Do not, do not again I say, drink the bruise juice. It will not ease the ache inside!

I saw the teaser for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns on TV a few minutes ago. Boy, it looks good.

I thought it was 'potrzebie axolotl fink!'

The Night Stalker has been euthanized-- er, I mean cancelled.

I've been watching the show, and frankly, I'm relieved.

I don't like the MAD system of measures as much as the one in Science Made Stupid, which had an entry for a "millihelen," the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.

i'm officially p.o.'d. Kansas City does not get any first run IMAX movies. I'm jealous of St. Louie, who is getting Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in IMAX. A lot of times we don't get them ever.

BUT we do have tickets for a showing tomorrow, which i'm now VERY primed for because of an A&E 'preview' program tonight.

Larkin's Dispensationalist charts are, in their own way, brilliant.

You can almost picture them on magic lantern slides. The 19th century sectarian version of a PowerPoint presentation. Put a half-way decent lecturer in front of the screen and your audiance will be ready to sell its possessions and head for the designated hilltop.

It would be fun to satirize them, but it is really too late for that. Their memes have been so thoroughly sold as what Christianity is about that mocking them would come across as bigotry.

Man, where's Dr. Brainiod and his DeFanaticizer Ray when you need him?

I am about to sit down with a Celebration Ale (made by the guys who make Sierra Nevada) and watch episode 9 of Firefly. I am mucho happy. I still want an anti-gravity doohickey for Christmas, however.

On another subject entirely: anyone else paying attention to politics? John Murtha, Conservative Democrat, Viet Nam veteran, out there in public saying "Bring the troops home now." Woo. And Mr. Bush's popularity numbers are in the toilet, except with the 30% or so who would be happy with David Koresh if he were a rich Republican.

As I said, I am mucho happy.

Superman Returns was shot in Fox Studios in Sydney. An acquaintance of mine worked in the special effects department, and had a great time. One of his tasks was to create the fibreglass body suits worn by Superman and Lois -- the suits had to be exact fits for the actors' actual bodies, so that the suits held the bodies rigid and horizontal in front of the green screen for the flying scenes, but looked just like the bodies to the camera. In order to take the mould for the suits, my acquaintance had to cover every centimetre of the actors' Lycra clad bodies with Vaseline. After such intimacies, it was no surprise that when the stars walked into the mess they invariably greeted him by name, much to the envy and mystification of other members of the tech crew.

Potrzebie axolotl fink, yes; also durmish, moxie, poiuyt, squamish, and veeblefetzer.

Was there ever such a visible retcon as Larkin's Dispensationalist charts?

Celebration Ale, Firefly, and lousy Republican poll numbers: altogether good. Now all you need is a hamster.

Why do I need a hamster? she asked plaintively.

quoth Lizzy L: "Why do I need a hamster? she asked plaintively."

[rolls eyes] Silly, everyone knows that... What else would you use to sodomize the dinosaur?

No, wait; don't answer that. Please.

protected static wrote:

[rolls eyes] Silly, everyone knows that... What else would you use to sodomize the dinosaur?

No, wait; don't answer that. Please.

... and you got it wrong, anyways [rolls eyes, then searches desperately for the missing one] Everyone knows that you have to use guinea pigs to sodomize dinosaurs!

Do the guinea pigs know that?

The children's zoo in Pittsburgh included one exhibit with the sign "These rats are not hamsters, they're guinea pigs".

As for Potrzebie axolotl fink and all the other little finks: There is a charming picture book titled Sarah So Small in which the title character is shrunk to the size of a teacup and seeks to return to her proper size. The magic words? "Klaatu barada nikto". I Am Not Making This Up.

xeger, xeger, xeger...

[sigh]

I told you not to answer, but you couldn't help yourself, could you?

[cracks whip]

Now come here before I unleash the dinosaur. And the hamsters.

But Frammistan is at war with Potrzebie. Frammistan has always been at war with Potrzebie. Fortunately, the excelsior ration is to be increased next week, so more of us will have a place to sit during the Two-Minute Fold-In.

Bill Gaines, Mad's publisher, once visited the Soviet Union, and drew a great deal of attention. (Certainly more than I did, despite the Pigeon Story.) If you don't already know why, you can examine the photograph here.

And, of course, the reason one needs a hamster is that parakeets look weird trying to run the wheel, and require large capacitors to smooth the power output. Sometimes these . . . well, let's just say that the Intelligent Design Studio* has failed to provide the bird kingdom with ground-fault interrupters.

*Think of it as Muppet Labs run by Fozzie.

And, of course, the reason one needs a hamster is that parakeets look weird trying to run the wheel,

oh, no way. not if you mean budgies. watching budgies playing on a hamster wheel is awesome. i suppose i'm not sure how much power they'd actually produce, though.

Speaking of dairy-free cocoa: I favor rice milk for my morning Cheerios (and other cereals, but I don't eat those very often) due to its nutty flavor. Does anyone know if it would also make good cocoa? I limit my dairy intake for reasons of taste more than tolerance, so having alternatives is always interesting.

(I'm responding here to this comment from thread #53 because the latter is approaching critical mass.)

"Serge, did you never watch Super Friends?"

Actually, Nomie, very little, for some reason. I do remember the episode where Darkseid took away their superpowers then proceeded to tell Wonder Woman she could still be his girlfriend. Heck, not all her superpowers had gone away, if you know what I mean, and I think you do (as movie critic Joe Bob Briggs would have said).

Anyway, what happened on the show that explains how Grundy can be on the same level as Lex in the criminal-mastermind dept?

(Sory to the site's people who aren't comic-book geeks.)

Did you see that coming attraction for Superman, Jonathan? It looks like a live-action rendition of an Alex Ross graphic novel. Very Grand in feel, especially as Superman is seen high above the Earth, his eyes closed. And... and... It has Eva Marie Saint as Martha Kent.

