silk for caldé

Another reason to play Skyrim

2011-12-04T19:07:00.001+11:00

I recently read an article on Paste Player, "Reading a Videogame: The Books of Skyrim", about the many books in Skyrim and the other Elder Scrolls games. The article consists largely of an interview with the Skyrim co-lead developer Kurt Kuhlmann and contains the following awesome nugget of information:

Kuhlmann’s own influences, direct and indirect, include “Gene Wolfe, Jorge Luis Borges, Paul Park, Jeff Vandermeer, and Tolkien for the Silmarillion.”

Now I have yet another reason to buy Skyrim! To scour it for Gene Wolfe references! Although this may mean reading through hundreds of pages worth of in-game books... I wonder if I can justify the time this would take by calling it 'research'? I'll say 'yes'.

One of the majestic dragons of Skyrim. Makes me think of Wolfe's The Wizard Knight,
which is fresh in my mind. Screenshot from The Escapist.

Home Fires web comic & Wolfe Chapbooks

2011-08-15T13:49:00.002+10:00

Came across a fantastic web comic on Comic Crits today about the experience of reading Home Fires by Gene Wolfe. The creator, John, does a great job of capturing the play on genre in Wolfe's book, and his comic certainly reflects my own thoughts on the novel.

Also, Lawrence Person just blogged about Wolfe's chapbooks, posting scanned title pages of At the Point of Capricorn (1983), The Boy Who Hooked the Sun (1985), The Arimaspian Legacy (1988), and Slow Children at Play (1989). As a fellow collector of Wolfe's work (albeit with a smaller collection than Person, no doubt), I know how rare and valuable these limited-edition chapbooks are. I'm so jealous!

Reflections on The Knight

2011-06-20T21:41:00.000+10:00

I recently finished reading The Knight (2004) and have now moved on to the second volume of the Wizard Knight series, The Wizard (2004). Although the two books can be said to form one long novel (as is the case with most of Wolfe's series), I thought it would be worthwhile writing some thoughts and impressions on The Knight first.

The Knight follows a young american boy who, when wandering in the woods one day, finds himself in another world: Mythgarthr. There he is given the name "Able of the High Heart," is magically transformed into a well-built adult man, and becomes a knight. During his journeys across land and sea, he takes on various companions, including a half-blind sailor named Pouk, two female Aelf, and a talking dog named Gylf.

Discussing an excerpt from The Knight (part of which is available online) John Clute notes that although the story "may seem at first glance to inhabit a straightforward medieval secondary world with seers and swords, just another Arthurized Version of fantasyland," the book's setting in actuality "resembles fantasyland only superficially, and for just a few pages" (Pardon This Intrusion, 2011, p. 139). This observation echoes exactly what I was feeling as I read the book. At first I was taken aback by the apparent simplicity of the story and its setting: boy goes through Portal to typical Arthurian fantasy world, encounters valiant knights, mythical creatures and magical objects, blah, blah, blah. But it soon becomes apparent that the world Wolfe has created is far from typical. Mythgarthr, it turns out, is the fourth of seven worlds, which exist in parallel and interact with each other in complex and powerful ways. Each world also has its own distinct creatures and cultures. Able's past is also far more mysterious than it first seems, for is revealed that he has spent time in one of these other worlds before, although the experience has been wiped from his mind.

The story also has a fascinating and complex religious element, and a strange cast of mythical creatures from different traditions. One character, versed in magic, says that the human beings of Mythgarthr were created by "the God of the highest world," and we are also told that the Valfather, who lives in a floating castle in the higher world of Skai, is often called the "Most High God" (although mistakenly, for the Valfather abides in Skai, not the highest world of Elysion). These higher worlds also seem heaven-like, and one of them, Kleos, is even populated by angelic beings (the 'angel' that visits Able is named Michael—no kidding). The lower worlds, in turn, often seem hell-like by comparison. However, the small nuggets of information we are given in The Knight aren't much to go on, and I expect these interesting story lines to be developed further in The Wizard.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Knight and thought it was a fantastic return to the rich style of The Book of the New Sun, the four volume series for which Wolfe is probably best known. We again have a first-person narrator who journeys through a strange and fantastic world with a constantly-changing cast of companions. The story is again much more complex than it first appears (and I have no doubt it will become even more so as I make my way through The Wizard). And finally (and this is important) there is once again an excellent balance between conversation and action/narrative. Many (including myself) have struggled with the sheer amount of conversation in some of Wolfe's recent work, such as An Evil Guest (2009) and Home Fires (2011). In the latter of these, for instance, there is a considerable amount of important action involving the novel's central characters that is skipped over, only to be described (repeatedly and in great depth) in conversation later. This is not the case in The Knight, in which we have a fast-paced narrative with enthralling descriptions of Sir Able's adventures, and his epic battles with ogres, giants, dragons, and other knights. Although some conversations are rather long, they are not unwelcome, for they are fascinating and well written, and usually well separated.

There are, of course, also many differences that set The Knight apart from The Book of the New Sun. The language of The Knight is not as complex, and Wolfe refrains from using obscure and archaic words, something that was common in his earlier series. The setting is also very different, for The Knight is set in a fantasy world, whereas The Book of the New Sun (and, indeed, the whole solar cycle) took place in a thoroughly science-fictional universe (although it often felt like a fantasy world, and the interplay of genre in the series is often debated). In short, I would certainly recommend The Knight to anyone who has enjoyed Wolfe's previous series, and would also consider it a good introduction to his work.

My new blog: unfashioned creatures

2011-06-19T21:37:00.002+10:00

Last week I created a new blog, unfashioned creatures. As I explain on the blog's first post, I created this blog, silk for caldé, as a place to discuss Gene Wolfe's work and develop ideas for my honours thesis on The Book of the Long Sun. However, I have also written a number of posts here that have nothing to do with Wolfe or sf literature, and this is something I have felt increasingly uncomfortable with, since this started out as a Wolfe-focused blog and is now linked to on other Wolfe-related websites, such as Ultan's Library. Thus, I have created unfashioned creatures as a place to post random miscellaneous outbursts of nerdiness.

This blog isn't going anywhere. There's a lot more research I plan to do on Wolfe's work and I've got a lot of his writing still to read. I'm about to post on The Knight, and I really should get around to posting on Home Fires at some point. I'm also planning to read through Letters Home and write a few posts on that as well. But if you're also interested in other posts by someone generally obsessed with sf/fantasy literature, film, tv, games, etc., then please do check out unfashioned creatures. You will also find a link to it, and feed from it, on the left sidebar of this blog.

Nobel Prizes in sf?

2011-06-10T23:21:00.058+10:00

There was recently an interesting 'Mind Meld' post on SF Signal, one of the science fiction blogs I frequent, in which the following question was discussed: "What SF/F Authors Should Be Considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature?" It should perhaps come as no surprise that many of the contributors discuss Gene Wolfe, who certainly has some of the most sophisticated and literary writing I have come across (hence my obsession). There is also thoughtful discussion of other significant and influential figures in sf, including Ursula K. Le Guin and Samuel R. Delany. The frequent mention of Wolfe was partly driven by a recent tweet by John D. through the @sfsignal Twitter account, and with which I would have to agree:

Gene Wolfe's birthday, beginning The Knight, and first sentences

2011-05-07T23:44:00.000+10:00

Today — 7 May, 2011 — is Gene Wolfe's 80th birthday. I was reminded of this a couple of days ago when a post on Hoof & Hide's blog pointed me to a new blog that had been set up so that people could wish Wolfe a happy birthday (in the comments field of the first post). The blog, Happy 80th Birthday, Gene!, already has some 114 comments, including one from Neil Gaiman, and a humorous little birthday poem from Michael Andre-Driussi, Urth scholar extraordinaire.

A couple of days ago I started reading Wolfe's The Knight, which has been on my to-read list for ages. I have just started a new full-time job at a different library (while still studying part-time), and have thus been too busy to do much reading (or writing). I've been restricting myself to short stories, and I've been loving The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson and Charles Yu's Third Class Superhero — both fantastic short story collections. Anyway, I finally picked up The Knight. The first thing that popped into my head was that the first sentence seemed uncharacteristically straightforward for one of Wolfe's: "You must have stopped wondering what happened to me a long time ago; I know it has been many years." It got me thinking about the opening sentences of each of the series in the Solar Cycle, which were amazing:

The Shadow of the Torturer, the first instalment of The Book of the New Sun, opens with: "It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future." It is, in many ways, quite an odd opening sentence - it seems to have little connection with the rest of the paragraph, which goes on to describe the aftermath of Severian's swim and near-death experience in the Gyoll - but it so brilliantly encapsulates the book's metaphysical and philosophical themes of time travel, free will and predestination, that I think it's absolutely perfect.

Nightside of the Long Sun, the first part of The Book of the Long Sun, opens with what is one of my most-loved lines of the book: "Enlightenment came to Patera Silk on the ball court; nothing could ever be the same after that." Again, this first sentence sums up so much of what the book is about, it's philosophical and theological core — Silk's enlightenment by the god he calls the Outsider and the absolute paradigm shift that occurs when his entire worldview is turned on its head. When you read it, as the first thing you read, it startles you, in much the same way as the sudden coming of this "enlightenment" must have startled Silk, and thus puts you in the perfect mindset for reading the puzzling and erratic sentences that describe the enlightenment itself.

Finally, On Blue's Waters opens with what initially seems to be a fairly straightforward sentence: "It is worthless, this old pen case I brought from Viron." It seems a simple statement, but I believe it is a metaphor for something more profound, as argued on the WolfeWiki. The narrator's description of the "old pen case" could (spoiler alert) serve as a metaphor for his own physical body, the body of Silk, the elderly man he was sent to retrieve from Viron. The three quills referred to in the following paragraph could thus represent three spirits inhabiting it. The worthlessness which the narrator ascribes to the pen case could reflect the unworthiness (and even self-loathing) that he seems to feel throughout the series, and which becomes central to his character.

I guess I just wanted to rant for a bit about how much I love those three opening sentences, and how each embodies so much of the series that will follow, tapping at the thematic cores of each. It may be that, like the opening to On Blue's Waters, the first sentence of The Knight has some deeper meaning which won't be apparent until much later on, or maybe it is just a more straightforward series than some of his earlier work (which is absolutely fine, and I know Wolfe has been tending towards "simpler" stories in his recent stand-alone novels, perhaps for increased accessibility). I'd better get back to reading to find out!

Comics! and a Tights and Tiaras update...

2011-04-08T23:36:00.000+10:00

I'm still trying to find the time to write a substantial post - I have some things to say about Gene Wolfe's latest novel, Home Fires. Lately I've had very little free time, though - between working near-full-time, studying a coursework masters degree part-time, assisting with the organisation of a conference, writing conference papers, and so on. I do, however, have time for comics!

My wife and I ventured into the city today to check out a new comic store: All Star Comics. The place is gorgeous, with nice staff and a great range of comics and graphic novels. I had to seriously restrain myself while I was in there, but I ended up buying a few trade paperbacks and a few individual comics. I picked up Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds, the first Birds of Prey trade from Gail Simone's run, which has been recommended to me by various people. I was also excited to find Fables, Vol. 15: Rose Red — I don't care what anyone says, I love Fables, overdrawn Israel analogy and all. I think the characters are great, the art and covers are magnificent, and I love what Willingham does with classic fairy tale and fable characters and stories. I grabbed Dollhouse: Epitaphs and The Guild: Tink one-shots (for my Felicia Day fix, apparently), and I picked up issue #21 of the graphic novel adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (by Boom Studios and Electric Shepherd Productions). I remembered reading about this issue of DADoES on Gabriel Mckee's SF Gospel blog - it's the issue in which Buster Friendly and His Friendly Friends do the exposé on Wilbur Mercer, which is central to the religious and philosophical storyline of the novel. Mckee also has a short essay at the end of the issue on the role of religion in the novel, which I'm really looking forward to reading.

Anyway, while we're on the topic of comics, I should mention that the conference my reading group is organising, Tights and Tiaras: Female Superheroes and Media Cultures, now has a conference website and a second, extended call for papers (see below). We have also announced our keynote speaker, Karen Healey, an author of young adult fiction who is writing her PhD on superhero comics and has been active in feminist comics criticism with her now-archived blog on Girl-Wonder.org, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed). If you're into comics and plan to be in Melbourne in August, then come along to the two-day conference!

TIGHTS AND TIARAS: FEMALE SUPERHEROES AND MEDIA CULTURES EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS

12-13 August 2011

Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

Sponsored by: The Centre for the Book, Monash University

In 2010, the 600th issue of Wonder Woman celebrated the Amazonian superhero’s longevity in print media. To mark the occasion, the issue reinvented the superhero’s iconic costume to make it less revealing, introducing dark trousers and a blue, starred jacket. This shift to more practical, less sexualised wear arguably reflects changing attitudes about gender and the growing female presence in the comics industry. Nonetheless, the change prompted some controversy online amongst fan communities, again highlighting the problematic history of the representation of women as powerful figures.

‘Tights and Tiaras: Female Superheroes and Media Cultures’ is a one and a half day interrogation of the construct of the ‘superhero’ as female and more generally of the representation of powerful female figures in fantasy and science fiction. Looking at a range of print and visual media, papers will explore the range of female characters in superhero narratives, the material history of the female superhero, and how visual and textual constructs of female heroes - and anti-heroes - have been re-imagined, re-invented and re-packaged over time.

Keynote Speaker: Karen Healey

Karen Healey is the writer of the popular archived feminist comics blog, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed). She is currently an acclaimed author of young adult fiction and is completing a dissertation on superhero comics as fan-created text at the University of Melbourne.

Possible topics include:

The representation of female superheroes in print and visual media – in comics, comix, graphic novels, novels, short stories, fan fiction, film, television, and other media forms
Distribution of narratives and images of female superheroes across multiple genres and media platforms
The female hero quest
Deconstructing the superhero trope – studies in feminism, patriotism, politics, race, satire, comedy, and so on
Constructs of the female supervillain
Superhero fashions, including costumes, cosplay and sartorial signifiers
Female collaboration in comics
Female comics artists: historical and contemporary
Female comics audiences and fan communities
Analysis of the institutional, commercial and licensing histories of female superhero properties
The construction of powerful women in fantasy and science fiction genres

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words, accompanied by a brief bio, by emailed attachment to tightsandtiaras@monash.edu. The extended deadline for abstracts is 26 April, 2011.

Conference website: http://arts.monash.edu.au/ecps/conferences/tights-and-tiaras/

New Gene Wolfe short story in the upcoming anthology Ghosts by Gaslight

2011-03-15T12:02:00.000+11:00

SF Signal just posted the table of contents for an upcoming anthology: Ghosts by Gaslight: Stories of Steampunk and Supernatural Suspense, edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers. The book, which will be published by HarperCollins and released in September, includes a new story from Gene Wolfe, who is well familiar with writing ghost stories. From the HarperCollins website:

They are the stories that have enthralled and terrified readers for generations, tales of the supernatural featuring haunted houses, phantoms beneath the floorboards, ghostly coachmen, figures in the carpet, ghosts in the machine, foggy, gaslit streets. In this mesmerizing collection, renowned editors Jack Dann and Nick Gevers bring together fresh modern feats of the phantasmagoric in the grand tradition of such classics as Henry James’s "The Turn of the Screw," Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Award-winning and bestselling authors, including Peter Beagle, Sean Williams, Gene Wolfe, Garth Nix, and Robert Silverberg, weave their magic in tales abrim with deep frights, shuddering chills, disquieting subtlety, shocking psychological ambiguity, and radical twists on all the classic ghostly elements. Here, too, in all their gothic glory are the eerie mechanisms of steampunk, engines waiting to entrap, magnify, or focus the souls of the dead . . .

Revitalizing the Victorian and Edwardian ghost story for twenty-first century readers, Ghosts by Gaslight reminds us that within the darkness lurk not only our most profound fears, but also unsuspected horrors from within ourselves.

Sounds like a great collection! Wolfe's story will be titled "Why I Was Hanged." You can check out the full list of stories on the SF Signal post or on the HarperCollins website.

New library acquisition: Encounter with Tiber

2011-03-10T18:56:00.000+11:00

Who knew that Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, had co-authored a science fiction novel? I had no idea until a couple of days ago, when my library's Rare Books Librarian showed me one of the latest additions to our science fiction collection: Encounter with Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes. And the best thing? It's signed by Aldrin! Also, there's a foreword by Arthur C. Clarke. Wow. I was almost totally freaking out in a moment of super nerdishness. A New York Times review and synopsis of the novel is linked to on Aldrin's website.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

2011-03-06T13:35:00.000+11:00

I just finished Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and I can hardly express how much I loved it. The story follows a time machine repair man, also named Charles Yu, who lives in a "science fictional universe" called Minor Universe 31. During the course of the novel, he becomes trapped in a time loop and must figure out how to escape it, all the while dealing with hangups on his childhood in a dysfunctional family. The book is prologued by the following paraphrased excerpt from the text, which hooked me immediately:

When it happens, this is what happens: I shoot myself.
Not, you know, my self self. I shoot my future self. He steps out of a time machine, introduces himself as Charles Yu. What else am I supposed to do? I kill him. I kill my own future.

As the same time, though, I'm not sure it's a book for everyone. Some of the things I loved the most could well be despised by other readers. The narrator's frequent philosophising on metaphysics, ontology, time, and the nature of human memory and relationships could come off as self-indulgent ramblings that don't further the plot. For me, however, they made the book. They also make the protagonist a very interesting and well-developed character. An example of one of the book's great lines: "Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward" (22).

The narrator's reflections on loneliness and isolation, his frequent comparisons of past and future to regret and anxiety, could come off as being unnecessarily negative and depressing, but perhaps they just appealed to my inner emo, because reading the narrator's struggles with these negative thoughts and emotions (regret over his childhood relationship with his father, and anxiety about ever seeing his father again, etc) gave the book a very human element, making it more about human relationships than time travel per se.

The book is also beautifully written, and even those sentences that 10-20 lines long flow wonderfully. There are frequent references to other science fiction stories and to nerd culture in general, and the novel often moves into the realm of meta-fictional self-reflection. I loved both of these aspects of the text, and in my mind its relatively short length, of a little over 200 pages, was ideal, since it didn't allow the book's unique style, blending sf with metaphysics and meta-fiction, to outstay its welcome.

Perhaps the book appeals to me because I've studies math, physics, sf literature, narratology and philosophy. Perhaps it's just because I'm a massive nerd. Either way, I would certainly side with the glowing five-star review the book received from Andrew Liptak on SF Signal, and agree wholeheartedly with his closing paragraph:

How To Live Safely is an exemplary example of storytelling in the genre, where story and characters come together to bring about a story of revelation, and one that is both thought provoking and touching. Yu, working through himself, paints a lonely, troubled existence, one with much baggage that he slowly works out over the course of the story. Here, time travel is the perfect medium for looking over past, rather than the future. [SF Signal]

I just really, really, really wish I could have this one-of-a-kind copy of the book, which mirrors the book as it is described in the book, and was given away by Wired.com last year:

The Book from Nowhere.
Developed by Andy Hughes of Random House’s Knopf publishing group

The Little Bookroom

2011-03-04T11:33:00.000+11:00

When my wife and I were in the city yesterday we came across a beautiful new bookshop we'd heard some friends at uni talking about: The Little Bookroom on Degraves Street. The Little Bookroom is a small independent bookshop specialising in children's literature; their main branch is in Carlton North. My wife studied children's literature as part of her English major, and we've both studied fairy tales, so we have quite a collection of illustrated children's books on our bookshelves at home.

The Little Bookroom, Degraves Street, Melbourne

We saw some absolutely beautiful books there, including some incredible limited printings of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and the complete Beatrix Potter, but my favourite collectible was on display at the front of the store: a limited edition of Shaun Tan's The Arrival, housed in a unique briefcase with a book of sketches and a signed print from the book. If I had five hundred disposable dollars I'd have bought it right there, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. Oh well. My wife and I do, however, have signed first editions of a number of Tan's books, including The Arrival, and we had the pleasure of meeting him at Aussiecon 4 last year (my wife also met him when he gave a talk at Monash University a few years earlier). Tan's short film The Lost Thing, which we got to see at Aussiecon 4 and now have on DVD, just won an Oscar.

Limited edition of Shaun Tan's The Arrival

“King Rat” and the abuse of women in Gene Wolfe’s stories

2011-03-01T19:17:00.003+11:00

I am holding off posting about Wolfe’s latest novel, Home Fires, because I want to receive my copy of the PS Publishing edition (with its introduction by Alastair Reynolds) before doing so. So I thought that, in the mean time, I would do a series of posts on the three short stories Wolfe had published in 2010: “King Rat” (in Gateways: A Feast of Great New Science Fiction Honoring Grand Master Frederik Pohl, edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull), “Bloodsport” (in Swords & Dark Magic, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders), and “Leif in the Wind” (in Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio).

"KING RAT"

In terms of genre, “King Rat” falls somewhere between the sword and sorcery fantasy setting of “Bloodsport” and the hard sf setting of “Leif in the Wind”, taking place in what seems to be a far distant post-apocalyptic future.

The story begins with the protagonist-narrator leaving his ruined city and sneaking aboard a massive alien spaceship, the main body of which seems to have been outfitted with a small, self-sufficient eco-system, with open fields and running streams surrounded by tall cliffs. (It is unclear why these aliens built such a spaceship, and whether or not they know that humans have been sneaking aboard and living there.) There he lives, just trying to survive, and even has a female companion stay with him for a while. For some time he stays near the cliffs of the spaceship, where he discovered a hidden door that allows him entrance to the ship’s corridors and storage holds. Near the end of the story the protagonist teams up with a young lion to take down the leader of a group of humans, thereby becoming king.

Throughout the story the narrator encounters a number of strange animals, and we are constantly trying to figure out the bizarre natures of these animals. What the narrator calls ‘spiders’ are clearly aliens, and probably received that name because of their eight eyes and eight legs, although they would seem to be roughly human sized. These aliens use modified, controllable elephants for labour. The narrator also describes multiple encounters with lions that seem to be intelligent and capable of speech, although they otherwise look and act like normal lions.

But the story is first and foremost about human nature and the human condition. Just as we are asking, “what are the natures of these animals?” we must also ask, “what are the natures of these humans?” And the human race does not fare well. The narrator, like most of the other people in the story, is treacherous, violent, cannibalistic, and an absolute misogynist.

DEPICTING THE ABUSE OF WOMEN: TEXT AND CONTEXT

Particularly given the way the story ends (and I'll get to that later), I feel I should say something here about the representation of women in this story and, to a lesser degree, in Wolfe’s work in general. The other day I was reading a heated GoodReads message board discussion on whether or not Wolfe is a rampant woman-hating misogynist that advocates the rape, torture, and general abuse of all women everywhere. The supposed evidence for this was the horrible mistreatment of women in Severian’s society on Urth in The Book of the New Sun, in which we have somewhat graphic descriptions of the rape, torture, executions, and general subjugation of women. Wolfe’s detractors took these scenes and aspects of the society, and the narrator’s passive endorsement of them, as evidence of his endorsement of the mistreatment of women, and hence of his misogyny (see message 1).

Of course, the entire argument is based on the false assumption that authors necessarily endorse everything they describe in their stories, and that narrators are always mouthpieces of their writers. That is not true of most sophisticated authors, and certainly not true of Wolfe (see message 7). Thus the argument progressed to adamant declarations that society was meant to have moved on from including such ugly things as rape and torture in literature, and that Wolfe’s writing is not literature anyway, but rather “pulp, fantasy Sci-Fi” (message 16 – also read the great responses in message 17 and message 23). Sigh.

Anyway, let me use some anecdotal and textual evidence to illustrate why it is important to consider context when reading such scenes, so as not to mistake condemnation for endorsement. One evening, a few years ago, a friend and I were watching the Richard Dawkins documentary The Root of All Evil? (later re-titled The God Delusion) on TV. In it, Dawkins argues that the world would be better off without religion, and as part of his argument he attempts to prove that the Old Testament, as an important part of Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, contains poisonous incitements to (and justifications of) gross violence and misogyny (see also chapter seven of his book The God Delusion). He does this by citing Judges 19:22-30, which describes the group rape and beating of a female concubine, and her subsequent death and dismemberment. The next day my friend and I attended a lecture for our history/literature unit “The World of the Bible: Text and Context,” in which the lecturer, having also watched the documentary the night before, tore apart Dawkins's terrible misinterpretation of the text. He emphasized the importance of taking the text in context, and not taking the passive narration of the events (and almost all of the historical books of the Bible are narrated in such a way) as an endorsement of them. He explained that reason the passage chosen by Dawkins appears towards the end of the book of Judges is because that book is meant to illustrate the increasing degradation and unraveling of society, to the point that the people needed a king to guide them. The events of Judges are a progression from bad to worse, and the horrible mistreatment of women is the worst point society reaches before all-out civil war in Judges 20-21. Indeed, the book closes reiterating its most repeated words: “In those days there was no King in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The entire point of the graphic rape and violence in Judges 19 was to show how far society had fallen and how badly the people needed guidance – it was certainly not an endorsement of the actions being described, but rather a condemnation of them.

