The Alien Next Door

Star Wars, Our 20th Century Myth

2008-07-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

Over thirty years after the first Star Wars motion picture blasted its way through our movie screens May 25, 1977, the saga continues to live strongly in literature and cinema. To date, six films and three animated series for television were made, with a live-action series and a 3D CGI animated series in pre-production as well as a 3D CGI full-length theatrical movie, The Clone Wars, scheduled for U.S. release on August 15, 2008. The six films alone have generated over $4.3 billion in revenue to date, making them the third highest grossing film series.

Although the current Star Wars New Jedi Order series (its 27th and last installment released in spring of 2004) leaves much to be desired from a literary standpoint, loyal fans of the Star Wars phenomenon, including, alas, yours truly, have persisted with the series, helping it maintain a place in the New York Times Bestsellers list. How did this come to be? Why do we read on despite our better judgement about literature and art? To understand the enduring success of a shallow plot-driven adventure series is to understand the basis for its creation: the original Star Wars concept as realized by George Lucus. The answer lies in one word: myth.

In his original “Star Wars” trilogy, George Lucus fashioned for us a long awaited 20th Century myth. He captured the current North American zeitgeist and portrayed a deep and abiding truth about the deeper meanings of what lies beneath our daily lives. Lucus did this by “taking the symbols gathered from his own experience of the world and transforming them into a metaphor that revealed something about the mysteries of human existence” (Mary Henderson, author of “Star Wars: the Magic of Myth”). According to Henderson, Lucas dramatized the eternal struggle of good versus evil and, by suggesting a way to emerge victorious from that struggle, fashioned a tale with all the elements of myth. Lucas’s modern myth resonates with scores of earlier myths from around the world including the classic myths of Siegfried, King Arthur, Odysseus, Theseus and the Minotaur, Dante and Beatrice, David and Goliath, and a host of others. Lucus takes elements of all these ancient classics and stirs them up with technology into a retro-punk-rock cyber-version never before seen on screen.

If, as Joseph Campbell said, “The artist is the one who communicates myth for today,” then Lucas is a great artist. It starts with his intriguing and quirky ‘alternate reality’ of ancient archetypes within a highly advanced technological world that begins “A long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away . . .” Swords, sorcery and chivalry meld with robots and zooming rocket ships . . . a dark lord wearing flowing robes looks -- and sounds -- like an android . . . a damsel in distress, who packs a laser gun, sends a message through a cocky droid . . . a young “Siegfried” embarks on a quest armed with his father’s sword, a lightsaber that bites through metal, and whose ‘steed’ is an X-wing spaceship. Medieval legend meets space and technology. Says Henderson, “. . . it is in illo tempore, a timeless eternity, both now and forever.”

Lukas paints his myth with rich archetypical characters--princesses, knights, dragons, fools, and wizards who help or hinder the hero on his journey--and archetypal images that resonate with traditional mythical constants. To unfold his hero’s transformation as he discovers his deeper nature, Lucas sheds subtlely for bold strokes, which includes the use of allegorical names: Luke (Lucas’s alter-ego) Skywalker is destined for the stars; Han Solo is an independent, self-reliant cynic; and Leia Organa is leader of the living, organic Rebellion against a mechanized, lifeless system. In Leia, Lucas takes the passive damsel in distress and elevates her to a kind of “Joan of Arc”. She is Luke’s inspiration and by the end of the second movie (“The Empire Strikes Back”) she will rescue him, playing “Beatrice to his Dante”.

Lucas makes it very clear that the heart of the Star Wars story lies in the central conflict of paired and linked opposites such as good vs. evil, light vs. dark, love vs. hate, compassion vs. fear. Which brings us to one of the principal threads of this particular hero’s journey: the Force, itself made of opposite pairs: dark and light sides. The Force is something sacred, powerful and intangible. Ben, Luke’s mentor and a Jedi Knight tells Luke that to become a Jedi, Luke must know the Force: “The Force . . . surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” In order to use his father’s old lightsaber, Luke must quiet himself from his desires and fears and tap into the spiritual network that connects us to all things. The Jedi and their use of the Force incorporate concepts of major religions and much of Eastern philosophy, while remaining true to a classic Western value: the importance of the individual. Biblical elements also abound. Darth Vader’s slide into the dark side of the Force is a fall from grace, like a fallen angel, who must be redeemed through atonement and reconciliation; while Luke, his son, struggles with the shadow of the dark side of the force as it creeps into his mind. Like a captivating samba, the pairs of opposites step in rythmic syncrony between mind and heart.

According to Henderson, 20th Century myths are obliged to incorporate the machine. Lucas’s dystopian vision in Star Wars marries the technological zeitgeist with a totalitarian dialectic, portraying the state as a fascist machine striving for ultimate order. Technology is itself an archetype, providing an extension of humanity’s power to control and manipulate itself and its world and in so doing, lose a critical part of what it means to be human. In Star Wars, the Empire uses technology as a malevolent instrument, with Vader, himself largely made of machine prosthetics, additionally subverting the life-supporting qualities of the Force to ensure Imperial domination. Vader’s human spirit has been consumed by the Imperial machine. Luke must resist the lure of “the system”, and the lure of his father’s invocation to join him, and revolt against the status quo.

Lucas’s visionary myth is ultimately appealing because it can be interpreted at so many levels from personal to societal. In striving for utopian order, the Empire’s totalitarian oppression of freedom of expression (and to be human) is played out through the relationship of Luke, Darth Vader and Leia. Inspired by his beloved country and people (Leia) our warrior poet (Luke) confronts and rebels against the system that helped “make” him (Darth Vader, his father). Only, in this galaxy, the damsel-in-distress is quite capable of taking care of herself.

Ellen Goodman, in her review of Star Wars in 1977, summed it up very neatly: “It’s not just about bad guys and good guys, but about bad technology and good technology. The good guys are on the side of truth, beauty and the cosmic force, but they aren’t opposed to machines. Nor do they fight missiles with stones. The real battle is between one technological society that supports a Lone Rider and praises his instinct, and a technological society that overrules individuals and suppresses instinct.”

Scoffed by literary snobs as space-opera fluff, Star Wars is no less visionary and relevant than any “real life” drama you could care to mention. This allegorical 20th Century myth explores good vs. evil in its truest sense, indeed, in a biblical sense. Says Luke Skywalker in the first page of “Refugee” (NJO): “There will always be people who are strong for evil. The stronger you become, the more you’re tempted.” This saga explores faith and the power in believing in something you can’t see. Says Yoda, Luke’s wise mentor (and himself someone who is not what he first appears to be): “There is no try; only do and do not.” This saga is about temptation (the dark side is always easier and looks more appealing to those lacking patience and vision) and overcoming fear and its cousin, impatience, toward wisdom. Star Wars is a classic “hero’s journey of enlightenment” and portrays in a rich tapestry of images and metaphor the hero’s classic struggle of paired opposites: love vs. hate; compassion vs. fear; forgiveness vs. retalliation; grace and humility vs. vain-glorious hubris.