America's ultimate immigrant is back.

Anyway, what happened on the show that explains how Grundy can be on the same level as Lex in the criminal-mastermind dept?

This might be a reference to the season that featured the Legion of Doom. The idea was that Luthor gathered a group of villains to plan ridiculous crimes in a swamp. For some reason, the Legion mostly consisted of the lamest and least powerful villains in the D.C. universe, including the Riddler, Black Manta, and Solomon Grundy.

"The idea was that Luthor gathered a group of villains to plan ridiculous crimes in a swamp."

He took over the D.C. Republicans?

I think some of us are confusing the old Super Friends show (circa 1980s) with the recent and far more interesting Justice League show. It's understandable,a s they feature the same characters. Sort of like mixing up Batman Begins with Batman Returns. One fetures Val Kilmer in a suit with rubbe rnipples. The other is good.

Batman's rubber nipples? That was George Clooney, not Val Kilmer. Amazingly, Clooney's career wasn't totally wrecked. (Anybody seen Good Night and Good Luck?)

Yes, Teresa, I think Luthor did take over the DC Republicans. In fact, there was an issue of Green Arrow where I found that Lex is now President of the USA.

What Pigeon Story, Mike?

This letter from Cindy Sheehan to Barbara Bush is worth a read.

Completely off the subject, frankly, but I have a deep need to tap the collective mind, which is wise both deep and wide, at Making Light. Here is my plea:

I'm putting together a book list for a writing course that I'll be teaching during "spring" term. I quote spring merely because only the last month is really spring-like around here and the term would be more accurately called "yes, yes, it's still winter" term.

Anyway.

The books that I'll be using in one of the units are Slaughterhouse Five, The Forever War and Starship Troopers. Last night I realized that these three, while great books all, need to be balanced by something written by (and, if possible, featuring) someone who wasn't white and male. But I'll be darned if I can figure out what that would be. It could be that my brain is simply soft (more than usual, that is) right now.

But I would like to ask the assembled: Can you think of a title that would fit? The books in question are used to generate writing themes and topics as well as discussions. There is a separate text that deals with the nuts and bolts of writing.

And, clearly, the hamster is to keep the wombats away. Wombats love Celebration Ale, Firefly, and lousy Republican poll numbers.

Night Stalker has been cancelled, Harry? I watched maybe three episodes, but mostly out of a sense of obligation. They went about it all wrong (says Serge the Wise One)... I mean, what people remembered from the original show was the mixture of humor and horror. There certainly wasn't any humor in this version. No, they didn't have to do McGavin's over-the-top kind. Heck, there was plenty of dry humor in the X Files.

Does anybody remember how, when they started filming LoTR, ther was someone other than Viggo Mortensen playing Aragorn, but for reasons unknown they replaced the original with Viggo. They had never said who it was. I just found out that it was Night Stalker's Stuart Townsend.

Ah, an open thread.
I recently learned that the release date for the Serenity DVD is December 20th.

Plan your holidays accordingly.

Adrienne: how about Octavia Butler? Parable of the Sower?

best I can do this am before coffee.

Adrienne: can't help with the non-white-non-male aspect, but I heartily recommend John Scalzi's Old Man's War as a counterbalance to the Heinlein and a complement to the Haldeman. Oh!! Wait--give them The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. It's not sf, but then neither is Slaughterhouse Five. And it's a much better book, IMO.

Peter Hentges wrote:
I favor rice milk for my morning Cheerios (and other cereals, but I don't eat those very often) due to its nutty flavor. Does anyone know if it would also make good cocoa?

Yes, it does. It's thinner than soymilk-based cocoa, and less 'creamy'. Whether that's a feature or a bug depends on your personal taste.

Serenity out on Dec 20, Bob? It IS starting to feel like Xmas.

I had a question about something on the "Dirty hippies" thread, but, being a little slow off the mark, I didn't get around to asking it before the discussion evolved.

Marna said:

Oh, there were whole heirarchies. The anti-war folks who weren't in the streets didn't want to be associated with the ones who were, the ones who were in the streets THIS time didn't want to be associated with anyone who'd been out for Afghanistan, the ones who'd been out for Afghanistan didn't want to be associated with anyone who'd been out for Seattle or Quebec, and NOBODY wanted to know the Quakers.

What's wrong with the Quakers?

I was delighted when I discovered that "It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide" makes perfect sense.

(I've long insisted that) Bill Gaines is the most important American cultural figure of the third quarter of the Twentieth Century.

I demonstrate this with the impossibility of naming any important American creative personality from, say, the Sixties to the Nineties, who wasn't influenced by MAD.

Adrienne, what were the criteria you used to pick those three books?

The hamster was because if you're stacking up joyful circumstances, a hamster is an appropriate addition.

So - do we need a password to see this 100 swords link, or what?

The protagonist of _Starship Troopers_ is not white.

The Female Man
Babel-17
anything by Josephine Saxton

Adrienne,

What was the reasoning behind your original three choices, besides all being great books (there are so many great books)?

If you want to be genre-based, how about something by Nalo Hopkinson—say Midnight Robber? Or are you looking for war stories? How about Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar (it has some stylistic issues, IMO, and my former employer loathed the excessive adjectives, but the storytelling is good enough to pull most readers through them.) For damn' fine, beautifully crafted writing on all levels you can't really go wrong with Jo Walton. If you're being a traditionalist, Ursula K. LeGuin is canonical, and a rich source of thematic material. For breathaking writing, and use of myth, archetype, and id, I'd recommend Patricia McKillip, and if any of your students can figure out how to do that thing she does, well, good—the world needs more of it, IMO (see also Pamela Dean.)

If you're straying from genre, but sticking with fiction, try The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.

