Sunday, November 1, 2009

...about that being back...

...right.

On the upside: back in the United States. (Nothing against the rest of the world, mind you.) Back in the South. (Nothing against the rest of the country, mind you.) Still employed. All family, friends, etc doing better than we deserve.

Downsides: Still employed, and in transition, which means less spare time than I thought.

(And having private(ish) access to the internets at all times? Not helping! New term I learned this week: lifehack - it's what the internet does with your time.)

So what is a gal to do with that time?

Sign up for National Novel Writing Month, of course!

God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

News Reaction: What should be said, and when

One of the things I've struggled with, blogging wise, is how (and when, and why) to respond to events in the news. And not just blogging - when, in daily life and passing conversation, does one bring up the latest insanity that's made headlines?

(Other people may have an easier time with this than I do - I argue with the radio in the car and mutter things under my breath at the tv playing in the caffiteria. Of course, I do this with TV shows and movies, too. Unquestioning consumption doesn't come easy.)

To add another wrinkle - much of the time, my reaction is negative - disagreement, fact-checking, and plain old 'look-at-the-world-we-live-in-it-these-kids-these-days'. I'm fairly well convinced that constantly spouting negativity is good for neither me nor who ever happens to be sharing my space. (And heaven knows the current state of political and social discourse in American society needs less divisive talk and demonizing, not more.)

And yet, is self-censorship ('if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all') the solution? Or is silence the same as agreement? No single person could possibly comment intelligently on every news article or blog post printed daily - even if they just limited themselves to things on which they had some degree of expertise! But just as the major networks, magazines and newspapers are accussed of bias in the things they talk about the things they ignore, so do we all pick and choose what we 'amp the signal' on, and what we walk past. (1)

Some things shouldn't be ignored. Some things shouldn't be given the dignity of a response.

And sometimes it's best to remember that God doesn't want me to be concerned about what other people do nearly as much as God wants me to be aware of what I'm doing.

***

Following that - this article about a Louisiana Justice of the Peace who refused to perform a marriage ceremony for an interracial couple has been getting traction, as they say.

The JP gave this reason for not performing the ceremony - that he felt the childern of interracial marriages had difficult lives and were never fully accepted into either 'black' or 'white' society. Instead of performing the ceremony, he referred the couple to another JP.(2)

I'm going to leave aside the legal requirements demanded of an elected official, and say that I can see where the JP is coming from - and that I don't disagree with his specific point, on the incomplete social integration in this country. There has been a great number of electrons spent on this point - the social, economic and health consequences of being African-American, Latino, or Native American in America.(3)

Much the same has been said, in fact, about the childern of single mothers, of Downs syndrome babies, of the childern of poor families, about the childern of women who have been raped - that they will be underpriviledged, unloved, and possibly abused. And because of this, the arguement goes, it is legitament for the mothers of those childern to abort childern in those situations, rather than carry them to term and let fate - or God - determine what happens then.

Both are rational, logical opinions that look carefully at the world we live in today.

And I reject both conclusions. We should not, I think, be looking at the world as it is, but at the world as we would like it to be. We should strive to treat people as though they were capable of reaching the highest potiential, instead of assuming they were pre-destined to some lesser capability.

Neither our striving to treat each other well nor our indivdual efforts to excell are going to be perfectly successful, and we should recognize that. But that should not stop us from trying.

***

Other items on a similar theme:

Journalist attempts shopping only at African American businesses (Actually, there is a whole movement behind this - check out here, here, here, and here. Note: I'm not convinced that selecting businesses based, first and most importantly, on the race of the owners isn't race-based bigotry.)

Slightly related to the above: 100-mile diet

Different definitions of racism

***

Notes:

(1) Something that gets throw out there - "Why are you talking about X when Y is obviously so much more horrible/significant/interesting/vital?" Different strokes for different folks - and just because H1N1 isn't Ebola doesn't mean that H1N1 is insignificant.

(2) This point - that the couple was sent to another JP, and that they were married shortly there after, so that the whole incident is less than two weeks old at this date - has been dropped from some news reports.

(3) This is an embarraessment for the land of the free. That we are still, imo, better at complete integration than any other nation on the planet doesn't change the fact that we can and should do better.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Back (Top Ten Heroes List)

So. Back. (I think.)

From Alexander Field's post here:

Top Ten Fictional Characters I'd Like to Be

1. Torin Kerr. Excuse me, that should be Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr. From Tanya Huff's excellent Valor series (now complete, I think, in 4 books, and which I love like little else I've loved in SF ever.) Kicks @$$, but takes no names, because she isn't going to need to remember you, punk. Perfectly capable of winning an intergalatic war singlehandly in her underwear.

2. Rowan, from Rosemary Kirsten's Steerswoman series. Adventurer, chronicler, scientist. I don't remember another series that celebrates the scientific method nearly as much.

3. Ista Dy Baocia of Louis McMaster Bujould's Chalion series. An older woman in the service of God, and struggling with the position. Ista takes on the challenges thrown her way with grace and humor and preserverance.

4. Zoe Washburn, of Serenity. Laconic. Deadly. Strong right arm to her captain, devoted wife to another (demonstrating a remarkable ability to separate her day job from the rest of her life) stubborn and lovely.

5. Ardeth Bey of The Mummy series - cool face tattoos, beautiful horse, and doesn't have to support the girl after the credits roll.

6. Storm (aka Ororro Munroe) of the X-Men. (But only if I didn't have to wear the spike heels.) (And only if it's the version where Storm is played by, oh, Angela Bassett and not Halley Berry.)

7. Cordelia Vorkorsagan, nee Naismith - Bujold again, this time for her Naismith/Vorkorsagan novels. (And speaking of people that Angela Bassett should play in the movie version...) Cordelia is just a hair *too* awesome to be real (it doesn't help that the bulk of the series is told from her son's pov, and Miles really does think his mother walks on water) but she has been one of those fantastic swashbuckling/thinking characters for me for, oh, decades now.

8. Ellen Ripley - of Aliens. I'm hoping I won't have to explain this one. Long before Buffy, there was Ripley, slayer of demons.

9. Strongbow, from Elfquest - strong, silent, deadly, stubborn like the bones of the earth are stubborn.

10. Optimus Prime (from the recent movies) - I honestly don't remember all that much of the kid cartoon, so I'm going mostly off the movies. In which Optimus is not only awesome in the busting heads category, he also shows himself to be a wise and capable leader (but not all perfect.)

***

Making this list, I'm again reminded that I like to read books with heroes who have adventures and issues that I really don't want to have. Which includes nearly all the CJ Cherryh novels and my favorite SF series Farscape, as well as the Crossroads series by Nick O'Donohoe (the only SF/F series I've seen to feature veterinarians).

***

Yes, back, of sorts. Attempting to apply the butt in chair principle, in rotation with lovingkindness towards Other People On The Internet Who Don't Think Like I Do. (I'm kinda rusty on the last one, I don't think there is supposed to be as much gritted teeth as I'm employing. *sigh*)

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Noted for later

Article on health care reform:

How health care killed my father

It is not, despite the title, an angry article, but very well researched and argued.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

August CSFFBT: Offworld, by Robin Parrish (III)

This is the last of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about Offworld. Previously, I focused on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; yesterday, I talked about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and today I finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

***

Before I forget - added from yesterday: one more SF work that Offworld reminds me of: "Houston, Can You Read" by James Tiptree, Jr.

