Rewriting the Past

Back in May, I posted up a week's worth of posts detailing my research with Norwich University and our alumni who fought at the Battle of the Bulge between December 16th through January 15th. The trip was incredible, but most of all, I learned quite a bit about working on a historical project with other groups: meeting their expectations, to construct a history that better matches with what they are looking for. Since then, we determined that there was more that could be done with the project, and for most of the summer, I worked on further research, uncovering quite a bit more material from archival sources, interviews and records to come up with a paper that’s far more centered around the men who had fought in Belgium, rather than the actions that thrust them into the spotlight.

The editorial process has been exceptionall well, and there's a couple of things that I've reinforced for myself this time around:

• Everything that I write generally needs to be put away and revisited with a clear mind. Going over the original paper, there were many parts that I found needed to be redone, either for the language that I used, or restructuring the project in a way that better explained what I was trying to convey to the reader.
• Live by the calendar. This is a key thing for me: deadlines matter, but marking down deadlines matter even more. I carry my iPad around with me almost everywhere, and as such, it's become an incredible tool for not only taking notes, but keeping me on task to finish up a project in a timely manner. Plus, deadlines are set much further in advance.
• Archives are your friend. I don't know what my hesitation was earlier: I think I wanted to write a paper that focused far more on the battle then the soldiers. The archives are an excellent, astounding wealth of information that I had never even known existed. They're the first stop for all of my NU related projects from here on out.

The paper is far stronger, in my opinion, and I’ve just wrapped up the final edits before  it’s turned in for good. As such, I’ve removed the older entries that I had posted up, but they’ll be brought back in their new (somewhat longer form) in the very near future.

Happy Birthday Halo!

Nine or so years ago, I worked as a counselor at a summer camp in northern Vermont, a job that involved long hours working with kids nearly twenty-four hours a day. Counselors worked under the supervision of village directors, who had their own cabins, and generally allowed use of the building as a break room for those couple of hours that we had off when we weren’t teaching classes or had some down time with no responsibilities. Where I had been introduced to Dungeons and Dragons while a counselor in training in 2000, I was introduced to Bungie’s Halo: Combat Evolved, something that suddenly appeared in each of the four villages, and something that everyone seemed to play.

Growing up, I had never really played video games at home – I’d played games on friend’s consoles at their homes. Halo was an eye-opening experience, one that appealed to me greatly after watching people play. I was drawn into the story, a tiny snapshot in a greater story that was both interactive and exciting at the same time. Where most of my friends had grown up on video games to various extents, I’ve never been all that great at them, and consequently, found myself playing the campaign over and over, playing the multiplayer sections when we organized major Halo tournaments late in the evenings. As a result, I’ve long enjoyed the first game, and when the black Xbox gave way to the white and error-prone Xbox 360, I found myself missing the game, but made the jump over to Halo 2 and 3 as they came out, as a whole variety of games exploded out of the gate.

Halo is a franchise that I suspect will continue to grow to the point where it rivals Star Wars or Star Trek, the standard bar for science fiction franchises and success. The first game, a decade old, has done some impressive things over its lifetime: each of its sequels have been pretty popular, to the point where midnight releases are the norm for new entries, and a growing body of fans have begun making their own Spartan armor costumes. 343 Industries have also continued to publish books that continue the series along in the moments that you're not behind the visor of Master Chief. Quality-wise, they run the gambit from pretty standard fare, to some pretty impressive stories by some very good authors. Then, there's the movie to consider, which has languished in development hell for the past couple of years. It's going to be made - the franchise has already proven itself with a vibrant fan base that it's grown - it's just a matter of Microsoft working with other companies over financial matters. I've also got few doubts that a Halo movie, if properly handled (or even improperly handled), will make whomever films it a lot of money that will further bring the series into the public's eye. If the live action commercials that they've released are any indication, it'll be something to see.

Halo, for me, stands out amongst a lot of other military science fiction stories. Like the Star Wars franchise, the first game doesn’t do anything other than drop you into the middle of a decades long conflict with little bits and pieces of a much larger story along the way, hands you a gun and has you play through the story. While the sequel games, novels and comics really flesh out the story, the first game was something special. I appreciated the somewhat realistic approach to the military that the game brought in, and the balancing between a contemporary story (that's really only gotten more relevant as the United States has been in a decade long war), and against some of the epic tropes of space opera. Like Star Wars, the Halo franchise seems to have pulled in influences from everything from Larry Niven's Ringworld or Iain M. Banks Culture series to Ridley Scott's Alien. The result is a product and story that checks all the boxes without feeling like there were boxes to be checked in the first place.

Yesterday, I picked up the Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary edition, and for the first time in years, played the original Halo. It's a little clunky with the new graphics at points, but my memory of the game came flooding back as I blew through the first couple of levels: It's really stood up excellently, even after all these years. It's a good reminder of the start (and something I'd hoped would happen eventually - an HD reboot), as the franchise continues forward. Hopefully, in ten years, the series will still be going strong.

Editorial Assistant

There's been a bit of news today surrounding Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazines earlier today: originally owned by Prime Books, they've both been sold to current editor John Joseph Adams, who'll continue to manage them from here on out.  Along with that bit of news, I've been promoted to Editorial Assistant, which I'm terribly excited about.

Earlier this year, I joined Lightspeed as a slush reader, reading submissions as they come in. It's been an eye-opening and educational experience, so far. I've read several hundred short science fiction stories over the course of the year, and have learned quite a bit about what makes a good story and what makes a story great. I'm looking forward to the next adventure with the magazine. If you haven't read it yet, you should make the jump.

No Submissions

I've been receiving an increasing number of e-mails and pleas from people asking me to review their book / website or something that they've created. Sorry, but no. No, no, no.

There's a couple of reasons behind this:

I have a finite amount of time on my hands, which is currently going to books that I really want to read. My current reading list has 94 books. So far this year? I've read a grant total of fifty-one, mostly things that I've bought over the course of the year. I'm not wanting for reading material, and the time that I do have is typically split between reviewing books for a couple of places that have submission guidelines, such as the Functional Nerds or SF Signal, which takes up quite a bit of reading time already.

This site isn't for you: it's for me. This is my little spot on the web, and it's for my own gratification, pontification and the things that generally interest me. There's a bunch of book reviews here because I read a lot. I'm actively trying to shift my focus away from reviews and more towards commentary, which in and of itself takes a lot of work. Plus, it makes me feel used, which I'm not a big fan of.

Personally, I'm trying to avoid shilling about products that I like. I'm working to make a conscious effort to write more on critical analysis, historical research and current events. Continual reviewing is tiring, and it ultimately dilutes what I really like talking about.

I'm simply not interested in the plethora of self-published ebooks that the popularity e-book readers have given rise to. That's a broad, sweeping generalization, I realize, but I've found it's far better to put one's trust in publishers rather than someone paying a couple of bucks to go through Amazon.com.

So: e-mails that get for people asking me to review their book have a couple of options: go to any of the sites that I've reviewed for before, and take a look at their submissions guidelines, and talk to them. They've got bigger audiences anyway.

Currently Reading

It's been a while since I've stepped back and taken stock of what I've been reading, and with the end of the year rapidly approaching, there's a whole handful of books that I'm currently in the middle of or about to start up. Hopefully, I'll get through this short list by the end of the year, and begin building a list of anticipated books for 2012. (Although, like last year's list, it was only somewhat helpful.)