Since the release of the Star Wars trilogy over thirty years ago, George Lucas made three prequels. The very well received Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (released May 19, 1999), was followed by a second Star Wars movie, “Star Wars 2: Return of the Clones”, which chronicles the adolescent years of Luke’s father, Anakin. Released in May, 2002 to an audience agog with Star Wars fever, it would seem that ironically, the movie’s shortcoming and its strength were one in the same: special effects. In a stunning comment to me shortly after viewing the film, my then-eleven year old son told me that he found the movie too dazzling, so much so that it spoiled the story for him and he pined for something more simple (for the eye as well as the mind). I found this incredibly insightful coming from a member of the generation that tends to be “bored” with lengthy stories that lack non-stop action. Although the effects accomplished that of providing us with incredibly vivid and stunning settings, such as Coruscant as seen from several spaceships entering its atmosphere, I had to agree with my son: there is no surrogate for a well told tale. No amount of razzle-dazzle can replace this. What my son pointed out to me is that even a well told story can be lessened by distracting elements, such as special effects. The third episode was released summer, 2005, and explained how the dark Jedi, Darth Vader, came to be.

A decade since the trilogy a fast-growing Expanded SW series by Bantam/Spectra made its way to fans, eager to read about some of the most memorable characters in fiction and has swollen to over 100+ books by various authors (not including the 25+ books of the New Jedi Order series by Lucas Books (Del Rey) and a host of books set before “A New Hope”). Written by as many writers as there are books, this series provides rich detail of the Star Wars universe. But, the original myth of the hero’s journey slides beneath the details of adventure, conflict and war. Most books focus on plot-driven space conflict, hard-boiled humor and clichéd prose, their success relying on fan’s love of established characters and scenarios. The role of the Force in shaping humanity and the universe is all but invisible. Only the occasional author elevates one or more characters into a marriage of personal theme with the greater arena of myth.
So why do we keep reading? Perhaps it is simply to linger with characters who have previously resonated with us so deeply. And it is still worthwhile to peruse the mineral for a glance at the occasional jewel.

References:
Campbell, Joseph. 1973. “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. 2nd edition. Nollingen Series no. 17. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press.
Henderson, Mary. 1997. “Star Wars: the Magic of Myth”. Bantam Books, New York, N.Y. 214pp.
Goodman, Ellen. 1977. “A ‘Star Wars’ Fantasy Fullfillment”. Washington Post, July 30.

America, You’re Beautiful!—Part 2: Louisville, KY

2008-07-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

During my stay in Louisville, I drove into the Highlands—an area near downtown Louisville marked by a ridge of land between the middle and south forks of Beargrass Creek—and found myself walking the eclectic commercial stretch of Bardstown Road from Market Street near what’s known as the Cherokee Triangle to Taylorsville Road.
Bardstown Road is one of the most unique shopping districts in Jefferson Country, and features some of Louisville's finest dining establishments, along with the best antique shopping and people watching in the country. Known variously as “punk street” and “Restaurant Row” for its copious nightclubs, pubs and eateries, Bardstown Road is a mixture of artistic, organic, punk and yuppie influences. I saw nothing ordinary here. A local told me about the city’s motto: Keep Louisville Weird, a phrase that refers to the city’s mandate to encourage and support local talent to flourish and keep the local culture alive; this is no better represented than on Bardstown Road, which fully embraces that motto on a number of fronts. Among the eclectic shops that provided body piercing, tattooing, and acupuncture, I saw clothing stores called “Eccentric” or “Weeds of Eden” (they sell hemp clothing, by the way), beauty salons called “ScissorHands” and “Raindogs” (named after a Tom White tune), funky restaurants like “Za’s Pizza Pub”, “Karma Café” or “Ramsi’s Café On the World”, which is featured in the Best of Louisville CitySearch (2003). Late-night nibblers can stop at this funky eatery for international cuisine ranging from Morrocan to Italian. Of course, I had to go there!

Continuing on my walk I passed Doo-Wop, which sells musical equipment and Ear-X-tacy, a different kind of music store that sells CDs and DVDs. Among the many antique stores, a contemporary furniture store calls itself “Objects of Desire”. Practically every shop, bistro and bar is adorned with original hand-painted signs or old-style neon lights; like the eye-catching mural and avant-garde recursive-post modern design of the Metro Café. Upon entering, I felt a little like Alice as I left funky for high chic (must have been the blue pill I took earlier). Patrons are treated to the elegant ambience of a dining room lined with original German art-deco prints as they dine on anything from a starter of Vidalia Onion Tart with roasted tomato crème fraiche to a main course of Veal Scaloppini with Bing cherries and a Frangelico cream sauce with mashed potatoes and vegetable of the day. There’s a reason why the Metro Café was voted one of Louisville’s top five restaurants. And I didn’t even get dessert! Ah, those German pastries!

Stuffed with the diverse rich flavors of a good meal, I walked into the Old Town liquor/wine store, and was greeted by an imposing wooden Indian statue (affectionately named “Chief Wooden Head” by its staff). Jeremy, who stands in the picture next to the Chief with a bottle of one of Kentucky’s best bourbon, tells me that the Chief came with the establishment over twenty five years ago and survived the great tornado of 1974. The owners of Old Town Wine Store would prefer that the locals consider it as their neighborhood wine store, despite its more than ample selection of hard liquors and exotic soft liquors from all over the world, including champagnes that go for over $300. Toulouse had his heart set on the “Buffalo Trace” Bourbon Whiskey, but after Gordon showed me all the local bourbons, I decided on the “Old Weller Antique” Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey to take home as a souvenir. I guess I ticked off Toulouse because I was half-way home in the car when I noticed that he was missing. I had to go back and found him lingering in the “Old World” Pinot Noir section of the store—Bad Toulouse!...But he does have good taste.

While parts of Bardstown Road seemed old and almost run-down, even these displayed incredible character, particularly juxtaposed to the side streets, which showcased wealthy residential areas, shaded by impressive over 100-foot high mature oak, elm or maple trees. Streets east and west of Bardstown Road house mostly single-family residences, and range from working class neighborhoods to some of the most expensive streets in Louisville, such as Spring Drive, home of Louisville's most famous Kentucky Derby parties.

In a park beside one of the side-street cafés, I met Nikki and Adam, a young couple with their two month old baby girl, who were travelling through Louisville in their converted school bus from New Orleans on their way west to Oregon. Nikki’s pen and ink sketches sprawled on the street ahead of her, for sale, as she played the musical saw to Adam’s lively accordion. Their lyrical bluegrass folk music transported me to an era of freedom, self-expression and spiritual-searching during university days and I saw myself reflected in their rasta hairdos, love beads, body piercings and tattoos. Once they’d finished their set, I asked Adam how long he’d played the accordion. Fixing on me striking blue eyes, rivaled only by a younger Mel Gibson’s dreamy gaze, Adam flashed a disarming smile. He’d only picked it up a few months ago. I was impressed.

