Boy Scouts of the Apocalypse

The apocalyptic genre has resonated with audiences for generations, despite the disapproval of parents and ecclesiastical potentates, but its star has been ascendant in our media-saturated culture for many years now. The Walking Dead has lasted (too many?) seasons, and my good friend Beth roped me into watching iZombie. The week before I headed off to Latin boot camp, I was picking up Spider-Titles at Mission Comics and Arts (now moved around the corner, not closed!), when a book caught my eye: Junior Braves of the Apocalypse, Vol. 1: A Brave is Brave by Greg Smith and Michael Tanner (authors) and Zach Lehner (artist). The proprietor, Leef, agreed that this graphic novel was right up my alley. But I would have to wait before I could read it.

When I did buy it, I was glad I did. I'm not much for zombie books or horror in general. Perhaps it was the familiarity of the setting that made me more comfortable with the premise. Perhaps it was the nostalgic freedoms denied to today's generation. But this graphic novel is now part of my BSA-themed collection.

The initial cast, especially the tribe, of the graphic novel displays the diversity one would expect of an ensemble cast with a high expected death rate. The organization itself is lawyer-proofed BSA, although many of the elements are more reminiscent of Campfire Girls (long since renamed something far less memorable) and Woodcraft Indians. The old school Scoutmaster, harsh but well-intentioned, and his assistant, who prefers a softer touch, take the tribe on a week-long camp in the woods. When they return, civilization has collapsed - there may be order somewhere, but nowhere near the location of the plot. The tribe uses its skills to avoid capture and infection, but of course there are losses along the way. One character's unconventional use of trail markings was particularly gratifying. The mix of ages within the tribe is a bit of a stretch, but these lawyer-friendly versions of Boy Scouts, often mix Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts indiscriminately, and, it must be admitted, the mixture allows a greater range of reactions.

Many reviews would focus on the boys, who are indeed well-written. But I am more interested in the dynamic between the tribe leader and assistant. Their styles are initially antagonistic, but their devotion to the welfare of the boys, despite their quite different definitions, is a refreshing change to the usual portrayals of adults in youth-focused apocalyptic tales as crazy at worst, incompetent at best - in the case of the school staff, both. The tribe is split at a crucial moment, leaving the assistant with the main group. As much as I dislike the notion that one can only relate to a character who is like oneself, it is an effective technique. The frustration and dedication of the assistant tribe leader was portrayed clearly and effectively. 

The Junior Braves' manual provides gaps between the action, in which the authors can provide the infodumps that the characters would not discuss (either because they are under attack, or already know it, or both). Various pages from the manual inform the reader of the Junior Brave philosophy, a cross between the Boy Scout Law and the Outdoor Code, the taxonomy of trail signs, knots, and first aid. It certainly seems to be more readable than the current edition of the Handbook!

The first volume ends on a positive note (well, as positive as one can be during a zombie apocalypse) and the promise of adventures in the woods of the northwest.

I would recommend this graphic novel to anybody who enjoys zombie stories and anybody who was Boy Scout. It's less graphic than the current shows, has plenty of action, and displays positive relationships, even if the ever-present threat of zombification introduces tension into those relationships. Go forth and read!

Interstitial Highways

I was travelling on my birthday - alas, not in style - when a middle-aged Asian woman, possibly Chinese, pulling a grocery cart of the common kind although it did not (yet?) contain groceries, wandered to the back of the 33. This was not propitious but not unanticipated, since strange people flow to the back of the bus. The woman was not spewing profanities, but she had an urgent question to ask the other passengers. Surprisingly, this question was not "have you been saved?" or an invitation to a meditation session at some obscures church, temple, or center. By no means! She informed us that a Chinese real estate developer (no name provided) would die very soon, and if he couldn't agree (with whom?), everything would be demolished. Maybe God is Chinese? Gods in general don't die, but it's hard to argue that the results aren't spectacular and world-changing when they do. On to the question. The woman informed us that Buddhists believe what she believed (even though she was clear that she wasn't Buddhist). She wanted to know, quite urgently, if anybody knew which planet the border of Wisconsin and Michigan was on. Apparently, not Earth. Now I've heard Madison described as another planet, but not quite so literally. After a gentleman at the back of the bus fended off her question, the location of the interplanetary nexus (in which Buddhists believe) changed to the border of South Dakota and North Dakota.

Eventually, she wandered off to ask her urgent question of others. But if the world ends soon in a cosmic building dispute, now you know why.

Names and Numbers

For years, our cabins (ours in the sense that we live there, not that we own them or are able to deny access to them in other sessions at Royaneh) at Pioneers had number only, one to seven,  although cabin seven was the most desirable, being easier to clean although farthest from the fall-ins at the junction of the road and the campsite. This has changed; although the numbers have remained, each cabin has a name, according to the donors who funded the construction of newer, better cabins, although in the same basic form as the old cabins. This pouring of money into the cabins was an expansion of a long tradition of maintaining the cabins lest they be replaced with the abominations that are more friendly to non-Scout populations but reduce the outdoorsy nature of the summer camp experience. Traditionally, these repairs were done during the Good Turn weekend, but the aggressive promotion of Camporee has thrown off that custom.

Giving something a name is a momentous occasion; it is not a coincidence that the naming of the beasts by Adam occupies a prominent position. Names give an identity that numbers cannot. Although the cabins have retained their numbers, the use of the new names - Weber, Callendar, Skewes-Cox, Ehrman, Applegarth, Morrissey, and the one I'm forgetting - has begun to rise. Will the numbers cease to be used? What will happen when a Scout who shares a name with the cabin dwells therein?

The Last Days of Forty-Niner

One summer, when I was in college and helping at Royaneh with Troop 14, a camp commissioner, whose son was in the troop, approached. He said that Troop 347 was coming to camp in the third week and urgently needed extra adult leaders. He asked me if I would help him with the leadership of that troop. I said yes. I had no summer job to which to return, and I have always believed in the Scout Law. So I was present at the third opening campfire of the year as a provisional leader, a leader on loan, as it were, from another troop. Troop 347 had a much smaller contingent than Troop 14, and camped in Forty-Niner, which lay below the chapel and the horseshoe pit. Once this campsite had contained four cabins in the same style as that of the Pioneer campsite, but erosion and weathering had reduced it from four to two plus a fire pit. The 347 contingent was small enough to fit, even though one of the cabins had a gaping hole at the back which made the building only half-usable. This 347 had disabilities - but with aid, they could attend Scout camp. It may seem strange that the council would put Scouts in a campsite with hazards for even non-disabled persons, but I am no expert in the difficulties of ADA compliance and fundamentally physical spaces such as summer camps. Every time I stepped into the cabin, I felt a twinge of fear lest someone, disabled or not, should fall through or lacerate themselves, There were many enjoyable times that session, but when I returned next summer and found Forty-Niner had been torn down, I shed no tears. Forty-Niner is now a toy-sized climbing wall to provide an extra merit badge area.

The Gilded Lily and the Golden As

[Note: Yes, I am using man meaning male; yes, it is a deliberate choice given the assumed audience.]

The Roman empire was built on military might and sound infrastructure, but monetary policy was not an area in which the Romans excelled (they probably farmed it out to the Greeks).. The Emperors had no budget - even if your idea of acquiring money is to take it at sword point from peasants, it is useful to know how much you can extract this year without having your sources dry up the next. The Empire did not understand this. When the Emperors needed more money, they made more money. The result was what one would expect from a basic knowledge of economic theory: inflation. When the Emperors discovered that make more money had not made them richer, and after they had failed to learn this lesson multiple times, they debased the currency: they used their dwindling supplies of the metals from which the coins had been wholly made in earlier eras and substituted a cheaper metal for the interior while coating the outside with the more precious metal. These later coins, although they looked the same, were not the same: gilded is not the same as golden, brazen not the same as bronze.