Here's a post-colonial reading list (non-genre). I vouch not its contents, as I haven't read everything on it, but it seems like pretty canonical place to start. Also, Nalo Hopkinson has edited an anthology of postcolonial SF, which might be a useful resource.

I really must get my Batmen strait. It was George Cloony with the rubber nipples on his batsuit, not Val Kilmer.

It's too bad about Mr. Cloony's career, though. He had such a promissing future as a shiftless B list actor and then he went and screwed it all up by making good films. The world has been denied seeing him play Buckaroo Banzai's older brother or Mr. Fantastic. Oh well.

Good Night and Good Luck hasn't come out down South yet, and I doubt it ever will but I look forward to adding to my Netflix Queue.

'Poiuyt' is one name for that pronged optical illusion thing. I've also seen it called a three-pronged slot-finder, but 'poiuyt' is much better.

By the way, what is the origin of the name Luthor? The movies and TV always pronounce it as if it were 'Luther', but I don't suppose that 'Luthor' is also germanic.

Odd trivium: I didn't know that Joe Haldeman was white until I searched for a picture. I think my semiconscious mind went, "Most of the people who got blown up in Vietnam were black; Joe Haldeman got blown up in Vietnam; Joe Haldeman is probably black."

Thanks for all of the great suggestions. Not only will all of these titles make great additions to my own reading list, they are also making me clarify my own muddy thoughts on the class.

The loose theme is "books about soldiers and war, with an emphasis on those with science fictional elements." I've toyed with Scalzi's Old Man's War, but it is merely in pencil at this point. Not to slight Scalzi -- it's a great book -- but OMW doesn't quite feel like it fits. No, I can't quite explain why -- and if I never figure out what my qualm is, then I'll add it.

If I can't figure out another genre-ish title to add, other possibilites are Atonement, Testament of Youth and Jarhead.

And, yes, the protagonist in the book Starship Troopers isn't white, the actor in the movie is -- and my brain keeps substituting Casper Van Dien's face when I think about the book. Damn you Verhoeven.

Isn't the protagonist of "The Forever War" black? Or am I just confused by a) his being called Mandella and b) the protagonist of "Forever Peace" being black? It's a long time since I read it.

And most of the people who got blown up in Vietnam were Asian. Of the US troops ('real people') who got blown up or otherwise killed, most were white. (Over 80%.)

I'm interested why your reaction was "this list needs to be balanced by including someone non-white and non-male" rather than "this list needs to be balanced by including someone non-American"...

Keith, did you know that Clooney was originally the actor playing Aretemus Gordon in the disappointing movie version of Wild Wild West? They had to let him go because he kept trying to play Artemus as if he were James West. (Kevin Kline did a good job in that role, but couldn't save the movie.)

On the subject of joyful circumstances: I have beheld a basket of Buddha's Hand citrons. They looked like Cthulhu! I didn't buy one, since they were $10 per, but what a beautiful scent. And soon enough it will be blood-orange time. Maybe this year they'll be maroon and sweet instead of those nasty high-acid orange ones.

Whatever happened to American-Indian writer Craig Strete? He was around in the Seventies, had a few things that got some attention then he just vanished.

For books about soldiers and war I would recommend "The Last Enemy" by Richard Hillary, "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat, "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" by Siegfried Sassoon, "Count Belisarius" by Robert Graves, "Quartered Safe Out Here" by George MacDonald Fraser, and "The Ship" by CS Forester.
For books with a more SF element, "Use of Weapons" by Iain M. Banks is the most military of the Culture novels. SF seems to be somewhat short of good novels from the footsoldier's perspective (as distinct from space battles) - I don't know if this matters?

Teresa, you have corrupted me. Or inspired me. I not only got myself a Microplane grater, I've started making cordials. One batch of habanero (now settling in to age for a while) and one of limoncello. I'm eying the herbs. Any advice?

Ajay:

Isn't the protagonist of "The Forever War" black? Or am I just confused by a) his being called Mandella and b) the protagonist of "Forever Peace" being black? It's a long time since I read it.

There's a passage at the end of The Forever War in which Mandella explains the origin of his name. His parents were hippie-types who decided to both change their names to something new when they got married. They wanted to use the word "mandala" (the Buddhist symbolic chart representing the Universe), but neither the parents nor the judge performing the marriage were sure how to spell the word. So they took their best guess and came up with "Mandella".

It's a pretty obvious parallel to / satire of Starship Troopers, in which you find out at the end that the protagonist's ethnicity was not what you might think it would be based on his surname.

Adrienne,

If your looking for a war book, try, "The Healer's War" by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. A sci fi/ fantasy set in Vietnam. Fantastic.

Amazon link

Sandy: Joe Haldeman served as a combat engineer - grunts with shovels first, guns second. Marginally more elite than regular infantry, and as such were similar to infantry units in composition.

Compare and contrast Haldeman w/ David Drake, who served in the 11th 'Black Horse' Armored Cav Regiment, an elite (and at the time exclusively white) unit.

Interestingly, despite the differences in the way they write about war, they share similar positions - or at least they did when I saw them on a 'military sf' panel at Boskone 23 or 24 (23, I think). They both pissed off a lot of fanboys dressed up in Aliens/Colonial Marines getups, Drake in particular. During the Q&A, Haldeman said something about how much war sucked and damaged everyone involved, including the victors. Someone in the audience started giving him grief and Drake quietly told the fanboy that Haldeman was right, so sit down and STFU. More eloquently than that, but still...

Drake said that wa sucked? Is that what comes across IN his novels?

I would also recommend Octavia Butler's "Xenogenesis" series as a counter to white male overload. (especially Dawn, the first in that series)

Not only is the protagonist non-white and non-male, but the narrative begins with the human beings having blown themselves to bits and being at the complete and total mercy of aliens who swooped down after the nuclear holocaust to save what humans they could.

