Eruditorum Press

Some sort of samizdat wind effect

Saturday Waffling (March 12th, 2016)

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I got a request on Tumblr to bring back Saturday Waffling, so here it is. First off, and totally unrelated to anything, there’s a Comixology sale on Gillen and McKelvie’s work that means WicDiv collections are going for $5 a pop. If you haven’t read WicDiv yet, I am jealous of the things you get to experience for the first time.  

Let’s see. Vague update on things. The Patreon has undergone the slight deflation that it always does over a few months to where I stopped breaking even on the site expansion again. Not a huge deal – it’s not like we’re bleeding money or things are unsustainable or anything. But it’d be nice to get back to that threshold, so I spruced things up a bit over there, including redoing the milestones to reflect Patreon’s decision to base everything on net income instead of pledged income. And there’s a goal now for Game of Thrones S6 reviews, if you’re into that kind of thing. Anyway, if you can spare a buck a week or whatever, that’s here.

The next Last War in Albion chapter continues to be like pulling teeth. Consider this my wry joke about massive delays as an in hindsight inevitable consequence of going “let’s mirror Watchmen.” Anyway, the opportunity to knock off some one-off pieces to fulfill Patreon requests, which I was lax on for a while anyway, is nice. Hoping to have that going by the 25th.

Further out, I’m currently expecting the Neoreaction a Basilisk Kickstarter to be in May, and Last War in Albion Volume 1 to be in July.

As for discussion, I’ve not really touched the Retro Hugos part of my nominating ballot beyond joking that the Puppies should be able to find lots of German sci-fi to their liking from 1940. So what actually is eligible and worth nominating there? …

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Fantasy Worldbreaking

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Consider this a belated postscript to Guided by the Beauty of Their Weapons. (Which, by the way, has no Amazon reviews, so if you hated it you can totally sabotage its sales by giving it a one-star review, just like you can support the site on Patreon and join the backers who voted to bring you this post. I’ve just set up new milestone goals, including Game of Thrones Season Six reviews.) That, after all, is my book about science fiction and fantasy in 2015. And whatever the major awards might say, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season is the best SF/F book of 2015.

Let’s go one further, in fact, and make it clear that its quality is inseparable from what might banally be called its “commitment to diversity,” and slightly less banally be called its “politics.” For instance, its central fantastic concept, the practice of orogeny, defined in the glossary at the back of the book (it being a fantasy novel and all, and it is a proper fantasy novel of the sort that starts with a map and ends with, well, a glossary) as “the ability to manipulate thermal, kinetic, and related forms of energy to address seismic events.” Or, perhaps more accurately, its central fantastic concept, orogenes, the people with this ability, upon whom the stability of the empire depends, but who are second-class citizens, allowed to live only under the despotic supervision of the Fulcrum, and often murdered in childhood by angry mobs before they even get the chance to be given to the empire.

If one wanted to read The Fifth Season as allegory, it would not be hard to decide what orogenes represent. The most blatant clue is in the derogatory term for them: rogga. Its real-world phonetic analogue is self-evident, doubled down on when one of the major characters, Alabaster, the famously mad ten-ring orogene, reclaims the slur in the course of explaining a particularly horrifying degradation: “they only reason they don’t do this to all of us is because we’re more versatile, more useful, if we control ourselves. But each of s is just another new weapon, to them. Just a useful monster, just a bit of new blood to add to the breeding lines. Just another fucking rogga.”

The link can readily be sharpened. The larger rhetoric by which the orogenes’ treatment is justified is based on the degree to which their powers are dangerous combined with their inherent lack of control. A mixture, in other words, of emphasizing their inherent strength – indeed “physical prowess” would be a justified term based on the ways in which Jemisin focuses on the bodily experience of orogeny – but coupling it with a suggestion that they are inherently predisposed to violence. This is familiar as the logic that explains why a black man acting in a manner that can even plausibly be described as “threatening” needs to be gunned down by cops in a way that a white man does not. And I want to stress, this is not some strained analogy.…

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“What is it that does not cease when the vision ends?”: Second Sight

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This is the moment where I finally break with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine establishment. I mean, not that it hasn’t been obvious over the past year and a half that I have serious disagreements with this creative team about what this show is fundamentally about and even what constitutes good basic storytelling, but “Second Sight” is where whatever bridges span the rift between us vanish forever and it becomes obvious we have two irreconcilable conceptions of what this show is about and something is going to have to give: I think this episode is a defining classic, but the creative team hates it and I have a feeling the majority of fandom agrees with them.