We use the word currency not only in reference to money, but to the qualities of men as well. An unearned award is like the gilding over the lead inside; rather than reflecting the accomplishments of the man who wears it, it deceives the world and misleads the public to believe that there is something of value where there is mostly dross. But coins and individuals do not exist in isolation. Once there are gilded coins mixed in with the golden ones, shrewd individuals will soon suspect that even the golden ones might be gilded. Once that suspicion has found fertile soil in the minds of men, the value of all the coins are reduced in the markets. It is likewise with virtue or character: it is hard won, but easily lost. The corruption of the individual, though it may often be invisible from the outside or to the unpracticed eye, once known, raises suspicions that other individuals who are in fact golden may be in truth gilded. And while in some cases this may be true, it is a human weakness to generalize from the worst to the entire group.

Thus a group which openly proclaims that its awards reflect moral values and are testaments of character must be vigilant against the debasement of its highest awards. It is far easier for the value of a coin or a medallion to be tarnished than for it to recover its former value. The latter may not be possible; then something which was bright and glorious has become sordid and stained, and the sublime reduced to the profane.

Navel of the World

On a bright Saturday morning, a hardy few Scouts and parents gathered at the Blue and Gold Ferry Building in order to seek by boat, albeit not a swift one, the island now called Angel but to many trapped therein after a long voyage to these domains hardly angelic. Across the foam-flecked waters we crossed to the harbor where the vessel lay anchor and we debarked. Our leader, though still yet a youth, spake unto the rangers and discovered that the path we had chosen was no longer passable. He sought, therefore, another path whereby we might attain the summit of the isle. After we had trod but a short while, we came to a place of rest and refreshment whose roof was made of leaves and whose seats were made of the fallen brethren of the trees. In this place we shed our vestments and donned the garments more meet for journeying.

The ascent led the faithful company through copses and fields full of those flowers whose virtue allows them to grow in this soil unto the summit. From that giddy height, thronged by many who had come to that isle, a man or boy could see all the shores that surround the mighty bay. The ground beneath was made of greywacke, a stone that is born grey but changes to tan upon exposure to the relentless air, and serpentinite, a greenish compound whose poisons forbid all but the hardiest plants to grow. Some in error call it serpentine, a more harmonious word, but those to whom more wisdom has been granted know that serpentine is but a part of the whole from which serpentinite takes its name.

The company descended to the far side of the isle, where they supped on the food which they had brought them. It was a fair spot to enjoy the fare, but that long grey isle wherein some many suffered,, perhaps justly, in part lay between the isle upon which the company sat and the fair city of tall towers and mighty hills whence we had fared that morn. Nigh unto the place of merriment were three grooves dug deep into the earth, that those warriors who once stood guard upon the isle might better aim their weapons in defense of the realm.

When the company had eaten their fill, they journeyed once more. They found a building, long abandoned, ruined but not yet wholly fallen down, wherein they played, imagining the adventures that boys do dream of according to their nature. Some, not tall enough though slender, wished that they had wings or mighty thews that they might reach the levels above forever out of reach of ordinary men. A marvelous mechanical device might have aided in the accomplishment of their desire, but the company lacked such wonders.

The company returned too early to the place where they had arrived upon the isle and from which the vessel would depart at the appointed time (or so it was hoped). Now the converse of men is good for the strengthening of brotherhood, but it would have been better if our youthful leader had used the time he had created for something other than idle games. I with another went to the house nearby, once the residence of the governor of the isle but now a place of remembrance for all that had passed upon that isle since the first Europeans set foot thereon. It may be that my enthusiasm made the sights within that building greater than they might have been, and that another more critical eye assessed the sights more truthfully.

The vessel which was to bear the company back to the city wherein they dwelt tarried in its coming, so that the number that desired to leave the isle, fair as it was, was vastly greater than the number which the ship could hold. All of the company made the first journey (the masters of the Blue and Gold had summoned a second vessel to rescue the sad remnant upon the isle). The boat itself was filled with merriment, of which much derived from the overconsumption of alcohol by those whose idea of pleasure is to eat and drink until judgment fades and impulse rules the limbs. Once the vessel neared the port of the Blue and Gold, a man in their service who fancied himself a wit warned the passengers to ensure that their vehicles, two-wheeled and painted with garish colors, not be taken by thieves and scoundrels.

Then the company landed and this tale is ended.

Sundiver

David Brin is an excellent science fiction author, but like any author, his quality varies. My more oenophile science fiction book club has chosen poorly in this regard, although it must be admitted that Brin's best is within series rather than at the beginning of one. The problem with the first book in a series is the same as the pilot for a series, except worse: it must both establish the nature of the universe and provide a compelling story. Unlike a pilot, an initial book must stand on its own, lest the book do well enough to sell but not well enough to justify a sequel. In a genre such as science fiction, a book can rely on many conventions - the quality is determined not by how common the tools are, but how the author uses them.

The beginning of Sundiver reads as though Brin had written a story that was absorbed and overwhelmed. It is necessary to establish the nature of the society that your protagonist comes from, but that can be a challenge when the real story lies elsewhere in an environment that is not conducive to expo-speak. Many of the details of this particular future history probably come from Brin's non-fiction book The Transparent Society, which would explain how swiftly and smoothly the details are covered. It would have been nice to know more about the Shirts and the Skins (although perhaps not the Spider-tracer up the backside), but it's better to have details to inspire the imagination than describe everything in detail and lose focus. If you want to describe everything, you should write fantasy, not science fiction.

At its heart, Sundiver is a murder mystery embedded in galactic politics. The basic premise of the Uplift Universe is that the galaxy is full of aliens with superior technology. The measure of status in the galactic society is 'uplifting', genetically raising client species to intelligence. Apparently R&D is expensive, since the client species have a long time of indenture before they can join galactic society as a full citizen species - the Uplift Universe is based on species, not individuals. Humans are an affront to the concept of Uplift - either their patrons abandoned them, or they are a 'wolfling' species, an occasional phenomenon of naturally occurring evolution. In either case, the procedure would have been for an established species to take them as a client, if not for the fact that Humans had already uplifted chimpanzees when first contact was made and therefore qualified as a patron-level species. Some aliens are not happy about these upstarts, but since Humans are a patron level species, the only ways to demote them are either to identify the neglectful patron species of Humanity and therefore which extant lineage should take over their education or to prove that Humans need guidance and then 'generously' offer to guide them. This ain't the Federation, folks!

The setting for the meat of the story is a base on Mercury and the titular Sundiver, a sunship which, as its name implies, can withstand the environment of the Sun - the corona specifically, rather than deeper realms. I am not familiar with a story that does so (perhaps I should borrow the Hal Clement collection from the library again). The Solarians, the inhabitants of the Sun, seemed implausible to me, but I have been informed that they are not as ridiculous I had thought. They don't seem to be especially intelligent, but the mentality of a plasma being is probably quite different than that of a carbon-based life-form.

The Library, the database that contains the knowledge that galactic society uses for many purposes, but in the context of Sundiver, schematics for spaceships. Although Earth's Library branch is miniscule compared to that of established races, its knowledge base is immense compared to that of pre-Contact Humanity. The Library is so well-established that no new research is done within galactic society - whatever you need to do, the Library has the schematics to build it. The Library, essentially, is a lazy high schooler's dream. Bubbacub, an alien from a species called the Pil and resembling a psychotic teddy bear, is operating from an assumption of superiority and is profoundly embarrassed that he cannot find any reference to the Solarians in the Library. The solely Human discovery of the Solarians validates the idea of research and cements the status of Humans as responsible members of society. Humans do have access to the Library but the database is organized according to alien principles which Humans must learn. I understand why science fiction in other media assume that any trained pilot can operated any spaceship for the sake of keeping the pace, but it is nice to see an acknowledgment of the effort to learn new systems.