It doesn't really solve the 'not by or about a white guy' problem, but I'm strongly tempted to suggest The Defense of Duffer's Drift, which should not be disqualified merely because it's a tactics manual. (It's a repeated-dream, fictional setting tactics manual.)

Kipling's The Army of a Dream is a primary precursor for Starship Troopers, and would be a very fertile source of contrasts. (The Kipling story about a Sikh telling his village elders about what the Ghurkas did at the funeral of the King-Emperor, also.)

Tanya Huff has some mil-sf books, quite new; there's the Rig Veda and the Lay of Helgi Hundingsbana (where the magic-working women have more to do with success than skill with swords) come to mind, too.

Cherryh's Hellburner might make a better or more immediate contrast to the three you've got. (The book is about a group of people caught up in the development of a new military technology in the midst of a very tangled political controversy over that tech, and if you are familiar with the future history in question, what seems like a success at the end isn't, at all.)

While people are asking questions about science fiction choices, I'm looking for a good shortish novel to include in an interdisciplinary seminar on family. we're looking at family from all sorts of angles (history, sociology, anthropology, legal battles, etc.) and I'd like to have something that forces people to expand their ideas of what counts and how things could work. (It doesn't have to be science fiction of course, but it would be fun.) I have the vague idea that there has to be the perfect story somewhere, but I can't quite think of what.

Alison

Serge: I know - pretty amazing, isn't it?

I don't know if Drake was just protecting Haldeman or what, but you know that quiet, exasperated yet patient, but-if-you-keep-pushing-it-I'll-tear-off-your-head-and-drink-from-your-skull tone that people with horrible personal experiences sometimes use when dealing with morons who deny the reality of those experiences?

That's how Drake was.

Alison: Left Hand of Darkness comes leaping to mind. See also Sturgeon's Venus Plus X.

So, that's the real Drake. Interesting. About Haldeman, does anybody know what his politics are? At last year's World Fantasy Con, he made a comment on a panel about war where he referred to the Liberal Media. I thought "Huh?"

Serge --

If you read Drake's Slammers stories carefully, I think it's very clear that they -- which are the direct Vietnam-experience ones -- are about the living dead, people whose souls have been destroyed. (Never mind the direct Vietnam ones, which are few in number and exceedingly bleak and creepy.)

Don't let the clinical detachment in the descriptions of violence fool you; this is a man who very publically compared the experience of a soldier on a modern battlefield to that of a hunted animal.

Which of Drake's Slammers novels would you recommend, Graydon? Just to see if I can be shocked any further about Drake, do you know what his political affiliations are - if he has any?

Someone already mentioned Jo Walton: her The King's Peace and The King's Name are about soldiers, and war, and what is worth fighting for. Among other things--and I hope Jo will correct me if I'm getting it badly wrong.

Duffer's Drift with the illustrations.

Serge --

There aren't any, you realize; novellas, and short stories, variously grouped together, that can be mistaken for novels, yes, but no actual Slammers novels. (There might be one story over 40 kwords, come to think, but I don't think many.)

The one you might find clearest on this point -- if I had to guess -- would be "The Warrior"; there's also something to be said for Cross the Stars and Birds of Prey, an sfnal Odyssey and an sfnal Roman Empire thriller of sorts.

Drake's politics I know nothing about; I do know he's remarked that he read Ovid in Vietnam to stay sane, and that's he's extremely clear in the forewords and afterwords of his books that his motivation for writing is in part to convey the costs of war to the people who might vote to start one.

Colored bubbles - cool!

Disappearing hair dye - oh, goody, I can have blue hair!

did you know that Clooney was originally the actor playing Aretemus Gordon in the disappointing movie version of Wild Wild West?

I was unaware of that fact, Serge. He's an odd duck, that Cloony fellow. It took until he was the Daily Show a few weeks ago, when he mentioned his Aunt Rosemary did a bit of singing that I realised that, in fact, yes she did at that. What a strange and wonderful family he comes from.

I still think his best role was in O, Brother Where Art Thou? but thgen I haven't seen Good Night yet. Or Syriana.

My impression of Drake is that he's influenced enough by Greco-Roman ideals that the whole "citizen's duty to the State" thing weighs very heavily upon him... I see how that could be construed as militarism, if seen through a particular lens.

As for Haldeman and his views, he's a professor at MIT - probably one of the most liberally conservative (or conservatively liberal?) places on the planet: lots of defense money, but also lots of hacker-esque libertarian-ish anti-authoritarian meritocratic influences floating around - it doesn't matter if you're gay or straight or black or white or male or female or whatever as long as you know your stuff (glossing over the point that being black or gay or female or whatever can have a tremendous impact on your ability to even get to a point where you can learn your stuff, but still...). Sure, he's an ex-hippy, but he's still an MIT professor.

(BTW, they both have their own websites - Haldeman updates his much more regularly than Drake)

Great! It used to be available online, then disappeared. Glad to hear it's back.

Ah! Por-cheb-ya! I can pronounce this. Excelsior! I can sing this. Alas, I can't find Frammistan on a map. Two out of three.

P.J., "poiuyt" is not only a better name, it's easier to type. Especially for a one-armed touch typist.

Am I repeating myself yet? How about this: right after Bill Gaines died, one of the MAD anthologies came out -- MAD About the Sixties, as I just verified -- and it has the most touching and personal dedication (which should be centered, but that HTML tag doesn't work here -- pretend the periods are invisible):

......To William M. Gaines:
..."FUN AROUND THE CLOCK
.YOU BET WE HAD OUR FILL!"
..--"The Usual Gang of Idiots"

As soon as it all clicked into place, I realized how sincere it was.

see chapter 2 of The MAD World of William M. Gaines by Frank Jacobs -- page 16 in my paperback edition

Allison--Octavia Butler's novella Blood Child.

