The Windup Girl and the Transporter

On the one hand, I lately finished reading Paolo Bacigalupi’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel. And on the other, I read it on my new tablet, bought in part to ease the growing shortage of book space in my life.

First, the tablet, an ASUS Transporter Infinity. I can’t figure out a way to take a picture of it with its own built-in camera, but here’s a nice picture of one like it, along with the separate and way cool docking station: http://eee.asus.com/html/eeepad/img/tf700/common/visual-model.png. I found it interesting that there is an assumption on the part of ASUS that anyone who buys such a thing would automatically know how the interface worked. As a technical writer and editor, I was astonished that neither the tablet nor its separate docking station came with any kind of documentation, including something like a QuickStart Guide. Fortunately, I’ve watched enough other people use Android devices and seen enough commercials that I could muddle my way through my first attempts to use it. Though there were interesting paradigm-shift moments such as when I saw that I had a number of applications open and running but could not formulate a plan to close them. It was a good thing that Mrs. Speculator is more conversant with Android than me. There was also the humorous first few attempts to unlock the pad by sliding the lock icon; I discovered that 1) if you slide the lock to the left, you put the tablet in camera mode and 2) if you’re a little patient, the tablet will actually tell you the direction you really want to slide it in to use the tablet without going through camera mode first.

I decided to use a Kindle app on the tablet for ebooks. I’m not really sure I appreciate all of Amazon’s practices when it comes to publishing, but I already have an Amazon Prime account, which facilitated continuing to use their services. Again, there is an assumption that using the app is intuitive. I figured out how to go to the Kindle store and buy my book, and was told it would be delivered to my tablet via WhisperSynch. Eventually, I got an email telling me that it had been delivered…but now how to access it. I would open the Kindle app hoping to see the cover of my newly purchased book on the home screen, only to find nothing. A bit of poking around led me to determine that I had to go to another menu and tell the Kindle to synch itself up with the downloads. And then! I had the cover on the front page.

Reading my first ebook was not the experience I expected. I have not thought so deeply about the reading process since I was taking a class in literary criticism and we were covering the post-Modernists. For example, by default, the Kindle app gives you black text on a white background, simulating the experience of reading a book. But even though there’s a brightness control, the white that the app delivers is far brighter than the white of the paper in a book. So in the case of the first ten pages or so, I spent as much time reading and getting the beginning of a headache with the intensity of the images on the screen as I did fiddling with the controls to get the settings right. Fortunately, I have lately read a couple of books from the 70s with paper slowly turning brown, so I was reminded that sepia might be a better choice than pure white and eventually ended up with black print on sepia with the brightness turned down. Then I went back and forth between horizontal and vertical orientations for a few pages to decide which I liked better, eventually deciding to go horizontal and two columns. I spent some time trying to use the dictionary, only to discover that I had to download the dictionary and then discovering that a lot of the words in my novel based in Thailand weren’t in the dictionary. I guess the built-in dictionary is put on the tablet to accommodate folks who are reading outside of a network, but why take up space on an Internet tool to pack a dictionary when a Web search direct from the page makes so much more sense? Especially when that’s what I had to do anyway to find the meaning of a number of the words in the novel?

I was delighted to discover that the layout of the pages pretty solidly matched the format of a printed book. Having worked in companies where the electronic version of a text was an afterthought to the printed version, I was concerned I would be spending as much for a paperback book for less readability. And because of the intense graphics of the Transporter Infinity, the cover of the book is vibrant and gorgeous, though I really would like to magnify sections of it for detail, mimicking holding the book really close to my face to find a plot point nicely portrayed in the cover art. I know that comic book readers support the magnification of their images, so I’m not concerned about the art for when I start looking at comics with the tablet. It makes me wonder if the combination of a tablet and music might bring about the return of awesome liner notes included with albums.

The tablet is also very convenient: Mrs. Speculator did not wake up at all when I found myself unable to sleep one night and read for about a half hour. No bright lights from the nightstand and perfect readability in the dark. I understand that with the Kindle app, my books will be automatically archived after a certain amount of time passes without them being opened. In the archive, I will have access to them again as will anyone who uses my Amazon account, like Mrs. Speculator. I emphasize being told this because, again, there was no documentation anywhere and I had to search for information, finding forum responses mired with all the dross that goes with them and the report of a friend who also uses the Kindle app. I’m hoping for the best.

In short, I’m becoming hooked; at last I am the 21st century schizoid man that King Crimson used to sing about—I want to read books and hold and smell them but am satisfying myself with getting the latest releases via ebook (outside of a few exceptions like Mieville, Brust, Kay, and Banks).

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As for the book itself, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl is a real delight. It is set in a not-too-distant future where the combination of the effects of global warming and genetic engineering has visited a catastrophe to the world. Thailand hides behind massive sea walls as it slowly sinks below the world’s new sea level. Genetically modified grains spawn genetically modified diseases, killing grains and people alike. Use of fossil fuels is severely limited and infractions severely punished in attempts to halt the continued rise of sea level and perhaps to reverse it. Symbolic of these ills are the cheshires, domestic housecats originally modified so that they blend in with their surroundings, chameleonlike, as a marketing ploy to sell cats. However, the modification bred true, and the cheshires have replaced the domestic housecats and the feral ones around the world, a vastly improved predator.

Bacigalupi introduces a handful of characters to this setting—Anderson Lake, an American entrepreneur who acts as an agent for a multinational in a country where foreigners, especially Americans, are reviled for the havoc they have brought to the world; Hock Seng, a Chinese immigrant who has come to Thailand in order to escape Muslim fundamentalists and works for Lake as he plots to recoup the shipping corporation he lost in his flight; Emiko, a Japanese “New Person”, a genetically modified human, molded to be the perfect servant and unable to reproduce; and Jaidee Rojjanasukchai, the Tiger of Bangkok, a native captain in the Environment Ministry, tasked with ensuring there are no further incursions of non-native life in Thailand. Bacigalupi’s plot follows them each in their individual machinations to merely survive in this hostile new world that experimentation has created. The characters’ movement throught Bangkok and its environs allows Bacigalupi to build up a picture of a horribly broken world, and as one might expect, the more the reader interacts with the characters, the more broken they appear to be as well.

Emiko is explicitly the windup girl in the title of the novel, and her actions do set off the biggest crisis, a battle for superiority between the Trade Ministry and the Environment Ministry, with all of the expatriates caught between the warring factions and neither side offering them very much support. Emiko struggles against her very nature, having been bred to need to serve even when it goes against her strongest instincts. She constantly fights her own body’s responses to stimuli with varying and ultimately surprising results. Her story is an example of the tried and true plot device, nature versus nurture with the added quibble that her nature has been modified by corporations.

But there is a second windup girl in the novel also—Kanya, the Tiger of Bangkok’s trusted lieutenant and protégé. Slowly, the reader learns Kanya’s back-story and discovers she is not all she seems to be either, fighting her own battle between two masters. While Emiko’s development and conflict drive the opening narrative of the novel, Kanya takes it over in its crisis and drives it to its unexpected and harrowing conclusion.