Currently Reading:

Ganymede, Cherie Priest. The 4th book in Priest's Clockwork Century series, we're dropped into the Louisiana area, slowly working our way across the US south east. Already, I like this book quite a bit more than Dreadnought, and while it's not quite as interesting or as much fun as Boneshaker was, I'm enjoying it when I have time to read. It's a good addition to the series, and I'm interested in how characters from several of the stories have begun to appear, making me wonder if the series isn't so open-ended as I first thought.

All You Need Is Kill, Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Earlier this fall, I was looking for some international military science fiction stories (i.e., not stories written from a perspective outside of the United States'), and seem to have found a good entry for modern-day Japan in this one. A bit like Groundhog Day with power armor and aliens, it's entertaining, and it's helping to confirm a couple of ideas that I've been working on in my head. Exciting stuff with this one, and I can't wait to see where it goes.

Learning to Eat Soup With A Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, John Nagl. My first non-Science Fiction / Fantasy / Fiction book in a little while, Nagl's book is a case study in counterinsurgency docrine and military pedagogy as it relates to military readiness and tactical continuity. Comparing the US experience in Vietnam and the UK experience in Malaya, it's a book that I wish that I'd read a while ago, while taking my Master's. It's short, but very dense, and very important for anyone who wants to understand how the modern military works.

Coming Up:

Ready Player One, Ernie Cline. A friend and classmate of mine turned me to this one. Written by Fanboys writer / director Ernie Cline, this book is absolutely loaded with geeky references throughout. The first couple of chapters were up for free a while ago, and when I had a spare moment last month, I'd downloaded the PDF and read it on my iPad in a single sitting, and have been wanting more ever since. I'm restraining myself from having this one jump the line, but it might very well do that soon.

Seed, Rob Zeigler. Paolo Bacigalupi's debut novel The Windup Girl is quite possibly one of the more pivotal books that I've picked up recently that's defined my view of science fiction. Seed looks to be in a similar vein of a near future of ecological destruction. I don't know that it'll be better, but it certainly looks as interesting.

Rule 34, Charles Stross. I really enjoyed Charles Stross's Halting State, and this loose sequel is something that I've been looking forward to picking up. Stross has a great understanding of how science fiction and the future work: it's not the technology, but the people and systems that they construct, and I think Halting State was a good example of this line of thinking. Hopefully, this one will be just as interesting.

I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet, Bill McKibbon. McKibbon is a fellow Vermont resident, and has been very active lately in protesting a major pipeline that's under consideration. This anthology of short stories looks at what happens if he fails. I'm very interested in the current and growing trend of eco-fiction that's coming to bear, and this looks to be a good addition.

How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, Gideon Rose. Megan's stolen this one from me and is enjoying it, and it's a topic that's ever more relevant as we approach the troop-withdrawal deadline at the end of the year.

Who Fears Death?, Nnedi Okorafor. This is the last book on an ever-long list, but it's one that I've had my eyes on for ages now. I've heard literally nothing but good things about this story, and it's good to see more non-US perspective stories coming out.

In Time

Over the past year or so, I've begun to go through the incredible backlog of science fiction movies that I've missed, coming across such gems as Soylant Green, Logan's Run, Omega Man, Silent Running, amongst others. Coming out of In Time, I found myself comparing it to the films of the 1960s and 1970s, when the filmmaker's message was key, dominating the characters and story. Andrew Niccol's latest film keeps close to some of the traditions of the past, as well as some of the surrounding visuals, to deliver a solid, interesting and thoughtful science fiction movie.

Set a hundred and fifty years into the future, people don't die of natural causes. The human body has been engineered to exist at our whim. To counter over population, you've got a 25 year head start, where the countdown clock kicks in. Nobody ages over 25, but if you don't replenish your stocks, you've got a year to live as the clock on your arm starts counting down. Currency has become time: it's become the currency of the world, in a literal twist on the phrase time is money.

It's also highly Darwinian. The smartest or those with a good job stay before the countdown hits zero. Those who don't, die. It's a highly dystopian system, where the rich get immortality and the poor pay the ultimate price. Will Salas, a worker staying just ahead of the clock, gets very, very lucky when he saves the life of a man who has over a century on the clock, transferring the time over before committing suicide. Salas snaps when his mother dies within moments of being saved at the last minute. (The puns here are endless.) Taking the time that's been given to him, he goes to the wealthy side of the country (a time zone), and begins to undermine the system, aided by the daughter of one of the wealthier members of society. What ensues is a Bonnie and Clyde sort of story, with all the hallmarks of a blockbuster science fiction movie, with car chases, countdown clocks and an excellent looking cast.

The first thing that really jumps out at me was the fun world that Niccol has set up. There's a lot of little references and clever world-building here, from the names of the locations to the differences between the rich and the poor: the former have time on their hands, while the poor run from place to place, in a hurry because they really don't have time to spare. Watching Gattaca the next day, I found myself wondering if that film could be a forerunner to this one: a glimpse of what came before.

This is a film about the idea that people have time on their hands, about the rich verses the poor and a very unsubtle look at how the capitalist system works. As Charlie Jane Anders said in her review of the film, it's landed in theaters at the perfect time: the Occupy Wall Street movement has been in the streets for just over a month, while right wing politicians and their supporters (arguably the more pure pro capitalist of the political spectrum, at least in American politics) have openly talked about letting people die if they can't make it on their own. It's not a movie that pulls punches, and it plays to the strengths of the genre, telling a story that's really about the present day, just taken out of context a bit.

In this horrific world, the system allows people to die who are essentially no longer useful to society. The rich, in the glimpses of the lives that they lead, have all of the usual excuses: they're lazy, unmotivated, ignorant, or merely unable to cut it in the world as it exists. They have their supporters who believe wholeheartedly in the system, who have a legitimate point of ensuring that the system stays in place, because the world, as a whole is stable and accepted by all involved.

The problem is, as the mighty come down to minutes on their clocks, they realize how much the cost of the system is. They've never had to worry about putting food on their table, or whether they'll make it home. They don't have to worry about a system that's designed to squeeze them out with higher costs of living in a society designed only for the purpose of keeping the small few at the top alive and comfortable. This film lands right on the tone of the political culture in the country.

There's problems with the film to be sure, but they're problems in that it's a film with a budget and designed to bring people into theaters. The cast, guns and car chases certainly don't hurt the film as a whole, and in the end, make this a well rounded piece of entertainment, one that's direct and overt, but worth paying attention to nonetheless. In Time isn't the best science fiction film that I've seen, but it's got the style and pluck of some of those old classics that still hold up because they focused on the ideas over the visuals. I can't help but think that this one will be looked at the same way, somewhere down the road.

At the very least, the film provides an easy out for a last minute halloween costume: 13 numbers on your arm in glowing green ink or paint. Before you pass out, you can even zero yourself out, and remain in character!

Depictions of History

(Click for a larger version)

War has a universal impact on the world: travel to any town or city on the planet, and you'll likely find a stone engraved with various wars that the place has witnessed, and the citizens that they lost. We count our experiences by our losses, and I try to make it a point to look at one of the memorials if I happen to go near one. This past weekend, I came across one of the best ones that I've ever seen, located in Hardwick, Vermont.

Where most that I've seen around Vermont are simple affairs - a polished granite slab, etched with names - Hardwick's is a fascinating one to behold. The names are carved on the back of five blocks, each depicting five of the conflicts of the 20th century: World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East (presumably, the current wars in Iraq / Afghanistan). Each panel holds with it a similar theme: a depiction of their surroundings, the tools with which they used, but most importantly, the profiles of the soldiers who served.

