I say a bit less over there, but lie a bit more.  Or do I?  Either way, please do come and visit.

This blog will sleep on in its cryogenic tube.  Sleep tight, little blog. 

As a boy he had never dreamed of an age when there was no song left, but still some heart.

Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer

Victor LaValle, in conversation with Madeleine Monson-Rosen at Bookslut:

It has always seemed to me that realism attempts to describe what daily life looks like while the fantastic attempts to express what daily life feels like. Getting evicted from your home — I mean genuine court-ordered, City Marshal enforced eviction — can feel like an episode from a piece of Gothic fiction. The reportorial aspects of realism just aren’t going to capture the matter. I can’t fathom how only one type of writing — whether realism, the fantastic, romance, mystery, etc. — can ever summarize life on its own. Using all of it — within the same book, sometimes within the same sentence — seems like the only sensible way to try and capture the whole spectrum of human experience. Plus, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

I have The Devil in Silver waiting on my Kindle.  Looking forward to it.

So, Coursera.  I’ve been lurking in the back rows of a course on fantasy and science fiction literature for the last couple of weeks.  Or maybe I’ve been auditing?  It’s free, low-pressure, and pretty high quality.  The course instructor is Eric Rabkin at U Michigan, and the course runs from July 23 through Oct 1.  Texts run from Grimm Brothers through Ursula K. LeGuin, lectures are broken into bite-sized pieces on video.  You can join in anytime.

It’s funny, we pretty much give up on learning things once we graduate and get jobs.  Or at least, there’s no further cultural support for continuing to take classes unless they’re Crossfit or cooking. When really, taking classes is one of the most awesome things in the world.

I finished reading a book the other day and right before I plunged into the next one, I felt a moment of sadness that reading is such a dislocated, personal experience.  I mean, I like that it’s personal, I just wish that there were some widely-accepted forum in which grown-up people could continue to think and talk and generally better themselves in the brain region, after graduation and induction into a cubicle.  Because really, what is out there??  Book groups, I guess.  Yeah, that’s…hit or miss.  Sad.

Anyway, here are some things that are good for your brain and its peripheral devices:

• Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie’s short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck
• Coursera
• Barbara Demick’s nonfiction book about North Korea, Nothing to Envy
• Possibly followed by Adam Johnson’s novel The Orphan Master’s Son (not sure, still reading)
• Premium Rush, the movie
• Emma Donoghue’s recent story in One Story, “The Widow’s Cruse.”

Okay, actually, one of those things will probably not enhance your brain significantly.  But North Korea is very depressing, so.

We are headed for Lawless in the near future, since apparently it hits theaters tonight.  This is a movie that stars both the delightful Tom Hardy and the undelightful Shia Leboeuf.  If I were Matt Bondurant I’d be alternately laughing and crying bitter, bitter tears.

*  True fact.  You can ask childhood best friends about this.  Probably not an indication of great mental health.

Bob Ross reassures the weary writer. “Relax, let it flow. There are no limits here.”

**SOME SPOILERY DESCRIPTIONS**

Note:  Reading this without a physical copy or any background research, I wasn’t sure whether it was YA or adult.  Most books with teenaged protagonists are YA–and I think this one is too.  But I guess there’s a YA continuum, or I’m old and out of touch*, because there’s a lot of violence and cussing in here.  I guess in a world where PG-13 movies regularly have people getting blown to pieces, that’s just how it goes.  Anyway, Y/A or adult–does it matter?  A conversation for another day.

Quick summary:  Banyan is a 17-year-old boy who lives in a world where nothing grows but the GM corn of GenTech.  Banyan builds trees from scrap metal, a trade his father taught him before disappearing and leaving Banyan to fend for himself.  The book follows Banyan as he gets entangled in a search for the last living trees on earth.

Overall, this felt a little hurried to me.  The prose felt a bit flat, and while the plot hit its beats I could see many of the twists coming from a ways off.  At one point, where things were going from bad to worse, I checked the Kindle progress bar and…yup, we were at 66% exactly.  So, kudos for structuring the story so that it delivered on its promises, but no kudos for prose and characters that didn’t keep me engaged enough to forget what we were doing.

The spine of the book, it seems to me, is the creation and examination of a world in which corporate biotech has taken over all creation.  After twenty years of Darkness, the only crop that will grow is corn, and only GenTech is allowed to grow it.  Each kernel on an ear is stamped with the purple GenTech logo, and anyone caught planting or trading corn illegally is killed.