There is no room for optimism in The Windup Girl. In an analogy of our world today, the problems of Bacigalupi’s world are manmade, and rather than working at solving the issues, the smartest and most powerful people struggle to find ways to profit, to make their own lives that much easier. There are several scenes where foreign entrepreneurs sit on the balcony of a local bar during the hottest part of the day in order to better catch what breezes there may be and completely about their hard lives while the people in the street below suffer and struggle. It would be very easy to strip The Windup Girl of its power and suggest it is an anti-Western novel, but it doesn’t take much close reading to see that the Thais are just as complicit in their troubles as everyone else, despite their blame for the rest of the world.

In a number of ways, The Windup Girl reminds me of Brave New World, with its interest in genetic manipulation and unrelenting cynicism. While the endings are somewhat different, there remains a sympathetic character in both novels who is not in the world of the novel by their own choice. Bacigalupi’s writing is perhaps more accessible than Huxley’s while Huxley’s characters are more fully realized. This is not to say that Bacigalupi’s characters are not fully formed; Huxley’s are just more memorable.

The Windup Girl is a powerful novel, deserving of the Hugo and Nebula awards it has won. It’s one of those novels that we may look back on in a decade or so and recognize as being incredibly important not only for its writing but for its message. It likely should transcend its genre to become something of interest to mainstream readers as well.

The Standards

A little while ago, I ran across a Web site that purported to list the 50 "must read" SF novels (http://forbiddenplanet.com/picks/50-sf-books-you-must-read/). I read through the list and at first was pleased to find I made it to #25 before encountering a book I had not read, but some of the choices were decidedly odd to me. Forever Peace at #2? No Heinlein in the list at all? And then I had the general reaction I have to these kinds of lists—what were the criteria that were used to select the books? There was no indication.

I posted the list to my Facebook page, which in turn garnered an interesting response; someone wanted to know why I didn't create my own list. At first, I declined, because it seemed like it would be a lot of work (it turns out that it was indeed a lot of work). But my subconscious kept processing through books until I had to write some of them down, and once I started writing them down, there was no way to stop the tide that would sweep me to just such a post.

So, here is my list of the 50 speculative fiction books everyone reads, the so-called "standards." These are the touchstone books, the ones that all speculative fiction fans know about…not the ones everyone SHOULD know about (in literary terms, it appears I am trying to write down the canon, always a dubious task). There may be some intersection between "should know" and "does know" but I'm trying very hard to take my personal taste out of the list (which is excruciatingly painful, let me say). I'm looking for the books that are generally accepted as the classics of speculative fiction by the readers of science fiction. And unlike other lists of this nature, I am actually going to provide my criteria:

1. An author may only appear on the list once. This was a major part of the excruciation I mentioned above.
2. I will only list books that I have read. I refuse to have an opinion about something I haven't read, so there are probably some big names and some big titles I don't mention. It's not because I don't believe them to be one of the foundation books of the genre; I just haven't read them.
3. I'm listing speculative fiction, so there is science fiction, fantasy, and horror in this list.
4. I am not listing comics, so as tempting as it was to include them, Watchmen and Sandman do not appear here.
5. I tried very hard to list just a book rather than a series. But in a couple of cases, that was just impossible, as you'll see.

If readers appreciate what I've come up with, I might go back and create my list of 50 that should be read, bearing in mind that such a list is by definition colored by my taste and opinion.

So without further ado, my own version of the speculative fiction must read list:

Frankenstein—Mary Shelley (1818)
While there are arguably other books that are the forefathers of fantasy (The Faerie Queen and Gulliver's Travels comes to mind), Shelley's classic is the understood beginning point for science fiction.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination—Edgar Allan Poe (1839—the publication date of the first short story in the collection, the book itself was published in 1968)
Poe was able to modernize the features of the gothic novels and provide a blueprint for horror for the next century, influencing future writers who went on to influence others. His short stories are masterworks in writing of any kind, let alone horror.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea—Jules Verne (1869)
A book that is in the mainstream because of the Walt Disney film of the 1950s, it also represents the prototype of Vernian science fiction. Verne extrapolates the science of his day into the future and then spends the novel describing its wonders. I also considered Around the World in 80 Days, but 20,000 Leagues is classic science fiction, even if it becomes awfully dry in its long descriptions.

Dracula—Bram Stoker (1897)
While there were vampires before Stoker's novel, none of them has captured the popular imagination like the count from Transylvania. It is also a brilliant exercise in the epistle, being made up of letters from one character to another. Sadly, Stoker tried to write other speculative fiction with nowhere near as much success, but everyone who thinks about vampires reads this novel.

War of the Worlds—H. G. Wells (1897)
Wells's science fiction had a different purpose than Verne's and they had something of a rivalry; Wells writes science fiction to establish a setting to discuss contemporary thinking and philosophy. War of the Worlds puts man—especially white men—in the uncomfortable position of being the colonized rather than the colonizer. And it's a terrific alien invasion story as well. I also considered The Invisible Man and The Time Machine, but when it comes down to the one that I think most people read, it is this one.

A Princess of Mars—Edgar Rice Burroughs (1912)
A much beloved book among science fiction fans, A Princess of Mars initiated a long career for Burroughs. John Carter, the hero of Princess, and Tarzan are Burroughs's best known heroes, but I would argue that the Tarzan books are more adventure story than science fiction. This is a tiny wedge, since the Barsoom books are primarily action stories as well, just set in a different kind of bizarre locale, but Princess does codify the planetary romance subgenre, the one that dominates "science fiction" films to this day.

Brave New World—Aldous Huxley (1932)
Just a classic book of a dystopic future and the rebel who tries to break free of it. Millions of students have had to read this for high school, which in no way diminishes its power and effect.

Conan of Cimmeria—Robert E. Howard (1932—the publication date of the first short story in the collection, the book itself was published in 2002)
Thanks to Scwarzenegger, everyone thinks they know Conan. The sad thing is that all the movies are very different from the character that Howard writes about; in fact, the movies dumb him down tremendously. Unfortunately, all of Conan is in short form—short stories and novellas—so we have to rely on this brilliant collection of short stories, edited to remove later writers' additions to the original text. Anyone who is a fan of heroic fantasy has read something of Conan.

At the Mountains of Madness—H. P. Lovecraft (1936)
Lovecraft is nearly a deity for speculative fiction, a forgotten master who has suddenly regained popularity as later readers have come to discover how many writers have been influenced by him. Lovecraft distilled a lot of thought about fantasy from his 20s and 30s and helped to create a new sub-genre, the weird, which is undergoing another huge revival. Mountains is his best known piece, a delight of terror and atmosphere, wherein the monsters are never actually seen, but their presence felt throughout the novel.

Triplanetary—E. E. Smith (1948)
For a lot of the 30s and 40s, science fiction took on the structure of the inventor story—a brilliant young man discovers or invents something that leads mankind to galactic conquest. While not the father of this mode of writing, Smith was very clearly its best practitioner. Triplanetary is the first novel in the Lensman series, a much beloved series that describes man's expansion from our own planet to eventually our galactic cluster. The writing is momentous and swashbuckling, pulling its readers right along. Personally, I like the Skylark series better—the Lensman storyline gets repetitive over the six books—and I like that for of the Skylark books, Smith reverses everything and makes his antagonist the protagonist.

1984—George Orwell (1949)
Another classic, another bane of high school readers. 1984 and its ideas have so worked their way through Western culture that it is truly one of the defining books of the last 200 years.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—C. S. Lewis (1950)
This is in the list for obvious reasons. For a few decades, I would not be surprised if nearly 80% of all children in the US read this book and some of its series. It has long captured children's imagination, and except for the last couple of books, Lewis was able to keep his allegory fairly minimal, making it a beloved memory for adults who pass it on to their children. In many ways, this book is the godfather of the glut of young adult novels in the marketplace today.