In and of itself, the memorial is an outstanding depiction of the evolution of war in the 20th century, without losing the key focus: those who served and died for their country. The tools of war have changed drastically: rifles were replaced with machine guns, while the aircraft overhead have grown ever more faster, flown higher and have served numerous purposes on the battlefield. The terrain has shifted from the ruins of Europe to those of Iraq, from the Pacific islands to Vietnam and Korea. The people, however, remain constant, faceless.

History begins at the personal level. For all of the major reasons for which a war is fought; Axis aggression in Europe, the spread of communism in Asia, or the threat of state-sponsored terrorism, there is the ground level view from the people who served. What I take out of this memorial is the focus not on the politics and reasons for the war, but for the simple reminder that the people who carried out the will of their country shouldered one hell of a burden. Beyond that simple message, it's elegantly executed, a visual story that sums up almost a hundred years of military history at a glance, a powerful image to take in.

Memorials are worth taking a look at, connecting to, because the stories of history are literally set in stone here: not the individual stories, but hard data, showing who really paid the ultimate price, and when.

The Windup Girl, Revisited

In 2009, I picked up Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl based on the cover and early reviews. It looked like an interesting read, and I quickly devoured it, enjoying the complexity of the plot and intertangling characters in an all too frightening future that looks all the more plausible today. It's been two years since I read the book, and finding myself stuck in my car for much of the weekend, I decided that listening to a book would be better than constantly fiddling with the radio: a good as a time as any to revisit a book that I've recommended countless times.

The book far exceeded my expectations when I first read it, and revisiting the novel has surpassed my memories of the book. In the time since reading it, much has changed in the world: we're still in the middle of an economic crisis, one that has spread world-wide. Conflict has broken out in new places around the planet, and we've seen a number of ecological and industrial disasters that have been both highly public and highly contentious.

The Windup Girl has also done exceedingly well since my first read: it's garnered Bacigalupi the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novel, the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novel (along with with China Miéville's fantastic The City & the City), the 2010 Compton Crook Award, the 2010 Locus Award for best first novel and the 2010 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Time Magazine has named the book one of the top ten books of 2009, and it's established Bacigalupi as a major up and coming writer.

What impressed me the most about the book was the interconnected nature of the entire, overall story. Bacigalupi takes a snapshot of a contentious, troubled, point in our future. Global climate change has had a profound impact on the worldL sea level rise has impacted millions, while war, politics and corporate entities appears to be linked in a single dangerous dance.

The strongest point in the entire novel is in how the various stories are handled: one action influences all of the other actions. It's an excellent example of two schools of thought when it comes to characters: characters either make the world themselves, through their actions (Self-made man), or the actions define the characters (Rising to the occassion). Jaidee's White Shirts, the enforcement arm of the Environmental Ministry, work to ensure that their country and city do not succum to the horrors of the outside world: diseases, war, conflict, trade, and so forth. They act as customs for Bangkok and Thailand. Early in the story, they destroy a sizable amount of cargo that is being brought in by outside interests, one of which is Anderson Lake. Lake is there to get the seedbank and work with the Environmental Ministry's rival, the Trade Ministry, to try and leverage his company's way into the country. The third puzzle is Emiko, a windup who's very presence is something that the Environmental Ministry is trying to keep from the country, and who runs to Anderson as life becomes more and more difficult for her.

The three storylines interact in an ever-closing circle. The destruction of the air pads and cargo at the hands of the Environmental Ministry sets into motion conflict between all three storylines: Trade and their interests are furious at the losses, and move against the Environmental ministry, which shocks the city into further conflict, with each of the numerous characters involved. The actions of one influence the larger picture in ways that's hard to see individually, but clearer collectively.

Bacigalupi lays his fingers down on a key point when it comes to the interaction between government and politics, and The Windup Girl is a very political novel. Multiple sides are presented: the factions in the Environmental Ministry that sticks to a rigid goal of protection, while the Trade Ministry works to leverage their own advantages. At the end of the day, the story really looks to the influence of money on people: the highly corruptable, and the marginally less so, and how that motivates their rise and retention of power. While all sides are equally flawed - both sides are corrupt in their actions. It's clearly a book that looks at what happens when large corporations gain a lot of influence and power in a political system. They work to their own advantage, an end that's not usually in line with the overall good ends of a country and large population.

What does that sound like?

The Windup Girl hit at the right moment: We're facing environmental degredation at the hands of a population and from corporations that can't look to practical, long term requirements or beyond shareholder interests, and when power in politics is generally distrusted by a large number of Americans. While listening and reading this book, I've had snippets of news on the radio or from twitter about protests from around the world, protests against an entire array of opressive governmental power and economic disparity. I view science fiction as the literature of the moment, and this book has certainly hit on a wide range of important points. Bacigalupi's future holds much of the same, in different forms and examples, in an all too realistic, frightening and plausible vision. It's a book that's not only held up to its first reading, but grown in significance.

Germline, TC McCarthy

A common talking point that I’ve found when it comes to military science fiction is that it's not a game. War is more than a bunch of soldiers dressed up in powered armor, shooting at aliens or their enemies, and telling a good story set against a backdrop of an epic war that pits the good guys against the bad guys. More than its surrounding features, military science fiction is a way to look at the present day. Germline, by TC McCarthy is a book that really gets the complexity, danger and horrors of warfare. It's the shock to the system that the first World War was to the civilized world, where they saw, first-hand, that war is a cruel and unforgiving institution.

Set at some point in the reasonably near future, the United States is at war with Russia. The battlegrounds are the mountains of Kazakhstan, where the war has dragged on in brutal fashion. Oscar Wendell is a reporter for Stars and Stripes, dropped in on the front lines to report on the progress of the war, where he's caught up amongst the soldiers that he befriends, and alongside the genetically engineered soldiers designed to take on the hardest battles.

One of the first novels that I've picked up that really seems to be influenced by the past decade of war in the Middle East (the other being Dan Abnett's Embedded), and it's a pleasant surprise to see the book draw from ideas other than the American experience in the Second World War or abject American exceptionalism. This feels like a book with less a political or national agenda, and one aimed far closer to the idea that warfare is, at its core, a horrible experience that should be avoided on the policy level.

Germline hits some snags early on, and takes a little while for it catch it's breath. For most of the book, I was wavering between liking the book for its message, and frustrated at points for some of the execution. Oscar is bounced from place to place, seemingly without warning, cause or purpose, as the war just drifts along. Key characters and moments that feel like they're supposed to take on far more significance pass by quickly, and a couple of personal issues that Oscar has are focused on and then dropped. Looking back, the ground-view experience from Oscar feels authentic, from his interactions with the US Marines in the beginning of the story, to the simple chaotic nature of his movements: this isn't a book that really looks at the war sans blinders. It's a tiny piece of a greater conflict, and within that context, it does a remarkable job.

For all of my misgivings, several of the complaints that I had about the story evaporated when I read a review that spoke a bit about the First World War experience, when everything began to fall into place. For all that warfare can be explained through charts, power point slides, rank structures, and the combat readiness statistics that are out there to explain why going to war is sometimes needed, it simply cannot explain away the experiences of a person on the front lines, no matter what the objectives are.

Reaching the last couple of chapters of Germline, it's clear that McCarthy gets warfare: his short bio includes a coy reference to his experiences as an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency during the opening days of the 'War on Terror'. The final, key part of the book shows us everything about how warfare is all but unknowable to the people who haven't experienced it. (I'd like to think that studying it provides some level of insight)

When it comes to much of the military science fiction that's out there - and there's a wide variety of what's available - this book stands apart because it so intensely focuses on the people caught up in the middle of the war. They don't care about the larger parts of the strategy that's required, nor the theory behind it, but at the people at the other end of their rifles. There's other books that have focused on the characters, but there's none that I've really come across that drives the point home so effectively.

