Transformation with Dot and Tot: More Than Meets The Eye

             At first glance L. Frank Baum’s Dot and Tot of Merryland is the equivalent of that episode in a rewatch of a series that is rewatched for the sake of completeness but otherwise is reserved no spot in conscious memory. It is that bottle episode which justifies the argument for a shorter season – not quite organized enough to offset its blandness, nor whimsical enough to offset its lack of organization, nor clever enough to breathe life into its half-hearted mystery. It is a fifth magnitude star in the sky wherein shines the brilliant constellation of the Famous Fourteen. Nonetheless, Dot and Tot of Merryland contains structural features worth examining, if only as comparanda. Dot and Tot of Merryland is the work that follows the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, although its realm would not be incorporated into the Continent of Imagination for many years. Dot’s real name is not Dorothy, but she is a Little Princess, even before her adventure. Tot’s name is not Tot, but the resemblance of the name of the lead and her mascot to Dorothy and Toto is hardly accidental. Dot is the leader, in both age and social standing; her mother has perished from some delicacy in her nature, and her father has left her in the care of a governess in the Secret Garden of his estate, while Tot’s father is the head gardener, much like the Gaffer at Bag End. It is water rather than air that bears the duo to the land of adventure, the Merryland of the title, a method which Dorothy would not use until Ozma of Oz. The entrance to adventure is narrow and almost prohibitive to adults who are children at heart, a natural category of humanity in Baum’s perception.

            There is a guardian, human despite his designation as the Watch-Dog of Merryland, but he is a Baumian guardian, comic and ineffective. He is bought off by a sweet cake, suggesting Cerberus and a descent into Hell, which completely fails to deliver. Yet, as will be revealed, the presence of a Watch-Dog in a location before the Seven Valleys is a potential misdirect, encouraging the reader (or read-to, depending on age) to remember a more Classical or Medieval katabasis than Baum’s actual intent. After an exchange between Dot and the Watch-Dog which is the typical watered-down logic of which Caroll’s Wonderland is the adult version, the duo sail into the First Valley.

            The First Valley is the Valley of Clowns, and it may be well to remember that Dot and Tot’s adventures, such as they are, take place in that sweet intermediate period between the apotropaic clowns of archaic religion and the demonic clowns of contemporary horror. The Seven Valleys of Merryland are isolated and infrequently visited, even by their own Queen. There is more contact between some of the Valleys and our world than between the Valleys themselves. Dot and Tot’s inability to steer their boat effectively renders this journey more of a fairground ride than the deliberate travel of their silver-shod predecessor. Flippityflop, the Prince of Clowns, but not the Clown Prince, welcomes the children and tells them that Clowns are indigenous – and endemic – to this Valley. The most skilled Clowns are set upon the peak of the mountain that separates this Valley of Merryland and the mundane world. From there they tumble into the world. Descent from the mountain is a favorite method of travel in Baum’s works, although this may be the only instance of a non-evil character using it; the Cast-Iron Man of The Monarch of Mo and the Roly-Rogues of Queen Zixi of Ix are not friends to the protagonists of their tales. Once a Clown is in our world, he seeks a circus, the telos of a true Clown. For there are false Clowns in this fallen world, who can be identified because they do not make children laugh. The idea of Clowns as an ethnicity could be seen as an othering tactic, and maybe even a mockery of indigenous peoples, but it could also provide positive messages. The first of these messages is that a true Clown is true to his nature, as all people should be; this message is consonant with Baum’s valorization of Dorothy and condemnation (however slight) of the Wizard. The second message, which is more mature than the first but not nearly as dark as othering, is a warning to children that people – and Clowns – are not always who they say they are, but the results of their actions will reveal their true nature. In the Valley of the Clowns, Dot and Tot encounter no women, despite Flippityflop’s mention of his father and grandfather before him. In addition to displaying Baum’s preference for Princes to Kings, even when they are King or Queens in truth, the lack of women references the traditionally male-only profession of clowning. Fortunately for the true Clowns, Merryland has a mechanism in the Third Valley whereby new Clowns might be born.

            The Second Valley is the Valley of Bonbons. The inhabitants of this Valley, unlike those of the Beautiful Valley of Mo, are entirely made of candy, as is their environment. Even before the mandatory color palette of the Quadrants of Oz, the theme of each land is overwriting its original complexity. The Candy Man, the leader of the Valley and considerably less menacing than Tony Todd, welcomes the children. Candy People, unlike Clowns, have both sexes as well as children, and as a society closer to that of the familiar world, the Candy People have black servants, licorice dolls who take care of the children of other colors; no prize will be given for guessing what the licorice children are called. The primary difference between Candy society and our world is the lack of non-candy-based sustenance, which Dot recognizes as a potential problem for permanent residency, but Tot is too hungry to care. The Candy People have no teeth and therefore have no cavities. Tot’s consumption of several fingers belonging to their host does not result in arrest, as might be anticipated, because replacement parts are easy to find. They grow in the marshmallow fields, where the licorice folk collect them for the Candy families. With that distasteful acknowledgement done, this dismemberment and replacement is yet another theme found both in The Magical Monarch of Mo and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Candy People do not die of old age, but they do eventually break into pieces that cannot be repaired. This is reminiscent of the China Country in the south of Oz, although the Merryland method of disposal is not recommended for divided china. The good and beautiful people of the Valley of Bonbons honor their deceased not with broken hearts but respectful edification in an act of what might be called “candy-balism.” Our protagonist and her charge, as visitors from what Baum called “civilized” lands, are horrified, but the Candy Man points out that there is no other sustenance in the Valley and that it is an honor among his people. The child-like logic wins over the children. Whether Baum intends this cannibalism to serve as an indictment of barbarous habits or a plea for tolerance of differences greater than that of the class distinction between the families of Dot and Tot is difficult to determine. Perhaps this consumption of the dead is a reference to Theosophist interest in Tibetan burial customs. The children’s horror at this custom is particularly hypocritical given the near-universal habit of biting off the heads of gingerbread men, leaving each as a body for a John Dough mystery. At least the inhabitants of the Valley of Bonbons do not send forth their own to be eaten – the licorice laborers in the fields of white are in poor taste already! The children must move on, Dot because she recognizes that they need actual food, and Tot because his hunger is a clear and present danger to the local population.

            Unfortunately for Tot, the Third Valley is the Valley of Babies, and babies are not food, as we learn in Ozma of Oz. The babies in question are human babies, although some of the boys might be Clowns and resolve the absence of women in that coulrophilic land. The “adults” in the Third Valley are Storks, all female and all white, but servants nonetheless to the eponymous babies. The Storks collect the baby blossoms that fall in storms from the sky and no doubt disqualify Storks with allergies. This focus on the babies rather than the Storks is understandable from the perspective of two small children, but it also reveals a gender divide between men and women – the all-male Clowns who qualify leave their Valley, but the Storks send forth others. The tone of Dot and Tot’s journey is becoming slightly darker, since the Storks are always exporting babies to forestall some sort of infantile apocalypse should there be no more room in the Valley. Is Baum, a pioneer of modern media and franchising, also a predecessor of the sordid tale of the commercialization of Cabbage Patch Kids? Are the Storks some sort of nursery rhyme Amazons? At least Dot and Tot finally receive some nourishment from the milk fountains in the Valley.

            The Fourth Valley is the Valley of the Dolls, where Dot and Tot are arrested by the wooden soldier despite his gun lacking ammunition; for the Queen of Merryland is not fond of strangers. That she has never met a non-resident of Merryland indicates that this stance is one of ignorance rather than experience. Her instructions to keep out foreigners are comical and ineffective, as the inaction of the Watch-Dog of Merryland attests, as well as her Baumian fairytale army. The wall of the city is reminiscent of China Country, and the average age of the fairyland juvenile arrest record is dropping precipitously. When Dot and Tot are brought before the Queen of Merryland, she is almost as tall as Dot. This detail is more important meta-textually than one might expect, because Dot and Tot of Merryland was the last Baum book illustrated by W. W. Denslow before his falling out with Baum over the rights to the characters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Baum’s prominence overshadowing him like Lee over Kirby. Denslow’s illustrations in the original show the inhabitants of Oz as possessing a similar height to Dorothy, and thus the Queen of Merryland should match the height of the protagonist. Had Dot and Tot of Merryland been a critical success, perhaps a similar dispute to that of the newspaper strips would have arisen.