Just like “Necessary Evil”, “Second Sight” is about elements from the past returning to have an impact on events in the present and, also just like “Necessary Evil”, it’s about finding positive, constructive ways to make peace with them and continue our lives. It’s the four year anniversary of the Battle of Wolf 359, and thus of Jennifer’s death, and Commander Sisko almost forgot. The guilt he feels upon this realisation is genuine: At some point we have to move on with our lives, but through the grieving process it’s not uncommon for people to feel like they’re betraying the memory and legacy of their loved one by not keeping them in their thoughts 24/7. But of course, we always have to remember that our loved ones would want us to move on and have healthy, fulfilling lives, with our without them. This is the conclusion Commander Sisko reaches, and he reaches it fairly early on in the story, even if the cause is a woman who’s not quite all there, if you know what I mean.

And make no mistake, “Second Sight” handles this with unabashed utopianism. The whole narrative is pushing Ben to go talk to Fenna, even in spite of that business about unconscious psychic projections I’ll deal with a little further down. The show could have taken the trite and clichéd path by using the romance as an excuse to drive a wedge between Ben and Jake for some good old-fashioned conflict-You can just imagine how the scenario would play out in your head with Jake petulantly complaining that his father beginning a new relationship isn’t fair to him and is an insult to his mother’s memory or something equally stupid (in fact, the normally sensible Michael Jan Friedman does precisely this in a couple years on Star Trek: The Next Generation, astonishingly with the thirtysomething Will Riker). But no: Here, Jake is the *first* one to say that if his dad has found love, he’ll support him all the way. So does Jadzia Dax, though Ben keeps dancing around addressing the topic with her.

Speaking of Jadzia, her role in this story, and Ben’s evasive behaviour around her, is somewhat revealing. Like “Rules of Acquisition”, “Second Sight” is another episode that very strongly defined my interpretation of Jadzia Dax: Once again she’s playing a support role to another character, and this is the most important one for her because it’s with Commander Sisko.…

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Shabcast 17 – It’s So Stimulating Being Your Hat

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As promised, hot on the heels of Shabcast 16, here’s Shabcast 17 … hopefully making up for our regrettably Shabcast-free February.

As also promised, this episode festures special guest Shana Wolstein of the Oi! Spaceman podcast.  Oi! Spaceman is the best Doctor Who podcast I’m not directly financially linked to… though I am the podcast’s official boyfriend (which is not something I ever expected to say). 

Back on the subject of Shabcasts, this episode is plenty-minutes of Shana and I chatting about two of her favourite films (and mine) the 80s Jim Henson fantasy masterpieces The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

Also, if you didn’t catch it, remember to check out Shabcast 16 from last week, in which Kevin Burns (of Pex Lives) and I spend plenty-minutes attacking The Matrix trilogy… amusingly, I hope.

On that subject: I now slightly regret the timing of that last Shabcast, for obvious reasons.  But I hope it’s obvious that disliking some of Lilly Wachowski’s films doesn’t mean Kevin or I have anything but best wishes for her personally.

Podlings of the world, unite!

 …

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Comics Reviews (March 9th, 2016)

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Guardians of the Galaxy #6

The good part of this thin and uninspiring week is that even the lowest ranked book is pretty good, especially for this largely disappointing All-New All-Different relaunch. A nice two-hander that focuses on the relationship between Peter Quill and Kitty Pryde, it provides Bendis the space for the sort of hyper-talky character work he excels at. It’s artful, but often heavy-handed, not least with Kitty’s tear-stained shout of “it’s a concentration camp.” Although “chag sameach, mother-#$@#$@!” almost makes up for it. Still seriously minded to drop this, but at least I can see why someone else would enjoy this issue.

Ms. Marvel #5

A very silly premise is allowed to get a bit out of hand here, and while numerous parts of it are thoroughly delightful, perhaps most obviously the stunning line “what, Tyesha gets to be a Muslim but my anarch-atheism is a phase?” the whole feels like markedly less than the sum of its parts, and like this story is more an opportunity for everyone to be silly and let their hair down than anything else. I suppose after an apocalyptic Secret Wars arc and a big reintroduction that’s deserved, but equally… meh.

Radioactive Spider-Gwen #6

A strong issue long on good character beats, with genuinely fantastic exchanges between Gwen and her father, Gwen and Captain America, and Gwen and Harry Osborne. The last of these is probably the most interesting, providing one of the book’s characteristically clever reworkings of the standard Spider-Man relationships and offering an insight into some of the ways in which Gwen is better at this than Peter. Not exactly thrilled that we’re headed into a crossover next month, but I’ve been curious about Spider-Woman and am at lest game for it. …

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“I Can’t Drive Warp 5”: Force of Nature

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Now this one is interesting to me because it’s an episode that’s always been very memorable to me, but also one that’s sort of bad, however, it’s not memorable to me because it’s bad.