Foundation—Isaac Asimov (1951)
It's very hard to pick just one Asimov book. But remembering that my questions concerns the book most read by fans, I think it has to be Foundation. Asimov's strengths are on display here—characterization and plot dominate the stories. Foundation has to be one of the touchstone books in the history of science fiction. (I also considered The Caves of Steel and The End of Eternity for this slot.)

Fahrenheit 451—Ray Bradbury (1953)
Another seminal book in American history, 451 is much beloved by science fiction and mainstream audiences alike, primarily for its warnings about censorship. Bradbury is a brilliant stylist, but not a lot of that is on display in 451, or it goes astray. And yet there is enough in the novel for it to capture the Western imagination. (I also considered The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes for this slot.)

I Am Legend—Richard Matheson (1954)
Matheson is one of America's great writers of the short form, even if most Americans don't realize who he is. Matheson wrote some of the most beloved episodes of The Twilight Zone and other horror and science fiction anthologies. I Am Legend is a thoughtful provocative take on the classic vampire story, providing an ironic twist on the general path such stories take. The novel has been filmed three times and, as you might expect, the best was the one starring Vincent Price (not Charlton Heston!). In many ways, this novel represents speculative fiction's turning its eyes on itself starting in the 50s, recognizing that it had a history as a genre and what seemed familiar territory could be mined for deeper ore.

Lord of the Rings—J. R. R. Tolkien (1954)
This is one that instance that I had to include a series rather than a single book. Tolkien's story of the dawning of man in a world where elder races have begun to fade is a touchstone for every fantasy novel that follows it. And just as its popularity started to wane, Peter Jackson directed a brilliant series of films based on the books, lofting the novels back into the mainstream consciousness again.

The Stars My Destination—Alfred Bester (1956)
In many ways, Bester represents the first modern writer of science fiction, interested as much in style and narrative as in character and plot. The Stars My Destination feels like a beat writer's attempt to write science fiction with tremendous results that acted as a touchstone for young science fiction writers for decades to follow. Bester also had big ideas that carry on in science fiction today. It was tough to choose between this and Bester's other classic, The Demolished Man, but when it comes down to it, I think more people have read Destination.

A Canticle for Leibowitz—Walter M. Miller, Jr. (1959)
It would be easy to shrug off Canticle as just another post-apocalyptic novel, but doing so would be a tremendous mistake. Canticle should have a lot more mainstream appreciation than it does, speaking as it does of what it means to be human, to constantly rise up against horrible odds, even when those odds are put upon man by man himself. There is humor and wit and loads of charm in Canticle and it is either astonishing or tremendously apropos that it is the only novel by Miller published in his lifetime. When I am asked by someone who is interested in trying out some science fiction for a suggestion, this is the one I always say. To my mind, it may be one of the best books, for all genres, of the 20^th century, and science fiction fans have long known and appreciated its genius.

Starship Troopers—Robert Heinlein (1959)
You can't have a list like this without Heinlein. Heinlein may be the most important figure in science fiction in the 20^th century, and he is a brilliant and cunning writer besides. Everybody that came after Heinlein (and bear in mind he started publishing short stories in the 30s, this is only the ONE book of his everyone reads) used him as a touchstone for what makes good science fiction and what makes good writing. And, if you are thinking to yourself that you saw the movie and so don't need to read the book, know that the movie is a horrible adaptation of the novel, antagonizing and polarizing fans to this day. Heinlein has a huge catalog, but the only other two books I really considered for this list were Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

A Wrinkle in Time—Madeleine L'Engle (1962)
Long known as a children's novel, it is nonetheless been a delightful introduction to science fiction for generations of readers. It is also well worth rereading as an adult

The Man in the High Castle—Philip K. Dick (1962)
There simply can be no list of this sort without reference to Dick. Another master whose writing inspired generations of writers, Dick is an icon in speculative fiction circles and gaining more and more notoriety in the mainstream as his stories are being made into movies. But the straightforward action fare of movies like Total Recall and Minority Report belies the plots of their stories: Dick was much more interested in the way the mind worked and how it would be affected by future changes than such movies indicate. Picking a single novel is hard, but I think more people have read The Man in the High Castle, an alternative history story where the US is divided between Germany and Japan after World War II, than the more surreal and paranoid novels of Dick. I also considered DO Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the story that the movie Blade Runner is based on, but I'm pretty sure most readers are satisfied with seeing the movie and have not attempted the novel.

Dune—Frank Herbert (1965)
Dune carries enormous gravitas in the speculative fiction community. It has its flaws to be sure, but it is epic in its scope, the first science fiction novel I can think of to do such massive world-building. It is not hyperbole to say that pretty much everyone who reads science fiction reads Dune.

Dragonflight—Anne McCaffrey (1968)
McCaffrey is a beloved author in science fiction circles for her Pern stories, about a planet colonized by humans but with a bizarre ecology that includes dragon. Those dragons are genetically manipulated by the colonists to help them fight a recurring natural disaster from space. But the first few novels don't really go into that much science fiction detail and follow a fairly typical young adult novel narrative. Dragonflight is the first Pern novel and can be read alone without reading any further, But I honestly don't know of anyone who has read just one Pern novel.

Stand on Zanzibar—John Brunner (1968)
Not many folks know of Brunner outside of science fiction circles, which is a shame. He started out as a middling fantasy writer, somewhat interested in pushing that genre along the New Wave of science fiction, challenging narrative style and language much like Bester did in his novels. But somewhere along the way, he started writing science fiction. The best of them is Stand on Zanzibar, a "literary" genre novel if ever there were one. Style and narration are experimental and complex but well worth the effort to read. The plot feels very much like it was taken out of the headlines of today. Those writers who eventually create the genre of cyberpunk read and were indebted to Brunner.

Slaughterhouse-Five—Kurt Vonnegut (1969)
It may not be the case any longer, but when I was a teenager, if I told someone that I read science fiction, they would almost always ask me my opinion of Vonnegut. Vonnegut is also required reading a lot of high school careers, so there is some familiarity with him. Vonnegut is a member of a very small club, someone who admits to writing science fiction and yet garners huge mainstream appeal as well (Bradbury would also be a member of this group). The choices were legion—Sirens of Titan, Breakfast of Champions—but when you think Vonnegut, the first title you usually think of is Slaughterhouse-Five.

The Left Hand of Darkness—Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
Le Guin is another speculative fiction writer who should be more appreciated in the mainstream than she is. If science fiction is about man's relationship to science and technology, Le Guin often uses the so-called soft sciences—anthropology and sociology—as the basis for her stories. The Left Hand of Darkness is a brilliant treatise on an alien near-human race and human interactions with them. The story forces the reader to reconsider long-held ideas of gender and gender roles, while also telling a bang-up story. Le Guin also has an extensive catalog of fantasy novels as well, such as The Wizard of Earthsea, but I think Left Hand noses it out for a place in the canon.

