The Staging Point

What’s the first thing you notice about this image, from an upcoming game called Star Wars: The Force Unleashed?

The issue here is, of course, why sci-fi females seem to wear such impractical armor. And that’s a good question to ask. But I’d say that the most striking thing about this image is not the Star Wars equivalent of the chainmail bikini that our Jedi friend here is wearing. The real question was noted by this Metafilter commentor: are those some kind of nightstick lightsabers?

Allow me to quote liberally from his comment:

People, this needs to stop.

Back in Ye Olde Days, people did not sit around nailing swords to just about everything and calling them weapons. [...]

Thus how it should be with lightsabers. Yeah, I know every saber is an expression of its user, but more and more these days that expression is “I am a dolt more impressed by flash than keeping to tried and true rules.” There are still a host of sword varieties out there that could be lightsaberified, from slightly curved katanas to monstrous zweihanders. Let’s see some more of those before we even hear the whirling whine of lightchucks, smell the ozone-laden tang of the lightmace, or shield our eyes from the horrible glare of the “I just duct-taped 40 lightsabers to my body” lightgrizzlybear encounter suit. A sword is fine. It’s all you really need. It’s a classic for a reason. Everything else is needless flash.

Well, except for the lightscythe that my alter-ego Darth Deathilicious has. That’s totally justified in her character history

How right you are, brother. (How do you use lightsaber nightsticks without chopping off your own arms?) In the original Star Wars trilogy, everybody seems quite content with the normal, longsword-style lightsaber. And that was really cool. But in the prequel trilogy, you can’t help but notice a weird sort of lightsaber arms race: first there’s Darth Maul’s dual-bladed lightsaber quarterstaff, then Anakin dual-wielding lightsabers, and Count Dooku dual-wielding stylish, curved-handled lightsabers. And then General Grievous wielding like forty million lightsabers at once. It’s all kinda cool… but there’s just something classier about those old-fashioned, ordinary lightsabers. This is where it’s at, my friends:

But I do like the mental image of Darth Deathilicious and her lightscythe. She sounds like a worthy companion to my own alter-ego, Darth Darkreaver Souldoom (fifty times more powerful than Mace Windu, and beloved by all the ladies; so awesome that he bucks the standard Darth naming scheme), who wields all of the lightsaber types mentioned above, but he also throws lightsaber shurikens.
I sure picked a bad day to stop writing Star Wars fanfiction.

I thought this was an interesting read: a fairly straightforward-sounding Q&A session with five doctors about (among other things) the state of their profession.

The health-care debate is something I know very, very little about, so I generally refrain from commenting. (And don’t worry, that’s not what the article is really about, although one can’t get through the article without getting the strong impression that there’s a lot that’s horribly screwed up about our medical system.) But the doctors’ comments towards the very end of the article about the prospect of universal health care caught my interest, because they echo what a doctor friend of ours has mentioned once or twice: that a very great deal of money and interest in the current American system is focused on helping people with extremely serious health problems of the sort that other health-care systems might (reasonably?) write off as terminal. That’s great if you’ve got such a problem and have access to good insurance; I know of more than one person in my circle of family and friends whose life has been literally saved by this system, no doubt at hugely disproportionate cost to the health-care/insurance system as a whole. But is that the best way to do things from the perspective of broader society? Probably not, but who knows? I sure don’t, so I’ll just stop talking for now.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. –from “The Call of Cthulhu”

But how on earth does someone who can compose the wonderful simile of the ruins “protruding uncannily above the sands as parts of a corpse may protrude from an ill-made grave” manage to let themselves write, not a page later, that the “brooding ruins … swelled beneath the sand like an ogre under a coverlet”? –Kenneth Hite on Lovecraft

The BBC recently broadcast a radio show examining the life and continuing influence of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft is the early 20th-century writer of weird fiction who invented the Cthulhu Mythos and penned many stories of “cosmic horror.”

