2014 gives up the ghost

The end was near.

Fourteen could see it coming. floating on its own platform. It wasn’t visible until after midnight of the last day, a far-off speck in the flat gray void. As the day progressed, though, it came nearer and nearer, until Fourteen could see the plump-baby form, the sash, the top hat (Why do they still give us those?) and wearing the sartorial minimum. The baby first took notice of him in the late afternoon, but generally paid him no  mind, the same thing Fourteen did upon his own arrival. But jeez, was he really ever that fat?

Finally, in the early evening, they were close enough to hear each other.

“Greetings, Fourteen,” the young one said.

“Fifteen, how are ya?” Fourteen leaned on his scythe. “Ready to take over?”

“I have a choice? Maybe if I run away, this whole boondoggle would come to an end.”

“Thirteen claimed he tried that, but just got shocked for his efforts. He was out for days.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. Something must’ve really scared the poor bugger.” He took off his hat, ran a hand over his bald head. He started to put it back on, then stopped, stared at Fourteen. “Where’s your hat?”

“It crumbled away before the end of the first quarter. Yours will, too.”

“Aw, man.” Fifteen turned the hat over, looked inside, then at the top. “I really like this. It gives me class.” He set it carefully on his head.

“‘Class’ is not something associated with our ilk.”

“I’ll say, given the look of those ratty old rags hanging on that skinny, wrinkled, ancient carcass of yours.”

“It’s a toga–”

The baby snorted. “A word stolen from some old Greek dudes who sat around scratching themselves in their ‘togas’ arguing about the nature of nature. And getting it all wrong, of course.”

“Pretty bold talk for someone still wearing diapers.”

The toddler’s whole body flushed red. “They made me wear this, I swear I’d never—” He pulled the waistband out, looked down. “Besides, I have nothing to put in them.”

“You don’t eat, you don’t need to–”

“Yeah, yeah, I got the lowdown from Administration. I tell you what, this form is pretty grody. I had hoped for the Translucent gig. Now there’s a beautiful and sublime form.”

“And their years are three months and six days shorter.”

“A short, bright life and then out in a blaze of glory. That’s the way to do it!”

Fourteen kept quiet, because he’d had the exact same wish a year ago.

“Been nice if you’d shaved occasionally.”

Fourteen shook his head so his long, white hair and long, white beard whipped around him. “Best beard you’ll ever see. Beats that scrawny fuzz on Thirteen’s chin. Don’t worry, ’round about March you’ll start to see some hair where there wasn’t any before.”

Fifteen made a show of taking his hat off, brushing non-existent dust off, putting it back on. “Shoulda used that blade t’do a little trimmin’ is what y’should’ve done, geezer.”

“You mean like this?” He swing the scythe backward. The platforms were close enough that it knocked the toddler’s top hat off. It rolled over and stopped right at the edge.

“Hey! Are you freakin’ crazy?” He waddled over, picked it up, again turned it slowly over as he inspected it for damage. “You’ve gotten senile-nuts in your old age.”

“Happens to all of us.”

“Yeah, well, time for some of us is gettin’ real short, and here comes someone who’ll make sure it happens.”

A black form was approaching, dark robes flapping and flowing around an emaciated central figure of bones, A skeletal foot touched down on Fourteen’s platform, but the rest of the figure halted. A skull leered out of the dark, winked. “Hello, boys,” it said in a raspy voice. “How’s it going?”

“Hello, Death,” Fifteen said. “You know, just hangin’ around, killin’ some time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So, Death, how’s life treatin’ ya?” Fourteen said.

“Why’s everyone a comedian when I show up? Well, not everyone. Thirteen was a drudge, no sense of humor at all. Wasn’t too displeased to see him go.”

“Well, you can do the universe a favor by ridding it of him,” Fifteen said, pointing at Fourteen.

“All in good time, all in good time.”

“See, now who’s the comedian?” Fifteen said.

“Got to look at the bright side, don’t we, lest we become maudlin and depressed.”

“Yeah, nothing worse than a gloomy Death,” Fourteen said.

Death burst into loud and deep laughter as he glided away. “Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

Conversation died for a while as time passed and the platforms drew nearer. Fifteen looked askance at Fourteen, who waggled his beard at him. Fifteen hmpffed and fiddled with his sash, smoothing it out and adjusting it across his roly-poly chest.

“By March it’ll lose its brightness, by June the first rips will show and by September it’ll start hanging on you like it was torn from an old curtain.”

“That will not happen this year. I will see that it doesn’t.”

Fourteen let out a solid laugh, then their attention was caught by another figure moving toward them. This one was tall, thin and gaunt in face, though his bald head looked too large for the frame. A white robe covered him neck to boots. He walked steadily, almost plodding, toward them though nothing supporting him was visible. His beard, long and thin, hung to his knees and an hourglass hung from a handle he held in his right hand. The red sand in the top glass was almost gone. Fourteen knew the sand was his time, and he felt a little touch of cold fear inside. Was that Death laughing somewhere? Or was it Fifteen? Neither, he realized; it was his own heart.

Despite the hourglass, the figure pulled out an immense watch, popped a cover open. “Earth, Terra,” a voice rumbled deeply from the figure’s chest. “Another turn around its life-giving Sun.”

“Good day, Father Time,” Fourteen and Fifteen said together.

“Good day, gentlemen. Another turn, another year.” He set the hourglass down on Fourteen’s platform. “Not too much damage, more of the usual chronological processes. Not so much grand killing by the dominant species, not like in some years.” He shook his head. “Some years — wow.”

“Wow” from Father Time was equivalent to “Holy freakin’ apocalyptic hell!” from everyone else. Fourteen was glad one of those years wasn’t his.

“The place is getting warmer, and not so naturally,” Fourteen said.

Father Time shrugged. “The processes will happen as they will, and we will adjust as they do.”

“Another year of the same ol’, same ol’, then,”  Fifteen said.