Sundiver is a good introduction to the Uplift Universe, but not an essential read if you want to get into this 'verse. Like many people, I read the following book, Startide Rising, before I read Sundiver
and, really, that's the best way to approach the separable books in the series. The Uplift Universe stories never return to Earth in a meaningful way, preferring to focus on the greater galactic society and the havoc which Humans and their anomalous status produce in it.

Foundation

The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a seminal series in the history of science fiction. Unlike other series of its day, it is focused on dialogue rather than action. Although the Foundation series was not the first to be planned out.. The Lensmen series by E. E. "Doc" Smith has that honor, but whereas that series uses military escalation on an exponential scale to lead to the final confrontation between cosmic Good and Evil, the Foundation series shows a gradual plan to reduce the Interregnum between the First and Second Galactic Empire from thirty millennia to a mere one thousand years. The escalation in the Lensmen series is wholly military and quite repetitive, while the progression in the Foundation series takes abrupt turns but also maintains its central conceit. The later books of the Foundation series explore the fatal flaws of the previous Foundation books, but this post is about the first book, also called Foundation.

Foundation is a compilation of  the first four stories in this universe, plus a framing story that functions as an introduction. In-universe, there is already a framing device, the Encyclopedia Galactica, which manages to be simultaneously the most intriguing and the most frustrating reference guide created up to that date. It is a literary device that places much (but not all) of the exposition otherwise delivered in Golden Age science fiction by the designated mouthpiece, thus stopping the flow of the story, into a format in which exposition is expected but not conducive to a dialogue format. The inspiration for the Encyclopedia Galactica was Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which does indeed have this style of dialogue. At the same time, however, the necessities of drama create lacunae where a real encyclopedia would be at its most useful.

The framing story, "The Psychohistorians" a recounting of the young mathematical star Gaal Dornick with the elderly and illustrious Hari Seldon, founder of psychohistory, is more substantial than many framing stories for other collections that followed. It fleshes out the nature of the Empire at the time of the foundation of the planet Terminus at the edge of the galaxy. The composition of the Encyclopedia, a massive undertaking in a Galactic society more than twelve millennia old, is used as the rationale for kickstarting the process of a shortened interregnum. Dornick, Seldon, and the Commissioner of Public Safety Chen are adequately sketched out for a framing story, but there is not extensive characterization. If you do want a fleshed-out version of the founder of psychohistory, you should read Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, two books written in the twilight of Asimov's life. The details of Trantor, the Imperial capital, have not weathered well scientifically, and were subject to revision by Asimov himself in the aforementioned books. The story is well-written, but does not have the punch that the individual stories have.

The second story in the collection and the first published, "The Encyclopedists", lays out the important concepts of the Foundation series. The Empire is losing control of the Periphery, although it has not yet admitted to it. Scientific research is dead - the current generation of 'scholars' considers reading the secondary sources adequate. Even the Encyclopedia Galactica is a compilation of previous knowledge - possibly an inspiration for the Library in David Brin's Uplift Universe? The Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus, despite its own regurgitation, is actually in a better condition than its neighboring kingdoms, where technology appears to have gone into freefall. The characters of the Foundation series are neither heroes nor villains, but merely people who have convictions upon which they act. Salvor Hardin is not a good man, but he is the man Terminus needs. Pirenne, the chief Encyclopedist, is a straw man. Lord Dorwin not only shows the absence of original research in the Empire but also speaks with an comic accent that would be unacceptable today. The conclusion of the story is not really a conclusion - the deus ex machina, provided by a holographic Hari Seldon, confirms Hardin's authority over Pirenne's, but does not explicitly provide the answer to the Seldon Crisis (another concept which this first story fleshes out), a situation that has developed until there is only one solution. The story ends with the statement that the solution to this crisis is obvious; the answer is not given until the second story. This is fine in the current collected edition, but it would be enormously frustrating to contemporary readers who, one presumes, were not informed that this was the first part of a planned series! Thus "The Encyclopedists" is a framing story that establishes a new universe through two forms of exposition and does not contain a proper ending. And yet it sold well enough to justify a sequel!

The third story in the collection, "The Mayors", explores the use of religion as a coercive force. As stated above, the solution to the first story is given in the second: Terminus now controls the surrounding kingdoms by cloaking technology in the guise of religion. The upper classes of the kingdoms, in turn, control their populaces by using the technological religion. The older generation does not believe in the religion except as a means to power, but the younger generation, raised in an atmosphere soaked in this religion, is not so confident. Religion within the Kingdom of Anacreon becomes a proxy for a power conflict, in homage to Byzantine politics. The floating throne is also a Byzantine contribution (although the Byzantine mechanism was obviously not nuclear). Hardin, as a representative of Terminus, understands the power of religion in Anacreonian society and uses it to defuse the political crisis. Hardin's character has not changed in the thirty years since "The Encyclopedists". He is still a pragmatist leading a government that pretends to be idealist. The Regent of Anacreon, an ambitious man in the guise of a pragmatist, is strongly implied to have murdered the late King of Anacreon. The teenaged and as-yet uncrowned new King of Anacreon, Lepold I, understands the benefits of power but not the delicate balance that entails. This story, at least, ends with a proper conclusion.

The fourth story in the collection, "The Traders", takes place at a later time, when the states beyond the original Four Kingdoms have seen the dependence that the Foundation's religions have created within the Four Kingdoms. Several states have banned missionaries lest their states follow the Four Kingdom's descent. The principal of this story, Ponyets, a trader motivated by profit rather than patriotism or religious zeal, is not from Terminus, a reject from a seminary. The citizens of Termius still do not think of him as "one of them." Ponyets is sent on a mission to Askone, a region which forbids the use of atomics, the very technology in which the Foundation specializes. Fortunately for our protagonist, greed is universal and blackmail is a time-tested tool. The Askonian Grand Master would lose his life if he revealed the hypocritical source of his new wealth. At the same time, however, the scalability of Foundation technology, or rather, lack thereof, indicates that this brand of snake oil salesmanship can no longer be a primary tool in the rise of the Foundation.

The fifth story in the collection, "The Merchant Princes", shows the rise of the merchants over the mayors and the priests, exemplified by our protagonist, Hober Mallow. The Four Kingdoms no longer have any pretence of power - its governments are now part of the Foundation Convention and the nobles are disinherited. Mallow is dispatched to the Republic of Korell, a de facto hereditary dictatorship. Mallow passes a test involving a trespassing missionary using his knowledge of the Seldon Plan. This makes Mallow look bad to the Foundation populace but endears him to the Commdor of Korell. The limited power source of Foundation technology, a liability in "The Traders", is an advantage here, since the Commdor wants to sell atomic beads as jewelry, and an expiration date guarantees repeat customers. The more important feature for the Foundation universe in this store, however, is the realization that the Empire is still at the center of the galaxy and still powerful. Mallow visits Siwenna, a planet on the edge of the current Empire whose history illustrates the weaknesses of Imperial power - the generals of the Empire are more interested in stripping the provinces of raw materials than keeping order, so the general populace cannot rely on even a minimum of security. This story also features the first contact between the Foundation's miniaturized technology and the Imperial technology, which still uses bulky materials as though it still controlled the entire galaxy. The discovery of the existence and power of the Empire leads Mallow to the conclusion that the Foundation will not win against the Empire in its current political configuration, but first he must survive the legal challenge that his handing over of the false missionary has precipitated on Terminus. So there is another change in the government of the Foundation, and a shift from survival in a world of petty states to anticipation of a conflict with an equal or greater power which is not susceptible to the previously used means of control.

