Be Prepared: A Brief Personal Review of Vera Brosgol's Russian Scouts in Exile Graphic Novel

 In her semi-biographical graphic novel Be Prepared, Vera Brosgol epitomizes many of the experiences of going to summer camp for the first time. The manipulations of younger Scouts by specific older Scouts, the cruel mockery of teens, and the heightened drama of young hormones all ring true, as does the hoarding of candy. Someday the tale of the Boar of Pioneer Campsite will be told! The integration of boys and girls was not familiar from Boy Scout camp (until recently), but was indeed familiar from Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) and various programs put on by the Episcopal Diocese of California (BREAD - "Boy-Related Education After Dark!) The CYO experience seems most relevant in the context of not quite fitting. Vera's protagonist Vera thinks that attending Russian Scout camp will allow her to find a place where she fits in, but she is not Russian enough there just as she is too Russian in New York with her (perceived as?) rich friends and their fancy dolls and summer camps. The organization itself seems a bit out of place, a piece of Russia in America, exemplified by the Russian and American flags flying side by side. Many Scouts have been all the roles in the book: the lost new kid, the best friend, the best friend betrayed and bitter, the unexpected friend, the cool counselor, the manipulator and the manipulated. Growing up is hard. Be Prepared is terrific.

Foundation's (Middle) Finger

      The trailer for the adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation is now released, and has sparked the predictable outrage of the few, the loud, the keyboard warriors. One of the objections is the change in race and sex of Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin. No one denies that Asimov’s world is a sausage fest, not even the author himself, who admitted that his science fiction lacked women because he didn’t know how to write them. Susan Calvin, as much as I love her, has the personality of “emotionally lonely nerd” rather than “real woman.” Arkady Darrell is a plucky Heinleinian teenager. Dors Venari, whom I am sure will appear, was based on Asimov’s wife, but she appeared in the prequels published at the end of Asimov’s life rather than in his early days.

     What I find more interesting about the online uproar was the concern over race. The depiction of race was a valid concern then just as it is now, but the depiction of race within Asimov, or rather the lack thereof, requires contexualition. Asimov’s editor was John W. Campbell, a former writer and formidable editor, who was a racist. He apparently did not care that Asimov was Jewish (and who would with Asimov’s sales figures?), but he did insist that aliens could never beat humans and that heroic space adventures must be blonde and blue-eyed. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s episode “Far Beyond the Stars” portrayed this attitude with excellence. Much like the comic book market, there were few options for writers of science fiction, so Asimov decided that he would omit that part of physical description altogether. The culturally imposed racial divisions of the far-flung future would not be the same anyway. Heinlein experienced this also and hid hints of race and sexuality within his books.

      Changing Salvor Hardin to a woman, especially one of color, is a big middle finger to John W Campbell’s racist editorial decrees. Canonical Hardin is the very model of a backroom politician, not traits normally associated with “feminine” characters, but perhaps this attitude leads to television Hardin feeling more at home on Terminus than in the center of the Galaxy. This “tough gal” attitude worked for Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica reboot! Hardin’s presence on Trantor is probably a concession to a compressed time scale for at least the first two seasons and the reality of actors. A more radical interpretation of Hardin would be that Hardin is transgender: he presents as female, but he identifies as male. Given how rigid Imperial Galactic society is, that would both provide him with outsider status similar to the rest of Seldon’s merry band of misfits, but still permit him to be or become the cynical and manipulative character necessary to the survival of Terminus. Or perhaps the reveal of the true goal of the Encyclopedia Foundation will be the turning point for Hardin’s character. Adaptation opens up possibilities, not all of them negative.

Formula IN SPACE!

        The first few chapters of Andrew Moriarty's Trans-Galactic Insurance: Adventures of Jump Space Accountant resembles nothing so much as the first three issues or episodes of a mini-series which one would drop and later, after the series was complete, revisit now that one understood the importance of the interminable exposition to a serviceable but hardly exciting mystery. The initial reference to Belters suggested a story that was Solar rather than Galactic. The characters were sufficiently fleshed out to serve the plot but scarcely more than that, as is common espionage plots. The implication of a plucky girl who aids the protagonist also being a minor in modern Western sensibilities, and therefore a nod to Heinleinian heroine, was well executed by a single line. The portrayal of the ideal spy as too boring to cause casual notice was a relief from the flashy action heroes of so much science fiction.

               The greatest blemish in the plot-driven world-building is the use of the term ‘credit’ as a basic fiat unit of currency in a book starring an accountant investigating fraud! I realize that credit is a generic science-fictional unit of currency, but one would think that a story about financial fraud would be more aware of the specific financial meaning of credit and debit in balancing accounts. It is not that Moriarty should have chosen some exotic name for the currency, such as ‘quatloos'; but he should have used something other than ‘credits’ when the fictional economy uses a double-entry system. This must be the way that physicists and engineers feel about gross ‘errors’ in other science fiction novels. If you are looking for a series that begins with a space-based human civilization cut off from its parent, you should go read John Scalzi’s latest series, The Interdependency Trilogy, instead.