Later, when I stopped to write, check my internet and drink at a Starbucks, I couldn’t help noticing three youths in lively conversation; one of them was sporting a bright pink Mohawk. I just had to ask him the question and barged in on them with my signature smile. After introducing myself, I asked, “Why did you do it and how do you sleep at night?” Ryan’s answer, after a good-natured chuckle, was “I don’t know” and “I sleep on my side.” Ryan is a stylist at “Raindogs” on Bardstown Road, along with his colleague, Tiffy. Both are locals from Louisville and area. They were joined by their friend, Eric, just moved from California. When I asked Eric what brought him here, he replied, “people care here…they genuinely care…” Tiffy added, “Louisville is where northern meets southern…and it works really well.” I understood exactly what she meant and realized that Louisville, and Bardstown Road particularly, had successfully married the northern qualities of progressive tolerance and avant garde-bohemian with a sensual southern charm and warmth. Ryan said, “there’s lots of diversity and people are open-minded in Louisville.” I certainly saw good evidence of that on Bardstown Road.

Nina's American Book Tour: Louisville, Kentucky

2008-07-13T01:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent some time in the Hurstbourne Barnes & Noble bookstore, signing copies of Darwin's Paradox. Get 'em while they're hot and newly autographed, folks!

When I first got into Louisville, I wasn't sure how to pronounce the name. The standard English pronunciation is "looeeville" (referring to King Louis XVI, for whom the city is named), which is often utilized by political leaders and the media. But most native residents pronounce the city's name "looavul"— often this degrades further to "luvul". The name is often pronounced far back in the mouth, in the top of the throat.

Located in north-central Kentucky close to the Indiana border, Louisville is Kentucky's largest city. It is ranked as either the 17th or 27th largest city in the United States depending on how the population is calculated. Louisville is famous as the home of "The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports": the Kentucky Derby, the widely watched first race of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing.

Although Louisville is situated in a Southern state, it is influenced by both Midwestern and Southern culture, and is commonly referred to as either the northernmost Southern city or the southernmost Northern city in the United States.

Louisville was the site of many important innovations through history. Notable residents include inventor Thomas Edison, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, newscaster Diane Sawyer, and writers Hunter S. Thompson and Sue Grafton. Notable events include the first public viewing place of Edison's light bulb, the first library open to African Am ericans in the South, and medical advances including the first human hand transplant, the first self-contained artificial heart transplant, and the development site of the first cervical cancer vaccine.

Louisville had one of the largest slave trades in the United States before the Civil War and much of the city's initial growth is attributed to that trade. During the Civil War Louisville became a major stronghold of Union forces, which kept Kentucky firmly in the Union. It was the center of planning, supplies, recruiting and transportation for numerous campaigns. Despite being surrounded by skirmishes and battles, Louisville itself was never attacked. After 1865, returning Confederate veterans took control of the city, leading to the jibe that Louisville joined the Confederacy after the war was over.

The first Kentucky Derby was held on May 17, 1875, at the Louisville Jockey Club track and 10,000 spectators came to watch Aristides win the race.

On March 27, 1890 the city was devastated and downtown nearly destroyed when an F4 tornado tore through the city at 8:30 pm as part of the Mid-Mississippi Valley Tornado Outbreak of March 1890. An estimated 74 to 120 people were killed. The city quickly recovered and signs of the tornado were nearly totally absent within a year.

In late January and February of 1937, a month of heavy rain in which 19" fell prompted what became remembered as the "Great Flood of '37". The flood submerged about 70% of the city, power was lost, and it forced the evacuation of 175,000 residents, and also led to fundamental changes in where residents bought houses. Today, the city is protected by numerous flood walls.

Louisville is one cool town! You folks rock! Oh, and: "Louisville, keep it weird!" More in a future post (I met some VERY interesting people, especially at my favorite place, Starbucks!). If you missed my previous post on my "great American journey", part one of a series entitled "America, You're Beautiful!" go here. Well, next is Columbus, Ohio...

The Novelist--He said, She said: Using Dialogue

2008-07-11T12:11:00.000-07:00

One of the most important devices to spice up narrative and increase pace is the use of dialogue. There’s a reason for this: we read dialogue more quickly; it’s written in more fluid, conversational English; it tends to create more white space on a page with less dense text, more pleasing to the reader’s eye. Dialogue is action. It gets readers involved.

Good dialogue neither exactly mimics actual speech (e.g., it’s not usually mundane, repetitive or broken with words like “uh”) nor on the other extreme does it proselytize or educate the reader through long discourse (unless the character is that kind of person). Good dialogue in a story should be somewhere in the middle. While it should read as fluid conversation, dialogue remains a device to propel the plot or enlighten us to the character of the speaker). No conversation follows a perfect linear progression. People interrupt one another, talk over one another, often don’t answer questions posed to them or avoid them by not answering them directly. These can all be used by the writer to establish character, tension, and relationship.

Below, I provide a few tips when using dialogue in your story.

Show, don’t tell: a common error of beginning writers is to use dialogue to explain something that both participants should already know but the reader doesn’t. It is both awkward and unrealistic and immediately exposes you as a novice. For instance, avoid the use of “As you know…” It’s better to keep the reader in the dark for a while than to use dialogue to explain something. Which brings us to the next point.

Have your characters talk to each other, not to the reader: for instance, “Hello, John, you loser drunk and wayward son of the most feared gangster in town!” could be improved to, “You stink like a distillery, John! Wait ‘til papa’s thugs find you!”

Avoid adverbs: e.g., he said dramatically, she said pleadingly; instead look for better ways to express the way they said it with actual dialogue. That’s not to say you can’t use adverbs (I believe J.K. Rowling is notorious for this), just use them sparingly and judiciously.

Avoid tag lines that repeat what the dialogue already tells the reader: e.g., “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “Do you have a dog?” she asked.

He said, she said: reduce tag lines where possible and keep them simple by using “said”; another sign of a novice is the overuse of words other than said (e.g., snarled, hissed, purred, etc.). While these can add spice, keep them for special places as they are noticed by the reader and will distract otherwise.

Pay consistent attention to a character’s “voice”: each character has a way of speaking that identifies them as a certain type of person. This can be used to identify class, education, culture, ethnicity, proclivities, etc. For instance one character might use Oxford English and another might swear every third word.

Use speech signatures: pick out particular word phrases for characters that can be their own and can be identified with them. If they have additional metaphoric meaning to the story, even better. For instance, I know a person who always adds “Don’t you think?” to almost everything they say. This says something about how that person… well, thinks… I knew another person who always added “Do you see?” at the end of their phrase. Again rather revealing.

Intersperse dialogue with good descriptive narrative: don’t forget to keep the reader plugged into the setting. Many beginning writers forget to “ground” the reader with sufficient cues as to where the characters are and what they’re doing while they are having this great conversation. This phenomenon is so common, it even has a name. It’s called “talking heads.”