Since this is the Foundation universe, military force is less important than sociology, but the Imperial illustration of that must wait until the next collection, Foundation and Empire (one of the tricky aspects of the original Foundation trilogy has Second Foundation as the third book!).

Jupiter Ascending

My decision to watch Jupiter Ascending despite reading the reviews beforehand was based on sociability rather than quality, so this review will focus less on the question of whether it is worth seeing in theaters (if you have a large screen at home, the answer is no) and more on the details; as such, there will be numerous spoilers.

The best way to picture the movie if you have not seen is a combination of the poor man's Dune and Star Wars with an aesthetic but not the heart. The heroine of our story is Jupiter Jones, an illegal immigrant (her words, not mine) with a stupid name and a crappy job. She is the daughter of an English ambassador's son, whose life expectency is governed by the Law of Disney, Parental Division, and a Russian woman. Her soon-to-be-late father is, of course, an astronomer, and like many scientists, is terrible at naming things, in this case his unborn daughter. The choice of the name Jones for our protagonist is no doubt meant to remind us of Indiana Jones, and therefore Harrison Ford, and therefore the good Star Wars trilogy. Our hero is an adventure – IN SPACE! The alliteration is typical of a superhero name, which our heroine definitely is not. The use of the name Jupiter, however, goes beyond this. One can tell from the spelling of their surname that the Wachowskis are Polish rather than Russian, and there is a Polish name, Juspeczyk, that is sometimes transliterated as Jupiter. The most prominent characters in comics with the surname Jupiter are Sally and Laurie Jupiter from Watchmen and the financier of the version of Teen Titans with teenage Ray Palmer, Loren Jupiter (who may be a gender-swapped version of the Watchmen character, given how the DC multiverse/hypertime tends to work). The use of Jupiter in this context makes me wonder whether the Wachowski's protagonist was Polish before the demands of blockbuster movie-making mandated that all Slavs be Russians with ties to criminal activity.

In the world of Jupiter Ascending, humans are not native to Earth – Earth is in fact a long-term plantation. I do have to give the Wachowskis credit for answering the question of why there are humans in space before it irritated the more perceptive members of the audience. In science fiction terms, panspermia, the idea of genetic seeding, is a better explanation than “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The movie only discusses planting humans, but I must assume that other items were also seeded when the Earth humans were. The deliberate extinction 65 million years ago would certainly provide the opportunity – because of course the movie has to tie in the one extinction event that even a moron has heard of. No doubt the novelization of the movie will fill in some of these details.

Jones is important to the powers that be because she is a genetic recurrence, the exact genetic copy of an important figure in the universe. I should mention that this movie illustrates the common flaw that science fiction writers have no sense of scale. The Empire in Dune does not encompass the whole galaxy, and even the Republic and Empire is limited to its own galaxy. The use of Babylon 5-style hypergates suggests that long distance travel is not as “simple” as putting in coordinates. Since this is a movie rather than a book or television series, the limitations are not explained. But I digress. The idea of a genetic recurrence as the secular equivalent of reincarnation in a human population which is probably in the quadrillions or quintillions is a good idea. The movie makes it clear that the powers that be are looking for a genetic recurrence because the will of Jones' late identical space twin has a clause that drew attention to the possibility rather than some mystical prophecy or some Kwisatz Haderach-y nonsense. In a bit of foreshadowing, Jones is identified as a genetic recurrence when she goes into a clinic to sell her eggs, which her creepy Russian slacker cousin identifies as “harvesting” in order to make money to pay off his debts. Perhaps the Wachowskis used Russians rather than Poles because Russians are an acceptable target for ethnic slandering.

The universe of Jupiter Ascending is a highly aristocratic place, complete with Houses, servants, and planets as properties. Jones is the genetic recurrence of the matriarch (no father is mentioned) of the House of Abrasax, which is a stupid Star Wars name if I ever heard one, although to be fair there are some profoundly stupid names in Dune as well. The House of Abrasax is one of the most powerful Houses of the universe – nobody ever discovers that they are the scion of some piddling mid-rank House in adventure stories – although since we don't see or hear anything about any other Houses, the House of Abrasax might as well be rulers of the universe. The other reason for their importance is their control of the human resources (quite literally) to make the liquid that allows indefinite life provided that you can pay for it. This is not only gross, but also begs many questions regarding the function of the harvesting industry.

Let's take a look at the numbers. The human race, according to the movie, emerged one billion years age on a planet other than Earth. The Earth was seeded 65 million years ago by the Abrasax Corporation. The House of Abrasax is therefore at more than 65 million years old. Kalique, the daughter of the genetic original who exposits at Jones is 14,000 years old and the genetic original was murdered at 91,000 years old. Kalique feels that this was an abrupt and untimely end, but the movie never clarifies what is a normal lifespan for the one millionth of the 1%. This means that if 100,000 years (rounded up to the nearest hundred thousand) is an average lifespan for the member of a House, the House of Abrasax has existed for 650 generations! To put this in perspective, the Empire in Dune is 10,000 years old, and the maximum life span of aristocrats is around 200 years. Houses Corrino, Harkonnen, and Atreides have existed from the beginning of the Empire. Therefore there are at most 50 generations between the foundation of the Empire and Muad'Dib. This is still an absurdly long number of generations for one group of families to consistently hold power, but at least it is within the time frame of human history measured in generations. Assuming that 50 generations is a reasonable time span for space aristocrats, this means that a healthy life span is 1.3 million years! Even at 100 generations, it's still well over half a million years per individual. This exaggerated (and I've never had to use the word 'exaggerated' in a understated sense before) life time would explain why the children of the genetic original behave like petty infants. They are, after all, only tens of thousands of years old. Since there is no suggestion that ordinary humans such as the space navy captain, live any longer than Earth humans, the longevity of the aristocrats is dependent on the liquefied humans. This longevity allows the Houses to maintain dominance over the other races of the universe. Since there are no other products shown of similar importance, I must declare that the spice must flow! - in the most literal and disgusting way possible.

The three primary heirs to the Abrasax fortune naturally fight over control of the resources. Although two are content to use coaxing or intimidation, the third combines these tasteless but expected corporate tactics with the creepiest seduction to ever “grace” the silver screen. I can understand how aristocrats can present a marriage as a business arrangement, and I'm no prude, weaned on Greek and Egyptian myth and history but this is beyond the pale. Luke and Leia didn't know that they were related (although the ret-conned information about the Force suggests that they should have), Jaime and Cersei Lannister have some level of affection for each other, and Pietro and Wanda have serious psychological problems, but a son marrying his own mother (from his own, genetically-oriented perspective) is creepy beyond words. That said, this lack of concern about genetics in a future space society is nothing new. The Spacers of Isaac Asmov's Robot series show no concern for kinship outside of reproduction, but this is made more palatable by an exaggerated avoidance of the Westermarck effect. Not so here. Jones rejects her own son's sexual advances before agreeing to the political marriage.

