Category: Uncategorized

True Blood

You’d think the public would have put a stake through the heart of vampire stories long ago but as long as creative new repackaging like the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer and HBO’s new series True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries come along, the undead will continue to haunt us.  I have to admit that I have a life-long prejudice against vampire stories.  Bela Lugosi’s Count Dracula was a cliché when I was a kid, and the concept seemed tired even back in the 1950s.  I was arm-twisted into give the living dead another chance with Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, which I truly admired, and that taught me to be more open about vampire stories.

The world of literature is full of recycled plots, characters and concepts.  Who would have ever thought that millions of books could have been written around the concept of the private detective?  True Blood blends murder mystery with the occult.  I guess some ideas are primal and go back as far as the origins of consciousness.  Being killed by a bite to the throat may even be an ancestral memory from when we were animals.  And isn’t it interesting that Christian symbols are weapons against these evil creatures of the night?  Especially since both myths use blood as the conduit of resurrection.

I did not intend to get into another HBO series, but I just happened to be in front of the TV when the premier episode started and within seconds I was hooked.  Right from the beginning I was thinking, “Geez, this is great storytelling.”  We’re not talking Shakespeare here, but A-1 quality Weird Tales.  Just high octane lurid pulp fiction, told with humor and a sense of style. 

Vampires have come out of the crypt and are demanding their civil rights, and humans are all over them seeking kinky sex, historical knowledge and even their blood.  Vampire blood is rumored to have some of the same kind of properties that Chinese herbalists claim for rare animals on the endangered species list and its worth thousands on the black market.

True Blood is about the first vampire moving into the little Louisiana town of Bom Temps.  You can follow the news of these events at Bloodcopy.com, an interesting viral marketing tool for HBO.  Anna Paquin plays Sookie Stackhouse, a young telepathic waitress that is boy crazy for vampires and solves mysteries for The Southern Vampire Mystery book series.  I’m amused that Charlaine Harris shares my last name and birthday, we were even born in the same year, and she lives in this part of the country.  I don’t believe in astrology, but my reading taste seems to be in the same house as her writing.

The first episode of True Blood got me hooked, so I’m anxiously awaiting next Sunday night to see if I’ll keep wanting to watch it.  I had come this close, picture me holding two fingers in a near pinch, to giving up TV this summer.  I’m a TV addict.  Shows as entertaining as True Blood, Pushing Daisies, Big Bang Theory and Mad Men keep me coming back.  I constantly wonder why fiction is so addictive.  I know it’s all make-believe.  I know it’s all pixels on a screen.  I know television is created by the elite of the world to get rich off us couch potatoes.  But I’m mesmerized by good story telling.

I’ve got to admit the vampires are a silly concept.  I could be spending time reading about quantum physics or learning to program rich Internet applications, but instead I flop on the couch and watch Anna Paquin pretend to be telepathic and Stephen Moyer pretend to be a vampire.  Why is that so interesting?  If I knew maybe I could churn out my own vampire stories and become one of those elite people that look down on television watchers but get rich writing stories that get slobs like me addicted.

Jim

Electoral College

An old friend of mine called me today sassing me with jokes about my piece on Sarah Palin.  He’s afraid that too many men are going to use their below the belt brains to make their voting decision.  I carefully informed him that although I found Sarah very attractive physically, I wasn’t going to vote Republican.  He then told me my vote wasn’t going to count anyway.  He said because of the way the Electoral College works, my vote, along with all the other democratic votes, won’t be used because it’s winner take all in each state, and currently Tennessee is running almost 2-to-1 for McCain.  That won’t keep me from voting, but it sure is a downer bit of knowledge.

His state, Florida, is slightly for McCain, but can still go either way.  I wonder if I should move to Florida and register there quickly?  Or would it be better to move to Colorado where the democrats have a slight edge and help them solidify the lead.  (I have no idea what the voter registration rules are, though.)

To play with these fun numbers, I found www.electoral-vote.com for quick statistics on state by state polling.  I wish I knew more about these people to know if their statistics are accurate and if the creators of this web page are biased for either party.  Politics really creates some fantastic web activity, and it’s extremely hard to know what’s real and not real.  Snopes.com is a great place to check rumors of any kind, but during the election it has become a great political lie-detecting tool.