War, at the end of the day, is complicated. It's rarely as clear cut a story of overwhelming good verses overwhelming evil. It's far more than strategy, while it's also far more than just the soldier's perspective. While I found parts of Germline underwhelming in some of its details, I found that it was more than a match for my expectations in other arenas: a good lesson to internalize. Moreover, the book outlines some outstanding points about how we as a society deal (or fail to deal) with the institution of warfare: the people who experience warfare firsthand deserve a major amount of respect for what they've experienced and survived, and in some cases, are still dealing with.

Changing the Skies

So. A year of waiting, several weeks of research and writing, and it's finally here: the November 2011 issue of Armchair General. On page 36, and running for 8 pages (including some awesome pictures and captions), is my first print article titled Changing the Skies: Curtis LeMay and the Cold War Transition of U.S. Strategic Airpower from Planes to Missiles. It's a bit of a long-realized dream, and on Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago, I opened the mail to find a thick package with several copies: my advance copies of the entire magazine, in glossy print, with my name right below the article title.

In March of 2010, Norwich University held the annual Colby Symposium, a two day event dedicated to military history and writing, typically on the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least since I've been there. I've missed a single year since 2002, and ever year, I come away from the talks with a better understanding of how War works. Almost two years ago, while at the Meet the Authors Dinner, I met Col. (RET) Jerry Morelock, the editor in chief of Armchair General, which sponsors a student scholarship, and we began to talk. He gave me his card, and within a couple of days, I'd e-mailed him back with a couple of article ideas. The one that stuck was a transition from the Second World War to the Cold War, particularly when it came to how the United States transitioned from aircraft to missiles.

The article came out of a couple of projects that I'd been working on prior to that. In 2009, I'd finished my Master's in Military History through Norwich, and I'd presented at two conferences, one of which, I presented my capstone paper on Spaceflight and the Military influences, particularly the strategic arms race that raged between the US and USSR. After finishing that work, I came across some additional sources that shed more light on the broader subject, and I wanted to explore more about it.

After gaining approval for the article and signing the contracts, I began research, looking to tie together a better story than the scattered ideas that I had, eventually discovering that much of the history went through General Curtis LeMay, who had implimented many of the lessons that the US put to the skies post-WWII.

The article was turned in, then it came back for a couple of rounds of revisions, and by May, it was complete, a nice feeling. I moved on to a couple of other projects, and soon, the magazines appeared at home. (Another issue, July 2011's, also features a classmate, David Armstrong, with another piece that I've got on the to-read pile.) It's something to know that they'll be coming out, with all the work completed, but it's quite another to see the finished product, from the cutaways, the pictures (and the absolutely gorgeous front page spread), and my name under it all. The people at the magazine seemed to really like it, and the various family members and co-workers who've taken my advance copies have also been quite positive with their reactions, something I barely dared to hope for.

It's been a very, very cool opportunity, one that I'm following up with another project through Armchair General, this time on the late General Ernest Harmon, who commanded the 2nd Armored Division during the Second World War. The research is exciting, and I'm looking forward to getting this one written and turned in.

Changing the Skies appears in the November 2011 issue of the magazine, but subscribers should be receiving it now (I've gotten an additional copy through work in the mail). You can subscribe to the magazine here and get more information about the magazine at their website.

Machine Man, Max Barry

Max Barry released a video trailer for his latest novel, Machine Man, which completely and utterly sums up the tone of the entire novel. It's bitterly comedic, which is something I've come to expect from the writer.

Machine Man is easy to sum up in a single sentence: it's about a man who cuts off his own limbs to replace them with parts he makes himself. It's one of the few examples of cybernetics in fiction that I can think of readily (Robocop also comes to mind), and it's a fun, easy look at some of the problems associated with identity and of making one's self better.

Charles Neumann is a scientist for a major company that has its fingers everywhere, and after locating his missing cell phone, he accidentally looses his leg. After working on recovering, he builds his own prosthesis, and finds that he'd like a matching pair. The company is more than willing to accomodate him: he's able to build some incredible technology, and the team that he's assembled goes through breakthrough after breakthough, building all types of things to make people *better*.

The story is somewhat predictable, and Neumann begins to lose some of his humanity as he replaces more and more parts, putting his relationship with Lola in risk as he circles the drain.

I liked this book: it's a quick, fairly easy and immersive read, and I found myself going through a hundred pages a sitting before finishing it. Written as an online serial to complete the first draft, the book feels remarkably consistant, although there are points towards the end where it begins to drag and slow down a bit.

Machine Man is also very funny, something I remembered enjoying from the other book I have from Barry, Jennifer Government. It's a blistering satire at times, jumping right out of the gate with the problems associated with a missing smartphone that sets Charles down the path of becoming more machine than man. Anyone who's owned an iPhone knows exactly what I'm talking about, and Barry brings up some good points between the two characters: Lola has mechanical parts in order to survive from day to day (an artificial heart), while Charles simply feels like he's a robot anyway, and wants the convinience and advances that robotics would bring him.

While it's funny, pithy and sarcastic, it feels like there's a good point to be made here: with everything that technology allows us, how much is too much, but more importantly, would we be able to recognize our overdependance on technology if we even realized that we were depending on it too much? This isn't a case of Barry standing on the front porch yelling for kids to get off his lawn, but one of rationing and realizing that there can be too much of a good thing, and the book balances a fine line between cyberntic fight scenes and morality, telling a straightup tale of human nature.

It's a little frustrating at points for me personally, especially running up to the end, when it's clear that most of the characters, despite their tendencies to make clear and rational decisions, to continue making the same choices, despite what it's cost them. It's pointed out to Lola that she has had problems recognizing a person's character and getting too involved with their struggle, even to her detriment, something that largely happens again when she meets Charlie. The same is true for Charlie, who keeps building pieces of himself, no matter what it costs. It's a relevant message, one that bears paying close attention to.

At the end of the day, Barry's put together a solid, fun science fiction thriller that doesn't feel like a science fiction story: it feels contemporary (and, much to my annoyance, it's shelved as such, which made it difficult to find in Barnes and Noble), and highly realistic, as if it's a future that we're living in right now.

Always Wash Your Hands: Contagion

When I was in high school, I wanted to study viruses. I'd picked up a book about the Ebola virus by Richard Preston, The Hot Zone, sometime in middle school, and reread it a dozen times over the years, along with several of Preston's other biological terror books: Demon in the Freezer, about the possibility that smallpox was still around, The Cobra Event, a fictional account of a terrorist attack using a biological weapon, as well as several other books about the state of the country's biological readiness against a potential terror attack. It's a subject that I never quite followed up on (Biology was a consideration after high school, but I opted for History), but it's one that's nonetheless kept me interested, especially as the Anthrax attack against Washington DC demonstrated the threat was a real one, but also as SARS and N1H1 have arisen over the past couple of years.

Where its predecessor films Traffic (also directed by Steven Soderbergh), and Syriana (directed by Traffic writer Stephen Gaghan), Soderbergh's Contagion takes on a complicated issue and splits its attention against a variety of interlocking characters. Where Traffic handled the drug war in the United States, and Syriana the war on terror, Contagion looks at the state of global health, from every angle of the problem. The result is a frantic, thoughtful and downright terrifying look at something that could very well happen to all of us.

