The Unidentified Adventures of Raymond A. Palmer

 

One of my favorite films is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, directed by Steven Spielberg. While watching it recently, I realized something: I've never noticed a significant overlap between the science fiction community and the UFO community. Sure, there are science fiction stories about aliens invading Earth, and I'm sure that there are plenty of UFO fans who read science fiction, but otherwise, the two communities seem fairly separate.

The modern UFO community emerged during the 1940s and 1950s following some sensational reporting and incidents that they latched onto. A major component of this community had some roots in science fiction fandom in the form of Raymond A. Palmer. Palmer had edited Amazing Stories, and founded some of the more influential publications for that community.

Go read The Unidentified Adventures of Raymond A. Palmer over on Kirkus Reviews.

Sources:

• Over my Shoulder: Reflections on a Science Fiction Era, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. Palmer shows up a couple of times here, and this book is good for context for the 1930s publishing field.
• Seekers of Tomorrow, Sam Moskowitz. Moskowitz mentions Palmer a bunch of times here, and provides some good context.
• The Man from Mars: Ray Palmer's Amazing Pulp Journey, Fred Nadis. Nadis's biography is a solid, entertaining read, and it's certainly worth picking up for a more in-depth look at the author.

Online:

• SF Encyclopedia: Palmer has an entry here that largely skirts over his connections to the paranormal / UFO communities.

Review: Pitbull: The Battle over an American Icon by Bronwen Dickey

I have to admit, I hesitated a bit when my wife first showed me a picture of Tiki on her computer screen. We had just gotten married, and were in the final stages of getting a house. A dog was something that we had talked about for quite a while, and we had gone through the ups and downs of searching through countless pictures of pets from the local shelters. I had my heart set on finding a black lab, a type of dog that I've always seen as loyal and family-friendly.

The description said 'Lab Mix', one of the more generic labels that a shelter can put on a dog. I hesitated because Megan pointed out that he was probably part pit bull.

I had only met a pit bull once, and it was a good experience. A friend of Megan's owns a sweet dog named Peaches, who had broken every stereotype of the dog. Regardless, we went up to meet Tiki, and fell in love instantly. He's currently sulking down in our living room because he was subjected to a bath.  He is, as my dad described him, a 'dog's dog', the base unit of dog. Snout, tail, ears, friendly attitude, etc.

I came across Bronwen Dickey's book after reading an article about the negative response to her debut book, Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon. After the book's release earlier this spring, she's had to get extra security and endure a relentless bout of harassment from anti-Pit activists who have condemned her as a sort of propagandist for the animals.

The book is a fascinating history of the type of dog - not a breed - but more importantly, it's an in-depth look at how ideas get embedded in society, and how these ideas are slowly changed. I didn't expect it, but it's probably one of the best self-examinations of media sensationalism and good journalistic practice. It's also a great book about dogs and how their role as human companions has changed with time.

The Pit Bull, Dickey argues, is a type of dog that has been maligned recently - in the early 20th Century and earlier, it was viewed as the best sort of dog - good with families, good companions, and so on. Dickey looks as the dog's legacy as a fighter, which was eventually rolled into coverage whenever a dog bit or killed someone. The shorthand article of a dog whose history includes fighting kills someone only reinforces the idea that the bite or death was inevitable.

Pit Bulls have bitten people, and a they have killed people. It's impossible to get away from that point. However, she notes, all other types of dogs are responsible for the same actions: there are golden retrievers and labs that have bitten and killed as well. Part of the general impression of these dogs stems from the type of coverage that they receive, which is disproportionately angled against these particular animals. They also aren't the first - they're just the latest in a long string of movements where they're at the wrong end of public opinion.

Furthermore, there's a deeply embedded level of racism that's associated with these dogs.

Furthermore, there's a deeply embedded level of racism that's associated with these dogs. During the 1970s and 1980s, the dogs became synonymous with rising crime levels and as guard dogs for - predominantly inner-city (read: black) - residents. This further solidified the general impression that these animals had no purpose other than violence. Dickey points to the rise of breed-specific legislation as a means of not only quelling white, suburban homeowner fears about 'killer dogs', but also as a good way to discourage minorities - who prominently owned the dogs - from moving in.

The combined series of events and circumstances have really tainted the reputation of the dog, which is unfortunate, given that there's absolutely no indication that there's a 'killer gene' that makes these particular dogs inherently dangerous. Numerous studies and data show that there's no breed more dangerous than any others.