Nine Princes in Amber—Roger Zelazny (1970)
Zelazny was part of the New Wave, where experimentation in language and narrative were the vogue and interest in the soft sciences formed the background of his novels. Zelazny is often cited as an inspiration by more modern writers, both for his language and for his plots. But if you were to ask speculative fiction fans what their favorite Zelazny novel is, it would be something from his Amber series, a fantasy set in a parallel dimension. Zelazny does use some of the New Wave techniques in the books, but not nearly so much as he does in his science fiction. Nine Princes in Amber is the first of the Amber novels and terrific fun to read, so much so that the experiments Zelazny is performing generally go unremarked.

Ringworld—Larry Niven     (1970)
Ringworld is probably the best known "hard science" science fiction novel, where the author works out with formulaic rigidity the technology at the core of his writing. In this case, Niven has created a giant ribbon that surround a star, with the side facing the sun of the system terraformed and habitable. The story follows an ill-fated exploration of the eponymous Ringworld as they try to determine who created the artifact and then escape from it themselves.

Swords and Deviltry—Fritz Leiber (1970)
In opposition to the epic fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien is the tradition of sword and sorcery. Generally, the plotlines follow a rogue or group of rogues as they try to earn as much money as they can by taking up distasteful tasks that generally involve magicians. There is a little room for ethics and philosophy as sometimes the protagonists wonder why they do what they do, and there is often a great deal of humor, as the narratives are strongly character driven. Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are the most beloved rogues in speculative fiction, and their origins and first meeting are chronicled in Swords and Deviltry. Leiber had actually been writing Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories for decades, but their origins were not chronicled until 1970. Swords and Deviltry is the first in a series of books that collects their adventures.

To Your Scattered Bodies Go—Philip Jose Farmer (1971)
Farmer began writing ground-breaking science fiction novels in the 60s, taking on some characteristics of the New Wave—experimentation in story-telling and some vaguely psychedelic language. He also didn't seem to give a damn about taboo, seeing it as his responsibility to break through it. Ironically, his best known novel doesn't care so much about taboo as to start a tremendous adventure with enormous storytelling potential. To Your Scattered Bodies Go marks the first novel about Riverworld, a vast planet dominated by a single river that flows all over it like a labyrinth, and upon which every human being that ever lived on Earth has been reincarnated. Farmer jovially mixes up the nations and cultures of the resurrected, pairing up Samuel Clemens with Richard Burton (the explorer of the Nile rather than the actor) as our protagonists as they try to figure out the causes of the rebirth.

Rendezvous with Rama—Arthur C. Clarke (1973)
Clarke has written so many wonderful novels that I have gone back and forth many times about which one to pick for the list. This is symptomatic of Clarke's beloved status in the science fiction community, eventually acting as a spokesman to the mainstream audience when events right out of science fiction took place, such as Apollo 11's landing on the moon. His works are beloved in the community, both the hard science fiction ones and the ones where he moves into "softer" fare. Unfortunately his best-known work, "The Sentinel", the story on which 2001: A Space Odyssey is based, is a short story (to be honest, I'm not sure a lot of people read that story, preferring to see the movie). I've chosen one of his hard science fiction novels, Rendezvous with Rama, in which a giant artifact from another civilization wanders through our solar system. Of course humans launch an expedition to determine its nature, and the story of that journey is recorded in the novel. I also considered Childhood's End, The City and the Stars, and a collection of his short stories.

Gateway—Frederik Pohl (1977)
Pohl began publishing fiction in the 50s, but I'm not sure if much of his earlier work is read very often any longer. But everyone knows Gateway, the story of humans discovering another alien artifact and trying to reverse engineer it to advance our own technological capability. One group, trying to manage the spaceships they find in the artifact, ends up travelling through a black hole.

Lord Foul's Bane—Stephen R. Donaldson (1977)
Donaldson was sort the rock star of fantasy in the late 70s, at one point earning an article in People magazine. Lord Foul's Bane is the first of the Thomas Covenant series, worthy of critical appreciation for the new path he set fantasy upon. Taking the trapping of epic fantasy, in the mold of J. R. R. Tolkien, but giving it an utterly unlikable protagonist, Donaldson was able to play with the tropes and clichés of perhaps the most clichéd subgenre in speculative fiction, and make it exciting. If there is any issue with Thomas Covenant, it is that he is so miserably unlikable that sometimes reading his story is a slog. But everyone read at least the first book and much of what is happening today in fantasy owes its origin on the trail that Donaldson first blazed.

The Stand—Stephen King (1978)
King stands as something of a living god for the horror genre and is so popular that mainstream readers adore him and would simultaneously be appalled if they were told they were reading speculative fiction. The Stand may be one of the most read books in America, and this is also true of readers of speculative fiction. And everyone has an opinion about it, especially King's immense talent, except when it comes to writing conclusions to his novels.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—Douglas Adams (1979)
This first book in a four-part trilogy is one of the most beloved books in speculative fiction, I think in good part because it is a comedy, poking at human frailty with absurd and blatant allegory. Not many readers go beyond the first novel or even pick up other series by Adams, but everyone reads Hitchhiker, as it is often referred to.

Book of the New Sun—Gene Wolfe (1980)
This is the second series I had to use a single selection on, and is made up of four books: The Shadow of the Torturer, The Claw of the Conciliator, The Sword of the Lictor, and The Citadel of the Autarch. It is impossible to just read one book of this series, not only because of the narrative threads that carry on between the books but also because of Wolfe's brilliance. A lot of books in this list are one that muct be read because that is what is done, but everyone likes the Book of the New Sun, especially because it is a challenge. Wolfe is another writer who should receive more mainstream acclaim than he does.

Lord Valentine's Castle—Robert Silverberg (1980)
Another much beloved book that follows the newly crowned Coronal, head of the planetary government of the planet Majipoor. Majipoor has a strange philosophy for rule, in that it governs by dream control. There is some political maneuvering in Lord Valentine's Castle but mostly it serves as a wondrous introduction to the huge planet and its many alien races.

Pawn of Prophecy—David Eddings (1982)
Eddings started down the path of becoming a staple of fantasy with the publication of this novel, the first of five in a series named The Belgariad. In a lot of ways, Pawn of Prophecy just follows the tropes of epic fantasy first codified by Tolkien. But the real strength of this series of books lies in the characterization—each character is fully rounded and has many many dimensions. And while the plot is somewhat typical, it also serves as the basis for the characters to work in different combination, further broadening and actuating them, shining light into the quirks of their personalities. Unfortunately, after the first five books, Eddings appears to get lazy and basically recycles the plot for three other series. But that first series, and especially Pawn of Prophecy was eye-opening and engaging, delighting legions of readers.

The Anubis Gates—Tim Powers (1983)
People don't often read a lot of Tim powers, though he is critically appreciated. His novels are generally set on an Earth that is slightly different in some way, and the stories exploit those differences. The Anubis Gates imagines time travel to be a possibility, allowing scholars to travel into the past to see a lecture by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But something goes hideously wrong, and the time travelers discover a secret world in early nineteenth century London, and the ensuing battle is what opens the time gates that allow for time travel in the first place. The Anubis Gate is a rollicking adventure, gleefully mixing science fiction and fantasy and throwing in a taste of the American version of magical realism. If ever a novel cried out to be given the movie treatment, this is the one, and science fiction fans know it well.

Neuromancer—William Gibson (1984)
While there were elements of cyberpunk as far back as John Brunner, William Gibson set the world on fire with the first words in Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." In Gibson's hands, cyberpunk was a genre that dealt with the harsh economic realities of the Reagan years while exploiting the hot new technology, computers. The PC was relatively new and writers like Gibson saw its potential for change. It also didn't hurt that Gibson is capable of some dramatic turn of phrase. Everyone read Neuromancer and cyberpunk took off, predicting and influencing a number of the changes that make our life in the 2010s so different from what it was in the 1980s.

