Recent reads

Stainless Steel Visions, by Harry Harrison.  This is a 1993 collection of science fiction short stories by Harry Harrison, best known to most as the author of Make Room, Make Room!, the novel that inspired the classic 1973 dystopian film Soylent Green, and second best known, among readers of science fiction, for his long series of comical stories featuring futuristic supercriminal "Slippery Jim" DiGriz, the "Stainless Steel Rat".

Both of these commercial high points are represented here.  The collection includes Roommates, the 1971 short story that Harrison later expanded into Make Room, Make Room!, and, as suggested by the allusive title, it also includes a new (in 1993) short story about Slippery Jim, The Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat.

The former is still gritty and galling, and well worth the price of admission to anyone who hasn't read it before.  The invasion of the detestable Belichers into the protagonist's living space at the end of the story is a psychically crushing and deadening blow after the other slow-grinding losses and defeats he has suffered, as it was meant to be -- even though middle aged readers, with some life experience at dealing with bureaucracies, might wonder why Andy and Shirl didn't pre-empt the situation by having her apply to move into the recently vacated space as his new "roommate" immediately as soon as it became available.  Forethought in such situations does pay off in real life, but of course it does not lead to so dramatic an ending.

The latter, in which the infamous Stainless Steel Rat is sent to a prison for retired supercriminals and predictably organizes a breakout, is so slight and flimsy that it might as well not be there.  I remember the Stainless Steel Rat stories I read in the past as being full of clever conceit in both senses of the word, with Slippery Jim opining frequently about his own brilliance and the dunderheadedness of the authority figures whom he outwits.  But in this outing, I couldn't help but note that intelligence seems to be utterly absent in the prison guards and in practically everyone else he encounters.  Conceitedness has given way to a kind of authorially-imposed solipsism in which it seems the protagonist is for all practical purposes the only functioning intelligence in his universe.  This may be amusing for the protagonist, but it hardly makes for exciting storytelling.

Both stories, of course, reflect an attitude that was and is quite common in science fiction, the presumption, correct within the world of the story, that the protagonist is intellectually superior to most of those around him.  Many science fiction readers no doubt believe this to be true of themselves, consciously or unconsciously.  On average, they might be correct.

This is also true of the other high point of the collection, Harrison's 1962 The Streets of Ashkelon.  Thanks to the mental debris of long-ago Sunday Schools and many interminable sermons in which I amused myself by poring over the colorful maps appended to my childhood copy of the Bible, I vaguely recognized the name Ashkelon, but I failed to pinpoint the exact source of Harrison's allusion, which is 2nd Samuel 1:20:

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.

The applicability of that verse in its original context to the plot of Harrison's story is actually a bit murky, but it's a good story nonetheless.  As the story opens, the protagonist, an atheistic spacegoing trader, is slowly and methodically educating some ponderously literal-minded aliens in the scientific method.  He is greatly annoyed when a zealous missionary arrives and sets out to convert them to Christianity.  The result of this conflict of ideas was shocking enough in 1962 that, as Harrison describes in his introduction, he had great difficulty finding a publisher for the story, especially in the United States.  Since that time, standards of shock have changed.  Streets of Ashkelon remains, perhaps not shocking, but thought-provoking.

Most of the other stories come from Harrison's long career as a writer for the pulp SF magazines of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.  As such they have limitations.  As Harrison observes, they rely greatly on such staples of magazine fiction as the "O. Henry" twist ending, and they also have the limitation of being perforce self-contained without the opportunity to tell an extended story or deal with any long-term or complex interactions.  But they are all good entertainment.  One of the most interesting parts of the entire collection is reading Harrison's account in the introduction of some of the tricks of the trade that he learned during his long career as a short story writer and editor -- and then seeing, up close and personal, how he applied his own advice in his stories.

Those who own or have read Harrison's previous short story collections should note that there is nothing here, other than the introduction and the slight-to-the-point-of-vanishing Golden Years of the Stainless Steel Rat, that has not been previously published in another collection (see this list).  But for casual readers new to his work, it's well worth a glance.  Or, in my case, a dollar to pick up a discarded public-library copy, enjoy it, and melancholicly reflect that each such withdrawn copy means that fewer readers in the future will have the same opportunity.

News noted

Barbarians continue to be barbarians.  Apparently the more self-confident and energetic a religion is, the more inevitable it is that its adherents will adopt the viewpoint of the Caliph Omar.

Selfies in voting booths -- free speech, or incipient threat to democratic elections?  How much do you suppose the Koch Brothers -- or George Soros, if you prefer -- would pay for my vote?

Can the SCA and pop-culture fascination with the middle ages save Medieval Studies?