            The Queen of Merryland, like other rulers of Baumian wonderlands, is isolationist, but she accepts Dot and Tot’s explanations of the Watch-Dog’s dereliction of duty; nonetheless, she intends to block up the entrance from which Dot and Tot entered – Narnia rules apply to her portals, but the Queen of Merryland is no Aslan. Since she cannot allow the children to leave and she cannot dispose of them, she adopts them as her heirs – even though she does not need any. This is the reason why the title is Dot and Tot of Merryland rather than Dot and Tot in Merryland. The adoption can seem abrupt, even for such an episodic text, until it is recalled that is an American fairytale. Naturalization is not only an American phenomenon, but it is also the explicit intention of Baum’s fairytale output, most prominently accomplished in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its sequels. Dorothy, after all, becomes, a Princess of Oz, and several other humans from our world become citizens of Oz.

            From a narrative standpoint, this elevation both places Dot and Tot as equals in Merryland in contract to the regular world and gives them responsibility. The Queen of Merryland, as negligent a ruler as many in the Continent of Imagination, appoints Dot and Tot to be in charge of the Valley of the Dolls while she heads upstream to instruct the Watch-Dog on what to do if more potential visitors to Merryland decline to obey him. The Watch-Dog isn’t very bright, either because he is senile, or because nearly five centuries of isolation is probably not healthy for anyone’s mental state. Against her better judgment the Queen allows Dot and Tot to experience the dolls of the Valley of the Dolls at their most chaotic. One would think that the Valley of the Dolls would be alive with Doll society, but the Queen found them noisy and disruptive and therefore leaves them asleep most of the time. This could be commentary on controlling (but not eliminating) the imagination, but it also reflects, not entirely favorably, on the controlling nature of queens, princesses, and sorceresses in Baum’s writing. There are elements of Glinda and Ozma that are troubling to lovers of liberty.

            The awakened Dolls of course do not know who Princess Dot and Prince Tot are and therefore do not recognize their authority. The wand which roused the Dolls is an item of Baumian magic, very specific in its duration and operator. The rebellion of the Dolls does not end until the Return of the Queen. This brief period of authority offers Dot and Tot some perspective on what it is like to be an adult who is minding children. The next rebellion in the Baumian canon will be in the Emerald City and only slightly less absurd in its weaponry. The Queen of Merryland decides that she should complete her circuit by sailing downstream with Dot and Tot and perhaps figuring out what to do with them since the children do not really want to live in Merryland forever (take that, Peter!) nor can she feed them properly, a matter of great concern for Tot.

            The Fifth Valley is the Valley of the Pussy Cats, whose taste in what constitutes beautiful music is significantly different from that of the two children and the Queen. Mr. Felis, the leader of the Pussy Cats, welcomes the party and explains that the test of adulthood in this Valley is the ability to jump to the roof of the house where one grew up as a kitten. The loudest voices are the most beautiful ones and authorize their possessors to rule the valley. This is not a phenomenon exclusive to the internet. Yet the cats are still communal and gladly take the kittens of large litters into their own homes. Dot and Tot are much more enthusiastic about the invitation to the traditional nocturnal concert than the Queen, who has already experienced such passionate singing, and therefore the party moves on.

            The Sixth Valley is the chronically understaffed Valley of Wind-Up Toys, where both Mr. Splits, two halves of a man, just barely manages to keep the animal inhabitants of the Valley fully wound. The Queen is aware of this problem, but proposes no solution, perhaps because as a Doll she lacks her own imagination. At the very least, she could allow some of the wind-up animals to remain temporarily unwound. Mr. Split’s gimmick, other than being bifurcated like a Mangaboo, is an allegedly amusing vocal tic whereby one half starts words and the other finishes them; but the two halves are never in the same place at the same time, creating great difficulty of comprehension. Possibly the frenetic pace of Mr. Split, never able to complete a thought, represents the overwhelming busyness of adult life and its deleterious effect on concentration and community; there is no functional society in the Sixth Valley.

            The Seventh Valley, the Valley of Lost Things, is devoid of life, mundane or fantastical. It is full, however, of lost things, particularly young children’s jackets, and especially those which belonged to boys. This rings true to experience. Dot finds a doll she lost, which the Queen allows her to keep on the grounds that it is no longer lost. Dot and Tot, in contrast, are lost, because they do not know whether the last arch will take them back to our world. The Queen consents to them leaving, after which she will seal the exit from the Seventh Valley. If the Valleys beyond the Fourth represent increasing adulthood, the Seventh Valley as a particularly sanitary landfill is a stark condemnation.

            Dot and Tot exit the Seventh Valley but fall asleep before they enter our world. This event parallels the initial nap (at least on Tot’s part) before encountering the Watch-Dog. This equivalence of fairyland with a dream state, the first such instance in the Baumian canon, js supported by the deceptively half-hearted mystery of the Queen of Merryland’s name. The Queen deflects the question every time it is brought up. Why is knowing her name so important when her title is clear? For this point the doll which Dot lost and then found is critical. In the literal manner of young children, Dot had named her doll Dolly, which she ultimately decided was the name of the Queen of Merryland. If Dot was worried about her lost doll the entire journey, then the journey was not a series of episodic adventures, but rather a quest. It is the nature of a quest that the questor is changed in some way by the end, usually by being more mature than at the beginning; Dot cannot return to Narnia. It is no accident that an alternative pet name for Dorothy is Dolly, allowing Dot to find herself. This analysis is far beyond the capabilities of a small girl such a Dot. Thus Dot and Tot of Merryland is a quest narrative experienced by a questor unaware of her quest and not yet capable of the necessary abstract thinking. Baum insists on the truth of the experience by having Dot and Tot’s boat appear upstream from where it was originally moored – this should not be possible. This feature of the narrative cannot be casually dismissed because it is precisely this “over the rainbow” feature that has endeared the 1939 Wizard of Oz film to generations of Americans. Dot and Tot of Merryland is a far more substantial work than it seems at first glance.

 Final Version Composed and Performed In A Backyard June 4, 2021

Doubling Down: The Reduplication that Europeans Do Not See

Reduplication is a linguistic phenomenon so basic that it is found throughout the world, except in Europe. When, therefore, the Europeans spread across the world in conquest, encountering new languages which possessed this feature and triggering the creation of new languages which used this basic tool of communication, they scorned it; but this disdain required willful blindness on the part of the more educated Europeans to the existence of partial reduplication in one language that they elevated above all others: Greek. In some instances, where the ravages of time and the desperation of analogical repair had worn away the surface pattern, this blindness could be forgiven; in many cases, however, the reduplication was a clear and present feature. The history of the Indo-European languages in Europe was, in part, a process of systematically removing this reduplication, but in Greek, and to a lesser extent Latin, it still remained, and those were tongues which the elites of Europe held in reverence. In Latin reduplication remained only in the perfect tense as an increasingly archaic and non-productive feature; in Greek, however, reduplication was the principal method by which the perfect was created, while reduplication in the present was non-productive. Since the fact of reduplication indicates a primary segment from which the reduplicated segment is taken, the reduplicated segment is almost always simplified, although the details of that simplification varies according to the language. If the simplification of European languages had been a laudable quality, the European point of view might have been consistent, but it was the complexity of Latin and Greek that was admired. Thus, logically, the complexity of foreign tongues should have been admired instead of suffering disdain.

The more change-oriented among my readers may see a lesson in this; I merely offer it as an observation.

We Only Find Them When They're Dead (Al Ewing)

 We Only Find Them When They're Dead, by Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo, is a graphic novel about harvesting materials from dead space gods. The space gods in question are the size of Marvel's Celestials (recently featured in the mediocre film The Eternals), but in appearance they resemble the New Gods of DC. This scaling has precedent in DC; at one point New Genesis and Apokolips were cosmically large and the boom tubes used for transport adjusted the size of the New Gods to be commensurate with Terrestrial life. One of heroes flew through space to Apokolips and discovered how miniscule they were. The corpses drift into the galaxy like cosmic fish and are harvested for exotic substances. All these corpses appear to be coming from one direction, but the exotic material is so valuable that nobody in power is motivated to ask the questions they should ask, such as "Why are there so many dead space gods and who killed them?" With a title such as We Only Find Them When They're Dead, naturally some crew discovers one that is not quite as dead as the ones before. The plot is standard fare: a crew desperate enough to take chances flouts the law and is pursued by the space police with whom some of the ragtag band have personal connections. The crew of the pursuer also choose to break the law in pursuit, thus establishing the precedence of revenge. The fishermen of space have left the coast for deeper waters. 

The representation is moderate and is integrated well into the plot. It is difficult to guess where this storty might lead, partly because this is one of the areas involving space gods which is not frequently examined, and partly because volume one is dedicated to establishing the world and the relationship of the characters before they depart for parts bereft of other humans, or aliens other than giants, that much remains unexplained. It will be character driven by necessity, but the work of giants is the motivation for further reading. All the gods found by humanity within the galaxy have been dead, but is this due to some property of our galaxy or galaxies in general versus open space? Do the space gods come from some galaxy that might even be described as Promethean? What War in Heaven resulted in the death of the Gods? Or do the Gods date from a time before the galaxies? To paraphrase G'kar, humanity can stay out of the way or be stepped on.