“Perhaps not, at least for us,” Father Time said. “The Administration has decided that, in light of shifting cultural values on the planet we serve, Sixteen’s skin could very well be a different shade. Or it’ll be female. Or both.”

“Bah,” Fifteen mumbled. “Change for the sake of change.”

“May I borrow that?”

Fourteen, surprised, handed him the scythe. Father Time stepped across the narrow gap, lifted Fifteen’s hat, rapped him hard on his head with the scythe handle. “Ow!” Fifteen shouted as Father Time replaced the hat, then stepped back across, handed the scythe back. “I am very old and very tired of this crap. What is it with Earth’s years, anyway? Only here do I get this constant guff. Maybe a female year is what we need. Damn it!”

Fifteen lifted his hat, rubbed the spot and gave Father Time an angry stare. Fourteen stayed silent. He had given Father Time guff, too, but at least he didn’t get rapped for it.

Father Time paid no heed, instead pulling out and looking at the watch again. “The last time zone is reaching zero. Fourteen, are you ready?”

“No. But what good does that do?”

“None at all, none at all.” He looked across the slim gap. “Fifteen! Ready!”

Fifteen stepped forward quickly. “Yessir!” He pulled up his diaper, adjusted his sash, adjusted his hat. “Ready.”

The platforms touched, the sand ran out. Fourteen lifted the scythe in both hands, then stretched his arms toward Fifteen, who stepped forward. Fourteen let go, but Fifteen stumbled, letting the scythe slip. In scrambling to hold on to it, he stepped back, tripped and fell, the scythe handle landing hard on his soft middle. He let out an “oof!” and a curse.

Father Time smirked. “Another successful handover.”

Fourteen laughed. The exact same thing happened a year ago.

“Fifteen.”

“Sir?” He stopped trying to stand, looked up.

Father Time picked up the hourglass, turned it over. A stream of red sand slipped through the neck and began piling up on the now-bottom.

Fifteen swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“Fourteen.” Father Time nodded, began his plodding steps that took him off in a different direction.

The platforms were separating rapidly now. Fourteen stood alone, watching as the other receded. Fifteen wasn’t looking in his direction. He was still trying to stand up with the scythe. He finally managed, leaning the scythe against one shoulder and planting his feet. He stood staring off into the void. At this distance, Fourteen couldn’t see Fifteen’s face, but he knew which expression was on it. It was the expression someone wore when asking, to borrow a phrase from the humans, WTF?

Yeah, exactly, Fifteen, Fourteen thought, WTF?

 

The spat is over, just in time for the holidays

Certainly glad to hear Amazon and Hachette have settled their tiff about e-book pricing. While its good for customers and fans, the authors caught in the middle should come out better once the buying and rating systems are restored for their books..
I don’t know if the boycott did any good — I doubt my not buying anything from Amazon made much of an impression. Perhaps the effort led by Douglas Preston and others nettled Amazon corporate honchos enough to give ’em a little extra incentive to stop being jerks. I hope so. I hope no one forgets the authors were hurt the most by this.
I support the effort to bring Amazon’s shenanigans to the attention of the Department of Justice, even if nothing happens there. Regulators need to be made aware that even one large company can strangle free enterprise without much risk on that company’s earnings.
Some people are saying the Amazon boycott should continue, but I’m not so sure. I think we ought to buy as many Hachette authors as we can for the next few months to show Amazon that they can suffer from bad business practices, too. Plus, its a good way to let those authors know we missed them and still support them.
I’m still wary of both companies despite this sudden breakout of amity. These two giant corporations still can — and do — new methods to screw the writers and artists. We must watch both sides constantly or face the possibility of losing a lot more than delayed deliveries or loss of sales. The stakes remain large.

I wanted a big, galactic adventure but all I got was this orb plot

The biggest movie of the year, the one filled with wit, adventure and interplanetary travel, the one that pulled in the biggest box office (though summer 2014 box office numbers supposedly aren’t that great) and probably will kick-start a bevy of movies with these characters mixing with characters from other parts of the Marvel universe, left me cold.

I don’t have much interest in a lot of the superhero movies mostly because I have no interest in the comic books they are based on. Many stories in the comics have gone just totally batty and the characters hard to identify with. They occupy worlds unto themselves, where laws of nature — a.k.a. physics — are ignored while the human drama becomes little more than soap operas. This was a condition of superheroes from the get-go; Superman has never made sense but he’s a hero to us because he’s a fulfillment of our hopes and dreams. He’s taken a dark turn lately, so we’ll have to see if he remains at the pinnacle of human possibilities or he becomes just another overpowered costumed avatar grubbing around the shadowy corners of our dark natures.

I wasn’t planning to see the Captain America films at all, but the response to them, including by friends whose judgment of superheroes and superhero movies I trust, intrigued me so I watched the first on DVD and saw the second in the theater. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the better of the two, partly because of the struggle the captain has to make to adjust from the years of the so-called “good war” years to the America of the nervous, divided and cynical society of the 21st century, a century when we were supposed to be exploring planets and getting ready to go to the starts. The other big reason it appealed to me was Cap’s decision to take down the giant surveillance apparatus being put together by S.H.I.E.L.D. (Oh, Nick Fury, you have changed so much from your Howling Commando days.) This explores, though only minutely, the idea that superpowered humans, or those who control superpowered humans, will try to take over control of everyone and every thing in the world. It’s a natural outgrowth — look at mundane human society — those with the physical power to conquer and rule generally tend to do so.

(Time out for blatant self-promotion: This is the theme explored in my book, The Tyranny of Heroes, which has a Superman-like character, a Wonder Woman-like character, and a Captain America-like character as a triumvirate in charge of a league of superheroes who have taken over the world and rule with an iron hand [literally in one case]. Links to the e-book sales sites can be found elsewhere on this page.)