Contradict dialogue with narrative: when dialogue contradicts body language or other narrative cues about the speaker, this adds an element of compelling tension and heightens reader excitement while telling them something important. Here are a few examples:

“How’d it go?”
“Great,” he lied.

“I feel so much better now,” she said, jaw clenched.
“It’s okay; I believe you.” His heart slammed.

Well, you get the picture, anyway. Hope this helps. Keep writing!

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

2008-07-06T20:15:00.000-07:00

When Paramount Pictures released the retro science-fiction adventure film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, September of 2004, it had been much anticipated since June when it was first intended to hit theatres. Was the delay, due to director, Kerry Conran’s additional tweaking of this virtually total CGI movie, worth it? You bet your MAC IIci it was!

Sky Captain was a debut not only for its director. It was also the first motion picture done entirely with no sets, locations or props. The actors were real but everything from 1930-style city scapes to exploding zeppelins and flying robots were digitally rendered. “A lot of filmmakers would find it limiting, but I find it strangely liberating,” said Conran in an interview with Frank Rose in Wired Magazine. Actor, Gwyneth Paltrow, however had another take on working in the computerized blue-screen void: “You get a little nuts in that blue,” said Paltrow. “I started to feel like, if I ever see this color again, I’m going to kill myself.”

Conran had set out a decade ago to make a black and white movie set in the 1930s about a mad scientist and his robot army. When no studio offered the novice the $100 million to re-create the era, Conran turned to computer generated imagery to provide him his richly imagined world. This ironically gave Conran the liberty to create his imagined world just in the way he wanted, which included a clever mixture of obvious animation with sharp realism; multi-textured imagery, creations of realistic fantasy and the use of “brushing”, superimposed images, imaginative angles and muting in mostly sepia-toned settings. Packing every frame with a terraced layering of visual details rivalled only by Ridley Scott's visual masterpieces (e.g., Bladerunner, Alien) Conran’s film is worth watching several times just to study the details within the rich expanse of its sweeping tapestries.

“Drawing from a well of pulp fiction, film noir and comic book imagery ― not to mention influences from the Wizard of Oz and Metropolis” (Allison Benedikt, Chicago Tribune), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a stylish and elegant film with a genuine mood and look of a 1930s motion picture. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Polly Perkins, a gutsy reporter who discovers that the world’s scientists are disappearing. After witnessing a giant robot invasion, in which Sky Captain, the mercenary hero-for-hire (Joe Sullivan, played by Jude Law), is called in to help fight, Polly seeks him out to help her solve the mystery. Undaunted by his sour reception, Polly strikes a bargain with Joe and they form a shaky alliance based on mutual distrust and peppered with good wordplay.

Polly’s obsession over getting her front-page story ― and the ultimate photograph ― plays counterpoint with her vulnerable attraction to Joe. He is a much maligned mercenary with a just heart and a weak stomach beneath his tough bravado. We learn very soon into the story that the strong-willed nosy reporter shares a history with the legendary swashbuckling Sky Captain, and that they’d parted some time ago on rather ill, if not dubious, terms. Sky Captain’s cool bluster and nasty insults barely mask his weakness for the lady, making us wonder what happened between these two earlier to make their coffee bitter-sweet.

Polly and Joe’s search for a mysterious scientist, who formed a secret organization outside Berlin called Unit Eleven and thought to be behind the machine armies, leads them across the globe to exotic locales from the stormy Himalaya mountains of Nepal to Dr. Totenkopf’s tropical island in the middle of the Pacific.

Conran rendered his 1930’s mood with relentless consistency in everything from his authentic sets in sepia-tones to casting the most appropriate actors. The actors who played the principal characters looked like they’d come from that time period. Conran went so far as to resserect an actor from that era, the late Sir Laurence Olivier, to play Dr. Totenkopf (German for ‘deadhead’). He achieved this by using CGI-manipulated archive footage of Olivier.

Conran keeps the actual plot fairly simple, which lets him ensnare the movie-watcher into his mesmorizing alternate universe. For instance, watching a zeppelin dock atop a New York sky scraper at night transported me to a place that might have existed but never did. It was like entering another dimension. When the flying robots first appeared in the New York evening sky, looking like one of my old alien-attack nightmares, I felt a kind of déjà vu with all the old 1950s SF movies. I kept feeling like I’d slipped through some crack between time into an alternate universe where all the inventions that didn’t take here actually worked. It was as though I was trapped in a dream where history had rewritten itself. This strangely enticing mixture of familiar with the unfamiliar is a common device of retro-fiction, sometimes called “recursive fiction” that has become quite popular. Examples include, among many, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Jasper Fforde’s Tuesday Next series. The recent film, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is another example.

I also didn’t mind Conran’s replete use of old SF clichés like a scientist’s Frankensteinesque laboratory, ray guns, metal-rivetted robots, or even a tongue-in-cheek reference to a come-on gesture made famous in the Matrix. The reason I didn’t mind was that he wasn’t just borrowing these, he integrated them into his retro fantasy and turned them on their sides. It also didn’t matter that some of the concepts didn’t make sense in the physics of our world. An example is the British Royal Navy’s mobile air strip. When Sky Captain’s shark-tooth painted plane runs out of gas over the middle of the ocean, he lands it on an incredible airborne landing strip run by Frankie (Angelina Jolie) of the Royal Navy, a no-nonsense girl of erect stature, sporting a patch over one eye, and who turns out to be Polly’s former rival for Joe’s affections.

From its first spectacular zeppelin scene to its last, Sky Captain races with non-stop action, punctuated only by frequent comic relief. The adrenalin surging airborn chase through the streets of New York city combined high tension with taught humor through characters’ witty banter ― something North American movie goers have come to expect in action movies. Paltrow’s and Law’s sometimes clever and amusing bickering lies much in the vein of legendary actors of that era such as Hepburn and Tracy or Bogart and Bacall and of a more current ‘scoundrel’ and his lady, Han Solo and Leia Organa in Star Wars.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow entertains in ways classic motion picture was intended since its inception. Conran delivers a full meal of action-adventure, spiced with a strong salsa of character repartee. The ending is spectacular, moving and humerous at the same time. A feat not easily achievable in films today.

Sky Captain has drawn incredibly mixed reviews, from: it “never exceeds the level of a clever exercise” (Carla Hall, San Francicso Chronicle) and has “no emotional centre” (Sarah Chauncey, Reel.com) to it is “a dazzling and groundbreaking film … the most fun you’ll have at the movies this year.” (Jeffrey Brunner, des Moines Register). This dichotomy of opinion is understandable because no film can be all things to all people. However, I strongly disagree with critics who pan Sky Captain as shallow and boring. I believe that this action-adventure delivers exactly what it was designed to deliver: a visually impressive and entertaining story.

Summing up both ends of the critical spectrum, Stephen Holden (The New York Times) says it best: “When Sky Captain remembers that storytelling and characters matter more than design and special effects, it charms as well as impresses.”