Tinfoil Hats: the definitive study

My own suggestion for the most accessible Drake - written with more distance from the experience and more practice in writing - is Redliners which is available in the Baen free as in beer library.
REDLINERS is possibly the best thing I've written. It's certainly the most important thing, both to me personally and to the audience I particularly care about....to understand the novel's underlying optimism you have to have ..... Perhaps in order to make the story more general the military is infantry. There is perhaps more in common with The Forever War here than in the Slammer stories - not exactly a spoiler but although you may disagree you'll see what I mean if you read Redliners. I'd argue that this book is more accessible to conventional SF reading techniques (inclueing, "turned on her left side"). I'd guess that when Drake says important he means at least in part important for getting the point across to a general reader rather than important for communicating to an in-group.

Notice especially that "The Warrior" is grounded in Achilles, an eternal type not a creation of war but one who finds a place in war. The contrast reminds me of a lecture to Rod in Tunnel in the Sky - compare and contrast a romantic and a practical man in a romantic and a practical age.

For my money much of the interest in Cross the Stars is in the quite explicit and carefully explained changes from the received text at points in the story.

I agree with Drake about the emotional impact he claims for the shepherd with his flock scene in Voyage and I rather suppose it helps to have at least a little farm background to follow Drake - YMMV.

To speak of "grunts with shovels" rather passes over what the job was and the price of a hot lunch.

Superman Returns looks promising, from the preview last night after Smallville. Though I can't stand that girl they've got playing Lois. Why can't we have a Lois who'll be credible as a smart, hard-hitting reporter? Why? (See also: why Katie Holmes was cast in Batman Begins.)

At any rate, it can't be much worse than Smallville itself. I used to watch it to snark (and, let's face it, for dreamy Lex Luthor and all the hilarious homoeroticism), and then it got SO BAD I couldn't even stand to do that. Lana Lang is possessed by an evil 14th c. French witch who allows her to do kung-fu wirework and swordplay in the context of an episode which (I swear to God) stole its plot from "Big Bird in China"? Lord.

I started watching again this season out of "Lost" disillusionment, and it's been pretty good (well. Good for Smallville) but there's only so much emotional and physical abuse you can stand watching being heaped on poor, well-meaning Lex by every single villain as well as the so-called heroes... Also, my favorite character, Chloe, (who's exactly what Lois should be) is walking around with a giant blinking "Gonna Die Soon" sign over her head. I'll probably stop again when that happens. Chloe should really have her own show...oh, wait. She does. It's called "Veronica Mars."

Ah. The 'elothtes' wiki site (100 swords link in Particles) has a sentence-at-a-time collaboritive story.

And you have to admire the style involved in the phrasing "It had been almost literally ages"!

re: "grunts with shovels" - no kidding. In Haldeman's own words:

"Twenty-eight years after Vietnam, the smell of roadkill still brings back the smell of days-old bodies rotting in the jungle heat. My first combat experience was to jump out of a helicopter into a "hot LZ," a landing zone that was under enemy fire. We jumped into six-foot-high elephant grass and lost sight of one another and all sense of direction. There was steady machinegun fire from both sides. One side yelled in English and so I staggered over there, having learned nothing from twenty years of war movies, and rolled over a dusty berm to relative safety. As soon as I dumped my cargo -- plastic explosives, a chain saw, and a welcome case of Budweiser -- I was overcome by the smell of the dead. It was mostly enemy dead, too close to our position for retrieval, but there were four or five of our own, lined up in plastic wrap, waiting for things to calm down enough for a helicopter to actually land. I'd never seen a dead person before who was not in a coffin. Their feet were at uncomfortable angles. I wonder now why they weren't in body bags. We usually carried enough for everybody."

and

"When I got to Vietnam they made me a "combat engineer, pioneer" -- which they told us meant we were sort of like infantry, but too dumb to carry a rifle, so they gave us a shovel. Actually, our primary tools were high explosives and chain saws -- and yes, some were dumb enough to be killed by both. (The man who died from his own chain saw may have been a bizarre suicide. We were working on a slippery hillside and it appeared that he had fallen on the blade and nearly cut off his leg before it stalled; he died of shock and blood loss before a helicopter could come. But all of our saws had dead-man switches; all you had to do was let go of the trigger, and it would stop.)"

And that's before you get to his account of being blown up. But 'grunts with shovels' wasn't a bad thumbnail.

I never said my semiconscious mind was right, or even smart.

Having said that:

"And most of the people who got blown up in Vietnam were Asian. "

This is entirely right, and I am entirely wrong.

Adrienne — I'd like to second or third the recommendation for Lois McMaster Bujold, and suggest either The Warrior's Apprentice (in Young Miles) or Shards of Honor (which you might have to find in Cordelia's Honor), which also contains Barrayar). Those are both good introductions to the series, and contain some very varied views of militarism. Barrayar is fantastic too, but it takes place during a 'civil' war.

A later intro point to the series is Komarr; less explicitly military, but contains a look at the generation-later consequences of a breach of honor (slaughter of unarmed captives) and both sides of the origin of the quarrel. And the folly of end-of-the-world-revenge. Also an amazing portrayal of betrayal in a marriage.

Allison — There's the classic Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress which contains some unusual blueprints for family: line marriage for instance. I think that's a sidelight of the book though.

protected static wrote:
quoth Lizzy L: "Why do I need a hamster? she asked plaintively."

[rolls eyes] Silly, everyone knows that... What else would you use to sodomize the dinosaur?

Ummm, I don't see this. Would a big ol' dinosaur even notice the hamster?

No, this scenario calls for three-way sodomy: hamster, R*ch*rd G*r*, dinosaur. (Yes, I know the Official Urban Legend version calls for gerbils. Tough.)