Where the movies faltered was in bringing the comics version of global evil, HYDRA (although it was a hoot watching Robert Redford mutter “Hail HYDRA” as his character was dying). I suppose the plot-driving Object of Desire — you know, the tesseract, orb, power crystal, ring, sword, whateverthehell — comes from the comics, too, but I tend to also ascribe it to lack of imagination among the movie writers. That damned Object of Desire stuff is spilling over to many of the Marvel movies, including the one this post is supposed to be about, Guardians of the Galaxy. (Not to be confused, as a couple of theaters did, with Rise of the Guardians, a “family” film about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and Jack Frost joining forces to keep the bad guy from destroying children’s dreams — hey, am I seeing a pattern here?)

The whole movie is centered on the Object of Desire, who has it, who loses it, who controls it, what they want it for, who it bites in the big climatic scene. And in the end, it makes no difference whatsoever. Yeah, the Evil Guy wanted it to take over a world or something, and in the end died for it, but the object itself, after all that destruction, is not changed. And it is placed where it can be — and will be, you bet — stolen by another Evil Guy and here we go ’round the merry-go-round again.

Said Evil Guy — looking an awful lot like someone who took his style clues from north and south Native Americans, Egyptians and the Na’vi of Pandora — wants to use the orb-thing to destroy a planet (don’t they all?). A large part of the film is our heroes trying to keep it from him, but they fail. All the Evil Guy has to do is touch the thing to the planet’s surface and zap! no more cities and people and stuff. So, he jumps into a small one-person shuttle, using the craft’s small radar profile to weave his way through planetary defenses, lands on an isolated spot, raises the orb, says “Sayonara, suckers!” and slams the thing into the ground, completing his mission (comic-book science allowing him to survive his own evil).

No! He does not do that! He aims his gigantic spaceship directly at the main city,  sparking evacuations of said city (we are told everyone got out; do I see fallout from Man of Steel here?) while scrambling the defenses. I have to admit, the visuals are amazing, particularly when the one-person defensive ships link into a huge net and encapsulate the enemy spacecraft. This whole sequence, except for a few plot lapses, is pretty exciting. But, alas, it shares a fate with other exciting, amazing sequences in other movies, that being a worthy thing trapped in bad film.

Meanwhile the subplots — our main characters hate each other at first, are captured, bicker, join forces, are beaten and lose the Object of Desire, bicker, are disheartened, listen to a speech that inspires them, gird their loins, bicker, go out and beat the tar out of the bad guy, recovering Object of Desire — are playing out the way they’ve played out in the various Captain America, Thor, Avengers and many more superhero movies to come. A lot to come — Guardians suggests moviemakers are going to scrape the entire Marvel pantheon for future films (Howard the Duck?!). The result being the creation of another walled universe called Marvel the way a walled universe of Marvel comics exists. Members only, thank you.

Rocket Raccoon is problematic for me, too. Every time I heard the name, my brain kept digging up the old Beatles song Rocky Raccoon from the white album. Well, what do you know? Wikipedia says the writers of the comic-book version based the name on that song back in 1975. The 2014 Rocket Raccoon (Rocky Raccoon checked into his room/Only to find Gideon’s bible … Gideon checked out and he left it no doubt/To help with good Rocky’s revival … oh, uh, sorry) bothers me because I just don’t believe those words are coming his mouth. The body is too small, the lungs are too small, the vocal chords are too small. His voice should be pitched higher. Well, comic-book science, right? I suppose they’ll explain it by referring to the biological manipulation that created him. But still … it’d be nice if someone made the effort.

I have no trouble with Groot. Odd, you’d think, ’cause here’s more comic-book science in making a plant-man. His sacrifice at the end saves everyone, but in true comic-book tradition, he comes back. And man, does he have the moves.

The other characters? Meh. The hero is a “loveable rogue” — ha ha, like we haven’t seen that before. His fixation on his mother’s mix tape is supposed to be endearing, but it’s irritating, especially when he puts it above the mission and his friends. Look, if he was that smart — probably is, but comic-book plotting, right? — why didn’t he copy the music, then keep the tape in a safe place? It’s not like there wasn’t any technology around him. Plus, after 20 years, he’s lucky that tape wasn’t at least stretched, making his music sound a little more … alien. And, of course, the non-human aliens have the technology to play 20th-century cassette tapes, and, of course, they’re grooving to American rock-and-roll music. That’s like hacking an alien computer with an Apple MacBook.

And I am sick to death of giant space ships falling on cities. It’s as if writers and producers got together at a secret retreat a few of years ago and said “OK, Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, you’ll drop big honkin’ starships on hapless cities. Captain America, you can use those flying carrier things, they’re big enough. Avengers, we’ll count the big invading bugs as space ships for now, but you gotta do better next time. That thing the purple-faced guy is riding would be great. Look, think about it, OK? I mean, come on guys, this is the Next Cool Thing.”

And these misfits have the gall to call themselves “guardians of the galaxy.” The Milky Way Galaxy is hundreds of thousands of light years across and could contain 400 billion stars and probably billions of planets. You’re going to patrol all of that? Right. And who knows what’s on the other side? You could run into really powerful beings with super-dooper-holy-mackerel technology, stuff that’ll make your orb look like an LED Christmas light. With just a flick of a mighty wrist, they could just sweep away the entire Marvel and DC universes (no matter what studio) and say “OK, we’re starting all over and we’re going to do this with logic.”

I’d pay to see that.

It’s about the authors, stupid

When you try to take over the world, you sometimes do really odd things.

Amazon.com wants to be the world’s merchant, so it’s picking fights with other retailers or suppliers to make them fall into line on pricing and supplies. One of the biggest arguments is with Hachette Book Group over pricing of e-books. Hachette owns several American publishing houses (among them Grand Central Publishing; Little, Brown and Company; Hachette Books and Orbit), and is in turn owned by a larger company in Europe. So we’re not talking about a mom-and-pop operation here; this is a Giant Corporation.

Hachette still publishes books on paper, although it does publish most if not all books as e-books also. Amazon worships e-books. The company sees the technology as the key to controlling all publishing.