Well, it’s been out on DVD for a while, so go pick it up and tell me differently.

America, You’re Beautiful!--Part 1: the Journey

2008-07-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

My impressions of America are as varied as its people and its land, a major factor in one’s culture. As an ecologist, I was fascinated with this aspect while I traveled across the United States through several very different environments, including the wet coastal forests of Washington, white pine forests and taiga of Idaho and the prairie deserts and chaparrals of Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota then the farming country and prairie grasslands of Nebraska, Missouri, Indiana and Kansas on through to the temperate broadleaf deciduous forests of Kentucky. My fascination with road trips comes with my love of travelling (you can see all the places I’ve traveled to on my Facebook profile. Those of you who know me personally and/or have kept up with my blog posts, know that I recently went to Paris to research my current historical fantasy. Of course, I flew there.

Road trips, however, are a destination themselves. Each mode of travel has its particular magic and its own “crystal ball” or window for the curious traveler. I walked in Paris. Years before, I walked much of southern England, which was a great way to experience the details of its fractal terrain, foot by foot (pardon the pun; couldn’t help it), through all one’s senses.

Travelling by car offered me yet another perspective, that of “relationship” in a vast land of contrast and differences. By driving across several states in a fairly quick time—I count twelve states so far in a little over a week—I gave myself the opportunity to make a sweeping overview of each state and its people to compare in rapid succession.

I didn’t have the luxury of forming more than a first impression of each state because before I knew it, I’d entered another one. What I can tell you is that each state was beautiful, each in its own way.

Of course, I chose as my trusty and discreet companion, my old friend Toulouse, who had accompanied me to Paris a few months ago. We started our trip crossing the border into Washington State and drove south to Seattle, before striking east toward Spokane. Washington, Northern Idaho and north-west Montana reminded me of my home province, British Columbia, a land of hills and conifer forests. I found the drive very easy on the eye and the freeways clean and well-maintained. It got progressively hotter as I moved east and then south through the central states. Several of my friends in Kentucky and Ohio were surprised to find that I drove through the central states with only “Armstrong” air conditioning in the car (e.g., opening windows to catch the breeze!).

A highlight for me was descending into the Great Plains of south-east Montana and into Wyoming, where the Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains. I had struck south on the Interstate 90 E where it met the Interstate 94 and proceeded to descend into a vast rolling sea of russet, yellow and green. The undulating expanse to the horizon in every direction caught my breath and I just had to stop the car for a while to take it all in. I felt both exalted and humbled; all I could think of was, this is truly God’s country. Buffaloes used to roam in the thousands here before we destroyed them all. The state of Wyoming adopted its name from the Delaware Indian word meaning "mountains and valleys alternating", which aptly depicts the landscape of Wyoming.

Another highlight was traveling through the Black Hills of South Dakota, near Keystone, and seeing Mount Rushmore for the first time. This monumental granite sculpture by Gutzon Borglum involved the use of dynamite, followed by the process of "honeycombing". About two million tons of rock were blasted off the mountainside to create the impressive sculpture of the four presidential faces: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.

One of my overnight stays was Sheridan, Wyoming, after a very windy day of driving south from Montana. Once in the motel, the news warned of tornadoes. I had, after all, entered the infamous “Tornado Alley”, the plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, where tornadoes lurked and I could expect an event during the majority of my continued drive to the east into Kentucky and Ohio. The following day, as storm clouds chased me on my drive, I couldn’t help periodically glancing over my shoulder and envisioning that terrifying image of a dark funnel descending from the boil of black cloud billowing behind me (I’d unknowingly experienced a night-time tornado in Louisville, Kentucky the previous winter). Thankfully, no state policeman caught me speeding faster than usual along the Wyoming interstate that day. As I drove, however, I realized that a part of me yearned to see a tornado and experience the thrill of its mercurial “personality”. Weather.com says it this way: “one of the most alarming aspects of [tornadoes] is their randomness, almost as if they had vindictive personalities.” Stu Ostro, The Weather Channel senior meteorologist adds, "Tornadoes [will] appear suddenly and take out one house here, but leave its neighbors and the houses across the street untouched." My friend in Kentucky would testify to that; when she was standing on the school grounds as a child, she witnessed just such an occurrence—a capricious tornado dropped down from the sky and “took out” a house across the street then disappeared, leaving the rest of the street untouched.

Weather.com posts a "True or False" Twister IQ. I’ve included it for you to test yourself. I’ve posted the answers at the bottom of my post. Did you get seven out of seven? Find out below...

1. Tornadoes are always visible from a great distance.
2. Tornadoes cause houses to explode from changes in air pressure.
3. By opening the windows, you can balance the pressure inside and outside your home so a tornado will not do damage.
4. The best place to be during a tornado is generally in the southwest corner of the basement.
5. Tornadoes cannot cross water.
6. A tornado is always accompanied or preceded by a funnel cloud.
7. Downward-bulging clouds mean tornadoes are on the way.

Here are some of my personal experiences and impressions (in no particular order), that you won’t find in a tourist book:

When I stopped in Gillette, Wyoming, to fix my computer, which was refusing to accept wireless internet, to my great fortune, I was directed to a very cute and helpful IT specialist at Gillette College and after almost an hour of his painstaking work, my computer was humming with the sounds of the web.

I got lost looking for a gas station in the plains of Montana by foolishly veering off the interstate onto a gravel road (shades of “Rat Race”)… A man in a pick-up not only gave me directions on how to find a gas station, but drove ahead to show me.

After mistakenly cutting me off in the pass-lane, a trucker in Montana profusely apologized (I’ll let you imagine how) then we proceeded to playfully shadow each other for the next fifty miles.

And what’s with you Nebraskan drivers? You remind me of my Montreal days, weaving in and out of traffic as fast as you can. One Nebraskan driver, in an attempt to get ahead, practically barreled into the road blocks on one of the many parts of the interstate where roadwork was occurring.

Drivers on the freeways of Louisville, Kentucky, remind me of drivers in my home province of British Columbia, merging without looking. Scary! But ya gotta love their sweet tea! And they do beat Paris drivers (who seem to prefer the sidewalk at times!).

Answers to the Twister IQ:

1. False. They can be hidden in heavy rainfall.
2. False. Homes are damaged by strong winds, not air pressure changes.
3. False. The force of a tornado can rip through a structure, whether the windows are open or not. One should not open the windows when a tornado threatens -- this could actually make the situation worse.
4. False. This used to be a safety rule based on the idea that debris would usually not be deposited there, but this has now been rethought. The current best advice is to move to a protected interior room on the lowest floor of the building, as far as possible from exterior walls and windows.
5. False. A waterspout is a type of tornado that forms on water, and tornadoes that form on land can cross bodies of water such as rivers and lakes. Tornadoes, especially the more violent ones, can also travel up and down hillsides. Therefore, a belief that your location is protected by a river or ridge could prove to be a dangerously invalid one.
6. False. Especially in the early stages, a tornado can cause damage on the ground even though a visible funnel cloud is not present. Likewise, if you see a funnel cloud but it does not appear to be "touching down," a tornadic circulation nonetheless may be in contact with the ground.
7. Not necessarily! This may be the case, especially with those that show evidence of a rotating motion, but many of these clouds are not associated with tornadoes and may be completely harmless.