I think this would be the XXX-version of a turducken.

Serge wrote:
"Batman's rubber nipples? That was George Clooney, not Val Kilmer. Amazingly, Clooney's career wasn't totally wrecked."

Just goes to show: If you're the star of a bad movie, make sure your character wears a mask.

Bruce: depends upon the size of the dinosaur. And the size of the hamster, of course...

Though an appropriately asterix-laden felch-o-phile would definitely be of use with, say, apatosaurus.

You know, the science in the colored bubble article is fascinating, but all my mind keeps saying is GIVE ME NOW! WANT WANT WANT

One more great military sci fi: Keith Laumer's Bolo series.

There's something, a meta-tone perhaps, which I feel in books written by people who were there. It comes out in brief flashes of almost unreal imagery of the horror. In Guy Gibson's Enemy Coast Ahead there's the image of the floods sweeping over the car headlights, just anther machine, like the Lancasters that carried his now-dead frienda. (And, in the movie The Dam Busters you have Richard Todd, who was a paratrooper on D-Day, playing Guy Gibson saying he has some letters to write.)

And the Slammers stories have that same feel, almost backing off from the detail.

Is it too late to mention that the Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures in that early issue of MAD was the first publication by famed computer scientist Donald Knuth?

Yea, I thought so, too.

Thanks enormously to everyone so far. I can't imaging how I forgot Left Hand of Darkness, and I'm heading to the library this afternoon (as soon as students stop coming in and asking questions every time I'm about to leave) to check out the Butler and the Sturgeon. I thought about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but I decided that the discussions of family were too tangential to justify spending a week of class on. All other suggestions eagerly awaited-- it's great to have an excuse to spend the weekend reading fiction.

The bubbles link is way cool.

Teresa, is "Kansas Morons" really meant to link to "Duffer's Drift"?

Serge wrote:

"About Haldeman, does anybody know what his politics are? At last year's World Fantasy Con, he made a comment on a panel about war where he referred to the Liberal Media. I thought "Huh?"

I used to read Haldeman's web site a good bit. In that venue his feelings toward Bush & co. could be fairly characterized as 'open disgust.' I'm sort of surprised to hear that he used the phrase 'liberal media'; any chance he was being facetious?

Anybody here actually know the man?

Also, since this is open forum, I will opine that that Showtime series "Masters of Horror" (Fridays at 10:00 EST) is pretty darn good.

Aaaargh, no, I've fixed it.

Thanks for all the comments about Drake and Haldeman. About the last, I am relieved that he is not one of those liberals/Democrats/whatever who became Republicans after 9-11. As for his reference to the "liberal media" at the WFC last year, maybe he was facetious, but it didn't look that way. Of course, a facetious Haldeman may not look like what I expect.

Brooke, you said you didn't care much for the actress playing Lois Lane, but I'm not sure you're referring to the one in Smallville or to the one in Superman returns. The one from TV leaves me cold. My Lois should be played the way Chloe is played: smart, inquisitive, and caring. Which isn't that different from the way Katharine Hepburn's characters usually were, amanaging to come out as strong and fragile at the same time. And speaking of Hepburn, the actress playing Lois in the movie said that some of her research' involved watching Katharine's old movies. That is quite promising.

Back to Smallville... I got quite tired of it after the first year. The plots usually revolved around kryptonite-induced mutations that unfailingly were bad guys, although they eventually got away from that. The rest of the episodes seemed to be Clark and Lana doing this damn mating dance that was leading nowhere. Basically the only episodes I watch were the one about Clark's kryptonian origins.

What? Not everybody knew that George Clooney's aunt was singer/actress Rosemary Clooney?

How about this? Can you find a direct link between Deep Space Nine and... yes... Singin' in the Rain? Nana Visitor, who played Kira on DS9, is the niece of Cyd Charisse.

And, in the movie The Dam Busters you have Richard Todd, who was a paratrooper on D-Day, playing Guy Gibson saying he has some letters to write.

While he was with 6th Airborne, at D-Day he landed with the glider units. In The Longest Day he plays his CO, Major John Howard, and during a crossing shouts "Over you go, Todd!" a line I very much doubt was coincidental.

Anybody here actually know [David Drake]?

For twenty-five years or so; about as long as I've known Joe Haldeman. While we're at different points on the political grid (a great number of my friends are, in many directions), he's never said anything to me that I found outrageous. He doesn't talk much about his military experience -- most of the Vietnam vets I know don't, except for the funny stories, or when they have a specific point to make -- but I have not once heard him romanticize, never mind glamorize, the experience, and while I haven't read all his fiction, what I have seen doesn't, either.

The Smallville TV series becomes annoying in exciting new ways after Jeph Loeb's influence starts dominating it (around season 3 or so). I liked Loeb's Batman "Halloween" books, which seem to have been dutifully integrated into the bible for the "Batman Begins" movie. But the Smallville stuff is loaded with false teasing for DC geeks (in addition to the patented WB teasing that's part of everything they do: required scenes of semi-naked teens frolicking to pop-rock single background music.)

What bugs me is the stuff targeted at us hardcore geeks: "Oh look, a naked blonde teenager with superpowers named 'Kara;' a kid named Wally West who runs at super speed; a newspaper reporter named Perry White. Any credible resemblance in this stuff to anyone we know? Not really.

(I've been taping this season without watching it; so I can't comment on the 'Aqualad' episode, or last night's introduction of James Marsters as Brainiac.)