***

Faith, God, and Christianity in Offworld

- The faith and spirituality of Offworld is more subtle than other SF/F works carrying the 'Christian' marketing label (that I have read.) I'm good with this. I think it's vital that we have a range of spiritual expression in different works - if nothing else because people who might turn their noses up at the Creationist hero in The Enclave would cheer for Cordelia Naismith in Shards of Honor.

- Having said that - is it clear at any point that the God of Offworld is the God of Scripture? Is Christ implied at any point? I don't seem to remember anything (but I could be wrong.)

- If I was to pick a phrase that described the type of faith that was portrayed in Offworld, I would say something like, "Finding God in one another." The crew members, Mae, even Rowley and Parks - they all search for ways to serve something other than themselves. This is most apparent, I think, in the crew, and their continued bond to each other.

- The other theme that suggests itself is 'God works in mysterious ways.' I'm thinking particularly of Owen, who had been placed on Ares in case of some ill-defined contingency. That contingency never came - not during the mission, at any rate - but during the dash across the Gulf Coast, when a bad-ass super-genius was needed to save the world, there was Owen.

- I like travelouge stories. (Can't seem to convince the bookstores to sub-categorize stories as 'journey SF', though.) This links well with stories showing a person (or persons) traveling through a spiritual quest. Offworld contained not one, but two 'real time' journeys - one back from Mars, and one from Florida to Texas. I wonder if the crew thought of their trip to Mars - any of them, in any sense - as a retreat, a journey in to the desert.

- Mae - wow. The character and treatment of Mae - a soul, yes, but not a complete person, because she wasn't integrated into society. (Orphaned might be a good descriptor here.) I think I found this among the most affective of all the elements in Offworld. And - as I said earlier - I was impressed by the relatively low-key approach to the topic of abortion.

- Burke and his father: I wonder how much of a God-and-Christians analogy Parrish was going after, here. God as distant-seeming-father-figure, always demanding more work, taking the Christian child away from the fun in life, pushing the child towards a greater destiny that, in the end, the child will have to choose on their own. Even in my head, it's far from a perfect analogy, but I think it has some merit. I'm less sure this analogy resembles anything Parrish had in mind.

- Space vs Earth as Paradise: Depending on who is telling the story and when the story is taking place, 'Heaven' holds a shifting location. At least in the Western world 'Heaven' and 'paradise' is assigned to a stellar location. As our knowledge of physics and the solar system have increased, we shifted to a more extra-planar concept of God's domain. Still, the imagery of writing about space travel includes references to the concept of the stars as 'Heaven'. In the story, despite the hardships of the journey, the crew of Ares was ready to leave Heaven and come back to Earth. I wonder if future humans will continue to associate God's domain with planets or with the starry void.

- I find the attempt by Roston and his group to 'take away the causes of war and hatred' - in short, to create a paradise on Earth - laudable, but, in the end, tragically mistaken. Take away all the bombs, all the guns, all the tanks, all the swords...and we'd still have the rock that Adam's son used to commit the first murder. Joss Weldon used the movie Serenity to talk about a similiar thing - our impulse as humans (and irrespective of political stance) to legislate improved morality into people.

***

And that's all I've got. Next step, look for what other people wrote. That should keep me busy at the airport tomorrow.

***

Fine print:

Find Offworld at Amazon.

Robin Parrish’s Web site - http://www.robinparrish.com/
Robin Parrish’s blog - http://twitter.com/robinparrish

Other CSFFBT participants:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

August CSFFBT: Offworld, by Robin Parrish (II)

This is the second of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about Offworld. Previously, I focused on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; here, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and (hopefully) tomorrow finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

Science

- I was fairly happy with the level of science included in the novel - especially in the first half. Actually, I should modify that - I was fairly happy with the advanced tech use in the novel - and that included the different sort of problem solving tricks that the crew used during their journey to Houston.

- The insistence that "we're going to figure this out!" - in the face of both opposition and uncertainty - was one of the things that kept me interested in the book. (This is as much a characterization thing as it is a plot thing - I love characters that keep on keeping on.)

- As noted, there was less inventing new things/discovering new things than there was adapting tools left lying about by other people. Granted, this is what nearly every immediate post-apoc novel does - follow the heroes as they wander about looking for a can opener. This trend continues even after the crew gets to Houston - they're just fighting with the Men In Black SUVs for the can opener. I would not have minded more *investigating* as they went - if it could have been done without sacrificing the pacing of the plot.

- I did like the electric cars and a couple of other notes that showed the difference between now and the future of the novel. It's a hard line to draw - how to make it enough different to keep up with the visible rate of change (*cough*Star Trek's clunky handhelds*cough*) and yet not overwhelm the reader with culture shock. I would have voted for *more* change in 35 years, but that's just me.

- That a portion of the internets was still up, much less GPS - I'm on the fence about that. On the one hand, it was only a couple months. On the other hand, it was a couple months!

- I'm afraid I wouldn't have bought the safe landing of the crew at Canaveral at all in a secular novel. In CSFF, I can say 'Oh, hand-of-God, okay' and ::handwave:: it that way.

Science Fiction

- I was also pretty pleased by the science fiction aspects of the novel - which, frankly, got a big boost from the absolute 'we're not in Kansas anymore' factor: I'm about as likely to ride in a space ship to Mars as I am to wander about a deserted Earth at this point.

- Of the many different sorts of SF, I thought this novel fell closer to being 'hard'-SF (physics, space, startravel), rather than the 'softer' SF that makes up psychology and social sciences, etc. I had this concept in my mind that most Christian or faith-driven SF was going to be 'soft' SF, and I'm not unhappy to be wrong.

- Extra-dimensional devices are also v. cool - even if they are, in part, driven by ancient glowy boxes of uncertain provenances. I particularly like how the incident on Mars was worked back into the main plot. (more about how the incident on Mars was handled from a faith angle in the next post.)

- Some sources that reminded me of this book/that this book reminded me of: Life After People - the history channel tv series, and World Without Us, a book by Alan Weisman. Of course, post-apoc books are as old as the bomb (ed: *cough*Revaluation*cough*) - or older! - and journeys through deserted lands are a stock part of SF, I think. Part of World War Z was strongly evoked for me, as was Left Hand of Darkness.

- For the space & Mars parts - Mars, by Ben Bova. I'm trying to remember something other than Space: 2001 that actually featured free-fall space travel.

***

Again, fairly shallow. (Doesn't help that I'm on the road, again.)

***

Fine print:

Find Offworld at Amazon.

Robin Parrish’s Web site - http://www.robinparrish.com/
Robin Parrish’s blog - http://twitter.com/robinparrish

Other CSFFBT participants:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Monday, August 17, 2009

August CSFFBT: Offworld, by Robin Parrish (I)

This is the first of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about Offworld. This one will focus on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; in following posts, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

(If I actually manage to do all those posts, it will be two months in a row, which is a trend. ooooo, I'd be trendy!)

What you need to know about Offworld: Space-exploration-centric SF/action, set on Earth. Multi-gender, multi-ethnic cast. (Well, kinda. Sort of. The characters aren't all Caucasian males! And the parameters of the story actually support those choices.) Part-Gulf-Coast traveloge, large part post-apoc thriller, small part X-files tie-in. Adult relationships, but nearly zero sex/erotica. Large amount of gunplay and skull-duggery. Fast-moving, once it gets going.

Packaging: - Slick. Very slick. About as proffesionally sf-ish as you can get. (The cover reminds me a great deal of Neil Gaiman's American Gods.) (Also of This Present Darkness). Tri-crome cover (black, grey-blue and ivory)shows an empty highway leading across a flatland to a skyscraper city. Back cover is mostly black. Title - and this is the kewl part - title is one word, centered over a sliver of a arc, as if a sphere (or a planet!) edged by an approaching dawn.