I can understand the theory behind the Electoral College, but I wonder why we can’t have direct voting, instead of using this ancient indirect method.  The Wikipedia article I linked to above is quite fascinating, and gives many pro and con points to the concept.  I can understand some of the pro Electoral College points in the abstract, but I just feel the one person one vote concept is more fair.  I doubt things will ever change, so keeping an eye on www.electoral-vote.com is probably the best way to take the political pulse each day.  If the Electoral College is the whole game, then stats following it are the ones to watch.

Jim

Revealing Your Personality With Science Fiction

Rusty Keele over at BestScienceFictionStories.com has invited blogging friends over to write about their favorite SF short story, and I’m one of the contributors.  My post is queued up for tomorrow.  I picked “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany from 1967.  Be sure and stop by and read all the posts this week.  Jason Sanford discusses his love of Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” from 1950 and John DeNardo picks “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin from 1954, after sneaking in a plea for “Diamond Dogs” by Alastair Reynolds from 2003.

It’s revealing to see what other fans like in the way of short stories, especially when you only get to pick one.  If had mentioned two, I might have included “The Menace From Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein from 1957.

To help refresh your memory of great short stories, look at these lists:

Are you a long time fan of science fiction?  If you study these lists, even in a casual way, they will bring back a flood of memories.  There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of great science fiction stories.  Our pitiful little minds just can’t hold them all our bio-RAM.  I wouldn’t have picked a different story if I had read these lists before I wrote my essay for Rusty, but reading them now makes me realize how hard it would be to pick story #2.

It’s too bad reprint rights are so expensive because it would be huge fun to create my own personal anthology of favorites and publish it at Lulu.com.  Imagine a fad of publishing personal anthologies of short stories, where you wrote forwards and afterwards for each story. Wouldn’t that make a unique way to communicate with new friends?  In the old days you’d introduce yourself to people and leave your calling card.  Imaging leaving your anthology.

Could you define your inner core personality with 12 short stories?  I think “The Star Pit” comes close to revealing a lot of my personal programming.  Picking the next 11 stories would be difficult, but I think I’ll start going through the above lists and make a try of it.  Certainly, it will make a nice blog entry.

Jim

Being the Peacock

It is the male peacock that wears the fancy dress and struts his finery to attract the less flashy lady peahens.  In the animal world it generally appears to be the male that gets all dolled up to catch the female, so why in our species are the females the disciples of Vogue?  With animal courtship the males do all kinds of crazy things to show off because it’s the females who get to make the final decision.  Human females also get to make our final decisions on mating, but it also appears they get to do all the gaudy displaying too?  Or is that true?

Males of our species do show off by making money, showing strength, doing dashing deeds, while only using a modest amount of flashy color and huge tail feathers.  Hell, suits are in by the young men again.  You can’t get less flashy than a suit.  Last night I saw a rock band all wearing black coats, white shirts and dark ties.  Their looks were dull but they were making a big noise to attract women.

In our species it appears that the males are still the ones that show off, but somehow the role of preening was giving to our ladies.  From fashion runways to Vegas shows to Miss America pageants you can see the extremes of female plumage.

I think this biological programming has had a tremendous impact on female behavior and psychology, making women very different from men.  Okay, I can hear all the protests now.  Yes, I know some men love to show off their costuming and some women don’t.  But I think this programming subroutine goes far deeper than outfits.  Women are a thousand times more concerned about their looks then men.  Why is that?

Let me give an example.  Among my lady friends, and I’m mostly talking about women in their fifties, I’m starting to hear the same story repeated independently from all of them that makes me worry.  They all hate to see themselves naked.  One friend said she holds her hand in front of her eyes when she gets out of the shower to shield her vision from the image of her naked body in the mirror.  When she says this I’m thinking I’d loved to see her step out of the shower and towel off, so it’s not that she’s bad looking.  But why has she become so hideous to herself that she won’t look at a mirror until she’s dressed and ready to hide her face in makeup?

