Zombie Lapdance

My camera wasn’t working at the Frugal Media event, so I didn’t get any pictures myself. But Camille Alexa who read a particularly upbeat slipstream story, was kind enough to snap some photos of the cake that the Frugal Media folks had made especially for us:

I also brought along the alien that I found while out biking near Shoal Creek a few months ago. I had it in my freezer, trying to get some DNA work done on it, but it kept coming back saying it was sasquatch, and I know that wasn’t right. But it was getting kinda hard to maintain a level-5 quarantine in my kitchen, so I figured it should have one last night on the town before getting double-bagged for curbside pickup.

Sorry, maybe this photo will be easier for y’all in internet land to understand:

Norm Sherman and those lovely folks at Drabblecast have produced another one of my stories. Although "story" is a bit generous. It’s called "Train Dreams" and it’s a 100-word drabble that I produced explicitly for them.

My previous Drabblecast story "Eggs" is my only published story, out of sixteen published stories, that strangers have told me they remember.

Which is to say, it is the only story that people I don’t know that I have met have remembered enjoying.

As of this moment, this blog entry, encluding BBC code, is larger than the published drabble.

My friend Julia was working on this project over the summer, where they’re designing "trashcan-sized" fission piles for powering the NASA moon-bases that will never happen.

You will notice that one of the final designs involves a stirling engine generator. There are two things that spell the kiss of death for any project design: stirling generators and ion drives. I have nothing against them personally, I just think they’re too neat to survive off the drawing board. Not like ugly old internal combustion.

She told me some of the design details that they don’t mention in the article, like plans to put them on tracks and make them mobile (too neat for words) and the big problem with the electrical generators was getting the radiators to shed waste heat efficiently in a vacuum. Yeah, vacuum is an insulator. So it’s like trying to dump nuclear waste heat through the layers of a thermos bottle?

For those of you in the Austin area, SPACE SQUID is hosting a reading on Friday, November 21st, 4-8pm, at Frugal Media (5400 N.Lamar).

There will be free beer, cupcakes, and I’ll probably be bringing in that dead alien I found the other day for everyone to look at.

Many of your local favorite writers will be there, reading from their most optimistic work. That’s right, this is an era of hope and change, so it’s about time that some of the Sci-Fi reflects that.

That’s right, we’re looking at the future through rose-tinted mirrorshades.

The other day I was talking about how Austin was a hostile environment for experimental art, but tonight went to see one of the best-attended free-jazz concerts I’ve ever seen. Scandinavian trio The Thing had a show down at Ruby’s sponsored by Epistrophy Arts.

Dissonant music makes my brain feel good. (photo courtesy Chris Nakashima Brown)

And then I came home and saw Sweding of a different sort. You ever see that Gondry film Be Kind Rewind? It wasn’t that great, but it centered around a DIY filmmaking technique called Sweding.

Of course with the internet the way it is, you can type "sweded" into youtube and get thousands of Sweded versions of blockbuster films.

Personally I wouldn’t want to encourage people to make Sweded films. More and more I’m of the opinion that art should only be produced by talented professionals with substantial financial backing. I’m sick and tired of any old dope thinking they can throw something together and call it art.

But in case you do want to subject yourself to the cinematic stylings of dilettantes, the two best Sweded films are The Lord of the Rings and this Japanese production of Bladerunner. (Be sure to note that Gandalf has a Dr.Who scarf)

Now that we know what we are looking for, we can start working on a cure.

The advertising for J.M. McDermott’s debut novel Last Dragon has the following plug from Jeff Vandermeer:

"Relentless, dark, and dangerous … A rare kind of clarity inhabits McDermott’s prose … the entire novel is a breath of fresh air."

Before I read the book I thought it was a bit heavy-handed to have such a long quote from Vandermeer. Now that I have read it, I’m disappointed that Vandermeer didn’t give Last Dragon the full credit it deserves.

But I shall do what I can to correct that deficiency.

This book is a masterful first novel. All the more impressive considering all the experimentation and stylistic risks, and yet there are no missteps. Last Dragon manages to be both highly readable and also humbling in its (shall I say it?) postmodern rigor.

But first to explain what the book is.

Last Dragon is an epistolary novel, a series of recollections, that tell the story of a warrior woman from a remote northern village who must go on a quest to revenge the murder of her family. One doesn’t normally think of barbarians as being big on written correspondence, but this proves to be a beguiling take on the high fantasy genre. Each section is a memory, recorded by the heroine from the end of a long life. Sometimes the memory is several pages long, and sometimes it is only a few sentences. And with the perfectly replicated tempo of memories hastily scratched out before they are forgotten, they follow a rambling chronology, linked by associations and personal prejudice. Events are sometimes told several times, with different emphasis. And they are rarely told in standard narrative order.