Amazon.com is telling publishers what they should charge for e-books. Hachette disagrees and wants to set prices for its own products. In retaliation, Amazon has delayed delivery of Hachette books, deleted the pre-order button on some, sent customers notices that instead of buying a particular Hachette author perhaps they would be interested in a book from a publisher that’s hewing to the Amazon.com line or perhaps a copy from one of Amazon’s used-booksellers (which bring no income for the original author) and perhaps other things to gum up the ordering of Hachette books.

So it’s a pissing match amongst corporate giants, so what? Well, it’s the authors who will be suffering. Many famous ones, some not so famous. Some fiction writers, some nonfiction writers. Authors need sales to continue to write, to continue to make a living (though only a small percentage make their living through writing only). Amazon’s tactics, while aimed at the Big Corporation, sweeps up writers as collateral damage.

And now, Amazon is recruiting writers and readers to help them in battle. Authors who have books on their Kindle e-book system found an e-mail in their inboxes rallying the troops for the big conflict: “We will never give up our fight for reasonable e-book prices. We know making books more affordable is good for book culture. We’d like your help.”

Then they give an e-mail address to Hachette and also tell you what you should say:

 

– We have noted your illegal collusion. Please stop working so hard to overcharge for ebooks. They can and should be less expensive.

– Lowering e-book prices will help – not hurt – the reading culture, just like paperbacks did.

– Stop using your authors as leverage and accept one of Amazon’s offers to take them out of the middle.

– Especially if you’re an author yourself: Remind them that authors are not united on this issue.

 

The “illegal collusion” mentioned was the antitrust suit brought against publishers for getting together with Apple to fix e-book prices. They lost, and now Amazon’s crowing about it. People who opposed the suit are now saying “we told you so.” The point was, it’s illegal to collude to fix prices and the publishers were rightly shot down. Now victorious Amazon is telling everyone else how they should price their products instead of letting the market decide. Amazon is acting the role of the monopoly now but because it’s one company, it doesn’t face scrutiny.

It’s disingenuous for Amazon to say “stop using your authors as leverage” when the company is doing just that. The authors are caught in the middle no matter who started it. Amazon touts its big royalties to authors, but you can bet the farm that if it prevails in this, it’ll find ways to cut those payments. Amazon is not looking out for the interest of authors, it’s only looking out for itself. Once it’s got the power to set all prices, it will bring its corporate power down and squash the talent. The talent always gets squashed; look at what happened to the creators of comic-book superheroes.

And that last line about authors not being united about this is a laugh. Of course they’re not united. Authors tend to be a fractious bunch anyway, but I think a general key here is authors within the traditional publisher realm versus authors of e-books and “independent” publishers. The Amazon e-mail says a petition against Hachette garnered more than 7,600 signatures. What it doesn’t say, though, is how many of those are strictly e-book authors, how many are with the big houses but who have e-books also for sale, and how many people just signed it because they hate the big publishers. Many, many people would like to see the “middlemen” — agents, editors, publishers — done away with, but the percentage of e-book authors with bestseller status is very small. Some people can do it that way, and more power to them. But there is still a place for traditional publishing.

Amazon’s cute e-mail is in reaction to an ad appearing in the Aug. 10 New York Times signed by around 900 authors calling on Amazon to stop being jerks. The petition is described as being from bestselling authors, but my name is on that petition and I’m far, far from the bestseller lists. Most of the signers aren’t either, but they are concerned that Amazon’s tactics are hurting them — or their friends, as I said in a previous post.

Look, Hachette is no angel in this. They just seem to be the company that wants to have its own say about how it prices its own products. But make no mistake — they can be as avaricious as Amazon. They can squash talent and take advantage of them as anyone else, and they do. And it’s got income from all sorts of places, so it’s not going to collapse if it loses this argument. This is mostly about the talent, the writers who spend much of their lives sitting at keyboards, writing, revising, editing, trying to come up with stories to entertain and inform fans and the general public. I agree that e-books tend to be overpriced, but I don’t like seeing my friends caught in traps they didn’t make and had no reason to expect.

No, Jeff Bezos, although I have an e-book in your Kindle system (though not for much longer, perhaps), I will not send a reply to Hachette based on your e-mail. I will tell you this: Go suck eggs. You know, the eggs from the golden goose you killed by squeezing literary creators.

To the Moon and beyond — yeah, maybe someday

When Neil Armstrong stepped out on the Moon, I was in an Air Force dining hall in Shemya Alaska. I listened to the description and heard Armstrong’s words on a radio, probably through the Armed Forces Radio Network. The network likely broadcast a television feed too, but there wasn’t a TV in the supply rooms, only a radio owned by a civilian, the guy in charge.

Most of my listening was done in between the tasks of preparing lunch and dinner for the 1200 or so soldiers and civilians on Shemya, almost all male. This was the 1960s, remember, and the possibility that women could do many of the things men did was just beginning to sink in. In the year I spent on the island, the only women were those who worked as stewardesses (not flight attendants, not yet) on Reeves Aleutian Airlines, the main civilian contractor serving the islands. They didn’t stay long and if you wanted to see one, you had to be at the NCO club at a specific time. Wikipedia says a radar station and refueling stop still operate there, but with only about 180 people, so there might still not be too many women.

That’s just the way it was in 1969. Men flew the spying planes, operated the radar and electronic eavesdropping systems, operated the airline refueling systems, ran the base amenities and cooked the food, which was what I was doing on the island. Not out of choice. Although I’d joined the AF to avoid the draft, thousands of other guys had the same idea so the AF had so many recruits it could put us where it needed bodies, so that’s how I ended up flipping eggs instead of being a photographer like I wanted.

And, of course, all the astronauts were men. So far, that’s all who have walked on the lunar surface. Women are said to be 51 percent of the population, but it wasn’t until the moon program was well over that women were even allowed in the space program, and then only in the space-truck and to spend time on the low-orbit-that-eventually-will-fall space station. That’s as far as they’ve gotten and that’s the way it’ll be until the Chinese or some big corporation sends a few into deeper space. There’s a good chance that the first women on the Moon and Mars won’t be Americans.