THE MISTREATMENT OF WOMEN IN WOLFE’S STORIES

As in the text discussed above, Wolfe’s description of the mistreatment and subjugation of women in Severian’s society (and by Severian himself) should not be taken as Wolfe’s personal endorsement of it, any more than his descriptions of cannibalism and public executions (also done by Severian) should be taken as endorsements of those actions. Rather, it should be read as further evidence of just how far human society had fallen by the time the story begins; evidence that the post-apocalyptic Urth is a dystopian place of horrible violence and perversion (and not just violence against women, for men are also raped, tortured and abused in the story, although, on the whole, women certainly do fare worse in the intentionally backward society of Severian’s Commonwealth). Just as J. G. Ballard is not endorsing the truly twisted, violent perversions described in novels such as Crash and High-Rise, Wolfe is not endorsing the mistreatment of women depicted in The Book of the New Sun.

Wolfe generally avoids using his protagonists or narrators to proclaim his own beliefs, but the closest he comes to creating and using such a mouthpiece may well be Patera Silk, the protagonist of The Book of the Long Sun. In Silk, Wolfe set out to depict a truly good man, and has acknowledged that Silk’s values tend to reflect his own (see the interview with Lawrence Person). When Silk sees a man hit a defenseless woman in Orchid’s brothel in Nightside of the Long Sun, he is infuriated and has to hold himself back from killing the man on the spot, clearly showing revulsion for the man’s mistreatment of the woman. The most sexist statements of the book (which took me aback when I first read them) are made by the wicked Councilor Loris in Lake of the Long Sun, and Loris is a character who clearly represents immorality rather than morality, and who, appropriately, is killed shortly after his misogynistic rant.

Returning to “King Rat,” we find a first-person narrator who describes all kinds of degraded acts being done by people to one another, including cannibalism. After describing how he became king by killing the previous king, Kazi, he tells his daughter (to whom he is narrating) what happened to his wives, and gives her some final advice before sending her off to bed:

Kazi’d had two wives and I took them over, only a river lizard got one by the leg and drowned her. It’s how they do. The other one got to giving me a hard time, so we ate her. After that I remembered your mom [abandoned earlier in the story] and went back for her. Now I want you to remember all this stuff and think about it before you sleep. You’re going to have to teach your own kids how I got to be king and why you’re queen, see? I know you think your kids are far away, but guys see your tits already. You pick a good one. He doesn’t have to be big, but he’s got to be tough, and he’s got to be somebody who’ll stick by you. If he isn’t I’ll off him if I’m still around. If I’m not, you’ll have to off him yourself. Quick. (256-7)

The lightheartedness with which the narrator describes his acquired wives as property is bad enough, but the subsequent blasé descriptions of one being killed by a lizard and the other being cannibalised for getting on his nerves are shocking to the core. His final words of advice to his daughter, vulgar and murderous, also reveal him to be awfully hypocritical: he became king not from being tough, but from making a deal with a young lion; he didn’t “stick by” his daughter’s mother, but left her alone and forgot about her for months, if not years.

The final words of the narrator’s story are horrific – and that's the point. We are meant to be horrified by the sordid nature of this man, by his terrible mistreatment of his wives and his daughter’s mother. It is exactly that dark side of humanity – the inhumanity of people – that we are forced to reflect on. In the end, the nature of the man who became king is revealed in full: he truly is the king rat.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to argue that Wolfe is a feminist, just that he isn’t the woman-hating misogynist that some would make him out to be. I will have more to say on Wolfe’s representation of women when I discuss Home Fires, but suffice to say here that I do believe that when it comes to gender roles in society (and a number of other issues), Wolfe tends to adopt more conservative, if perhaps a bit out-dated, approaches. That, however, doesn’t change the fact that he is an incredible author. An author held by many, including myself, to be the greatest science fiction author alive. Or maybe ever. Yeah, ever sounds right.

"Tights and Tiaras" - an upcoming conference on female superheroes

2011-02-20T10:46:00.000+11:00

My wife and I have been members of a feminist reading group in Monash University's School of English, Communications and Performance Studies for a couple of years. Our group is currently organising a symposium on female superheroes, titled "Tights and Tiaras: Female Superheroes and Media Cultures," to be held at Monash University (Clayton) in August. Check out the call for papers below the break. I'll post more details throughout the year. The last conference organised by the reading group was "Vampires, Vamps and Va Va Voom: A Critical Engagement with Paranormal Romance."

You might also like to check out the following blogs run by other members of the reading group:

Patrick has also compiled a list of blogs and websites maintained by staff and students associated with English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash, which can be found on his blog.

TIGHTS AND TIARAS: FEMALE SUPERHEROES AND MEDIA CULTURES

12-13 August 2011

Monash University, Melbourne

Sponsored by: The Centre for the Book, Monash University

The representation of female superheroes in print and visual media – in comics, comix, graphic novels, novels, short stories, fan fiction, film, television, and other media forms
Distribution of narratives and images of female superheroes across multiple genres and media platforms
The female hero quest
Deconstructing the superhero trope – studies in feminism, patriotism, politics, race, satire, comedy, and so on
Constructs of the female supervillain
Superhero fashions, including costumes, cosplay and sartorial signifiers
Female collaboration in comics
Female comics artists: historical and contemporary
Female comics audiences and fan communities
Analysis of the institutional, commercial and licensing histories of female superhero properties
The construction of powerful women in fantasy and science fiction genres

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words, accompanied by a brief bio, by emailed attachment to Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario, Rebecca.DoRozario@monash.edu. The deadline for abstracts is 11 April, 2011.

Poppets!

2011-02-19T13:51:00.000+11:00

It's been a whole month since my last post. I've been busy, but hopefully things are settling down a bit now. I've started my new course, the Master of Information Studies (Librarianship) at Charles Sturt University, and work's been taking off as we get prepared for first semester. I'm off work next week, though, because I'm getting my wisdom teeth extracted (eek!). If I'm not too doped out on pain killers, and can string a few coherent sentences together, I'll write and post a review of Gene Wolfe's latest novel, Home Fires, which I have just finished reading. For now, I just thought I'd post some photos of the two beautiful Poppets that my lovely wife bought me for Valentines Day.

Saturday Afternoon Reading Poppet and Classic Little Red Poppet

Poppets are the creation of Lisa Snellings-Clark and are sold through her Etsy store, Strange Studios. She has made many different kinds of Poppet and has featured the Classic Little Red Poppet in numerous paintings. Her work has been featured in chapbook collaborations with Gene Wolfe, Neil Gaiman, Charles DeLint, John Shirley, and Peter Beagle. I absolutely adore the Wolfe chapbook, Strange Birds (DreamHaven, 2006), with its beautiful cover art and two original stories, "On a Vacant Face a Bruise" and "Sob in the Silence." Copies are still available, and the small book is a must-have for Wolfe fans (the two stories it contains cannot currently be found elsewhere).

Gene Wolfe interview on io9

2011-01-19T13:51:00.000+11:00

Just a quick post to point out a new Gene Wolfe interview on io9. The interview, which has just been posted, was conducted last month by io9's Josh Wimmer, and has been titled "Gene Wolfe talks dystopian futures, and the chances of star-drive in our lifetime."

The interview covers some good ground, including Wolfe's experiences in the Korean War and his predictions about where the world is going, while focusing on his new novel Home Fires, which was released earlier this month (although I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail - that's what happens when you live in Australia, I guess).

Josh also does a good job of introducing Wolfe, and I particularly liked this paragraph:

No one else writes like Gene Wolfe. Perhaps most famous for his four-part Book of the New Sun — which Neil Gaiman called "the best SF novel of the last century" — the onetime industrial engineer and editor crafts stories that seem to hint at dozens of things left unsaid. His prose can be simultaneously baroque and perfectly clear, demanding deeper engagement from readers than most fantasy and science-fiction literature does — and supplying commensurate rewards.

Hear, hear! Check out the whole interview on the io9 blog, which is one of my favourite sources of nerdy news.

Thesis results, and my plans for 2011 and beyond

2011-01-16T13:12:00.000+11:00

Happy New Year! Just a short post to update those interested on how my honours (undergraduate) thesis went last year. I submitted my thesis on religion in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun in October last year, and received results in December. I was thrilled to receive First Class Honours for the thesis, which both examiners really enjoyed. Furthermore, last week I received the 2010 Monash University Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Best Honours Thesis Prize.

One of the examiners also made some comments on how much he enjoyed reading The Book of the Long Sun in preparation for marking the thesis, saying that Wolfe's tetralogy reminded him of the "emancipative and enlightening force of early Christianity," with its emphases on personal faith in a single god and love and self-sacrifice for others. Yay! The world now has one more Wolfe reader!

This year I will be working on developing the thesis into a couple of articles - one on Wolfe's catholicism in The Book of the Long Sun (and how he uses the text to propound a complex and multifaceted Christian theology), and another on how Wolfe's use of the generation starship trope differs significantly from the generally more anti-religious uses of the trope which preceded his tetralogy (and which the tetralogy responds to). I'll be sure to post details here as these plans gradually come to fruition.

This year I also begin a Master of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University (part-time via distance over three years), in order to become a qualified librarian. I plan to continue reading and researching science fiction (and Gene Wolfe in particular) over the next few years, with the intention of beginning a PhD (probably part-time) a year or two after I graduate from CSU. My head is brimming with half-baked ideas on what this hypothetical thesis could be on: Wolfe's experiences in the Korean War and their influences on his writing (including a study of Letters Home), Wolfe's relationship to the New Wave movement, or maybe the narratological techniques Wolfe employs in order to open up his stories to multiple interpretations, creating an infinite interpretative space within the text (something I thought about working into my honours thesis, but in the end rejected because it proved to be too massive a topic to handle properly). I also need to take some time to finish reading all of Wolfe's writing, since there is a vast amount of it (including hundreds of short stories), and I'm probably not even half-way through reading it all yet. Oh well, there's plenty of time! All the best for 2011, everyone!

The influence of G. K. Chesterton's writings on Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun

2011-01-13T08:18:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since I've written anything substantial on this blog, so I thought I'd post some of what I wrote for my honours thesis last year (I'll do a post soon on how it all went). As I was researching Wolfe and the role of religion in his epic science fiction tetralogy The Book of the Long Sun (1993-1996), Chesterton's influence on Wolfe's faith and writing kept coming to the foreground. Most of what I wrote on Wolfe and Chesterton was originally incorporated into the main body of my thesis, but when I was faced with being about a thousand words over the word limit, I reluctantly moved the Chesterton material to an appendix, which, for some reason, doesn't contribute towards the total word count. Although most of these connections have been made before, I still thought I would post it here as it might be of interest to others who, like me, are fascinated by the literary and spiritual influences on Wolfe and his work.

The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009) reprints two of Wolfe’s most overtly Catholic short stories, “Westwind” and “The Detective of Dreams,” each of which is followed by a short afterword referring readers to Chesterton. The first attests to Chesterton’s literary influence on Wolfe, who cheerfully acknowledges The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) as a precursor to his own story. The second reveals Chesterton’s influence on Wolfe’s Catholic faith: “I will not lecture you on Jesus of Nazareth,” writes Wolfe, “but I advise you to find Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man” [1]. Both kinds of influence, literary and spiritual, are evident in The Book of the Long Sun, particularly in the characterisation of Patera Silk, the story’s protagonist.

Wolfe himself has pointed to Chesterton’s Father Brown as an inspiration for Silk and there are numerous similarities between the two characters. Martin Gardner, the scholar behind The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown (1987), believes Brown to be “the second most famous mystery-solver in English literature,” after Sherlock Holmes [2]. Although both are highly observant and intelligent, Brown stands apart from Holmes because his deductions are more frequently based on intuitive leaps than the stringent analysis of scientific data. Silk also uses this mode of detection in a number of scenes in The Book of the Long Sun, most noticeably during his investigations of the possessions and murder at Orchid’s brothel in Nightside of the Long Sun, which Nick Gevers has rightly identified as a detective story pastiche [3]. In fact, throughout the entire series Silk shows remarkable intuition, frequently piecing things together before the other characters, or even the readers, have a chance to do so. In addition to their obvious vocational similarities (both Brown and Silk are clergymen), the two characters also have reformed criminals as sidekicks: Flambeau and Auk, respectively. These parallels demonstrate Silk’s connection to Father Brown and establish him as Wolfe’s homage to Chesterton’s famous detective.

Christopher Beiting has also observed parallels between Silk and Saint Francis of Assisi, since both are given a divine command they interpret “in the most literal—and wrong—way possible” [4]. The connection seems intentional on Wolfe’s part and was most likely inspired by Chesterton’s St. Francis of Assisi (1923), in which particular emphasis is placed on what Chesterton identifies as a defining moment of the saint’s spiritual journey:

The story very largely revolves around the ruins of the Church of St. Damian, an old shrine in Assisi which was apparently neglected and falling to pieces. Here Francis was in the habit of praying before the crucifix. … As he did so he heard a voice saying to him, ‘Francis, seest thou not that my house is in ruins? Go and restore it for me.’ [5]

Likewise, the god called “the Outsider,” who is surely none other than Wolfe's Catholic God, gives Silk an important mission during his initial enlightenment, one that is remarkably similar to St. Francis's: “There’s only one thing that the Outsider wishes me to do,” he explains to his students, “I am to save our manteion” [6]. Chesterton continues his narrative with St. Francis’s response to this calling:

Francis sprang up and went. To go and do something was one of the driving demands of his nature; probably he had gone and done it before he had at all thoroughly thought out what he had done. … In the coarse conventional language of the uncomprehending world, he stole. [7]

Similarly, when Silk becomes aware that his manteion (church) and its adjoining palaestra (school) have been sold to the crime lord Blood, he, like St. Francis, acts immediately, though irrationally, infiltrating Blood’s villa and attempting to steal the deed for the buildings. He fails, however, when he falls from the villa’s roof, breaks his ankle and is apprehended by Blood’s guards. Silk is then forced to agree to Blood’s demand for 26,000 cards (the currency of the city) for the property, double what Blood claims to have paid, although we later discover he only paid thirteen hundred: “Only when I’d talked to him a little, I made it thirteen thousand,” Blood boasts, “because he really thought those old buildings in the middle of that slum were priceless” [8].

According to Chesterton, after St. Francis’s release from jail for the theft and resale of some of his father’s possessions, he took to the streets and begged for bricks, which he used to repair the Church of St. Damian. Only later did he realise that:

he was labouring at a double task, and rebuilding something else as well as the church of Saint Damian. … something that has often enough fallen into ruin but has never been past rebuilding; a church that could always be built anew though it had rotted away to its first foundation stone, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. [9]

Likewise, Silk labours under the misapprehension that the Outsider wishes him to save the physical buildings of his manteion, and many of his actions in The Book of the Long Sun seem to be directed to this end. Only at the close of the final volume, Exodus from the Long Sun, does Silk finally realise what the Outsider truly meant: “I have done it,” he tells some of his followers, “saved it from the dissolution of the whorl. Or at least I will have when we reach the new one. I was to save our manteion; and that is the manteion, all of those people coming together to worship. The rest was trimming, very much including me” [10]. At the end of the tetralogy, Silk realises how drastically he misinterpreted the divine command—that he was meant to save the manteion’s congregation, not its buildings.

Silk’s gradual reassertion, throughout the series, of a distinctly Christian monotheism also seems to echo Chesterton’s declaration that the true church, the spiritual church, can always be rebuilt, even if it seems to have rotted away almost entirely, as is the case in Silk’s world. Thus, Chesterton’s distinctive retelling of St. Francis’s story, with its own emphases and commentaries, seems to have influenced Wolfe’s own understanding of divine calling and his portrayal of Silk’s enlightenment, motivations and actions. Wolfe’s debt to Chesterton, particularly in his characterisation of Silk, places The Book of the Long Sun firmly within a distinctively Catholic literary tradition.

[1] Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe: A Definitive Retrospective of his Finest Short Fiction (New York: Tor-Tom Doherty, 2009) 346.
[2] Martin Gardner, Introduction to The Annotated Innocence of Father Brown, by G. K. Chesterton, with introduction and notes by Martin Gardner (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987) 1.
[3] See Nick Gevers's two brilliant articles on The Book of the Long Sun: http://www.ultan.org.uk/five-steps-towards-briah/ and http://www.ultan.org.uk/the-reader-as-augur/
[4] Christopher Beiting, “The Divine Irruption in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the Long Sun.” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 11.3 (2008): 92.
[5] G. K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, 1923 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1943) 62-3.
[6] Gene Wolfe, Lake of the Long Sun, 1994, in: Litany of the Long Sun (New York: Orb-Tom Doherty, 2000) 281-2.
[7] Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, 63.
[8] Gene Wolfe, Caldé of the Long Sun, 1994, in: Epiphany of the Long Sun (New York: Orb-Tom Doherty, 2000) 283.
[9] Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi, 68-9.
[10] Gene Wolfe, Exodus from the Long Sun, 1996, in: Epiphany of the Long Sun (New York: Orb-Tom Doherty, 2000) 702.

More on Gene Wolfe's upcoming Home Fires

2010-12-19T15:17:00.000+11:00

Just a couple of quick updates on Gene Wolfe's upcoming stand-alone novel Home Fires, due out in January 2011.

First, Lawrence Person has written an insightful review of Home Fires on his blog. The book sounds like it will be an interesting read, although perhaps not one of Wolfe's most most significant novels. I particularly look forward to the plays on genre that Person identifies: "Homes Fires is science fiction novel as romance novel as mystery novel as spy novel, and any given scene may be fulfilling the expectations of any of those genres." Person also notes that the novel's protagonist, Skip, is a "deeply honest, good-hearted and dependable" character, much like Patera Silk in The Book of the Long Sun.

Also, PS Publishing is doing a limited edition printing of Home Fires: 300 jacketed hardcovers, signed by Wolfe, and 100 traycased hardcovers, signed by Wolfe and Alastair Reynolds, who wrote the introduction for the PS Publishing edition. The cover (below) looks fantastic.

The PS Publishing cover of Wolfe's Home Fires. Art by David Gentry.

Gene Wolfe: upcoming novels and a recent interview

2010-11-28T11:53:00.000+11:00

I've been a bit slack blogging lately. Mostly because I'm still waiting on the results of my honours thesis, and I don't really want to go near my thesis or anything related to it until I have received said results. However, I just thought I'd post some recent Gene Wolfe news and links that may be of interest.

First off, Wolfe has a new book coming out in January titled Home Fires, the official blurb of which runs thus:

Gene Wolfe takes us to a future North America at once familiar and utterly strange. A young man and woman, Skip and Chelle, fall in love in college and marry, but she is enlisted in the military, there is a war on, and she must serve her tour of duty before they can settle down. But the military is fighting a war with aliens in distant solar systems, and her months in the service will be years in relative time on Earth. Chelle returns to recuperate from severe injuries, after months of service, still a young woman but not necessarily the same person - while Skip is in his forties and a wealthy businessman, but eager for her return.

Still in love (somewhat to his surprise and delight), they go on a Caribbean cruise to resume their marriage. Their vacation rapidly becomes a complex series of challenges, not the least of which are spies, aliens, and battles with pirates who capture the ship for ransom. There is no writer in SF like Gene Wolfe and no SF novel like Home Fires.

Although the only (early) review I can find is not glowing, I am still really looking forward to this book. The reviewer groups it together with An Evil Guest and There are Doors as some of Wolfe's lesser works. However, I absolutely loved There are Doors - it's my favourite of Wolfe's stand-alone novels - and I certainly didn't mind An Evil Guest. Also, the premise of Home Fires sounds very interesting, and I look forward to seeing how Wolfe treats the gender and relationship issues that look like they will play an important part in the book.

C.S.E. Cooney recently interviewed Wolfe for Black Gate - it's a great interview that is certainly worth reading. A week earlier Cooney wrote a Live Journal blog post asking if anyone had any questions they'd like Wolfe to answer, so I posted a question in a comment. I had to sign in to post, so I just used my Twitter account, although I should probably have used Facebook or at least signed my name to the comment (although my real name appears if you open my Twitter profile), because when Cooney came to asking my question, it ran thus:

Cooney: "The second guy – I… didn’t get his name, actually. I only have his LJ handle.”

Wolfe: “What is it?”

Cooney: “Um… Silk4Calde.”

Wolfe: [Gene started to laugh.] “Say no more! I know where he got it.”

So, that was kind of embarrassing! Funny though - in an oh-my-gosh-I-feel-like-such-a-dork kind of way. Anyway, I asked what Wolfe was working on at present, and he said he was writing a new book called The Land Across, which he summarised thus:

There’s a young man. His father is dead – or he believes his father is dead. He’s grown up all over the world, because his father was in the State Department. He has written a travel book about Austria. English is his cradle language, but he picked up others – some German, French, and Japanese – when he lived in those countries.

He decides to write another book about a different European country, “on the other side of the mountain,” from Austria. This country is a surreal Balkan nation, formerly under the Communist government, anciently invaded by the Turks, completely fictional.

The young man is arrested as soon as he enters this country. His passport is taken, his luggage is taken. The police there bring him to the house of a man they do not like – this is the kind of thing the police do – and explain to him that he is to live in the man’s house. He must sleep there every night; should he escape, his host will be shot. And they give him as a little hint:

“If you don’t like the food, you can threaten to escape.”

And it goes on from there.

Sounds rather interesting! And a bit like his most recent novel, The Sorcerer's House, although perhaps more sf and less fantasy.

Anyway, I had better get back to working on this article on late-nineteenth-century Australian utopian literature. Thesis results will be released on Friday, and after that I'll be back posting more regularly - I have a lot of Wolfe's fiction still to read!

Researching nineteenth-century Australian utopian literature

2010-11-20T10:34:00.001+11:00

While eagerly awaiting the results of my honours thesis (due out on 2 December), I have been continuing my research on early Australian utopian literature. I am currently working on converting the paper I gave at the recent Utopias conference (see here, here and here), entitled "The Victorian Crisis of Faith in Australian Utopian Literature, 1870–1900" (mp3 available for download), into a publishable article. This involves increasing the word length from around 3000 to over 5000, going over my old research (most of which was done two years ago), and confirming bibliographic details. It was the latter of these that has been causing me some grief over the last few days.

The first difficulty came when I noticed that one of the texts I discuss in the article, The Battle of Mordialloc; or, How We Lost Australia (1888), had different authors listed in different catalogue entries. The confusion came about because the text was published anonymously. The short book is most commonly ascribed to Edward Maitland, an English author and spiritualist who served as a commissioner of Crown lands and police magistrate in New South Wales for some years, although several listings instead ascribe authorship to one Herbert Ainslee. After some digging I discovered that Ainslee was a fictional creation of Maitland, first appearing as the protagonist of his novel The Pilgrim and the Shrine; or, Passages from the Life and Correspondence of Herbert Ainslie, B. A., Cantab (1867). The introduction to The Battle of Mordialloc claims the body of the book was based on manuscripts of Ainslee's - this must be why the text has been ascribed to the fictional character, although it is also the reason why authorship can be traced back to Maitland. The book itself is a mildly interesting dystopian novel about the invasion of Australia by Chinese and Russian forces, but in addition to being rather racist (which is depressingly common in nineteenth-century Australian literature), it is also kind of amusing, since the invasion takes place on Cup Day, when all of Victoria's citizens are too busy betting on horses for the Melbourne Cup to pay attention to anything else. The entire text of The Battle of Mordialloc can be read online at Reason in Revolt: Source Documents of Australian Radicalism.