If this was an isolated comment I wouldn’t have much evidence for my case, but I hear stories like this over and over again.  We’ve reached an age where my women friends are horrified by their bodies but I’m not, not by mine or theirs.  I still want to look up their dresses and down their blouses to catch whatever glimpses I can.  And another common thing I hear from these women are gripes about men wanting younger “firmer” women.

They seemed obsessed with the word “firmer” too, because they say it with such resentment.  And no matter how much I tell them I’m still physically attracted to women my age and even a bit older they don’t believe it.  They say I’m an oddball and 99% of normal men only want to look at twenty-something women.  Sure we like looking at younger women, but I’ve talked to my fellow boomers, and the consensus is older women can be just as hot.

Women may blame their resentment on men, but I’m starting to wonder if the problem isn’t theirs.  Sure there are men obsessed with sweet young things, but none of my pals are like that.  I think a lot of men have to chase younger women because as they get older the females of their generation stop wanting to be caught, forcing those guys to go further afield to hunt.  But this isn’t the point of my story.  I want to focus on the psychology of being the peacock.

I think both sexes are cursed by their biological programming.  Personally and culturally we’re possessed by the drive to reproduce.  This is understandable from a biological point of view, but why doesn’t the sex drive shut off when the baby making years are over?  When women go through menopause, why don’t they suddenly wake up and think, “Gee, I feel great.  I don’t have to preen anymore for those goddamn males always chasing after me.”  And then relax into a new lifestyle.  Why should women hate their bodies just because the sign “Great Babies Made Here!” gets turned off?

From the male side of things I wished my thoughts weren’t constantly befuddled by my cells urging me to go make babies.  Obviously, the reason why I still want to see fiftyish women get out of the shower is from residual programming to reproduce.  I’m already hearing all those people thinking, “Well men can make babies until they die.”  Just because we can, and just because we have the drive, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.  Evolution designed us to live long enough to reproduce and then die.  Our brains helped us beat those plans and  we live much longer than evolution planned.  At a certain point in both the lives of men and women we get to an age where babies aren’t wanted.  But the damn baby making programming inside of us doesn’t shut off.

Woman feel angst about losing their younger bodies and men feel angst about not getting laid as often.  It appears that the women who looked the best in youth hate themselves the most while aging.  Of course this is well illustrated by Hollywood starlets pursing plastic surgery till they have faces that look like rigor mortis of death.  The nature of women playing the peacock was well illustrated in an old movie I saw the other night, Mr. Skeffington, with Bette Davis as a beauty obsessed woman constantly courting marriage proposals even after she was married.

I feel sorry for my women friends.  Why can’t they accept wrinkles and sags?  Firm tits and ass are only signs that say, “I Make Babies.”  Why can’t old guys understand that the urge to chase young women is your cells tricking you into fatherhood?  In the end, I think the burden of the peacock syndrome on women is far harder than left-over horniness in men.  I don’t hate my body because I can’t get laid.  Being a peacock when the feathers fall out must be painful and pathetic.

I have a long running argument with one of my lady friends.  She says who we’re attracted to is mental, and I say it’s biological.  Well honey, I think if it’s mental you would be able to rationalize yourself out of the peacock syndrome.

Jim

The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 56

If the golden age of science fiction is 12, what am I to read at 56?  I still yearn for the same sense of wonder thrills as I did as a kid, but they are much harder to find.  What if I reread the books I loved at 12 now at 56?  Are they the same books even though I’m not the same me?  No, of course not.  I reread one or two books a year, so I know.  I’m listening to City by Clifford Simak, a story I loved as a kid.  I barely remember the flavor of the story, and damn few details.  It’s almost like reading the book for the first time.

City

However, the sense of wonder I get from City in 1965 when I first read it, is much different from 2008, while listening to it now.  There are so many factors at play:

  • The world of 1952 when City was published
  • The knowledge of science fiction by Simak in 1952
  • The knowledge of the science by Simak in 1952
  • The state of the world in 1965
  • The state of science fiction in 1965
  • How many science fiction books I had read by 1965
  • The state of science in 1965
  • Who I was in 1965
  • The state of the world in 2008
  • The state of science fiction in 2008
  • How many science fiction books I had read by 2008
  • The state of science in 2008
  • Who I am in 2008

There are other factors, but these are enough to discuss for now.  In fact, it’s too broad for a blog essay, so I shall narrow it down.  One of City‘s sense of wonder aspects is robots, so let’s focus on how my perception of stories about robots changes over time.