Short, non-spoilerly reaction - I liked this one. (Not loved, not adored, liked.) I didn't have to work at liking it. The action was uneven, and I would have spent more depth on the travelouge part of the book. The characters were engaging, if a bit stock, and I appreciated the fair-but-negative treatment of the villian(s). There were adult (note: term includes more than sex) aspects to the characters and their relationships that I greatly appreciated. Christian/faith elements were present but not overpowering.

Longer reaction, with spoilers

What I liked:

- I do like post-apoc books. And this one is all that in spades.

- And space exploration! On other planets!

- The plot managed to anticipate several eye-rolling moments (sample: oh, for crying out loud, why is the magic glowy cloud in the USA? there is the entire rest of the world to explore! and turn them around into integral parts of the story. Ditto the 'lost guy on the surface of Mars' subplot. Good job on that!

- I really liked the tensions and stupid fights and testosterone duels and saving-each-other-right-back of the crew. I really liked that. They were a team on a mission, and the story never lost track of that. Plus, they made me laugh more than once.

- The bad guys were trying to do the right thing. I appreciate that. They were very very wrong, but they weren't doing it to be rich or famous. (Just trying to be God. If you're going to fail, fail big.)

- I like traveloge stories, especially ones about the South.

- The inclusion of Mae, and who she was, was awesome. To top it off, I thought the topic (abortion) was very well handled, without demonizing.

- Low-key hand of God: Sometimes, like in the book of Ester, you see God most clearly when He's hard to discern. This book was like that.

- Multi-pov stories can be a pain. So can multi-threaded plots. Parrish handled both of them well, I thought. In particular, I was kept 'hooked' on the book by the bits that each character thought or did out of sight of the others.

What didn't work so well for me:

- Stock characterization: The characters seemed a hair too predictable: Hard-nosed commander, tough-as-nails loyal second in command, clown/younger brother, wildcard. There have been books where I *knew* what a character was going to say/do, because the author had made that character live so well for me. Offworld was a bit closer to knowing what the character was going to say because I'd read this book before a dozen times.

- Not enough science love. (I'll hit on this in more depth in a later post.) This was one of the big weakness of the book for me - mostly because it seemed to be a weakeness in characterization of all the astronaunts.

- I would really have liked more introspection from the characters on the landscape they passed, instead of just barreling down I-10. (But that's just my pref. I suspect it would have bored other people to tears.)

- While the action kept me reading, there were a couple points (like the jumping from the lighthouse) (heck, like the run for the lighthouse!) that had me just shaking my head, going it would never happen like that. Also, I never figured out how the storm surge/flooding was supposed to work. There were a couple of other places where the strength of the story was insufficent to overcome my disbelief of what I was being told.

- I loved The X-Files, back in the day. But TXF was not SF. Ancient mystical boxes that power universe-shifting machinery make my eyes roll. (Sorry.)

***

Hmmm. This is a bit shallower than I thought it would be. Might add more later, if deeper thunks happen.

Or I might just go check out what other people have to say.

***

Fine print:

Find Offworld at Amazon.

Robin Parrish’s Web site - http://www.robinparrish.com/
Robin Parrish’s blog - http://twitter.com/robinparrish

Other CSFFBT participants:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Sunday, August 16, 2009

My basket is full of things

One of the books I've been going through lately is Following Francis: The Francisican Way for Everyone. The author, Susan Pitchford, is a NorthWest American college professor, and part of the value of the book for me has been the way the author's values and mine don't overlap.

This week's section has been on Obedience - about what submitting to authority means. I'm one of those people who really likes rules - they give structure, they make a foundation, they set boundaries and make a bowl so life doesn't slop over the sides and get wasted as you're mixing things up. I follow rules (like walking on the sidewalk and not the grass) even when there's no sign posted, and I fret internally when I don't follow the rules.

(Don't get me started on what I think about people who delight in rule-breaking. It's far less charitable than I should be.)

Some people have nightmares about the Nazis coming for them. Me, I sometimes have nightmares about shoving people in ovens. Because that's where I'd fail - to not have the courage to examine what I'm doing.

***

Other parts of Following Francis have dealt with Simplicity and Poverty - dealing with not having things that we want. Which - hmm. I've traveled a fair bit, so I understand that people's perceptions of what is needful vs nice-to-have can vary quite a bit. (Right now I'm still hung up on indoor flush toilets.) But I travel - and even before airtravel became a global warming beating boy, world travel has been a sign of (a great deal of) disposable wealth. Even when you're doing missions-related travel.

So I read with interest this BBC report on average home sizes across the globe. And this article about different ways of measuring healthcare across the globe. And this article about the outrage over an op-ed by a Whole Foods CEO - people who regularly buy very high-priced foodstuffs are outraged by the suggestion that present schemes for reforming health care aren't the best option. (Connected to that: an article on the limitations of Fair Trade schemes.)

One of the most frustrating things about "the current political climate" - although I'm not sure this was ever *not* true, as my memories of calm harmony probably had more to do with ideologicial isolation than of actual peaceful discourse between people of different stances - is that people seem to insist on "litmus tests" of ideology (government control is bad, fair trade is good, health care reform is needed NOW, war is bad, gun control is bad) without allowing for degrees of difference.

***

Speaking of traveling and staying healthy and different priorities: here is an article about working out while Muslim and female. And an article about different cultures responding to facial expressions was very interesting - if a pretty good example of a not-very-good study: 13 subjects in two groups means not a terrific setup. One of the issues with communication is that so much of it is non-verbal. Imagine if a nod or a frown means different things.

(Critters do this too - Scottish fold cats have permanently bent over ears, that make other cats think they are angry. Rodesian Ridgeback dogs have spiky hair on their backs that mimics an expression of aggression. Dogs that want to play wag their tails, and lift a forepaw - both of which are expressions that cats use to mean "go away, I don't want any.")

***

One last thing, to end on a "the world is getting better all the time" note: Elephant gets prostetic limb.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Links on Saving the World

Got called out late yesterday afternoon for an incoming flight with a "sick dog" that turned out not to be as advertised: the flight was six hours out, not 45 minutes, and the dog was lame, not sick.

Sick, if it included 'collapsed' or 'vomiting' or 'passing blood' could mean any number of life threatening issues, for which I would want to be there right then. Lame, on the other hand, is rarely life threatening, and generally isn't an emergency, technically speaking. (Although a very severe fracture could require bandaging before travel to immediate treatment to prevent severe limb impairment.)

In a way, it turned out for the best, as the aircraft was arriving at the more distant airport, and not the close one. So we got to practice emergency response (verdict: we need more practice) and still got done with work fairly early.

***
Grand Rounds Blog Calender - I love Grand Rounds, even though it's nearly all heavily human-medicine oriented.

Ten Ways the American Health Care System Is Better Than You Think - doesn't cover care of pre-term babies, (and I'm too lazy to look up links right now) which is another area in which we excell. (We just have too many pre-term babies, and not enough of a handle on how to prevent this significant risk factor.) (I will also note how easy it is to cherry-pick data comparing one country's sytem to another.)

Grant System Encourages Cancer Researchers To Play It Safe - So far, grants haven't helped find treatments. That's a bummer.

Catholic Conservation Center - like it says on the wrapper - Catholic-pov-driven conservation/ecological movement. Perhaps a hair too anti-pagan in tone, but otherwise a site I intend to spend more time looking through.