Serge--I actually don't like either of those actresses. I wanted to like Erica Durance, despite her rather plastic prettiness, because I like canon Lois and OMG nothing could be worse than f#$*ing Lana Lang. But then the Smallville writers got hold of her and made the character completely ineffectual while denying her any of the classic Lois's personality (aside from a vague abrasiveness). Became a general damsel-in-distress/fount of unintelligent snarkery. Chloe, being smart, strong-willed, witty, and caring, never has anything good happen to her and spends half her lines apologizing to Clark or Lana for things that are totally not her fault. And she's so marked to die this season. *sigh*

The Hepburn quote is v. encouraging, but let's not forget that Kate Bosworth's last starring role was in "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!", and most of the critics said her performance actually made the material worse. If that were possible.

Isn't George Clooney cousin to character actor Miguel Ferrer, who was the boss in "Crossing Jordan" and has had small parts all over the place? I think Fametracker or some such site commented that both men look like they should have the other one's name. I think they're both grandsons of classic swashbuckler Jose Ferrer, and the same article expressed a wistful hope that one day Miguel would get a part wearing a ruffled shirt and sword and rescuing a buxom bodiced lass. I'd go see that.

Lenny--the other fake crossovers did indeed suck. The worst was the "Adam Knight" character, who was falsely rumored to be somehow connected with Bruce Wayne, and ended up being a pretty-boy zombie who was (of course) obsessed with Lana. But the Perry White ep turned out to be, IMHO, one of the best of the series, largely because he was played by the brilliant Michael McKean. Plus, tractors falling out of the sky for cheap laughs! Always works for me.

George Clooney and Miguel Ferrer are indeed cousins. Miguel's parents are Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney; Rosemary's brother is Nick Clooney, who is George's father.

One of Miguel's brothers is Rafael Ferrer, who voiced the arch-villain Darth Malak in the "Knights of the Old Republic" video games, and splendidly too. I've been hearing him lately doing VO for Discovery Channel promos, and it's a tad bit eerie, though I suppose being a Sith Lord doesn't pay like it used to. "I find your lack of desire for fries . . . disturbing."

And Mel Ferrer was Jose's bro and was married to Audrey Hepburn, right?

One of my co-workers is a Vietnam vet, but he seldom talks about that time of his life. True, he seldom says anything about who he is. Still, on a couple of occasions, he told me something about that war, without my asking. That was strange. A couple of years ago, he went back to Vietnam.

Another co-worker is from Ireland, but her hubby was born in Vietnam. She once told me he doesn't care much for movies with explosions in them.

this scenario calls for three-way sodomy: hamster, R*ch*rd G*r*, dinosaur. (Yes, I know the Official Urban Legend version calls for gerbils. Tough.)

I think this would be the XXX-version of a turducken.

Excuse me, but has anybody got any bleach and a nice stiff brush?

Thank you. *scrubs brain vigorously*

Quakers, right, Quakers.

Not "quackers", definitely not (maybe a pterodactyl...) NO. No. Quakers.

So, what's wrong with Quakers.

If I recall the reasoning correctly, the opinion of anybody who a) was a pacifict on September 10th and b) was still a pacifist on September 20th (just... don't ask me about the 10 days in between, ok?) was, by virtue of, um, having had a general objection to war in the past or being, like, the sort of person who went around objecting to wars in general, suspect or downright obviously woo-woo. "Of COURSE the pacifists are against this, what we need are big hairy macho violent people who are against this, that'll grab attention ..."

All anti-war arguments were to be preceded with "I'm not some kind of damned pacifist (insert 'not a damned pacifist' credentials here) BUT..."

I exaggerate and overgeneralise, and I know it. Please don't assume I mean anyone in particular.

I'm not making assertions about anyone's motives. I am only saying, that was what the energy in the air was, and to some degree continues to be.

Objections to the war were to be tactical, and were not, for example, to contain any reference to such floofy notions as moral wrongness.

And, you know, you always get that divide between people who oppose and resist war and people who are against a particular war, but it was for a number of reasons particularly vivid and difficult this time.

And, again. Maybe it might have worked. I don't know. I don't think so, but maybe.

And that is more than I meant to say, but I did want to at least take a crack at answering the question.

Spotted in Bristol, at the Louisiana. (A venue of the earnest indie variety, and far from being a toilet)

Your basic touring weblog.

Serge: You asked me a question a long way upthread. No, I haven't seen it.These things can take a while to reach teh antipodes.

Alison: While people are asking questions about science fiction choices, I'm looking for a good shortish novel to include in an interdisciplinary seminar on family. we're looking at family from all sorts of angles (history, sociology, anthropology, legal battles, etc.) and I'd like to have something that forces people to expand their ideas of what counts and how things could work. (It doesn't have to be science fiction of course, but it would be fun.) I have the vague idea that there has to be the perfect story somewhere, but I can't quite think of what.

Most of the books I would recommend on the topic of "family" use more of a traditional family structure, and so might not fit your needs. I'll recommend them anyway, because, well, why not? Everybody can always use more good books...

Sean Stewart has a couple of terrific family stories in Mockingbird and Perfect Circle. Both are modern-world fantasy; the former has a single mother dealing with voodoo spirits, while the latter is more of a ghost story.

There's also a book that Patrick recommended very highly the last time Kate and I were in The City, called Coyote Cowgirl by... Kim Antieu (he says after getting up to check the shelves). That's sort of Southwestern magic realism, with food.

If you specifically want science fiction, I'd recommend a book by Making Light's own John M. Ford: Growing Up Weightless. It's got all sorts of good stuff-- virtual reality, trains on the Moon, interesting moral dilemmas-- all wrapped around a great story about parents and kids.

Dr. Fun's Turducken comic:

http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200312/df20031210.jpg

"...a good shortish novel to include in an interdisciplinary seminar on family..." ?

I'd recommend CJ Cherryh's space adventure Merchanter's Luck, which, to me anyway, is about the creation of a family. That's probably why it's one of my favorites. (Come to think of it, that very theme is probably what drew me the most to Firefly.

There's also pretty much anything by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.