Every Science Fiction Story is Someone's First

 

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera, is a middle grade book that serves as a gateway to heavier science fiction. The heroine, Petra Peña, is genetically flawed in a less obvious way than the protagonist of Gattaca, but closely enough that its disclosure would disqualify her for the exodus from Earth, whose lateness is definite and whose greatness is much disputed. This genetic deformity spares her the conditioning which she is intended to receive, but it is a cruel mercy, to the character if not the reader, to be awakened in a strange world. The plan for the ship has gone awry, since a smooth ride would be unsatisfactory in all but the best hands. Conformity is the watchword – the dangers of excessive originality have no place in the solipsistic world of YA novels – and our plucky heroine must struggle alone against them while feigning conformity using home ec chemistry. The world of the ship and that of the new planet are lightly sketched but it is sufficient to provide the feeling of a real place; the lacunae are due to irrelevancy or the logical ignorance of the heroine. The educator tapes, more like those of Cyteen than Hospital Station, explain away the otherwise implausible expertise of an adolescent girl. Many science fiction ideas are touched upon in the world building, but the primary drive of the book is action reminiscent of a Heinlein juvenile, based more on chemistry than engineering. Perhaps it seems a bit strange to pass over the story-telling component of a book called The Last Cuentista, but if it is remembered by the youth of today, it will not be because it is the deepest narrative, but because it has served as a preface to more detailed narratives.

Yaghan: Coincidences Do Come True

 The last speaker of Yaghan, the indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego, has sailed (or perhaps canoed) beyond the sunset. In the memorial article for the woman and the language, a curious fact emerges: the word for sun is lamp. To Anglophones or Francophones, this may seem remarkable. And the more romantically inclined may daydream of a latter-day Pythias or Hanno voyaging, leaving this word as an indication of early contact. Unfortunately for such bold thinking, the similarities are often due to mere coincidence. Lamp is merely a word in a recently moribund language, whose living light has been extinguished.

(If you nonetheless want to know more about the language, the Wikipedia article at the time of this writing is a good place to start)

Edge Lords of Universe: Valerian and Laureline, Volume 19

 At the Edge of the Great Void is the nineteenth volume of the Valerian and Laureline series, the midmost part of a trilogy of volumes. The change from an almost purely terrestrial view in the previous volume to an exclusively celestial and cosmic one in the current volume could come across as jarring. I suspect, however, that those who read this volume when it was new were already heavily invested in the peripatetic scene changes of the series. Valerian and Laureline, having wrapped up affairs as best they could on twentieth century Earth, are now making their way to the titular edge of the Great Void in search of their old headquarters, before they offended the false gods of Earth. Since their support system from before is gone, they must rely on overtly dubious means to survive (their former bosses were not above underhanded moves). The antagonists, of course, use even more dubious means and are far less concerned about the welfare of individuals. On an economically shattered planet, Laureline recruits an woman, Ky Lai, a human by all exterior signs, from space Indochina. Laureline is very much the lead in this volume. After a brief stop on a "cemetery planet" to interrogate filthy thieving space scavengers, Valerian and Laureline and Indochinese Mrs. Kato arrive at Roubanis, the planet at the edge of the Great Void. Valerian is then sidelined for the most of the rest of the story so that Laureline and Ky Lai can use their powers of persuasion, deception, and textile manufacture to overthrow an unjust regime, a common plot in the Valerian and Laureline universe. There is a comedic subplot about the ridiculously violent way the space pirate captain chooses her crew for the voyage into the Great Void. Valerian and Laureline join the crew, while Ky Lai remains behind with her space Indochina people to make textiles.

This volume has a strong "middle book" feeling to it. It can be read on its own, but all the components of the story are pieces that need to be setup for the following volume.  Valerian and Laureline, like many long-running series, developed increasingly longer narrative rather than one-off stories connected by the series' theme.  The scale became grander, which is saying something when the first volume started with an galactic agent traveling through space and time in medieval Earth. The real question is what happens when our heroes meet the Lords of All the Cosmos - what could possibly happen in the following volume!?

Looking Backward: A Tale of Tmesis

The delights of digital tools are manifold, but one area in which they fail is the phenomenon of tmesis, whereby a prefix normally attached to a verb is separated, sometimes at a considerable distance due to the non-configurational nature of Greek, and thus the unwary may be led to the wrong dictionary entry. This separation, this cutting off, is an illusion, not just in translation, but in origin. It was quite logical for the Greeks who first observed this feature to call it a cutting off, a lobotomy of an intact word, for they were looking backward and needed merely a descriptive term rather than an analytical one. The science of philology was millennia away.

The true nature of the phenomenon, however, was not one of cutting, but of grafting. In earlier days, the adverb or preposition could float, and only gradually became attached to the verb. This is why some verbs could be modified by prepositional phrases, while others, to which the prefix was appended, governed cases other than the expected case. Some barbarian tongues, such as German, left this process conspicously incomplete; thus this process should be called thesis, not tmesis, but the cruel mistress of convention had established a false analysis as the official term.

Saga #55 (and #56) Dramatis Personae

This year witnesses the return of several independent series, among which is Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples. The failure of the television adaptation of Y: The Last Man may allow Saga to arise to greater heights. I must confess that I did not read all issues of Staples' interim project about magic and sisterly betrayal.

 

Saga is the story of Hazel, the child of two races whose war has consumed the galaxy, enlisting the other races to whom this did not matter. Elsewhere I have compared this to the genesis of Peloponnesian War, and perhaps it will have a similarly devastating end; but this is unlikely to occur until our protagonist is older. The purpose of a first issue, especially after such a gap, is to reintroduce the themes and characters; as a wise man once since, every story is someone's first story. Thus Saga #55 reintroduces our protagonist Hazel, a blasphemy according to both races, a bit older and in denial of some of the trauma she carries (but with a sweet hat); Squire, the former heir of the Robot Kingdom (which is a kingdom of humanoids with televisions for heads), who has obvious trauma; Alana, Hazel's mother and provider, although she is not doing a particularly good job at it; and a newcomer, Bombazine, her employee who looks like a refugee from a stage play of Oz. The rocket tree which they call home also makes its return. The bounty hunters The Will (the article is mandatory), Gwendolyn, and fan favorite Lying Cat also appear.

Saga, as with many works focused on an underage protagonist, may lead the unwary or simple-minded to believe that this comic is "safe" for children. Although each child is different, this reintroduction goes out of its way to include suicide, police brutality, coition, adverse childhood experiences, a false accusation of child abuse by a child thief, as well as smuggling of adult "food". The greatest potential of preadolescent protagonists are adventures in the 'real' world, but that does not mean the audience is children.

Update:

Saga #66 is now out. This issue introduces new characters and a new setting. The dreams of the new crew are not what one would have expected. The colors are bright, but the content is fairly dark.

Manseed

Jack Williamson's Manseed is a story of human colonization of space predicated on the vastness and emptiness, and that we cannot outrun our own sins. The narrative alternates between the contemporary humans of the Raven Foundation on Earth and the far future Defenders of Mansphere (which is a terrible name for a planet). The primary connective tissue derives from the elements of personality which inevitably slipped in among the practical data in creating the Defenders, the half-machine supermen tasked with scouting and preparing new worlds for humaniry. The choice of siblings as genetic material seems particularly ill-advised and unlikely for a collection of otherwise scientifically literate participants. The genetic pool is shallow enough to be suitable for noting but a parable (much like the current series Raised by Wolves). The psychosexual adaptation of the myth of Adam and Eve, mixed with Cain and Abel, and the misogyny now known to be pervasive in science fiction circles of the seventies, is blatant.

Manseed was published in 1982 and was written by a man in his seventies. Even in the feminist science fiction of the time, such as that of Suzette Hayden Elgin and Sheri S Tepper, the gender dynamics was covert and aggressive. Williamson was a writer of an older generation and his characters' discomfort in adapting to the novel circumstances limits the power of the narrative. This book has not aged well.

