Fiction

X-Men: What's the Cost of Built-in Inequality?

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“What will become of treasured notions about equality if we get to the point where genuine differences can be imprinted, demonstrated, even bar-coded? Will equality survive in a brave new world of built-in inequality?” asked James Pinkerton, writing about the new X-Men movie.

The intended message is harmony amidst difference, but the storyline is always discord, even violence, among visibly different factions. What does that tell us about the future of a speciated humanity?

Beyond the special effects, maybe “X-Men” is a already a hit (number 1 box office movie this past weekend) because it probes our deepest Darwinian feelings–and fears. If science succeeds in updating the definition of “fittest,” the survival of our particular species, in its current form, could be at risk. That’s great for future mutants, but not so great for the rest of us, and our current civilization.

Isn’t this the sticking point of many sci-fi stories and shows one weakness of the naturalistic worldview the stories come from? We’re all equal, humans and nonhumans. Even those bugs over there. Isn’t that right, Chewy? Rwaaraaa!

Uncategorized

Believe it or not, I was sober

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My posts for the next few weeks are likely to be shorter than usual, as I’m handicapped by a hand cast.

And that’s just one of my injuries.

It was a memorable weekend.

First there was Story City, IA, and its annual Scandinavian celebration. I didn’t take any pictures down there, because they would have been pretty much the same as the previous years’. Good food, nice people, gracious hosts. Sam was there with his Viking boat. Consistency is nice.

It was windy though. As Denny and I were setting up our Viking tent (a rather old one belonging to the club), a gust caught it, and we lost our grip. It fell and sort of exploded. The ridge pole broke, the frames split, and part of it fell on my head. The result was a trip to the local clinic, and three stitches.

(By the way, my brother once found a record that our grandmother, who was born in Story City, had her appendix removed in the hospital there, about a century ago. I’m confident it was a different building, but I felt a bond.)

I left a couple hours early on Saturday, to participate in a distant relative’s 100th birthday party, about 20 miles away. I walked in on them in full Viking garb, and managed to get away unscathed.

Sunday was Danish Day in Minneapolis, pictured above. Good weather, good crowd. At the very beginning of my very first fight, I got clouted on the right hand, breaking my index finger. The pain hasn’t been too bad, but this one-handed keyboarding is a nuisance.

Authors, Bookselling, Publishing

Interview with a Superagent

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The man behind the Wylie Agency speaks to the Wall Street Journal Magazine about his aggressive deals and some of the needs in the publishing industry. “I think most of the best-sellers list is the literary equivalent of daytime television. This is a world in which Danielle Steel is mysteriously more valuable than Shakespeare,” Wylie states.

Reading

Reading As Often As Possible

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“I cannot remember a time when I did not want to read as much as possible. Since my family did not have many books, my main sources were school books, gifts from relatives, and books borrowed from neighbors until I was old enough to check them out of the Butte Public Library, which I did as often and as many as possible.”

Patrick Kurp talks about the love for words, saying we have a master poet walking among us today in Helen Pinkerton. He brings her up in reference to an email he got from D.G. Myers, asking whether he thought printed books were positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably dead.

Authors

Hans Christian Andersen, in person

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Tomorrow I head south to Story City, Iowa for their annual Scandinavian festival, and on Sunday I’ll be at Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis. So I won’t be posting tomorrow. I’m sure Phil will have wonderful things to share, which will ease your keen sense of loss.

Speaking of Denmark, I thought it would be nice to share a few excerpts from J. R. Browne’s report on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen (I spelled it wrong last time), in his book The Land of Thor, which I reviewed yesterday.

Presently I heard a rapid step and the door was thrown open. Before me stood a tall, thin, shambling, raw-boned figure of a man a little beyond the prime of life, but not yet old, with a pair of dancing gray eyes and a hatchet-face, all alive with twists, and wrinkles, and muscles; a long, lean face, upon which stood out prominently a great nose, diverted by a freak of nature a little to one side, and flanked by a tremendous pair of cheek-bones, with great hollows underneath. Innumerable ridges and furrows swept semicircularly downward around the corners of a great mouth—a broad, deep, rugged fissure across the face, that might have been mistaken for the dreadful child-trap of an ogre but for the sunny beams of benevolence that lurked around the lips, and the genial humanity that glimmered from every nook and turn… a long, bony pair of arms, with long hands on them, a long, lank body, with a long black coat on it; a long, loose pair of legs, with long boots on the feet, all in motion at the same time—all shining, and wriggling and working with an indescribable vitality, a voice bubbling up from the vast depths below with cheery, spasmodic, and unintelligible words of welcome—this was the wonderful man that stood before me…. I would have picked him out from among a thousand men at first glance as a candidate for Congress, or the proprietor of a tavern, if I had met him any where in the United States….

“Come in! come in!” he said, in a gush of broken English; “come in and sit down. You are very welcome. Thank you—thank you very much. I am very glad to see you. It is a rare thing to meet a traveler all the way from California—quite a surprise. Sit down! Thank you!” Continue reading Hans Christian Andersen, in person →

Goofing, Writing

Tips from Twitter

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FakeAPStylebook on Twitter hands us words to write by:

  1. Typographers will tell you to eliminate widows and orphans. Typographers are MONSTERS.
  2. “Kill your darlings” refers to editing overwrought copy. Our apologies to the surviving family of Gotham City’s Printon “Scoop” Presser.
  3. To avoid being sued for copyright infringement, alter one letter in each word of quotes from literary works: “Carl mi Ishmail.”
  4. Misplaced modifiers are always in the last place you look.

Priceless and free. This comes from the brilliant minds behind Write More Good.

Fiction

Heroic Sacrifices

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Nameless (Jet Li)



Here’s a meditation on the movie Hero. Jason Morehead loves it, saying the director appears to have developed “a visually ravishing exploration of the sacrifices that people are willing to make for causes larger than themselves, sometimes foolishly, and the human foibles that plague and hinder our attempts at nobility.”

Non-fiction, Reviews

The Land of Thor, by J. R. Browne

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I downloaded John Ross Browne’s book on his travels in Russia and Scandinavia, The Land of Thor, because it was an old account of those regions that I’d never heard of (such accounts can be invaluable for the historical writer), and because I could get it free as a Kindle e-book. Now that I know better, I recommend going to The Guttenberg Project instead, and downloading the illustrated version, as the author’s drawings are half the point.

John Ross Browne was born in Ireland, but raised in the United States. He eventually became a proud—nay, arrogant—citizen of the state of California. He was a frequent contributor of both stories and illustrations to Harper’s Weekly Magazine. For a period of his life around the Civil War he moved to Germany and took the opportunity to travel extensively, sending reports to Harper’s and compiling them into books when he was finished. The Land of Thor is one of those. Continue reading The Land of Thor, by J. R. Browne →