What makes dogs dangerous? It's likely living conditions and abnormal stresses from owners who want dogs but are ill equipped to deal with them, and that doesn't extend to just pits. Dickey closes out the book with efforts that groups are putting together to help dog owners, whether it's providing fencing, training, neutering, food or basic healthcare for those who might not ordinarily be able to afford it. Similarly, breed-specific legislations are beginning to fall across the United States, an incredibly positive step.

Stress also has its impact. Tiki is an incredibly friendly, happy member of the family, but he has his buttons that we sometimes inadvertently push. I got a bite on the hand once when I tried to get him out of the car - he had hopped in expecting a ride, but got nervous as I tried to grab him by the collar to pull him out. I hadn't recognized how anxious he was, and how afraid he when I raised my voice. I now know how to recognize the signs when he's upset, and haven't had an issue since. When he hopped into the car the other day expecting a ride (seriously, saying the words 'Car Ride' gets him excited), I just hooked a leash to his collar and was able to get him out of the car without a fuss.

I've met more Pit Bulls or Pit-type dogs since we've adopted Tiki: some are sweet and adorable animals who are bursting with energy and ready to play and receive attention. Others encounters haven't gone well: while walking Tiki one day, we came across a female Pit that grew really angry as we walked past: she slipped out of the tennis court that she was in with her owners, closed the distance between us and attacked Tiki, biting him in the neck. (His wounds were superficial), but the inattention of the owners (hers and myself - we should have turned around and walked the other way) led to the encounter. It appears to have been an isolated incident. Tiki was already a slightly stressed and anxious dog, and the encounter has certainly made an impact, one that we've worked on with training and reinforcement.

If you like Pit Bulls or really dislike them, Dickey's book is one that's really well worth picking up and giving an honest read. This is a book that's evenly balanced, and cuts through hearsay and the accumulated bullshit that had become truth to so many people. (Another author to check out in the same vein is Maureen Ogle, with her book In Meat We Trust, a spectacular history of meat and the United States). Dickey's book has had the unexpected impact of making me a better journalist and pet owner, all while providing a really interesting history of dogs and how we interact with them. I hope that it will help improve things for the dogs.

The Absurd Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of those authors that I've continually missed over the years. For some reason, I never quite got around to reading Slaughterhouse-Five while in high school (or college), and I've missed his major novels as well. That said, one of the first science fiction stories that I ever read was 'Harrison Bergeron', which I also saw as a play when I was probably in Middle School - the Handicapper General. That story has stuck with me for years, and it's a brilliant piece of short fiction.

My latest column for Kirkus (which is still running with me at The Verge) focuses on Vonnegut's story, particularly how he pointed out some of the really ridiculous parts of modern life. I came across an interview where he said that he was the one person who benefitted from the Dresden bombings, a massive bombing campaign that utterly destroyed the city.

Go read The Absurd Kurt Vonnegut over on Kirkus Reviews.

Sources:

TK

So Long, and Thanks For All The Trilobites

I regret to announce — this is The End. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell.

So, yesterday was my last day at io9. I've spent the last year as their Weekend Editor, running the site on Saturday / Sunday, filling in and generally holding down the fort on the slow part of the week. I've been there even longer as a contributor. Now, it's time to move on.

It’s been a hell of a ride.

I started writing for io9 back in 2008, after I answered a call for interns. I think I skipped pass the intern phase and became the site’s ‘research fellow’. I had written for a couple of places like SF Signal, but this was a whole new thing. Under Annalee Newitz, I had the chance to write about a whole new mix of things - Trilobites, Stormtroopers, spaceflight, books that should be movies (three of which have become or will be TV shows!), and scored a big hit with a rant on Military Science Fiction.

My term was up after 6 months, but I kept contributing the occasional book review or commentary. io9 opened a whole lot of doors for me, professionally. It helped me become a better writer and thinker - the range of articles that Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane Anders, Meredith Woerner, Lauren Davis, James Whitbrook, Germain Lusslier, and many others put together shaped how I looked at science fiction, writing, science, current events, and so much more. It’s helped me get regular writing gigs, such as with Kirkus Reviews and Barnes and Noble, and to travel to places like the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop.