Blog post discussing recent UK study finding no added nutritional value to 'organic' food. I don't support organic animal husbandry, because sick things shuold get medicine, and I don't support large scale organic vegtable and grain production, because pulling weeds for a living sucks. But I have no problems with people indulging in organic methods for backyard produce, and I am opposed to non-organic lawncare.

***

Note for writing later: New Kind of Beanstalk

Friday, July 31, 2009

News of all sorts

The good news: Starting last Saturday, I suddenly had a couple extra unclaimed hours in the day.

The bad news: I have extra hours because my home internet went out. Doesn't appear to be fixed anytime soon.

Upside: more time to read, reflect, watch Alias re-runs and work out.

Downside: I was just getting back into the blogging thing.

I've got a work-around figured out (local internet cafe and a thumbdrive) but haven't ironned out all the bugs. Plus, there is all this extra time...

***

Daniel Drezner posted a list of Top Ten Books to Read about International Economic History. Given the Pope's recent teaching on Charity (which I am still working through) some background might be helpful.

(I whole heartedly second the recomendation of Guns, Germs and Steel as a noteworthy arguement for why the world looks like it does now. And I find it interesting that Thomas Friedman ("Lexus and the Olive Tree" is not listed. (Perhaps the book is less about economics than I thought.)

Friday, July 24, 2009

CSFFBT Roundup

So.

My first Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour is done.

That was fun! Also, tiring. My crit toolbox had been getting dusty, and it took longer than I thought to put my thoughts in order. Adding to the crunch, I didn't get the book (bought on my own, not through the tour, not their fault) until the week before. So instead of having the posts atleast well outlined before hand, I was frantically typing on the day of posting. Which means that I forgot at least one thing on the third day that I had made a note of, on the first day, to follow up on later.

And on top of that, a last-minute work trip came up, so I was away from my usual haunts overnight. ("No, boss, can't go to the other location overnight, I have this non-work related post to finish drafting!" Right. I like my job.)

And I still don't know why that computer was only spellchecking in French.

It all worked out. I had fun. Very nice and SMART people - including the author, OMG - dropped by, I read a few other posts, and I did post all three days.

Next time, I really want to have what I want to say already drafted before the tour starts, so that I can spend that time reading other people's posts and commenting there. I really feel like I missed out on half the blog tour experience by only checking out a few posts.

(My intent is to try to catch up on that over the next week. I hope.)

(Had a former boss who told me that 'hope is not a method! hope is not a plan! you better have some other way of getting that accomplished!'Never asked him, at the time, what he thought of prayer as a method.)

Anyway.

Had fun, want to do it again. This time with double checking the spelling of character names!

***

Thunk for the day, from Ron Rolheiser:

Daniel Berrigan once quipped: Before you get serious about Jesus, first consider carefully how good you are going to look on wood.


Yeah. 'Never promised you a rose garden.'

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

July CSFFBT: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (III)

This is the third of three posts on Karen Hancock's The Enclave, this month's CSFFBT's selection.

Previously, I talked about the book in general and the science and science fiction parts of the book.

Today I'm going to look at the Christian elements of the book.

In a way, this is more difficult than the first two posts: each of us interacts differently with God. I feel much more comfortable making definitive statements about elements of style and treatments of science in a book than I do about how I see the Christian elements, and what impact those elements had on me.

However, I think that one of the valuable aspects of Christian science fiction is the ability to use the genre to both examine and spread the Word.

So here it goes:

Christianity as practiced by Characters

- The first page isn't over yet, and already Our Heroine is stepping back from condemning a co-worker (Our Hero, but we don't know that yet) because it isn't right to be angry at other people. That's one of the things that sold me on this book. The theme of forgiveness was something I could follow throughout.

- Lacey's struggle between reaching for shiny things - including the fulfillment of her professional dreams - vs reaching for God seemed real and was something else I could relate to. I also appreciated the candor of her doubt - she wasn't even sure that she did believe [in the Bible] anymore.

- It was somewhat disappointing to me that Lacey's reaching for God didn't seem to include reaching out to other people. Nor does the charity expressed in the first page really get applied to people who are not Cam. I'm not sure how much weight I want to give this, because it would be really beyond reasonable for me to expect Lacey to develop - over the course of even a 500-page novel - into a person who tries to express Christ-level love for everyone, including people who kidnap her and try to use her as an incubator for human-monster hybrids.

- Lacey looked up stuff in the Bible. This is probably a small thing, but I love it. When in doubt, read the citation yourself.

- Cam was actually the character whom I found most accessible, and I greatly appreciated his attempts to live his faith. The combination of "I'm here to try to bring the Good News to these people" with "What am I thinking? I'm such an arrogant idiot for trying to take this on" seemed spot-on.

- I also loved that Cam was shown to be as much a research geek in his faith as he was in his work. I think that was about perfect, that Cam would try to dig very deep into Biblical scholarship, and would read weighty books with lots of footnotes in Latin about the Bible and Christian thinkers. (Note: This might not have been exactly what the author intended me to think.)

- That both Cam and Rudy accepted the orders given to them - and the roles set out for them by God - echoed for me the centurion's response: I am a man under orders; give the word and I know it shall be done.

- Cam's willingness to accept that Gen might yet come to believe in God, too (at the very end of the book) was another appealing part of his character.

- Cam's Creationism: ehh. I'm...disquieted, here. In the 'public stoning' - where Cam is dragged in front of a group of his peers and forced to defend his faith - Cam is asked why he became a geneticist if he believed that the modern diversity of life had not developed along evolutionary lines. (Heavily paraphrased.) Cam's answer is "Maybe I wanted to prove it false." On the one hand, that's not really an answer. On the other hand, it's an indication of lack of integrity - going at something (and working for someone) under false pretenses. On a third hand, it's not as though Cam was hiding his bias.

- Cam got up in front of that crowd to defend his faith.

- One of the interesting and very close to awesome parts of the book was Zoan's interactions with God. That Zoan was looking for God before even knowing what God was, that was really kewl. That sequence - Zoan's questioning of the world around him, and his quest for answers - that also hit home.

- It bothered me, how easily the main characters dismissed the Wives and the K-J technicians and security guards and all the others killed in the Nephilium attack. One of the things that makes me twitchy in books and movies is a callous attitude towards collateral damage. Spear carriers are children of God as well. If I have to pick my main issue with Christianity as depicted in this book, it would be that - the relative self-focus of our two main characters.

Christianity as shown in the book

- A couple things seemed a little off, like the attention paid to the fact that Cam's church community advocated 'daily bible study.' (I wonder what the executives at K-J would have made of a Catholic who wanted to attend daily Mass!)

- As I said previously, it has not been my experience that a whole group of scientists would have been either vocally hostile or silent while others were hostile towards people of different religions. Particularly because there are so many different levels of 'living your faith out loud' - someone might be very committed to demonstrating the gospel at all times, just not in words.

- It's been suggested that the strong anti-religion feeling among the scientists happened because Swain & co all picked anti-religious scientists for the Institute. This seems reasonable.

- Jade's dismissal of the Bible as "an old book that ought to be dead by now" seemed...extraordinarily ham-handed, for a person who hadn't shown a great deal of capacity for thoughtlessness up until then.

- On one hand, it was a relief to see an Evangelically-toned book with a negative portrayal of a separatist cult. On the other hand, part of the Enclave's activities seemed to mirror Catholic (or High Church) rites. On one hand, it might be difficult to create a rite that didn't seem to reflect Roman Catholic tradition. On the other hand, I might just be overly sensitive here.

- I would have liked to have seen more discussion of Swain's pov on the Bible and God - his true, real thoughts - given the proven existence of the Nephilium. I think it was telling that he referenced Genesis in his presentation.