In 1995, The Hot Zone inspired a movie called Outbreak, which saw the release of an Ebola-like virus in the United States, an overly dramatic outbreak scenario, with mutations, blood, military intervention and so forth. What makes Contagion really stand out is it's reluctance to go overboard while accomplishing much of the same. Rather than being an action thriller, it's more of a geopolitical one, processing a much larger story.

The film opens with Beth Emhoff coughing in an airport. She's headed home from Hong Kong, where she was overseeing a factory opening. Upon returning home, she has a seizure, and dies in the hospital, taking her son with her a couple of hours later, leaving her husband, Mitch Emhoff, to pick up the pieces and make sense of it all.

This piece is a tip of the iceburg, which seems fitting for this loose trilogy of films: there's more to the story than that, as the film cycles through a Hong Kong waiter back in China, and members of the World Health Organization and US Center for Disease Control, as they work to figure out how these various pockets of people have all gotten sick around the world. The disease, MEV-1, has already begun to spread, and it's moving faster than anyone can take measures to stop it. It's a plausible event, one that we've seen a bit of already: the outbreaks of SARS a couple of years ago, and last year's N1H1 Flu varient, demonstrated how quickly one a virus could get out in the world and affect people all over the place. Contagion presents a scenario where the stakes get raised far higher than they've ever been. At one point in the film, it's noted that the Spanish Influenza outbreak killed 1% of the human population at the time: anywhere from fifty to a hundred million people. At the current population, an outbreak of that size would be around 70 million people. By comparison, the 17,000 people killed by N1H1 is a very small figure indeed.

The film is terrifying, but not in ways that one would expect from an outbreak movie. There's no gushing blood from a hemorrhagic fever, just a seizure and some frothing at the mouth from the victums. The scary stuff comes in two parts: the absolute ease at which the MEV-1 virus is transmitted from person to person, in a cough, from a touch, or close proximety, and the absolute breakdown in civil society as the death toll mounts.

Traffic and Syriana came away with a certain amount of political sense and preachiness to them: they're stories that have a relevant and pertenant issues: Contagion comes off in much the same way, but has a much wider focus to everything, covering the cleanliness and regulation of the food that we consume, the lax ways in which we approach our own health, and to how we approach authority, even when they're trying to help. The film has a lot to say as Mitch breaks into a neighbor's abandoned home to steal a gun as he sees looters acting with impunity, and as a rogue blogger spreads distrust against the CDC even as he's enrichening himself for it. This film has all of the lessons of a zombie film, in the days before the fall, and it's scary at how plausible and realistic it feels.

Unlike Traffic and Syriana, Contagion feels a bit more scattered: where those two films had tight plots that self-reinforced each other, this one feels like there's just too much material, with some things explored and never quite picked up: the health administrator demanding to know who's going to pay for CDC efforts as the disease spreads, the role of the media (very underplayed), and the response of the Chinese Government to large world events, among others, while more attention is paid towards a blogger in a very overt bit of contempt for bloggers (Alan Krumwiede is sleazy and annoying, right down to his bad teeth), in a storyline that doesn't do much for the film as a whole.

Still, with more to work with than the runtime allows, Contagion does a good job with the major storylines: a father protecting his daughter on the front lines, isolated as the world falls down around him, the CDC officials who work to coordinate the local and international responses, and the WHO analyst, who's kidnapped as they discover where the virus comes from in the first place. These storylines are handled excellently, with stark, brilliant camera work, coupled with Cliff Martinez's fantastic, intense score.

Contagion is just as good, at points, as its precessessor films, not only for the entertainment factor, but for the political ideas that it handles. Like the others, it doesn't really spell out a cure for the problems, but it demonstrates the complexity of the issues at hand, a careful fiction demonstrating the realities of the world around us. In the meantime, it's good to see a film get things right: if anything, my reading on Ebola, Smallpox or other biological threats have demonstrated that it's a major problem. Contagion shows just what the worst case scenario would be, and that it's not just the diseases that you have to worry about.

In the meantime, the lesson is simple: wash your hands, and don't cough on people.

The Aftermath

This past weekend, I was able to volunteer in both Waterbury and Moretown, two towns that are struggling with the floods. The aftermath was heartbreaking. My hometown was inundated with upwards of 7 feet of flood waters in places, and many other communities around the state were under water, with roads flooded, houses swept away, and businesses destroyed.

On Saturday, I drove a group of Norwich University students out to Waterbury, where they worked on one of the streets hardest hit by the rising waters, which took out a number of places in the downtown areas of town, including one of my favorite Pubs, the Alchemist, and a number of state administrative buildings. While I'd seen a number of pictures, videos and driven up and down several roads up and down the Northfield area, nothing prepared me for what I saw in Waterbury: houses with their entire contents in the front lawn, silt baking on their surfaces. Mud and dust filled the air: everyone wore a mask, gloves, heavy boots, and clothes smeared with grime. The scene changed as I drove back out of the village, and onto the interstate: everything was green and untouched.

Sunday marked a work day. I'd driven through the day before, over patched up dirt roads, and into town. The scene was even more striking. Descending into the village, we passed a sign: "All routes in and out of town closed." Moretown was covered in a fine layer of dust, kicked up from the cars that passed up and down Rt. 100 B. Driving through town, we saw where the bridge into town had been washed out at one end, over a narrow chasm of rock that was still saw the Mad River rushing below it. Megan and I signed in, and helped wash one man's house before moving on to another, which had seen a couple of feet of water in the main parts of the house. Tearing up the floorboards, I was struck by two things: no matter how secure we see, nature can really disrupt our everyday lives, and that I was tearing up a gorgeous hardwood floor, and the home's owner was smiling. It was astonishing.

A pack of volunteers had converged on the house: groups of two were pulling up the floor, sweeping up the dust and river muck that had collected under it, and pulled out the nails. Bathroom tiles shattered, sheetrock was removed, pipes stripped out, as we sweated in the dust. It was a rewarding couple of hours of work: by the end of the couple of hours, the floor had been removed, swept and free of nails, while others outside were salvaging what they could of the wood we pulled up and out. Fortunately, they seem to have had flood insurance.

The attitude of Vermonters in the aftermath of the flood has been the most remarkable thing to have come out of the disaster. Everywhere, people were enthusiastic, ready to work, ready to volunteer, and ready to rebuild. Despite the dust, the mud, the destroyed roads, washed out riverbanks, bridges and fields, the people of Vermont have shown that they’re resilient, tough and as a whole, strong. While disasters such as these are horrifying in the damage, they’re welcome in only that they can demonstrate the unity that they invoke from the community. Their roads and homes might be broken, but not the people.

Limitless

We all want to be smarter, faster, improvements upon ourselves, the 2.0 version of our percieved out of date opeating systems. Like the best science fiction stories, Neil Burger's 2011 film Limitless is a film that looks to the very basics of human life, and watches where people inevitably mess it up with our own flaws. Based off of a 2001 book, The Dark Fields, by Alan Glynn, the film looks at what people do if they can operate with nothing holding them back.

Eddie Morra is a struggling person. He's got a novel that he's been trying to work on, a girlfriend who's left him (not to mention an ex-wife who wasn't around for very long), and an apartment that he can barely afford. Down on his luck, he takes a pill from a dubious character (his ex-brother in law), who tells him that it's FDA approved, and that it'll be the next big thing. He takes the pill, and ceases to be a struggling person: he's focused, smarter, faster. He makes connections from things that he learned years ago, observes things that he would normally overlook, and finishes the book that he struggled to finish for so long. He's a changed man, and NZT48 is his ticket to success. Think super Ritalin that solves everyone's hangups.