James White: The Things Are Also People

 An author often overlooked except by authors fond of obscures references (such as Grant Morrison) is James White, whose space medicine series Sector General, a Star Trek: Doctor Space Nine or Lensmen with a pathology lab, was an analgesic to the militarism of science fiction. Such a view is not surprising from a Northern Irishman who grew up in the Troubles (which lasted even longer in the Star Trek universe, according to Data). White's team of Star Surgeons is a mix of different species, all of whom are dedicated to the treatment of patients, no matter their provenance. The specialized knowledge required to treat the patients could never be contained in any sapient brain, so the pre-surgery preparation involves "Educator tapes" created by the best medical minds of the patient's species - or whichever species is closest to J'onn Doe. The tapes, however, contain a partial psychology of the species, so the human who partakes may develop brief and exciting appetites. Actual appetites are limited to vegetarianism, due to potential trauma from observation of lunchmates. The species in the universe are organized by an alphabetical code, which is rendered in the Roman alphabet (for humans anyway). The team includes one spirited red-headed human woman, but there are alien women as well - especially Charge Nurse Naydrad, who is a giant caterpillar. The scandalous behavior of the methane-breathers is a running joke here, long before it appears on Babylon 5, and when I first saw Sikorsky of the Starjammers, I thought he might be a visual reference to the insectoid Dr. Prillicla.

When I read the ET ER comic one-shot, I had hoped it would be more like this rather than the Masquerade with ailing extraterrestrials, but the closest I have ever seen to a use of Sector General in modern media is its cameo in Grant Morrison's run of Green Lantern, in which Hal visits and later contributes to the destruction of the homage, complete with giant caterpillar nurse and empathic insect pathologist, while Hal continues on his way to death and eventual godhood. It would have been nice to see Sector General treated with more respect, but media portrayals of space hospital have generally not fared well in ratings. I am not sure whether this is due to the restriction of romantic plots or the necessity of television writers to eliminate the fiendishly clever puzzles in search of an audience less willing to face an intellectual challenge.

The Words We Leave Behind

 A feature of the Pindaric realm, the epinician genre, is the double use of grammatical components and its corollary, the absence of words that would not have been absent in a prosaic work. The complex meter demands such compromises. This absence works best when the audience is so familiar with the story presented that it perceives the new text as an alternate presentation rather than a novelty. A problem, arises, therefore, when the audience receiving is no longer the audience originally intended to receive; and even more so when the primary language of that audience is not the language of the work.

This phenomenon, however, is not unfamiliar to contemporary consumers of media. Movie adaptations of popular franchises often depend on the audience's knowledge of the book series and therefore feel at liberty to discard scenes that convey critical information to those who have not read the books and are merely accompanying their progeny or sweetheart to the cinema. The consumer intimately familiar with the work may not realize how deficient these lacunae can be to their companion, and perhaps even become angry when they fail to appreciate the genius of their literary god. From the perspective of the companion, however, this low esteem for the film is appropriate; the cinematographers have failed to create a coherent narrative in service of spectacle.

A Tale of Two Monkeys (and a Dog)

 Primordial by Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino is an alternate Cold War mini-series about two monkeys, Able and Mrs. Baker, and Laika, everyone's favorite space dog. A signal from space is discovered which deflects the Cold War from celestial posturing to more terrestrial endeavors. Before the end, however, two monkeys and a dog, who is of course Laika, have been launched into space. It is not clear what the space trio encounter, perhaps because they are animals and respond accordingly, or perhaps because it is alien and no terrestrial being could comprehend it. This is not a story, however, about an alternate history without the space program, or a story about the fallout from animal-alien contact, but rather a reflection of the strangeness of the universe, how wonderfully and terribly all things have been made.

Jake the Idiot, but no Finn

    The first few chapters of Andrew Moriarty's Trans-Galactic Insurance: Adventures of Jump Space Accountant reminds of nothing so much as the first three issues or episodes of a mini-series which I would drop and later, after the series was complete, revisit now that I 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.

                My greatest annoyance at 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 savvy to the specific financial meaning of credit and debit in balancing accounts. I am not saying that the author should have chosen some exotic name for the currency, such as ‘quatloos’, just something other than ‘credits’ when the fictional economy uses a double-entry system. I suppose this is the way that physicists and engineers feel about gross ‘errors’ in other science fiction novels. If you want to read a series that begins with a space-based human civilization cut off from its parent, you should go read John Scalzi’s latest trilogy instead.

Triangles! Triangles Everywhere!

Agsin and again I am drawn back to the aesthetic appeal of  Ditema tsa Dinoko, also known as Isbheqe Sohlamvu. A good aesthetic is an excellent tool for promotion and its overlay of the IPA chart on the indigenous symbols assures me that this is a result of international syncretism. The iconography is sufficiently simple to allow combinations of sounds and (where appropriate) to compose syllable clusters, which the eye and mind of native speakers can process as a word. The extensive system of prefixes and suffixes in Bantu languages no doubt facilitates this process. It would be fascinating to see a study on the relative speed of comprehension for Ditema tsa Dinoko versus Roman orthography.

There are, however, two questions that come to mind. The first is that of the order of the syllables in the visual medium. If the syllables fit more harmoniously in a non-concatenative order, it is sensible to order them in such a way; but there must be some sequences whoch could be reade in more than order, even if the noun class prefix is clear from the surrounding context. The second question is not so much a question as an observation. Direma tsa Dinoko, along with Mandombe and other African and indigenous scripts, depend on rotational symmetry. Although the reduction of shapes simplifies the number of design components needed to create the specialized font, quite a few persons have difficulty with rotation and reversal, especially when the orthography is so heavily dependent on these processes. Perhaps it is a challenge overcome by practice, but this challenge illustrates the conflict between simplicity of composition and simplicity of comprehension.

Not All Robots: Science Fiction Done Right

 Not All Robots, wirtten by Mark Russell and drawn by Mike Deodato Jr, is a mini-series in the classic tradition of science fiction: tackling modern problems through allegory. The world of Not All Robots is one in which humanity has retreated into bubble cities to escape the devastation of the world. The human unemployment rate is almost a hundred percent; a robot is assigned to each family to provide for them. The humans are bored and angry at their lack of agency and ungrateful: not the most flattering depiction of humanity, but a probable reaction to the circumstances. Hairdressers alone retain a profession, a reflection of the limited opportunities afforded to women throughout many eras. Even the robots, however, lack job security because the job of many robots is to build their own replacements. Under such conditions, it is no wonder that strife breaks out.

The simplicity of the scenario is its strength. Although the five-issue mini-series is divided in a chapter per issue, the brevity of the format allows just enough explicit detail while omitting or passing over other details that would distract from the basic questions of identity, mortality, and purpose. A short story does not have to explain the tax policies of the apocalypse.

Go, Gowachin, Go!

Now and in the immediate future Dune will be the Frank Herbert book most read (or claimed to be read), but as much as Dune stands out among science fiction novels, it is worth reading Herbert's other books such as The Whipping Star. The universe of The Whipping Star is one in which government has achieved such efficiency that it is necessary to inhibit it in some way. This efficiency is the least plausible part of the setting, but initial conditions in science fiction sometimes must be accepted. The organization in charged with disrupting the bureaucracy is the Bureau of Sabotage, or BuSab. The representative of BuSab is Jorj X. McKie. McKie uncovers a conspiracy that threatens virtually all life in the universe because aliens are, well, alien in thought and experience or lack thereof.

The sequel, The Dosadi Experiment, is the better of the two. The Dosadi Experiment is this: what happens if we put various alien species in the most vicious social pressure cooker ever evented? The chasm in which the Experiment takes place is the opposite of the paradise of Malacandra: crowded, competitive, and amoral. BuSab sends McKie to check on the Experiment, and it does not bode well for the rest of the universe, as one might expect from a perpetual gom jabbar.

These are shorter and less dense than Dune, a palate cleanser between Messiah, Children, and God Emperor.

A Sorrowful and Epitrite Heart

 The group has embarked upon reading Pindar Pythian 4 as a thematically appropriate work after reading Euripides' Medea. Pindar dwells on happier days, although there is an exile in the Ode. To say that the meter of Pindar is challenging would be an understatement, and scholars of previous generations had difficulty determining the lines. Their suffering, however, has brought wisdom to later generations.

Most classicists are trained on dactylic hexameter, iambic trimeter, and elegiac couplets, with the meter of the chorus often provided in the back of the text (assuming the text is not hopelessly corrupt). Other meters can be painful to learn and even passed over in the need to complete the lines assigned. Recitation is not as common as it once was.

The meter of Pythian 4 is dactylo-epitritic, which no doubt has a high morbidity rate. Dactyls are familiar to virtually all classicists, although in this case the dactyls are doubled and extended into a series long-short-short-long-short-short-long (a hemipes). Epitrite, which might also be a parasitic plant, is a specific kind of foot, but varies more than feet of two or three syllables. It is common for tetrasyllabic feet to vary in a specified way: once the foot is of this length, perhaps it is no longer productive (pace Latine loquentibus) to give individual names beyond the ordinal. The epitrite is a tetrasyllable in which one syllable must be short and the others long, much like desperate sailors at sea. The combination of this foot with the hemipes, along with variations, produce some long lines compared to epic or tragedy.

