a merchandising empire that has been this way since day 1 *and* a brilliantly subversive postmodern deconstruction of the comic strip medium that used to be hilarious and cutting edge in the 1980s and early 1990s but stopped being that at some point. Whether this cutoff point is pegged at 1995, 1997, 2000, 2006, 2008 or 2013 tends to change depending on who’s making the argument at any given time, and that there are so many dates given is probably telling. But Jon’s last name is Arbuckle, not Schrödinger, and Garfield can’t be both at once. The strip has outlasted all of its critics and attacks, and is well aware of the reputation it has amongst the comic strip intellegentsia, hence jokes like this one: Garfield’s pasts looks a lot like his futures (and his presence: Note how he’s staring straight ahead, out of the strip and at us, in that last panel) because not much in his world ever changes.…

October 10, 2016

Mr. Robot Season 2: A Furious Defense

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The recently completed second season of Mr. Robot has served as an occasion for critics to put the knife in. As with most critical maulings there’s a sense that the fix was in. Ambitious and genuinely iconoclastic shows like Mr. Robot don’t get to triumph for long before people decide they need to be brought down a peg. But there’s been something darkly amusing about watching critics throw themselves at the task of slagging off Mr. Robot and repeatedly failing to produce anything more insightful than essays that can be summarized as “I wish this literally revolutionary show was more conventional.” Still, as entertaining as it is to watch nominally intelligent people completely fuck up at their jobs, it’s left something of a deficit in actually decent and coherent criticism of Mr. Robot this year, with only the AV Club managing to avoid confusing the show with CSI: Cyber.

Let’s start by puncturing the usual lines of critique, since explaining why they’re wrong-headed is a good way of getting at what’s actually going on here. The big one centers on the seventh-episode revelation that Elliot has not in fact been staying with his mother but has been in prison since the season premiere. We’ll set aside for the moment the basic structural question of why this had to happen (although I’ve got some sympathy for anyone who wishes it had taken an episode less than it did) and look instead at the way in which it’s meant to be read, and particularly at those who have suggested it was a problem that people guessed the twist.

Obviously the thing to look back to is the equivalent “Elliot’s perceptions as revealed to the viewer are misleading” twist of season one, which, recall, was considered such a massive bombshell that it was treated as a pre-commercial cliffhanger, lampshaded with the line “are you really going to make me say it out loud,” and guessed by essentially everybody as of the first or second episode of the season with the only tension being “are they really just building to a Fight Club rip-off?” Which is to say that complaining that you could see the twist coming rather misses the point. Indeed, the whole adage about “fool me once, shame on you” springs to mind, especially with this season’s gleefully disingenuous promise not to do it again after the reveal.

In other words, if you’re imagining Mr. Robot as a show whose twists are first and foremost about surprise you’re doing it very, very wrong. Indeed, aside from its various narrative purposes (which are substantial), the major point of the “he’s actually in prison” twist is to scream, as loudly as possible, at any audience members who are watching the show without actively questioning what is and isn’t being shown to pay attention. It’s not just “not a surprise,” it’s an overt warning that the audience should expect this kind of thing. Sam Esmail has all but said as much in interviews, asking reporters what about the season they guessed and agreeing with them when they identify the major twists.…

October 9, 2016

The Eruditorum Press Doctor Who Poll Wrapup

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All right. Let’s go through those extra questions, then we’ll get on to some overall thoughts on this ridiculous endeavor.

Favorite Doctor

First the options that got one vote, namely Arabella Weir, River Song, The Curator, The Other, and “The one in the early Target books, written by Dicks, Hulke, and Letts.” But of those getting multiple votes…

Jon Pertwee: 3

Clara Oswald: 4

Splendind Chap, All of Them and Variations: 5

Colin Baker: 8

Peter Davison: 9

William Hartnell: 11

Paul McGann: 11

David Tennant: 17

Christopher Eccleston: 24

Matt Smith: 47

Tom Baker: 50

Patrick Troughton: 52

Sylvester McCoy: 62

Peter Capaldi: 63

Best Companion

Single votes were cast for the Brigadier, Cass, Elisabeth Klein, Ian Chesterton, Izzy S, Kamelion, Katarina, Lucie Miller, Mickey Smith, Molly O’Sullivan, Nyssa, Peri, Rigsy, Sara Kingdom, Shayde, Tegan Jovanka, and Zoe Heriot

Fitz Kreiner: 2

Frobisher: 2

Steven Taylor: 2

The TARDIS: 2

Wilf: 2

Liz Shaw: 3

Captain Jack Harkness: 3

Charley Pollard: 3

Vicki: 3

K-9: 4

Jamie McCrimmon: 5

River Song: 5

Evelyn Smythe: 6

Rose Tyler: 6

Martha Jones: 6

Jo Grant: 7

Bernice Summerfield: 9

Rory Pond: 11

Leela: 15

Romana: 16 (One specifying Mary Tamm, Nine specifying Lalla Ward, Five not specifying, and one specifying both. I count them separately, personally, but there you go.)

Amy Pond: 16 (Votes for Amy/Rory as a combo were split equitably, though one voter was adamant that was what they meant.)

Barbara Wright: 17

Sarah Jane Smith: 39

Donna Noble: 44

Ace: 46

Clara Oswald: 76

Classic vs New Series

Classic Series: 112

New Series: 165