It’s a curious chimera of a novel. On the one hand it is a deeply personal and subjective work with all the high-falutin trappings of great literature, including recurring symbols (ants and spiders, in case you’re wondering). On the other hand it has all the elements of a fantasy epic, which let’s face it, is the lowest literature in the world. There’s warrior women, dragons, mercenary armies, zombies, and a ragtag band of adventurers.

Again, I am deeply impressed that McDermott was able to juggle these competing elements, and write such an engaging and technically perfect book.

So basically, Last Dragon is aimed at people who are both discerning consumers of literature, and fans of exciting sword-opera. I’m not sure if that’s likely to expand the fanbase, or contract it to just me and you, the discerning reader of this blog.

At a bar last night I was talking to my friend who was all scared because he had heard that Obama was going to institute mandatory national service at the behest of some advisers who have a history with similar Israeli military policies (this particular friend is Jewish, so while his comments may appear to be paranoid anti-semitic, he’s probably merely paranoid).

It turns out that wasn’t quite the rumor going around. Here’s a clip of the relevant speech that President-elect Obama made in July in Colorado (with some SFnal elements thrown in to keep this blog on topic). The text is:

"We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

So seriously. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?

It’s clearly not a slip of the tongue, it’s an entire coherent paragraph. And he uses the word "security" in both sentences, so he can’t be talking about sending college graduates to inner-city schools.

And yet, why would he say something that clearly implies a gargantuan spending initiative, and a novel concept, without ever bothering to explain what he’s talking about? "Just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the military? What could that possibly mean? Roving land-based aircraft carriers on our interstates? Or is he just proposing to give Homeland Security way more money than they already have (which is a pretty reasonable hypothesis and far scarier).

The only googlable sources are the conservative bloggers who barely pause to breathe as they ratchet up the hyperbole:

Blue Collar Muse:
"I have said, in offline discussions, that I believe a Barack Obama Presidency has the capacity literally to destroy this country. That sentiment has been pooh-poohed by Obama supporters who assure me Obama is a proud American who loves this country and would never do anything to harm it."

Gatewaypundit:
"Unfortunately for America, Barack Obama’s security plan is already practiced.
Not in America but in Marxist regimes."

Hyscience.com weighs in with a blog entry tastefully titled "Is Obama’s ‘civilian national security force’ a ruse for something far more sinister?":
"However, Obama’s vague and often shadowy past, his associations, and his prior rhetoric, foretell of something far more sinister that would include putting impressionable youth through a course of brainwashing, and pro-Marxist activities."

And from our non-partisanly paranoid friends at Infowars:
"It appears candidate Obama, if elected, fully intends to recruit young citizens into something he calls a “national security force,” apparently a large paramilitary group “just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military."

Now, I believe, with all my heart, that even with a Democratic majority in both houses, a Democrat president couldn’t get a pound of government cheese to an unwed mother without bleeding political capital like a stuck pig, so the chances of a giant Cultural-Revolution-style gestapo-denunciation-squad marching through the mainstreets of America is pretty much nil.

My guess, is that was a throwaway line to signal that he’s willing to increase funding to domestic law-enforcement and surveillance. Essentially the sort of thing Clinton always did to make it seem like he was tough on crime, even though everyone knows that cops don’t stop crime, they just punish random people after the crime has been committed.

But if I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if that man actually clarifies what the hell he was talking about.

I think the RevSF blort of Patrice Sarath related content is over, but I want to make sure that everyone got to see everything. Here are the links to everything Sarath on RevSF:

We have a sample excerpt from Patrice Sarath’s debut novel Gordath Wood, new from Ace Fantasy.

RevSF editor-at-large Rick Klaw has a Bakers Dozen interview with Patrice Sarath herself.

The entertainment continues with a podcast reading of Patrice Sarath’s short story "Bad Amy." It’s a terrifying vision of the monsters who lurk just a cubical away (previously published in SPACE SQUID).

We reprint Patrice Sarath’s short "Night of Their Conversion," mere weeks after its first run in Space Squid #6.

From deep in the RevSF archives, emerges an audio podcast of Patrice Sarath reading her story "Into the Dark," originally published in Realms of Fantasy. It’s a parenting story for the rest of us. And by that, I mean those of us raising changelings.

And finally, congratulations to our Gordath Wood trivia contest winners!

Not only was this the first time I voted for a Democrat for president, it’s the first time I voted for a presidential nominee who actually won. A lot of people have been ecstatic about the Obama victory, filled with hope and happiness for the change to come.

So I would like to be the first to burst those bubbles and smack some cynical back into America.