Poor you, Jonathan, for having missed the teaser for Superman returns on TV last night. I understand that it's also being shown with the Harry Potter movie.

Like I said before, it looks good. And what didn't hurt was that they reclaimed the best elements from the original movie's first half. Not just John Williams's score. Thru all the scenes, you hear again Marlon Brando's words in the Fortress of Solitude, when he tells Clark that humans are capable of greatness, if only they'll be shown the way, and "...that's why I'm sending them you, my only son..."

It's a pretty obvious parallel to / satire of Starship Troopers, in which you find out at the end that the protagonist's ethnicity was not what you might think it would be based on his surname.

At the end? I recall several points in the book where we're reminded that Juan Rico is a Filipino.

There's a teaser for Superman Returns on MTV Overdrive.

For those who remember Sgt. Rock, DC has a 6-issue series done by Joe Kubert coming out as of January.

When I think of science fiction about alternative visions of family, the first thing that comes to mind is Growing Up In Tier 3000 by Felix Gotschalk. In the future they take Freud very, very seriously.

It's way out of print, though, and definitely not for all tastes, being as strange and intense of J.G. Ballard's more extreme stuff.

Amazing how little it takes to cheer me up. I've just been writing a review of Lars Eighner's Elements of Arousal for a writer's magazine, and as a result I now know that alibris *still* hasn't updated that rather unfortunate description of the book. :-)

I'm still digesting having seen Harry Potter at a 6:50 showing, it launched my brain into hyper and I'm still trying to wind down. I loved it but I need to think it through before I can say more. They left out a lot of bits and pieces yet I still ended up weeping when Cedric got killed and Harry realized he was dead. I'm more scared for Harry than ever, and I've read the next two books...

I was not impressed by the Superman trailer. My first impression was 'gag'. Pretty, but really touchy-feely for a superhero movie. And, despite dealing in comics for years, I never read the superhero books, I mostly read the weird ones or picked comics up as used. Or Classics Illustrated (papa bought those for me as a treat when he went on flights). There were other trailers, including one for a film by M. Night Shamalyan that gave me the willies. Most of the othe trailers were stupid, like the next 'cheaper by the dozen' franchise and its ilk.

John, you're slightly confused about Richard Todd. He was an officer in the 7th Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, which was dropped into DZ-N, between Ranville and Breville. The battalion had the job of reinforcing Major John Howard's gilder-borne assault force which has captured Pegasus Bridge, and Richard Todd was the officer who made the initial contact. So he was there, but he didn't land by glider.

He played John Howard in The Longest Day, and his own battalion commander in another movie, which must have felt rather strange, as somebody else in both movies would have been playing him.

And it wouldn't quite be like I Was Monty's Double

He played John Howard in The Longest Day, and his own battalion commander in another movie, which must have felt rather strange . . .

There's another story -- and I hope I've got this one right in detail -- that at the premiere of Longest Day in New York, Red Buttons, who played John Steele (the paratrooper who gets hung up on the church), was introduced to the real veteran. Steele said, "You know, if I had that to live over again . . . I'm glad it was you that did it."

I still think, when SF: the Motion Picture* gets made, I want David Hyde Pierce to play me. (Our birthdays are actually a week -- plus a coupla years -- apart, so this seems curiously right.)

*Still in committee, as it has been since 1937. Currently the first scheduled project of the revived PRC studio, as the top of a double bill with the remake of The Devil Bat with Jeremy Irons in the role made so famous by Bela Lugosi.

SF about war -- nobody's mentioned Cherryh's Rimrunners which is really very directly about war, and by a woman. I also endorse the previous suggestions of Bujold's Cordelia's Honor.

Spike Milligan wrote a brilliant series of books about his military service in WWII which are funny, serious, profane, surreal, brave, cowardly, mad and hopeful--sometimes all on the same page. They're not available in the U.S.A. for what seems to be a strange licensing deal--Volume 1 was made into a movie, and the copywrite page on the Penguin editions has a notice that it can't be sold over here. Apparently nobody here wants to publish volumes two through six of a trilogy without volume one. (Boy, am I glad I bought mine in London.) I recommend the hell out of them, but have quit lending them since someone stole one of the middle volumes from me.

(Volume 3 (?) has an introduction where Milligan destroys a high-ranking military idiot who publically said it was all lies because the British military wouldn't do any of the stuff Milligan described, and after all Milligan is a professional comedian. Turns out that Spike had been working from copies of the Regimental War Diaries to ensure that whatever he wrote had happened when and where it happened and corresponding furiously to make sure he wasn't misremembering things.)

The books do have lots and lots of silly joke captions by the photos and silly bits of dialog between military leaders on both sides, but they're also full of incidents that have to be true because nobody would make them up. To boil down one example ruthlessly (you really need to read this in the original), during one practice session at a remote location a gun misfired and blew off another gunner's hand. The response from the victim, staring at the stump: "Well, I'll be fooked." While he was being bandaged up the rest of the group went looking for something to bury the hand in, and found a biscuit tin that would fit. They dug a hole for the tin and before it was sealed the guy holding it, in some sort of spasm of good manners, asked the victim "Did you want to shake hands with yourself one last time before we bury it?"

I believe it.

The Superman teaser, "...Pretty, but really touchy-feely for a superhero movie..", Paula? I can see that, but this IS Superman. You probably wouldn't like the graphic short-story Peace on Earth that Alex Ross did about the Ultimate Boy Scout a few years ago. Well, different strokes for different folks. (And, no, I am not condenscending. I really mean it.)

Darn. my last post should have read "I am NOT being condescending...", not "condenscending", whatever THAT means.

Mike writes that "...when SF: the Motion Picture gets made, I want David Hyde Pierce to play me..."

And if they ever get around to filming the spinoff Making light, who should play our hosts?