Let's Talk About Ptolitics

A challenge often faced by linguistic neophytes is the mastery of clusters not found in their native tongue. In the case of English-speakers learning Ancient Greek, one such cluster is πτ at the beginning of the word. The Greeks themselves were not thrilled with this combination, if the development of πτόλις to πόλις is any indication. Internally, this cluster did not present a problem. Exempla even developed from the juncture of π and the first-person suffix yo in verbs such as πίπτω and κλέπτω. The average Greek was not a linguist, even a poor one, for comparative linguistic had not yet been invented, so the root was reanalysed as πίπτ- and produced both future πεσοῦμαι and infinitive πίτνειν through another round of affixation and cluster reduction. One of the words which kept the πτ was πτῶσις, falling, from which the word for case, the best grammatical invention of man, derives its name.

Despite the potential difficulty of pronouncing πτ, the original pronunciation was even more challenging: τπ. If this looks improbable, let us remember that the Proto-Indo-European root for earth was *dhghom-, so someone at some point deemed such clusters pronounceable. In the later evolution of the language, it is a bit surprising that the t did not become an s: PIE loves its s almost as much as Greek likes to drop it intervocalically. The rule which developed in Greek was this: in a cluster of two different plosives the first could not be a dental; or in layman's terms, τ, d, and θ could not be first. Greek, therefore, has πτ and κτ and lacks τπ and τκ. The earth is χθών not θχών. 

Superman '78 Mini-Series Review and Analysis

 To me, Superman will always be Christopher Reeve. I was excited, therefore, to read the six-issue mini-series Superman '78. 

Robert Venditti is the writer. Wilfred Torres is the artist. The colorist is Jordie Bellaire, and Dave Lamphear of A Better World (DC's main earth, perhaps) is the letter. Torres does an excellent job rendering the characters to resemble the actors, and Venditti captures the dialogue admirably. I am, however, more interested in how the mini-series' themes allow it to serve as the third volume and conclusion to the first two movies. This is absolutely worth reading, but my analysis below includes spoilers, as an ending in a trilogy would, so be forewarned. Even better, buy it wherever you get your comics.

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The goal of the Superman movies can be summed up in Jor-El's words to Kal-El: "They can be a great people, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you ... my only son." (Superman: The Movie) Jor-El's world is doomed, with an absence of hope, but he can share hope with another civilization. Superman in the first movie learns how to be human from his adoptive parents and about Kryptonian civilization from the Fortress of Solitude; unlike the Kryptonians, however, he learned about it without the sterility or Jor-El's despair. He learns that he can literally change the course of history. In the second movie, Superman faces off against Zod and his goons. Zod's goal is to exploit others, whether they be the doomed Kryptonians or humans under Kal-El's protection. Superman learns that the capacity for evil is as present in Kryptonians as it is in humans, and that this nature must be incorporated and overcome because it cannot be eliminated.

Since the first movie had Luthor as a villain and the second had Zod, the mini-series uses Brainiac. The movie universe has a simple mythology, so Brainiac is doing what he always does: bottling cities and destroyed civilizations. This obsession, of course, makes Superman a rare prize. This Brainiac is not the organic one of the Silver Age, not the mechanical skull of the Post-Crisis era, but a more movie-suitable transitional one - appropriate for the period in which Brainiac was moving from organic to artificial. Brainiac himself is the sole survivor of his civilization, but lacks the empathy of Superman and Jor-El. It is not clear whether this is the result of eons of loneliness or a defect in his species' psychology. Brainiac doesn't even have a '70s space monkey for company. His "solution" to his loneliness is not to settle somewhere for a time, or even communicate extensively with various civilizations, but rather to preserve each in his bottles. This preservation leads to resignation at best, and despair at worst for the cities in flight; thus Brainiac is spreading despair rather than hope. 

Superman is willing to sacrifice himself to save the Earth, but Metropolis is bottled anyway. The existence of Kandor is a surprise for Superman, but not to anyone who knows the Brainiac mythos. The bigger surprise is that Jor-El and Lara are in Kandor. They are delighted to see their son, but Jor-El, whose words were so inspiring to young Clark Kent, has given into despair and seeks only to ensure the continued existence of Kandor, the last remnant of Krypton. Superman does not accept this and wins Jor-El over with his optimism borne of sources unavailable on Krypton. The sterility of Brainiac's ship is fundamentally no different from the sterility of Krypton. Superman fights Brainiac, but the fight also includes a discussion of how one reacts to the destruction and other terrors of the universe, whether the hope of action or the despair of inaction is the appropriate response. Brainiac choses to die rather than live among lesser mortals; he also choses death for all the bottled cities and the lesser mortals who live therein. Even if suicide is a legitimate choice for Brainiac, he not only has no right to choose for others, but he is also making the opposite choice of the citizens of the two cities featured in the mini-series. The look on his last uploaded body suggests that Brainiac realized his error after he could no longer avoid the consequences. 

Superman saves Kandor and Metropolis, the latter of which has apparently not set to permanent miniaturization, but the bigger surprise is that he saves most or all of the other cities as well. Perhaps this is as close to the Cosmic Zoo as the movie universe can come, but the more likely reason is that the victory over despair would ring hollow if only the cities of the hero and his loved ones survived. Although Brainiac's technology is lost, the cities and their inhabitants are safe, protected by a guardian who wants to restore them rather than a specimen collector who wants to preserve them. Hope triumphs over despair.

Stopping At Slowyear: Willoughby Among the Stars

 For a book about which I only occasionally remember details, Stopping At Slowyear certainly sticks in my mind; at yet this patchy memory is thematically appropriate. Stopping At Slowyear is a book Fred Pohl wrote late in life, and this too ties into the theme, which unfortunately is also the twist. It is no accident that the outdated cargo ship is called the Nordvik, a Viking name reminiscent of Pohl's early work, nor that the main character is named Mercy. The setting is spare and basic: an old ship, a planet of long and bitter seasons, and a romance between a spacer and a grounder. There is, of course, a secret which the locals are loath to reveal.

It's a good story, but don't read this at a low point in your life. Or perhaps you should: consolation has been found in stranger places.

The Curious Case of the Removable Nu

 There are many dialects of Ancient Greek, and individual dialects are often assigned to different genres, presumably due to some founder effect. This literary dialect then is smoothed and standardized and thus acquires some forms not found in the original dialect. Many literary dialects mix features from more than one dialect. Tragedy generally separates the Ionic speech of the majority of the play from the stage Doric of the Chorus, but even this relatively clear separation does not prohibit the occasional intrusion of a Doric verb into the Ionic sentence. The proper dialect of an Ode is Doric and Aeolic combined. This presents a challenge to the modern student of Ancient Greek, who has trained on Attic Greek, itself not as standard as the Athenians would have you believe. And thus we come to the removable ν.

Calling this ν 'removable' is somewhat misleading, for although it disappears, it does not do so without leaving a trace. The nature of that trace is the reason for such variation among the Greek dialects in critical grammatical forms such a participles. Greek loves participles; if one wields them correctly, they increase the subtlety of Greek to a degree that would make Cato uncomfortable. The present and aorist active particles have an affix -ντ- to which the case endings are appended; but the σ of the nominative singular triggers changes which differentiate it from the oblique cases. These changes are not the same in every dialect. In general, the change involves lengthening the preceding vowel. Such is the case in Attic. In the dialect of Pindar's Odes, however, lengthening is replaced by diphthongization; thus -ανς from -αντς becomes -αις rather than Attic -ας. This phenomenon can be confusing for a student at their first encounter because it is similar to the feminine dative -αις (which is -αισι here, for reasons best dealt with elsewhere and never had a ν). These changes create a brief uphill battle for the neophyte, until they see the horror of even more radical non-configurationality.

Where Have All the Flores Gone?

 The recent cancellation of Wonder Girl, the Wonder Woman Family title starring Yara Flor, the first Wonder Girl of indigenous Amazonian descent, was disappointing. Although Flor's demotion from Wonder Woman in the Future State timeline was inevitable, given the large number of Amazons with a prior claim, a series featuring an Amazonian Amazon was an opportunity to expand the corpus of mythologies available to the Wonder Woman franchise beyond the Tetrarchy of Greek, Norse, Celtic, and Egyptian. Unfortunately, the financial reward for even the headlining Amazon has often been tenuous. If American comics companies will not support stories of Amazons of the Amazon, perhaps there is an opportunity for some Brazilian company to do so.

It is satisfying to see that at least the cancellation happened at the end of story arc, but it exposes a problem with the big two in general: the money made from events prevents characters from having isolated adventures which build up their voice.