In June 2015, I figured out that I didn’t want to stay at my day job anymore, and was able to join up regularly as io9's Weekend Editor. The new gig allowed me to write about a ton of things that I loved writing about.

All of that is coming to a close. I’m jumping over to The Verge at the end of this month, something that’s exciting, but also slightly scary. It’s time for a bit of a change, and it's the next step.

It’s hard to encapsulate everything I’m proud of with io9 - the list above is only a fraction of what I’ve done. io9 is genuinely an online home, and while I won’t be adding to it anymore, I’ll be keeping my eyes on the place.

Future Histories of Poul Anderson

While researching the Kirkus column, there's a bunch of authors who frequently appear: one such author is Poul Anderson, a hard SF author whose career really began to take off in the 1950s.

Anderson represents part of the movement in the middle of the 1960s/1970s that ran counter to the New Wave: they tended to be conservative, and typically wrote about stories in space with realistic physics and knowledge of astronomy. Anderson's an author that I've never quite read much of, but his name pops up everywhere, due to the sheer number of stories that he wrote over the course of his career.

As I've been writing this column, I've been really interested in the relationship between conservative / liberal politics that has been injected, but also just how those viewpoints have manifested themselves. Conservative authors tend to write about harder, tangible parts of SF, while some of the more liberal movements reject things like space. That's a gross oversimplification, but there's some roots to it. My suspicion is that this comes out of the connections to the space race between the USA and USSR, and all the trappings involved there.

This isn't to say that liberal authors can't write the hardest of the hard SF - just look at Joe Haldeman and his book The Forever War.

Go read Future Histories of Poul Anderson over on Kirkus Reviews.

Sources:

• Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction, Brian Aldiss. Aldiss's history of the genre has some good information about Anderson's career and life.
• Transformations: The Story of The Science Fiction Magazines from 1950-1970, Mike Ashley. Ashley's book has some excellent information about his work in the magazines.
• Science Fiction Writers: Second Edition, edited by Richard Bleiler. Sandra Miesel authored the entry on Anderson here, and it's a very good background on his career and analysis on his works.
• The Creation of Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Magazine Science Fiction, Paul A. Carter. Good additional contextual information here.
• Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction, James Gunn. This had some useful contextual information in it.

A trio of obituaries were useful, from The Guardian, New York Times and LA Times. The SF Encyclopedia, as always, has a very useful article about him.

Acer Chromebook, Initial Impressions

Earlier today, I got a new computer in the mail: an Acer Chromebook. For most of my freelancing / working life, I've used a work computer in my off hours to write up just about everything. When it became clear last year that I'd be leaving Norwich, I ended up buying a used iMac at a good price, which has been an absolute joy to use. It's reliable, user friendly, and didn't require too much effort to get used to.

The problem with a desktop is that it's really chained to one area, whereas before I have a sort of freedom of movement with the laptop, and while I don't travel all that often, when I do, it requires some extra finagling, such as carting along an iPad with its keyboard.

I like that setup, but my iPad 1 is getting up in age, and it's hard to do anything but watch Netflix or read the occasional book on the various book apps that are available for it. Last month, one of my fellow Gizmodo writers wrote an interesting post about how he picked up a Chromebook, rather than a new Macbook.

What hooked me here was the price that he got his at: $173. That's a staggeringly low price for a computer, especially if you do some light writing and surfing, which is pretty much what I do day to day, especially if I'm on the road.

So, I picked up this little Acer Chromebook for $140. I've been playing with it for a bit, and it plays Netflix nicely and seems to work decently as a writing device.

The main main thing that I need to get used to is the fact that there's no default Capslock button. I've trained myself to use that button instead of shifting (for some random reason that I can't fathom), so I have to get used to using SHIFT properly. There's a search button that's in the place of the Capslock that has me opening up a window every couple of minutes. Going into Settings allowed me to move that button to Capslock, which is nice, and makes things easier.

A couple of other buttons are in weird places - Control and Alt, but that's not bad. The keyboard isn't all that different from the Mac, and it's about as responsive, so that's a plus. It's a bit smaller, so that'll take some getting used to.

I'll have to see if I can get a small wireless mouse for it - my Apple mouse doesn't seem to want to connect.

I'll take this out with me when I go away from the house. It's simple and small enough to toss into my bag and cart along with me, provided I have an internet connecting where I'm going.