The scope of the world here is a little hard to grasp, in part because our narrator is only 17 and is busy trying to stay alive and save the world.  There’s not a lot of time for him to ponder questions like:  is the whole world in this shape?  Does GenTech own corn production in every country?  How do people breathe, if there are literally zero trees and no other plants besides corn?  What’s going on with the atmosphere?  Are pelagic algae making up for the loss of land-based plant life?  And if there are no plants, and no animals besides locusts, where is GenTech getting the raw materials to flavor its wide-distribution microwaved popcorn food?  Can a whole planet really survive on nothing but chemicals and corn?  How long could that possibly last?  And so on.

Howard does address some of the fallout issues of his treeless world.  The ocean has become a raging Surge, eating steadily away at any exposed land because there are no roots to secure the earth.  Some people suffer from a lung-crusting disease that makes it hard to breathe, but it’s unclear whether this is due to a change in the atmosphere, or chemicals used to grow the GM corn, or…?

I admit, while I was reading this book I found myself becoming more conscious of the trees in my life.  I’m lucky enough to live in a city with a lot of trees, right next to one of the largest wilderness parks in the nation.  I’m married to an architect who has schooled me on all the ways that trees improve our cities and our lives.  I’m definitely pro-tree, but Howard’s book still made me think a little differently about them, and feel a little more grateful for all that they do.  It also made me ponder how close we may be coming to a world in which genetically modified, proprietary plants start to crowd out their wild, independent cousins.  That…would not be a good world.

The final third of the book feels a little formulaic to me, complete with family revelations and a Hollywood-style uprising of the masses.  I have <a href=”http://munrovian.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/in-time-vs-blade-runner-hideously-uneven-cage-match/”>taken issue before</a> with the trope of the easily-accomplished revolution, and I take issue with it here.  I don’t really understand why storytellers feel like they should do this.  The idea that a huge (multinational?), entrenched, heavily resourced organization could be toppled by a few scrappy upstarts willing to risk it all…to me this feels tired and implausible.  Some readers may find it satisfying, since it treads a familiar path.  For myself, I would have been more interested in less hype and more depth.  Howard has another book already in the pipeline, so maybe next time?

* I am definitely both of these things.

The ALA Library Information Technology Association and Tor Books hosted another science fiction and fantasy author talk at ALA this year.  I have to say, this is a pretty awesome public service these folks are doing.  If you wanted to see GRRM talk in Portland, you’d pay at least $26 for a ticket to the Aladdin, and you still wouldn’t get in.  (If Literary Arts unbent a little, maybe you could pay $75 to see him at the Schnitzer…and still not get in.)  Getting to see these great folks talk for free, in a venue big enough to accommodate just about everyone, is pretty awesome.

It’s never very useful to summarize these things, except maybe for the broad strokes.  (That’s why we go to them in person.)  In very broad strokes, all three speakers touched on the ability of fantasy and science fiction to empower its readers, both literally and metaphorically.

Blake Charlton is funny, energetic, and knows how to keep a talk moving and an audience happy. He fell in love with fantasy literature because it was the “literature of ability”–as a dyslexic kid who grew up thinking he was stupid, fantasy helped him dream of being powerful.  And now he’s a Yale graduate, Stanford medical student, and author of two fantasy novels, Spellbound and Spellwright.  So, yeah.

Lois McMaster Bujold, who should probably be Dame McMaster Bujold by now, talked about getting letters from people who told her that her books helped them through bad times, and how moving that could be.  During the question period, someone asked her about Miles Vorkosigan, the hero of her Vorkosigan Saga books.  Miles has congenital physical handicaps, including brittle bones, a spinal deformity, and dwarfism. Did McMaster Bujold have any trouble publishing a book about a disabled hero?  Sounds like no.  How and why did McMaster Bujold choose such an unlikely character for a hero?  Sounds like he walked on stage that way.  In other words, sounds like Miles is a pretty awesome, compelling character (I haven’t read any of those books yet–but will look them up now.)

George R.R. Martin, in his trademark cap and suspenders, talked about growing up poor in the small town of Bayonne on the New Jersey waterfront.  The family had so little money that they could only afford to take the excursion ferry to Rockaway Beach NY once a year–when the Democrats sponsored a free day.  (The Republicans sponsored a sailing too, Martin said, but it cost money.  Make of that what you will.)