The other bibliographic inconsistency I came across concerned The Future of Victoria by "Acorn". In his bibliography of Australian literature, Lyman Tower Sargent notes that the National Library of Australia card catalogue suggests the author is one James Oakes, although I can find no evidence supporting this (there was a journalist in Boston called James Oakes writing under the pseudonym "Acorn" during the late nineteenth century, but I can find no evidence he ever lived in Australia). But there is a further problem with The Future of Victoria's bibliographical details: Sargent, in his bibliography and a related article, says it was published in the 1880s, while the NLA (and all other libraries) date it in the 1850s. This threatened to be very problematic for me, since I am only writing on texts published between 1870 and 1900 - if it was published in the 1850s it would fall beyond the purview of my article (which focuses, in part, on the impact of Darwin's Origin of Species on Australian utopian literature). I did, however, successfully determine a short window in which the text could have been published: 1872-1873. The first clue: the copy of the text held at the State Library of Victoria has "Presented by the Author April 16th 1873" inscribed on its title page, thereby ruling out publication after that date. I also had a look at the copy held at my library, in the Monash University Library Rare Books collection, which has the previous owner's initials and the date 11/77 on its cover. I then asked one of the staff members in Rare Books, Stephen Herrin, if there was any way I could determine when the book's printer, Wigney and Summerscales, were operating in Ballarat. "Wigney and Sumerscales?" he says, "They're one of mine!" He reaches to the bookshelf next to him to grab his book, The Development of Printing in Nineteenth-Century Ballarat (2000). In one of the appendices at the back of his book was a list of Ballarat printers and the years they operated - Wigney and Summerscales only ran from 1872 to 1875. I could hardly believe my luck! Now I have successfully determined a brief window in which the book could have been published, and I can discuss it in my article. The Future of Victoria has been digitised by the State Library of Victoria and can be read online.

Fortunately, I haven't had this much trouble with all the books I discuss in the article. Another couple of the anonymous ones, A New Pilgrim's Progress, Purporting to be Given By John Bunyan, Through an Impressional Medium (1877) and An Agnostic's Progress from the Known to the Unknown (1884), both pastiches of Bunyan's book, are easy enough to attribute to Alfred Deakin and Catherin Helen Spence respectively, since both have (embarrassingly) confessed authorship. Now I just have to re-read a few more of these old (and, for the most part, incredibly boring) utopian novels so I can finally finish this article, which has been in the works for almost two years.

Long Sun Whorl spotted on Andromeda

2010-10-28T20:30:00.000+11:00

I have a love / hate relationship with Andromeda (2000-2005). I think it's that some of the characters (Trance and Rommie) are fantastic, while others are infuriatingly annoying (Hunt and Tyr), and the writing quality really fluctuates. Although it could be as simple as: love Lexa Doig / hate Kevin Sorbo (to be fair, it's his character that I find repulsive and creepy, not necessarily the actor himself).

Anyway, I've been watching through the entire series on DVD with my wife, and the other night we came to the final episodes of season four: "The Dissonant Interval" parts one and two. In these episodes I was pleasantly surprised to find a cylindrical generation starship called the Arkology, which was remarkably similar to the Whorl described by Gene Wolfe in The Book of the Long Sun.

Sometimes the show's special effects can be pretty good (that is, when I'm not shouting: "They've recycled that footage like a hundred times already!") and I think they pulled off the long sun thing quite well:

Telemachus and Louisa watch the long sun set

There were, of course, some major differences between the generation starship on Andromeda and the one described by Wolfe. The Arkology, for instance, was not made out of a hollowed-out asteroid, although it is attached to an asteroid at one end, which it harvests for raw minerals. The main body of Arkology's cylinder does rotate, but I don't believe it is connected to the ship's gravity emulation, which seemed to be based on the same mysterious and unnamed technology as the other ships in the series (this, of course, makes you wonder why the cylinder rotates at all, if not to create a gravity-like effect from centripetal forces). The scale of the ship was also much smaller than that of Wolfe's Whorl, and unlike the Whorl's long sun, which simulates day and night by rotating a "shade" over part of the sun, the sun of the Arkology narrows to a thin beam at night.

External view of the Arkology generation starship

Andromeda's depiction of a cylindrical generation starship illuminated and heated by a long beam of light, with people living on the inner surface of the hollow ship, got me wondering what other sf has described starships with "long suns" like that of Wolfe's Whorl. There were certainly none described in any of the other generation starship stories I read recently.

Does anyone know of any other TV shows, films or novels that describe cylindrical starships with long suns? Or was Wolfe the first?

Images from the Andromeda season four DVDs, available, for those in Australia, from EzyDVD and JB Hi-Fi, with the complete series coming in December 2010. They are reproduced here solely for the purposes of criticism and research (fair use).

Podcast: "The Victorian Crisis of Faith in Australian Utopian Literature, 1870–1900"

2010-10-27T14:26:00.000+11:00

I blogged in September that the keynote presentations from Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe, the fourth national conference on utopia, dystopia and science fiction, held by Monash University in Melbourne in August 2010, had been made available online as podcasts (in mp3 format).

The university has now uploaded the rest of the papers presented at the conference (with permission of the authors/presenters), including my own paper, "The Victorian Crisis of Faith in Australian Utopian Literature, 1870–1900" (abstract below) (click here to download the mp3). However, the sound is rather soft and some of the questions asked after the paper has been presented are almost inaudible. Also, I sound terrible - but doesn't everyone think that when they hear recordings of their own voice?

As I mentioned earlier, you should check out the papers given by John Clute and Kim Stanley Robinson, which were fantastic. Some others worth listening to: Andrew Milner's paper on a couple of influential Australian dystopian novels, Tamara Prosic's paper on ecology and Orthodox Christianity, and Tom Moylan's paper on Robinson's Science and the Capital series. My wife read the paper by Adam Brown, "'Our World is ending, but Life Must Go On...': Post-Apocalyptic Dystopias in Contemporary Children’s Films," and she sounds lovely, as always.

THE VICTORIAN CRISIS OF FAITH IN
AUSTRALIAN UTOPIAN LITERATURE, 1870–1900

[abstract]

During the nineteenth century, advances in geology and evolutionary theory brought traditional religious beliefs into question, igniting what has often been characterised as a ‘war’ between science and religion. Some of the most diverse treatments of religious themes in Australian utopian literature come between 1870 and 1900, during the ‘Victorian Crisis of Faith.’ This paper will briefly examine the approaches to religion and science in some of the utopian writing from this period, looking at how different Australian authors have envisaged, or hoped, the relationship between science and religion would unfold in the future. Topics such as Darwinism, secularism, church reform and spiritualism will be addressed in an attempt to demonstrate that this literature displays a vast array of approaches to contemporary scientific and religious issues. It will be my contention that an examination of this utopian literature supports modern historical scholarship, which contests the stereotypical ‘science versus religion’ dichotomy and observes a more complex relationship at work.

Done! The thesis is submitted!

2010-10-22T11:24:00.000+11:00

I submitted the final, printed copies of my honours (undergraduate) thesis on religion in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun this week — what a relief! As proof, I present a photo of the finished product:

The introduction ended up being as long as the first chapter, since I covered a lot in it, briefly examining the history of religion and "scientism" in the sf genre, and introducing Wolfe and his work. The first chapter was largely concerned with deciphering the text. I argued that Silk's enlightenment by the Outsider is central to the series and is intended to be understood as a genuine spiritual experience (rather than a "cerebral accident" or a download of information), and that the series is, first and foremost, about Silk's spiritual journey. The second chapter examined the Outsider in greater detail, and I argued that he is literally and distinctively the Catholic God in the text (as opposed to some amorphous monotheistic deity) and that Wolfe uses his depiction of the Outsider to propound a distinctively Catholic theology. I also examined how Wolfe expresses his deviations from traditional Catholicism and even engages in a critique of the Church through his representation of the Vironese Faith (a "bad religion" that borrows heavily from Catholic ritual and the Church). The final chapter compared Wolfe's use of the generation starship trope to those of authors such as Heinlein, Aldiss, Harrison and Simak. I argued that, while retaining many traditional aspects of the trope and its archetypal treatment, Wolfe radically inverts its meaning and treats faith and religion in much more complex ways than his predecessors, using the trope to create a distinctly Catholic story.

In the end I managed to keep to the word limit (an upper limit of 18,000 words) by relegating the stuff I'd written on Chesterton to an appendix, which doesn't contribute to the word count proper (so that kind of felt like cheating, but it was what my supervisor recommended!). The finished product totaled 80 pages. My copy is now sitting on the shelf and I won't touch it again until I have my results (early December, I think) lest I discover typos — no matter how many times you read something, some wicked and evil typo will always elude you.

What now? On the day I submitted my thesis I got an email from Charles Sturt University accepting me into the Master of Information Studies (Librarianship), which I will complete part-time off-campus over the next three years so I can become a fully-fledged librarian.

After that I'll probably work while doing a PhD part-time. Currently I'm thinking of studying Wolfe's short fiction, with each chapter examining a specific story, but I haven't yet decided how to tie the whole thing together yet, what the overall point will be.

In the immediate future, however, I'll be working on a couple of articles for possible publication (if I'm lucky) based on my honours research and on the paper I gave recently on Australian utopian literature. Also, my wife and I are members of a feminist reading group at Monash, and we intend to run a symposium on female superheroes in comics, prose, TV and film some time next year, so there's organising to do for that (and I have to work on a paper to give).

And this blog will certainly live on — although I must change it's subtitle from "musings of a science fiction obsessed literature student," since I am not, sadly, a literature student any more (at least I won't be for the next few years). I've still got a lot of Wolfe left to read and I find that blogging about what I read keeps me thinking. At an honours thesis-writing workshop that ran earlier this year, one of the academic speakers stressed the importance of writing regularly, whether in a personal journal, for study, or for a blog, just to keep the words flowing smoothly. Sounds like good advice to me!

Recent Wolfe acquisitions: Letters Home and Sir!

2010-10-02T16:26:00.000+10:00

I have been fortunate enough to have received a few scholarships during my BA, including the Faculty of Arts Honours Scholarship, of which I just received my final installment. Since every other payment had gone immediately on living expenses and whatnot (and perhaps a few study-related books), I decided that this time I had to get something by Wolfe (whose work is the subject of my honours thesis). I have an wish list of Wolfe books that includes limited printings, rare chapbooks, and signed first editions, so I picked a couple of items from this list and purchased them a couple of weeks ago. They were:

LETTERS HOME

I had been wanting this book for years. Letters Home is a collection of Wolfe's letters to his mother written during the Korean War, in which he served as general infantry. The first edition, hardcover book is one of 250 signed and numbered copies printed in 1991 by U.M. Press. It is 185 pages long and includes an introduction by Wolfe and a few pages of photographs. It came with a small, 12 page paperback companion volume titled "A Wolfe Family Album," which includes a selection of Wolfe's photos from his childhood through to the 1980s. Two photos jumped out at me: a beautiful wedding photo of Gene and Rosemary Wolfe, and a photo of Wolfe, Frederik Pohl and Robert Silverberg at a house party in Melbourne, I'm guessing during Aussiecon 2 in 1985.

Wolfe has written very little about his experiences in Korea, although they have certainly influenced his fiction, with grisly war scenes playing major roles in The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun and The Book of the Short Sun. I had to get a copy of Letters Home after reading Kim Stanley Robinson's brilliant introduction to The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (2009). In it, Robinson discusses Wolfe's frequent urge, in his fiction, "both to conceal and to reveal at once." He claims that this is also evident in the letters Wolfe wrote during the war, in which "he wants to be able to tell his mom what is happening to him, while at the same time wanting to protect her from any too vivid knowledge of the worst of what he is facing. He wants both to tell and not to tell" (vii). Since this thought-provoking (and sometimes infuriating) concealment is part of what I love about Wolfe's fiction, I couldn't resist buying this volume. I will read through it over the summer and probably blog about it again when I'm done.

SIR! (OCTOBER 1965)

This is the first dirty magazine I've ever bought. After convincing my beautiful, loving wife that I only wanted it "for the articles," I now have Wolfe's the very first short story publication (or first paid publication, rather, since he had two short stories published in the Texas A&M student magazine). The story, "The Dead Man," was printed in the October 1965 issue of Sir!, an old men's magazine, although it has also appeared in the short collection Young Wolfe (1992) and the special Gene Wolfe issue of Weird Tales of Spring 1988 (#290). I have not read the version printed in Young Wolfe (which is still on my wish list), but the one in Weird Tales is a slightly revised version of the original (no major changes, mostly just changes in word choices and grammar). In Sir! it appears with a full-page illustration of the (dead) protagonist climbing out of the alligator's den, with the deceased woman lying at his feet. There is also, on the first page of the magazine, a great little bio of Wolfe at age 34, living in Ohio; click on the black and white strip (below right) for a better view.

Gene Wolfe: New Wave author?

2010-09-18T12:57:00.000+10:00

I've been wondering lately, while writing the introduction to my honours thesis, to what degree can Gene Wolfe be considered a New Wave author?

THE NEW WAVE

The New Wave movements in sf came about in the 1960s, largely as a response to the increasingly stale and repetitive hard sf tropes pervading the genre. New Wave authors brought some much-needed stylistic changes to the genre, offering more literary writing with more complex narratives, characters and writing styles. They also brought the 'soft sciences', such as sociology, psychology and philosophy, to the foreground of their writing, often downplaying or omitting altogether the traditional 'hard science' themes of Golden Age sf. With these new focuses came some of the critical attitudes that the genre needed, and New Wave sf tended to draw into question the scientific optimism and positivism that filled the earlier pulps.

The movement originated in Britain, specifically in the pulp sf magazine New Worlds while it was edited by Michael Moorcock. Moorcock and the writers he published, including J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Thomas Disch and Samuel R. Delany, championed this new style of sf. The New Wave movement was strongest in the 1960s and 1970s, after which point it became a thing of the past. Although the movement had ended, the style continued, and the New Wave undoubtedly had a lasting impact on the genre, opening it up to become the complex and rich genre we know today.

From left: Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, Mike Kustow and J. G. Ballard.
Photo from the Ballardian. Circa 1968.

GENE WOLFE AS NEW WAVE AUTHOR

In an interview with Larry McCaffery Wolfe was asked if he was aware of New Wave authors writing in the 1960s while Moorcock was editing New Worlds. He responded:

I was not only aware of what they were doing but I even placed one story in New Worlds. What was happening with the New Wave was that a lot of SF authors with literary backgrounds, rather than scientific backgrounds, were applying what they knew in their works in just the same way the people with engineering and scientific backgrounds—Heinlein, for instance, or Asimov—had applied those backgrounds earlier. ... Alot of experimentalism was handled in such a way that it alienated readers, many of whom were raised on the pulps and didn't give a damn about "literature" in any kind of elevated sense. I was personally sorry to see it not catching on since some of what it was trying to do certainly struck a responsive chord in me. When Harlan Ellison put together his Again[,] Dangerous Visions, he included three stories by me, so I was associated with the New Wave. It was a time in which a lot of people were yelling at us for what we were doing, and we were yelling back at them. Actually, at various times I was put into both camps by different people, which was fine with me.

Wolfe certainly made good use of the new styles advocated by the New Wave, especially in The Fifth Head of Cerberus, which is, by his own admission, very much a New Wave text, especially the novella "'A Story' by John V. Marsch." With his complex characters, unreliable narrators, non-linear narratives and erudite fusions of different genres, not to mention his focuses on mythology, religion, philosophy and theology, most of his work would seem to fit within the broad range of New Wave styles and themes.

Gene Wolfe. Random photo I found at Aussiecon Four.

Nevertheless, in an interview with Lawrence Person Wolfe expressed a good deal of hesitancy when discussing his association with the New Wave:

I don't think I was heavily influenced by the New Wave. If I was a part of it, I was only a very remote, peripheral person. I suppose the epicenter of the New Wave was J. G. Ballard, although you might dispute that, and certainly I was at a great distance from J. G. Ballard. ... belonging to a literary movement doesn't consist so much in using a certain set of techniques, as it consists in running with a certain set of people, and only to a very small degree did I run with that set of people.

Yet in spite of his unwillingness to be closely associate with the New Wave, Wolfe certainly emerged within the movement. As he said, he had a short story, "The Green Wall Said," published in New Worlds in August 1967 — so clearly Moorcock thought Wolfe was sufficiently 'New Wave' to be published in his distinctive magazine. Furthermore, Wolfe had three short stories published in Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions anthology in 1972, a follow up to his remarkably successful Dangerous Visions anthology of 1967. Both of these volumes were essential to the New Wave movement in America. The Wolfe stories published by Ellison were "Robot's Story," "Against The Lafayette Escadrille" and "Loco Parentis," collected together as "Mathoms From the Time Closet."

Wolfe doth protest too much, methinks. As my supervisor said when we were discussing this, you can't get much more New Wave than New Worlds and Again, Dangerous Visions. We eventually settled on the word "originated": as in "Wolfe originated within the New Wave movement of the 1960s."

I would love to hear other people's opinions on this. Does Wolfe's distance from the New Wave clique of authors mean he wasn't part of the movement? Can he still be considered one of the New Wave authors? Please feel free to comment below!

For more on the New Wave, I would recommend reading:

Damien Broderick. “New Wave and backwash: 1960-1980.” The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendelshon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Edward James. “From New Wave to Cyberpunk and Beyond, 1960-1993.” Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

And, of course, the "New Wave" entry in John Clute and Peter Nicholls's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

Utopias Conference podcasts and other random things

2010-09-16T17:38:00.003+10:00

I recently blogged about the fourth Australian conference on utopia, dystopia and science fiction, titled Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe (see Day One, Day Two and Day Three). I was just informed that audio podcasts of the keynote addresses have just been uploaded to the conference webpage. I would strongly encourage listening to the papers by John Clute, Kim Stanely Robinson and Tom Moylan — they were fantastic.

Thesis progress: almost there! Everything has now been written and looked at by my supervisor except for the conclusion, which will be quite short (and I have some great ideas for it, too, so there shouldn't be any problem there). I've been re-reading it and making some minor changes today and I'm really happy with how it's turning out. The only problem is that it's several thousand words over the word limit, so there may be some frantic word cutting ahead. The final submission date is 25 October, so we're getting close!

While checking some details on Michael Moorcock and New Worlds for the introduction to my thesis, I discovered that Moorcock has a Doctor Who book coming out next month! It's titled Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles and the hardcover edition is set to be released on 14 October, according to BookDepository.co.uk. It will feature the current (eleventh) Doctor and Amy Pond (yay!) as they join a group called the Terraphiles that are obsessed with Earth and its history. Apparently it will also involve some of the characters from Moorcock's other work, which should be interesting. Check out the awesome cover below.

And finally, I just had to post this hilarious YouTube video I discovered via the Evil Librarian Supervillain blog. Enjoy!

UPDATE: The above video is probably best enjoyed when it has been contextualised, so check out these recent commercials that have become a YouTube hits: Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, Old Spice: Questions and Old Spice: Did You Know.

Aussiecon 4 in review

2010-09-11T09:50:00.000+10:00

So. I finally have time to write something about Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, held in my home city of Melbourne, 2 - 6 September. Since all the days have now blurred together, I'll just go through, what were for me, some of the most interesting aspects of the convention.

ACADEMIC TRACK

The academic track, convened by Andrew Milner and Helen Merrick, brought a diverse range of papers on many interesting topics. I heard some fascinating papers on: myth and history in Neil Gaiman's Sandman; the progeny of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner; Doctor Who and the 'coolification' of nerds; Doctor Who and fairy tale; and speculative science in the writings of Johannes Kepler.

Evie taking questions after her paper

Evie, my wife, delivered a fantastic paper entitled "Science Fiction: The Language of Bioethics Philosophy," in which she examined the (mis)use of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Andrew Niccol's Gattaca in bioethical debates on cloning, genetic engineering and genetic discrimination. People really enjoyed it and it sparked some good conversations afterwards. Evie has her own blog, too.

On the last day of the con I presented my paper on generation starships in science fiction, which was quite well received. Question time was far less terrifying that I had anticipated and overall it was a very positive experience.

Me presenting my paper

PANELS

There were some fascinating panels during the convention. I attended "Creating believable space travel" and "Hand-waving, rule-breaking and other dirty tricks of hard sf," both of which included panels of hard sf authors and scientists, including Gregory Benford. There was a great panel on copyright in the 21st century, which had Cory Doctorow as a panelist. A panel titled "Capes and skirts: the plight of female superheroes" was very heated, with two of the panelists discussing the objectification and mistreatment of women in comics, while the other (male) panelist became (unnecessarily) very defensive — much arguing ensued! There was, however, a very good panel on the history of women in Australian sf, which included panelists Lucy Sussex and Helen Merrick. There were also some great academic panels covering the environment and climate change, race in sf and feminism.

From left: Tom Moylan (m), Jonathan Cowie, John Clute, Glenda Larkin, Kim Stanley Robinson

I particularly enjoyed a couple of the panels that John Clute was on. One was "How to Review," which was both insightful and fun, since Clute's approach to reviewing was the opposite to the approaches taken by the other two panellists, John Berlyne and Dirk Flinthart. For instance, whereas Berlyne said that he was writing to tell readers whether or not to buy and read a particular book (without giving away any 'spoilers'), Clute adopted a more literary approach by reviewing books in more critical terms, examining how they work (and giving away 'spoilers' freely). Personally, I much prefer Clute's reviews, but I understand the need for both. Another interesting panel was on "slipstream" fiction and sf/f genre conventions. Again, Clute was at odds with the other panelist, G. David Nordley, but Clute clearly had a better understanding of genre and how it works (I have no idea why Nordley was selected for the panel). Clute said that genre is pure until you actually look at texts, since no text conforms perfectly to a single genre. Quite true. He also said that most near future sf could now be considered 'slipstream', since so much now plays with genre tropes and distinctions, traversing and transcending traditional genre boundaries.

From left: John Clute, Ian Nichols (m), G. David Nordley

HUGO AWARDS

The Hugo Awards Ceremony on Sunday evening was brilliant. Garth Nix did a fantastic (and hilarious) job as Master of Ceremonies and Kim Stanley Robinson did very well announcing that there had been a tie for best novel (China Miéville and Paolo Bacigalupi both won). I was very glad that our very own Shaun Tan won the Hugo for best professional artist, that Moon won best long form (film) and, most of all, that StarShipSofa won best fanzine. This was the first time a podcast had won a Hugo award, and you must head over to the StarShipSofa website to see Tony C. Smith's reaction during the live video podcast of the Hugo award results (fast forward to 40:00 to see him react to winning the award). I was, however, disappointed that Dollhouse's "Epitaph One" didn't win best short form (TV), since I strongly believe it was much better written than any of the Doctor Who specials nominated. (In fact, Dollhouse got the most primary votes out of the five nominees, but after the preferences were counted — with everyone who voted for a Doctor Who episode preferencing another Doctor Who episode — the three Doctor Who specials claimed the first three places and Dollhouse came fourth. Grr. That doesn't seem fair!)

RANDOM STUFF

On our way to one of the panels my wife and I got lost and ended up attending an impromptu game show! Paul Cornell hosted an absolutely hilarious game of "Just a Minute," a BBC radio comedy game show, featuring a great panel which included Patrick Nielsen Hayden, China Miéville and John Scalzi. I stuck around until it finished, even though it meant missing a couple of the panels I had intended on going to, because it was just so much fun!

The "Just a Minute" group

Kim Stanley Robinson's guest of honour speech was brilliant. Originally planned as an interview of Robinson by Sean Williams (who could not make it), it ended up being Dr. Kim Robinson interviewing sf author Stan Robinson, and it was great! There was also an on-stage conversation between Robinson and Robert Silverberg, where they discussed archaeological hoaxes, the New Wave of sf, and whether or not it is advisable to write in the nude. A very funny conversation indeed!

Robert Silverberg and Kim Stanley Robinson

There were relatively few costumes or TV/film-centric events, but there were a bunch of people wearing Star Wars outfits. I couldn't resist getting my photo taken with this group of stormtroopers! I believe there was, at some point during the con, a Star Wars event with choreographed lightsaber battles — I'm sorry I missed it!

Me with three stormtroopers!

Another highlight was the screening of Shaun Tan's new short film The Lost Thing, due for release in November and based on the picture book of the same title. Introduced by Tan, who discussed it's making-of, The Lost Thing was absolutely beautiful and amazingly done.

LOOT

I picked up some great books from the dealer's room and I was able to get many inscribed. Among them:

Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo's Dream (paperback) (signed & inscribed)
John Clute, Canary Fever: Reviews (first edition, paperback) (signed & inscribed)
China Miéville, The City & The City (paperback) (signed & inscribed)
Phil & Kaja Foglio, Girl Genius Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm (signed)
Shaun Tan, The Bird King and Other Sketches (first edition hardcover, launched at the con) (signed & inscribed)
Lucy Sussex, A Tour Guide in Utopia (signed & inscribed)
Gregory Benford, Timescape (paperback) (signed)

I also picked up some other cool things, like an issue of Postscripts with the as yet uncollected Gene Wolfe short story "Comber" (2005), some issues of The New York Review of Science Fiction with Wolfe-related articles and reviews, and some pulp magazines, including Aurealis #2, the cover of which is the first piece of artwork that Shaun Tan sold.