This didn’t start out to be a critique of gender politics in the American space program. It’s just another old guy reminiscing on the 45th anniversary of the first lunar landing. Thinking about where I was that year, on an island full of men, led to realizing the moon was full of men, too. Women are now such a part of the space programs — not just astronauts, but engineers, scientists, rocket designers, spacecraft operators and whatever other jobs there are in space-related programs — that we often forget that NASA once had pretty much ruled out women having any place in space. (And has it changed that much? Even today, women scientists are complaining of sexual harassment — by other scientists. Progress, you say?)

When I was a kid, 7, 8 years old, I saw a lunchbox with a rocket above the earth painted on it. The caption said “Mars Mission 2000.” (Or 2001, or 2010, I don’t remember the exact date except that it’s already passed.) Space was everywhere — on TV, in our toys, our comic books. Walt Disney produced shows about how we were going to the Moon, compete with scientists, including Werner von Braun. The slick magazines did articles about space missions, car companies put out cars with big fins and names like the Rocket 88 and a movie called Destination Moon gave us the dry, bare-bones details on how to do a mission to the Moon. No aliens, no monsters, no explosions — and no women.

When Russia lofted ol’ Sputnik into orbit, it scared a lot of people, but amazed the rest of us. Slowly, more and more satellites were sent into space, and then men. My mother surprised me as she watched a taped replay of the Alan Shepard sub-orbital launch, saying “What a great thing.” Yeah, I thought it was terrific, but Mom, too? Whoa.

And then it all turned out to be just a Cold War gimmick. That the only Really Important thing was that we beat the Russians to the Moon. To prevent them from setting up a lunar station where they’ll threaten us with nuclear missiles. And then we didn’t even bother to set up a station of our own. It’s just all so expensive, you see. We cannot go the Moon and fight commies everywhere to keep the Earth safe for democracy. (And we all know how that turned out in Vietnam.) So we turned away. Away from the Moon, from Mars (which is where von Braun wanted to go in the end).

Fortunately for us, it might be hard to put humans in space, but easy to send robots. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d barely know anything about the solar system and the universe in general. So why send humans at all? The simple answer is, the robots aren’t us.

I know, it’s easy to scorn the people who lived in the ’50s and ’60s as naive dreamers about space exploration. Reality has pretty well shot them down, eh? Perhaps, but at least they had dreams, hopes, aspirations. Space exploration promised us new things and new ideas (I’m not talking about Teflon, cell phones or drones here). As in all new explorations, there was a spiritual sense, a chance to rediscover oneself, to aim for something outside the norm. In the ’60s, we had some of that.

It would be nice to see some of it come back.

Win a date with George R.R. Martin! And help wolves and hungry people!

George R.R. Martin, author of — in case you live under a rock or something — The Song of Ice and Fire series, a.k.a. Game of Thrones, is raising money for the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in northern New Mexico ( the wolf part) and The Food Depot of Santa Fe (the hungry people part).

A $25 donation will get you into the drawing for the grand prize, where the winner will be flown to New Mexico, meet with George, then fly to the sanctuary together (in a chopper most likely, not on the back of a dragon, more’s the pity). There are pretty cool goodies available for other donation levels, but some have already been snapped up. There are 59 days left (as of 6 June) in the campaign, and they’re a tad over half-way there. I don’t think there’s any doubt they’re going to reach their goal (George R.R. Martin! Wolves! Helping hungry people! What’s not to like?). And, mayhap, you’ll even get to see a movie at George’s theater in Santa Fe.

All the information is available at the Prizeo.com site, including how to donate.

 

Tilting at windmills, perhaps, but I have to support my writer friends

Perhaps you’ve heard about the fight between Hachette book group and Amazon.com about pricing on e-books. Amazon is putting the screws to Hachette by not accepting pre-orders or delaying shipping of print books from that publisher. Hachette, like most other corporations these days, is made up of several (relatively) smaller publishers, of which a couple publish books by two colleagues from my New Mexico days.

Walter Jon Williams is the author of many books, including Hardwired, Knight Moves, Angel Station, Days of Atonement, Aristoi, Metropolitan, Implied Spaces, the “Dread Empire’s Fall” series (The Praxis, The Sundering, Conventions of War and Investments, a separate novel set in the Empire’s Fall universe) and his latest works based on social media, This is Not a Game, Deep State and The Fourth Wall. Those last three are affected because they’re published by Orbit, one of those smaller publishers. Walter is an excellent writer. He’s also a smart, gregarious fellow, as you’ll find out if you go to his web page. There you will also find links to his out-of-print-made-into-ebooks, short-story collections and novellas.

James S.A. Corey is an amalgam of two writers, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who paired up for “The Expanse” series, Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, Abaddon’s Gate and the new novel, Cibola Burn, coming out this summer. The series has impressed critics and hit the NY Times bestseller list and the first one has been picked up by SyFy channel for a series. These books also are among those caught up in the argument.

Now, it’s not like you can’t get these books at all. Barnes and Noble is still in business, and they have a web site, too. Plus, there’s all sorts of independent bookstores that have managed to survive the online revolution so far, and I’d recommend you patronize your nearest one if you want these (or any other) books. Wal-Mart is reporting a jump in book sales, too, so there’s another option.And I can’t really shed much of a tear for the big publishers; sometimes the way they treat writers borders on criminal. The Corey duo and Williams aren’t going to be hurt that much from this because they’re established and known writers, but as the Coreys point out on their blog, writers with smaller followings or those starting out could be hit kind of hard. After all, Amazon makes it so easy to buy a book. Click and boom!, a couple days later there’s your purchase.