I am extraordinarily fond of Lovecraft’s writing. In fact, I’d certainly place him amid the crowd of writers whose work has inspired or influenced me throughout my reading life. One thing that intrigues me about Lovecraft is that he’s not a terribly good writer in any traditional sense of the word: his recognizable-from-a-mile-away writing style is often clumsy and obsessed with clunky words like “cyclopean” and “squamous” (for a challenge, fit those into your next everyday conversation); his characters are often poorly developed (and there’s pretty much one female mentioned–once–in the entire body of his work, and she’s a centuries-old undead witch); and he consistently sidles too close to Goofiness when he’s trying to evoke Creepiness.

But he’s got one thing that more than compensates for any technical failing of his writing: sheer, unadulterated vision. You can see it lurking behind every awkward, adjective-laden phrase, in every earnest description of a monster that’s supposed to be horrifying but instead comes across sounding like a hippopotamus-headed tentacled frog. And every great now and then, his vision breaks out of the cheesiness of his writing style and knocks you over with its pure brilliance. Occasionally, amidst all the mad scientists and squid-faced flying ooze monsters, you catch a sanity-shattering glimpse of what Lovecraft is really scared of: a universe that doesn’t care, in which mankind and all he’s accomplished is just an unnoticed aberration of evolution. Lovecraft throws all that overwrought prose at you to keep you distracted, and then when your attention is diverted, he punches you in the gut with the existential awfulness of his vision.

At the risk of turning him into a cheesy inspirational figure, I like Lovecraft because he’s an example of somebody whose ideas were so compelling that his writing deficiencies simply didn’t matter. In fact, the strength of his vision and the earnestness with which he pursued it actually took that sometimes-awful prose and made it a work of art in its own right. In religious terms, his ideas redeemed the clumsy way in which he communicated them.

My own introduction to Lovecraft came in the form of a computer game, actually–Infocom’s The Lurking Horror. In college I found a collection of Lovecraft stories and, one spring, I spent many a sunny Michigan afternoon reading almost everything he’d written. “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” and “At the Mountains of Madness” were my instant favorites, along with some of his lesser-read, dreamlike short stories. Then followed the superb Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game (a must read for Lovecraft fans, even if you’ve no intention of playing it) and the realization that some of my other favorite horror stories (Stephen King’s It, for instance) were essentially Lovecraft fan fiction.

All this to say: if you’ve not had the joy of reading Lovecraft, you really ought to head down to your local library and check out a collection of his stories. And a few links if you want to delve a bit deeper:

• Ken Hite, writer of excellent roleplaying books, has been reflecting on each of Lovecraft’s stories (the good ones, the bad ones, and the mind-shatteringly awful ones) at his Livejournal. (See his commentary on “Mountains of Madness,” for instance.)

• Neil Gaiman wrote a spectacular Lovecraft/Sherlock Holmes crossover story called “A Study in Emerald”, which impresses me anew each time I re-read it. (It’s the third story down on the page.)
• Lots of information about Lovecraft’s life and works.
• “A Colder War” by Charles Stross, adding the Cthulhu Mythos to the Cold War.

I don’t go to many concerts, but oh, how many times I’ve wanted to write a variant of this brilliant letter upon leaving the movie theater. My particular curse is not the annoying music fan, but the Guy Who Narrates Everything That Happens in the Movie to his girlfriend/wife, a tragic woman who apparently is incapable of discerning for herself that yes, Batman is getting into the Batmobile, and yes, he is now driving through the streets of the city, which is of course Gotham City in case you’ve not paid any attention to anything Batman-related over the last few decades. And that guy wearing the scary scarecrow mask? That is in fact the Scarecrow, who you may recall was introduced to us several minutes ago in this very film.

Most recently I had the pleasure of sitting next to the Guy Who Loudly States Plot Spoilers Before They Happen, since it’s important that his wife/girlfriend (and the people sitting nearby) not be surprised by anything that happens in the movie. Fortunately the movie was Pirates of the Caribbean 3, the garbled narrative mess of which stripped spoilers of their usual movie-ruining power.

This is quite amusing and well-done.

That scene in Platoon, by the way, is one of the Andy’s Favorite Film Moments. I suspect that if I were to watch the film again today, it would come across as heavy-handed and overly dramatic. But when I first saw it back in college… wow. The slow-motion shot of the US choppers’ shadows flitting past overhead as it happens–good stuff. And it helps that it’s set to one superb piece of music.

update: and here’s the original scene from Platoon.