However, when other people who were on the drug start to wind up in the hospital, or dead (including his ex-brother in law), things get serious. No longer content with writing, he takes up finance, having dreamt up a plan to take him to bigger and greater things, and soon, he's rolling in the cash, working with big shot financiers, and is being followed by ill-intentioned characters.

Limitless was a total surprise for me: it wasn't a film that really popped up on my radar when it was released earlier this year. It got some good reviews, and appeared in a local Redbox. It's a pleasant surprise, a film that's got a lot to say, and has the perfect intersection of good acting, fantastic camerawork and a great story.

The film was never really sold as a science fiction thriller, but its roots in the genre are clear as day: it feels very much like a modern William Gibson novel, with equal parts Pattern Recognition and Flowers for Algernon. Moreover, the film shows us that with great intelligence or skill, we're still at the mercy of our own, human faults. Eddie gets smarter, but as he does so, he gets paranoid, overconfident, inflicted with hubris.

The film makes a good point about overreaching, one that's highly relevant in this day and age. The connections to the financial markets is likely no accident: if ever there was a time when fiction points to the flaws in modern day society, the financial meltdown of 2008 is a good example. There's a perfect connection between the abstract news and times elements here and that of a character doing the same exact thing. Here, the movie succeeds brilliantly.

Coupled with the story is Burger's fantastic approach to the film. Rarely does a film come along where the medium and everything that goes with it helps to support the story. Slacker-Eddie sees the world through grays and drab colors. Super-Eddie sees everything in vibrant shades. There's a series of great, endless zoom shots that go along with this, a limitless, never ending perspective that helps us see the world through Eddie's eyes.

The third big part of the film rests with Bradley Cooper, who played Eddie. I've been a fan of him since his short stint in Alias a while back, and while he's never really done a lot that I've seen - mostly comedies - Limitless demonstrates that he really can carry a picture along nicely. Even where I'm usually annoyed by voice overs or excessive narration, he makes it work quite well. For the most part, he's the star of the show, but I have to say that he's overshadowed a bit by Andrew Howard, who played Gennady, the loan shark who Eddie inadvertantly advances. He utters some of the best lines of the movie, and while it's a little uneven at first, his presence grows nicely.

If there's any fault with the picture, it's that it's almost overreaching itself: small bits of the film are never quite compounded on: Eddie's ex-wife, who provides a vital piece of information before vanishing; Eddie's novel, which appears and vanishes without a trace by the end of the film; little things that could have been snipped and woven into the film to help reinforce parts of the plot and story. The film isn't wanting for more material, but the extra pieces feel like they're almost added on, and turn what could have been an elegant story into something even better. As it stands, it wanders a little bit, hitting good pieces, but pieces that feel somewhat disconnected. Still, it's far better than what most of Hollywood churns out.

Limitless works well for what it is: it's easily one of the best science fiction films of 2011, in the same line of films as Source Code (and from appearances, In Time, coming out later this year.) It's slick, relevant, but above all, never strays too far from the main focus of the story: the central character, and all of his flaws.

On Hype

The story this morning amongst a lot of the news outlets this morning are questioning whether or not Hurricane Irene was overhyped or not: much was made of the dangers of the storm, prompting massive evacuations from all along the eastern seaboard. The storm did dissapate quite a bit as it moved up the coast, downgrading to a tropical storm by the time that it reached New England, but where the storm lost wind, it made up for it in rainfall.

Earlier this spring, Vermont experienced some horrific floods following a wet spring: entire towns found themselves under water. Once again, flooding returned to Vermont, in what people are comparing to the epic floods of 1927, which killed numerous people and destroyed countless bridges. Driving around Vermont, look at the years in which they were build: many were built in 1927 or 1928: replacements.

This storm wasn't overhyped, nor should we think that there's any greater danger in overhyping a storm of this type.

The pictures from around the state are scary: my hometown of Moretown is under feet of water from the Mad River, Brattleboro is covered, and with houses and bridges swept away by the floods. People and resources were prepared, and a single person was swept away last night, with around twenty fatalities all told. Considering the population density of the Eastern seaboard, that's a remarkable figure: had there been no evacuations or preparation, that number would surely rise.

It's easy to prepare for the worst: it's much harder if you're caught unawares. Overhyped? Not for Vermont: we'll be cleaning out and rebuilding out for weeks, if not months.

Cowboys and Aliens

Last week, I caught an early screening of Cowboys & Aliens, at the Majestic Ten in Williston. One of the film's screenwriters, Hawk Otsby, is a resident of South Burlington, and just prior to the screening, he was introduced, talked briefly about the film and his involvement, and sat down to applause as the film started up.

Cowboys & Aliens is a film about film: two of the richest genres are mashed together into a surprisingly coherent, exciting film. Set in New Mexico, a mysterious man (Daniel Craig) wakes up suddenly in the desert, with a strange device on his wrist. What happens next is a flood of clichés mainly from westerns, but some science fiction flicks as well. The result is the perfect recipe for a summer blockbuster: light, entertaining, with plenty of action and a surprisingly good story to boot.

Craig's character has lost his memory, and discovers that he's quick to action and fairly ruthless when confronted by four men who aim to bring him in for a bounty. Ending up in a small town, he quickly becomes embroiled in a local conflict at a bar, running him against the local cattle man, Woodrow Dolarhyde. It's only then that he learns that he's Jake Lonergan, a wanted man, and is prepped to be sent off to the federal marshals. As that happens, bright lights appear in the sky, complete with explosions, abductions and shooting. The town gathers together to track down their kidnapped friends and family, and the rag tag group of townspeople, ranchers and criminals set off into the desert, coming across outlaws, Native Americans and ultimately, gold-hunting aliens. It's a silly, but fun plot.

The really good points to this film isn't the actual story itself, but the characters. Broadly speaking, there's a lot of archetypes here: the mysterious stranger who doesn't remember his past, the soft bartender, the gruff, but ultimately wise fatherly figure and so forth: ultimately, none of these roles would have really worked with different people in the cast. Daniel Craig does a fine job as an American cowboy, strong, silent, and reserved. Sam Rockwell is fantastic with his regular wit (still one of my favorite actors), and Olivia Wilde does well with her surprise twist.

But the real props go to Harrison Ford: 69 years old, and still a fantastic actor. He steals the show in every scene he shows up in, with a fantastic blend of dark and angry, but at other times, fatherly, caring. He pulls off the role convincingly, and it's quite possibly one of my favorite roles in which I've seen him. He's no Han Solo or Indiana Jones here, and it's nice to see him succeed so well in a role that's quite possibly as memorable or at least as much fun to watch.

Coupled with this summer's other nostalgic blockbuster about aliens, Super 8, Cowboys & Aliens makes a good balance when it comes to looking to the past for inspiration. Super 8 looked to the 1970s films of Stephen Spielberg, and this one clearly has some influence from him as well, but expands out to other influences within the Western or Science Fiction genres. Moreover, the film could have easily taken the parody route, but stays true to being a western with science fiction mixed in. It's nothing new or groundbreaking in films (There's others, such as Outland and Firefly that go similar routes), but this one feels more rooted in the wild west than in outer space.

At the end of this summer, Cowboys & Aliens is one of the stronger summer films, and while it didn't amaze me like Super 8 did, it was a hell of a ride: exciting, nostalgic and fun all at the same time.

Spellbound, Blake Charlton

A disclaimer: a copy of this book was provided by Blake, who had consulted me at one point about the military elements of the story.