On the Ashley Madison imbroglio: 

Jennifer Weiner points out that the people who signed up for Ashley Madison's services with their real names and email addresses are just plain stupid (on top of being dishonest).  As for the people who signed up from .gov and .mil addresses -- or, so help us, the Vatican -- they're well into the realm of Idiocracy, but without the funny parts. 

More trenchantly, a DailyKos blogger points out that even before it was hacked, Ashley Madison was almost certainly a scam.  If something looks too good to be true, well, you know the rest of the saying.  And if you're going to a website for the express purpose of cheating and lying, don't be too surprised when the people you meet there are just as dishonest as you.

Why hello there, little weblog.

I'd almost forgotten you were still here.  Still following me around like a good and faithful servant. 

I've neglected you, I'm afraid.  I got distracted by something new and flashy.  And also by other things of greater import.  There has been much sturm und drang in the life of Felix over the past few years, as well as sweetness and light.  We needn't go into that in much detail.

Suffice it to say that that flashy distraction has turned out to be kind of shallow.  All looks, no substance. The kind of place where all they care about is what you look like, not what you have to say.  And it's so crowded!  Every day, every hour, dozens -- hundreds -- of impassioned pleas for attention.  Look at me!  Sign my petition!  Like me, like me, like me!  Please like me!  Like my joke!  Like my cartoon!  Like my church!  Like my political party!  Or else a little kid with cancer will die if you don't like me RIGHT NOW!

It's exhausting.

So the little space of peace and quiet that you offer is quite welcome.  And -- I have to be honest about this -- I like the exclusivity of our relationship.  I guess I'm just egotistical about things like that.

Oh, I'll still visit That Other Place, too.  It's a good place to see and be seen.  But for more reflective discussions, I'll be coming here to hang out with you. 

Good to see you again.

Signs of the times V

Capture and control?

This 2002 article by H. Keith Henson provides a lot of food for thought for those who would understand human behavior, particularly the psychological aspects of religious cults and captor/captive relationships.

Law and the Multiverse

A few works of pop culture, most notably The Incredibles, have speculated about how superheroes might be affected by the legal system. Few have actually attempted to apply the real-life legal system to such sticky superhero problems as testifying in court, maintaining a secret identity, or accumulating and holding property for longer than a normal human life span. And these are simple when compared to the huge snarl of legal difficulties that might arise from dying and being resurrected even once, let alone spinning around in a revolving door of temporary mortality the way some denizens of the comics multiverse seem to do. This very interesting blog, apparently written by an attorney or law student who is also a raging comics fan, attempts to fill the gap.

The political populist in me notes that corporations, which lack not only mortality but most of the other positive attributes of human beings, have rather neatly managed to evade all of these difficulties. Perhaps superheroes should simply incorporate themselves.

Recent reads:

Losing Mum and Pup, by Christopher Buckley. The author of several successful novels of political satire (Thank You For Smoking, Boomsday, etc.) tackles a much bleaker subject: the deaths of his mother and father within a year of each other, and his own memories, thoughts and reactions to those losses. His parents, of course, were notable in their own right. William F. Buckley was one of the most influential political writers of the twentieth century, founder of National Review and a leading figure in the decades-long attempt to give political conservatism a respectable intellectual foundation. Patricia Taylor Buckley, though less well known to political mavens, was a prominent social figure in New York and a formidable personal presence to her family.

Buckley's reminiscences of his parents are both illuminating and entertaining, and some portions of the book read like the humorous stories told about a person at their wake. A chapter about his father's love of sailing, and of the many adventures and mishaps which resulted from his almost recklessly sanguine approach to seamanship, had me laughing out loud: "Over the years, my father took out entire sections of docks up and down the eastern seaboard. His crew bestowed on him the nickname 'Captain Crunch'...." And yet Buckley also has the respect and the awareness to note that "Pup's greatness was of a piece with the way he conducted himself at sea. Great men always have too much canvas up. Great men take great risks."

The literally morbid subtext of the book also gives Buckley plenty of room to exercise his bleaker, blacker sense of humor, as when he describes the unctuousness of funeral directors or the very strange world of funeral price accounting. And also discuss much more serious matters, such as his famously intellectual father's struggle with the gradual loss of some of his physical and mental agility.

Would that all of us accomplished so much with the time available to us, and were remembered in such fashion.

Neat link of the day:

FedFlix. Free downloadable US government films, including documentaries, training films, etc. "Duck and Cover!"

Neverwas Haul

An industrious crew busily exploring the applications of neo-Victorian steam-powered gadgets. Although their lumbering self-propelled multi-story turretted house is impressive, I'm pretty sure the peppy little steam car is more fun to drive.

Dulce et decorum

"The necessary supply of heroes must be maintained at all costs."

-- Sir Edward Carson, supporting a Bill for Compulsory Military Service, sometime prior to 1916. Quoted by Robert Graves in The Double Dealer, Jan. 1924, p. 19.