Ender's Game—Orson Scott Card (1985)
Card's book about young Ender Wiggins learning to become an officer in Earth's war against an alien insect-like race excites strong reactions among science fiction fans. It generally has a positive reception though there are some legitimate complaints about the subject matter. It also has a "gotcha" near its end, which pulled numerous readers in also. Love it or hate it, the generation of fans that were reading in the 80s read Ender's Game.

The Player of Games—Iain M. Banks (1988)
Essentially a national treasure in the UK, Banks's popularity causes readers to pick up at least one book to try out. That book is usually The Player of Games, perhaps the most acclaimed of his novels.

Tigana—Guy Gavriel Kay (1990)
Kay plays with the tropes of epic fantasy, evolving deeper and richer stories than the genre usually allows. Kay also bases each story in a setting that is an analog to a human culture and time period. Tigana is set in a country that is much like Italy between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One of Kay's most distinctive qualities is the subtlety of the magic in his stories—there are not evil warlords leading hordes of hideous orcs into battle. Instead magic is pervasive and thus more powerful, and Kay is very concerned with its effects on people. Tigana is a powerful story about rage and redemption, sacrifice and sorrow. Like Banks, Kay is extremely popular the world over, and Tigana is simply his best work.

A Fire Upon the Deep—Vernor Vinge (1992)
In some ways, A Fire Upon the Deep is nothing more than a giant space opera, a descendant of E. E. Smith's work. But Vinge is not content with galactic empires, and the novel is a delight of interaction with truly alien races and big ideas. Vinge is another well-beloved writer in science fiction cricles, and Fire is generally acclaimed to be his best work.

Red Mars—Kim Stanley Robinson (1992)
A novel of the colonization and terraforming of Mars, Red Mars is generally accepted as the best hard science fiction novel in the last few decades. Actually, it is the first book of a trilogy, and that series is widely appreciated, having won numerous awards. Robinson's descriptions are Verne-like in their capacity and detail, but Robinson is interested in not only how humans can affect Mars but also how Mars would affect its colonists.

Snow Crash—Neal Stephenson (1992)
This novel was the next step in cyberpunk, after the initial genre boundaries were established by Gibson and his contemporaries. It is a tour de force, a rollicking adventure with fascinating characters and loads of wit. If I taught creative writing, the first four chapters of this novel would be required reading in my class, introducing one of the great names in speculative fiction history, Hiro Protagonist, the Deliverator—or as we find out, a pizza delivery man for the mob. But the novel goes beyond irony to imagine a computer virus that infects users, the eponymous snow crash, interpolating and extrapolating the relationship between human and computer languages and imagining a time where they begin to intersect.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone—J. K. Rowling (1997)
This one is kind of a no-brainer. The Harry Potter phenomenon swept the world, including the speculative fiction community. While there has always been a young adult market for speculative fiction, Harry Potter brought a monstrous boom as everyone tried to get into the apparently newly opened market space. I have intentionally chosen the British version of the book, primarily because I have never read the American version (…Sorcerer's Stone), and because whenever possible, I like to read my books in their original language.

American Gods—Neil Gaiman (2000)
Neil Gaiman is the rock star of current speculative fiction. I've seen him at conventions twice and each time he walked on stage, you'd've thought it was the Beatles in Shea Stadium—legions of screaming women calling out his name. He is charming, witty, and urbane, and he even dresses the part of rock star, rarely seen without his black leather jacket. He's also an exciting voice in modern fantasy, interested in the crafting of new mythologies and their place in Western culture. American Gods is probably his most beloved book, becoming a touchstone for the current generation of readers of fantasy, but his young adult novels are surely not far behind in popularity. Coraline has already been made into a movie, and I understand the award-winning Graveyard Book is about to be as well. But for now, I'll stick with American Gods as Gaiman's contribution to this list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell—Susanna Clarke (2004)
Another exciting voice without as long as resume as Gaiman's, Clarke rocked the fantasy world with her first novel. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was a soaring success upon its release, inventing a history of magic and delivering it in Victorian style. It is a sweeping epic with delightful characters and twisty subplots, and fans simply had to read the novel to find out what the fuss was about. The work has influenced what's going on in the genre today, relying as it does on Victorian style and narrative and giving the current steampunk explosion a guiding star.

The Name of the Wind—Patrick Rothfuss (2007)
I'm taking a risk with this pick; it might be hubris to select a book that has been out for five years as one of the "Standards." It is something of a prediction on my part, but fantasy fans devoured Rothfuss's first novel and clamored for more. Rothfuss gave The Name of the Wind the explicit narrative structure of most epic fantasy and then set about with a scythe as he injected reality into the conventions. He was not the first to do this by any means, but he did it the best, so that his work has become a touchstone for current writers of fantasy on how to become subversive. Other authors I considered for this slot, for much the same reason, were Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch.

There you have it, my speculative fiction canon. Who did I leave out? Let me know in the comments section.

A Question of Style

Last January, I wrote about the qualities of literariness and goodness, both in terms of books and television (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2010/01/some-have-greatness-thrust-upon-them.html). It's something of a ramble, but I eventually end up with perhaps one distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction, that of denseness of narrative. I also stated out loud (wrote out loud?) my firmly held belief that the idea of literary fiction is made up, a marketing ploy to entice readers to read things they might not otherwise be interested in and perhaps also to mollify authors who don't wish to be pigeonholed. However, having written this, I am still vexed by the question…or perhaps I'm more vexed by the rigidity with which such an artificial distinction is imposed.

A good friend and regular reader recently pinged me with his own question along similar lines. Determined to better learn the storytelling craft, he had picked up what has long been regarded as a classic literary novel but was feeling less than satisfied in its greatness: "why is this considered a classic?" he asked me. I was momentarily stymied because I had to admit that I hadn't read the novel so couldn't speak to its merits, but he filled the pause with his own idea: "The story seems pretty straightforward, so maybe it has to do with the style?" And I immediately thought of my old straw man, Mad Men, a critically acclaimed and award-winning TV show that seems to me to be pretty mundane when it comes to the story but all about style.

There's a danger here, though, in talking about style as if it is the same for all works in a genre; style is patently not static. So it's difficult to pin down attributes of the classics or current literary fiction that characterize those genres, though there do seem to be some common elements—robust language and meaning-packed sentences (whether they are short or long). But if you read any genre fiction, you know there are works that have these elements as well, which is one of the reasons I have long held that the distinction between literary fiction and genre is totally artificial. But my friend's other distinction is important as well, that the classic he was reading wasn't a great story in his mind whereas most of the genre fiction he has read has great plots, as if the emphasis was on storytelling. And I think we need to make a distinction here regarding quantity and quality of plot—in the blog entry I cite above, I talked about the complex plots of a lot of literary fiction, that is, the interweaving of a number of plots. As a reader, I sometimes find that entertaining, but that speaks nothing about how interesting those individual storylines are. What is often more compelling is fewer but more engrossing plotlines in a story, and very often genre fiction is single-minded in its plotting.

To be fair, I don't want to swing over too far the other way by generally declaiming literary fiction as not being interested in storytelling, because there are many examples that prove otherwise. But is there more emphasis on style than on plot? That's an interesting question, one that would probably require a lot more reading and a lot more space than I have here to work out. But let's assume for a bit that it is generally true.