The initial impressions that I've got? For $140, it's stupidly simple and cheap, and it'll fill the role that my iPad just wasn't filling. Hopefully, once I get on the road later this month, I'll be able to try it out.

Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier

I've always been more of a Marvel and Dark Horse Comics fan: I picked up a ton of Hellboy, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Spider-Man and Iron Man comics over the years, but only the occasional DC comic: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen currently sit on my shelves. Superman, Green Arrow and most of the others really haven't interested me over the years, until I came across Darwyn Cooke's artwork.

Cooke died the other week, and the outpouring of grief populated my Twitter and Facebook feeds with excerpts of his artwork. I was hooked immediately, and ordered a copy of his book, DC: The New Frontier.

It was a lot bigger than I expected, and it was a read that I sank into with glee. I loved his artwork: bold, simple art deco that feels both nostalgic and futuristic at the same time, the perfect epitome of the 1950s/1960s.

The story for this comic was fantastic, but what I really appreciated was that this comic was fun. It wasn't a grim, dark story that deconstructed the nature of superheroes. It was an adventure, exactly everything a comic book story should be.

It's a shame that Cooke passed away, but I'm looking forward to discovering more of his work.

Traveling Time With Connie Willis

One of the authors I've been wanting to read more of is Connie Willis. I really loved her book Blackout, and I've recently picked up two others, Doomsday Book and The Best of Connie Willis.

She's been someone I've been reading up on lately, ever since she was made a SFWA Grandmaster, and over on Kirkus Reviews, I've taken a look at her career.

Read Traveling Time With Connie Willis over on Kirkus Reviews.

The West Wing Marathon

Every time we have a Presidential election, I find myself drawn back to a favorite show: The West Wing. I've found that it's a nice reprieve from the ongoing presidential primaries, debates and mud-slinging, but I also find that I've been approaching the show in different ways each time.

The first time I really sat down to watch was shortly before the 2008 presidential election, and again in the 2012 general: it certainly informed how I look at politics and the general political process, understanding that there's a whole shadow world in which the country is run through a continual stream of negotiation, bargaining and trading, all in the name of getting things done.

Since I last tuned in, things have changed. Washington is gridlocked, but so too are each side of the political spectrum: everyone is unwilling to engage with one another, which makes the show a quaint fantasy of when things were better.

Watching this time around, the notion that this show is a quaint fantasy is even more apparent. You could easily tell when there wasn't a woman present in the writer's room, something that's even more painfully apparent when you look at the relationship between Josh Lyman and Donna Moss. The first two times I watched the show, I felt like their story was a fun romantic one. This time, I could see how painful it was for Donna, and found myself rooting for her all the more when she walked out of the offices at the end of Season 5. I was angry when she decided to go back.

This is a show for men, about men doing the important things men should be doing -that seems to be the mode that it was stuck in throughout the time Aaron Sorkin was running the show; it wasn't until he left that we see women appearing more prominently in the sidelines and forefront. Toby Zeigler indignantly shouting (which is always fun to watch) gave way to C.J. Craig getting things done. The show became better for that, I think.

One thing that did impress me was at how the show managed to completely miss the ramifications of race in Santos' presidential run. It missed the run to the right that the Republican Party has taken in the last eight years as Vinick portrayed a classical Eisenhower-style candidate (God, I would love to see someone like him run. Sadly, Jon Huntsman isn't running). It did prefigure some things: the Healthcare debate, and a couple of other things, which are still dead on almost a decade off the air.

I can't help but think that NBC should reboot the show, picking up as the Obama Santos administration leaves office. It would be interesting to see the show deal with the modern political environment, from women to race to climate change to terrorism to the media, trying to make sense of it all. It would be a bit more interesting than watching CNN.

Gaming the System: The 1987 Hugo Awards

One of the authors I've been really fascinated by is L. Ron Hubbard, who's probably best known for Scientology, his quasi-religion that seems perpetually mired in controversy. I've avoided writing about him up until this point, because I didn't want to put together a post that got involved in that argument, because there's already quite a bit written about it. What did catch my interests was how Hubbard's press seemed to artificially inflate their marketing numbers, and game the Hugo Awards back in the 1980s.

The gaming of the Hugos has been a hot-button topic for a while now, ever since the Rabid/Sad puppies realized that putting together a block of voters meant that they could influence what ends up on the final ballot. The Scientologists did this back in 1987 with the Hugo Awards, putting Black Genesis on the Best Novel list.