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. –Robert Louis Stevenson

Michele and I have a road trip coming up soon. It’ll take us through what many people would consider the “boring flyover” states (Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas), but it’s a route we both enjoy. It’s long and flat and hot, but it’s a familiar drive, one that we’ve made many times before. Lots of time to talk, read, and listen to music in the car, and nothing to challenge our rather limited navigational skills–just get on 80 and stay there.

One reason we’re especially excited about this trip is that it’s the last big road trip we’ll be making before (Lord willing) the baby arrives in autumn. (Oh, and if you don’t know–we’re having a baby.) We’re trying to steer clear of the notion that Our Lives Will Change Forever once Baby arrives (yes, “Baby”–trust me, you don’t want to hear the array of Byzantine, ancient Mesopotamian, and Tolkien-derived names we’ve put on the list of Possible Baby Names), but there is that sense that we need to be extra deliberate in our enjoyment of this trip, since we might be making just a few minor lifestyle changes once our cute little broodling joins the family.

Odd as it may be, I mentally associate traveling through the Midwest (highway 80 in particular) with our marriage. While Michele and I were dating, I made the drive between west Michigan and Chicago countless times. The Saturday-morning drive to Chicago was a joy because at the end of the trek Michele was waiting; the Saturday-evening drive back to Michigan was a joy because I had just spent several hours with my future wife. (But credit where credit is due: I want to thank my indefatigable red Chevy Cavalier, the Dandy Warhols, and Depeche Mode for making those trips a bit more manageable.) Once we got married, the travel continued, along the same route even (Michigan to Chicago) but extended further out to Nebraska, where Michele’s family lives. The Cavalier, which I figure has put in its time, has been retired; but the Dandy Warhols and Depeche Mode still keep us company along the route.

For both of us, road trips also mean books. I have a little habit of choosing a book to read on each road trip we take. (Usually more than one, actually, but I always designate which book is the official Road Trip Book.) I love reading in the passenger seat as Illinois and Iowa roll by outside. Invariably the experience of reading my chosen book gets woven into the road trip experience, so that my memories of one are permanently intertwined with the other. Last year it was Alan Moore’s Watchmen; before that it was Umberto Eco’s Baudolino; Nabakov’s Pale Fire and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine (written with somebody else, I forget who) happened in there somewhere, going all the way back to our honeymoon road trip along highway 80, which was accompanied by the decidedly unromantic Six Armies in Normandy by John Keegan. This year it’s A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance, and I’ve already cheated by reading the first 50 pages before the road trip’s begun.
So we’ve got a road trip coming, and I’m mentally and emotionally ready for it. If Baby can hear us yet, s/he will be treated to our comfortable routine of Generation X music, political banter, and nostalgic reminiscing about the days when The X-Files was still good, people treated each other with respect, and the Fourth Crusade had not yet sacked Constantinople. I hope Baby enjoys it, because Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, the three of us have many years of these trips ahead of us.

This is probably old news to most of you, but on the off chance that a few of you have not seen this priceless Star Wars blooper, I must post it. During the escape-from-the-Death-Star sequence midway through the film, a group of stormtroopers comes through a door; watch the one on the right closely:

It happens very fast and is easily missed if you aren’t paying attention. The sound of his helmet smacking the bulkhead is audible, so I assume it was deliberate. Nevertheless, I watched this movie dozens and dozens of times throughout my childhood years before noticing it one day in college. It was something new in a film whose dialogue I (and most of us back then, before the dark times, before the Empire) could recite entirely from memory. I recall scrambling frantically to the orange dorm room phone to summon my fellow SW geek Jeff, one of only two people I know who can recite poor doomed Greedo’s cantina dialogue in the original Rodian. We probably rewound the tape (VHS, in those days) to watch that scene 20 times.

I am sure that those of you who follow politics have heard about Mitt Romney’s incredibly significant and newsworthy gaffe. When asked to name his favorite book, he cited Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.

