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.

Afar: Dreams of Distant Lands and Times

Afar, written by Leila Del Duca (Shutter, Scarlet Witch) with art by Kit Seaton (The Black Bull of Norway, Otto the Odd and the Dragon King), is a post-apocalyptic tale that feels more fantastic than scientific and more adventurous than cynical, pessimistic, or grotesque. The setting is post-apocalyptic, but in the period when society has recovered sufficiently to have medieval tech cities along with the requisite scavenged and jury-rigged “tech” from the bad old times.  The mix of styles and the chimeras that replace the creatures of our era give a flavor of cosmopolitan fantasy. The art is gorgeous, neither too cartoony nor too realistic. The various worlds featured all feel different, even the one most similar to that of the protagonists’.

This is a character-driven book centered around our protagonist, a girl named Boetema, and the deuteragonist, her younger brother Inotu. There are five threads: the departure of the parents to become “salt shepherds” and their subsequent absence; Inotu’s tendency to get in trouble and force the siblings to move again; Boetema’s narcoleptic astral travel and speaking in tongues while asleep; Boetema’s possession of an alien girl, Lindu, and her attempt to repair the damage she caused during her first trip; and training in the astral plane under what (somewhat troublingly) seems to be the trickster spirit of the post-apocalyptic future. The thread with the parents is unlikely to be resolved until the end of the series. Inotu’s attraction to trouble is necessary to start the action, but his role is sidelined to that of narrator and interlocutor to illustrate the reconciliation and growing bond between the siblings. The possession of Lindu and the quest to fix the initial damage provides the requisite love interest (Inotu’s love interest is sidelined within the first act, but she does get a name!), and the astral travel possession sets up a love triangle that could be messy. Lindu’s boyfriend (and therefore that of Boetema possessing Lindu) is certain that the unpossessed Lindu will be fine with Boetema periodically possessing her, but Lindu herself has not spoken. In this universe, an astral traveler can only possess another astral traveler, including those not yet aware of their power. It seems likely that the similarity of the two damaged worlds will somehow allow knowledge of the other to benefit the other. The fifth thread, that of training in the astral plane, has barely started. None of the restrictions of astral travel have been elucidated and the appointment of a trickster god, who in lore led a boy to his death in the desert, does not inspire confidence – or, at least, suggests that Boetema should temper her enthusiasm and exercise caution.

The characters in this graphic novel are black, but race is not a theme. The action is present, but not overwhelmingly grim. Even the necessary parental abandonment is downplayed. Afar is recommended for 11 to 14-year-olds, leaning towards girls, but not necessarily, given the preponderance of female leads in YA books.

Filling the Void

“There’s Nothing There”

Created by Patrick Kindlon & Maria Llovet

Art by Maria Llovet

Letters Jim Campbell

This is a selfie celebrity take on demonic summoning and possession. Emptiness and voyeurism are transformed into something meaningful.

Reno Salletti is a rich party girl known for being a rich party girl. But when she is invited to a party that proves to be an occult summoning, she becomes a target. Befitting the subject, the initial characterization is slight, but Reno gains some character through the conflict. The extent to which she grows would spoil the ending.

There are graphic sex scenes, hardly surprising for a story that starts with an orgy, but all sex and violence depicted is in service to plot and characterization.

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.