A Singular Story

I have finished the Singular book When Men Become Gods about the FLDS communities on the borders of Arizona and Utah. The only time I was near those towns was back in grad school, when I went on an Episcopal mission trip to the northern edge of the Navajo Nation. That was an interesting trip, but it had nothing to do with polygamy. Polygamy is a fundamentally unbalanced social mechanism; the assignment of many women to one man excludes the other potential husbands from marriage unless you swap women around like oxen and she-asses. The assignment, and especially reassignment, of women, eviscerates any pretense of a system of family values; but there are politicians to the left of the FLDS who are equally hypocritical, if not on such a grand scale. Polygamy especially does not mix well with the founder effect, but perhaps a polygamist society could overcome this with overbreeding, the Eleventh Commandment as it were. In the backstory of the FLDS and its steady reduction to monarchy or tyranny, I was surprised that nobody brought up Samuel's denunciation of the concept of kingship.

To Euripides, She Was Always The Woman

Medea is a play that has never been out of style, but directorial choices have varied, and on occasion playwrights have adapted the material to the current circumstances. A proletarian perspective on Medea is possible, but such an adaptation would be to Euripides as Anouilh to Sophocles; even less so, because Anouilh did not need to shift the focus from Antigone. The Nurse delivers the first speech on the subject of the foolish drama of the aristocrats; the Pedagogue advocates on the behalf of the children; and the Messenger, despite his fancy speech (which may be due as much to his job in addressing the melodrama of the those who rule as much as his own personality), has a rather common view of the world. 

Meanwhile the aristocrats put on a poor show. Aegeus is on the lower end of the IQ scale. Jason is not much smarter and does not learn from experience than angering a woman who would murder her own brother is a bad idea even if there is now an opportunity for gain. Creon and Glauce are generic placeholders for king and Corinthian progeny - Creon literally means 'one who has strength' and Glauce or Glaucus is a generic name for a princess, especially a Corinthian one such as Bellerophon. Anyone named Glaucus in Greek mythology either dies or is ultimately ruined and broken. Medea, meanwhile, seems trapped between two genres, the tragic and the epic, and rejects the possibility of breaking the cycle of abuse from which she has suffered. The only physical affection between two related aristocratic individuals results in the painful death of both. Medea's advice to Aegeus sets in motion the birth of Theseus, which ultimately leads to her later flight from Attica and the eventual death of Aegeus due to the black sails of Theseus' return.

In the current media environment, I would expect a book from the perspective of the Nurse and the Pedagogue; but mostly the Nurse, since women narrators seem to sell better.

Mike Carey's Unwritten (Some Spoilers)

 Mike Carey is a favorite author of mine, whose works include both the Vertigo series Lucifer (original run) and the book The Girl With All the Gifts. Carey's series Unwritten, however, does not have the same impact on me, and I think I now know why. I thought my lack of response might have been a surfeit of meta-commentary in series of the time period, but this turned out to be false.

Unwritten stars Tommy Taylor, an expository character for Harry Potter, whose fictionality is substantially greater than that of many media celebrities. An unpleasant experience with an obsessed fan leads to a plot that threatens all reality and breaks the tenuous barrier between fiction and reality. The conclusion of the series involves the abolition of fiction - all fiction. I should have expected this ending, given the title of the series and the Flood motif, but it had little emotional impact on me, save for vague disappointment. I am a student of myth and legend, and therefore a conclusion that the old stories must be swept away and utterly forgotten is the antithesis of what I hold dear. I do not regret reading the series, but its conclusion is more palatable to a younger, less traditional generation.

Old Man's War

I recently finished reading Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi is one of those writers whom I get confused with another quite easily, like Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis. In this case, I often passed up reading Old Man's War because I confused it with Joe Haldeman's Forever War. Perhaps there is something to editor's fears of using too-similar titles! The premise of Old Man's War is intriguing - it is seldom that a scene about military recruiting is mysterious. Once our hero has signed up, the training sequences are pure Heinlein, the right mixture of jingoism (to fire up the troops) and pragmatism (to aid in the troops' survival). The aliens are lightly sketched, but distinct enough to qualify as separate species. The anthropophagous deer and bellicose Lilliputians are particularly striking choices.

I highly recommend.

What Do You Want, Your Modesty?

 One of the peculiarities of life is that you can go years or decades without examining patterns that you know are peculiar. Such was the case recently with the constant switch in Ancient Greek between singular and plural. This fluidity is particularly noticeable in the Chorus, and to a lesser degree in the protagonist, deuteragonist, and (if there is one) tritagonist of Greek tragedy. This environment, however, partially normalizes this movement, especially if you know the history of Greek drama. The Chorus was the primordial performer at the Dionysia, with the occasional Choregos as the equivalent of the modern soloist. The Choregos could stand out, but he was still ultimately part of the Chorus. The Protagonist emerged as a performer who could act independent of the Chorus and engage in dialogue with it. The Deuteragonist came next, although a bit too early to be a cat of any kind, and then, much later the Tritagonist. The Chorus was singular and plural from the beginning, and the Choregos could move between the numbers as necessary, but the permeability of grammatical number for the Protagonist and his kin I had assumed was the result of the elevated style of Greek drama. This was partially true, but not necessary for the reasons I had assumed.

Before I go any further, I would like to clarify that in almost all case the explanation of metric convenience is a facile explanation and diminishes the skill of the tragedians.

An investigation into Smythe's Greek Grammar, a tome of wisdom compiled by a greater intellect than mine, revealed much. There is a Plural of Majesty (S1005) in Greek, but it applies to the noun rather than the verb, as an Anglophone might anticipate. These plural nouns do impart an air of majesty to tragedy, but it is the number of the verb which is more relevant here. The verb, specifically in the first person, when plural with a singular noun, is termed a Plural of Modesty (S1008), a concept rather alien to English-speakers, except perhaps in a cynical and manipulative way. This Plural of Modesty is meant to diminish the individual and place her in the greater crowd of whichever category is currently applicable. The evidence that some individuality remains lies in the retention of the feminine. When a feminine speaker uses the Plural of Modesty in verbalization, the modifying participles remain feminine if singular (S1009). If the participles change their number to plural, the gender becomes masculine, because masculine is the default in Greek. The construction of participles render this condition especially visible. 

The permeability of singular and plural, however, is still far more common than the above would suggest. Tragic dialogue flows between the specific circumstances of the tragedy and general statements which are applicable to the circumstances (S1012), between individual disaster and cosmic horror. This fluidity renders most of the shifts of number comprehensible, with the remainder a matter of consistency of style.

The core of Greek is its facility with grammar, but even something as simple as grammatical number cannot escape (lanthanein) the pathological philosophizing of the greatest dramatists.

He May Be Invincible, But My Wallet Isn't

 At great personal cost, I have caught up to what I believe is the appropriate point in Robert Kirkman's Invincible. I cannot be certain, however, due to the reshuffling of plot elements in adapting it to a different medium. Consecutive reading renders the sense of time quite differently, but the events in-universe do occur faster than I had imagined. When Invincible first came out, I read some issues, but I was more enthusiastic about Dynamo 5 than anything else in the Kirkman universe. The events of Volumes 3 and 4 move quickly because the comic-reading audience would already be familiar with the scenarios from other franchises. Ottley's style is not my favorite, but it is neither off-putting nor fundamentally unreadable (if colors can be said to be read). I have a bad habit, driven by the impulse to cut the chaff from my pull list, of dropping series before the surprise reveal which rewards the patient reader; on the other hand, the risk of continuing a series beyond literary and financial justification would make me a sucker rather than a good and loyal fan.

    Kirkman's dialogue is reflective of the era in which it was written; for some this may be an unforgiveable sin. I do not deem it as such. Although I would not use such language now, the slur in question was used casually then, and even now there are worse and more malevolent curses. Active homophobia seems not to be a concern in a universe full of Martian invaders. The other issue, the strange relation that Robot and Monster Girl have to aging, is not problematic as much as fascinating and a problem that could only be explored using fiction. I may write more about this later. For now, I recommend Invincible, but perhaps a more graduated approach to financial acquisition.

Foundation's Fruit: Seeds

 My review of Foundation, Season One, was the last, best hope for taking this blog in a certain direction. It failed. But an autopsy is still in order. For those who hold the delusion that the original book is filmable as is, I can do nothing. Film must fill the visual voids that a well-honed story leaves to the imagination of those that have them. Foundation also faces the John Carter dilemma of appearing derivative because others have borrowed from them in another medium.