In 1965 my knowledge of robots mainly came from SF movies like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Target Earth and The Jetsons, and the robot stories by Isaac Asimov.  It’s a rather limited view.  I don’t even know if there were any real robots in the world at that time, and if there were they were no more than toys.  And I certainly hadn’t read any histories of literature discussing the antecedents of robots like Frankenstein and The Golem.

When Clifford Simak was writing his robot stories in the 1940s, his only inspiration was probably other science fiction writers and their stories.  Robots were all speculation.  He had the play R.U.R. which coined the term robots, and Metropolis, the classic silent film from Germany, and he had Isaac Asimov, Eando Binder and Lester del Rey, and before the City stories were fixed up for hardback publication, he had the magnificent Jack Williamson story, “With Folded Hands.”  When City came out it won the third International Fantasy Award in 1953.  Other winners were Earth Abides (1951), More than Human (1954) and The Lord of the Rings (1957).  It was a well respected book.

In 2008, City is quaint and it would be very kind to just say the speculation is full of holes, but the story telling is still magical.  I look forward to every moment I can spend with it.  I like Jenkins like I like Godfrey and Charles, two butlers William Powell played in 1930s films.  If I could interview my 1965 self, even though he was a kid in junior high, he probably knew the speculation of the story was silly then.  The quality of the story telling held me then as it does today.  Simak if far from a great writer, and his prose is barely a step up from pulp fiction, but damn, he does have a lot of far out ideas in such a small book.

One of the reasons why The Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12 is because at that age you don’t know much about the world and everything you discover has impact.  Just the concept of building artificial beings is mind blowing.  Of course it’s not much different than wishing I could fly like Superman in terms of reality.  One of the things that has tarnished old science fiction stories is real science.  Robots have a reality in 2008 – yet their reality is far from science fiction then and now, but strangely I think science fiction robots have a better chance of finding their place in the real world than interstellar space travel, aliens or time travel – the other major motifs of early SF.

Science fiction robots have evolved in the years since 1965.  You have the philosophical replicants of Blade Runner, the charm of Commander Data on Star Trek:TNG, the cyborg tenacity of The Terminator, the cuteness of Wall-E, the comic duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO, the threat of the Cylons, the wise robotic aliens of A.I. When I read City today I see Jenkins in relation to all the robots I’ve met since.  He is a simple faithful servant, intelligent, but hardly more than a mechanical Mr. Jeeves.  Of course, if I owned a robot, I’d want a Jenkins.  Owning a Commander Data or even a Rachael from Blade Runner would be a kind of slavery.  Jenkins’ mechanical servitude is acceptable, but that’s a whole other world of speculation.

In 1965 just the concept of an intelligent machine was cool.  The possibilities were endless.  Soon after Jenkins I encountered Mike, the intelligent computer in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and then HAL in 2001, and the concept of artificial intelligence grew in my mind.  There is a chance I even majored in computers in 1971 because of those stories.  They were a far cry from the IBM 1620 I was programming with punch cards at the time.  Working with real computers taught me the limitations of science fictional computers.

When I read City today, I analyze Simak’s speculation about the future from his vantage of 1952 and earlier.  He pictured atomic power, private planes, helicopters and hydroponic farming causing such a societal paradigm change that cities were dissolved and people chose to live far from one another independently.  While this was going on, Simak imagined the development of robots and the uplifting of dogs.  His speculation of de-urbanization, or re-ruralization seems silly today, but it is elegant speculation.  Simak’s whole imagined future where humans disappear and are forgotten, leaving the Earth to intelligent dogs and robots is quite beautiful.  That holds up.

What my 56-year-old self needs is a 2008 novel about robots that is as ground breaking as City was in 1952.  This wished for novel needs to have the story quality of City so it remains in print until 2060 and later.  And I need to live to be a 109 so I can reread it and evaluate my sense of wonder one last time before I pass into oblivion.

Jim