CONCLUSION

I've come away from Aussiecon 4 with not only a nice stack of beautiful books and another conference paper to add to my curriculum vitae, but with quite a reading list. Towards the top of this list is now Robinson's Galileo's Dream, Miéville's The City & The City and Benford's Timescape — I've only read short stories and non-fiction articles by these authors, but after having met them I really want to read these books. I'm currently reading selected reviews from Clute's Canary Fever and I am constantly finding myself jealous of his amazing vocabulary and lyrical writing style. Attending the con also introduced me to authors who I now, having met them in person, have absolutely no desire to read — as tempting as it is, I won't name them.

The convention also introduced me to the sf/f fan scene for the first time — previously I had attended academic conferences relating to sf/f, but never a con. Now I'm tempted to go to Perth in Western Australia next year for Swancon Thirty Six / Natcon Fifty and if the 2014 WorldCon does end up being held in London (and I hope it does!) then that would provide a wonderful excuse for my wife and I to visit the UK!

Utopias Conference, Day Three

2010-09-04T20:16:00.001+10:00

The third day of the Utopias conference, Changing the Climate, was a great end to a great conference. I was thrown in the deep end when I was asked to chair a session immediately after the opening keynote, but it went quite smoothly and wasn't as difficult as I anticipated (I had never chaired before). There were a couple of fantastic papers presented in the session I chaired, including one by David Blencowe, a PhD candidate from Monash University, who discussed the representation of utopia and revolution in Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch in his paper "Catastophic Intentions: Benjamin and Bloch on the Nature of Revolution."

After lunch there was a launch for the two latest volumes of the Ralahine Utopian Studies series, with a speech by one of the series editors, Tom Moylan. The latest volume of the series, titled Tenses of Imagination: Raymond Williams on Science Fiction, Utopia and Dystopia, was edited by Andrew Milner, co-convener of the Utopias conference.

I attended a couple of very interesting papers in the afternoon, both on Christianity, utopianism and ecology, including one entitled, "Of Bodies and Souls: Ecology and Orthodox Christianity," which was particularly insightful, as the presenter looked at recent statements from the Eastern Orthodox Church that call harm to the environment a 'sin' and unpacked the theology that underlies such statements.

In a session chaired by Kim Stanley Robinson, John Clute gave a perfect keynote address to close the conference. His paper was titled "Truth is Consequence," and he discussed the failure of "fantastika" (sf/fantasy/horror) to predict the problems we are now facing with climate change. Peter Nicholls, co-author of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, joined us for John's keynote and the end-of-conference drinks, so my wife and I got to express our appreciation of both John and Peter's work on the encyclopedia, which has helped us with every sf essay we've written.

During the end-of-conference drinks I got another chance to chat to Kim Stanley Robinson, who is just a really nice guy, and when you get him talking about Gene Wolfe, he sounds just like any other Wolfe fan. He told me about his experiences writing the introduction to The Very Best of Gene Wolfe and how it was the fruition of 35 years reading Wolfe's work. I had also given him a copy of my list of uncollected Wolfe short stories (since we had discussed his short fiction a few days earlier) which he really liked, expressing a hope that they could be put back into print in one form or another (to which I wholeheartedly agreed).

So that was the end of the Utopias conference! The next day? Aussiecon 4! (Which I still haven't had a chance to blog about!) Right now, I have to finish cutting down that paper I'll be presenting on Monday...

Utopias Conference, Day Two

2010-08-31T22:38:00.000+10:00

Another fantastic day at Changing the Climate, the fourth Australian conference on utopia, dystopia and science fiction. The opening keynote today was by Tom Moylan on climate change and the fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson, titled "N-H-N': Kim Stanley Robinson's Dialectics of Ecology." After morning tea I attended a series of papers on Robinson's Science in the Capital trilogy (which Robinson himself also attended).

After lunch I presented my own paper, titled "The Victorian Crisis of Faith in Australian Utopian Literature, 1870-1900," based on some research I undertook during a 2008/2009 Summer Research Scholarship at the Australian National University. I was, of course, quite nervous, but the whole thing went really well. I kept the paper within the allotted 20 minutes and endured the 10 minutes of question time quite well, glad I had spent the last few days revising the material I was speaking on, although the questions really were actually really good.

After my paper, Andrew Milner, my honours supervisor, spoke on Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957) and George Turner's The Sea and the Summer (1987), in a paper titled "From the Beach to the Sea: Two Paradigmatic Australian Dystopias".

The day ended with a fantastic keynote address by Robinson on "Utopia in the Age of Climate Change," in which he discussed his fiction and what he called his addiction to writing utopias. His paper ended with an environmentalist calls to take action on climate change and for the sciences and humanities to combine their efforts in battling global warming. Afterwards I descended into a moment of fannishness and asked Stan to sign a copy of The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (2010), which he signed "from a fellow Wolfean"! Oh, and I also got this photo:

Me, John Clute and Kim Stanley Robinson

Utopias Conference, Day One

2010-08-31T21:07:00.001+10:00

Yesterday began a crazy eight days (it's Aussiecon 4 soon, yay!) with the first day of Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe, the fourth Australian conference on utopia, dystopia and science fiction, held at the Monash University Conference Centre in the Melbourne CBD (on Collins Street).

The conference opened with a keynote address by Kate Rigby (Monash University), then concurrent sessions of papers ran throughout the day (with breaks for lunch and afternoon tea). The final keynote was a Q&A with Deborah Bird Rose and Marshall Bell, an indigenous painter.

My wife presented a paper written by a friend of ours, who unfortunately could not make it to the conference. The paper, titled "'Our World is Ending, But Life Must Go On...': Post-Apocalyptic Dystopias in Contemporary Children's Films," examined the recent films 9 and Wall-E, and Evie presented wonderfully.

Following Evie, there was a really fascinating paper titled "Virtual Catastrophe: Games, Play and Environmental Disaster in Online Games and Cyberpunk Fiction," which opened with a hilarious trailer for EpicWin, and proceeded to discuss calls for environmental activism in recent online games, such as Evoke.

The highlight of the day was talking to John Clute and Kim Stanley Robinson about Gene Wolfe during the afternoon tea break. Both John and Stan (as they introduced themselves) have written on Wolfe, with John publishing a selection of Wolfe-related essays in Strokes (1988) and Stan writing the introduction to The Very Best of Gene Wolfe (2009). We had a great chat about The Book of the Long Sun and I told them about my honours research on the book. We also talked about Wolfe's unique writing style and the kind of interpretative debates that surround it, as well as Wolfe's unwillingness to confirm or deny interpretative theories (such as John's own theory of the Autarch as Severian's mother - if you don't know about this, read Strokes!). All in all, a fantastic day indeed!

Joss Whedon Keynote at the Melbourne Writers Festival

2010-08-28T13:12:00.000+10:00

Last night my wife and I went to see Joss Whedon's keynote address for the Melbourne Writers Festival at the Melbourne Town Hall. It was done in Q&A format and towards the end of the evening some questions were taken from the audience. It was a fantastic night and the extraordinary excitement of the audience was amazing. There were even some people wearing Jayne hats.

When asked whether or not he would ever return to writing television, Whedon answered that he would never turn his back on television — which is a huge relief. Given the premature cancellations of all his recent shows (especially the amazing Firefly) I was afraid that we wouldn't be seeing any more Whedon TV, thankfully that shouldn't be the case. There certainly were, however, many comments made regarding "Satanic" and "evil" television networks, and the threats posed to the stability of society by massive corporations (which is very much a running theme in Whedon's writing, something I hadn't fully realised before last night). He also spoke about the differences in writing for film, television and comics (I am thoroughly enjoying the Buffy Season 8 and Angel comics), and even mentioned writing a novel (I don't know if he was serious, but I sure hope he was!!). I'm also getting really excited about the Avengers movie he'll be writing and directing (due for release in 2012) — he spoke a bit about how they're really letting him do whatever he wants with it, which certainly sounds promising! He said that many superhero movies now are becoming postmodern and deconstructive (The Dark Knight, Watchmen, etc), but that there is still work to do in constructing really good modern superhero movies before we begin to deconstruct them. A good point, I thought.

There is an article on Gizmodo.com.au on last night's MWF keynote and it goes through some of the things Whedon said, with some great quotes as well. The Australian radio station Triple J interviewed him last night as well, and there's also a great little interview on the Sydney Morning Herald website, as well as an article. Whedon will also be appearing in Sydney tomorrow night (29 September 2010) for another Q&A at the Sydney Opera House.

Come to the Aussiecon 4 Academic Program!

2010-08-27T08:57:00.000+10:00

Not long now until Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Melbourne over 2-6 September. The convention program has just been uploaded to the Aussiecon 4 website. It will be the first convention I've been to and I can hardly believe how much will be happening!

There is an academic stream running throughout the convention, with an amazing variety of papers being presented. Each paper will be around 20 minutes with 10 minutes of question time. My paper, on the generation starship trope in science fiction, will be presented on the last day of the con, Monday 6 September, at 12:30pm. The title and abstract of my paper is below, along with the mini-bio that will be published in the full program. My wife will be giving a paper on the use of science fiction in bioethical debates on Sunday 5 September at 2:30pm.

Kendal, Zachary

Adrift: The Generation Starship in Science Fiction

The generation starship, an interstellar space habitat that travels at sub-light speeds, is a common science fiction trope. This paper will trace the development of the trope from Robert A. Heinlein’s Orphans of the Sky (1941; 1963) and Brian Aldiss’s Non-Stop (aka Starship) (1958), through to more recent stories such as Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun (1993-1996) and Elizabeth Bear’s Jacob’s Ladder Trilogy (ongoing). Particular attention will be paid to the treatment of religion, where a loss of social memory has led the ship’s inhabitants to ritualise and mythologise its creators or governing artificial intelligences, which are revered like gods. I will argue that generation starship stories have often been used to argue for the superiority of “science” over “religion,” insofar as scientific enlightenment liberates the ship’s inhabitants from subservience to false religion. However, more recent renditions of the trope, such as Wolfe’s, have overturned these conventions and offered fresh approaches to idea of the generation starship.

Bio

Zachary Kendal is currently completing his Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree at Monash University. He is writing a thesis in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies on the subject of religion in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Long Sun, and has been in receipt of a CLCS Honours Scholarship. He lives in Melbourne and works at the Monash University Library.

Doctor Who Nerdiness

2010-08-11T23:01:00.001+10:00

While it isn't my favourite sf television show of all time, I do seem to blog about Doctor Who more than anything else I watch. See, for instance my two recent blog posts on the inflatable Dalek, which has become my library department's mascot (part 1, part 2). I think, perhaps, it's because there's so much wonderful, nerdy Doctor Who paraphernalia out there. Traditionally, my wife and I get something Doctor Who related for my father-in-law each Christmas, and when we walk in to Minotaur there are multiple large bookcases dedicated to Doctor Who books, magazines, audio books and radio shows, action figures, toys, and so on. And now I have this on my desk at work:

I stumbled upon the DeviantArt gallery of CyberDrone and found some absolutely brilliant cutout templates for the different incarnations of the Doctor and the TARDIS. Above is the assembled cutout of the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS (I claimed I wanted to test the blue toner in our recently-fixed printer), but there are also templates for the Classic TARDIS, the 1980s TARDIS and, amusingly, the First Doctor's Black & White TARDIS. I was perplexed by the Pink TARDIS until I realised that it was actually based on the Doctor Who episode "The Happiness Patrol".

There is, in fact, an insane amount of Doctor Who related craft out there. There are, for instance, a huge number of knitting patterns, from the classic scarf worn by Tom Baker's Doctor, to dolls based on David Tennant's Doctor and stuffed plush TARDISes. You can even make a Robotic Dalek Pumpkin!

I'm not quite sure what gives Doctor Who this massive appeal. Sometimes the writing of the show drives me crazy! Although I did love the episode "Amy's Choice" from the most recent season — there were hardly any plot holds at all! Overall I enjoyed the most recent season (Steven Moffat's) much more than the previous ones (that is, Russell T. Davies' run). Perhaps its cult status comes primarily from having been around for so long.

For those interested in Doctor Who, Gabriel McKee has written a great series of blog posts on religion in the latest (fifth) season of the show. McKee, author of The Gospel According to Science Fiction (2007), maintains his own blog, SF Gospel, which is also worth checking out.

Generation Starship Stories: Harry Harrison's Captive Universe

2010-08-03T14:00:00.001+10:00

In his book on Harry Harrison, Leon Stover praises Captive Universe (1969) as "Harrison's literary masterpiece", and it certainly is an engaging and quite well written novel. It is only a short novel (under 200 pages) but it provides a very interesting treatment of the generation starship trope.

As I discussed in my post on Clifford D. Simak's "Spacebred Generations", most generation starship stories address the problem of keeping the mission of the multi-generational voyage on track for centuries or millenia of travel. In most of these stories, after many generations have passed the current inhabitants are left with no conception of the ship's original mission or purpose. This "forgetting" results in the ship drifting aimlessly through space, with the mission incomplete.

Harrison's solution to this problem is a lot like Simak's, although Stover incorrectly claims that Harrison was the first to use it. In order to keep the mission on track, the creators of the generation starship in Captive Universe keep the ship's inhabitants enslaved by religion. As in Simak's story, the ship's inhabitants are kept ignorant and subservient by the artificial religions constructed by the ship's designers. Harrison, however, is much stronger in his message and his condemnation of the unethicalness of controlling a population through theocracy and of the generation starship idea in general.

There are two populations on board Harrison's generation starship: the Aztecs of the valley, who live within the main body of the ship, which is designed to look like Earth, with a fake sun and painted sky; and the Observers, who live in the corridors of the ship, observing the Aztecs and ensuring that their artificial world is running properly. The Aztecs and Observers both operate as theocracies, with the Aztecs fearfully worshipping a pantheon of terrifying gods and the Observers worshipping "the Great Designer".

The Great Designer, we discover, was a powerful ruler on Earth who ordered the construction of the starship as a testament to his great legacy. In order to keep the ship's main inhabitants ignorant of the ship's true mission he indoctrinated them in Aztec religion, establishing a powerful theocracy run by the priests of the village. By his decree, the Observers, themselves enslaved in a religion which worships him as "God", maintain the artificial valley and ensure the operation of a two-headed vengeful (mechanical) god called Coatlicue, who kills any villagers attempting to leave the Valley. Furthermore, to ensure the Aztecs retain unquestioning loyalty to their fabricated religion and false gods, the Great Creator genetically engineers the inhabitants of the two Aztec villages to be stupid (apparently there is a 'stupid gene' and a 'genius gene'). When the ship reaches its destination, however, the inhabitants of the two villages are to intermarry and procreate (otherwise taboo), thereby activating the dormant genius genes which otherwise stay suppressed within each village. Thus, a new generation of genius children would be born, ready to learn about Earth and the Great Creator and his empire and carry this knowledge to the planet they colonise.

The novel's protagonist, Chimal, is a child born out of wedlock from an inter-village couple and is therefore very intelligent and inquisitive, questioning things that everyone else takes for granted. He eventually discovers the true nature of the ship, the Aztec religion, and the Observers that go about their rituals unseen by the villagers. He learns from the Observers that none of the gods worshiped by the Aztecs exist, and that their entire religious system is only a tool to keep them ignorant of the true nature of the ship and its mission. He soon, however, questions the Observers' unrelenting belief in the Great Designer, such that, later in the book, when one of the Observers declares that the Great Designer was "God," Chimal responds:

Not God, or even a black god of evil, though he deserves that name. Just a man. A frightful man. The books talk of the wonders of the Aztecs he created to carry out his mission, their artificially induced weakness of mind and docility. There is no wonder—but a crime. Children were born, from the finest people in the land, and they were stunted before birth. They were taught superstitious nonsense and bundled off into this prison of rock to die without hope. (148)

Thus, the evilness of the Great Designer is emphasised through his enslavement of the Aztec people to an oppressive religious system. Chimal continues his tirade against the Great Designer, criticising his indoctrination of the Observers:

this monster looked for a group to do the necessary housekeeping for the centuries-long voyage. He found it in the mysticism and monasticism that has always been a nasty side path taken by the human race. Hermits wallowing in filth in caves, others staring into the sun for a lifetime of holy blindness, orders that withdrew from the world and sealed themselves away for lives of sacred misery. Faith replacing thinking and ritual replacing intelligence. (149)

In his essay on Aldiss's Non-Stop (aka Starship), Fredric Jameson stressed that in stories such as Aldiss's, the elements of the shipboard culture presented in the story "always come before us as signs: they ask us to take them as equivalents for the cultural habits of our own daily lives, they beg to be judged on their intention rather than by what they actually realize, to be read with complicity rather than for the impoverished literal content." One has to wonder, therefore, whether Harrison is not only criticising religion for being oppressive and unenlightened, but also criticising religious education (that is, the raising of children to believe "superstitious nonsense") as inherently unethical.

Whatever his motivations, religion certainly does not come off well in Captive Universe. It is regarded as "a nasty side path" that keeps people from properly understanding the world through rational and scientific means. Faith is presented as the opposite of thinking and ritual the opposite of intelligence. Chimal could almost be breaking through the fourth wall and speaking directly to religious readers when he shouts:

Don’t you realize the ritualized waste of your empty lives? Don’t you understand that your intelligence has been dimmed and diminished so that none of you will question the things you have to do? (149)

On a lighter note: above is the cover of my paperback copy of Captive Universe, and I just have to say that the picture on the cover is absurd. I'm quite sure the artist didn't read the story and was just told to go with an "Aztecs in space" motif. Okay, the ship does like kind of cool and the artist did get the cylindrical shape right, but, leaving aside the ridiculousness of crafting an intricate solid gold starship, we are specifically told in the novel that the ship was made from a hollowed-out asteroid. I am fairly certain that there are no golden Aztec-themed asteroids hurtling through space.

While the cover for the first paperback edition (top) features the sandy feel of the Aztec valley and the vultures mentioned occasionally in the story, I'm not quite sure what is going on in the other cover (middle, and here). It looks like a scene from a completely different novel. The covers below, taken from Harrison's website and a fan blog, feature the two-headed serpent god Coatlicue, an automatic heat-seeking sentry robot. The German cover (right) is particularly dreadful.

Page numbers refer to the following edition:

Harrison, Harry. Captive Universe. 1969. New York: Ace-Berkley, 1984.

Generation Starship Stories: Clifford D. Simak's "Spacebred Generations"

2010-07-31T23:26:00.000+10:00

Clifford D. Simak's short story "Spacebred Generations" (1953), also known by the title "Target Generation" and collected in Simak's Strangers in the Universe (1956), is presented, in many ways, as a possible solution to the problems involved in a multi-generational voyage. In Wilcox's "The Voyage That Lasted Six Hundred Years" (1940) and Heinlein's "Universe" and "Common Sense" (1941) something goes terribly wrong onboard the generation starship which causes a ship-wide "forgetting." This forgetting of the ship's purpose is, in many generation starship stories, accompanied by the development of a religious system that ritualises and mythologises the ship, its creators and its mission. In Wilcox, this forgetting seems to be caused partly by the bad planning of those who made the ship and set it on its journey and partly by the protagonist's bad judgement; in Heinlein, a catastrophic mutiny is the cause. This pattern is also followed in Aldiss's Non-Stop(1958), published after Simak's story, where a devastating virus wipes out most of the ship's population. In all these cases, the forgetting results in the potential failure of the mission, as the ship's inhabitants do not know how to fulfil the ship's purpose.

In "Spacebred Generations," Simak offers a clever solution to this problem: the builders of the generation starship intentionally created a shipboard culture of ignorance to keep the population peaceful, accompanied, of course, by a religious system which allows them to feel comforted. According to Simak, only by forgetting about Earth and human history could the ship's population survive the journey without terrible psychological trauma.

The story's protagonist, Jon, comes from a family which has been passing down a "heresy" from generation to generation. This heresy involves teaching the ability to read (considered taboo) and handing down the Letter and the Book, to be opened and read only in case of emergency. This emergency takes place at the beginning of the story when the cylindrical ship ceases its rotation, stopping the centripetal forces that emulated gravity and replacing them with an artificial gravity working in a different direction (thereby changing the direction of 'gravity' in every room in the ship). The ship's inhabitants also realise that instead of perpetually moving, like they used to, the stars not appear stationary.

Understanding the seriousness of the situation, Jon reads the mysterious Letter, which contains instructions to enter a locked room and use a learning machine. Once he has used this machine, Jon receives a vast amount of knowledge, coming to understand the true nature of the ship. He then realises that there was "No divine intervention. No myth. Just human planning" (15). He also realises that the ship's entire culture was planned by its creators:

It was planned on Earth. … Every step was planned. They planned the great forgetting as the only way that humans could carry out the flight. They planned the heresy that handed down the knowledge. They made the ship so simple that anyone could handle it—anyone at all.
They looked ahead and saw what was bound to happen. Their planning has been just a jump ahead of us every moment. (21)

She ship's creators designed the entire religious system of the ship, including the heresy passed down through Jon's family, as a means of keeping the society ignorant and subservient. They put their faith in the blind observation of religious rituals and laws to see their mission completed successfully, and their faith turns out to be well placed. Religion, in this story, is not simply depicted as ignorant and unscientific, as it is in Heinlein's and Aldiss's, although it certainly does prove to be this too. Rather, religion becomes a useful tool for controlling the population through ignorance, superstition and ritual. It is also, however, acknowledged as a comforting and peaceful force—it is only when the religious system falls down that violence and murder begin to occur (apparently for the first time in generations).

A very positive aspect of this story, in my opinion, is its representation of women and marriage. In Heinlein's "Universe" and "Common Sense," the depiction of women is terrible (as I explained in my blog post on those stories). In Aldiss's Non-Stop, the protagonist argues with his wife throughout the first chapter and is completely unconcerned for his wife's wellbeing when she is kidnapped by a rival tribe (in fact, he soon forgets about her entirely, and develops a romance with another woman—we never find out what became of his wife!). In Simak's story, however, Jon and his wife Mary are very much happy and in love. When Jon has locked himself in the ship's control room in order to find a safe, habitable planet for the ship to land on, he is left without food, since everyone else on the ship has turned against him. Mary, however, risks her own life to bring him food and water, supporting and trusting him when no one else will. He is overjoyed when he sees her, relieved that she is safe and well. (I'm not even sure I've read the words "My darling wife" in a pulp sf story before). He teaches her about the ship and its true purpose and they spend the rest of the story together. I thought this was a much better portrayal of marriage than Heinlein's or Aldiss's.

Something I found very amusing about this story, published in Hugo Gernsback's Science-Fiction Plus (August 1953), was the story's scientific footnotes. Gernsback was always very concerned about the scientific plausibility of stories published in his magazines, frequently rejecting stories for containing too much fantasy (or "fairy tale" as he liked to call it). Simak seems to be pandering to this glorification of science and fascination with technology by the inclusion of these footnotes, offering scientific explanations for things such as "hydroponic gardens" and the automatic operation of the spaceship.

Particularly painful is a footnote on "educational devices" which praises Gernsback's 1925 novel Ralph 124C 41+, apparently the first story to suggest such a learning machine, as a "science-fiction classic" (14). For a more accurate description of this novel, read this review by Steven H. Silver.

To anyone that has this story in its solo publication or in Strangers in the Universe, I would be interested to know: are any of these footnotes are preserved? Please leave a comment on this post if you know.

Page numbers refer to the original Science-Fiction Plus printing.

New Gene Wolfe Forum

2010-07-23T10:23:00.000+10:00

Just a quick note to let you know that is a new web forum up and running for the discussion of Gene Wolfe and his amazing writing. You can find the forum at: http://usefulphrases.yuku.com/

This forum was created to fill the void left by The Solar Cycle Book Club, which was a fantastic forum for the discussion of Wolfe's Solar Cycle that recently went inactive.

So, Wolfe fans, please pop over to the new forum and introduce yourselves!

For those that prefer the email-style forum, check out the urth.net mailing list.

Hugo Gernsback's Science-Fiction Plus discovered in the Rare Books Collection

2010-07-20T19:48:00.000+10:00

I was very excited to discover that my library's Rare Books Collection, which I don't shut up about, has the complete run of Hugo Gernsback's Science-Fiction Plus (or Science-Fiction +, as it appears on the cover). Granted, it only ran for seven issues in 1953, but I'm still impressed we have it.

One story, published in the August issue (no. 5), is of particular interest to me: Clifford D. Simak's "Spacebred Generations," a short story set aboard a generation starship. This story was kindly recommended to me by someone following this blog, so now I can read it and comment on it in my thesis and upcoming conference paper. Also of interest is an article in the April issue (no. 2) by Leslie R. Shepherd on "Interstellar Flight," which contains a discussion about the feisability of multi-generational interstellar travel. Below is the cover for this issue, featuring a large (generation?) spaceship, apparently carved out of an asteroid.