So, how did you do?...

Interesting Areas of Scientific Research

2008-06-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was asked by JP Frantz at SF Signal to respond to an interesting question on their forum, “MIND MELD: Interesting Areas of Scientific Research”. The editors said,

“For many of us, one of the main interests of science fiction is it's use of science as part of the story. There's nothing quite like reading about a cool idea that is based on current scientific thought and then going back and finding out more. We asked our respondents this question:

Q: There is a lot of scientific research being performed across a wide array of disciplines. So much that it can be difficult to keep up with it all. What current avenue of scientific inquiry do you believe people should be paying attention to, and why?”

Head over there and read some thought provoking answers from the likes of Kathleen Ann Goonan, Nancy Kress, Mike Brotherton, Jennifer Ouellette, Kay Kenyon, and Alexis Glynn Latner.

Just to whet your appetite, here are some "clips" from a few examples of answers:

This one by Jennefer Ouellette interested me greatly: “My mantra is always, "Look to the fringes!" That is, those boundary areas between disciplines, where scientists from different fields are collaborating with each other and doing more interdisciplinary investigations. That's where many exciting breakthroughs are likely to occur in the near future, I think. And with good reason: Science has become so highly specialized/compartmentalized that researchers often aren't aware of breakthroughs in other fields that might have relevance to their own work. So any kind of cross-pollination is likely to lead to new insights or technologies, and, potentially, revolutionary breakthroughs…”(go here for more, like some examples she provides).

Kay Kenyon, always providing a great overview of humankind’s place in the world said this: “I wish we'd pay more attention to the Theory of Everything. I'm coming from the standpoint that basic research gets short shrift in the quest for marketable results. I read somewhere that we don't understand photosynthesis at important levels of detail. Perhaps if we did understand photosynthesis we'd be on track for truly efficient solar panels. In the 19th century, realizing that electricity and magnetism could be understood as one combined force led to the harnessing of electricity, radio and that cell phone in your purse.

“So I'm just saying, let's get back to basics. And what could be more basic than understanding the fundamental interactions in nature? (Electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear forces and gravity.) I don't pretend to understand the issues, but apparently we've still got a long slog ahead to fitting gravity into the general scheme of things. (Unless you're an adherent of M-theory, and think string theory solves it. In case you care about an English major's opinion, I agree with those who hold that string theory is suspect because it can't be tested.)

“So let's give a cheer for basic physics. And when we take an interest, perhaps our short-sighted electeds (Clinton era and beyond) will rue the day they canceled the superconducting Super Collider in Texas even after 14 miles of it had already been dug. The research continues at CERN at a smaller scale.”

Kathleen Ann Goonan provided a very interesting discussion on brain research and memory. Michael S. Brotherton talked about the Hubble Space Telescope and Alexis Glynn Latner described nanoscale science. Add your two cents worth and comment on the SF Signal post and/or leave a comment right here.

Bios:

Kathleen Ann Goonan is a science fiction writer with several Nebula Award nominated books. Her debut novel, Queen City Jazz was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and her most recent novel, In War Times, was chosen by the American Library Association as Best Science Fiction Novel for their 2008 reading list.

Nancy Kress is the author of 21 books of SF, fantasy, and writing advice. She has three more books appearing in 2008, a collection of short stories and two novels. Her fiction has won three Nebulas, a Hugo, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Mike Brotherton is the author of the hard science fiction novels Spider Star (2008) and Star Dragon (2003), the latter being a finalist for the Campbell award. He's also a professor of astronomy at the University of Wyoming, Clarion West graduate, and founder of the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers (www.launchpadworkshop.org). He blogs at www.mikebrotherton.com.

Jennifer Ouellette is the author of The Physics of the Buffyverse and Black Bodies and Quantum Cats. She also blogs at Cocktail Party Physics and Twisted Physics.

Kay Kenyon is a science fiction and fantasy writer currently living in Wenatchee, Washington. Her most recent novel, A World Too Near, has just been released, and continues the story begun in Bright of the Sky.

Alexis Glynn Latner's science fiction novel Hurricane Moon was published by Pyr in 2007. Twenty-three of her novelettes and short stories have been or will be published in science fiction magazines, especially Analog, and horror and mystery anthologies. She also does editing, teaches and coaches creative writing, and works in the Rice University Library.

What Charles Darwin Didn’t Know about Sex

2008-06-25T00:07:00.000-07:00

My husband passed this article on to me, among many other newspaper clippings—as he is wont to do—he likes to help keep me well stocked in interesting “stories” for my blog. Well, this one was so interesting and well written by the Vancouver Sun editorial staff (all nine of them, listed below) that I’m compelled to hijack it in its original form and post it here for your delicious and tantalizing pleasure:

~~~~~~~

In the world of Charles Darwin, males compete with other males to mate with females, which is why the male of the species is hard-wired to become aroused by females and developed flamboyant plumage, horns or exuberant songs and dances to court them. Females select those mates they think can best protect them from aggressors, hunt for food and pass on the best genes.

Follow the evolutionary bouncing ball and we learn that men are in competition with other men for the attention of, and opportunity to mate with, women; and that women are searching for muscular men with material resources, ones likely to produce strong, healthy, attractive offspring.

Well, forget all that. Research suggests women aren’t particularly aroused by the sculpted male body. In fact, they’d rather look at other women.

In her experiments, Meredith Chivers, a research fellow at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health at the University of Toronto, found heterosexual women were no more excited by videos of hunky, naked men doing yoga than they were by the control footage—slow camera pans of snow-capped Himalayan mountains. But when the same group viewed a naked woman exercising, their blood flow increased sharply.

Chivers hooked up her subjects to a device called a photoplethysmograph in a manner hard to describe in a family newspaper and found they were aroused by couples making love regardless of gender. This adds to a growing body of evidence that female sexuality is more multi-dimensional, and a lot more interesting, than men’s.

Nearly a decade ago, Rosemary Basson, a researcher at the University of British Columbia did detailed work on the non-linear nature of female sexual response, although it didn’t delve into bisexual chic, Chivers did. The apparent flexibility of women may be related to greater potential for bisexuality in women than in men, she wrote.

All of this raises some interesting questions. If most women are capable of arousal by both sexes, why do they choose one over the other? Perhaps the principal sex difference between men and women is in the brain, not where we thought it was.

But women’s apparent gender tolerance also presents an unexpected challenge to heterosexual men, who, research confirms, are predictably turned on exclusively by women. The competition for a woman’s love had doubled. It’s one thing to fight an army of male suitors, quite another to stand against all of humanity. What straight men have long considered an erotic fantasy has become a threat to their manhood. Women think other women are hot; men not so much.

It’s tough to be a guy.