It didn't go well, but it does go to show how an effective marketing campaign can really influence things, especially if you have lots of people willing to help. They did something similar (according to LA booksellers) with the novels, gaming the system to artificially put his books on the bestseller lists. As some of his books will be re-released this year, this is language that's prominent on their marketing materials.

In many ways, this is a publisher and publicity department that understands how to manipulate their materials effectively. Having labels on books such as New York Times Bestseller (or even just Bestselling Author) and Hugo Award Nominee or Winner are extremely effective in getting people to pick up a book. These are tactics that the RP/SP groups have been capitalizing on. Unfortunately, when you manipulate these systems, you undermine the effectiveness of those labels: because they're considered to be a sort of organic level of broad, public buy-in to the product you're trying to sell, slapping those labels on there jumps the system a bit - sometimes in actuality, sometimes in spirit.

Go read Gaming the System: The 1987 Hugo Awards over on Kirkus Reviews.

Morning Bugle - Aoife O'Donovan

Growing up, a stereo was a fixture in our living room. Laden down with vinyl records, cassette tapes and later CDs, it made sure that there was some music in the house. Artist such as Alison Krauss and Union Station (So Long, So Wrong is one of my favorite albums), Enya (her album Watermark is one that I will *never* get tired of), Nanci Griffith (Other Voice, Other Rooms), Gordon Lightfoot (Where to start with his albums?), Fleetwood Mac (Greatest Hits) and a whole bunch of others fill me with an incredible sense of nostalgia.

I *despise* A Prairie Home Companion, but I'll catch snippets of it while driving - this past weekend, they had a song that made me stop dead: a cover of John Hartford's Morning Bugle, sung by Aoife O'Donovan. I hadn't come across her before, but it was a song that fit in that same vein of nostalgia from my childhood. I promptly bought her latest album, In The Magic Hour, which I've really been enjoying.

The Year's Best Science Fiction and Gardner Dozois

One of the first science fiction books that I ever bought was one edited by Gardner Dozois, one of his Year's Best Science Fiction collections (#18). I really loved anthologies early on (and still do), picking through and reading the summations of the prior year, and the fiction that made up the best of that year. Some of those stories still stick with me - one from Stephen Baxter (On the Orion Line), and a couple of others.

For three decades, Dozois has been an institution in and of himself, providing a major anthology series for the science fiction community. It's a pretty astounding feat, considering that most 'Year's Best Anthology' series peter out after 5,7,10 years.

The number of these survey anthologies has exploded in the last couple of years. Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine releases his first in a series, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, while John Joseph Adams began the Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy last year.

There's others out there: Rich Horton's Year's Best science Fiction & Fantasy, Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Paula Guran's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror of the Year and The Year’s Best Science & Fantasy Novellas, ChiZine's Year's Best Weird Fiction and Baen's Year's Best Military SF & Space Opera.

There will undoubtably be more to come in the future, crowding the market, but these are useful books to have: they document the prior year, and expose readers to stories they might not have otherwise picked up, especially if they're not subscribing to major publications.

Go read The Year's Best Science Fiction and Gardner Dozois over on Kirkus Reviews.

Sources:

• Interviews with SF Signal (RIP), Black Gate, Book Banter, and SF Encyclopedia entries for Gardner, Anthologies and Asimovs.
• Mike Ashley's Transformations and Gateways to Forever also provided some extremely useful details.

Destination: Venus

I have a new nonfiction article up on Clarkesworld Magazine, Destination: Venus, a followup to Destination: Mars from last year.

Like the last post, it covers a topic that I've been getting more and more interested in: how did we discover the Solar System, and how did we interpret those findings? Science Fiction is the ideal medium for making sense of the potential for life elsewhere in the galaxy or solar system, and what I'm finding most interesting is how seemingly at ease people were with the idea of life on other planets just a century ago.

It's interesting: Venus is so much different from Mars, and our stories about it are quite a bit different, yet the same. There's more about Mars as a potential second Earth, even though it's smaller and colder.

Like Mars, though, as we learned more about Venus, the stories changed. We couldn't live on Venus and nothing could, but SF has the enthusiastic optimism about the world: maybe we can terraform it, live in floating cities, or merely study it.

Read Destination Venus over on Clarkesworld Magazine.