I did some searching through Google Books, which I love, and found a few sources which discuss this short-lived magazine, including Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction by Gary Westfahl, Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 by Michael Ashley, and Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years by Everett F. Bleiler and Richard J. Bleiler. From what I can gather, Science-Fiction Plus was an attempt to resurrect the "bedsheet" size magazine, with older and more established sf authors, in a less pulp-ish publication. However, this resulted in the magazine appearing anachronistic, with the old names and old style no longer holding the weight they used to. Furthermore, Gernsback kept the magazine firmly grounded in his rather restrictive idea of science fiction, which had not changed in some thirty years. As sales declined, the magazine was changed from the classier glossy format to the old pulp paper format. Finding that Science-Fiction Plus wasn't as profitable as he'd hoped, Gernsback cancelled it.

On the topic of my library's Rare Books collection: they have just opened a new exhibition on "lewd and scandalous books." You can view the virtual exhibition online, or come in and see it at the Rare Books Exhibition Room at the Matheson Library. The opening of the exhibition was integrated into the recent Bibliographic Society of Australia and New Zealand 2010 conference, which was titled To Deprave and Corrupt: Forbidden, Hidden and Censored Books. A friend of mine, Patrick Spedding, has been writing about the conference and exhibition on his blog.

Generation Starship Stories: Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop

2010-07-19T21:52:00.002+10:00

Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop (1958), published under the title Starship in the US, brings some imaginative new material to Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky and serves as an important milestone in the development of the generation starship trope in science fiction.

Non-Stop was Aldiss's first novel and from it we can see some of the ways in which he will challenge genre definitions in his fiction. In his essay "Generic Discontinuities in SF: Brian Aldiss' Starship," Fredric Jameson studies the ways Non-Stop plays with the reader's expectations of genre: the novel shifts from adventure, to romance, to political fable, subverting our expectations of each. Narrative techniques such as this has led to Aldiss being considered a "New Wave" sf author; David Wingrove, co-author of Apertures: A Study of the Writings of Brian Aldiss, has attributed Aldiss with bridging "old" and "new" sf.

Non-Stop follows the adventures of Roy Complain, a member of the semi-nomadic Greene tribe. Complain's tribe moves between the corridors of the rear section of a generation starship, surviving off animals hunted in the (artificial) forests and the "ponics" (plants) which grow out of control down the corridors of the ship. As in many generation starship stories, Complain's society has developed a religion, the "Teaching," that mythologises aspects of the ship's past. The priests tell stories of their world being a ship, travelling through space, but they are not always believed; the image of the stars have become a story parents tell their children. It also turns out that much of the shipboard religion was adapted from psychology textbooks aboard the ship, with "Froyd, Yung and Bassit" becoming "the holy trinity," "Conscious" becoming God, and "Subconscious" standing in for the devil. The priests frequently perform psychoanalysis, as well as more "normal" religious rituals, such as a twisted version of the last rites, although they don't hold quite the same level of power and respect as they do in Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky.

When Complain's adventures take him into "Forwards" territory, the front part of the ship, he finds a more civilised society, which has cast off the religious Teachings followed by the tribes at the rear of the ship. Over the course of the novel, Complain discovers the truth about the ship, with lots of twists and turns along the way, many of which are just as surprising to the reader as they are to the novel's protagonist. He realises the falseness of the Teachings and he has "outgrown" such superstition and ritual.

The characterisation of religion as the indicator of a backward or primitive society is something common in sf, and was often used in the pulps to demonstrate the uncivilised state of an alien society. As in Heinlein's story, religion in Non-Stop comes off as a thoroughly unscientific and superstitious force that society must be liberated from. However, Aldiss does extend a slight courtesy at the end of the novel [spoiler alert!] when it is revealed that religion still exists on Earth, and continued to exist on the ship until the virus devastated its population. Furthermore, we are told that "holy men"were sent from Earth to the ship to "counter the vile irreligion of the Teaching" (although there is no evidence of this in the novel, and no competing religious beliefs) and that the Teaching, false though it was, probably assisted the survival of the ship's inhabitants to some degree.

Overall I found Non-Stop to be quite enjoyable, and I really liked that it managed to pull out surprises that I didn't guess beforehand. Nevertheless, some things still annoyed me. At the start of the novel, for instance, Complain is married, but when his wife is kidnapped during a hunting expedition, he only cares that he will probably be punished for it. We never do find out what happened to his wife, nor are we meant to care, because he soon falls madly in love with Laur Vyann. Vyann, however, is quite a good character – she is strong and smart, which is much more than can be said about any of the female characters of Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky. Maybe this was all done to establish Complain as an antihero, but it still ground me the wrong way – I much prefer reading about good protagonists, such as Patera Silk from Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. I also thought the novel's talking rats and telepathic rabbits were a little absurd, but they didn't ruin the story. Non-Stop has certainly encouraged me to read more by Aldiss, so I will have to get my hands on some more of his work – Hothouse perhaps? Any suggestions?

Generation Starship Stories: Robert A. Heinlein's "Universe" and "Common Sense"

2010-07-11T19:50:00.002+10:00

Soon after Don Wilcox's "The Voyage That Lasted Six Hundred Years" came Robert A. Heinlein's "Universe" and its sequel "Common Sense" (both 1941). These two stories are perhaps the most significant generation starship stories ever written, since they brought many new elements to the generation starship trope and offered an archetype for how future stories would play out. Future sf that used the generation starship, and particularly those which dealt with mythologisation and ritualisation of history, would draw from Heinlein's work and respond to it in some way, all attempting to offer a new twist on his story.

One of the most important developments of Heinlein's is that he brings to his generation starship story a strong religious theme. His story takes place hundreds of years into a starship's journey, and the inhabitants have long since forgotten what the purpose of the ship was. Since there are no windows on the ship, they have come to believe that the ship is their entire universe, and they have no comprehension of an "outside", yet alone that the ship is actually moving through the vastness of space. A complex religion has developed on the ship which posits "Jordan" as God, the Creator of the Ship. "Scientists" are the ship's priests, and they preach from the ship's technical manuals, which they interpret metaphorically. The ship's voyage has become the "Trip" that everyone takes upon death before arriving at the "heavenly home" of "Far Centaurus" (the ship's original destination). The work required to keep the ship operational has become thoroughly ritualised, with a reenactment of "manning landing stations" becoming a "religious ceremony".

"Universe" opens with the protagonist, Hugh Hoyland, exploring the more dangerous regions of the ship in which he lives. These regions, being closer the the centre of the cylindrical, rotating starship, are almost weightless (due to lower centrifugal forces). They are also the home of the mutants, who attack (and eat) other members of the crew. Hoyland's world is turned upside down when he is abducted by a short mutant, Bobo, and brought to one of the mutant's leaders, the two-headed Joe-Jim. Joe-Jim educates Hoyland on the true nature of the ship, taking him to the Main Control Room where he shows him the stars.

Hoyland discovers, of course, that Jordan was the name of the foundation which created the ship, and that the ship is moving through space on a journey to Centaurus. Returning to his own people to enlighten them about the true nature of the ship, and the falseness of their religion, Hoyland is accused of heresy and imprisoned, facing imminent execution. Joe-Jim, however, breaks him out of jail and takes him to safety, while at the same time abducting one of the ship's chief scientists. "Universe" ends with this scientist, Ertz, being shown the stars himself, and coming to believe, as Hoyland does, that they should attempt to steer the ship to its destination.

"Common Sense" was, in my opinion, a rather weak follow up to "Universe". The interesting themes of the ship's inhabitants mythologising and ritualising the ship and its history in order to create a complex religion is not really developed, although it certainly does still remain, primarily in the opposition between the conservative scientists (religious fundamentalists) and the modern, free-thinking scientists who accept the truth about the ship. "Common Sense" tracks the attempts of Hoyland and his companions to liberate the non-mutants from religion, while attempting to stop a bloody war between the "normal" humans and the mutants and steer the ship to a nearby star system.

What I found almost unbearable about this story was not the reductive and simplistic presentation of religion as the ignorant and backwards mythologisation of science—I was expecting that when I picked up the book—it was the absolutely terrible treatment of women in the book. According to D. A. Houdek at The Heinlein Society (surely not an unbiased source) and M. G. Lord writing for the New York Times (slightly more credible), Heinlein often created strong female characters and "terrific women", although the latter source does admit that he has "been attacked for being misogynist." After reading "Common Sense", however, I am certainly inclined to tend towards the Heinlein-as-misogynist viewpoint. There are no strong female characters in "Universe" or "Common Sense", and I'm not sure there is a female character that isn't savagely beaten by one of our "heroes" at some point in the story. During the story, Hoyland takes two wives, and attractive young wife (purely for sex) and an older wife (for domestic duties). Towards the end of the story, when Hoyland must feed matter into a "converter" in order to power his landing shuttle, he is tempted to chop up and feed in one of his wives, though his friend convinces him to feed in some of his precious books instead. I admit that I haven't read anything else by Heinlein, although I certainly intend to (Stranger in a Strange Land is on my shelf, glaring at me), and the gender politics in his later work may be much better. That said, I was far from impressed with this aspect of "Universe" and "Common Sense", which pretty much ruined the stories for me.

"Universe" and "Common Sense" were collected as Orphans of the Sky in 1963, even though they only provided enough substance for a short novel due to large font sizes and wide margins. Nevertheless, the the book has been very popular and remains in print after almost 70 years (available via BookDepository or Amazon.com).

Oh, also, the woman shown on the right of the book's most recent cover (above right) is only in one scene of the book. She is the mutant's knife maker, and Joe-Jim asks her to make him several long knives (swords). When she refuses, Joe-Jim beats her into submission — problem solved! Grr... So irritating! And I have absolutely no idea why the Astounding cover shown above has "Universe"'s two main characters walking around in their underwear. Very disturbing.

Generation Starship Stories: Don Wilcox's “The Voyage That Lasted Six Hundred Years”

2010-07-10T21:58:00.000+10:00

I thought I'd go through and blog about some of the generation starship stories I've been reading lately, in preparation for the third chapter of my thesis and my upcoming conference paper. I've been going through the stories in more or less chronological order, and the first story that dealt directly with the concept of the generation starship was Don Wilcox's "The Voyage That Lasted Six Hundred Years" (1940). This story has been collected in Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science, edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski (2000). Wilcox had numerous short stories in pulp sf magazines in the 1940s, and, according to AuthorWars, studied sociology at the University of Kansas.

Wilcox's is probably one of the best generations starship stories I've read so far—it was thoroughly enjoyable and quite humorous. The protagonist and narrator, Dr. Gregory Grimstone, is the sole user of a cryogenic "refrigerator" aboard the S. S. Flashaway, a generation starship created for the colonisation of a distant star system. Grimstone, a young history professor, is meant to wake up every hundred years of the 600 year journey in order to ensure the mission is still on track; he is the "Keeper of the Traditions," who will ensure that American culture survives through to colonisation. But, predictably, things don't go entirely according to plan: after 100 years the population is growing too quickly, and after 200 the ship is far above its maximum capacity. After resolving a drastic situation in which 200 of the ship's elite have been attempting to starve the other 600 people to death, Grimstone enforces drastic measures of forced sterilisation, which 100 years later result in a population of a mere 50 people. Things continue to go awry as feuds between the more powerful families lead to bloody conflicts.

Throughout the story, Wilcox explores ideas of the loss of cultural history that become common to future generation starship stories The people of the Flashaway begin to think of guns as magical weapons, having only seen them in movies, and when Grimstone is forced to use one to suppress an uprising, 100 years later stories are told about him as a terrifying bogeyman, responsible for the uprising he tried to prevent:

As year after year dropped away, the people told and retold the stories of destruction to their children. Gradually the legend twisted into a strange form in which all the guilt of the carnage was placed upon me!
     I was the one who had started the killing! I, the ogre, who slept in a cave somewhere in the rear of the ship, came out once upon a time and started all the trouble.
     I, the Traditions man, dealt death with a magic weapon; I cast the spell of killing upon the Smiths and the Dickinsons that kept them fighting until there was nothing left to fight for. …
     I was the traditions man: or rather the ‘Traddy Man’—the bane of every child’s life.

Upon awakening 500 years into the journey, he finds that the people of the Flashaway have lost all sense of the ship's mission and the very notion of a "stranger", someone unknown, is completely alien to them. Without giving anything more away, I will just say that the end of the story is quite satisfying, and adds a twist of dark humour to the tale.

Although the tendency for society to mythologise past events (or forget them altogether) is well presented, religion, which is central to many later generation starship stories, is barely mentioned. The mysterious beliefs that come to surround guns are called "superstitious" and therefore irrational, but beyond that there is very little sign of the religious themes that will become so important in later stories, including Heinlein's "Universe", published a year after Wilcox's.

"The Voyage That Lasted Six Hundred Years" is definitely worth reading, and I highly recommend the Skylife anthology, which contains many great stories and essays by sf writers. I got my copy from Better World Books, which has a number of second-hand copies (and mine just happened to be signed by Benford!).

Extra tidbit: According to Eric Leif Davin's Partners in Wonder (via Google books), there have been debates over Wilcox's real name, since he wrote under numerous pseudonyms. These included "Miles Shelton," "Max Overton," "Buzz-Bolt Atomcracker," and the female "Cleo Eldon". Strangely, one of Wilcox's pseudonyms seems to have been taken from his wife's name, Helen Miles Shelton (this from her obituary and these cemetery records—a bit of a morbid source of information, I admit). Davin is quite certain that "Don Wilcox" was his real name, although most sources give it as the pen name of Cleo Eldon Wilcox (in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Clute and Nicholls incorrectly claim his real name is "Cleo Eldon Knox"). Quite a puzzle to put together!

Aussiecon 4 and the 4th Utopias Conference

2010-07-03T12:16:00.000+10:00

I'm getting more and more excited about Aussiecon 4, the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Melbourne between 2nd and 6th of September this year. I've never been to a convention before, so it will be a new experience!

Also, my abstract proposal has been accepted for the Aussiecon 4 World Science Fiction Convention Academic Program. The title of my paper is: "Adrift: The Generation Starship in Science Fiction." The paper will go for around 20 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes of question time—eep! I plan to look, very briefly, at the development of the generation starship trope and the role that religion plays in such stories. As I have written previously, this trope is usually used to explore a closed society whose loss of a sense of historicity has led to the ritualisation and mythologisation of the ship and its technology. The protagonist usually comes to realise the true nature of the ship and loses faith in the religion in which he or she was raised. Such stories often preach a rigid materialism, and seek to establish scientific enlightenment over religious superstition. Gene Wolfe, of course, puts a twist on this usual formula in The Book of the Long Sun. I'm going to have to figure out how to say a lot in only 20 minutes!

I have also received a provisional letter of acceptance for an abstract I submitted for Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe, the 4th Utopias Conference, to be held at Monash University from 30 August to 1 September (immediately before Aussiecon 4). There will be some great keynote speakers at the conference, including Kim Stanley Robinson and John Clute. My paper will be titled: "The Victorian Crisis of Faith in Australian Utopian Literature, 1870–1900."

I will post abstracts and programs here when I have more details. I also plan to blog about the events, so expect to see lots of blog activity in late August and early September!

Thesis Update

2010-06-27T21:02:00.000+10:00

Seems I haven't written anything directly thesis related on this blog for a while, so here's a bit of an update. The structure of my undergrad thesis on religion in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun has changed somewhat over the last couple of months, as these things are prone to do. Here's a bit of a run down on the evolution of the thesis thus far.

In the early planning stages, once a general thesis topic had been settled on, my supervisor encouraged me to formulate a basic three-chapter thesis plan. After playing around with different ideas, I eventually settled upon the following chapter topics (which I blogged about at the time):

1. The Outsider: The Transcendent God
2. Materialism and the 'Generation Ship' Trope
3. Patera Silk and the Role of the Priest in Science Fiction

Finding that the priest-in-science-fiction area was too broad and too complex to make a coherent analysis of in under 5,000 words (I had earlier thought of focusing my entire thesis around this topic), I soon changed my idea for the third chapter to a study of how Wolfe demonstrates transcendence in Long Sun by opening up an infinite interpretative space within the text itself.

The total word count for the thesis is meant to be between 15,000 and 18,000 words, so I had to stay below 5,000 words for each chapter. However, after writing my first chapter, I found I had written over 9,000 words. I also found that there were two distinct points I was trying to make. So, after a crisis meeting with my supervisor in which he assured me that everything was okay and it wasn't the end of the world if I deviated from my original plan, I decided split the first chapter into two chapters and eliminate the third completely. I still like my idea for the third chapter, but I realised that it wasn't integrally connected to the first two chapters and that it was a massive topic in itself. Perhaps I will give it a more thorough treatment in a Masters of PhD thesis some time in the future. My current plan is as follows:

1. Enlightenment Came to Silk on the Ball Court
2. Propounding a Theology
3. Inverting the Archetype: The Book of the Long Sun and the Generation Starship Trope

The first chapter has two parts: "Patera Silk and the Vironese Faith," in which I critically examine the character of Silk and the Vironese religion in which he was raised; and, "Silk's Enlightenment," in which I examine Silk's enlightenment by the Outsider and the profound impact this has on the rest of the series. I have also split the second chapter into two parts: "The Outsider," in which I examine the qualities Wolfe attributes to the Outsider; and, "The Book of the Long Sun and Gene Wolfe's Catholicism," in which I look at the distinctly Catholic roots of Long Sun and how Wolfe represents Catholicism and Catholic theology in the text. In these chapters I critically engage with Wolfe scholars—such as Peter Wright, whose brief analysis of Long Sun in Attending Daedalus is the subject of some scrutiny—and compare what Wolfe has said about his faith and writing in interviews and articles with what he performs in the text of Long Sun itself. I've written these first two chapters and received positive feedback from my supervisor, so now I'm doing reading and research for my third and final chapter, where I will compare what Wolfe does with the generation starship trope with what other sf authors have done (I have briefly written on this previously), specifically as it relates to the representation of religion and transcendence.

So that's how things are at the moment. I'm more than half way through, which is quite exciting. Oh, and better yet, my thesis now has a title: "Beyond the Whorl: Encountering Religion in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."

The Dalek: Visiting the Rare Books Collection

2010-06-25T10:40:00.000+10:00

The fun continued yesterday when our new library employee saw the Rare Books display near the Music and Multimedia section of the library. Noticing his excitement, Simon, Emmaleigh and I decided to take him upstairs to the Rare Books exhibition room. The current exhibition is on Children's Books and displays a range of rare materials from the library's Lindsay Shaw Collection.

We then showed our friend the large science fiction collection in Rare Books, including many shelves of Doctor Who magazines, fanzines, books, novels, and even playing cards.

He selected some material that interested him and took them to the Rare Books Exhibition Room. Among these was The Dalek Book, which he found particularly enlightening.

The Rare Books website has a virtual tour of our science fiction collection, as well as other previous exhibitions. They're definitely worth checking out!

We've had people come into the office and say, "Oh! It's a TARDIS!" Visitors have also attribute the Dalek to Star Wars or Star Trek. So for those who don't know what a Dalek is, please watch the following instructional video: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Daleks," which was linked to on io9 yesterday.

Religion in Science Fiction posts at Only a Game

2010-06-24T15:44:00.000+10:00

I recently discovered some very interesting blog posts from 2009 on religion in science fiction. The series is by Chris Bateman on his blog, Only a Game, and consists of the nine posts:

I've recently finished re-watching Stargate SG-1 and I find myself very much agreeing with Chris's analysis of the show. He writes: "From the very onset, Stargate had been tied up in an unsophisticated pulp-novel critique of religion." However, as he goes on to argue, SG-1's mission of removing the Goa'uld, who pose as gods, from power is more closely connected to deposing tyrants and freeing slaves than it is an attack on religion per se. Chris then examines seasons nine and ten of the show, posing the question: "did the later seasons alienate Christian fans?" The answer he arrives at is a definite "yes", and he also suggests that it could have played a role in the show's downfall. He writes: "It is almost impossible not to interpret the Ori as a paper-thin parody of Christianity." It is this Ori storyline that makes the show so incredibly frustrating towards the end—it becomes preoccupied with presenting a simplistic and philosophically naïve attack on religion, and on Christianity most of all. Perhaps at some point I'll write a long, ranting post about it, but Chris pretty well sums up my frustrations. Don't get me wrong, I still loved the show (I really wish they'd hurry up and make the third DVD movie). I also think that Stargate Atlantis was, in many ways, what SG-1 should have remained: simple sci-fi fun, which doesn't take itself too seriously. That is perhaps where Stargate Universe is going wrong; it is attempting to be far too serious for show that should be lighthearted and fun (I mean, the premise based on people walking through wormholes to distant planets, for heaven's sake!). Anyway, I'm getting off-topic...

Chris's post on Battlestar Galactica is also very interesting, and he briefly looks at the original 1979 series, which was heavily influenced by Mormonism, before launching into a study of the show's 2003 re-make. I absolutely loved BSG and think it did a really good job of presenting a fairly balanced look at religious themes in a science fictional setting. I also loved the rather bold ending of the series, which, as Chris notes, came as quite a shock to many viewers:

Religiously-minded individuals were stunned at these metaphysical concessions to the idea of something beyond materialism, while anti-religious atheists were up in arms in the indignant edges of the blogosphere – even though, quite frankly, prophecy and mystical dreams had played an integral part of the storyline from the beginning and something preternatural was certainly required to account for this. It was another of those not-so-rare cases of the dogmatic-corners of the atheist community behaving like a fundamentalist religious subculture – a few angry individuals decrying a story because it did not concord with their personal metaphysical beliefs.

With the range of ideas that get discussed throughout the series, Chris attributes Ronald D. Moore and David Eick with creating a "brilliantly ambiguous mythology", one which I thoroughly enjoyed trying to decrypt as I watched the show fanatically during its run.

The Dalek: Our New Music and Multimedia Librarian

2010-06-23T19:47:00.002+10:00

Yesterday, Simon, Emmaleigh and I welcomed a new Music and Multimedia staff member to the Matheson Library (Monash University, Clayton). He wasn't quite what we were expecting...

Nevertheless, we set him up at his workstation, and showed him around the Music and Multimedia collection.

"THE DOCTOR! HE WILL BE EXTERMINATED!"

I then took the time to give him some one-on-one training in customer service at the Music and Multimedia loans desk.

After a busy morning we went for a walk to the pond near the library.

When it was time for lunch we went to the Den, a popular eatery located underneath the library.

After lunch we went down to the basement of the library and showed him around the processing desks, 16mm film collection and microfiche compactus.

"CHUCK NORRIS IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN THE DOCTOR!
HE MUST BE EXTERMINATED!"

"METROPOLIS IS MY FAVOURITE FILM!"

We did, however, expect some difficulties when we encountered stairs...

... but apparently we were worried about nothing.

"ELEVATE! ELEVATE!"

All-in-all, we are very glad to have such a unique addition to our team. We're sure he'll fit right in.

We received our new co-worker from a friend of ours, Marcus, who recently moved to the UK. A note was included in the parcel stating:

It was a condition of opening this package that you would perform the following tasks:
(1) Inflate the Dalek.
(2) Photograph the Dalek around key locations within the Library.
(3) Upload said photos onto the interweb

So many thanks to Marcus, who clearly has an amazing sense of humour. I wish I could think of things like this! Thanks also to my partners in crime, Simon and Emmaleigh. I'm sure I wouldn't have had the confidence to stand in line for coffee with an inflated Dalek without them nearby laughing at me.

The Dalek used is an "Inflatable Movie Dalek" (based on Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.) made for www.scificollector.co.uk.

Forthcoming anthologies

2010-06-11T13:15:00.001+10:00

There are two great looking short story anthologies due out this month, both containing previously unpublished short stories by Gene Wolfe.

Stories: All-New Tales. Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio. Headline, 2010.

Early reviews of this collection have been overwhelmingly positive, with the LA Times claiming it is "breaking fantasy from the genre ghetto." According to Crime and Publishing, "This anthology grew out of Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio’s frustration with the boundaries that genre has placed on writers." That sounds fantastic to me! The stories I love most are always those which challenge genre boundaries and create imaginative blends of established genre conventions. The anthology's warm reception isn't a huge surprise, given it has such an amazing line-up of authors, including Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, Michael Moorcock, Tim Powers, and many other big names. Wolfe's contribution is called "Leif in the Wind." The full table of contents is online at SF Signal. Stories is due out on 15 June (BookDepository).

Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery. Edited by Jonathan Strahan and Lou Anders. Eos, 2010.

I haven't seen any reviews of this anthology yet, but again the authors all seem to be quite big names from the fantasy genre. Wolfe's story is titled "Bloodsport." I am also very excited to see Bill Willingham has contributed a story called "Thieves of Daring"—I absolutely adore Willingham's Fables comic book series. Check out the full table of contents is online at SF Signal. The Swords & Dark Magic trade paperback is due out on 1 July (BookDepository). A Limited Edition hardcover will also be available from Subterranean Press.

UPDATE (15/6/2010): Seems I missed another one coming out soon...

Gateways: Original New Stories Inspired by Frederik Pohl. Edited by Elizabeth A. Hull. Tor, 2010.

This anthology is a tribute to Pohl, and includes many great authors, including Neil Gaiman, Greg Bear, and Cory Doctorow. Wolfe's story is titled "King Rat", and I don't believe it has been published elsewhere. The full contents is available on Pohl's fantastic blog. The hardcover book is due out on 6 July (BookDepository).

Review: The Sorcerer's House (2/2)

2010-06-10T15:54:00.001+10:00

In part one of my review of Gene Wolfe's The Sorcerer's House I gave my first impressions of the novel. This second part of my review focuses on the questions raised in the book and by the book's ending—ones that I found particularly interesting or perplexing—and my own interpretations of them. Many spoilers follow these pretty pictures...


Tor-Macmillan, 2009.	PS Publishing, 2009. (Limited Edition)

PART II
[[spoilers follow]]

The final letter of the The Sorcerer's House, which purports to be from George to his wife Millie, is surely misdirection. It seems fairly certain that Baxter is the letter's real author and that he has assumed George's identity—the style of the letter matches Baxter's, and it seems unlikely that George would have such a dramatic change of character. The question remains, then, what happened to George? Did Baxter kill him, or let him live in faerie? Given their conflict, and Baxter's jealousy over his brother's wealth (and wife), the former seems more likely.

I am also fairly certain that Ted, Doris's (presumably) late husband, holds some significance. It seems probable that he is the sorcerer Ambrose, whose ring Baxter comes to possess early on in the story. It would also explain the initials on the handkerchief Ted leaves for Doris at the end: TAG - Ted Ambrose Griffin. I am far from certain of this interpretation though, and there are other ways in which Ted could be significant.

For a while I was quite perplexed by the sheer number of identical twins in the book. One character claims that twins run in families, though this is only true for fraternal twins, not identical twins. Wolfe surely is aware of this, because the occurrence of fraternal twins in The Book of the New Sun hints at the blood relationship between Severian and Agia. It seems likely, therefore, that some form of magic is at work in The Sorcerer's House which has caused so many identical twins to be born. We are told that Mr. Black likes twins, so perhaps it is for this reason that he marries Margaret (a twin), and then somehow, magically, ensures that the children she bears him are also twins. I also found the use of the 'evil twin' idea quite amusing, and I spent a good portion of the book trying to figure out whether Baxter or George was the 'evil twin'.

The theme of pairing is surely significant, and it has been discussed on the urth.net mailing list that the 44 chapters of the book seem to mirror each other (1 to 44, 2 to 43, 3 to 42, etc.). The occurrence of threes is also frequent, usually because of the triannulus, which brings Baxter three fish (three times?), three sources of money, etc. Numbers certainly seem to play a major role in the text. Now I feel I have to re-read it, counting everything!

The book's biblical references were very interesting, and they suggest another layer of meaning to interpret. According to a local folk tale, Nicholas the Butler is the servant who brought Herod the head of John the Baptist. The name "Mary King" also rings with Catholic significance. I haven't been able to figure out what it all means though, or what, if anything, Wolfe is trying to say by it.

Overall, The Sorcerer's House definitely calls for a re-reading, and that is one of the reasons I found it so enjoyable. For now, however, my time is being chewed up by reading for my thesis, so my further investigations into The Sorcerer's House may have to wait till the end of the year.

Review: The Sorcerer's House (1/2)

2010-06-10T15:39:00.000+10:00

I thought I would post my brief review of Gene Wolfe's latest novel, The Sorcerer's House (2010), in two parts: the first shall be a general review of the book, and the second part will look at the book's ending and some of the questions we are left with—it will be full of spoilers, so don't read on to part two if you haven't read the book, or don't intend to.

PART I

The Sorcerer's House is a stand-alone novel written as a series of letters, most of which are from the protagonist, Baxter Dunn, to his twin brother George. Baxter is an ex-con, who upon his release from jail found himself in possession of a large and mysterious house. Baxter is an interesting character, and I really enjoyed Wolfe's use of a person who is so intelligent in some ways (Baxter has two PhDs and is frequently making allusions to nineteenth-century literature and ancient history) and rather stupid in others (relationships, for instance). Even though I found him to be quite unlikeable, he still kept my attention. At first I was unconvinced by the construction of the novel as a series of letters, it seemed a bit contrived, but I eventually got used to it and came to understand why such a format was chosen. I suppose it is also quite believable that someone with two PhDs could be driven to write so many long, descriptive letters.

In his introduction to PS Publishing's limited edition of the book, Tim Powell notes that the novel slowly draws the reader in to a fantasy world. At first, the house just seems large and empty, if perhaps frequented by squatters, but as the story progresses, stranger things start to happen. The house constantly seems to be growing—new rooms appear regularly—and fantastic creatures such as dwarves and werewolves start to appear. Eventually we are introduced to the realm of faerie, which I thought was a lovely touch to the story.

Overall, it was a remarkably 'easy' read, for a Wolfe novel. I found the same thing with An Evil Guest (2008), but The Sorcerer's House was ultimately more satisfying. While I enjoyed An Evil Guest, I also found it to be a bit too much of a puzzle—there are numerous hints at what is really going on in the story, but we are not given enough evidence to properly decode and understand the book. Perhaps Wolfe decided to address his readers' frustration, for his latest novel seems much more candid. Wolfe sets up a great many mysteries throughout the book, but goes on to solve many of them explicitly in the text itself. Yet there are also some questions that remain, and it is this balance of resolution, explanation, and mystery that I really enjoyed. The narrator, of course, is very unreliable, and does not always seem to make sense of what is happening around him. So even in the end, when so much seems to have been explained, we can still search through the book to discover more questions, and, if we're lucky, more answers.

After reading a book I don't want to feel completely left out of the story, as though everything important has been happening in the background but I haven't been observant enough to notice. I want to be surprised by revelations and satisfied by conclusions. But I also want to be left with a sense of wonder, with some questions to solve myself, and then be driven to go back and re-read the book to unlock its greater depths. The Sorcerer's House achieved this balance for me, and I found it a very satisfying novel.

Also of interest...

Elizabeth Bear's review at Tor.com

Neil Gaiman's review at goodreads.com

A puzzle (one of many) from The Book of the Long Sun

2010-05-15T11:18:00.000+10:00

I recently finished re-reading Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun, and there is one thing that has really been bugging me. During Silk's enlightenments he is shown many images, and the significance of what he is shown is not always instantly apparent. When he sees, for instance, "lights beneath everyone's feet, like cities low in the night sky," he is seeing the stars and distant worlds of the cosmos, something completely foreign to Silk, who has lived his life on the inner surface of the hollowed-out asteroid that is the Whorl (Nightside 7). During his second enlightenment he is shown "a ragged child weeping on a mattress of straw," which is surely an image of the Nativity (Caldé 559).

However, there is one vision that I cannot understand the significance of. During his initial enlightenment, Silk is shown "a dead woman in an alley off Silver Street, and the people of the quarter," and a moment later "the dead woman seemed to stir, rags fluttering in the hot wind born halfway 'round the whorl" (Nightside 7-8). He mentions this vision of a dead woman some time later when describing his enlightenment to Doctor Crane: "There was a dead woman who had been left in an alley, and Patera Pike, and it was all connected, as if they were pieces of something larger" (Lake 490).

I've been trying to figure out the significance of this "dead woman in an alley" for some time—a few days ago I posted a message on the Urth.net mailing list, but no reply just yet. Anyone have any idea what this could mean? It's driving me nuts!

EDITIONS USED

Page numbers refer to omnibus editions of Nightside of the Long Sun and Lake of the Long Sun collected in Litany of the Long Sun (New York: Orb-Tom Doherty Associates, 2000); and Caldé of the Long Sun and Exodus from the Long Sun collected in Epiphany of the Long Sun (New York: Orb-Tom Doherty Associates, 2000).

Patera Silk's "cerebral accident"

2010-05-10T20:36:00.001+10:00

Nightside of the Long Sun, the first book in Gene Wolfe's masterful tetralogy The Book of the Long Sun, opens with Patera Silk's enlightenment by a god he calls the Outsider. During his enlightenment, Silk is shown many images and hears a multitude of voices, which he believes are all, somehow, one voice. It takes Silk the rest of the series to understand his enlightenment—the visions he was given, and the meaning of the Outsider's message. I'm currently writing my honours thesis on religion in Long Sun; specifically on the limited "gods" of Silk's whorl and the infinite, transcendent god that Silk calls the Outsider, who is certainly none other than Wolfe's own Catholic God. The following examination of Doctor Crane and his explanation for Silk's enlightenment was originally written for the first chapter of my thesis, but most of it had to be cut (I was way over the word limit for the chapter).

Doctor Crane, the rational sceptic of Long Sun, brings the validity of Silk's enlightenment by the Outsider into question when he laughingly reduces it to a medical phenomenon:

Crane smiled, and for a moment actually appeared cheerful. 'You had a cerebral accident, that's all. Most likely a tiny vein burst as a result of your exertions during the game. When that happens in the right spot, delusions like yours aren’t all that uncommon. Wernicke's area, it’s called.' He touched his own head to indicate the place. (Lake 494)

Crane takes visible pleasure in "debunking" what he sees as Silk's irrational faith. His medical explanation for a seemingly supernatural event reflects theories that the visions Saint Paul experienced on the road to Damascus were caused by a pre-existing neurological condition. In "St Paul and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy," D. Landsborough speculates that the New Testament accounts of Paul's conversion bear "a close resemblance to the psychic and perceptual experience of a temporal lobe seizure" (659). Wolfe seems to be playing with these speculations, and challenging them, when he presents Crane’s theory, which ultimately fails to explain what Wolfe himself has called a "purely miraculous" event ("The Wolfean Oracle Speaks"). During his enlightenment, Silk is shown things that he could not possibly have seen or known otherwise: he is shown the stars, something completely foreign to those living on the inner surface of the hollowed-out asteroid that is the "starcrosser Whorl"; he is shown the inner workings of the "clockwork" ship and given a mission to save it (or rather, its inhabitants); and he is shown scenes from the life of Christ. A supernatural enlightenment would seem to be the only possible explanation for Silk coming to possess this knowledge. Theories that Silk received this "enlightenment" from a Sacred Window or "glass" (downloading the information into his mind) are also flawed, since there was no such object on the ball court where he received his enlightenment (furthermore, this interpretation has been argued against by Wolfe in the Q&A linked to above).

Doctor Crane's explanation also seems to be medically dubious, since he attributes Silk’s "cerebral accident" to a burst blood vessel in the Wernicke's area of the brain, located in the temporal lobe. Trauma to this area usually results in aphasia, "the partial or complete loss of language abilities," resulting in outbursts of unintelligible speech and a total loss of language comprehension (Bear, Connors, and Paradiso 640, 645-47). Silk experiences none of these symptoms, and is seen fluently talking to Maytera Marble and the students of the palaestra immediately following the incident. Although the Wernicke's area is working in overdrive during temporal lobe hallucinations, and can be connected to the hearing of incomprehensible voices, it is not connected to visual hallucinations, such as the visions that Silk receives (Shergill). Furthermore, Silk understands what the many voices (which he believes are all the one voice, somehow) are saying to him. Hence, Crane's hypothesis would seem to fail on a medical level, as well as a narrative one.

In spite of its apparent inability to explain his enlightenment, Crane's scientific explanation still troubles Silk, and causes him to doubt the Outsider and his own experiences:

But the Outsider had doubtless been, as Doctor Crane had maintained, no more than a vein’s bursting.
     Or had Doctor Crane—who had thought himself, or at any rate called himself, and agent of the Rani—been in truth an agent of the Outsider? Doctor Crane had made it possible for him to proceed in his attempt to save the manteion despite his broken ankle; and Doctor Crane had freed him when he had been taken by the Ayuntamiento. It was conceivable, even likely, that Doctor Crane's skepticism had been a test of faith.
     Had he passed?
     … If he had, he would almost certainly be tested again, after this surrender to doubt. (Caldé 273)

Silk overcomes his doubts and begins to see Crane's scepticism as a test of faith; a test that would seem to apply to the reader as much as it does to Silk. Nick Gevers argues that scientific rhetoric like Doctor Crane's "entices the secular-minded reader into Wolfe’s text. Then, too late, the reader realises that scientific analysis will not serve, that a religious paradigm must take over" ("Five Steps towards Briah"). The reader, then, is forced into accepting, at least within the universe of Wolfe's Sun books, the actuality of a god that Silk calls the Outsider, which is, undoubtedly, a form of Wolfe’s own Catholic God. It is for this reason that Gevers rightly calls The Book of the Long Sun "a masterpiece of subversive persuasion" ("Five Steps").

EDITIONS USED

Male names in The Book of the Long Sun

2010-04-21T13:29:00.007+10:00

Naming is central to Gene Wolfe's writing, and we can often learn a lot about his characters from the history and etymology of the names he assigns them. For instance, in Michael Andre-Driussi's Lexicon Urthus, entries for character names are comprised not only of the role the character plays in The Book of the New Sun, but also the name's importance to history and ancient mythology.

In The Book of the Long Sun, the inhabitants of the city of Viron follow an unusual naming custom: boys are named after animals or animal products; girls are named after flowers or plants; and chems (mechanical people) are named after metals or stones. Hence, boys will receive names like Horn or Silk; girls, names like Mint or Hyacinth; and chems, names like Marble or Sand.

In this post I'm going to undertake a brief, cursory examination of some of the names of major male characters in the series. I will look at why they have been given these names and how their names either tell us something about the character, or serve as the source of some irony. Spoilers follow, for those who have not read the series.

Patera Silk - Our protagonist's name refers, of course, to the luxurious fabric produced by moth caterpillars. I believe the naming Silk is one of the most interesting in the series. It turns out that Silk is the adopted son of the previous caldé, and hence comes from a family of wealth and importance. However, when we first meet Silk he is the sole augur of an old, run-down manteion in the poorest quarter of Viron. The ever humble Silk presents us with something of a paradox - when forced to wear Remora's robes, Silk finds their suggestion of luxury detestable. In spite of its fineness, silk is actually quite tough, and this too fits our protagonist, who (miraculously) survives an ever-increasing number of injuries: a gash on his arm, a broken ankle, several savage beatings, being shot in the chest with a needler, being buried alive, and so on.

Caldé Tussah - We are not told the name of the previous caldé until it is quite clear that he is Silk's father, since his name is a dead giveaway. The Chinese Tussah Moth, or Antheraea pernyi, produces tussah silk (wild silk). Hence, Tussah is the progenitor (father) of Silk (though he is not biologically Silk's father). This also, of course, connects Silk to wild silk, which is stronger and more durable than other forms of silk. Tussah's connection to the Tussah Moth, commonly found in the wild in the tropics of Asia, adds to my suspicion that he is, in fact, an inhumu (a alien vampire-like creature from the forest planet Green). Further evidence of this is the mention that, like Quetzal, a known inhumi, Caldé Tussah used to wear makeup and powder his face - perhaps, as in the case of Quetzal, this was done in order to hide the fact that he wasn't human? (I just found out that this has been argued against on the urth.net mailing list, though I'm not fully convinced, because Chenille could either be born of another frozen embryo or another man, with Tussah as her father in the same sense that he is Silk's, and the woman who bore her still her biological mother, though her genetic parents could be different).

Chinese Tussah Moth. Image from http://tpittaway.tripod.com/silk/a_per.htm

Patera Quetzal - As just mentioned, Quetzal is an inhumu from the planet Green. He is appropriately named after quetzal birds, which are brightly coloured and live in forests, preferring a humid climate (like that of Green, explored in The Book of the Short Sun). The inhumi's ability to fly also makes the selection of a winged creature appropriate. Others have also connected Quetzal's name to Quetzalcoatl, meaning "feathered serpent", a Mesoamerican deity central to the Aztec pantheon. The quetzal itself was sacred in ancient Mayan and Aztec cultures.

A resplendent quetzal. Image from the National Geographic website.

Patera Remora - This groveling and self-interested augur is well suited to his name, which is taken from the remora fish, or suckerfish as it is also called. Remoras attach themselves, like leeches, to larger sea animals, such as sharks. According to Wikipedia (and shame on me for writing those words), "The host they attach to for transport gains nothing from the relationship, but also loses little." This is certainly representative of the ambitious Patera Remora, and makes his naming quite ironic.

Generalissimo Oosik - I must admit, this one made me laugh out loud. The Generalissimo, leader of the Vironese army once Silk has become caldé, derives his name from the massive penis bone, or baculum, of the walrus, seal, sea lion, or polar bear. This bone, called an oosik in Native Alaskan cultures, can be as long as 60cm - the largest on record is a 1.4m baculum from an extinct species of walrus. The association of a military leader with such a phallic name is very ironic - since war is often regarded as a testosterone-fueled display of manhood. It also adds irony to his competitive relationship with the female generalissimo of Trivigaunte. His name could also be related to the fact that he has been sexually involved with Hyacinth, Silk's love interest.

A 56 centimetre (22 inch) walrus baculum (oosik). Image from Wikipedia.

Auk - Silk's underworld friend is named after a seabird called the auk (more here). Somewhat like penguins, auks spend most of their time in the water, coming ashore to lay eggs and raise children. Auks, with the exception of the recently extinct great auk, are capable of flight. The character's connection to his name may be due to his connection with Scylla, the goddess of water, who possesses Chenille for a short while. Auk's dead brother, Bustard, is named after the land-dwelling bustards - birds that prefer drier climates.

Master Xiphias - Another ironic naming, as this master swordsman takes his name from the xiphias gladius, the swordfish! Silk has two training lessons with Xiphias (one willing, one not so much), before Xiphias appoints himself Silk's bodyguard.

Patera Incus - I'm not really sure what the significance is, but this little priest takes his name from the tiny incus or anvil bone found in the middle ear. Perhaps it is just that they are both rather small?

Patera Gulo -The gulo gulo, or wolvarine, is a small and stocky animal, capable of much greater strength and viciousness than its size would suggest. Likewise, Patera Gulo, the augur assigned to the Sun Street manteion to spy on Silk, starts off appearing to be the weak pawn of Patera Remora, but soon stands up to his superiors and becomes a fierce supporter of Silk's, and a fighter for Mint's ragged army of volunteers.

A wolverine. Image from Wikipedia.

Blood - This naming choice is explained in Caldé of the Long Sun: the son of Maytera Rose (and, according to a Q&A with Wolfe, Patera Pike) was said to be "born in blood", and for that he was named. His name becomes even better suited to him as he rises to power in Viron through criminal activity - as Silk realises shortly before he kills him, Blood is one of the most evil people he's met, and presents a great threat to the future of the city. He is also responsible for the shedding of many people's blood, not least of all his adopted daughter, Mucor.

Musk - Blood's male lover receives his name from the odor of a unique gland in the male musk deer. The fragrance, musk, is commonly used in perfume (though natural musk us hardly used any more, with synthetic musk being cheaper and easier to obtain). This naming choice is probably based on the descriptions of Musk as effeminate.

Horn - One of Silk's pupils, and the co-narrator / co-author of The Book of the Long Sun, named after the animal horn. The significance of this may be connected with animal horns, historically, being made into musical instruments, such as the shofar. The character Horn, who has a propensity to imitate Silk, is shaped into a vocal proponent of Silk's. He even decides to write "The Book of the Long Sun" about his old mentor, and gains fame for it on Blue, where many from the Whorl settle at the end of the series. In a way, he becomes a 'horn' himself, loudly proclaiming Silk's greatness.

A horn made from an animal horn. Image from aeiou.

Blog update

2010-04-09T17:48:00.001+10:00

The blog now has a nice new layout, thanks to Blogger in Draft's new Template Designer. I think it now uses space better, and is much more readable (being black text on a white background, and not the other way around). Playing around with the Template Designer has been heaps of fun, and a great way to procrastinate.

After playing around with the new Pages feature, I have created an 'About' page, with some information about myself and what I do. Currently the 'Home' and 'About' page links are on the left of the page, though I'm still not sure where they should be (I wasn't much of a fan of having the Pages tabs at the top of the screen, though that might work better if I end up adding more pages in the future). I just wish the pages allowed for greater customisation - removal of the sidebars for example - instead of being identical to blog posts.

I have this neat library software on my Mac called Delicious Library. I've been having fun with the 'publish' feature, and decided to 'publish' my Gene Wolfe bookshelves – you can view them here. I'll add more shelves as I get to know the software a bit better.

Now, time to get back to re-reading The Book of the Long Sun and drinking Ceylon Orange Pekoe tea...

What to do when you read bad books

2010-03-29T21:51:00.000+11:00

I've been reading through Gene Wolfe's essays in Castle of Days (1992) as preparation for my thesis. My favourite has to be the hilarious "Lone Wolfe: A Self-Conducted Interview with Gene Wolfe" from 1983. I particularly loved the following passage (pp. 315-6):

Q: You have the reputation of being one of the nicest guys in the field. We both know you're a hyena on its hind legs. How have you fooled everyone?
A: By keeping my mouth shut when I read garbage.
Q: Have you found that difficult?
A: No. I'm constantly running into people who've read bad books clean to the end. I admire them more than I can say, but I can't do that—when I get shit in my eyes I close them fast and cry.
Q: You also throw the book at the wall and scare the dog.
A: Yeah. And when somebody asks me how I liked the book, I say I haven't read it, because it's really not fair for me to judge without finishing the book. Maybe the last nine-tenths are marvelous. But I doubt it.

There are some fascinating essays in the collection (and some less so). There is a definite religious focus in many of his essays in The Castle of the Otter, the companion volume to The Book of the New Sun, which I believe reveals the degree to which religious and theological ideas were central to the book's development and writing.

Now it's on to Shadows of the New Sun: Wofle on Writing/Writers on Wolfe, edited by Peter Wright. I'm mining the essays (and interviews) for what Wolfe says about his own faith, ideology and worldview. I've read much of what he's written on the topic before, but now I have to relocate it for proper citation.

The Demonstration of Transcendence in Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun

2010-03-19T22:44:00.000+11:00

I have settled on a theme for the third chapter of my thesis. The introduction to the thesis will summarise my arguments, look briefly at the history of religion and the idea of transcendence in the science fiction genre, and introduce Gene Wolfe. The first chapter will be an in-depth analysis of The Book of the Long Sun and its representation of materialism / scientism and religion / transcendence. The second chapter will compare Wolfe's tetralogy to other works of science fiction, especially earlier generation ship stories. Originally, my third and final chapter was going to be on Patera Silk (The Book of the Long Sun's protagonist) and the role of the priest in science fiction. However, I have decided that this topic is too complex to spend a mere 5000 words on, since I would have to acknowledge a huge number of other science fiction stories and would probably just end up repeating the arguments of my previous two chapters anyway.

Then it came to me: while Wolfe tells us about transcendence and the infinite through Silk's learning about 'the Outsider' (God), he also goes further and performs or demonstrates this very transcendence in his complex narrative style. In my third chapter, I will examine how Wolfe opens up The Book of the Long Sun, allowing it to transcend the text itself, and become more than some set story or narrative.

The philosophical framework for my analysis will be provided by Emmanuel Levinas, a twentieth century French philosopher who wrote extensively about ethics, transcendence, and the idea of infinity. According to Levinas, a fictional text is only 'ethical' if it resists becoming part of the 'totality' - that is, if it resists becoming a simple, set story that can be fully comprehended and completely 'known'. As an example, he often cites Dostoevsky, in whose work he sees the possibility of a multitude of interpretations. In his opinion, the text's resistance to any definitive interpretation allows it to demonstrate the idea of infinity, and accurately reflect our inability to fully comprehend or internalise the world in which we live.

Emmanuel Levinas. Photo by Bracha L. Ettinger.