~~~~~

I found this article both fascinating and relevant for a number of reasons, but particularly in relation to my own observations and feelings...and the current stage of life I’m entering. I’m not saying that I’m bisexual…or perhaps I am; perhaps ALL women are, or possess the potential for it, given our higher range of physiological and behavioral expression. What I am certainly saying is that I am a woman, a lover, a wife and a mother… and more. Like you all, I am on a personal journey and that journey has taken a turn.

In a post entitled, “The Three Stages of a Woman’s Life” (The Therapist Directory of San Diego) Linda E. Savage (Ph.D., and author of “Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality”) starts her first section, called “Gateways to Changes in Consciousness”, with a revealing statistic:

“… By the year 2008, postmenopausal women will comprise the largest demographic group in America. The ancient tripartite divisions of Maiden, Mother, and Crone can be even more meaningful in women’s lives as the Crone stage becomes one third of our lifespan. Each stage of a woman’s life is organized around what Goddess Cultures called the blood mysteries: menarche, (the first monthly flow of blood); childbirth, which is accompanied by blood from birthing; and menopause, when a woman’s “wise blood” remains inside her to give her wisdom. These are still powerful landmarks, which profoundly influence women’s lives. They function as psychological gateways to the change in consciousness required by each new stage.”

Savage calls the Crone the most powerful sexual stage of a woman (YES!). Here’s what she has to say:

“The developmental task of the Crone Stage is sharing wisdom. In Neolithic times, Crone women were the tribal matriarchs. Their heightened awareness of human nature yielded great insight and they were the source of wise counsel for important decisions. Spiritually, this is the Mastery phase. The Wise Woman teaches knowledge gained from her skills and life experience. It is a time of reaching into her spiritual depths, utilizing her powers of intuition, and finding meaning in her visions from the dream world. Some Crone women are masters of healing at the highest level.“The Crone Stage of life, more than any other, is a time of giving back to society the cumulative wisdom of the years. Many women have an urge to speak out (who…me?), to organize others, to take action (look out, Hillary!). They seem to have the energy to get more involved in the world-at-large. It is often Crone energy that leads to changes being made in society. As the Crone woman moves further into her life path she feels the urge to teach others and to cultivate her passions. It can be the most productive time in women’s lives.”

So, this “crone” (that’s me, silly!) will soon be embarking on a walkabout (actually a road trip), in search of the feminine…

Oh, and doing a book tour too!... And what better place than the heart of America, the land of freedom, opportunity and democracy, to find and express my new stage of life.

Nina’s American Tour

In the next few weeks, as I cross the United States of America, you might see my smiling face in your part of the country, at your local Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore. I’d be glad to see you and sign your copy of Darwin’s Paradox. Cities and Barnes & Noble bookstores my manager and I have targeted include (but are not limited to):

Spokane, Washington—15310 E Indiana Ave, Spokane (509) 922-4104

Bozeman, Montana—2825 W Main St, Bozeman, MT 59718 (406) 586-5360

Sioux Falls, South Dakota—3700 West 41st Street, Sioux Falls, SD 57106 (605) 362-1500

Omaha, Nebraska—Oakview Mall, 3333 Oakview Dr, Omaha (402) 691-4557

Kansas City, Kansas—400 W 47th St, Kansas City (816) 753-1313

Columbia, Missouri—2208 Bernadette Dr, Columbia, MO 65203 (573) 445-4080

Saint Louis, Missouri—9618 Watson Rd., Crestwood (314) 843-9480

Louisville, Kentucky—801 South Hurstbourne Pkwy, Louisville, KY 40222 (502) 426-0255 and
Chicago, Illinois—1441 W Webster Ave, Chicago (773) 871-3610

If you live nearby, you may wish to call the bookstore to find out when I’ll be there. I look forward to seeing you.

I will likely not post here as often for the next month. But when I do, I promise you a vivid travelogue. And I look forward to your comments as always. You may wish to visit Karen Mason’s site, Darwin’s Paradox, for current news of my whereabouts.

I leave you with some wonderful travel music… And when I next see you it will be from that great country to the south of us, the United States of America.

Bibliography:

Savage, Linda. 1999. Reclaiming Goddess Sexuality: The Power of the Feminine Way. Hay House. 293p.

Vancouver Sun Editorial Board: Fazil Mihlar, Harvey Enchin, Craig McInnes, Peter McKnight, Patricia Graham, Kevin Bent, Stephen Hume, Jonathan Manthorpe, Barbara Yaffe.

Oryx & Crake--Book Review

2008-06-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

Margaret Atwood’s Booker Award nominee, “Oryx and Crake” is a sharp-edged, dark contemplative essay on the premise of where the myopia of greed, power and obsession with “self-image” and its outstripping of ethics and morality may take us. Replete with sordid subject matter and unlikeable but complex characters, Atwood’s gloomy post-apocalyptic tale follows the slow pace of introspection. It is a dark commentary rich with vivid, often viscerally provokative language, metaphor and symbolism.

“Oryx and Crake” is a dark “cautionary tale for a society addicted to vanity, greed and self.” Often sordid and disturbing, it depicts “an acquisitional era where everything from sex to learning is about power and ownership” (Sarah Barnett, Anglican Media). In her typical sharp-witted prose and edgy humor, Atwood “uses those rare birds, oryx and crake, like canaries in the mines,” says Victoria Bramworth of the Baltimore Sun, “to invoke a metaphor ― and warning ― for our times”.

The story begins with Jimmy, aka Snowman (as in Abominable), who lives a somnolent, disconsolate life in a post-apocalyptic world created by a worldwide biological catastrophe. Slowly starving to death, Snowman’s mind leap frogs back and forth between his haunting memories of an abysmally amoral past to his present empty existence as the apparent sole survivor except for a group of naïve genetically-engineered youths. They are called the children of Crake, Crakers (after his best friend, who ― you guessed it ― created them) and they regard Snowman as their caretaker-prophet-demi-god. He spends a great deal of time wallowing in mourning for his beloved, Oryx, and best friend, Crake, as he searches for supplies in a wasteland where freakish genetically-engineered animals ravage the Pleeblands (where ordinary people used to live) and the Compounds (that used to shelter the extraordinary). His journey back to Crake’s high-tech facility, where the genesis of the Paradice Project was conceived, is Snowman’s journey “home” to his past, which unfolds insidiously like a twisted version of Adam and Eve: And the Lord God commanded. . . “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”(Book of Genesis). And there was much of that. Dying. Decaying. Suffering. It plays out like a warped tragedy written by a toked-up Shakespeare, with Crake as the self-proclaimed god and snake in one, Oryx his ill-fated Eve, and Jimmy a callow and ineffectual Adam. Jimmy more aptly fulfills the role of the court jester, the Fool (there always is one in a Shakespeare play and he often fulfills the role of commentator).