PSA: Facebook Page

For a while now, I've been feeling guilty about the number of links I've been foisting on friends on Facebook - it's increased as I've taken on more freelance work. To alleviate this, I've set up a personal page, which will feature all of the things that I've been writing, and other SF/Writing type links that I find interesting. You can like the page here.

I've had an uptick in people in the SF community sending me friend requests, and while I like networking, I've been increasingly feeling like my profile is something I'm going to lock down a bit more and keep it more for friends and family that I actually know. The page will be for everyone, though!

Mech: Age of Steel Kickstarter Now Live

So, this is a project that I've been involved with: Mech: Age of Steel! It's a science fiction anthology all about, well, giant mecha. I've got a short story that I'm writing included in the table of contents. The book's Kickstarter just launched, and you can take a look here.

I'm pretty excited about this anthology as a whole - there's some great authors in the Table of Contents. I'm also excited about my own story, which is something that I've been working on for a while now. 'Battlefield Recovery' is about a technician who is dropped onto the battlefield to recover a damaged mech, and finds that it's more complicated than originally thought.

So, go pledge! I want this book in my hands!

Can We Talk About Serial's Second Season?

Like many people, I got hooked on Serial about halfway through the first season when I had heard a bunch of ads for it on NPR, and diligently listened to the rest of the season as Sarah Koenig, worked her way through the story.

I just finished listening to Serial's second season, and I'm surprised that there hasn't been the same level of cultural obsession with it. It seems like everyone was talking and buzzing about how Season 1 would end; this time, it feels like it's been overlooked.

I really like long-form journalism: stories that really require you to sit down and read through, not because they're in depth or well researched (although that helps), but because it helps me think better. When done right, they explore something that I probably would never think about on a normal day, but find that they have ramifications that impact how I see things.

I was let down by Serial's first season, to be honest. The story reached an abrupt halt, with Koenig stumbling over whether she believed his story or not. It was a fun ride, but it ran into the limitations of covering something that's unresolved: you get to catch everyone up, but when you hit the present, you can't really report too much more on it.

Part of the reason for this, I think, is that Serial was set up as this sort of narrative storytelling experiment that felt as though it had a beginning middle and end: it didn't, although they're now updating Adnan Syed's case bit by bit as new developments happen.

I think that's why I didn't pick up on Serial's second season until it was over. The focus this time around was on a surprisingly high-profile case:Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier who walked away from his OP on June 30th. I listened to the first episode, found it interesting, but didn't really look into it again until recently.

I went to a military school (as a civilian), and studied military history, and since then, I've become friends with a number of people who work in and around the military. Bergdahl's case has been a source of discussion across most of them, and I remember the initial news of his recovery and the backlash against him - many weren't happy about it.

I listened through Season 2 in the last couple of weeks, and what's struck me is the podcast's (and how longform journalism) can really take the time to tease out the story: that's exactly what's done here. This is journalism at its best: taking the time to really cover a story, from the initial impact of the soldiers sent out on patrol to the larger geo-political problems that his capture caused in the general war effort. When all is said and done, it's an incredible story, one that clarified and at points, reinforced some of my thoughts on the matter, all the while providing some context. I had fallen in the 'He's suffered enough' camp before listening, and now, I'm not sure that I believe that.

I think the subject matter here worked quite a bit more than Syed's story: Bergdahl's story wasn't so much about whether or not he should be prosecuted: it was more to understand why and what happened. Unlike Syed's case, there's a good resolution to it, with his current legal situation an additional chapter.

Along they way, they explore some interesting, and important topics, none of which are easy: what is the value of human life in war? It's an easy thing to abstractly think about, but listening to the various people talk about the decisions that they made during the entire story, it's clear that this is a complicated situation, and the Serial team did a good job pulling it together. Already, I'm really eager to see what they'll talk about for their next season, which will apparently be launching sometime this spring.

On a personal level, the podcast has become this really aspirational thing for me, as a journalist. I like researching and writing in depth articles - the Expanse and Star Wars ones from last year were certainly influenced by the type of reporting done there, and there's other topics that I've been seeing with new eyes after listening to this (and seeking out and reading other stories as well), and motivated to write and research accordingly.