For some reason, the Warp 5 speed limit is a concept that really stuck with me. I have no idea why, it’s no less outlandish then some of the other artificially out-there concepts this franchise plays with on occasion, but for some reason this one connected with me. When rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s earlier years back in the day I would *always* self-correct whenever Captain Picard had the Enterprise go somewhere at over Warp 5: “Well, they didn’t know any better at the time”, I kept telling myself. For some reason. Because, famously, this is a plot thread that is pretty swiftly abandoned and the speed limit is a rule that has more exceptions and gets broken more frequently than the Prime Directive. I would always let this one through in my personal headcanon, even though I didn’t particularly enjoy watching it, because to me it introduced a critical piece of worldbuilding: A “Datalore” for the latter years.

Except it’s not critical. At all. The warp speed limit is only mentioned I think like three other times, so I have absolutely no idea why this struck me as such an important piece of Star Trek universe worldbuilding. I can tell you why I think it’s important to talk about today though: “Force of Nature” is attempting, albeit clunkily and embarrassingly, to address environmentalist issues, which don’t get considered anywhere remotely near as much as they should. Environmentalism is a fundamental part of my political philosophy because I believe in a holistic utopianism that would reunite all forms of life energy in the universe. Connection to our land is an extension of empathy, of course, and perhaps the highest form of it because at that stage you’ve finally shed all the artificial boundaries you have erected between the self and the perceived other. A great deal of my most formative intellectual background is actually in the fields of zoology, ethology and natural history (my interest in genre fiction media studies is honestly a kind of aberration, albeit a big one) and I’m a big supporter of Donna Haraway’s conception of ecofeminism and multispecies ethnography, although that’s best saved for a look in a specific essay down the road a bit.

(Apart from the weird warp speed limit thing, as I looked at “Force of Nature” this time some of the effects shots with the space rift and scenes with Data and Geordi in the Jeffries tubes felt familiar to me: This may have been an episode I saw way back when, or it’s at least a part of the same landscape of visual memory.)

It’s important that Star Trek: The Next Generation adopt ecology and environmentalism as part of itself, but sadly, the way “Force of Nature” goes about doing it is fairly terrible.…

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Time and The Island

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So I recently finished the last couple of Jonathan Blow video games, so curious was I about this developer’s work given the interest in it by people I respect. As Phil predicted, The Witness was a bit more up my alley than it was his. Phil is often right.

Not that I didn’t like Braid. Indeed, the basic mechanic itself in that game is both fascinating and relevant to the game’s overall points about regret and nostalgia, which are entwined with the impetus to “save the princess.” The actual puzzles I found very entertaining. Indeed, stripped down to just its mechanics, Braid has a wonderful, enchanting structure. Each section is basically an exploration of what happens when the mechanic of going back is contradicted or expanded in some novel way. Even more so, the way the various levels unfold remind me of certain musical compositions.

Take, for example, the rather well-known Canon in D Major, by Johann Pachelbel, or Ravel’s Bolero. Certain passages repeat, over and over, but with different tones and expressions as they are played by different instruments and with slight variations. This is the sense I get of Braid’s structure, from the repetition of The Pit as the first level in a new world (to explore a newly introduced mechanic) to Tim’s constant failure to find the princess at the end of each sequence.

Likewise, I found the art of Braid to be terribly enchanting. The palette of colors, the impressionistic brush strokes, coupled with the background music, it’s a game that’s pleasurable just to get immersed in. There is an element of pleasure for the sake of pleasure that I find very appealing, though obviously that’s not all that’s going on with Braid.

Which brings me to what really didn’t work for me, which is the story. Some of this displeasure is undoubtedly rooted in having just played Undertale. In Undertale, the avatar for the player is decidedly ambiguous – a figure who could be any sex, and who could come from all kinds of different cultural backgrounds. Which makes it very easy to project one’s self into the story. But Undertale goes further, in that there’s an element of co-creation to the story, for indeed the point of Undertale is explore what sort of role you want to play in a game in the first place. You don’t have to kill monsters, you can make friends. Or you can be a terribly fearsome fighter. The outcome of the story is a reflection of your choices.