The aesthetics of the spaceships is different, but not as impressive as some of the reviews indicated. Perhaps a contemporary audience has been spoiled by the abundance of movies and especially video game designs. The extensive use of force fields in the construction of the spaceships is definitely futuristic, but immensely impractical. Here is seen the benefit of using actual models at some stage of world building. There is considerable latitude in spaceship design once you are free of atmospheric considerations, but wide freedom does not equal absolute freedom. If there were peace throughout the realm and nothing ever crashed, then perhaps detached parts of a spaceship would make sense, but it is an absolute that in any adventure set in space the power will fail. In a world full of million-year-old aristocrats, I wouldn't place much faith in the detachable parts having adequate life support or engine capability.

MLK Hike 2015

On Saturday morning, a horde of red neckerchiefs assembled in the Bear Valley parking lot of Point Reyes National Seashore, ready for the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend backpacking trip. Three days and two nights is not a very long trip, but it's the best one can manage during the school year with a miscellany of 'winter vacations'. Sometimes the diversity of the Troop is also a liability. At this point, everyone was clean and energetic. The two Philmont crews had decided that this trip was mandatory in order to test their gear and skills for the summer; this decision considerably swelled our numbers. The smaller Scouts were there also, with all the enthusiasm and boundless energy of the truly young; inexperience in backpacking would dampen this, but not extinguish it.

When the First Emperor ordered maps to be made of all the great roads of his realm, he commanded that the distance in li (imperial miles) be measured in time spent travelling rather than absolute distance, and that the roads be measured both uphill and downhill. On the first day of this trip, the intrepid Red Horde learned the truth and wisdom in this approach. The distance to Sky Camp was not far, but the journey was entirely onwards and upwards (with apologies to C.S. Lewis). The first stop involved a good deal of pack adjustment, as the contents that were still in the city were moved by the rhythm of the trail. When the group crested and then descended, albeit briefly, into camp, everybody set up camp. The wind of the last time the Troop camped here was absent, greatly aiding the speed of setting up. But the gnats, o the gnats, the gnats swarmed around anything breathing out carbon dioxide.

The first event of the afternoon was a round robin of skills. These included orienteering, outdoor safety, proper packing, and of course knots - it wouldn't be a Scout outing without knots. The stories of outdoor safety seemed to become more gruesome and exciting as the groups rotated. After the learning came the fun: the troop divided into two teams and played a game of Capture the Flag which proved to be more hotly contested than most. In light of this dispute, a rematch was scheduled for Sunday night.

Saturday's campfire was (sadly) a Nalgene (c) campfire, since Saturday had been declared a Spare the Air Day. It is annoying, but probably not accidental, that many Spare the Air Days are the same days a group like this might go camping and want to build a fire. For those who do not know what a Nalgene campfire is, I shall explain. Concern for fire safety sometimes, and more and more frequently often, trumps the traditional focus ("hearth" in Latin) of a roaring fire with Scouts around it singing and entertaining each other. Although the heat of the fire on a cold January night is the most noticeable feature of the traditional fire, the way it provides light is a second important role. The third function is the designation of the stage on which the skits are performed. Without a true fire, the heat is absent, but the other two roles can be supplied by a "fire" consisting of flashlights and Nalgene bottles of different colors. The effect is a cold rainbow that illuminates the performances.

The actual performance at Saturday's campfire was no better and no worse than other recent campfires. The food group skits were undercooked, and one was raw - the players were arguing on stages about the skit so long that they ran out of time! I would say more, but I suspect that my dissatisfaction with the skits, although justified, is somewhat colored by my own unreliable memories of my days as a patrol leader. The food group songs were enthusiastic, but the singers often did not know some of the key lyrics. The Troop songs and yells, however, were enthusiastic, and my traditional song worked almost perfectly. The Troop heard some stories about the San Francisco Giants.

That night, around half past nine, the fog rolled in, making everything unprotected extremely wet. For many, this was not a problem: I, however, was sleeping outside. The important parts of my equipment remained dry, and the exterior of my camping pillow (which was now outside my sleeping bag, as I was resting my head on a sweater) proved its durability and usefulness.



Sunday morning was cool and wet, very unlike the dry weather of the previous trip. Even with the unintentional late start, squarely blamed on the boy leadership, there was no chance of truly drying anything, and a few insects were packed with the boys' gear. Everybody filled their water bottles before we left because there would be no opportunity for resupply between Sky Camp and Wildcat, our final destination. The group left Sky Camp at a brisk pace. The woods were cool and the path was easy, but then the group reached the first fork in the road, and the leadership determined that they had led the group a half-mile the wrong way! There was nothing to do other than turn around and dismiss the mistake (unconvincingly) as a "warm-up". It's better to make such mistakes on a trip such as this and learn from them rather than on a trip where there are higher consequences for errors!

The morning was all downhill through the fog, thick enough to cool but thin enough to see clearly - ideal hiking weather. A steady downhill, even in these conditions, begins to weary the legs, but cool weather may not last, so one must take advantage of it when one can. This fog lasted a surprisingly long time.

As the group was approaching the descent to Arch Rock, the sole of my boots detached. I was forced to changed into my camp shoes. which fortunately were tennis shoes rather than sandals. Nor was I the only one whose boots failed - one of the fathers suffered a similar loss. I do not recommend the trail to Wildcat in tennis shoes, certainly not with a backpack.

When the group reached Arch Rock, the Troop ate lunch amidst the day hikers.  Arch Rock is a knob that sticks out into the Pacific. Its top is bare and sandy, with a few scattered rocks. Its edges gradually curve into the surrounding abyss. It is a scenic spot, but somewhat disconcerting. The remaining water supply was considerably greater than that of last time, since the fog had had provided cool weather almost the entire descent.

After lunch, we ascended the hill that was the first barrier on the journey to Wildcat. The initial climb is clear and then gives way to a forest track with many side-tracks, probably deer trails, descending into the brush. Near the first crest was a viewing station, although few members of the Troop took advantage of it, preferring to get as much rest as they could. Past that point, the trail was easy but deceptively long - several cool, covered stretches were nearly identical and planted false hope in the weary soul. The descent into Wildcat appeared at last, and the group lost all the altitude that it had gained since leaving Arch Rock.

We pitched our tents and set up our food areas as soon as we reached Wildcat. This time we did not discover a field mouse nest in one of the food boxes. Wildcat was more crowded than last time, so playing Capture the Flag in the campsite was not feasible. The boys headed to the beach, where they played the second round of the MLK Capture the Flag series and soaked their feet, swollen from the long day's march, in the Pacific Ocean. One food group had split the duties of grubmaster and had a failure of communication; this group was coping admirably with a skimpier meal, but the other groups had enough food to share, whether that was the result of Scout spirit or a practical desire to dispense of food before the next day's hike.

The campfire was once again a Nalgene campfire. The skits were more creative than Saturday night, but I could hardly believe my eyes when one group performed the very same skit as a different group had performed the night before. The song were once again enthusiastic, and the fathers who had come on the trip performed a medley as their contribution to the campfire. There were, of course, more Giants stories.

After the campfire, there was a conference of the leadership, both boys and adults, for debriefing, discussing any disciplinary issues, and planning the next day's route. The Senior Patrol Leader had not been the previous MLK hike on which we traversed this route, so there was much discussion on which route back to the Bear Valley parking lot would quickest, most efficient, and involve the least backtracking.

This night, many Scouts, especially younger ones, decided to sleep under the stars. The weather was drier and windier in Wildcat than Sky Camp, but I was a bit concerned that the little Scouts would not be warm enough. Fortunately, that concern proved unwarranted - some had friends' tents to which they could retreat, while others had the latest, warmest sleeping bags and the ability of all small things to burrow.