Blake Charlton’s second novel has remained one of my more anticipated books of the year, ever since I set aside his first, Spellwright. Set ten years after the events of his first novel, Spellbound picks up the action and world nicely, proving to be an entertaining and enthralling read, while avoiding the pitfalls of the dreaded sophomore slump.

When we last left Nicodemus Weal, he’d been through hell, discovering some of the reasons behind his disability and coming up with some stunning revelations about the world around him. Ten years on, we’re introduced to Francesca DeVega, a healer who stumbles into the middle of a grand conspiracy when a patient that she accidentally kills awakens, sending her into a world of trouble, colliding with Nicodemus as he prepares to meet agents of a larger agenda, working to change the world for the worse, bringing about the Disjunction, where the world’s language prime is re-written, eliminating life as they all know it.

Spellbound was a fun read: Charlton brings out a great tale, one that moves swiftly from point to point without letting up on the urgency. Like Spellwright, Spellbound is a great story within a story: like some of the great fantasy worlds, the focus is on the characters, operating within a much larger story. While there are points where I would have liked to have strayed and explored the story’s rich world a bit more, Charlton clamps down a bit and keeps the story moving forward. The result is a fairly focused narrative, with points that I had wished been fleshed out or explained a little more. Spellbound is going to be a bit of a harder book for an introductory reader (Spellwright should certainly be read first), but for readers aching for more after Spellwright, it’s a welcomed addition to the world. It fits perfectly, taking much of the same tone and pace, and it’s as if one never left.

Where Spellwright focused extensively on the disabilities and triumph on the part of Nicodemus, Spellbound takes a bit of a different turn by focusing almost extensively on Francesca, a healer. Charlton has drawn from his own life experiences when it comes to his dyslexia, and while that’s certainly an element of the story here, he’s moved past the problems and focused on things: medicine. One of the sheer joys of reading a new novel is seeing what the author does to a genre differently, and here, we see a neat blend of magic and medical science. Fantastic literature tends to gloss over some of the details of how the systems actually work: Charlton has taken a much different approach with his own magical system, and where it was a delight in Spellwright, it’s an absolute joy to see it fleshed out here. The world building is once again top notch, and where the first book had a bit of a narrow view of the world, the second rips it open, and we see quite a bit more: the politics, environment, lives of the people, and so forth, all in far more detail.

The medical element adds a nice touch too: presumably, people in any fantastic world have issues with their health, and rather than a bunch of vague understandings, we’re presented with a deep understanding of the human body, and how not only magic would affect someone, but how a person wielding magic would be able to treat and address wounds and illnesses. This element alone gives the book a good edge over other, similar reads out there, and it’s certainly one of my favorites for the year so far.

Spellbound isn’t a perfect read, however. Like the first book, there’s some pacing issues: where book one was strongest to begin with, this one feels like it’s spinning its wheels a bit in the beginning, explaining, connecting and setting the stage before carrying everything over into the conclusion. Coupled with an overly rich world, I kept feeling as if I’d missed something, going back a couple of pages to catch up. Given that it’s also been about a year since I picked up Spellwright, I’m looking forward to the day when I can pick up all three books and read them consecutively: I suspect that a lot of things will fall into place when that happens. There’s points where the dialogue, while pithy and appropriate at points, feels forced and out of place.

Spellbound is a fun, exciting read, one that deserves the attention and more of its predecessor. Rather than retread over old ground, Charlton has paved his way forward based on the lessons learned (presumably from his own experiences) in the prior book, building and expanding them aggressively in the second. The story is loaded with interesting characters, a story that works well and that comes unexpectedly at points, and a world that is worth returning to often. The result is a rich, textured read, one that shows what fantasy should be when it encounters a creative and curious mind, a second novel that doesn’t disappoint. I’m already waiting for Disjunction, the final book in the trilogy.

Science Fiction and the Frontier

Science Fiction in the United States has a very close relationship with the idea of the American West, the frontier. It is so ingrained into our cultural DNA, that presidents often associate the exploration of the heavens with the freedom and romance that the settlement of the American West afforded our country. Both Bush Presidents had some interesting words to say about the subject at various points in their terms in office:

"We'll build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the Moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own. . . . We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: human beings are headed into the cosmos", President George W. Bush, speech at NASA headquarters, 14 January 2004.

And,

"Our goal: To place Americans on Mars and to do it within the working lifetimes of scientists and engineers who will be recruited for the effort today. And just as Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to open the continent, our commitment to the Moon/Mars initiative will open the Universe. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, and offers a lifetime of opportunity", President George Bush, 2 February 1990.

At a recent conference at NASA Headquarters in April, this very subject was brought up:

It's very easy to see the influence that the West has on science fiction: the first Star Trek show was pitched to CBS as a 'Wagon Train to the Stars, while the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, certainly has its influences as well, while other films from the last 1970s and early 1980s are more explicitly influenced by western movie tropes: Westworld, written and directed by Michael Crichton, depicts a futuristic western amusement park, while Outland, directed by Peter Hyams, is heavily influenced by the western film 'High Noon', as a Federal Marshal goes up against company men in a mining colony on Io. Moving forward, the television show Firefly, created by Joss Whedon, compares the expansion of humanity into space with that of the expansion into North America. There's others, to be sure, with a new addition this week, Cowboys and Aliens. At the same time, the growing field of Steampunk (Cherie Priest's Boneshaker and Deadnought come immediately to mind), is likewise filled with images of the American West.

The West represents a romantic character vision of the United States. It was a time of intense growth, formative change, and really the last point where it's perceived that people could literally shape the country. At the same time, it's associated with the freedom for a person to make something of themselves, either by pulling up their roots and heading out to restart their lives in the wilderness, or to build an empire, as many of the industrial barons did throughout that time.

While people at the conference disagreed with the association - they likened it to not the west exploration, but to polar exploration - they did note that it's a valuable association to bring to bear, noting that the space program has often been justified with comparisons to the American West. It was the United State's mission (for better or for worse) to expand then, while space offers unlimited potential for (if highly expensive) growth for the future.

But more than that, the romance of the Wild West offers something to science fiction that I've really only seen in stories that have come out of the United States (granted, I'm not well read on non-US SF/F), which is the ability to tap into this idea that we are at our greatest when we're fresh, when we're exploring and discovering new lands, people and adventures, rather than sitting idly, stagnating as life becomes more and more complicated. In the current political and cultural problems that the US is currently facing, it's easy to see why stories, and particularly, science fiction, can succeed so well: it's relatable, and escapist at the same time.

As was talked about at the NASA History Conference, the differences in reality aren't really there: to travel from the East Coast to the West coast in the 1800s, one was reasonably certain of fairly low costs (in the hundreds of dollars), not to mention the potential for a livelihood, food and supplies, and the companionship of everyone else who had the same idea. Polar Exploration, on the other hand, holds no such assurances: the conditions are harsh, unlivable, with few prospects to live on, and a far higher cost.

Space travel falls far more closely with the latter style than the former, and as such, it's not marketed to the American public as such: it doesn't fit with our views of how things should be. And that's okay: the American west has its innumerable stories, a broad canvas from which to be influenced by. It's dramatic, tragic, and beautiful: a good place for stories.

Captain America & World War II

The best part of the latest Marvel film, Captain America, is the end credits. Bold propaganda posters with bright, 1940s colors, jumping out of the screen in the best display of three dimensions in the entire film, the credits capture everything that’s to know about the entire film. Fun, splashy, with more than a little propaganda splashed in there somewhere, it’s everything that America remembers broadly about the Second World War: a classic fight against unmentionable evil, where the good guys win in the end.