One of the things I noted in the earlier blog entry was the feeling that I am supposed to think that something is good as I am reading/watching it. I still find this a difficult concept to pin down but I do think it has to derive from the style. It's easy to see when a plotline deals with portentous issues and have that fact register on the conscious checklist we keep as we read or view things. But style is supposed to be more subtle, working nearly subconsciously, so that the construction and choice of words move you to feel one thing or another. And perhaps because I enjoy paying close attention to such influence, I am better able to perceive that effect taking place and so somewhat feel the piece telling me that it is employing its style. And having associated effective use of style with good writing, I "feel" the piece telling me that it is "good." I'd be interested to know if anyone else has ever felt this effect.

So why don't I feel this effect when I'm reading/watching good genre fiction? Again, plot is not as subtle as style, so it's easy to see the good stuff—an obvious good quality will obscure a subtle good quality and even conceal a subtle mediocre one. Or, to say it less obtusely, a ripping good story carries me away so I don't pay close attention to style issues. And when the plot isn't so good, I do see the style working itself out and appreciate it.

But all this makes me just circle around to my opinion that the genre-ness of a work shouldn't make any difference to perceptions of its quality. I was rereading a blog entry from Steven Grant from a few years ago, and I found this to be particularly strong:

Genre is milieu. That's it. There isn't one genre that's not wide open with possibilities or places any inherent restrictions on literary quality, except where they attract adherents who aren't interested in such things and enforce a self-censorship based on tradition and fannish fixation. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22513)

In other words, good writing including good style can appear in any genre. A little earlier he says

Whatever the genre, the associated trappings, not the ideas or execution, become the genre, though most book editors insist on at least a minimal level of literary competence…. This is the exact opposite of literary fiction, where idea and execution are both paramount….

Genre is the setting. I could quibble with that, but I think it's true enough that the quibbles themselves are based on the setting as well. And if literary fiction is, purportedly, genreless, then it can only rely on execution. But here's the truth that sticks in the craw of proponents of literary fiction—it can't be genreless (no fiction can be) and so sometimes end up using settings that move it into a genre. And there's another movement taking place that also disrupts the argument that those proponents try to make: the authors themselves openly talk about their indebtedness to genre.

So I've resolved this whole issue to my satisfaction, and like most epiphanies, it seems so obvious. But at the same time there are heretics who will not be convinced, as always. And for those, I feel a little sad since it's likely that the value of what they enjoy is more wrapped up in its perception than any of its inherent qualities.

Dadgum Nebula Awards

The Science Fiction Writers of America have announced their nominations for the 2010 Nebula Awards (http://www.sfwa.org/2011/02/2010-nebula-nominees/). I haven't read a single one of the nominated novels, a rarity for me. Like I needed a reminder of how much reading I am not getting done.

Fantasy and Nihilism

It was news to me. Apparently my reading tastes are leading to the downfall of Western civilization. My teachers must be so proud.

On 14 February, a blogger on the ultra-conservative Web site Breitbart wrote about how modern fantasy is destroying the obvious pattern of easily recognized good and evil in the "good old stuff," especially Tolkien and Howard (http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/02/12/the-bankrupt-nihilism-of-our-fallen-fantasists/). In a nutshell, and in high-falutin' language as well, blogger Leo Grin says

But it was only recently, after decades of ever-increasing reading disappointment, that I grudgingly began to admit the truth: I don't particularly care for fantasy per se. What I actually cherish is something far more rare: the elevated prose poetry, mythopoeic subcreation, and thematic richness that only the best fantasy achieves, and that echoes in important particulars the myths and fables of old.

This realization eliminates, at a stroke, virtually everything written under the banner of fantasy today.

It seems Grin is well-read, based on his examples of fantasy "soiling the building blocks and well-known tropes of our treasured modern myths" but there are a couple of ways to argue with his vision that offer a more expansive and perhaps even mature view of how literature, and perhaps the world at large, actually works.

The first is to point out that perhaps he isn't as well read as he thinks he is, or perhaps not as close a reader as he would like. You see, I (and a lot of other people as it turns out) have a real issue with setting up Tolkien and Howard's works as stereotypes of a heroic form. Taken as a whole, Tolkien's works are about the fallen nature of the world, how everything seems to be getting progressively worse and worse since the golden age when gods walked the earth. In fact, this downward progression of civilization is a common point amongst most of the major Western mythologies, from Greek to Norse, and including Christianity—where man has been booted from the garden of paradise itself. Tolkien probably recognized this pattern as he appropriated it for his own use through his works. Remember, the end of The Lord of the Rings is not a triumphant celebration of the heroes' return, but a sad departure as those heroes leave Middle Earth for the Grey Havens, as there is no longer a place for them in the world of men.

Similarly, I think Howard would be appalled at the idea of using Conan as a role model. If anything, Conan typifies the attitude of doing whatever it takes to get by. He tries to spill as little innocent blood as he can, with varying degrees of success. He despises civilization, not for the advances it makes, but for the effect those advances have on individuals, that of often removing individuality and making them reject the moral values of independence for indolence and sloth.

The dichotomy of these two paragraphs also represents a dichotomy in the very nature of these kinds of works. I would argue that Tolkien represents heroic/epic fantasy while Howard represents sword and sorcery (for an excellent description of the differences and a history of sword and sorcery, I recommend again the introduction to Swords and Dark Magic, edited by Lou Anders and Jonathan Strahan). The very goals of these two schools of fantasy are different, and to lump them together as though they are the same thing is a mistake. To be sure, they have the same roots, but their lineage and intent are far different. I would argue that sword and sorcery has always been about the individuals and the gray areas that they inhabit. In fact, the works of the three Big Names that Anders and Strahan cite as the seminal authors of sword and sorcery, Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock, are rife with moral ambiguity and gray areas. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are rogues and mercenaries, available to whomever will pay them the most money. Even their companionship is sometimes endangered by their taking different offers and finding themselves at odds with one another. The moral ambiguity of Moorcock's works I leave as an exercise for the reader, since it doesn't take much effort to refute the idea of Elric as moral icon.

So Grin holds up these two archetypes as examples of the golden nature of fantasy, and yet both Tolkien and Howard do not really contain the qualities that Grin pines for.

A second refutation would be to take a step sideways and talk about "taste." I find it odd that Grin (or anyone for that matter) clings to the idea that their decisions about what qualifies as good and bad writing are to be held out as the sole arbiter for that kind of decision. To be sure, it makes my position as an amateur literary and film critic difficult; here I am talking to people who read my blog about how I interpret the things that I read or watch. But I am always cognizant that it is my opinion, and that other folks may hold different opinions. I feel my job as a critic is to describe my perception of a work to such a point that a reader can use it as a touchstone upon which to build their own opinion. And sure, I can read Grin's blog as just his opinion, but there is a qualitative difference between discussing the relative merits of a work and saying that an entire genre is leading to the downfall of our culture:

In the end, it's just another small, pathetic chapter in the decades-long slide of Western civilization into suicidal self-loathing. It's a well-worn road: bored middle-class creatives (almost all of them college-educated liberals) living lives devoid of any greater purpose inevitably reach out for anything deemed sacred by the conservatives populating any artistic field. They co-opt the language, the plots, the characters, the cliches, the marketing, and proceed to deconstruct it all like a mad doctor performing an autopsy. Then, using cynicism, profanity, scatology, dark humor, and nihilism, they put it back together into a Frankenstein's monster designed to shock, outrage, offend, and dishearten.