The first season of Foundation accomplishes several things. Firstly, it establishes a framework of a season-long mystery. Mystery is a fundamentally Asimovian narrative structure. Psychohistory may be based on probability, but the initial conditions are specific. Secondly, it fills in the universe; the original stories assumed that readers at the time would fill in the context from the blatant historical references. The elements which trickled in must appear more quickly in a visual medium. Thirdly, the casting corrects (perhaps overcorrects) the blandness forced upon the original trilogy by John W Campbell's preference for only white heroes.

If any franchise is going to play the long game, it is Foundation. I do not believe I can assess it properly without watching a second season.

Miracleman (Miracleman, Does Whatever A Miracle Can ...)

Marvel is incorporating Alan Moore's Miracleman, or a version thereof, into its main universe. The true miracle is that the rights situation was resolved. Given Miracleman's transformation from Captain Marvel to Marvelman to Miracleman, perhaps this version should team up with Angela, a fellow company-crossing character. Both have been written by Neil Gaiman, after all. I cannot imagine, however, that Marvel can deliver on the mood of Miracleman's world.

Made in Abyss, Season 1: Katabasis Japanese-style

 

I’ll admit, I binge watched Made in Abyss, Season 1. I’d been wanting to watch it for a while, because I like YA protagonists experiencing and overcoming horrifying scenarios, but I was put off by the rumor of Japanese images not conducive to the online reputation of American males. Thus, the opportunity to binge it without extra cost was welcome. You know things are going to become dark when the default idyllic hometown from which the plucky girl protagonist leaves has lax child-labor laws, especially for orphans. The duo of plucky yet emotional child who should not be embarking on life-endangering quests and her ridiculously human robot boy (with plot-convenient amnesia, of course) is as wholesome as animation comes. The animation itself, both of places and bizarre creatures, is Ghibli-esque. The price paid for the descent into the Netherworld (and especially any ascent) is just as excessive as it should be. Facilis descensus Averni indeed.

I am looking forward to Season 2 in 2022. But why are the Japanese so obsessed with still-birth? And why is nobody in this world concerned about the specific timing of the layer with all the skeletons?

Dustborn: Fury Road for Fifth Graders

 

Dustborn by Erin Bowman is an easy YA read set in a place that is only slightly less doomed than N K Jemisin’s geomancer trilogy. That the map at the front is critical to the plot was refreshing. The contingencies of modern book format out of universe and the awkward yet necessary placement of the map in-universe allows forgiveness for a lack of consistent absolute scale. The characters are appropriately ignorant or startled by Old World technology, as they call it. The setting appears post-apocalyptic (which is technically correct), and the astronomy is wonky, but the sheer ignorance of the locals about anything outside of survival, and sometimes even then, is an effective screen for the actual truth. When the truth is revealed, the rather shallow world building makes sense. Sometimes with YA books it is hard to tell whether a book is the first of a trilogy.

 

The names of the characters are a bit on the nose. The protagonist, Delta of Dead River, is the predictable adolescent girl point-of-view, while Asher of Alkali Lake is the mandatory love interest/antagonist. The baby doesn’t get a name until later, and Delta’s creativity does not extend to names. Nobody is particularly likeable in the harsh environment, but some people are more awful than others. The distribution of skills and knowledge makes The Masterpiece Society’s utopia look well-planned.  The plot is stolen, but no more so than many science fiction juveniles. The linguistics is shoddy, as it nearly always is, but serviceable. The thematic swearing is mildly irritating because the thematic appropriateness is not enough to distract from the awkward prosody reminiscent of “translationese.”

There is nothing revolutionary about the setting, plot, or characterization in Dustborn; it is, nonetheless, a pleasant diversion, and a wholly acceptable juvenile for those parents who find the classics a bit too patriarchal – or do not want their kids watching the Mad Max franchise. If Bowman set another story in the future (or past) of this setting, it would be welcome.

Foundation's Fruit, Part 2

 

                Another word for change is adaptation, and none more so from a medium of words to a medium of people. This is particularly important in adaptations of sources long on words and short on action, a description which epitomizes the earliest stories of the Foundation series. Many Golden Age stories suffer from this, in the opinions of many modern readers, and most lack the rigor of Asimov’s genius. There is a serialized version of Flash Gordon, black and white, but the scripts are written with radio in mind. This mismatch is jarring, even with allowances for the slower pace of action in the early days of film and television!

                The other challenge is the reflexive presentism of most of the viewing audience. Logic can tell a person that this work was produced before another work which received an adaptation sooner, but the nature of television and film, especially since the development effective CGI, is to bypass that logic. The number of people who read the book first and watch the show later has diminished, although the percentage is thankfully not yet so low as Brave New World levels. Dune and Star Wars used ideas found in Foundation, but they preceded it to television and film adaptation. The latter adaptation, therefore, must establish visual distinction from the former.

                The third challenge is a different kind of adaptation. The history of Rome upon which the Foundation series was based is that of Edward Gibbon. This is a classic history, but there have been many changes in Roman historiography since his time. Even if his thesis were correct, there are multiple other causes for the collapse of the Western Empire. A contemporary adaptation can use this historical knowledge to expand the world of the adaptation.

                The premise of the Foundation series, in whatever form it may be, is that the Galactic Empire is stagnant and will fall. There will be a period of barbarism. The use of psychohistory can reduce this period from thirty millennia to one millennium. The Imperial government does not like doomsayers such as Hari ‘Raven’ Seldon. They want to harness the predictive power of psychohistory for its own continuance. Psychohistory works through probability, not predication, but the Imperial government either does not understand this or does not want to understand this. Psychohistory is also more effective the less people are aware of it, and certainly the less people understand the mathematics.

                In the show and the books, Trantor is the imperial planet, the world-city save for the Imperial gardens. The show’s space elevator is impressive and becomes important later – there is only one dramatic reason to showcase a space elevator. The trip down the space elevator, unlike the descent to the surface in the original framing device, is visible to Gaal Dornick, the new kid who provides reasons for exposition. This visibility is partially to provide the audience with an idea of the size of Trantor; but it also immediately contrasts with Dune, in which a rule of the Spacing Guild is that nobody sees planets from space. This lack of visibility is as important to the plot of Dune as the visibility is to the Foundation series. The visibility of the space elevator also contrasts with the literal covering of the inhabited areas of Trantor and its people. The greater galaxy is hidden from the populace by a physical barrier, just as the true level of rot of the Galaxy is hidden from the Imperial Government from their own psychological barrier. Perhaps psychohistory acts as the space elevator for the entire galaxy; or maybe there are other forces at work.

                The sheer scale of everything is true to the source material, although there are only as many absolute numbers as necessary – perhaps science fiction script writers have finally learned their lesson about scale. Everything in the Empire is large, larger than you can imagine, and this should be regarded as a bad thing. There is only one technological item which is small, but it is present to show that the Empire can miniaturize if it wants to. There is also no indication of the cost of miniaturization, so perhaps it is astronomically expensive. Both this item and the robot (because no Asimov IP would be a cash cow without at least one) cover items which are (mostly) unchanging and therefore stagnant, reflecting this important theme of Foundation.

                The solution to solving the problem of showing galactic stagnation while portraying personal interactions is quite interesting. The use of Empire (rather than Emperor, and specifically without the definite) as a personal name is infelicitous but understandable, if the purpose is to show the identity of Emperor, Empire, and Imperial Dynasty. The length of the present dynasty as four centuries is coincident with the length of the Western Roman Empire, and its origin in a period of interminable civil war may be a reference to the Roman Crisis of the Third-Century or the fratricidal wars of the Constantinian dynasty. The existence of Empire is a logical conclusion in a science-fiction setting to the problems of Constantinian strife, as well as the closest thing to a God-King in a setting where religion is minimized and treated pejoratively. The action of the religious leaders on Synnax, Gaal Dornick’s homeworld, illustrate the position of the Foundation show regarding religion.

                The companion to Empire is not a Bene Gesserit, although that may be the first impression. Those who have read the books know the identity of Demerzel, but the series has changed so much that one should not assume. The names given to Empire alliterate with Demerzel, which in turn suggests Demerzel’s identity, but the demeanor of Demerzel towards Empire suggests their identity is the other character whose name begins with D that could fulfill that role – especially since Seldon’s personal life has changed from the book series. This change (if true) does raises the question of where Demerzel’s book identity is; his absence from the series, at least long-term, is inconceivable.

One last note: the brief mention of the Robot Wars on a time scale not conducive with the timeline of the books is the show’s way of saying that we know Asimov has robots and everybody loves them, but that is not the focus of this story. The show is also saying that this show is (mostly) robot-free, but this is not Dune, in which the absence of thinking machines in the likeness of a man is a conscious driving force for the society.

                The big changes over which many have panicked wait for another time. And somehow I have avoided Hari Seldon almost entirely!