The actual mechanics of Undertale, in the meantime, are relatively trivial. You wander around various environments, solve some puzzles, and occasionally play mini-video games that are mostly about dodging or capturing certain sprites. But, as I said, the point of Undertale isn’t the mechanics, it’s the story, which unfolds through the exploration of the world and interacting with its characters. If anything, then, the central mechanic is choosing what you’re going to say next.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 3.07: The Bear and the Maiden Fair

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It was a hairy bear. It was a scary bear. Brienne and Jaime beat a hasty retreat from its lair, and described it with adjectives.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, the Hand of the King Tywin Lannister

Lions of Harrenhal: Jaime Lannister

Dragons of Yunkai: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

Direwolves of Riverrun: Robb Stark, Catelyn Stark

Bears of Yunkai: Jorah Mormont

Roses of King’s Landing: Margaery Tyrell

Burning Hearts of King’s Landing: Melisandre

The Direwolf, Bran Stark

The Direwolf, Arya Stark

Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark

The Kraken, Theon Greyjoy

Tigers of Riverrun: Talisa Stark

Stags of King’s Landing: King Joffrey Baratheon, Gendry

Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae

Bows of the Wall: Ygritte

Chains of King’s Landing: Bronn

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

The episode is in twelve parts. The first part runs two minutes and is set on the far side of the Wall. The first image is of the open sky.

The second runs four minutes and is set in the Stark camp between Riverrun and the Twins. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Robb Stark.

The third runs two minutes and is set in the woods beneath the Wall. The transition is by family, from Robb Stark to Jon Snow.

The fourth runs eight minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Sansa Stark.

The fifth runs seven minutes and is set outside Yunkai. The transition is by dialogue, from Joffrey and Tywin talking about Daenerys to her.

The seventh runs four minutes and is in sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is three minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys stroking Drogon to Shae looking at her golden chains. The second section is one minute long; the transition is by dialogue, from Tyrion saying he would take care of his bastards to Gendry.

The eighth part runs two minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by dialogue, from Mellisandre to Arya talking about her with Thoros and Berric.

The ninth runs three minutes and is set in Harrenhal. The transition is by region, remaining in the Riverlands.

The tenth runs five minutes and is set in the Dreadfort. The transition is by family, from Roose Bolton to Ramsey Snow.

The eleventh runs eight minutes and is set in the North along the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Theon about to have his cock cut off to Jon and Ygritte. The second section is 44:30; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Bran Stark.

The twelfth runs eight minutes and is set in the Riverlands south of Harrenhal. The transition is by hard cut, from Osha to horses standing on a hill. The final shot is of Jaime and Brienne walking out of Harrenhal having prevented a bear from completing a Full Web.

Analysis

The phenomenon of Martin writing for Game of Thrones is reliably interesting.…

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“Everyone talking about hard rain”: Necessary Evil

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“Necessary Evil” exists in two distinct places within my memory, and they map alongside the two phases of my experience with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The first time I was exposed to this story was in 1993 or 1994, naturally, as part of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine. Like “Rules of Acquisition” before it and “Second Sight” after it, this is a story I vividly remember from the episode synopsis printed in issue 7. At the time, I immediately recognised it as a modern classic in the making; a wonderfully dramatic noir mystery that fleshes out the backstory of Odo and Kira during the occupation and adds a touching nuance to their relationship in the present day.

It was not, however, an episode I watched on television at the time (or if I did I don’t consciously remember it…The imagery certainly feels familiar). The first time I actually got to see the finished product itself must have been somewhere around 1999 or 2000. I’m not sure if Enterprise had been announced or the TNN Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns had started up yet, but either way the winds must have been starting to change: I was over at the house of some friends, two brothers who shared my love of all (or at least most) things Star Trek. One of them made the offhand comment that they had actually taped an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine live at the time as part of a larger collection of programming that also included one or more episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (for younger readers, you have to understand that in those days VHS tapes were capable of holding several hours of video at a time, so it wasn’t uncommon to have single tapes that had entire days worth of material archived away. The catch was, of course, that the transfer quality was garbage). Knowing how passionate I was about the series and how eager I was to fill in the gaps in my understanding of this period in my life, the two suggested we give it a watch that afternoon.

The episode they had recorded (of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, not The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh) was “Necessary Evil”. I immediately recognised it from the teaser and the name drop of Vaatrik, and I got very excited because I knew this was a good one. Then the credits ran, and I proceeded to be completely bowled over. This was the first time I had actually seen the intro credits to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in something like seven years, and it was the first time I remember consciously registering what I was seeing. I was utterly taken aback because I didn’t remember what they were like and didn’t really know what to expect: I guess I was assuming that the theme song would echo the motifs of the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme song in some way instead of being something completely different.…

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City of the Dead 8: The Psychopath

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Eruditorum Press is thrilled to announce the return of Holy Boson and the City of the Dead podcast to our… whatever you call airwaves for a podcast. Anyway, this is the famed “lost film” of the Amicus set, with a story that I know Holly related to me once, but that I’ve completely forgotten the details of. I’m sure she explains it in the podcast. Anyway, with a script by legendary horror writer Robert Bloch, one assumes this is potentially a hidden gem. Or possibly a legendary trainwreck. Find out right here.…

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