One of the goals of my own writing is to open the door to conversation, for people to react to what I am saying and challenge me or expand on my thoughts, to help me better understand and appreciate the things that I am writing about. Grin's writing, on the other hand, seems intent on closing down conversation. It's hard not to read his long treatise without envisioning a petulant child, bottom lip poking out, muttering "it all sucks." And to that child, I would say—maybe, but perhaps it is just different than what you like.

So, here's the ironic thing about all this. On the same day that Grin published his diatribe, I posted my review of Steven Erikson's Dust of Dreams. And in his diatribe, Grin specifically calls out Dust of Dreams as an example of the fallen nature of modern fantasy, while I celebrate it for its power and effectiveness. It's interesting to note that Grin's opinion of Dust of Dreams seems to come only from his browsing through the Amazon reviews of the book, as his negative statements are quotes from them, without any opinion of his own added in other than a sort of "see, that's what I'm talking about." And it may come as no surprise that Grin cherry picks the reviews to find ones that reflect his opinion, leaving out ones with opinions to the contrary.

As you also can imagine, the response has been pretty harsh. I particularly enjoyed Joe Abercrombie's idea of a bunker from which civilization-ending fantasy writers irregularly expel their noxious books (http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2011/02/15/bankrupt-nihilism/). It's very odd to find people yearning for a return to a golden age that, upon closer examination, never really existed. But I'm also fairly sure that kind of fantasy writing is available to someone who really seeks it out. As for me, I grew tired of the same clichés and tropes. I appreciate the "new" direction fantasists have taken, in part because I see that direction as growing the genre, expanding it beyond the elements that have caused it to be condemned as unworthy of critical merit. And the funny thing is that there's room for folks like Grin and for people like me, all of whom appreciate what the genre has to offer to us, though perhaps different aspects of it. But I somehow doubt that Grin has any appreciation for the fallen readers like me.

Forget my teachers…my mom would be so proud. From the day she "caught" me taking some fantasy novels with Frazetta covers on them to church to exchange with a friend, she's been pretty convinced I'm contributing to the downfall of something or other. And now it's been confirmed.

How do you know you're a book geek? (part the second)

—when the author you are reading leaves autobiographical details in his works, you spend time on Google searching for and eventually finding a picture of him and his wife. And then you try to figure out just how autobiographical the details in his writing actually are.

—when you discover that a book you ordered on Amazon and that got delayed for unstated reasons years ago is really about to come out in less than a month. And then you get a little pissed that you'd've been better off not knowing it was coming out because now you have to WAIT.

And the first volume of the Pogo Archive is finally scheduled too! The first volume has an intro by Jimmy Breslin, but I'm praying future volumes will have some words from the likes of Jeff Smith, Berkeley Breathed, and Bill Watterson. (But perhaps this points more to comics geekdom than book geekdom.)

How do you know you're a book geek?

When you preorder two copies of a book six months before its release--one for you and one for a friend who doesn't have the advantage of free shipping. Maybe not a book geek, but at least a geek for at least one particular author. 25 March cannot arrive soon enough, Mr. Brust!

Of course, I've been geeking about Fritz Leiber for the past few weeks, diving more and more deeply into his works and just appreciating the heck out of them...to the point of finding that he has put autobiographical information in his short stories and novellae. I've been using Google Street View and Google Earth to see not only the places he writes about, but the building where he lived. If I ever make it to San Francisco, I may be spending a night at the Hotel Union at 811 Geary Street, room 607. Even if it is haunted. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "especially if it is haunted." I'm talking to you Spirit of Fritz Leiber.

Nope, nothing to see here. No geeks anywhere in sight.

Some random thoughts

At my mainstream job where I have achieved some sort of notoriety as an expert on comics when the company did a small blurb about my interests, I was approached a number of times about the merger of Disney and Marvel. The merger was all over the airwaves and friendly people wanted to know my take on it ("not a very big deal at the moment, but let's see what happens in two or three years if Marvel isn't making as much money as Disney imagined"). I have to say I am not looking forward to the potential appearance of Marvel characters at sporting events that ESPN is covering, or Michael Wilbon going up against Dazzler on Pardon the Interruption. But other than that kind of cross-pollination, I don't expect any big changes.

However, no one is asking anything me about the far more important change at DC, with Warner Brothers exerting control and changing DC Comics to DC Entertainment. This one seems a lot more troublesome to me, especially since it appears (important word choice there) to be a reaction to the Disney/Marvel merger. DC has long been the second-place comic company and some would argue way behind Marvel in the development of their properties for media. Such an argument would have to be based on quantity of movies, because frankly DC has long kicked Marvel's butt in the development of TV shows (Smallville or the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series, anyone?) and in the quality of their movies recently. But since Marvel has announced a schedule for the next two or three years, the perception is that Marvel is leading the race to make a movie buck. And I suppose they are, since four decent movies will generally outdraw just one great one. And of course, creating great movies is not an easily reproducible task.

I doubt that the change is a reaction to Disney/Marvel, since I would think it would take more than a couple of weeks to make such a change—I suspect this has been in talks for some time. Nonetheless, it has already had some serious repercussion with the resignation of Paul Levitz, a guiding hand at DC for some decades. While Levitz will return to writing, whether for good or ill remains to be seen, it is his role as publisher and final decision-maker that is going to be missed. Unlike the Disney/Marvel merger, where Disney was quick to say that nothing will change with the comics, no one is saying similar things about DC and Warner Brothers; in fact, such a move seems designed to force change since DC has been owned by Warner Brothers for years and there was no organizational shake-up.

I've read some interesting analyses of Levitz's tenure as publisher. Most of the industry has only great things to say about him (see, for example, http://busiek.com/site/2009/09/paul_levitz.php), but the fans seem somehow really angry at him. They blame a lot of interesting decisions about censorship on him without taking into account how important he has been on the larger movements of the comics industry. I think that such a view of his work neglects that comics may have no bigger fan than Paul Levitz, and every decision he made has come from the primal love. They may not have been the right decisions but they were grounded in the joy of going to the store on Wednesday and finding out what was new this week.

And if the result is non-comics people injecting themselves into decisions with an immediate goal of boosting the bottom line, I fear a lot of the creative energy at DC will get misplaced. DC has been very good of late giving comics a good run to find their audience, and with some success. I wonder how short the leash will be for new series. And I worry that more effort will be spent in aligning the comics with the other media representations, something that has already happened at DC, with an upcoming origin series for Superman being his third or fourth in a few years. Having a different viewpoint is not a bad thing and, of course, the long-term health of DC Comics has got to be more important than the career paths of my favorite characters. But it all just feels sort of ominous; perhaps I'm not worried about Disney and Marvel because I really don't read their comics and only am concerned with Marvel's health as it is necessary for DC's continued survival. But when someone starts messing with DC, my hackles may be up and I'm not even aware of it.

We certainly do live in interesting times.

*****

Alex Bledsoe has written a nice opinion piece about the latest Star Trek movie. I've already made my feelings known about it, and Bledsoe has put another nail in the coffin for me, adding to my concern about the movie missing out on what distinguishes Star Trek from random space opera. Check it out at http://downinluckytown.blogspot.com/2009/09/core-problem-with-jj-abrams-star-trek.html. It's a really good point and one that I overlooked in my general unease about what the franchise is trying to become.