Foundation's Fruits: Prologue

 

                Before I start to analyze the Apple TV Foundation series, I think it only fair to lay out my own perspective as a long-time fan of the Asimov Foundation and Robot novels. I am a fan of Golden Age science fiction, with all its flaws. I enjoy exposition, which is why I could read most Stephen Baxter novels once. I was introduced to the Foundation, Empire, and Robot series (by which I mean the novels, not the short stories) as separate series. My favorite Asimov, however, has always been The End of Eternity. All three had the same author, and therefore used similar themes, but because they were separate series, their timelines and technologies did not need to line up perfectly. Eventually I had read all the originals and moved on to the novels which tied things together, both the Robot and the Foundation series. When Foundation’s Edge brought the conclusion of The End of Eternity into the Foundation series as a legend, at first I thought it might just be an Easter egg, since time travel is not a feature of the Foundation, Empire, or Robot series. The incorporation of the critical character of the Robot series suggested otherwise. Nonetheless, I understood the unified timeline as one of the many that could arise from the conclusion of The End of Eternity rather than the exclusive one. The limiting factor in The End of Eternity was the limitation to Earth, which in turned limited the possibilities of Humanity’s development; the galaxy is orders of magnitude larger, and therefore contains commensurately more opportunities. Multiple timelines would allow not only for the divergent dates for the formerly independent series, but also timelines in which the other Asimov stories could live – particularly the ones with alien species, which are conspicuously absent in the Foundation series, both original and expanded. At the time, I was under the influence of Heinlein’s later works, whose multiverse is wild and chaotic (and a bit creepy), but I had hoped that the unification of Asimov’s popular series would at least leave room for his lesser stories in other universes. (I’m not sure where I should put this, but I had these thoughts before Nemesis was published).

I thought the unification was a mistake, like the continuation of the Pern series past the recovery of AI, but Asimov had written it and it was therefore canonical. It was a long time until I read Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation because I had confused it with the Second Foundation trilogy. I am a bit of a purist in the sense of favoring the original author and perhaps his successor if he had worked with him long-term, such as Christopher Tolkien and (originally) Brian Herbert. After I had read all five Dune novels, I read the immediate prequels and found them a decent if not necessary addition to the Dune canon, but the prequels set during the Butlerian Jihad felt like a betrayal. I had become wary of sequels and prequels not written by the original author. Once I realized that Asimov had written Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, I read them. The expansion on Trantorian society was welcome, but the reason for humanity not encountering aliens was disturbing. The reason for humanity’s lack of innovation was even worse, and absolved, at least in part, the Empire itself of the sin of stagnation. Sometimes the unrealistic elements in a story are best left unaddressed in canon for fans to speculate upon; look what happened to the simple statement about Klingon foreheads and Worf’s refusal to elaborate. I did eventually read the Second Foundation trilogy, whose authors I respect greatly, but each book felt less and less like the Foundation universe. Newer additions are Nemesis and Mark Tiedemann’s Robot series, both of which would have benefitted from a multiverse or at least a looser canonicity akin to that of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle; thus I have always thought of the unified series as one possibility among many.

The inevitable truth is that a TV adaptation of the Foundation series would have to change and elaborate even more than the later published books. The chronologically books have slightly more actions, but the chronologically earlier books are conversations and interrogations, devoid of actions and (thankfully) Heinleinian sexuality. Much like the Hobbit, the extant text was not designed to carry live action of the length necessary for modern television. There are other Golden Age texts that could sustain more action but lack the intellectual depth; there are others that have even less dialogue and more monologue. This denseness is not solely a thing of the past; Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee novels can be dense in this way. A well-timed and well-delivered speech, on the other hand, can be entrancing; this was a strength of the (original) Babylon 5. 

            The necessity of change is not just a matter of a change of medium, but of time and influence. I like to call this the “John Carter” problem. An influential work inspires imitators, or perhaps plagiarists in a less generous interpretation. If the imitators become popular in a separate medium, or the originals fade from memory, then when the originals enter that medium as a second work, many people assume that the older work is stealing from the later one. The older work then does not do well in the new medium, and the fans of the older work are annoyed at fans of the younger work who proclaim the originality of the younger work in the second medium. Even worse, the anti-creative nature of intellectual property often prevents the older work from a second, better thought-out adaptation.

I realize that I have said nothing about the Foundation Apple TV series yet, but I am around the thousand-word limit, and that seems sufficient for today.

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.

Back to the Brigade?

Written on June 19, 2018. A follow-up post will arrive after sufficient research.

In recent years, there have been numerous groups that have claimed that the Boy Scouts of America have lost their claim to be "morally straight" and formed their own organizations. This is, of course, their right. The phenomenon is fascinating, but scarcely new. One feature I have noted that these organizations share are that they are implicitly or explicitly religious-based, specifically Christian, if not even more narrowly denominational. These groups are, in fact, correct in claiming that they hearken back to the early days of youth organizations, but they are wrong (for the most part) in claiming that this Christian youth group mentality was the purpose of the BSA.

Many of the original troops were groups of boys from the YMCA, which at that time was a Protestant organization, but the primary motivator here was threefold: first, that's where the boys were; second, that's where pre-built facilities were; third, the YMCA was already an organization committed to the moral improvement of young men. This was functionally no different than the current reasoning that encourages troops and crews to use church basements and social halls as meeting spaces. The perceived Protestant element was so strong, however, that the Catholic Church forbade its boys from joining until 1913.

The Scouting movement already established in England had addressed this issue: although the initial testing ground for the Scouting movement had been the resolutely Presbyterian Boys' Brigade, of which there were Anglican, Catholic, Jewish, and Pacifist iterations, the Scouting method was designed as a religiously neutral method of training boys, and the Boy Scouts, once founded, maintained that neutrality. The self-organizing principle ensured that many groups were religiously homogeneous, often because they were also units of the Boys' Brigade or equivalents. This was also a reflection of the more segregated religion of the day, except in the military, from which Baden-Powell came. Baden-Powell and Brigadier Smith, the founder of Boys' Brigade worked together for many years, but the split, one of many among the promoters of the booming youth program movement, was on the relatively passive role of religion with the Boy Scout organization. Baden-Powell was adamant that duty to God was a matter of individual conscience and therefore could not and should not be administered by external forces within the Boy Scout organization. Smith, whose initial inspiration to form the Boys' Brigade had come from the union of Sunday school and military drill, could not countenance such sloppiness. This was hardly the only ideological rift among youth leaders, but the military and political aspects are topics to be discussed another time.

It is worth noting that neither of the predecessor organizations in the United States, the Sons of Daniel Boone and the Woodcraft Indians, placed explicitly denominational requirements on their members. This ecumenicism (for non-denominational, sadly, has now come to mean "very specific denomination") carried over to the BSA, although it seems that many people could not wrap their minds around the concept except in terms of military training.

Nowadays there is an organization called the Troops of St George. It is Catholic, somewhat military ( partly through expediency of Army/Navy store supplies in Texas), and incorporates father-son elements similar to the YMCA's long-defunct Indian Guide program. The truly distinguishing paraphernalia, however, is the Rosary. Although the organization is not linked to the military, nor are troops within the organization required to practice drill, the assumption of a military rank system and the explicit religious element are a return to the days of the Boys' Brigade, or in this case, the Catholic Lads' Brigade.

https://troopsofsaintgeorge.org/troops/

https://boys-brigade.org.uk/

http://www.bgbrigade.com/

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Sons_of_Daniel_Boone

http://history.oa-bsa.org/node/3039

http://vintagekidstuff.com/yguides/yguides.html

Right Place, Right Time

After a disastrous evening, full of painful walking through the dark of an unfamiliar town, in which so far the only bright light had been a pleasant surprise encounter with Grayson, I made it back to the San Leandro BART station. A man approached me from an angle I could not see well, and addressed me. I responded with the prudent reaction when a stranger approaches on BART - cautious hostility - but when I saw him, I realized that he was a Kaiser employee. He had recognized my Scout uniform. He wanted to know if the council office was still there, and if so, when it was open. I sympathized; it is nearly impossible to tell when the council office is open from an occasional glance from the street. Some buildings look open in all circumstance; others appear closed when they are not. He had been s Scout in Troops 313 and 247, an Arrowman, and a camper at Royaneh, but had lost his insignia in a house fire. I encouraged him to talk to the council about replacements, at least for 247 and Order of the Arrow insignia, and to see if any of his old friends were in the Royaneh volunteer corps.

If my evening had not gone sideways, I would not have been there; but if I had not been there, I would not have been able to help a man who truly valued his Scouting experience. I cannot prove it, of course, but I am inclined to believe the Great Master of All Scouts wanted me there at that time.