Atwood fittingly paints Jimmy this way. He is basically an unappealing jerk (like most Fools); a debauched, morally dubious individual whose “life and circumstances,” according to critic Sarah Barnett, “beg our sympathy but many readers may be reluctant to give it.” Yet, by the last third of the novel, I found myself indeed sympathizing with him, despite his shortcomings, which began to wither next to the soulless actions of his best friend. It is at the same time that I also noticed I was no longer “observing” the book but “participating” in it. Somewhere around page 280 (the book runs 378 pages) I began to get involved. Up until then the story was mostly an exercise in literary cleverness, sharp dark wit, and smartly turned phrases ― my reaction being: “Ah, that was clever, Margaret! I see your point, Margaret!” Never, “Oh, my God, what’s going to happen next?” My patience was vindicated in the last third of the book, however, when this cornucopia of documentary-style detail ironically provided me with a wealth of material to draw and feel pathos for Snowman’s cascading plight toward the book’s inevitable and tragic climax. What Sawyer inneffectively attempts with detail, Atwood consumately achieves: she cooly subverts the reader into accepting and viscerally experiencing her “mundane” world.

So, why did Jimmy incite my compassion? Perhaps it was the mother in me hoping he’d find his way, his connection with his soul and the heart of humanity. Even the mother who abandoned him (to pursue her principals) makes a last feeble effort to instill this in him in her final message to him: “I love you. Don’t let me down, Jimmy.”

Atwood’s astute command of the grim subject matter explored in “Oryx and Crake” provides an edgy realism that is not found in much traditional science fiction. I think this is largely due to Atwood’s mainstream literature background and to her virtuoso writing style (yes, including all that detail!). This is why it works, despite not being terribly original within a purely SF context. What Atwood brings to us that is more important than originality is her gritty realism and a tone of visceral immediacy. Oryx and Crake is a poignant commentary of our disfunctional society of isolated, fearful people who have lost touch with what it is to be human. She has accurately captured a growing zeitgeist that has lost the need for words like honor, integrity, compassion, humility, forgiveness, respect and love in its vocabulary. And she has projected this trend into an alarmingly probable future. This is subversive SF at its best.

Atwood’s “Oryx & Crake” is a swift left hook in the gut from the darkness; for those willing to spend time reflecting on the dark poetry of Atwood’s smart and edgy slice-of-life commentary, there is much to gain in reading “Oryx and Crake”.

Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty

2008-06-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

Love makes an object beautiful—Eliseo Lagano

Ubi amor ibi oculus est (Where there is love there is vision)—Richard of St Victor

Do you recall John Keats’ enigmatic last two lines in Ode on a Grecian Urn: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” ?

“But what on Earth did Keats mean?” asked mathematician and author, Martin Gardner (Scientific American, April 2007). Gardner went on to quote T.S. Eliot who called the lines “meaningless” and “a serious blemish on a beautiful poem”. A rather pithy remark, I thought, considering the lines spoke of beauty. Gardner further described how great theorems and great proofs, such as “Euclid’s elegant proof of infinity of primes, have about them what Bertrand Russell described as ‘a beauty cold and austere’ akin to the beauty of great works of sculpture.”

Ian Stewart, a distinguished mathematician at the University of Warwick in England and author of Why Beauty is Truth: a History of Symmetry, suggested that symmetry lay at the heart of beauty. He concluded his book with two maxims: 1) in physics, beauty does not automatically ensure truth, but it helps; and 2) in mathematics beauty must be true—because everything false is ugly.

I really don’t think these guys get it. Truth, like beauty, is something personally perceived and known. Like love, beauty (and truth) apply to one’s personal experiences, feelings and thoughts. It isn’t something we “prove”. It just simply IS. Neither beauty nor truth (certainly in all its facets) can be remotely described or “proven” through science (at least not in the language of traditional science). We are each a unique universe, within whom resides a world of aesthetic truths. British author John Lane, author of Timeless Beauty: In the Arts and Everyday Life, describes it this way:

“Although the complexities of both nature and beauty have a subtle mathematical basis, reason by itself cannot tell us why beauty exists nor what is beautiful…There is often something spontaneous, even ‘illogical’ about these emotions; like love they can never be predetermined, let alone dictated. But neither can the other wise and splendid things which are most significant in human life, to which the greatest of the human race have contributed most, and in which our real refreshment consists—the love of truth, the sources of inspiration and the production of great works of art.”

“These, like beauty,” says Lane, “ultimately pertain to the unconscious, the heart and the soul. They pertain to the heart because it is love which discerns the mystery inherent in those things we see as beautiful; love which abandons arrogance and stands in awe before the mystery of life. It is love that sees beauty which, in turn, is always loved.”

A while back, I posted an article on an experiment run by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post in a Washington, D.C. metro station with virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell, disguised as a street performer. Bell’s performance, arranged by The Washington Post, was an experiment in context, perception and priorities – as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

Moreover, Weingarten’s experiment in human behavior brings up yet another question about North Americans as a culture: do we need someone else to tell us what is beautiful and worthwhile?

John Lane suggests that the experiment at L'Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, “not because people didn't have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.” Lane then added, "This is about having the wrong priorities." And losing one's balance of life. I will go even further with this: beauty, in all its forms, is God’s gift to us. Divine grace. Forgiveness. Compassion. Humility. Altruism. These are all expressions of beauty, and ultimately expressions of God. So, when you don’t have time to perceive the beautiful and exalting “hymns” of Joshua Bell in a busy metro station—then you also aren’t listening to God.

So, what DID Keats mean?... Well, here is what I think he meant (and whether he did or not is actually moot because what it means to me—to each of us—is what’s important):

Truth, like beauty, is perceived from the heart and the soul. Shakespeare knew this too (To thine own self be true—Hamlet). When one is truthful (about oneself particularly) then one is also beautiful. To see the truth about a person or object is invariably to recognize our inherent beauty, the divine nature God has given us, to see beyond the mundane surficial veil we all spend so much time cultivating… Truth is beauty, beauty truth; that is all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know. It is a simple yet difficult maxim to follow. For in following it, one must be willing to cast off one’s “safe” societal facade and display oneself naked before God and the often judgmental scrutiny of humankind. To look beyond the shallow shores of deception into the deep abyss of truth.

I dedicate this post to Karen Mason, my manager and guru-of-sorts, accomplished publisher, editor, marketer and SEO. My wise mentor, advocate, literary promoter and beloved friend. You are beautiful. I love you with my heart and soul. You delivered me a beautiful dream and I intend to live it.

Bibliography:

Stewart, Ian. 2007. Why Beauty Is Truth: The History of Symmetry. Basic Books. 304p.
Gardner, Martin. 2007. Is Beauty Truth and Truth Beauty? In: Scientific American, March, 2007.
Lane, John. 2001. Timeless Beauty: in the Arts and Everyday Life. Green Books. 176p.