- When God said, "You think I can't handle that?" to Cam, it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. God is capable of extraordinary mercy and beauty, but I really appreciate that this book took the opportunity to show God's power as well. Plus, thunderbolts!

- I liked the depiction of the clones (Zoan and his friends, at least) as perfectly normal people. This contrasted with the feeling of abomination I read into the descriptions of the Wives and the clone/hybrids. I can see a number of reasons for not going into details of the lives of the Wives, but part of me thinks this was an opportunity for more examination of the meaning of humanity. Surely a child with golden skin or a third eye or neck quills is no more an abomination than is a leper or an AIDS patient.

***

Well, I think I've come to the end of my notes. I really appreciate anyone who's taken the time to read all this.

Time for the fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

July Blog Tour: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (II)

This is the second of three (intended) posts on The Enclave, the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour selection for the month of July.

[My deep apologies for spelling errors throughout - I am away from my usual computer and this one's word processor's spell check is set for French. (And not for any interesting reason, either.) I hope to correct this tomorrow.] Fixed now!

Thanks to everyone who commented so far - I haven't had a chance to read other people's posts yet and it's making me nuts.

First post is here, and covers my general likes and don'ts, packaging, writing strengths, etc. Today I want to focus more on the science and the science fiction in The Enclave.

Short version: there wasn't enough of either in the book.

That doesn't mean I didn't get wrapt up in the last 200 pages and that I didn't enjoy reading the book. (And the book does get a partial pass because it is billed as 'science fiction/fantasy'.) Just that I didn't think the book I was reading was science fiction. And I think that - especially for a book dealing with cutting-edge biotechnology - there wasn't much science in it.

(And here's where I think I have to say what SF is - aside from 'what I'm thinking about when I mean SF'. So I will turn to wikipedia, that last refuge of the despairing, and say look here.)

Science Fiction

As I said in my first post, the book had less science fiction than I would have preferred. While just what kind and to what extent any particular book is going to be science fiction rather than mystery or action or military adventure or even literature (to use a wildly non-specific word to describe a work centered on beauty and use of words in the act of story-telling) will vary from book to book, I feel comfortable in saying that The Enclave doesn't fit the genre well.

In The Enclave, there were several avenues that I think could have been pursued to increase the "sci-fi" feel of the book, and still told essentially the same story.

1) Lost World/Secret Society - With the character of Zoan and 'the enclave' itself, there existed the opportunity to dig deeper into the culture and mannerisms of the people living there. (Sci-fi is really pretty good at sociology thought experiments.) While the society itself was quite young - the oldest were no more than their early twenties - I think there was plenty of time for language drift and for the development of traditions and rituals, especially among the children. Some of the culture and daily life of the Enclave was shown, but most of it was top-driven, not organic, and not 'new'. A bit of punching up - especially of the post-apop feel of the enclave - could have helped. So could have more details about the lives of the Wives.

2) Inventions of (- and applications of -) New Things - Swain's stated goal was to "change the world and make everything new". Yet there was very little made new in the story. When new things were shown, as when Swain showed Cam the 'failed' clones through the doors as they passed, it was as end results and not as a process. Swain's presentation, as well, made very little mention of present day genetic advances and listed nothing that his institute had done, except for the not-yet released fast-healing technique. Cam was introduced as a brilliant geneticist, but I can't find where any of his accomplishments were noted. (If anyone reading this knows where I missed this information, I'd appreciate it.) The only kwel new stuff shown were the clones themselves - and all without discussions of any other sort of cloning - plant or animal.

(It's possible this was part of a deliberate choice on the part of the author - perhaps the message was only God can create new things. Which would be fine, if we didn't already have wheat with salmon anti-freeze genes, off-the-shelf insulin made from GM bacteria with human insulin genes, and cloned sheep, cats, and dogs.)

3) Sense of Wonder - For this reader, in science fiction and fantasy both, this is big. I want the story to amaze me, to make me want to see in person what is on the pages, to actually be there. Except for the scene where the Nephilium hatch (and a few of Cam's flash back scenes) the sense of wonder was mostly absent. Part of this, I think, is that, except under the influence of either Swain or God, the main characters weren't awed or amazed.

Science

Okay. I am not a research scientist. I am absolutely not a geneticist. But I have conducted (and written up) more than one post-graduate experiment (all in life sciences, mostly in animal medicine) and visited institutes of higher learning as well as commercial research labs. I saw that Our Heroine (Lacey) AND Our Hero (Cam) were researchers - geneticists, even - and I was anticipating a book that dug into their lives and used their work - their professions - as integral parts of the plot.

For me, The Enclave didn't deliver on this. Now, there's possible reasons for this - the author wanted to focus on the faith parts of the story, and weave in the might of God through the Nephilium, and for that purpose, Lacey and Cam could have been computer network administrators or energy plant technicians or public relations experts instead of researchers, and they could have found the same shady goings-on of Swain and co. The story didn't have to be about research scientists. (Note: It's partly my fault for setting up expectations about what the story should be instead of letting the author tell the story.)

Here are some of the things that jumped out at me that seemed to be significant shortfalls in the science story telling or just didn't seem right:

- The loose frogs all over should have seriously wrecked someone's experiment - either by mixing up batches of different frogs, messing with their environment to the point of invalidating any findings, or just altering their growth/aging time line by the different light and heat. Lacey should have made some note of this - even if only thinking "thank goodness that it's not the experimental tank that got left open, just the new incoming frogs".

- As mentioned above - just what did Cam do, to make himself such a hiring coup? Maybe he had excellent benchside technique (not likely, given the Frog Tank Incident) but possible. Maybe he had taken some previously over-looked genetic code and, in sequencing it, established a new sequencing protocol. Maybe he'd cloned some knock-out frogs with a really useful set of characteristics.

- What, besides freezing people, did the health spa do? Was it feeding some extra-enriched food? Sun filters?

- Lacey as Frog Girl is the care-taker for the animal rooms. What does this entail? Does she feed the frogs? If so, what? What sorts of things are being done, experimentally wise? What kind of animal care schedule does she have to keep to? Does she get attached to different frogs?

- Cam as flightly but brilliant scientist - what was he doing with his frogs and gels? He kept checking them, but I missed the part where even an outline of the purpose of his experiment was given. Don't remember what the other scientists were going after, either. Some researchers I met were very quiet people. Others, you couldn't get them to shut up about their latest project.

- While I agree that reading abstracts and writing up journal articles takes about a zillion more hours out of a scientists year than the general public realizes, I was disappointed that this was about all the science 'work' shown in the book.

- I wanted more details about the general maintainence in the Enclave - water pipes, animal health, what they grew for the animals to eat.

- Cam, who in the book was already established as an overly-thinky sort of guy - what did he think about as he watched frogs metamorphosing from swimmers into hoppers? This would have been a great place to merge his thoughts on science, and the influence of genes as we know them to work now, and the wonder of the cosmos God made, and the transformation of fallen humans into saved. (More on this when I talk about the Christian aspects.)

- The clones, the Nephilium and the Nephilium/clone hybrids: I didn't really buy this. Partly because I'm a hard sell on "rediscovered secrets of the Ancients" and "amazing off-world technology that we miraculously learned how to reverse engineer without killing ourselves" -

- although, you could argue that in this case, Swain failed to manage to not kill himself -

- and partly it's because there wasn't enough buildup. I could have bought the magic third eyes that killed helicopters if I'd seen, say, frogs with third eyes, or golden skin, or something similar. Starting small, building up. Get me past the "there ain't no such critter" and then bring out a human with a third eye. As for the clones - there wasn't any hint (that I caught) that the experimental animals (frogs) were cloned, so the human clones came out of left field. Further more, even though the book is placed about a decade into the future, Zoan's age meant that basic cloning would have to have been started well before Dolly the sheep. Again,that's a step too far, too fast for me to buy in this story.