Cue a whole lot of snickering and mocking overanalysis by every blogger and pundit in the universe–all of whom no doubt curl up each night in their favorite cozy chair to read from a dog-eared copy of Crime and Punishment. A presidential candidate who likes a book about (snicker) aliens? A candidate who appreciates a nice pulp sci-fi story? God forbid a candidate respond to that question with a title that falls outside our vaguely-remembered high school Intro to World Literature syllabus. Thank goodness the pretentiati is on hand to assure us that anyone who would read, let alone enjoy, such a novel is, obviously, unfit for any sort of serious position in government. Can’t have our betters and those Europeans snickering at a U.S. President, can we?

Fortunately, Romney was quick to recant, assuring a worried public that his favorite novel is really Huckleberry Finn. Clearly, that’s an answer straight from his heart, and isn’t just a book title deemed by his political consultants as the Book Most Likely to Evoke a Positive Response from the Most Potential American Voters. (Let me guess: other Romney favorites include apple pie, the Bible, the soulful poetry of Maya Angelou, and freedom; and his heroes include Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.) Good save, Romney, good save. For a minute there I was worried that I’d spotted a glimmer of an actual interesting personality beneath the soulless political mask, an honest-to-goodness quirk that hadn’t yet been sanded down into inoffensiveness by focus groups and asinine political cliches.

I exaggerate a little; Romney has not completely renounced his enjoyment of pulpy sci-fi. And a few brave defenders are standing up to the literary snobs. But this shocking scandal has got me on the defensive, as I enjoyed Battlefield Earth as a teenager and did not grow up to be Scientologist or an illiterate. Whether or not you think that presidential candidates should be reading B-grade sci-fi, mark my words: Romney’s Battlefield Earth answer was the most honest thing you’re going to hear from any candidate for the next 18 months; and it was us who, at the first sign of deviation from the predicable norm, mocked him into repenting (so we could then mock him for flip-flopping). Xenu help us–it’s going to be a long and stupid campaign season.

Why am I content to sit here, blogging in our west Michigan apartment, when I could be writing books like this?

If this were the late 1970s, there would also be a boxed wargame (with 1500 playing chits) detailing this exact scenario. I’m halfway tempted to create it myself.

(Spotted at the Judge a Book by its Cover blog.)

Charles Stross, author of numerous sci-fi and other novels, recently mused online about why the commercial ebook market is broken. Much of his post (which is focused on the ebook novel market) revolves around the issues of piracy, DRM, short-sighted publishers, etc. Insightful stuff.

I have often wondered why digital versions of novels haven’t seemed to catch on; in theory, making available digital versions of clunky print books seems like a no-brainer. I have no doubt that publisher overreaction to the piracy issue has done a great deal to hobble the ebook market. But as for myself, I just don’t enjoy reading novels in electronic format as much as I enjoy reading them in print format. I regularly use and purchase ebooks (in PDF format, generally), but the ones I use the most are invariably some form of reference work. I skim through them looking for specific pieces of information; I don’t read them from start to finish.

I don’t know if it’s a hard-wired mental association that makes me prefer print novels; but put a lengthy story on any size screen (computer monitor, PDA, whatever) and it becomes a struggle for me to read it. I just can’t read any form of narrative onscreen for more than a few pages (see, I can’t even break out of archaic pre-digital metrics!) before I start getting antsy. Lengthy blog posts and online articles in the New York Times are about all I can handle before I start wishing for a print version. If I want to read something by Jane Austen, I’d sooner shell out for the paperback than read the freely-available online text.

Maybe I’m just a dinosaur when it comes to this issue. My wife, for one, seems fairly comfortable reading longer pieces of literature on a computer screen. But I suspect, given the failure of ebooks compared to the popularity of digital music, that I’m not alone in just not finding ebooks as they exist today to be an attractive medium for lengthy, involved stories. While I certainly agree in principle that cumbersome DRM and other reader-hostile practices are a terrible idea, the real reason I’m not buying ebooks is that I just don’t find them very usable to me. Maybe somebody will come along in the next few years and make the medium more attractive to aging Gen Xers like myself, but until then I’ll stick with my beat-up, cracked-binding, age-yellowed print library.