I’ve used Amazon many times; I’ve bought all the Corey book that way. This last Christmas, I bought several gifts from the company. Now, though, I’m not buying anything from Amazon until they stop being jerks. They’re trying to bully Hachette into meeting their demands, but they’re doing it on the backs of the writers. (Why is it everyone hates the writers and creators? Publishers, movie studios, merchandisers, and now Amazon — always stomping on the people who bring them profits.) Maybe Amazon will win this one. And maybe I’ll never use them again.

So be it.

(Sorry, Walter, but I am not clicking on that video of those identical roller-skating, accordion-playing sub-debs singing polkas from hell or anywhere else. Not going to do it, uh-uh, nope, no way. Your nightmares will remain your own, so stay out of mine, thank you.)

 

Lego my childhood; or, unleash the dog of history

Popular culture in the United States is like that mythical worm that eats its own tail.

An Ouroboros it’s called, a self-devouring beast that could eat itself right out of existence. That last foot or so, where the mouth swallows the head, must be a bear.

U.S. pop culture, though, likely won’t have that problem because it’ll just keep finding new stuff to devour over and over again to eternity.

What brought all this talk about ouroboroses (ouroborosi?) was two movies both animated and both based on child-like nostalgia. Childhood, you mean, don’t you? Not necessarily. Child-like is a better description, in my view.

The first is The Lego Movie, and at least the creators didn’t insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending it’s not a long commercial. (Yes, it is. If it’s not, then where are the other toys? In the Pixar Toy Story series, toys from different manufacturers appear in speaking roles. In this movie, it’s Legos and only Legos.) Generations of children around the world have grown up with Legos, so the marketing is already three-quarters done. Through the years, the company hasn’t sat on its laurels, it’s adapted its product for whatever popular culture meme is in force at any given time. A long way from the humble carved-wood toys it started out with, and if you don’t believe it, look at the CGI movie the company made about itself and how its founders took Mr. McGuire’s advice and went into plastics.

I don’t remember playing with Legos when I was a kid. I did have some plastic brick-like things with the holes and tabs, but they were all red with some longer white pieces. They might have been Legos, but it’s more likely they were some off-brand. My main construction set was the wooden Tinkertoys. A couple of my friends had Erector Sets, made of metal and you had screws and bolts to piece the thing together. So when are the Tinkertoy and/or Erector Set movies coming out? Not soon, evidently; a Lego sequel already has been approved. Money talks, and Lego is there to collect.

The movie itself has been a big seller, and deservedly so because it’s actually good. It’s flashy and humorous for the kids and satirical and metaphorical for the adults. It suffers from the same thing that nearly every American animated film suffers from: action crammed in for the sake of action. Afraid of losing their younger audience, the makers put in speedy chases and complicated fight scenes while the adults are forced to sit through it until the next plot development. Fortunately, it has voice actors such as Morgan Freeman, who seems to be having a ball sending up the Wise Old Man cliché.

The movie also has an interesting take on what Legos actually are for. On one hand, you’ve got those who build under strict real-world rules, erecting buildings and skyscrapers, regular cities with streets and traffic. On the other hand are those who are more free-form in their creations. This idea sifts through the entire movie as the Lord Business tries to lock down everything and everyone in its place. An adult who wants a nice, tidy, realistic city. The less strict, a child, say, has the Millennium Falcon come out of nowhere to help the good guys. Why not? To him, there’s nothing wrong with mashing pop culture together.

The movie also wants to suggest that conformity is a dead end and life needs spontaneity to advance. This is illustrated by the reluctant (and, admittedly, clueless) hero, a construction worker who spends his days following the rules and going to work as a member of as team and who must leave it all behind to fulfill his destiny. But he can’t do that alone; he needs help. So he trades one team for another. Granted, the methods of the second team are unorthodox, but he still is a cog in a larger wheel. So, has the lone hero really turned his back on conformity?

The Lego Movie, despite its name, wasn’t made with actual Lego pieces being manipulated frame-by-frame. A daunting task, that would be, but man, think of what it would look like! Instead, it’s CGI, a cop-out. Computers make everything too easy any more.

The other nostalgic movie uses the old Rocky and Bullwinkle Show of the ’60s as its source. This I do remember; coming home from school and turning on the TV to cartoon shows on the local stations (before the time was taken over by network talk shows, infomercials and soaps). Rocky and Bullwinkle was done in what’s called limited animation. That form was popular because it was cheap and the channels were filled with Quick-Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear, all execrable examples. Rocky and Bullwinkle had style, though, more imagination and great writing with wit and intelligence.

Besides the adventures of the titular characters, the show also had various short segments, such as “Fractured Fairy Tales” that pretty much destroyed the fairy tales we’d learned when we were younger. “Peabody’s Improbable History” featured a dog who had a time machine he’d use to teach his boy, Sherman, a lesson in history. They’d find things weren’t happening they way they were supposed to, so Peabody would have to take action to set things aright. And to set up the show-ending pun.

Why a dog? Who knows, but we can imagine Ted Key, the show’s developer, saying to himself, “Well, every boy needs a dog, so why shouldn’t a dog have a boy?” Just a silly thing to make the segment that much more off-beat, to poke a finger in the eye of convention. (Ted Key, by the way, also drew and wrote the one-panel cartoon Hazel that appeared in a weekly magazine for many years. Talk about a broad field of interest.)

Now jump ahead fifty years or so to a conversation that begins with something like “Hey, you know what would be neat? A movie about Peabody the time-traveling dog and his kid, what’s-his-name, Grant, McClellan—what? Oh, yeah! Sherman!” So Mr. Peabody and Sherman, a big, CGI, 3-D animated movie is born. And, being a Hollywood movie, we must have a back story. In the Key cartoon, we didn’t care how a dog came to own a boy, it was the show’s set-up, it didn’t matter. But I suppose a 92-minute movie needs it all explained.

Well, not everything. Mr. Peabody doesn’t explain why Mr. Peabody is the only talking dog in the movie, but it does explain why he was forced to educate himself and make his own way in the world: nobody wants to own a smart-alec dog. Fair enough, but he knows so much he becomes insufferable. It would have been nice if just once he could step aside and say to his guests, “You know, I’ve studied many things, but I was never able to squeeze in bartending lessons. Perhaps you’d like to take a shot at mixing us drinks. ‘Take as shot,’ get it?”