***
This part of my review has come out rather negative, I'm afraid. The up side is that I was really more pleased with the faith/Christian aspects of the book. That, and the over-all positive things I talked about last post, mean that I think the book was still a good read, even if it wasn't told how I would have told it, or written to specifically please me.

If there are other life-sciences oriented people out there, I'd be interested in hearing if they were bothered by the same things - or if they weren't! Karen Hancock is described in the back blurb as having a degree in biology. Jason commented yesterday that he had done an interview with her - I hope to get over there tomorrow and check that out. Perhaps there were comments on the science/SF parts of the story.

Again, fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Monday, July 20, 2009

Technorati claim post

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...this really feels like some sort of internet hoax...

July Book Tour: The Enclave, by Karen Hancock (I)

This is the first of three posts (in keeping with the Christian Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog Tour guidelines) about this book. This one will focus on technical details, story-crafting, and characterization; in following posts, I intend to talk about the science and science-fiction aspects of the work and finish up with a post on the Christian elements.

What you need to know about The Enclave: near-future action-adventure centered around mysterious goings-on in a cutting-edge genetics lab. Post-apocalyptic elements. Set in southwest USA. Mild romance. Threat of sexual assault. Lots of gunplay and explosions. Military characters shown in sympathetic manner.

Packaging: Professionally presented trade paperback, with attractive cover (more on that in a sec) and larger-than-usual print face, making it a very thick book (500 pages.) Cover successfully combines suspense (two out of focus figures running down a tunnel) and characterization (pretty lady with rumpled hair, flawless skin, groomed eyebrows and expensive-looking complex earrings.) Back cover is much more subdued, includes a chain-link fence in a desert setting. All in all, I think the cover sells the book and does so accurately.

Overall Reaction (short version, light on spoilers): An engaging story (although slow to start) illustrating Christian principles and Creationist themes. Multiple storylines end up gelling nicely. Multiple POVs that sometimes switch in the middle of chapters, but are generally clearly delineated. Writing is competent throughout and frequently engaging. Sympathetic characters are vividly drawn, if somewhat more thought-driven than skin-driven. I was particularly struck with how the main characters were given to indecision and second-guessing - as well as fumbling through their plans in a fairly realistic manner. Opposing characters (ie 'the bad guys') were less completely handled. The author appeared to engage in anti-scientist stereotyping. Even though the setup is somewhat lengthy, the action, once it gets going, is engaging. There was far less science than I would have liked. Most of the science present was of the X-Philes variety (depending on intervention by aliens/ancient technology rather than the application of the scientific method.) The story was set in the universe of an actively interventionist God, but this due ex machina was believably presented.

More complete reaction, complete with SPOILERS:

What I liked:

The Enclave, while presented at CSFFBT as 'science fiction', to me seemed to be more along the lines of the present-day/near future techno-thrillers (or suspense-thrillers) of Tom Clancy, Micheal Crichton, Dean Koontz, etc. However, it worked better than many of that genre, in that the characterization was decent throughout and (esp) the multiple storylines came together well.

I have a particular weakness for stories in which the author speaks through a character vividly enough that the dual vision (character that has never seen a horse sees a creature that I the reader recognize as a particular breed of horse) is nearly seamless. Hancock is not stellar at this, but she is more than competent, and I enjoyed learning about Zoan's underground world through his eyes. There were parts that worked less well (sometimes having Zoan or his friends bring up something entirely new about the Enclave was interesting and refreshing, other times it seemed more of a cheat.)

The Enclave portions of the story also gave the book a bit of a post-apocalypse feel, which is another thing I tend to like in SFF. And it had goats! Goats always make a story better. (No, not kidding.) (Yes, I am punny sometimes.)

Our Heroine, Lacey McHenry, is a scientist! Woot! Well, not actually, but she is a female trained in life sciences.

Action, explosions and people creeping their way into dark tunnels: this book had it in spades, especially as the end got rolling. I'd love to see parts of this filmed.

Our Hero - Dr Cameron Reinhardt - that's Dr Reinhardt to you and me - is a likable guy, (although I have mixed feelings about his Tragic Past). I did like how the military part of his background was used to elevate his competence without making him into G.I. Joe, Super Special Forces Ninja Ranger. (I do believe that there are a couple science-minded guys out there who could rise to high levels in their branch of research AND still be deadly ninja rangers after a 10 year break...but no more than a couple. Cameron was much more realistically portrayed.

Connected to this: The camaraderie between Cam and Rudy worked well for me.

The writing itself was well-crafted - while there weren't any parts that I re-read for the joy of the language itself, nor were there passages that I had to go through twice, scratching my head and muttering what did that mean? (Suspense and misdirecting the reader as part of the plot is okay. Confusing the reader because of poor sentence or paragraph structure is not okay.) While I would have liked language that was a bit less prosaic, less work-man, that's an individual taste thing, and it would have pushed the book out of its genre.

Aliens (the awakened Nephilim) were cool. Okay, in my head, they looked a great deal like Giger's Aliens, but still, they were cool.

Things that worked less well for me:

Despite the relatively active beginning (the first line, paragraph, and page were all solid as far as 'hook' went) it seemed to take forever for the story to get rolling. The introduction of the scientists and their work wasn't presented in a terribly interesting fashion and was made worse, I think, by the quick establishment of the 'bad guy' Swain. Perhaps some hesitation before he started threatening Cam would have helped.

Connected to this, I would have liked to have seen more of the other scientists and their personalities. I think that if the characters could have been divided into 'good guys' (or 'pov characters') and 'bad guys' AND 'other people whose part hasn't been established yet and might be good or bad but we don't know yet' that it would have helped draw me more into the book early on.

Which brings me to one of my major beefs with the characterization in the book - the relatively flat, simplistic and somewhat hostile depiction of nearly all the 'extras' among the scientists. The caricature of the scientists as being bitterly anti-Scriptural and bigoted towards Christians has not been my experience. (Yes, there are those individuals out there. And scientists have their share of egotists, and egotists tend to run their mouths and run people down.) The failure to make mention of any sort of spiritual leaning among any of the other scientists was a fault in the book, I think.

Connected to that, I'm not really crazy about the 'Christian as Lone Gunslinger' (meaning Shane, not X-File's Lone Gunmen) motif. (I'll go more into this when I talk about my take on the Christian elements of the story in a future post.)

Which brings me to the characterization of Cameron - I had mixed feelings about his Tragic Special Ops PTSD-Inducing Past. Especially with the child that died wrapt up into it. On the one hand, it worked because it helped justify Cameron's intellectual, overly-thinky decision processes. On the other hand, it made this reader aware that the author was female, writing a male character. Not so good.

A lot of the story focused on the glamorous nature of the bad guys - how pretty/handsome/well preserved they were, the cost of their clothes, the six-inch heels on the head bad gal. It gave me two impressions - firstly, it made all the characters seem overly concerned about surface appearances, and secondly, it was another form of stereotyping - rich beautiful people are evil.

In fact, to me, the main characters, even the 'good guys' seemed to be overly self-focused in their struggles and especially during the final sequences - bystanders, innocent or not, fall mangled and dead and are ignored in a manner more typical of the most mindless Hollywood violence. Even when our heroes are shown trying to save people, the attempted rescue happens 'off-screen' and then the story goes back, 'in real time', as our heroes run away.