On Monday morning, the Troop rose early, although not as early as last time, when the Troop had risen before dawn and ascended the first hill home in the half-light. Further delay, but a necessary delay, came from breakfast. Scout's Own, the non-denominational service which normally takes place on Sunday morning, took place on Monday - given the nature of the long weekend, Monday was an appropriate time for serious contemplation. Scout's Own took place on a knob overlooking the Pacific. The waves crashing behind the emcee and the speakers were so loud it was sometimes difficult to hear.

Once the other adult whose shoes had dissolved had an adequate (though not ideal0 pair of shoes and a large portion of the pack of the struggling little Scout had been redistributed, the Troop headed up the trail. The ascent looked less intimidating in full light. The first crest, indicated by the presence of a water tank was encouraging, but it proved that my memories of this trail from two years ago were rosier than warranted on the matter of the amount of uphill and fire road. It was cool while we traveled. As usual on the last day of a trip, part of the route was trudging steadily onward in anticipation of civilization and a visit to In 'N' Out. The Troop made good time and reached the Bear Valley parking lot an hour later than the last trip.

It's always hard to end these accounts, since a good trip often lacks a dramatic ending - if real-life adventures ended the way stories and movies do,  life would be exhausting and terrifying. The MLK 2015 hike had its ups and downs (both literally and figuratively). It will be remembered well by those who were there, and the unpleasantries will fade away soon, leaving only the recollection of an exciting weekend hike.

Foundation's Finals

The expansion of series beyond their freshness date is a common practice. One can thank the Galactic Spirit that Asimov did not have a child who co-authored with him in his dotage and then continued to dilute his (or her) literary heritage. The final duology of the Asimov-penned Foundation series, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, connect the Robot and the Foundation series far more ably than Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth. Although Golden Age series are not as dependent on a Future History as contemporary science fiction, it makes perfect sense that Asimov's last books would connect the characters who represent his most enduring concepts, psychohistory and the Three Laws of Robotics. The connection is far less awkward than the Future History multiverse of Heinlein where everybody sleeps with Lazarus Long! Asimov still has not learned how to write women well (although he certainly appreciates their attributes more publicly than in his classic works), and it's not entirely surprising that that the female companion of the legendary psychohistorian is a robot rather than a woman.

The nature of prequels is a loss of surprise and historical inevitability, but the very conceit of the Foundation series makes this an asset rather than a liability. It may be a bit depressing, however, when the audience knows how many people are going to fail. The tendency of fictional characters to adopt rather than breed is puzzling - in a tight timeline, such as a comic, it is an understandable shortcut, but in a fictional biography of a man who lives a full lifetime, it is puzzling. One almost imagines that there is some sort of aversion to biological granddaughters in fiction!

The revisions in the geography of Trantor are a necessary evil, although the time when Trantor was domed over appears to have been moved forward considerably from the Empire novels. Eras in the Asimovian amalgamated universe seem to be more important in terms of sequential events than absolute dates. The trio of Seldon, Daneel, and Dors Venabili suggests that Asimov would have liked to revive Susan Calvin for his final novels but could not justify a second time-travel incident like that of Joseph Schwartz, especially after the swerve from temporal to spatial research in 1932.

One of the advantage of a novel written by the creator of a series is the restraint in adding discordant elements. The robot-idolizing inhabitants of the Mycogenian Sector and the previously unmentioned rise to high office of Hari Seldon are additions rather than intrusions. Although aliens appear in other works by Asimov, the focus of the Robot-Empire-Foundation series does not allow their participation in the principal narrative; thus the spare focus of a Golden Age 'verse is preserved.

Selma and Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is an essential component of the cinematic experience, aided and abetted by that human faculty that gives rise to stories, lies, and Plan Bs when the world seems set against you. The darkness of the cinema, only recently swept clear of the glare of cell phones, is a sensory deprivation which the audience has chosen in order to clear the palate for other sensory experiences. This voluntary immersion is especially important for films that take place in other times, whether in the past or future. Selma is about the past, although its release date suggests it is the past representing and commenting on the future - the Chinese government once banned films set in the past for this reason. This representation, however, may not be exact, and above all should not be explicit. The power of such messages are that they infiltrate the mind, allow the audience to ruminate, to understand where the parallels are not exact and thereby encourage a creative response to the social crisis so addressed.

The inability of the creators of Selma to get the rights to use the actual words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is not necessarily a liability. Every school child has heard "I have a dream" so many times that there is a substantial risk that the audience will gloss over it. The torturous rewrites that this legal barrier triggered may have cause audiences to pay more attention to the message. These rewrites, however, are very much in character for the era and therefore do not disrupt the audience's immersion in the narrative.

This immersion lasts throughout the film, only to be broken at the last second by an intrusive song referencing the incidents in Ferguson. Even if King's Selma march were the right comparison to Ferguson, the insertion of this song indicates an astonishing lack of subtlety in an otherwise well-constructed film, the cinematic equivalent of crying out another woman's name in the moment of passion or the study guide that turns a work of literature into a school assignment. The only possible conclusions to be drawn from this are either that somebody involved in the film did not trust his audience to understand the parallels (in which case he should have made a better, more focused, film) or that the parallels between movie and reality are not as strong as the auteurs would wish, and that the addition of the final song is a desperate attempt at "relevance".

Review: In Real Life

Just finished In Real Life, the graphic novel by Corey Doctorow and Jen Wang, selected for Mission Comics and Art's book club meeting which (sadly) will be lacking yours truly. The visual equivalent of a short story, IRL tells the story of Anda, a teenage female gamer who develops a social conscience through her experiences in-game. IRL has a rather simple plot, structured around bullying and gold farming, the practice of hiring cheap labor to mine in-game objects for real cash value, (which of course is not reflected in the pay of the labor force), The exploration of how a perceived injustice on one level (i.e., in-game), may reflect an injustice on another (i.e., in reality) is well-constructed. The characterization is a bit shallow, but sufficient for the short format and appropriate to the personalities of many teenagers. The art has fluid, rounded lines; the portrayal of the female form in the real world sequences is neither idealizing nor grotesque - there are more straight lines and generic shapes in the online world.

Foundation's Filming

Warning: This writing assumes that you have read the entire series, and therefore does not avoid spoilers.

The recent announcement that HBO had bought the right to make a Foundation series, based on the Asimov books, raised some issues. On the one hand, if there’s any company that knows how to treat a book franchise seriously and produce a quality television show, it’s HBO (the disaster that is Will Smith's I, Robot still stings). On the other hand, the Foundation series has some liabilities as the basis of a mini-series or multi-year series. Asimov’s stories are heavy on dialogue and short on action. Although a television show can tolerate talking more than a movie, there must be some action, a feature which is conspicuously lacking in the Foundation series. Furthermore, a key component of psychohistory in the Foundation series is that the actions of individuals do not matter; what matters is the mass socio-economic movement. One might note that this lack of individual impact is the exact opposite, the 'Star’s End' as it were, of what audiences seek in movies and dramas. The collapse of an Empire is a messy affair, and there are many action sequences from which to draw, but would they hold an audience as tightly when the premise of the series is that they will not only fail, but fail to have any impact whatsoever?

Hari Seldon himself is a rebuttal to the notion of psychohistory – it’s hard to imagine more of a personal impact than shaving more than 90% off the Galactic dark ages. The Mule, everybody’s favorite mutant, derails the Seldon Plan, and only the efforts of the Second Foundation reestablish its proper course. Arkady Darell, the plucky escapee from a Heinlein juvenile, not only turns out to be special, but is even a descendant of one of the earlier protagonists, Hober Mallow. It must be admitted that Terminus was settled by a very small founding population, but the idea that one family produces many descendants who have an impact on the history of the Galaxy is redolent of a different, more fantasy-oriented, franchise. Certainly, young Miss Darell would not appear soon in a Foundation series, but if it were successful, there is not a chance that the series would not cover the Mule.