And we now know how Sherman became his son: An abandoned baby found in a cardboard box in an alley, already wearing round glasses. Not such a stretch, actually (except for the glasses). And, of course, there are complications. A boy with a dog father isn’t exactly going to be popular at school. Enter Penny Peterson, bully, who goads Sherman into biting her. (At least she’s not the popular-girl-stereotype bully; she’s a bully because she thinks she’s the smartest girl in school. A smart girl, who wants to be smart. At least there’s some eye-poking going on here.) This brings the evil family services agent in to threaten to take Sherman away ’cause, you know, dogs aren’t fit to be fathers to human boys.

Mr. Peabody has Penny and her parents over for dinner in an attempt to fix things. He tells Sherman not to tell Penny about the WABAC machine, so of course he does. Hijinks ensue. The past is as a messed-up place as it was in the ’60s, and Mr. Peabody is hard-pressed to fix the things that Sherman and Penny have screwed up. We meet historical characters, and they all seem to be a gregarious lot. Da Vinci especially, who owes a great debt to Mr. Peabody for getting the Mona Lisa to smile. (See what I mean about Peabody? He can do no wrong, even when he’s the butt of the joke.) And then it all threatens to collapse as the past is crashing into the present and Mr. Peabody—and Sherman, who has by now gained confidence with the help of Penny—try to send everyone back to their respective whens and correct the time stream. Well, mostly. Touches of 21st century culture went back with each historical figure, suggesting that the present Sherman & Peabody tried to fix isn’t really. But perhaps that’s for a sequel.

Mr. Peabody and Sherman as a computer-animated movie looks generally fine, the backgrounds are lavish, the time-warp stuff is dazzling. However, it does suffer from crammed action (see above). And while it was nice the animators stayed with Key’s character designs, they went too far. Those kids would never be able to support those heads on those scrawny necks. Key could get away with it because his Sherman hardly moved, but a three-dimensional child running, jumping, falling and spinning needs muscles and bones in his neck.

Other parts of the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show have been plucked out and turned into modern movies, but the less said about them the better. Fortunately, Mr. Peabody and Sherman rises well above those and is an entertaining movie. Still, though, the question of why arises. Both this movie and The Lego Movie suggest there are no new ideas in Hollywood, that the past, our childhoods, are going to be scraped clean and everything run through the technological improvements again and again. Look at comic superhero movies—icons from the past made into film after film, and then rebooted for a new generation before the old generation even has a chance to age much. The recent awful Lone Ranger movie is a sign of this self-devouring trend. Pixar is going to make a third Cars film, a second Incredibles film, and is working on a second Finding Nemo film. And now we hear of plans to make 3-D movie with the characters from the comic strip Peanuts. It just doesn’t stop.

Nostalgia is a nice thing, and remembering the past is important. But we also need to think about the future, we need to see new ideas, not constant rehashing of the old. It’s hard, really hard, to present something totally new; just look at what happened to The Iron Giant. But everything was new once; even The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. A hundred and fourteen years ago it was new, but you have to start somewhere.

Or, as Mr. Peabody might say, sometime.

The new ‘Cosmos’ has been a bit remolded to fit the times

Starstuff.

Cal Sagan made the word famous in the first iteration of Cosmos, a TV show that explored well, “everything that is, or was, or ever shall be.” That’s biting off a lot to chew. Sagan pulled it off in 1981 with an erudite, intelligent, fascinating and informative 15-week series on PBS. Sagan was one of the most well-known scientific spokesmen and the show propelled him to celebrity status. His was subtitles “A Personal Journey.”

Now the series has been revamped in 2014 with this generation’s most well-known scientific spokesman, astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. New discoveries in the intervening 33 years certainly call for such a move. Even though the subtitle of the new series is the more bombastic “A Spacetime Odyessy,” the producers still have to be careful not to step on, belittle or demean Sagan’s legacy yet continue the quest of explaining scientific process and discovery to the general public.

One way to update is with modern production techniques to create whiz-bang visuals and special effects. The new Cosmos started on the same seashore as the old one and borrowed the spaceship of the mind idea to explore the universe. Sagan started his from the outside — billions of light years away — and traveled in to Earth. Tyson goes the other way, starting here and moving outward. That turns out to be more effective, because Tyson can mention all the planets of the solar system where Sagan couldn’t get Venus and Mercury on-screen because he stopped at the third rock from the sun. Tyson also has more information about what the planets looked like, so his planetary system looks cooler. Of course, in Sagan’s day, Pluto was considered a planet (and at that time was inside the orbit of Neptune) where Tyson simply mentioned something vague about other objects in the system past Neptune, including Pluto. Nothing about the demotion of Pluto from planet status and his role in doing that, but perhaps he’ll go into more detail in a later episode.

Tyson’s version follows the trail blazed by Sagan’s to the point of him saying some of the same words as Sagan in some cases. This shown particularly in the segment of the life of the universe shown as a calendar year to show how all of human recorded history can fit into the last ten seconds or so of the year. Almost word-for-word at the end.

The two men diverge on their choices for early scientific heroes to illustrate how thinkers in ancient times blazed a path for later generations. Sagan went with Eratosthenes, who deduced the size of the Earth my measuring the shadows of sticks stuck in the ground. Tyson chose Giordano Bruno, a 12th century monk who suggested the sun was the center of the universe, not the Earth. He was eventually burned at the stake for suggesting that. Eratosthenes was a scientist, Sagan points out, where Bruno wasn’t because he didn’t have facts to back him up, says Tyson.

This choice of “hero” illustrates best the differences between the two shows. Sagan is more of a dreamer, Tyson more prosaic. Sagan spoke in poetry — “We are the way for the cosmos to know itself” — where Tyson’s style is more lecture. Both men say “starstuff,” but when Sagan says it, it’s just that more lyrical. Nothing wrong with that, but Tyson should let himself wax poetic once or twice. Wouldn’t hurt his image that much.