Finally, I would have liked to have seen more actual science being performed. Testing, perhaps. Experimental design discussion. Heck, even feeding parameters of the frogs. (More on this when I talk about the book and science fiction.)

So. That's about all I had to say on the book structure, plot, etc. In my next two posts I intend to talk about science/science-fiction aspects, and then about the Christian aspects of the work.

The fine print:

Featured book, The Enclave - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764203282

Karen Hancock’s Web site - http://www.kmhancock.com/index.htm
Karen Hancock’s blog - http://karenhancock.wordpress.com/

Other CSFFBT Participants’ Links:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Grace Bridges
Canadianladybug
Melissa Carswell
Valerie Comer
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Janey DeMeo
Jeff Draper
Emmalyn Edwards
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Beth Goddard
Todd Michael Greene
Heather R. Hunt
Becky Jesse
Cris Jesse
Julie
Carol Keen
Krystine Kercher
Dawn King
Mike Lynch
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Mirtika
Eve Nielsen
Nissa
John W. Otte
Steve Rice
Crista Richey
James Somers
Speculative Faith
Stephanie
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Elizabeth Williams

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Recent (and not recent) Links: Religion

An important part of being Catholic, for me, is the international nature of the Church. This came home to me again when I visited Norway - most of my fellow co-religious were non-European. (Including the lovely daughter of a weary and harrassed looking mother in the pew in front of me in Oslo - a restless little nymph in a shining white dress and sneakers with red LED lights that lit up when she stamped her feet. She reminded me so much of my little brothers (years back, you understand) that I hardly kept from laughing outloud during the readings.)

Anyway. Being Catholic is one of the ways I am definitely a part of the whole human race.

From Brazil: Two stories (here and here) concerning an abortion case. The mother in this case was a 9 year-old girl, impregnated by her foster-father. The local Bishop, in accordance with doctrine, excommunicated the 9-year-old's parents and the doctor who performed the proceedure.

What a horrific situation. Hard cases make bad laws. On some levels, it makes me nuts that this is an abortion news story about the Catholic Church, and not a child abuse story about the case of the rape of the girl.

It's hard to live with either solution - a child, already victimized by an adult she trusted, dealing with the physical and social reprecussions of carrying the baby to term. (The Catholic option suggested was cesearian section, not the (likely lethal)option of letting the girl go through labor.) Or, a child, already victimized by an adult she trusted, dealing with having been forced into an abortion. (IMO, if a child can't legally agree to sex, they can't agree to abortion, either.)

The idea that it would be better to go ahead with the abortion, and just let the child and her family get on with their lives hinges, I think, on the supposition that it's not an actual person that is killed during abortion. Which is...hard.

***

Vactican statement may put pressure on Catholic judges. Interesting. One of the not fun parts about being an American and being a Catholic is the inherent conflict between the two. It appears that the Church may have just upped the ante.

***

Top 10 Religion Stories of 2008; according to Time magazine.

As a bit of a counter point - an older article about Top 25 Evangelicals in America. I didn't focus too much on the personalities of the religious leaders in previous administrations. (To some extent, I was more concerned with people living principles, not preaching them. To other extents, I didn't care.) I will have to look further into the Catholic personalities mentioned. (Richard John Neuhaus)

***

Drug Dealers for Jesus In Mexico - As presented in the article, it's less a religous movement and more a "red-neck" outfit - where religion is part of what makes up "La Familia Michoacana" into a self-contained community. Narcotics smuggling is not on my list of "things to do for the glory of the kingdom of God." My sympathy is not with people who kill cops.

But. It's beyond the scope of this post to go into the righteousness of doing an ugly job with compassion and integrity. I'm not sure that applies here, but it bears considering.

***

Barbara Hagerty Interview: An NPR journalist talks about looking for God. My faith is the prism through which I look at the world and make moral decisions.

***

And a last one, not exactly religious, but keeping it SFF - Muggle Activists - Harry Potter fans unite to change the world. I'm not a Potter fan, but I'll say about this what I said about the books - anything that gets huge numbers of non-reading kids to read multiple lengthy novels is not all bad.

Friday, July 17, 2009

A Writer on Star Trek

I picked up a May issue of Newsweek at the gym because of the cover - "To Boldly Go ... How 'Star Trek' taught us to dream big" - and found a handful of interesting articles.

(It's fun to read short-cycle media multiple cycles after it's been posted/published - much of what consituted 'news' ends up forgotten. My father used to say that one should always read the back pages first - the short bits on 'obscure' happenings end up being relevent longer than what ever is on the front page.)

I was most enthralled with Leonard Mlodinow's "Vulcans Never, Ever Smile" - a recollection of his time as a scriptwriter for(post-Original Series) Star Trek. A physicist, Mlodinow thought that he was responsible for 'putting science into science fiction.' Instead, Mlodinow relates, he learned:

The fun in Star Trek didn't come from copying science, but from having science copy it. My job wasn't to put real science into Star Trek, but to imagine new ideas that hadn't yet been thought of.


I pretty much agree. A fellow geek friend of mine from university days reminded me that the sliding doors common in hospitals and most public areas (and which show up in sci-fi-ish movies such as Sliding Doors) that respond to approaching masses and not a button were invented because a guy saw them on the original ST and took the concept as a challenge. That, said my friend, was what SFF is about.

(It's arguable that one of the big differences between fangirls and gameboys is this: gameboys want to know about the sliding doors, fangirls want to know about the people who walk through the doors. Generalizing and sterotyping, of course.)

The article has a number of insights, including interactions with Gene Roddenberry and his perspective on the evolution of human nature. (In a sort of point/counter point, another article in that issue of Newsweek discusses altruism and charity, while the concept of the role of science in SF gets a different look in Biology in Science Fiction's recent post Hollywood Science and Unscientific America.)

Something not covered in any recent discussion of ST (that I've seen so far) has been the role of religion in ST, and how, after being dismissed as superior tech in ST:TOS, faith gradually made a comeback in later renditions.

***

One of the movies I saw on vacation was the new Star Trek, which I greatly enjoyed - more than I expected to, in fact. In fact, I can't remember the last time I had that much fun in front of Star Trek product. (This despite the fact that Eric Bana and Karl Urban were the only actors even remotely in my age demographic.)

I've put off posting about the movie because I wanted to have some deeper thoughts about it...but no such luck. I enjoyed the movie. Thoughts have been entirely shallow, affectionate, but without much passion. (Okay, I have exactly one deep thought, and that relates to the potientally different role of the Vulcans in this (new) ST cosmos - going from, say, representing France to being Israel.)

***

On a less-happy-about-the-future note - and one which doesn't support Rodenberry's theory of change in human nature - the Newsweek issue also covered an internet privacy/censorship legal case - in which a family was fighting to restrict the spread of photos of their daughter's fatal car accident.

The grisy photos have been passed from person to person - and even have been emailed back to the family. One could ask, what kind of person does that?!?!

One of the answers postulated by the article was 'the kind of person who feels empowered by the anonymity of the internet'. Which I can readily agree with.

If, on the internet, only God knows it was you doing hateful things...

***

One last thing to close the post on a better note: I could have sworn that John Hannah, who was in the above mentioned 1998 Sliding Doors, played Scotty in the new ST movie. Which would have made a great 'close the loop' for this post. Alas, it was Simon Pegg - of Hot Fuzz - who ALSO did the voice of "Buck" in Ice Age III. So.

You learn something new every day.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Book Review: Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, by Anne Rice

I did not think that I would like this book.