If it is not possible to look to the (First) Foundation for individual actions with consequences, perhaps the Second Foundation is a font of drama. Yet the Second Foundation is not a league of assassins, but a secretive order that nudges the masses when they unwittingly seek to thwart the Seldon Plan. It is hard to imagine something more anticlimactic on screen than a mental push (not even spoken) that causes the individual’s grand plan to fail. Its dramatic success in the Foundation stories is predicated on the ability to treat telepathic communication as vividly as oral communication.

There are some positive aspects to a Foundation series. The key one for HBO, of course, is that it is a true classic science fiction universe which antedates Lucas’ pastiche of ‘40s entertainment. Galactic empires are not, of course unique to Asimov, but the Foundation series possesses elements present in the Star Wars universe that can draw in fans of that franchise while avoiding copyright lawsuits on the part of the Mouse. Trantor, Terminus, and the other one-biome planets are a familiar element to audiences; their distance from Earth mostly prevents the problems of the march of science that John Carter presented during his adventures on Mars. The lack of physical description in Asimov’s stories facilitates casting – although it would be interesting to cast an Asimov look-alike for the part of Seldon. Much of the visuals come from the book covers – at least those which bear any relevance to the contents! The names of Galactic planets are based on classical or pseudo-classical names, providing both ease of pronunciation and coding the nature of the planet. Asimovian nomenclature is mercifully free of the meaningless apostrophes of some science fiction universes, and no debilitating dependence on the ‘exotic’ letters of the English alphabet separates the Foundation universe from Game of Thrones. Even the common language, a frequent stumbling block but necessary evil of the fantasy and science fiction genre, is justified in the Foundation series since the Galactic Empire is a stand-in for the Roman Empire and the common language for Latin. The lack of aliens in the Foundation universe distinguishes this universe from all the other currently active science fiction franchises that operate on a galactic scale.

Being an Asimov fan in the impending arrival of the Foundation series is much like being a citizen of Terminus under the Seldon Plan: you have no control over the many elements coming together, but at least you don’t have to put up with 30,000 years of development hell.

Window of the Soul

Recently, I was reflecting on the idea of cleanliness - clean in body and mind. An unclean mind is a bit like a dirty window - when the window was clean, someone could look out and see the world and other people clearly, but now that it is dirty there are spots where all you can see is the dirty and muck adhering to the window. In those spots, unlike the clean areas, the scene never changes. If you allow the window through which you see the world to become begrimed by these specific forms of filth, every time you look out you will see that grime imposed on the otherwise changeable scene. Even worse is gunk on your side of the window, which you could remove more easily than the grime on the outside. Thus, if you have some interior blemish of soul or mind, you will see that blemish in others and treat it as a normal part of the human condition. So perhaps if you see a fault in all men, you should check that your own window doesn't have some gum stuck to it!

Sand (Hugh Howey)

All good science fiction stories have an element of parable to them; sometimes this element subsumes the harder science, not to the extent that it becomes fantasy, but rather to avoid too many info-dumps. Sand takes place in a world that is devastated, desiccated, and depopulated, where the poor scavenge the sands for the remnants of old civilization in a process of diminishing returns. This is a world where the poor are hucksters, thugs, and prostitutes, while the rich hide behind walls and pretend that their security and status is not built upon the same shifting sands as the poor they revile. There is little about the wealthy in Sand; this is a story about those who little, if even that much. The inhabitants of these shantytowns have a better physical situation than the Fremen of Dune, but a poorer spiritual one.

Scavenging the remnants of the past is the only thing that makes living outside the walls tolerable to the wretched poor. The way in which the same item that once was cheap and plentiful has become a rare artifact creates a permanent impression on the reader. The protagonists, with one exception, make their living by diving for these relics in suits designed to control the flow of sand around them and selling the relics. As in any good sea yarn (and here it would not be remiss to remember that the name 'Sahara' ultimately means 'sea'), there is a hidden realm, rumored to be replete with riches, the fabled city of Danvar. The discovery of the hidden city initiates the bloodshed.

The characters are almost wholly the members of a family whose father fell from a position on power on which his grasp was less than sound, and then deserted his wife and children. His wife is a fallen woman, both through the desertion of her husband and the choices she made later out of desperation, which temporarily fed her children, but would drive them away in the long term. The eldest of the family, born before the family's fall from grace, is the best adjusted and least bitter, but she perpetuates the family habit of eventually betraying the trust of the younger members in order to seek her own self-interest. This betrayal teaches the next eldest that there is no support, even within family, and triggers the next betrayal. The next sibling, the eldest brother, is a ne'er-do-well whose discovery of Danvar precipitates the plot. The middle brother is waiting for his chance to abandon the youngest brother, who will then be alone.

The geology and linguistics are inconsistent. Enough time has passed that the stars of Orion's belt have spread visibly, the city of Danvar is buried a mile deep, the Rockies have crumbled to the extent that the peaks barely rise above the surface of the sands (the Waterworld effect), yet the name of the hidden city remains barely changed, and, more egregiously, the names which the mother of our protagonists gives her offspring are modern names which still have the modern meanings! These errors are less offensive if the story is viewed as a parable, a warning against things to come, exaggerated for the sake of memorability.

The conclusion is a combination of Steinbeck and Exodus, a satisfying ending to the story of a family that must make great sacrifices to overcome their lot. The ending is positive, but with the realistic ambiguity that Hollywood loves to excise.

Revealing the End Among the Dry Dust

Civilization is a tenuous construct, and this is illustrated nowhere more plainly than in Eric Cline's 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed. Cline demonstrates how the civilizations of that area - Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni, Mycenaean, Ugaritic - were tied together by trade rather than isolated civilizations and how the best evidence of this trade lies in the exchanges of wealth among the elite, not only in (relative) imperishables, but also in the more fragile goods, whether worn or consumed. He further shows that there were merchants of foreign nations in the capitals of these nations, possibly for generations. The specter of imprecise archaeological chronology rears its head, but Cline handles it as well as can be expected. The source material is richer than in past decades, but all archaeology is feeding on scraps! The interconnection of the civilizations presents a clearer picture of the post-apocalyptic past, but muddies the waters of the lives of the survivors, since the equation of new pottery forms with invasion and a new population is no longer a Euclidean equation. Cline's book is informative, but written in a style too dry for the casual reader, and not technical enough for a professional. Some authors have the skill to walk the via media: in this book, Cline is not among that company.

The Power of One

First of all, a caveat: I wrote this for my book club, so it is a book review that presumes that you have read the book. So, while I often talk in generalities, I do not avoid all spoilers. You have been warned.


I was almost finished with The Girl with All the Gifts, (the cheaper Hachette link is not working right now) by M. R. Carey and truly enjoying it when it occurred to me to look him up online. Then I discovered that M. R, Carey was the pen name of Mike Carey, the author of the 11-volume Lucifer graphic novel series, which I highly recommend, as well as the Unwritten graphic novels, which I started but lost interest in (they weren't bad, though - check the first volume out, and make up your own mind), and the Felix Castor supernatural mystery series, which I have not read. Carey's origins as a comics writer and a screenplay writer are important influences in the strengths and weaknesses of The Girl with All the Gifts.