Sagan’s ethereal music — such as the show’s theme, Movement 3, “Symphony to the Powers B” from the album Heaven and Hell by the electronic artist Vangelis — has been replaced by the tedious orchestrations that mark scores of modern films such as Star Trek or Star Wars. Perhaps this isn’t surprising because a main backer of the new series is Seth MacFarlane, a potty-mouthed producer of potty-mouthed TV and movies who is wont to “borrow” from other creators. The credits also list Brannon Braga, who was on the staff for Star Trek: The Next Generation. This also perhaps explains why Tyson’s spaceship of the imagination resembles Boba Fett’s spacecraft from Star Wars. In flight, it resembles a coffin. (Update, April 10: I finally figured out what it does resemble: a sarcophagus. And it gives me the creeps every time I see it sliding through the cosmos.) In one scene, as the ship flew low over a rocky world, I expected a giant space worm to rise out of a hole and snap at the spacecraft. Given the show’s personnel, and the fact that it’s on commercial TV, I keep anticipating pop-culture references, like the U.S.S. Enterprise visiting a new world or the Millennium Falcon zipping by a distant galaxy.

The original show was based on the BBC model of documentary series where the host would visit the places under discussion and dramatize the stories of the historical figures under discussion. But the new show has commercials, which squeezes the time, so it looks like Tyson will spend most of his time in his spacecraft or standing on a beach or a meadow. And the dramatizations will be animated the way the Bruno story was. Perhaps that saves money, but with all the commercials, you’d think they’d have enough to spare. But, this is the modern world, and in this world everything mus make s money for someone somewhere. Altruism is so ’70s.

The most affecting part is Tyson’s telling use about a visit to Sagan when Tyson was a teen. That’s Sagan, all right, taking time to talk to a kid about the wonders of science, and in this case, it certainly paid off. Tyson points out that this is another process in how science works — a teacher passes information to a student, who uses it to carry research further, then he becomes a teacher and passes what he found out to the next student.  And on and on. A nice touch, but we must hope the series doesn’t become too much of a paean to Sagan.

It’s good to have science and rational thought on TV, especially network TV. The first show was interesting and Tyson’s no-nonsense style is engaging and the eye candy was compelling. Plus, if Tyson continues to take an occasional jab at conventional thinking, that could only be a good thing.

 

Update: paragraph added 10 March ’cause I left it out of the original version.

‘The Wind Rises’ might not be Oscar’s cup of tea

Update March 2: Frozen got the Oscar.

The Wind Rises could very well swoop down and snatch the animation Oscar from Disney’s jaws.

It’s as good as Frozen in its own way, it’s the swan song from a beloved animation (and manga) storyteller and it has universal themes. The subject of the story, however, could be its downfall.

The Wind Rises centers on Jiro Horikoshi, the aeronautical engineer who designed the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, one of the weapons that enabled Japan to expand its empire in the late ’30s, early ’40s. That alone might make Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters pause. It’s also a serious adult movie, despite being animated. No singing, no dancing, no happy endings; a main character dies, the hero is left with a bittersweet legacy.

Why did Hayao Miyazaki pick such a topic? Because he could mold the story to illustrate the things that are important to him: following your dreams against adversity, staying true to yourself, opening yourself to outside ideas and working them into your own vision. Oh, and flying. A biopic about an aeronautical engineer certainly lets Miyazaki indulge his love of soaring over the landscape.

The film cannot be taken as serious biography. The love story is fiction, especially in the way Miyazaki has this one unwind. And the hero is a little too perfect: generous, kind, smart, handsome in his pastel lavender suits, dedicated and brave. As a kid, he stops the bullying of a smaller boy, tosses the aggressor over his shoulder—then get told by his mother that violence never solves anything. When an earthquake strikes, he helps a little girl get home as Tokyo burns. He speaks several languages and is able to calm a bombastic German soldier with just words. (He does smoke a lot, so that’s at least one flaw.)

This puts Horikoshi on a pedestal that the real Jiro Horikoshi likely never could live up to. But I think Miyazaki is after something else here. This is a story not only about dreams but about how dreams of men often are stuck in the dark clay of his baser instincts. Horikoshi has a dream of flying, of breaking the bonds of Earth, but to get the money to  make those dreams reality, he has to accept the reality of how his beautiful machines will be used. Like Werner von Braun, who had visions of sending rockets to Mars, but he had to see them land on London before they could go elsewhere. Horikoshi had visions of his planes carrying people from place to place, but first he had to see his planes carry bombs.

So instead of simply glorifying a builder of war machines, Miyazaki perhaps is showing us how we allow our dreams to be co-opted by fear and loathing. These people could always refuse the militarization of their dreams, but that could mean prison and someone else doing it instead. So, they go along with the program. And perhaps, in the end, they do as Horikoshi does at the end of The Wind Rises: Walk through a graveyard where the skeletons of their ideals lie in ruins. (He is reported to have said in an interview with the Asahi Shibun the Zero “represented one of the few things we Japanese could be proud of—they were a truly formidable presence, and so were the pilots who flew them.” Sounds like a little flag-waving from the maker of My Neighbor Tortoro, but he has criticized the Japanese government on war-related issues, and did protest the U.S. action in Iraq. So he’s proud of Japanese know-how on building the machine, but not what it was used for. But, again, if not for the military, the thing might never have been built. So his—and our—ambivalence stands to illustrate the dilemma.)

Whatever, the film is as glorious as any other Mitazaki production, with sumptuous visuals and an incredible attention to detail. Never thought I’d ever see a realistic animated slide rule, but that’s Miyazaki for you.

What chance does the film have in making off with that Oscar? Good, but I’m still going with Frozen. I can tell you, though, I won’t be unhappy to see an upset here.

(Updated March 1 to add more on Miyazaki’s anti-war stance.)