Here are 22 predictions for what will happen in the next 4 to 8 years:

1.) The president will successfully tax the rich. That would just about balance the budget deficit, except-

2.) -we will never really get out of Iraq. Expect major reductions of troops in Iraq, but they will stay on at some level, probably as a "stability force" or somesuch euphemism for occupiers. The troops that do leave will just trounce over to Afghanistan.

3.) Prediction 1 leads to the conservatives hating Obama like nobody’s business. The invective increases steadily in hatred, until the language from the ministers of conservative churches borders on the treasonous. Bolstered by the hate speech, the extreme right wing mounts-

4.) -several serious assassination attempts. But luckily the right wingers with the guns are every bit the screwups as the ones in the Whitehouse these last eight years. Feeling increasingly disempowered, the conservatives turn to-

5.) – Sarah Palin as a role model and ideological figurehead. Becoming as divisive and polarizing as Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney before her (but without the common sense to shut up and stay out of sight after the country gets sick of her), Palin skirts the accusation that she caused the downfall of the McCain campaign (see my previous post about the trap of identity politics for the right), and instead becomes a righteous martyr. Offensive comments from Palin will make the news every six months. At least once she will be caught saying something truly racist, but America won’t really notice because-

6.) -investment in the tech sector will skyrocket. Even though investors are politically conservative, they only feel comfortable putting their money in the future when there’s a forward-thinking Democrat in power. Because of Obama, the most stodgy moneybags will think that we can remake the shape of industry, and that people will buy books online if given the chance. With the previous administration, all the investors could think about was oil. Now’s the time to invest in the most goof-ball technologies you can find, but be sure to sell before the conservative backlash government.

7.) America will completely fail to get over its race problem. The cops in Austin will still use force on black people at a rate seven times that of whites. School funding will still be tied to the property values of the community, giving poor communities the shaft. The president will just be another celebrity, no more tied to the liberation of black people than the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, except that now when the middle class sees someone from the working class, they won’t think, "Let’s fix the disparity in the access to education," they’ll think, "That loser could have been president." And it won’t help that Obama thinks those Mexicans need to learn English (luckily, he will find a way to phrase that so it sounds perfectly reasonable).

8.) The energy crisis will continue to be a crisis and too little will be done too late. Luckily the economy won’t hit the post-petroleum brick wall until the first term of the conservative backlash president of 2016, so no one will think to blame Obama.

9.) There will be no significant health care reform. Nobody in power wants that to happen. There’s too much money in the health racket. All that time that Obama and Hillary spent debating nuanced differences in their health-care packages? Total waste of freaking time.

10.) At some point I will find myself protesting a "limited bombing campaign" against a nation’s sovereign territory. There will be five other people there. They will all be incredibly ugly. At least one of the signs will be misspelled and that will be the only thing to make it to the nightly news.

11.) There will be no Great Society-style initiative. Do you remember Obama mentioning poor people? Wrack your brain all you want, he hasn’t brought it up and he never will.

12.) Obama will continue to look great on television, and people will continue to feel all warm inside when he sounds reassuring and presidential.

13.) Exciting revelations about the horrible things done by the Bush administration will pop up continually throughout the Obama administration, even if Obama gets two terms.

14.) The environment will continue to degrade, and people will continue to make token and ineffectual gestures to ameliorate the problem.

15.) The liberalization of international trade will continue in the form of the WTO, World Bank, IMF, NAFTA, etc., without slowing down.

16.) The world will suddenly think America is awesome. Except for Venezuela, which will still hate us.

17.) Conservatives in Congress will do everything possible to dig their feet into the ground. There will be no unity and no consensus building. If Obama asks Congress to breath air, they will hold their breath until they die. There will be lawsuits, special investigators, filibustered appointees, and the minute they get a majority (which will happen mid-term elections second term), they will attempt an impeachment. Lieberman will continue to be a putz.

18.) Something as weird and improbable as a black guy with a funny name becoming president will happen, but none of us will get close to predicting what that will be.

19.) Nobody from the Bush administration will be held accountable for their crimes.

20.) George Bush will write his memoirs. In crayon.

21.) President Obama will repeatedly remind us that the Democratic party is also the party of big business.

22.) The next version of Firefox will have a spellchecker that includes both "Obama" and "Barack" in its dictionary.

In short, Obama is going to be what he’s always appeared to be: a moderate Democrat who seems like a wonderful improvement over the last 8 years just because he’s a competent adult. He will be every bit as mediocre and disappointing as Clinton.

That being said, I’ll probably end up voting for the man again in four years, just because he’s the best we can hope for. And I’m getting too old to think that Nader’s a good idea.