Captain America as a superhero film felt like a mixed product for me. One part advance marketing for the 2012 Avengers film, helmed by Joss Whedon, another part superhero origin story and the last bit war film. On the whole, it’s a fun ride: Chris Evans is spectacular as the titular character in Red, White and Blue, with one of the better origin stories set to celluloid (or gigabyte as it were), up there with the original Spiderman and Iron Man films. Yet despite that, the film is torn between missions, and fell pretty far from my expectations, which surprised me, given the praise that the film has garnered from a lot of outlets that I generally trust.

One of the film’s strongest and weakest points was its setting of the Second World War. It’s a fantastic place to place a superhero origin, given the near supernatural nature of the war itself, not to mention accurate to the character’s origins. World War II has taken on a mythological status within the United States, as it’s arguably the one point where the country displayed its absolute best, and absolute worst (necessarily – I’m not being revisionist!).

The movie is good – great even – when we’re introduced to a scrawny Steve Rodgers getting booted from his physical, and given the opportunity to prove himself with some medical experimentation that turns him into the only super soldier that the United States is able to create. Johnson sets up a good arc for Rogers as he’s selected not for his physical strength, but for his purely American character of being a well rounded individual: good of heart, smart, resourceful, all traits that live up to a supposed ideal American that the modern right wing would point to. It’s an admirable goal, to be sure: Steve’s a nice guy, and he saves the entire Eastern seaboard, but it’s a simple vision for how the United States and her allies collided with the Axis powers in Europe. (Japan is barely referenced.) The film builds as Rogers is put onto promotional detail, and it’s not until he reaches the front that he realizes his full potential as a soldier. Once there, he gets one awesome costume / uniform that I love.

It’s the wartime action part of the film that drags the film down. Full of tired action scenes with the all-token American team, the film never really materializes as any type of war film: it’s a collection of sequences against a faceless (literally!) enemy who serves as a stand-in for the Nazi and German soldiers on the front lines of the war. Part of this is from the fact that this is a comic book film in a bizzaro Marvel universe, but I can’t think that the reasons for why we didn’t see Nazis in the films: The Hydra soldiers could have hardly beat out the SS troops as ridiculously cartoonish in and of themselves, and there’s an incredible opportunity missed here when looking to set up a story of American good vs. evil. The action scenes feel as if they’re there for their own sake, penciled in by the screenwriters because they couldn’t be bothered to pick up a Stephen Ambrose story, or any one of the other millions of tomes released in the last decade about the Second World War. As a whole? It’s also pretty boring: Cap hits people with his shield, bounces around Europe to take out the Hydra baddies, and jumps over things on his motorcycle.

In a way, this feels very much as how the United States sees and views the Second World War: we know the basics: the US was attacked, went overseas to far-off battlefields against an enemy who displayed a real disregard for any type of human dignity (not that there’s much in war to begin with, but there’s certainly a line drawn at human experimentation and outright murder), where we won by the strength of our soldiers with a moral imperative to win the war. Rogers / Captain America certainly fit this bill to a T.

My argument here is that it’s just too simple, much as Captain America is, and that the film is basically a reflection of our own understanding and our collective desire to understand the war. The United States faced an enemy that really outgunned and out trained our soldiers for years on the battlefield, bound by a strong nationalistic sense of duty that bordered on fanatical in some instances. The United States largely won the war by outsupplying their armies, slowly improving the training and equipment of our GIs and keeping to a strategy that outmaneuvered the Axis powers, rather than simply outfighting them at every turn by our own prowess, strength and will to fight. This in and of itself is a bit of a simplification, but the study of World War II is akin to a complicated onion, with layers upon layers: it was truly a global war, with innumerable facets.

The Superhero archetype that Captain America displays is something that we commonly believe as a country: it’s a nice narrative, and in a way, Captain America is us, or at least, the parts that we really want to see. The conflict set up between him and Red Skull is horribly underplayed: all things equal, the only differences between the two men are their inner natures: Captain America is good, Red Skull is evil, and it’s a fight that’s set up with some real promise, but ultimately never goes anywhere meaningful, beyond action sequences. Not that the film needed much more than that: it’s designed as a fun action film, so this works, but other Marvel films such as Iron Man really demonstrated that a strong character film is possible: Iron Man succeeded wildly as a story of a self-examination and role within the nation’s character. Captain America never quite does this, although it does a far better job at it than Superman, another type of national hero, does.

Finally, I’m personally tired of the Avengers crossover that seems to be bleeding into every film. Before, we just had to content with the trailers as the beginning of the film: now, they’re in the movies themselves, and while I’m just as excited to see everything next year, I hate the amount of pandering that Marvel is displaying for the film: there’s connections to Iron Man and Thor here in this film, and for someone who hasn’t seen every film, it doesn’t feel so much like connecting stories as trying to bleed the audience dry. The film also hints rather overtly that the next main storyline will be the Winter Soldier run, with the (spoiler!) off-stage death of Bucky.

Captain America is a fun film, but it’s no Iron Man. Well acted (Chris Evans is a superb Captain America and Tommy Lee Jones has some fantastic comedic moments throughout, as well as some of the supporting cast) at points, but the film’s unable to really capitalize on the 2nd World War beyond turning it into one giant series of action sequences that does little to move the characters forward, or even make the audience care about them. The real shame is that I’ve seen people point to this as the ultimate sort of patriotic film, which annoys me because it’s not much more than a regular run of the mill summer blockbuster, just wrapped up in the flag.

Like the end credits, it's propaganda, a self-fulfilling mythos that we perpetuate ourselves to remind us of how great we are. That bothers me, a great deal. Still, it’s fun to see quasi-Nazis get hit in the face with a red, white and blue shield. That never gets old.

Lissie - Catching a Tiger

The song 'Everywhere I Go' was my first introduction to Lissie's music, during an episode of the television show Dollhouse. It's a fantastic song, one that's quiet, stripped down to guitar, lyrics and an incredible vocal performance from Lissie: it's a heart aching song, one that soars during the chorus with an impressive range from the singer. Tracking down her EP, 'Why You Runnin'', I was introduced to more of her music, but it didn't really stick with me.

Lissie's first album Catching A Tiger is a work that caught me completely off guard. Initially, I wasn't sure what to think of it: her music still didn't catch me: my introduction of a quiet, thoughtful song initially didn't prepare me for the sheer range of style that Lissie exhibits over the course of the album.

Record Collector, the first track off of the album, is a good example of what the album feels like as a whole. There's an eclectic sound, with an infectious, steady beat that slows to a crawl before an infusion of energy that blasts away: its an extraordinary track, and one that represents the album as a whole.

What impresses me the most, I think, is the range at which Lissie seems to operate: she's sentimental without wallowing in grief (When I'm Alone), pointed but not angry (Bully), nostalgic (Cuckoo), and wistful (In Sleep). Catching A Tiger is an album that has a lot to give to a lot of people: there's something for everyone here, and I'm sure that given any number of periods in my life, I'd see the album in a lot of different ways.

Also impressive is the raw energy that Lissie is able to bring to the table for tracks like In Sleep, Loosen the Knot, Cuckoo, but can turn around for tracks like Oh Mississippi or Everywhere I Go, naturally. She feels like she's right at home rocking out on stage (and it's worth checking out videos of her performances online), or singing solo in front of a crowd. It's something that I've heard other artists attempt, but I'm not sure that I've really heard anyone pull it off as convincingly as she seems to be able to, at least on the record.

Catching A Tiger is a fun, exciting album, one that I've been playing the car: much of the album is perfect for blasting around the highways of Vermont during the middle of summer: vibrant, rich and surprising, all at once.