Unauthorized Stories: Fan Fiction and Fandom

When I was a bit more active in the Star Wars fan circles, something you couldn't escape from was fan fiction. Forums such as TheForce.net and Fanfiction.net each had vibrant communities in the early '00s, and there was a whole range of really interesting stories to really crappy ones. I wrote a couple of the crappy ones - spinoffs from the Rogue Squadron series - and I had a bunch of friends who did as well.

Fan Fiction has interested me for a while now, because it's this really unique way that fandom contributes to genre literature. Stories become more than just an author telling the reader a story: the readers jump in and continue that story.

Go read Unauthorized Stories: Fan fiction and fandom over on Kirkus Reviews.

The Innovative Jim Baen

I have to say, I have a visceral reaction to a Baen cover when I see it on the bookshelf. I'm not a fan of the bold colors, typeface and generally, of the illustrations. I've picked up the books, and I'm typically not their target audience.

(Actually, the above image is one of the covers and books that I really liked from them.)

But, Baen is one of the most interesting genre publishers out there. Founded with the help of Tor's founder, Tom Doherty, Baen is one of the more popular publishers, and one of the most innovative. Jim Baen recognized the importance of online communities, and built a fan base that is dedicated and loyal to the brand. They were one of the earliest proponents of free lending on the web, and of eBooks before the Kindle was ever a thing.

Love their books or hate them, Baen knows their audience and their stories exactly, and they're damn good at it.

Go read The Innovative Jim Baen over on Kirkus Reviews.

Sources:

• Gateways to Forever, Mike Ashley. Ashley provides some really interesting background on Baen's work with Galaxy and If magazines.
• The Dreams Stuff Our Is Made Of, Thomas Disch. Disch throws a bit of political commentary in here about Baen and his brand of fiction.
• David Drake: he posted the following remembrance to his website several months after Baen died.
• Tom Doherty: I interviewed Doherty a while ago, and we spoke extensively about Baen and his work.

Ray LaMontagne - No Pressure

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ2whG32g_0

Ray LaMontagne has a new album out, Ouroboros, which features the singer along with My Morning Jacket. It's a really sublime album, featuring just two tracks, designed to imitate the 'vinyl experience'. There's really eight tracks on the album, and it's up there with the best of his works.

LaMontagne is one of those artists that has gotten better as time has gone on, and his music has been a real comfort at various points in my life. Till The Sun Turns Black tracked some things in an uncanny fashion, while Gossip in the Grain helped (and alternatively didn't help) with the aftermath. God Willing & the Creek Don't Rise was brilliant, and Supernova was quite a bit of fun.

I don't quite know where Ouroboros fits there, but it feels like one of those albums that feels different, special. It's short - just 40 minutes or so but it's packed with a lot of material. There's some echoes of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon in the background, and probably some other influences that I haven't picked up yet.

What I found really interesting here is LaMontagne's reflection back on his older albums: he noted that he can't listen to Trouble without cringing:

I can’t even listen to Trouble because all I hear is a much younger me manhandling the process. I hear that on the first record, the second record, the third record. There are little moments that start to come through as the records progress, but mostly I just hear myself manhandling it. I’m trying too hard. I’m trying to shape the songs too much. I’m singing too hard. I’m pushing too hard. But when you’re just learning, that’s something you have to go through before you figure it out. I felt like with Supernova, when I listen to that album, all I hear is magic. I hear myself completely out of the way, just letting the songs dictate. They tell me what they want. I follow them. It’s their game.

You can certainly hear the learning curve, but he started at an already high point with Trouble - he started with a fairly conventional album, and with every followup, you can hear his music become more and more sophisticated.

Introducing The New England Garrison's Green Mountain Squad!

This is the good news of the day: the 501st Legion has approved its newest squad: the Green Mountain Squad, which will cover all of Vermont!

I've been a member of the 501st Legion since 2003, and for much of that time, I've been one of only a couple of members of the group in the entire state. Since that time, we've had recruits come and go, but it wasn't until last year that we started seeing new members: a lot of them. We started 2014 with just three approved members. By December 2015, we had fifteen, with another 15 people currently building something. If all goes well, we'll double our numbers by this time next year.

I'm extremely proud of the group of members that we've pulled together: the entire squad is an amazing community here in Vermont, and we've really worked to encourage a positive and supportive environment. The result is that the squad meets regularly for social gatherings, and people have formed some really close friendships with one another.

It's amazing to see this finally exist. It's been a dream for a long time.