Interestingly, Mrs. Speculator was lately talking about the same thing in recent fantasy reading we've been doing. The whole "chosen one" meme seems ripped from mainstream high fantasy, and I've been more and more getting into fantasy that breaks away from the clichés. Mrs. Speculator has bravely gone along on the ride (I imagine she would say she had very little choice in the matter) and so we have read Mieville and Lynch and Rothfuss and Mr. Bledsoe himself. When you go back to the clichés after being in the company of such freethinking folks, it can feel a little ham-handed, and she noticed. Sadly, now that she is about to go back to school, I don't see how she is going to have time to read Abercrombie and Gilman.

*****

A woman's college in the city I have spent my life in just changed their mascot from Angels to Avenging Angels. That strikes me as a little odd, since I would not expect young Methodist women to have much to avenge. It also seems to speak to not having a history of success in athletics, thus requiring the school to spend a great deal of time avenging historic ignominious defeat.

And to show what a geek I really am, I'm reminded of a train of thought I've long held, originating with my firmly held belief that DC comics are superior to Marvel. In 1963, Iron Man, Ant-Man, The Wasp, Hulk, and Thor came together to fight Thor's nemesis, Loki, and then stuck together because they felt they worked well as a team. They named themselves the Avengers, and they worked so well together that after the second issue Hulk was gone. But to my point—the event that brought them together. Loki was just being villainous; he didn't attack Thor or any of his friends, nor any of the others or their friends. Loki causes Hulk to rip up a railroad track. So what exactly is it that the Avengers are avenging? And wouldn't you think after more than 45 years, they would have achieved vengeance?

Note that DC's primary hero team seeks only justice, not vengeance….

Book list

I haven't posted in the new year yet. I'm mired in a book that I am only slowly poking my way through, but I am determined to finish it before moving on. I have this horrible completist streak in me, and it is so hard to shake these kinds of things off. And since it is the second half of a two-volume novel, I have already invested some time and effort into the effort.

At the same time, I have carefully avoided the movie theatres, true to my self-pledge not to go see the remakes and revisions I noted late last year.

I considered another reasoned diatribe about what's going on at DC, but that's getting old. I find it fascinating that my pull list is growing shorter and shorter through no effort of my own.

So, I found this in my daily perusal of SF blogs; a list of the 149 science fiction and fantasy novels that "everyone must read" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-novels-fiction-fantasy-introduction, by way of SF Signal). It's a fascinating list; some novels I would not have considered science fiction or fantasy, some novels acting as prototypes for what speculative fiction will become, some novels I didn't even know existed…some novels not even novels. And it being from the UK, there feels like a decidedly English tilt to the list. I highly recommend going to the link and reading through the list, since the post actually talks about the novels and why they were included. It is of course, all opinion.

Desperate to put something in my blog before the first month of 2009 gets by, I've reprinted the list (not the discussion) here, bolding the books I've read. It's an experiment of sorts….

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958)

Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951)

Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000)

Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale (1985)

Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987)

J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (1962)

J.G. Ballard: Crash (1973)

J.G. Ballard: Millennium People (2003)

Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984)

Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987)

Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987)

Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007)

Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995)

Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999)

William Beckford: Vathek (1786)

Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956)

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992)

Charles Brockden Brown: Wieland (1798)

Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960)

Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966)

Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871)

Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960)

Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982)

Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912)

William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959)

Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979)

Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872)

Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957)

Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988)

Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871)

Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984)

Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eve (1977)

Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000)

Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953)

GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908)

Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004)

Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975)

Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000)

Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996)

Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967)

Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

Thomas M Disch: Camp Concentration (1968)

Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988)

Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000)

John Fowles: The Magus (1966)

Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)

Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973)

William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915)

William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954)

Joe Haldeman: The Forever War (1974)

M John Harrison: Light (2002)

Nathaniel Hawthorne: The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

Robert A Heinlein: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961)

Frank Herbert: Dune (1965)

Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker (1980)

James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824)

Michel Houellebecq: Atomised (1998)

Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (1932)

Kazuo Ishiguro: The Unconsoled (1995)

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House (1959)

Henry James: The Turn of the Screw (1898)

PD James: The Children of Men (1992)

Richard Jefferies: After London; Or, Wild England (1885)

Gwyneth Jones: Bold as Love (2001)

Franz Kafka: The Trial (1925)

Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Stephen King: The Shining (1977)

Marghanita Laski: The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953)

CS Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56) (Book 1 at least)

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: Uncle Silas (1864)

Stanislaw Lem: Solaris (1961)

Ursula K Le Guin: The Earthsea series (1968-1990)

Ursula K Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

Doris Lessing: Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)

MG Lewis: The Monk (1796)

David Lindsay: A Voyage to Arcturus (1920)

Ken MacLeod: The Night Sessions (2008)

Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black (2005)

Michael Marshall Smith: Only Forward (1994)

Richard Matheson: I Am Legend (1954)

Charles Maturin: Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)

Patrick McCabe: The Butcher Boy (1992)

Cormac McCarthy: The Road (2006)

Jed Mercurio: Ascent (2007)

China Miéville: The Scar (2002)

Andrew Miller: Ingenious Pain (1997)

Walter M Miller Jr: A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960)

David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas (2004)

Michael Moorcock: Mother London (1988)

William Morris: News From Nowhere (1890)

Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987)

Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1995)

Vladimir Nabokov: Ada or Ardor (1969)

Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife (2003)

Larry Niven: Ringworld (1970)

Jeff Noon: Vurt (1993)

Flann O'Brien: The Third Policeman (1967)

Ben Okri: The Famished Road (1991)

George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)

Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (1996)

Thomas Love Peacock: Nightmare Abbey (1818)

Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946)

Frederik Pohl & CM Kornbluth: The Space Merchants (1953)

John Cowper Powys: A Glastonbury Romance (1932)

Terry Pratchett: The Discworld series (1983- ) (A few of them)

Christopher Priest: The Prestige (1995)

Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials (1995-2000)

François Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532-34)

Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (2000)

Kim Stanley Robinson: The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)

JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

Geoff Ryman: Air (2005)

Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses (1988)

Joanna Russ: The Female Man (1975)

Antoine de Sainte-Exupéry: The Little Prince (1943)

José Saramago: Blindness (1995)

Will Self: How the Dead Live (2000)

Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (1818)

Dan Simmons: Hyperion (1989)

Olaf Stapledon: Star Maker (1937)

Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash (1992)

Robert Louis Stevenson: The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Bram Stoker: Dracula (1897)

Rupert Thomson: The Insult (1996)

JRR Tolkien: The Hobbit (1937)

JRR Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings (1954-55)

Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1889)

Kurt Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan (1959)

Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto (1764)

Robert Walser: Institute Benjamenta (1909)

Sylvia Townsend Warner: Lolly Willowes (1926)

Sarah Waters: Affinity (1999)

HG Wells: The Time Machine (1895)

HG Wells: The War of the Worlds (1898)

TH White: The Sword in the Stone (1938)

Angus Wilson: The Old Men at the Zoo (1961)

Gene Wolfe: The Book of the New Sun (1980-83)

Virginia Woolf: Orlando (1928)

John Wyndham: Day of the Triffids (1951)

John Wyndham: The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)

Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (1924)

59 out of 149. Looks like my reading list just got a lot bigger.