I will look at three ways in which Wolfe achieves this opening up in The Book of the Long Sun: [spoilers follow]

The raising of questions which go unanswered. There are many questions left at the end of the fourth book that seem to be unanswered (although, of course, the answer may sometimes be hidden in the text itself). These would include: what was really taking place with the appearance of Patera Pike as a 'ghost'? does Silk, at the end of the fourth book, get 'digitised' and become a 'god' himself? who is Silk's (biological and adoptive) family? to what extent are the inhabitants of the whorl successful in escaping their dying ship? what happens to Silk and Hyacinth, who remain in the whorl?
The "slingshot ending". This is written about by Kim Stanley Robinson, who attributes Wolfe with the invention of the "slingshot ending", wherein the pace of the narrative builds to a dense, complex flurry of activity at the end of the story. Each of the four books in the tetralogy demonstrates this type of perplexing ending: Silk encountering 'himself' at the end of Nightside; the ambush and (ironic) murder of Crane at the end of Lake; Silk's murder of Blood at the end of Caldé (and the book's confusing epilogue); the revelation that Horn is the author of the books at the end of Exodus. The effect of this "slingshot ending" narrative technique is that it leaves the reader wondering what is taking place, raising questions about what has been happening in the book and what will happen after the narrative ends.
The unreliable narrator. Almost the entire tetralogy is written in the third person by a supposedly omniscient narrator. With the revelation at the end of the final book that one of the text's minor characters, Silk's pupil Horn (with the aid of his wife Nettle), is in fact the book's author, the entire narration is thrown into question, and we can no longer assume the accuracy of what we have been told.

All three of these, of course, are narrative techniques commonly used by Wolfe, and when describing each of them I will also refer to their use in some of Wolfe's other work. The space which these techniques create is one in which the hard tasks of decoding and interpretation can take place. This space transcends the text itself, and demonstrates for us the infinity described in the text.

Gene Wolfe interview on StarShipSofa

2010-03-12T16:57:00.000+11:00

This week's issue of the StarShipSofa podcast (no. 124) contains a fantastic 45 minute interview with Gene Wolfe. He discusses a range of topics: he remembers back to experiences from his childhood, discusses the joy of writing and the nature of science fiction as a genre, updates on his current day-to-day life, and talks about his latest novel The Sorcerer's House (as well as mentioning some other recent and upcoming writing projects). Best of all, Wolfe sounds very happy while giving the interview, being glad to talk about his writing and his life. It is a great interview and definitely worth listening to. You can listen online or download the podcast here, or via iTunes here.

A few weeks back (no. 120) they had Wolfe's story "Pulp Cover" narrated. Previously there has been an audio play of "The Tree is My Hat" (no. 49), and a narration of "The Vampire Kiss" (no. 60), which was also published in StarShipSofa Stories Volume 1.

Aussiecon Two Convention Handbook

2010-03-11T18:53:00.000+11:00

I love perusing my library's rare books collection. Today I came across the Aussiecon Two Convention Handbook. Aussiecon Two was the 43rd World Science Fiction Convention, held 22-26 August 1985 in Melbourne (Aussiecon Four is upon us later this year). The professional guest of honour for the convention was none other than Gene Wolfe. I would have gone, but I was only an embryo at the time.

The handbook includes the original publication of Wolfe's essay "Peace of My Mind"; an article by John Clute titled "Gene Wolfe – Shadow of the Torturer?"; and a short bibliography of Wolfe's fiction. There are also fantastic full-page advertisements for Wolfe's Free Live Free and the tetralogy of The Book of the New Sun. A lucky find! We also have the convention's conference proceedings at the library, with an article titled "Audience and the Narrators in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun" by Norman Talbot.

New Thesis Plan: Delving into The Book of the Long Sun

2010-03-07T12:28:00.001+11:00

I have decided, after a fair amount of reading over the summer, to focus my entire thesis around Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. I was inspired to do this for two reasons: first, because in order to give "the role of the priest in science fiction" a half-decent treatment I would need to be doing a PhD thesis (or writing a book); and second, because the excellent articles on The Book of the Long Sun by Gevers and Beiting reminded me that there is plenty of fascinating material in Long Sun to fill an honours thesis (15,000-18,000 words).

The title of the thesis will probably be something along the lines of, "Materialism and Transcendence in Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." A brief, tentative plan would go something like this:

INTRODUCTION

Brief discussion of the relationship between science fiction (sf) and religion / transcendence / metaphysics.
The dominance of materialism, empiricism, scientism, and the scientific world-view in early / golden-age sf.
Post-WWII sf and the New Wave movement see the genre open up to philosophical treatments of religion, transcendence and metaphysics.
Gene Wolfe often has religious themes central to his sf.

About Wolfe and his work.

1. THE OUTSIDER: THE TRANSCENDENT GOD

Description of Patera Silk's Vironese religion: Graeco-Roman Paganism + Roman Catholicism + Technological Fetishism [citing Beiting].

The pantheon of 'gods' worshiped turn out to be artificial intelligences (AI) of the generation ship (Whorl). They are neither all-powerful, nor even 'good'.
Silk comes to see these 'gods' for what they really are, and realises they are not worthy of worship.

However, at the beginning of the book, Silk is 'enlightened' by 'the Outsider'.

Unlike the other 'gods', the Outsider transcends (the Whorl, the 'gods', all things...).

Silk and the other characters attempt secular or scientific solutions to the Whorl's problems, but always end up having to return to the religious paradigm of the Outsider and Silk's original enlightenment [citing Gevers].
By having Silk undertake this personal spiritual journey, Wolfe overturns some major sf tropes...

2. MATERIALISM AND THE 'GENERATION SHIP' TROPE

This chapter would contain an in-depth analysis of the generation ship trope, detailing the 'usual' formula for the story, and how it serves as a scientific or materialist allegory, representing religion as an ignorant mythology.
The central analysis will probably be of Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, though I will also mention other generation ship stories.
For the most part Wolfe follows this formula, having Silk lose faith in the 'gods' of Vironese religion; but he also inverts the trope by sending Silk on a personal spiritual journey towards the Outsider, turning the tale into a story of metaphysics and transcendence.

The Book of the Long Sun as Christian allegory [citing Beiting].

3. PATERA SILK AND THE ROLE OF THE PRIEST IN SCIENCE FICTION

This chapter would compare Wolfe's use of the priest protagonist to early uses, particularly those found in pulp sf.
Argument would probably be that while there are many different purposes for the priestly protagonist in sf, most authors use the character to attack organised religion, to show 'logical faults' with the religious world-view, or just to challenge faith in an all-powerful, all-loving God.
Central analysis would likely be Arthur C. Clarke's The Star.
Wolfe overturns this tendency as well, by having his priest, Silk, simultaneously lose faith in Vironese religion, and come to a stronger faith in the Outsider.

This also reflects the tension between materialism and transcendence in the text: Silk, in a sense, renounces the material and ritual aspect of Catholicism, while affirming the spiritual aspect.
This reflects Wolfe's own Catholic faith - even his (unorthodox) belief that the Graeco-Roman gods did exist, but were not all powerful and were not worthy of worship.

I am still unsure about the last chapter - I may end up re-focusing it on some other aspect of The Book of the Long Sun, but we shall see. I've got, probably, until mid-year to settle on it. So, thoughts?

Generation Ships

2010-02-24T16:33:00.000+11:00

Christopher Beiting's article on The Book of the Long Sun (which I blogged about yesterday) has got me very interested in generation ships. A type of "interstellar ark", the generation ship is a hypothetical ship capable of sustaining a human population for a number of generations, traveling a great distance in this time.

The first fictional depictions of the generation ship are, so far as I can ascertain, Don Wilcox's "The Voyage That Lasted 600 Years" (Amazing Stories, October 1940), and Robert A. Heinlein's "Universe" and its sequel "Common Sense" (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941 and October 1941 respectively, collected together as Orphans of the Sky in 1963). These were followed by many other science fiction stories centred around the 'trope' of the generation ship, including Brian W. Aldiss's Non-Stop (aka Starship) (1958), the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" (1968), Harry Harrison's Captive Universe (1969), and the short-lived 1973 Canadian science fiction series The Starlost. More recently, Elizabeth Bear has taken up the concept in her Jacob's Lader Trilogy (2007-ongoing).

The generation ship of Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun, called the Whorl, is a hollowed out asteroid, outfitted with life-support systems and a propulsion system. According to this website, the "hollowed asteroid generation ship" has also been used in Greg Bear's Eon (1985), Gregory Benford and David Brin's Heart of the Comet (1986), and the Star Trek episode mentioned above.

A hollowed asteroid generation ship. http://www.weirdwarp.com/tag/neo/

Related to the generation ship is the sleeper ship, which transports people over great distances by placing them in a kind of cryogenic sleep or stasis. I think that these are a more common science fiction trope than the generation ship, since it allows authors to avoid their characters aging during interstellar travel (the alternative, of course, is to have faster than light travel). Wolfe's Whorl would also classify as a Sleeper Ship, since in addition to the human beings living within the hollowed asteroid (the "cargo" of the Whorl), there are also thousands of people being transported in stasis (called "sleepers").

It seems that a lot of thought has gone in to generation ships, and their feasibility as a form of interstellar transportation:

According to a 2002 article in New Scientist magazine, scientists have determined that 160 people would be required to board a generational ship in order to create a sustainable population.
An essay at strangepaths.com examines the physics and philosophy of interstellar arks and generational ships.
A Strange Horizons article looks at different possibilities for interstellar travel, including generation ships and sleeper ships.
An article on Weird Warp looks as the benefits of using a hollowed asteroid as a generation ship.

Such theorisation on generation ships is by no means limited to science fiction: in the 1970s Princeton physicist Gerard K. O'Neill designed the "O'Neill Cylinder" or "Island Three" as a hypothetical generational ship in which gravity was created from centrifugal forces. The US National Space Society has made a fascinating 1977 book called Colonies in Space by T. A. Heppenheimer, an aerospace engineer, available online - it is worth a look.

Gene Wolfe's treatment of the generation ship trope seems more and more interesting the more I think about it. As Beiting notes in his article, Wolfe completely overturns the tendency to use the trope as a materialist or scientific empiricist allegory. Traditionally, the ship's inhabitants discover that their 'world' is actually a giant space ship, and must cast off the ignorant mythology or religion they have developed around the ship's builders or artificial intelligences (AI). In Long Sun, while Silk's faith in the 'gods' of his religion is destroyed when he finds out they are (mostly evil) AI, he comes to a stronger faith in the transcendent 'Outsider' (i.e. the God of Christianity). Long Sun as a whole can be read an allegory for of the coming of Christianity to the pagan, and the triumph of the religious worldview over more scientific and secular alternatives.

I shall have to find a way to incorporate this into my thesis. Perhaps instead of writing on the role of the priest -protagonist in science fiction in general, and dedicating one chapter (of three) to Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun, I will instead focus entirely on the relationship between empiricism and transcendence in the text, dedicating one chapter to Patera Silk as Wolfe's unique utilisation of the priestly character to affirm the existence of a transcendent God.

Scholarship on The Book of the Long Sun

2010-02-23T22:33:00.000+11:00

In preparation for my thesis I have been reading up on prior scholarship on Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Long Sun. Not much has been written on this tetralogy, but I did find these three articles incredibly insightful:

1. Nick Gevers, "Five Steps towards Briah: Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the Long Sun," http://www.ultan.org.uk/five-steps-towards-briah/

Gevers's treatment of The Book of the Long Sun is absolutely fascinating, and definitely worth reading by anyone who has read the tetralogy. He begins by observing some parallels between The Book of the Long Sun and Wolfe's earlier Book of the New Sun, but soon launches into a great analysis of the interaction between "the religious and the worldly," or faith and materialism, in Long Sun. He discusses the text in terms of plot, characterisation, and dialogue.

I was most fascinated by Gevers's assertion that each of the four books of Long Sun tends towards a different literary genre, and in doing so represents a scientific or secular approach to the problems afflicting the Whorl. Thus, Nightside of the Long Sun is seen as a detective novel; Lake of the Long Sun is read as a spy or espionage tale; Calde of the Long Sun represents the military story; and Exodus of the Long Sun embodies utopian idealism. Each of these secular attempts at problem solving and truth-finding turns out to be futile, and only manages to make things worse. Thus, as each of the secular approaches is tried and fails, only one option remains: that of "religious transcendence". Gevers explains how Wolfe, in demonstrating the futility of more 'scientific' approaches, leaves the acceptance of a "religious paradigm" as the only option.

2. Nick Gevers, "The Reader as Augur: Beginnings and Endings in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the Long Sun," http://www.ultan.org.uk/the-reader-as-augur/

This article is more or less a continuation from "Five Steps towards Briah," and similar themes are addressed. In this article, Gevers's central thesis is that Wolfe uses augury (divination from the entrails of sacrificed animals) as an analogy for reading. Thus, in Wolfe's descriptions of Patera Silk's augury and (at the start of Nightside) textual interpretation, we have demonstrations of the kind of careful reading necessary to truly understand Wolfe's text. Gevers goes on to illustrate how careful readings of the beginnings and endings of the four books reveal to us how each of the books are to be read and understood. The article mostly comprises rich textual analysis, and of particular interest are his discussions of Silk's enlightenment at the start of Nightside, and the role of Horn, one of Silk's pupils, in the series.

3. Christopher Beiting, "The Divine Irruption in Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the Long Sun," Logos 11, no. 3 (2008). Accessed through the Project MUSE database.

Beiting's article, published in the Catholic journal Logos, is a very enjoyable read, and contains many insights into the religious themes of Long Sun. Beiting sees the story as one of "divine irruption" - the direct intervention of God in human history. This irruption comes in the form of Silk's enlightenment, which guides all the events which follow. Beiting makes a point of the fact that Silk continually misinterprets the Outsider's (i.e. God's) command - when told to "save the manteion", Silk assumes that the physical building is what must be saved, but only realises at the end of the books that the manteion is in fact the people of his quarter, who must be saved from the dying generational ship which is the Whorl. In this way, Beiting likens Silk to Saint Francis of Assisi, who was also commanded by God to "go and rebuild My house which, as you see, is being destroyed" (p. 86), and also misunderstood the command.

Beiting covers much of the same ground as Gevers, but makes another point which I found very fascinating: while Wolfe uses the common science-fictional motif of a generational spaceship, he offers a very new take on it. In the usual tale, characterised by Robert Heinlein's "Universe" (1941) and Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop (1958), the generational ship is failing (or is adrift, or has reached its destination) and the ship's inhabitants have, after many generations, forgotten about the universe beyond the ship and mythologised the ship's original builders, often forming a religion around this mythology. The protagonist of the tale discovers that their 'world' is only a spaceship, and must enlighten others to this fact, and encourage them to repair the ship or leave to colonise a planet. Beiting sees this usual playing-out of events as a "materialist allegory: the scales fall from the eyes of the ignorant, benighted protagonists, who abandon their primitive beliefs for the truth of a glorified Science and a bright, technological future" (p. 88). He argues that Wolfe is "demolishing this trope utterly" by using the generation ship paradigm as the foundation for a "Christian allegory" (pp. 88, 102). This article is definitely worth reading, if you can get your hands on it.

The new Gene Wolfe novel is nearly here!

2010-02-17T14:05:00.001+11:00

Not long now until the release of Gene Wolfe's latest novel, The Sorcerer's House, on 16 March 2010.

The novel is contemporary fantasy and written as a series of letters, mostly short in length, giving the book a fast pace. The book's publisher, Macmillan, describes the book on their website as follows:

In a contemporary town in the American midwest where he has no connections, Bax, an educated man recently released from prison, is staying in a motel. He writes letters to his brother and to others, including a friend still in jail, to whom he progressively reveals the intriguing pieces of a strange and fantastic narrative. When he meets a real estate agent who tells him he is, to his utter surprise, the heir to a huge old house in town, long empty, he moves in. He is immediately confronted by an array of supernatural creatures and events, by love and danger.

His life is utterly transformed and we read on, because we must know more. We revise our opinions of him, and of others, with each letter, piecing together more of the story as we go. We learn things about magic, and another world, and about the sorcerer Mr. Black, who originally inhabited the house. And then knowing what we now know only in the end, perhaps we read it again.

PS Publishing is also releasing limited editions of the book, with cover art by Dirk Berger and an introduction by Tim Powers. There are Hardcover and Traycased Hardcover editions available.

Now I just need to decide which copy to get (although I want all of them! I quite like both covers), and then find the time to read it. I've been contemplating a self-imposed ban on all non-thesis related reading for a while. Right after I finish Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett, of course!

James Blish, A Case of Conscience

2010-02-14T16:40:00.000+11:00

I finished reading James Blish's A Case of Conscience weeks ago, but haven't got around to blogging about it till now. The Hugo award-winning book was a must-read for my upcoming honours thesis on (loosely) the role of the priest in science fiction literature. The 1958 novel is divided into two parts, with the first part being an extended version of Blish's 1953 short story by the same title.

The protagonist of A Case of Conscience is Father Ruinz-Sanchez, a Jesuit biologist, who at the opening of the novel is part of a research team on the planet Lithia. The first part of the novel, set entirely on Lithia, sees Ruinz-Sanchez make a discovery about the indigenous Lithians that is central to the rest of the story. In short, Ruinz-Sanchez finds out that after birth the Lithians go through a very visible evolutionary cycle before they reach adulthood (evolving from sea creature to land-dwelling reptile). Ruinz-Sanchez believes that this, and the fact that the Lithians seem to live perfectly civil and moral lives without any religion, are incontestable evidence that the entire planet was created by Satan (a heresy, since his faith teaches that Satan cannot create). The rest of the first part of the story is mostly concerned with a lengthy conversation between Ruinz-Sanchez and his three associates, Cleaver, Michelis, and Argonski. The four scientists discuss whether or not Lithia should be open to the general public, and Ruinz-Sanchez argues that it should not, since it is all the work of Satan.

I found the logic here, not to mention the science, to be somewhat problematic – though I suppose that was more to do with when the text was written than anything else. Nevertheless, the entire book seemed to be predicated on some highly questionable assertions: that Satan would create an entire planet to shake the faith of a few Catholics; and that seeing the growth or "evolution" of the Lithians would actually destroy Catholicism altogether. The possibility that Lithian society is "perfect" because the Lithians were not fallen creatures was dismissed out of hand by Ruinz-Sanchez, solely because of how the species "evolves". I found the long conversations between the scientists to be a struggle to get through, primarily because of the absurd logic involved. However, I was never sure whether or not I was meant to understand the logic. I kept thinking that Ruinz-Sanchez was a lunatic, but perhaps I was meant to?

At the end of the first part of the novel, the Lithian Chtexa gives Ruinz-Sanchez a jar with a Lithian infant inside, with the intent that he take the child back to Earth to learn from it and teach it about human life. The second part of the book is set on Earth and is mostly concerned with this Lithian youth, named Egtverchi, who is raised by Ruinz-Sanchez and Liu Meid, another biologist. The story seems to grow increasingly absurd, as Egtverchi, probably the only alien life on Earth, becomes a prominent television personality. Ever critical of Earth and the state of human society, Egtverchi incites hatred towards authority and eventually calls for widespread rioting and civil unrest. There is also a very confusing scene set at a dinner party, with people getting high on psychotropic gasses and so on.

The second part of the novel seemed like quite a different animal to the first, though I didn't find it any more interesting. It is primarily concerned with the same issues as the first part, but it has a faster paced narrative (which is a mercy). I found the end of the story to be rather underwhelming – perhaps because by that point I had given up trying to care about the story, or any of the characters.

It is clear why Blish chose to have a Jesuit priest as his protagonist – he needed to utilise the priest's moral and theological framework in order to create the "case of conscience" upon which the story is based. This, perhaps, reflects one of the most common uses of the priest in science fiction: as the source of a unique worldview. I believe that this utilisation of the priest character is most common when the priest is one of a number of central characters. For example, in Joss Whedon's space opera Firefly, the priest, or "shepherd", provides the crew with a unique concern for morality, frequently offering counseling and spiritual insights to others. Dan Simmons' Hyperion (which I have just finished reading), is comprised of six "tales" within a frame narrative, and "the priest's tale" presents us with a unique concern for the theological and religious implications of what the priest uncovers, particularly as they pertain to the Catholic church. I shall have to find some way to work this use of the priest as the provider of unique insights and opinions into my thesis somehow...

SF reading update - A Case of Conscience; Hyperion

2010-01-11T20:48:00.000+11:00

I am still struggling through James Blish's A Case of Conscience, but I'm nearly finished! It's not even that long a book - I'm just not feeling much love for it. The science is absurd, as is the logic behind the apparently random events of the book (e.g. the crazy smokes at the bizarre dinner party, and the only (?) alien on Earth being a popular talk show host). I should finish it very soon though, and then I can rant or complain about it at length.

I have, however, started reading Dan Simmons's Hyperion, which I am thoroughly enjoying. I have finished reading Father Hoyt's tale and the embedded narrative of Father Duré's journals - they form one of the most fascinating, and chilling, treatments of religion in science fiction that I have read. Since the priest's story is told primarily through Duré's journal (of which Duré is of course the narrator and the protagonist), it should prove to be a useful text to study for my honours thesis. I found it interesting how Duré's faith fluctuated between weakening (when he arrived at the planet and believed the Church to be doomed), strengthening (when he found the 'basilica' and supposed proof of his faith), and weakening again (when he found this cross-centred faith to be quite evil, and was unable to understand how God could allow such a wickedness to take place). Though perhaps weakening and strengthening are not the words I am looking for - more like pessimism and optimism perhaps; or fluctuating between seeing God as a merciless, even cold and heartless deity, and a powerful, loving and merciful one. I can't wait to see how the story turns out. Thanks to those who recommended it! It has already been worth while.

"Dante's Medieval World", Part I

2010-01-11T20:26:00.001+11:00

Today I'm writing from the Hotel Flora in Prato, Italy. On 4 January my wife and I left Australia for Italy to undertake a one month international study intensive called "Dante's Medieval World" with Monash University. The course, which uses Dante's Divine Comedy as a starting point for studying medieval Italy, is being taught out of the Monash Centre in Prato, a small but beautiful centre occupying one level of the Palazzo Vaj. Aside from regular lectures, tutorials and reading groups, there are numerous site visits and day trips. We have been to Florence and Pisa, and we still have day trips to Arezzo, Bologna, Lucca, Siena, and San Gimignano to come.

One of the most amazing experiences thus far has been witnessing the Procession of the Magi - the traditional Florentine celebrations of the Epiphany. Hundreds of people dressed in the most amazing colours and marched around the streets of Florence, finally arriving at the Duomo (where we were). There was sword fighting, a nativity, a choir, the procession, a message from the Bishop, and lots of balloons.

Christmas in the Stars

2009-12-14T11:28:00.000+11:00

A friend of mine sent me this link - and I thought it was worth sharing.

Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album

You can even listen to free samples of the tracks, and hear C3PO and R2D2 sing the fantastic title track "Christmas in the Stars". Pity the album is out of print and so damn expensive now!

Also on the topic of Christmas, I highly recommend checking out StarShipSofa podcast no. 56, which has narrated a China Meiville story called "Tis the Season" - a really hilarious short Christmas story.

I'm looking forward to January - until then I hardly have time to breath (yet alone read all the books I have waiting for me). Last weekend was a close friend's wedding, and this coming weekend is my sister-in-law's wedding (which seems to be taking up a *lot* of our time at the moment, since my wife is Matron of Honour). Christmas is a few days after that, and we'll be travelling between Wonthaggi and Melbourne for most of that day. Soon after that is my other sister-in-law's birthday, then New Years Day. And finally, on 4 January, my wife and I will be escaping all this craziness and going to Prato, Italy for four weeks to undertake a short-term international study program called "Dante's Medieval World" (she's taking the unit for credit towards her degree, and I'm auditing, i.e. tagging along). I was reminded yesterday that I can't take a suitcase full of books, and that I'll need to ration some space for clothes. Damn.

Hopefully when I next have time to write a blog post I'll have finished James Blish's A Case of Conscience and can write about that. I've had so little time to read, I'm still only half-way through the short book. So far it has been interesting, though perhaps a bit full of long-winded dialogue. Anyway, tea break is over, now back to work - these Harry Potter audio books won't process themselves...

Adventures in Pulp SF - Four Wolves

2009-12-05T09:27:00.001+11:00

Yesterday I worked a fantastic shift in my library's Rare Books Collection, checking a collection of Astounding Science Fiction from the 1940s and 1950s against our current holdings of the pulp sf magazine, to see if purchasing the items for sale would fill any gaps. It turned out we have everything in the collection for sale, and in much better condition too - our pulp sf collection is quite impressive!

For those interested, the website of Monash University Library's Rare Books Collection is http://lib.monash.edu.au/rare/. A virtual exhibition of our rare science fiction pulp collection is also online at http://www.lib.monash.edu.au/exhibitions/scifi/xscifi.html, though it is a bit old, having been made in 1999.