At first glance, The Girl with All the Gifts has two strikes against it: it is a zombie book (herein called "hungries") and its protagonist is a precocious girl. Either of these, if done less than well, could have ruined the book. The protagonist, Melanie, is a hungry who has maintained her intelligence. Melanie's character is fleshed out (so to speak), and her mentor/schoolgirl crush, Miss Justineau, recieves some character development, but the other characters who round out the principal quartet, Sargeant Parks and Doctor Caldwell, are shallow. The characterization of Parks improves as that of Justineau goes fallow. Melanie is a strong enough character on her own, but the plot demands interaction (it's a zombie book, after all, not a "last man in the world" book), so there is a lot of Justineau in the beginning. Justineau is the force that explains why Melanie is "alive", rather than cannon fodder for Parks' men, and a quite different novel could have been written about Justineau's project. Justineau, however, is fundamentally a plot device in Melanie's world, so once the quartet leaves Justineau's natural domain, her characterization withers and dies on the vine as she persistently engages in mind-numbingly stupid objections given the post-apocalyptic world she lives in. Sympathy for the devil is one thing, giving him your credit card is quite another.

To make a long story short, bad things happen (because of course they do, because it's a zombie book), and the merry band hit the road. Justineau becomes baggage, and Melanie and Parks become the important duo. Parks' changing attitude to Melanie is not really character development as much as revelation of a constant character in differing circumstances. He does not learn as much as one might think, but to say more about that would spoil the ending. Melanie's relationship with Caldwell remains (justifiably) hostile.

The limited sociological detail in the novel is reasonable, since this book is not about the society, but rather about the coming of age (in a strange way) of a little undead girl. The scantiness of the personal relationship is more troubling. The Girl with All the Gifts is not only a novel, but also a screen play, written simultaneously; apparently, the novel's multiple viewpoints are collapsed into the single viewpoint of Melanie in the script. The paucity of description of characters in the book is probably interference from the script process, as are some of the graphic scenes that only touch lightly on the plot. Both movies and comics are collaborative art forms, which means that they are both more than the sum of their parts and divided in complimentary tasks. Some of the details absent from the book would be filled in by the illustrator in a comic or the set designer in a movie.

The scientific explanation of the apocalypse makes a fair amount of sense - at least, it explains how the walking corpses are walking. The explanation of Melanie's functionality is good, as far as it goes. It does answer how a ten-year-old hungry can maintain intelligence, but there are some confusing and inexplicable things about her existence to the ten year mark - human babies don't map perfectly onto animal babies. Only Melanie's total lack of knowledge of her life before captivity excuses the lack of an explanation. The complexities of Carey's other plots makes it probable that he does have one. The resolution of the plot, which is closely tied to Melanie's nature and others like her, is cold and logical, yet hopeful. It would be nice if the movie does not have an artificially happy ending, but Hollywood is rather hopeless in that regard. As in all zombie books, the solution is (or seems to be) a temporary solution, but it does further the standard "future history" of the zombie apocalypse from one generation to two generations. If The Girl with All the Gifts catches the imagination of the zombie-mad masses, I expect that there will be further exploration of undead incubation, child care, and post-human civilization.

Canoe Trip 2014

We gathered on an early Saturday morning in a place from which we could see Angel Island and sites across the Bay. The exercisers arrived before the boys did. A prompt departure was a challenge - military efficiency is not expected, but we still failed to leave before the arrival of the legendary Late Scout. The trip up to Burke's Canoe Trips was uneventful, with some delaying on the road longer than others for their cappucinos. In previous years, a Troop father had generously allowed us to camp on his riverine estate with an apple tree much beloved by small Scouts, but in this year the house was undergoing renovation, so we could not stay there. I could not find the cord which I had bought for this trip and with which I had intended to secure my drybag, so I had to use my shoe laces. Part of being prepared is knowing secondary uses of objects! The supply boat carried our extra water, which our leader had managed to acquire. The first challenge of the river was a choice between a portage and a particularly swift and bushy curve. Many of the Scouts chose to portage, but with skill we avoided the worst traps of the curve.

When we had passed this, we saw a cormorant gliding along the river, heedless of the canoers invading his realm; there were many revelers this weekend, since those who sought adventure had adapted their expectations to current drought conditions. We also saw ducks in a row - I had thought this an image drawn from the repetitive targets of carnival hucksters, but it is a real phenomenon. Six or seven duck were perched on log in an eddy, craving the algal growth below them.

The Troop dad, who had gone home to fetch his kayak, now joined us for a stretch. He was good company and he left before the journey back up-river became too long. The cormorant appeared again, this time on the stump of a high tree, with its wings spread out. Majestic and serene!

The campsite which we had found in lieu of the apple orchard was a RV campground, so we held out  few hopes for it, but our site was surprisingly pleasant and large. It was much better than the land on which we used to camp, the land of the Pomo tribe, which held a large dirt patch and an over-priced convenience store. One Scouts had forgotten his kit, so I lent him one of my two bowls on the promise of a thorough cleaning and remembering to bring his supplies next time.

There was a proper fire pit, so our campfires had actual fires, a nice change from the creatively arranged but hardly warming translucent Nalgene bottles illuminated by flashlights.The skits were in the low moderate range, not bad for the beginning of the year. The yells were reasonably creative, and all the songs were off-key. I spoke on the history of canoes, a rough, unpolished speech, but most works start as uncut diamond.

The Troop settled down quickly after the campfire ended. I had forgetten my warm top for sleeping outside, but the second, interior drawstring of my sleeping bag provided a more than adequate cocoon. The spot which I had selected was ideal, as far as dirt patches go - flat, no sharp rocks or tree roots, no overhanging tree branch to drip on me in the morning. That last proved not be a concern, since the place was too dry for dew. The older boys had decamped to a lower grassy field, but around midnight they returned from the mosquito-laden mere that adjoined the grassy area.

In the morning, the adult group had no breakfast, but a combination of personal rations and an overflow of apples from one of the Scout groups solved the problem. There was a brief Scout's Own, done sufficiently and briefly. By this point, there was only one parent to choose as the speaker.  We returned home early, but everybody had had a good time.

Gorgeous? Only Mostly.

The current exhibit at the Asian Art Museum is entitled Gorgeous, one of those pretentious adjectival titles so beloved of show organizers scrambling for a label, any label, to encompass the miscellany they have scrounged together. My sweetie wanted to see the show, so we went on a pleasant Saturday. The ticket price was reasonable. The exhibit was divided into four parts, although the sequence was not apparent without explicit guidance. I'm still not sure what the justification for the division, other than space, was. Many of the items were very beautiful, quite a few were fairly pretty, some were baffling, and a very few should not have been in an exhibit entitled Gorgeous! The statue of Michael Jackson and Bubbles (the chimpanzee, not Fred Astaire's tap dance tutor) was pretty - a bit tacky and shiny, and something which the Ancien Regime would have loved. The abstract art, especially the paintings, held a tenuous position - my beloved could see no worth in them, but I had to concede that the proportions followed a pleasing geometry. The display of an iPhone offended my very sense of art - not a block carved or painted in the shape or colors of an iPhone, not one constructed or mutilated by the artist, but just an iPhone. Found art requires a context - otherwise, it's just an object! The display of an iPhone as art should also serve as an indictment of the art- and music-starved education of the millennial generation.

A different item which suffered from lack of context was the quartered pile of rubble in Room 4 of 4. If it were in the vicinity of a bombed-out building like those of Cocteau's post-World War II Orpheus, or next to Grace Cathedral when the grand stairs had been demolished, I could have deemed it art; without that context, an informational poster updating a committee on building progress would be more artistic. And then there was the urinal, well-made and clean, and by no means the ugliest thing in the exhibit. Craftmanship has become rare, but so rare that there is no difference between good design and artistic creativity? If there were an artist in this situation, it was the designer of the urinal model, not the vapid artiste who ordered it from home furnishing.