Back in the day, I read Rice's Interview with a Vampire slowly and painfully - the writing was hyper-Tolkienesque in density, the characters were not easily liked, and the action seemed excessively slow. I never saw an reason to pick up another book in the series. In addition, I heard enough third and fourth-hand about Rice's attitude towards fan-fic writers and towards editors ("I write and rewrite every page until it is how I want it to be, and I don't need editors to give me their feedback") to harbor a low level of hostility to the woman and how she conducted her craft.

And when word came out that Anne Rice had (re)found God, and was only going to write Christian fiction, I joined with other people in mocking and sneering at her pretension. (I regretted this since.)

It was a bit of that regret that drove, in part, my picking up the paperback from the rack in the department store. What the rest of my motivation was, I can't say. I will say that I bought the book practically without opening it, which is not usual for me. (Reading the first page is a decent litmus test to see if I will like the book at all.)

Starting on vacation, I pulled it out when I got to the airport. And by the end of the third page, I was hooked on the language and the voice Rice used for Christ.

If it were not for the name on the cover, I would not have know the book was written by the same person who wrote Interview - this book was written lightly, in spare language that was no less carefully chosen, but also infused with a joy and appreciation for the world that had been lacking in the vampire book.

Road to Cana is the second book in Rice's series, and covers a season in Christ's life just before and after he meets his cousin John at the Jordan.

Rice does some remarkable things in this book - she recreates the feel and rhythms of turn-of-the-age Palestine, she unravels what is known and guessed and proclaimed about the Holy Family and reweaves it into a cloth that is at once familiar and brand new, and she presents a Christ that is both God and human, and struggling with His role - and yet never ceases to be either.

This Yeshua can be seen as perfect, but he does not live in a perfect world. The faults and follies and festering anger of the people of Nazareth are drawn clearly, if sympathetically. (There are no hopeless evil things here - only humans who have done wrong.) The politics of the larger world still go on, and the ripples reach out to Palestine. The society of the time is closed in, dependent on manual labor, and tightly segregated by gender, family, and class, but the people who live in that society are not presented as caricatures. I was well satisfied not only by the world-building and the plot (which I did not guess all the details of before hand, even though most of the world knows how the story goes) but also by the care given to crafting all the secondary characters.

One of the things I appreciated best about the book was the way the rest of Nazareth treated Yeshua - they called him 'the sinless', but it was as much a weary confusion and a mockery as it was a praise-name. Yeshua confuses and disquiets these people - as, I think, he would those who knew him in any age.

In flaws I have only three major items: one, that the first two paragraphs were not the best hook, and I didn't start getting intrigued until the second page; two, that the repetition of names (while not the fault of the author) was confusing throughout (too many names starting with 'J'!) and finally, that the book lost some steam in the last couple of chapters, as Yeshua started gathering disciples. But these are minor things.

I have ordered the first book (Out of Egypt) and am looking forward to the third in the series.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Roads Less Traveled

Ulvik is a small town in Norway, located on Hardangerfjord. It is a lovely place in early summer (heck, most of Norway is) with the quiet atmosphere of an out-of-the-way place.

Ulvik was our second walk, and our only 'walk to get there' trip. We got off the bus at Granvin and turned uphill. (This part - "turning uphill" - was a constant part of our trip. Really constant.)

The path began as a single-lane asphalt road, became a narrow unmarked asphalt road, twisted and turned, became gravel, and then we turned left off the road, and were on the trail.

It was called "the post road" because, until Ulvik got its own post office, the people used to walk over the mountian to check their mail (which came twice a week.) One way, the trip took three hours.

***

A few months back, a storm of protest arose on the internets in the space of 24 hours, because Amazon.com mis-labeled a whole stack of books, making them difficult to find on the webpages, and then (most horribly) failed to swiftly correct the problem. This storm arose on Easter Sunday.

***

As a long time reader of The Tightwad Gazette, I have found the recent spate of articles on 'living on a budget' interesting, and even occasionally helpful. Most of them echo the age old advice of "don't buy it if you don't need it' and 'pay your bills on time'.

Some articles go a bit further.

CNN linked earlier today to an article on 'disconnecting' - electronically, at least - and 'living simplier'. The thoughts shared in this article share a thread that keeps re-appearing in much of my recent reading on monks and other religious - that the distractions of modern life can help make us unhappy. You don't need stuff to make you happy.

I asked for all things so that I could enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

In the current economic situation - which many blame on the greed of lenders and bankers and/or the foolish materialism of those who bought things (including houses) that they couldn't pay for - not to mention the climate change debate which seems to hinge on condemning wasteful 'progress' and the pollution from industrial development - there seem to be many who agree. And yet...is it not a crisis because we don't have stuff? Because we don't have money to pay for stuff?

I think that one of the great gifts of modern civilization is all the 'stuff' we have - including the internet, post offices in our town, and paved roads. Oh, and open-heart surgeries, electric lights, and airplane travel. I think that having certain levels of 'stuff' - esp. food, shelter, physical security, and ways to learn more - makes us better people, and makes it easier to follow Christ, just as having a good night's sleep makes it easier to not scream at people who are annoying you. And let's hear it for things that make it easier to communication, like literacy, education, cheap paperback printing, telephones and the internet.

But I agree that the quest for getting more 'stuff' just to have 'stuff' is a distractor - and that it can make it hard to identify the most important 'stuff' for an individual person. And I think that individual choice is important. The publishers should go on printing tons of romance novels, even though I'll never read them, and there should be enough peas grown and harvested for people who like green peas to eat them. (I'll stick with SF and mysteries, and lima beans, thank you.) Ditto good cars for people who care what they drive, and big houses for people with big families.

We all, individually, need to pick what we need, and be willing leave lay what we don't. How learn this - and how to teach it, without denying access to things we don't think needful, but others might - that's a bit easier to say than to do.

***

Somewhat related: 100 Geek Skills. Also somewhat related: Heinlein's list of life skills.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Too Kwell: Human Genre Project; Cool Horses

huge hattip to Biology in Science Fiction - HUGE

The Human Genre Project is a (proposed) collection of fiction, flash fiction, and poetry relating to the human genome - yeah, that genome, the one they've just finished mapping. They're still taking contributions.

This is so cool.

(Related: Micheal Swanwick's Periodic Table of Science Fiction)

A different post on the Biology in Science Fiction had me scratching my head to remember the title of a book I'd read -

- read at least part of, and that twenty odd years ago -

but could remember nothing of the title or author's name - but possibly what the cover looked like.

The cover I remembered was Rowena's Project Pope. Do you have any idea what fraction of Rowena artwork sites come up as listed under 'pornography'? (Not that I disagree, but sheez. All I wanted was a perfectly clean pic of two fully dressed robots - one in bishop's robes, for crying out loud - and I kept getting hit with 'your filter blocks this site.') And those that weren't so listed (yet!) generally didn't have titles associated with the pictures.

(There's a joke about looking at art for the text in here somewhere but I can't make it come out straight.)

And that wasn't the right book (Project Pope by Clifford D. Simak). So I thought some more, and the idea of a human confronting a man (robot) on a rearing mechanical horse came into hazy focus. Back to google I went.

And I eventually found it, via TV Tropes and it's Cool Horse page. TV Tropes is a listing of plot elements used in TV, literature, movies, just about anywhere. In addition to cool horses, they also discuss Hell Horses, Mechanical Horses, and Horses of A Different Color.

This is just neat.

(The book I was looking for was James P. Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker. And yes, one of the old mass market books had a man in a space suit confronting a robot on a rearing mechanical horse. Success!)