Anyway, when I got home from work I decided to read a few Gene Wolfe short stories that have been waiting for me:

Gene Wolfe, 'Four Wolves,' Amazing Science Fiction, May 1983.

'Four Wolves' is a collection of four, apparently unconnected short stories. The first, 'My Book', is collected in Endangered Species; the second and third, 'At the Volcano’s Lip' and 'In the Mountains', are collected in Storeys From the Old Hotel; and the final story, 'The River', is uncollected, and can only be found in this issue of Amazing Science Fiction.

All four stories are about a page or less in length, and each is preceded by a small illustration. It is amazing to see what Wolfe can accomplish in such short pieces, and how even his shortest stories can leave you in awe. I thought it was funny, however, that these stories appeared in an sf pulp magazine, since I wouldn't consider any of them to be science fiction. For those not aware, these reviews / summaries are spoiler heavy.

1. My Book

Beautiful and poetic, 'My Book' is narrated by a writer beginning a book, but deciding to start with the last word (the most important word, in his opinion). From there the writer moves backward, writing the penultimate, antepenultimate, preantepenultimate, transpreantepenultimate words, and so on. The finished product, as it turns out, is 'My Book' itself. Wolfe's writing in this short piece is amazing and hypnotic, with the story testifying to the unpredictable adventure of authorship.

By the way, does anyone know if "transpreantepenultimate" is actually a word? While I can't find it in the Oxford English Dictionary, I can find its predecessors (or successors, perhaps). Nevertheless, it's a fantastic word - I shall attempt to use it regularly in everyday conversation.

2. In the Mountains

A man who lives with his wife in the mountains tells of another couple who stayed in the city because they feared bears. The narrator believes that living in the city has destroyed their health, and is the reason that their children “have not turned out well.” As I read it, the revelation at the end is that the supposed bear tracks were actually elk tracks, hence their fear was unfounded, and they ruined their lives because of it.

3. At the Volcano’s Lip

A man and his wife visit the site of a volcanic eruption, and he compares the power of the blast to that of an atomic bomb. The story ends on a foreboding tone, perhaps regarding the danger of nuclear weapons. There's not a lot else to say about this one, it wasn't my favourite of the four.

4. The River

This story is certainly the odd one out, since it is narrated in the third-person, not the first, and is quite clearly fantasy. Siith, the Infinite Stream, is an uncrossable river – on one side are the “countries shown on maps”, and on the other, “lands that no map shows”. Althor-elmil, Lord of Siith, has navies that destroy any ship trying to cross the river from the unmapped region, taking some of their crew as slaves, and casting the rest overboard. These castaways, who can turn up on the shore or in the wells of the mapped region, are described as “blood-drinkers” and “hairy men” – vampires and werewolves perhaps? Maybe this is the reason why those on the unmapped region are attempting to cross the river, but those on the mapped region are not. In this way, it is a lot like the relationship between the planets Green and Blue in Wolfe’s Book of the Short Sun, where Green is inhabited by the inhumi (vampires), and Blue is the refuge of the humans from the Whorl. At the end of 'The River' we find that Althor-elmil has been creating flying machines to further his domain, but these are taken by Marhoon, Lord of the Air.

"The Legend of St. Ignatz" and "Article of Faith"

2009-11-26T16:13:00.000+11:00

I listened to two more fantastic science fiction short stories the other day. I chose them because they sounded like they would address religious themes, and was pleasantly surprised to find that both stories have priests as protagonists (and hence, are relevant to my honours thesis).

Samantha Henderson, "The Legend of Saint Ignatz the Provider"

A brilliantly written, and darkly amusing, short story. The narrative which follows Ignatz - a corrupt, alcoholic priest - is broken up by excerpts from the "legend" which becomes of his life after he is beatified. Neither the priest nor the Church come off particularly well in this story, since both are corrupt and greedy, with little concern for others. The story seemed a little unbalanced, because there was no positive representation of the clergy - the priest and his contacts higher-up are very disagreeable. However, a couple of peripheral characters, who we know to be Christian, are presented positively, and greatly dislike the behaviour of the drunken priest.

I believe the primary goal of the story is humor and irony, rather than a serious commentary on the Church (though Church corruption and perhaps the process of beatification are criticised). The story is also funny because Henderson is, according to her website, a church office coordinator. Didn't see that one coming.

Click for full text (via Ideomancer) or audio (via Escape Pod).

Mike Resnick, "Article of Faith"

This story, nominated for a Hugo award in 2009, tells of a robot, hired to clean a small church, who comes to believe in God after discussing Christianity with the priest, listening to his sermons, and reading the Bible. The story is told from the perspective of the church's priest, who is very happy to talk to the robot and pleased at his interest in God - until the priest angrily declares that the robot cannot be a member of his parish because he has no soul. When the robot attends the church service regardless, the congregation is outraged. After talking with the robot, the priest encourages the congregation to consider allowing him to join them, since he expresses a genuine desire to worship God. The intolerance of the parishioners, however, leads them to kill the robot, whereupon the priest resigns and becomes a carpenter.

I found the sudden introduction of anti-robot sentiment to be unprecedented and unusual, since there is no indication of it before the priest's angry outburst at the robot - before which point he is eager to share his faith with him. The story is also awkwardly heavy with allusions to the robot being a Christ-like martyr for his faith. Most interesting to me is how the (science-fictional) dilemma the priest finds himself in causes him to renounce his calling and leave the church. He comes to realise that the church is inherently intolerant - indeed, they are violently so - and this revelation changes him. While he doesn't seem to fully renounce his faith and disbelieve in God, he certainly ceases his devout religiosity. In this respect, I found the story to be rather anti-religious, since all the church-goers are portrayed as violent and intolerant cold-blooded killers.

Click for full text (via Jim Baen's Universe) or audio (via Escape Pod).

I've started reading James Blish's A Case of Conscience, which is great so far. I'm just trying to find the time to read some more! Also, it's been a while since I've read any Gene Wolfe, which I realised today when I was discussing The Book of the New Sun with a coworker at the library (who I convinced to read it, and who absolutely adores the book so far). Perhaps I should gobble down some more Wolfe short stories...

Elizabeth Bear's Dust

2009-11-15T16:41:00.000+11:00

Just finished reading Dust by Elizabeth Bear. It was overall a quite enjoyable book, though I did not find myself particularly attached to any of the characters, not even the protagonists, Perceval and Rien, who perhaps weren't as well developed as they could have been. Nevertheless, the story was interesting, and the world that Bear created is immense and creative - I look forward to seeing it explored more in the rest of the series (Dust is the first book in a planned trilogy).

The story begins with Perceval, an Exalt from Engine, being taken into captivity by Ariane of Rule, who mercilessly amputates Perceval's wings in order to humiliate her. Rien, a servant in Rule, is given the responsibility of caring for Perceval while she is in prison. It is soon revealed to Rien that Perceval is her half-sister, and Rien orchestrates their escape from Rule, thereby saving Perceval from certain death at the hands of the war-mongering Ariane. The two escape and begin their adventure through the intergenerational spaceship known as Jacob's Ladder.

Elsewhere on the massive spacecraft, powerful artificial intelligences, calling themselves "angels", battle for control over Jacob's Ladder. The most powerful of these, Jacob Dust, has an obsession with Perceval. Unlike Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun (with which Dust bears a great many similarities), where the ship's AIs are called "gods" because they created a pantheistic religion aboard the ship in order that they be worshipped and obeyed, the reasons behind Bear's AIs being referred to as "Angels" and "Gods" is never clear.

We do, however, discover that Jacob's Ladder was launched as a project of forced evolution - the one paragraph blurb of Dust's sequel, Chill, indicates that the project was orchestrated by a religious cult - though this is not particularly clear in Dust itself, where the mixture of evolutionary science and Judeo-Christian religion is awkward and for the most part unexplained. Furthermore, it is often unclear whether the religious symbolism (e.g. the name "Jacob's Ladder" itself, and the desire to attain "divinity" through forced evolution) is intended literally or metaphorically. To further confuse matters, of the 29 chapter epigraphs (!!), three are from the "New Evolutionist Bible" (apparently a translation of the Christian Bible which actually appears in the book itself) and one is from the "New Evolutionist Funeral Service". So far as I can tell (through much googling), these are entirely fictional creations of Bear. The builders of the Jacob's Ladder, we surmise, must be these "New Evolutionists". Hopefully this will be developed more in-depth in the next two books.

The only other gripe I have is that the ending seemed to come out of nowhere [spoilers ahoy]. When Rien eats the plumb, containing one of the AIs in virus form, she alters the virus and transmits the code to Perceval, and through Perceval's connection with Dust, manages to re-write Dust's programming and free Perceval from his clutches. Upon essentially merging herself with Dust and the virus, Rein's physical body and mecha suit suddenly disintigrate (turn to dust - how poetic, if scientifically implausible), and a new super-powerful AI is born. What I fail to comprehend is how Rien, who until a few days earlier had spent her entire life as a servant, was suddenly able to re-write what must have been the incredibly complex programming of the virus and then re-write the programming of Dust and all other AI in Jacob's Ladder in a matter of seconds. It seemed that Bear was pulling a rabbit out of a hat with this out of nowhere ending (much like the sword out of the hat resolution in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). I had seen no indication that Rien possessed the amazing abilities that she displayed at the end in her defeat / reprogramming of Dust.

Nevertheless, the story was quite intriguing, and enjoyable to read. Bear's writing can be lucid and poetic, though this isn't maintained throughout, and some things, such as the hermaphrodite sex scene and the recurring theme of incest, just made me cringe. Perhaps that makes me intolerant and closed minded, but I couldn't bring myself to get celebrate a romance between half-sisters. I did, however, find the blend of science fiction and fantasy to be fascinating - I love writing that blends these genres (as Wolfe does), and Bear does this very well. The interplay between science and religion in the story had me wanting to read more. I'll have to read the sequel, Chill, when it is released next year.

More info on Dust and Bear's other writing can be found at her website here. Now, to start reading James Blish's A Case of Conscience...

Podcasts; "Come All Ye Faithful" by Robert J. Sawyer

2009-11-05T15:29:00.000+11:00

After listening to StarShipSofa, I decided to scour the internet and find what other sf audio podcasts were out there. Lo and behold, I discovered Escape Pod, and its fantasy-centred sibling PodCastle. (The same team also does a horror podcast, Pseudopod, but horror isn't really my gig).

Episode 220 of Escape Pod has a narration of Robert J. Sawyer's "Come All Ye Faithful", a fascinating sf story which deals with religion. With the protagonist and narrator being a priest, the story was of particular interest to me due to my upcoming honours thesis on priests as protagonists in sf. The story follows the only Catholic priest on Mars as he sets off from the colony of Bradbury (fantastic choice of name by the way) to investigate an apparent sighting of the Virgin Mary elsewhere on the red planet. Arriving at the location of the apparent sighting (made by a popular televangelist via telescope from Earth), the priest looks around and finds nothing but sand. Reporting back to the Vatican, however, the priest fabricates a fanciful story about a miraculous encounter with the Virgin, thereby corroborating the televangelist's vision. As a result of the priest's lie, many Catholics pilgrimage to Mars and stay there permanently. We are led to pity these poor religious fools, who base their lives upon lies - fabrications made to reinforce their faith.

I was thoroughly enjoying the story up to the point where the priest fabricated his story - a turn which I found very bizarre, primarily because it did not seem to be in keeping with the priest's character. The priest is not only a devout Catholic, but also a scientist - an expert astronomer. He is intelligent, friendly, and, for most of the story anyway, quite likable. Needless to say, his fabrication is a gross violation of scientific method. It also seems incomprehensible to me why someone who genuinely believes in miraculous visions, as the priest claims he does, would feel the need to fabricate one, and lie so openly about it. The logical conclusion is that the priest must, then, be insincere in his faith - living a lie he does not truly believe. Were his faith to be genuine, he would surely have believed that the Catholic religion could stand up on its own, without the need to fabricate such miracles - though perhaps this was the point. When he makes up his story, he seems to be reluctantly accepting a necessary part of his job - as though it were a longstanding tradition for Catholic priests to corroborate false miracles. In this respect, Catholicism is presented as a faith predicated on lies - a religion which relies upon fabrications to keep on going.

Although the Mars scientists and colonists are, for the most part, presented as bigots, their condescension on the priest and his religion turn out to be well founded. Far from breaking down traditional barriers between "science" and "religion" (or "rationality" and "faith"), the story ends up reinforcing this irritating and all too common stereotype. The idea of a truly devout priest who is also an intelligent scientist seems to be too much for Sawyer to handle, so he presents the priest as being full of contradictions. The priest cannot be both faithful and scientific, rational and spiritual, so he must compromise on one (or both) of these things.

Overall, religion (Catholicism specifically) does not come off well in this story. The priest is a duplicitous liar who feels it is necessary to fabricate miracles in order to maintain his religion. The irritating televangelist (who just made me cringe) is thrown in just to make religion even less likable - not that the story needed any help in this respect. All the story serves to do, in the end, is reinforce the false dichotomy between "rationality" ("truth") and "faith" ("lies"). Nevertheless, it as an interesting read (or listen), and would be worth checking out, even if only for the fantastic jokes, such as the simile to "farting in an airlock" and the priest's mock-relief that he isn't "preaching to the converted".

Free Will and Determinism in The Book of the New Sun

2009-11-03T22:46:00.000+11:00

I recently finished re-reading Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer, paying particular attention to religious, spiritual, and philosophical themes and discussions. And there is certainly no shortage of such material. One of the central themes, which grows in importance as the series progresses, is the question of free will and determinism. Specifically, to what extent is Severian "in control" of what transpires in the narrative? How much of what he does has already been determined by forces greater than himself? And what role does God play the events?

The opening line of the book – "It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future" (p. 9) – signals that some kind of "destiny" or "fate" is at work in Severian's life. His future is set. We are forced to ask who, or what, has set his future.

There are implications of divine providence throughout The Book of the New Sun, with constant reference to the Pancreator / Increate (God / Holy Spirit) being sovereign over all things. However, we are never given any conclusive evidence of this one way or the other.

Later in the book, we find that highly advanced alien creatures (cacogens, Hierodules, giant sea creatures, etc) have been interfering in Severian's life from very early on – perhaps before he was even born. Severian's manipulation by Agia and Agilus throughout The Shadow of the Torturer may serve as a parallel for his manipulation by powerful alien forces throughout the entire story.

The free will / determinism problem is further complicated by the introduction of time travel – especially Severian's ability to step into the "corridors of time" and go into the past, thereby altering the future. At the end of The Citadel of the Autarch, Severian speculates that he was not the first Severian, and that there have been many Severians before him who have gone into the past and changed the future (his life). We find in The Urth of the New Sun that these alterations to Severian and his life were all for the purpose of having him pass the test necessary to bring the New Sun (which previous incarnations of him had failed). Perhaps Severian, through time travel, has taken his own free will away?

Another way in which determinism works its way into the story is through Severian being driven by his own desires – yearnings that he is not fully in control of. Severian discusses this in one of my favourite passages from The Shadow of the Torturer, which comes as he discusses the difficult exegesis of the tale of Ymar:

The difficulty lies in learning that we ourselves encompass forces equally great. We say, "I will," and "I will not," and imagine ourselves (though we obey the orders of some prosaic person every day) our own masters, when the truth is that our masters are sleeping. One wakes within us and we are ridden like beasts, though the rider is but some hitherto unguessed part of ourselves. (p. 159)

Severian, it seems, regards his actions as predetermined by his inner desires, which "wake" and "ride" him. These desires appear to be beyond his control. This sounds like a fatalism which sees the human being as entirely determined by their biology and their experiences – nature and nurture.

Whichever of these be the case, we are given ample evidence of the determinism at work in the narrative. With implications that events have been set by biological and cultural determinism, time travel paradoxes, manipulation by more powerful beings, or divine providence, Severian never seems to be fully in control of his actions, or the events in which he is involved. But then again, who is?

Quotations are taken from: Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer, in The Book of the New Sun – Volume 1: Shadow and Claw, Fantasy Masterworks edition (London: Gollancz, 2000).

Relax to the soothing sounds of a nuclear powered aircraft carrier

2009-10-24T09:17:00.000+11:00

I had to share this. The other day, while sorting through some of the library's LPs, my colleague came across this classic album:

The album contains such hits as "Nuclear reactor room siren" and "Engine room, main oil lube alarm". I have absolutely no idea how this ended up in my library's music collection!

Tribble triathlon

2009-10-23T23:23:00.000+11:00

Ahh... this is the life. Watching dreadful science fiction TV while eating nachos. Earlier this week I processed the second and third seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series at my library, and immediately borrowed the fifth disc of season two, which contains three Star Trek Tribble episodes: "Trouble with Tribbles" from The Original Series, "More Trouble, More Tribbles" from The Animated Series, and "Trials and Tribble-ations" from Deep Space Nine.

"Trouble with Tribbles" was good in a nostalgic classic-science-fiction kind of way - not really fantastic in and of itself (in fact quite dreadful by today's standards), but nonetheless enjoyable. While trying to protect storehouses of grain from the Klingon, the Enterprise is overrun by Tribbles - tiny, furry creatures that multiply at an incredible rate. The Tribbles also have a strangely calming effect on all non-Klingon races, and send Klingons into a rage. The episode is very funny - at least I'm fairly sure I was laughing at the jokes most of the time, and not the show itself.

The Animated Series, it seems, is truly dreadful - and the 20 minute "More Trouble, More Tribbles" felt more like 20 hours. The cast of The Original Series are certainly not voice actors, since they all sounded incredibly bored for the entire episode (so they sounded like I felt). Furthermore, the animation was virtually non-existent, with most scenes being stationary people with slightly moving lips - though this was probably more due to the shocking animation technology of the time.

The Deep Space Nine episode, however, was thoroughly enjoyable - by far the best of the three. Yes, "Trouble with Tribbles" is classic, but "Trials and Tribble-ations" is good. I knew that the DS9 episode was a "crossover", but I still wasn't sure exactly what to expect. The episode actually runs, for the most part, concurrently with "The Trouble with Tribbles", and scenes from the original episode are spliced in. DS9 crew are forced to disguise themselves as Enterprise crew in order to infiltrate the station and the Enterprise and foil the plan of a villain that travelled back in time with them. In doing this, the DS9 crew become the 'extras' and 'behind the scenes' characters of "The Trouble with Tribbles". They are digitally inserted into scenes from the earlier episode quite seamlessly, and the result is hilarious (see, for instance, the bar fight). The writing of the episode is also brilliant, with many nods to (and parodies of) The Original Series. It is also, in many ways, a pastiche of other time travel stories, being very self-conscious. It is plain to see why "Trials and Tribble-ations" was nominated for a Hugo Award. I highly recommend it! You should watch "The Trouble with Tribbles" first to truly appreciate the episode. But skip The Animated Series. Trust me.

Essay done! SF reading underway!

2009-10-22T15:05:00.000+11:00

Finally! I am now totally free from coursework units, having submitted my final essay yesterday. It could perhaps be considered sad, but on the same day as I technically finish uni for the year, I manage to pick up some reading for my thesis. I work at the Matheson Library at Monash University, and as I was walking past the new books display, this caught my eye:

Gabriel McKee, The Gospel According to Science Fiction: From the Twilight Zone to the Final Frontier (2007).

I've been following McKee's fantastic blog at sfgospel.com, and a while ago requested that my library acquire a copy of his book, and lo and behold, here it is! I read the introduction at work, and can't wait to get started on the book proper. Check out the table of contents at Amazon.com - I can't wait to read the chapters on Free Will and Divine Providence, Alien Messiahs, and Faith and Religious Experience.

I'm also about a third the way through Dust by Elizabeth Bear, which I'm really enjoying. I find it rather reminiscent of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun - failing generational spaceship, AI as 'gods', religious themes, blend of fantasy and sf, needlers (needle-guns in Bear), the word 'azure'. I'll write a proper review when I've finished.

On my agenda for post-semester fun: playing Oblivion and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl; re-watching Stargate SG1; planning my trip to Italy in January (I'm auditing a one month unit taught at the Monash Prato centre called "Dante's Medieval World", which my wife is taking); and reading outside in the beautiful, sunny Spring weather. Also tidying the house, though that's perhaps slightly less fun.

Howl's Moving Castle; reading short stories

2009-10-13T23:07:00.000+11:00

I finished reading Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle with my wife the other day, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We decided it was one of those essential childrens' fantasy books that we had to read - and we bought a copy because of it's gorgeous cover. As soon as we started reading it, I discovered it was going to be quite different to what I had expected. It's a brilliantly written, self-reflective, and very, very fun. The characters were fantastic, and I absolutely loved that it crossed over from the fantasy world to the 'real' world at times. It's very different to the anime movie based on it, but I did see that years ago, so it didn't have much of a bearing on my reading of it. Highly recommended!

I've also been reading a few short stories lately, since they're easy to fit in around essay writing. I bought Vera Nazarian's Salt of the Air (not only because it has an introduction by Gene Wolfe) and have read "Rossia Moya", an interesting little science fiction piece set in a near-future dystopian Russia which is about to sever all connections with the rest of the world, and "The Story of Love", a beautifully written story that was nominated for a Nebula Award - though I would question how much a father that beats his daughter actually deserves love.

StarShipSofa's podcasts have be fantastic for providing quick doses of science fiction while walking to and from university. I'm listening through them rather randomly, but so far I have thoroughly enjoyed:

"Mythological Beast" by Stephen Donaldson (episode no. 11) – a brilliant blend of science fiction and fantasy. It has evil artificial intelligences and unicorns – what more could you ask for?
"'Tis the Season" by China Miéville (episode no. 56) – an extremely funny story about the commercialisation of Christmas.
"A Slow Saturday Night" by Michael Moorcock (episode no. 9) – an incredibly funny story in which God is questioned about his divine plan by bar patrons on a slow Saturday night. God, it turns out, is the God of prosperity doctrine - only the wealthy and prosperous get in to heaven. And cats. Apparently God greatly prefers cats to humans, and he essentially only allows humans in to heaven to serve the cats. I suppose I understand that. All in all, some very interesting, and funny, social commentary.
"And the Deep Blue Sea" by Elizabeth Bear (episode no. 19) – probably the most 'science fictional' of all the stories I listened to. Set in a post-apocalyptic America, the story follows a package courier that must ride across the country on her motorcycle to deliver an important parcel. It was also brilliantly narrated. The story had me wanting to read more by Bear, so I read the first few pages of her recent novel Dust on Amazon.com preview (the description sounded a lot like Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun – massive generational spaceship, blend of sf and fantasy, etc) – now I'm hooked and I must read the rest of it! Only thing is, I can't find it in any bookstore here. Blasted understocked Australian bookstores!

As soon as I've finished this blasted honours coursework essay (eight days to go! yay!) I'll have time to delve into some novels. I'm waiting to read Elizabeth Bear's Dust, Neil Gaiman's Sandman (the entire series!), and a heap of novels related to my thesis next year. All that, of course, will have to wait untill my desk doesn't look like this:

Coursework essay writing underway

2009-10-03T16:45:00.000+10:00

Well, I just wrote the first 1600 words of a 6000 word coursework essay. I even came up with a title: "The Angel of Derision: The Use of Biblical Intertexts in S. Y. Abramovitsh's 'Shem and Japheth on the Train' and 'Burned Out'". What does it have to do with science fiction? Absolutely nothing. (What a sad semester, but such things are unavoidable.) The essay is for a unit called "The Jewish Literature of Destruction," in which we've been studying Jewish literary responses to catastrophe, from the biblical period to the Holocaust. I chose to write my essay on the 'grandfather' of modern Yiddish and Hebrew prose fiction, Abramovitsh, who was writing in Tsarist Russia from the Pale of Settlement in the late nineteenth-century. What makes Abramovitsh fairly unique among the authors we've been studying this semester is his style of response: parody and satire. His stories are, at the same time, incredibly funny and rather depressing. But they still make for more lighthearted reading than most of what I've read this semester. I'm specifically looking at his use of biblical quotations as a source of satire and irony in his later Hebrew writing.

The unavoidable problem with studying the Jewish literature of destruction in isolation, however, is that reading it alone serves to reinforce a lachrymose (tearful) view of Jewish history, one which many scholars are attempting to move past. Nevertheless, as upsetting as most of this literature is, it is incredibly beautiful writing, and very enlightening - there is a huge difference between reading a history book on life in the ghettos, and reading the heart wrenching writings of actual ghetto inhabitants.

As deep as all that sounds, I've been having trouble not just sitting and looking at my little room heater, which I swear would look just like a cylon, if only I could make its red light move from left to right.