Martin mentioned that his mother’s family had once had money in their small town.  Their home in the projects was only a few blocks from old family seat, now sold off and housing a new family.  He described regularly walking past that old house, which was dredged in bittersweet family memories.  Early origins for his  themes of lost greatness and faded glory.

Martin stumbled over fantasy literature in thirty-five-cent pulp paperbacks, slowly acquiring enough to fill up the tiny shelf in the headboard of his bed.  He recalled surveying his book collection in a lordly fashion.  (“Eight books!  I have eight books!  Eight of them!  There they are!”)  Recently, he built an addition to his house to hold his expanding library, he said–and it’s already full.  Librarians everywhere relate.

There was an obligatory question about when his next book will be out (“Every time someone asks him that, he kills a Stark.”) and another about when he’ll write a gay character who isn’t punished horribly (“When will I write any character who isn’t punished horribly?”)  And then, amazingly, it was time to pack up and go.

Big thanks to Tor and Baen Books, who gave away several hundred books to attendees.  I had the chance to talk to Baen’s Senior Editor Jim Minz shortly after the panel, and he was a super-smart, friendly guy.  Baen offers about 100 of their books for free online, and when I (sort of stupidly) asked him how they can do that, he laughed and said basically, “It’s great for sales.  Dummy.”  Except he didn’t say the “dummy” part.

Thanks for the great session, Tor, Baen, and LITA!  And thanks to the panelists, who were all kinds of awesome.

Do you know how hard it is to find a picture of anyone from Game of Thrones SMILING?

ETA:  Thanks to Jim Minz for setting me straight on a few key points, including his name.  Mea culpa!!

Image source.

Thanks to Paul Martone and Erin Hoover of Late Night Library for making it happen.  And to The Rumpus for signal-boosting.  And to Roxane for making the time in her busy life.

If you don’t already read Roxane’s blog, I highly recommend hopping over and checking it out.  She’s hilarious and wise and witty and kind.  All rolled into one.

I think the practice of reviewing movies when they’re released is overrated.  I prefer to review them when they’ve been out for at least a few months, or until I order the DVD off Amazon, wait ten days for sketch3selr_nyc@yahoo.com to send it, then lie nearly comatose on the couch for two hours at the end of a long day, watching the moving pictures through my eyelashes.  I find that opens up new depths of insight that are lacking in some of your more “timely” reviews.

Anyway, we actually saw Hanna when it came out in theaters last year–I caught the trailer online and started emitting high-pitched dolphin noises, which didn’t stop until my butt was in the velveteen chair.  If you don’t already know, it’s an action/thriller/coming-of-age movie about a kick-ass sixteen-year-old girl.  Yeah, that’s a crowded genre, I know.  It stars the unearthly Saoirse Ronan, and–in a particularly vulpine turn–Cate Blanchett.  It involves guns, neck-breakings, feats of agility, the fatal underestimation of teenaged girls, and Eric Bana.  Basically, it was made for me.  Thanks, Joe Wright!

Here are some of the things I love about this movie:

1.  It’s about a girl.

2.  It’s about a girl versus a woman.  Both of them are smart and ruthless and powerful.  Neither of them wears skimpy outfits, or anything made of leather, or poses with their mouths open.  Neither of them smiles appeasingly, or flirts, or pretends to be stupid or incompetent as part of any ruse.  Neither of them is out to please the world at the expense of her own interests.  Neither of them takes prisoners.

3.  Again, please note: this is a narrative in which the two main characters are female.  Let’s just sit for a moment and count all the movies we’ve seen that can say that.  Or all the movies we’ve seen that can pass the Bechdel Test.  Which this does.

4.  OK, spoiler:  Hanna was (unbeknownst to her) genetically manipulated to be faster, stronger, more fearless, and mentally sharper than most people.  This is good for the story, because it means that she really can kick ass, can beat the snot out of soldiers and mercenaries, and it makes sense within the bounds of the narrative.  It’s not just girl-power fantasy.

5.  There are lots of scenes of running.  I love running scenes.  Run, Hanna, run!!

6.  Hanna’s dad has layers–we start the movie seeing him as a monosyllabic, humorless, wax-on wax-off Eagle Scout leader.  And okay, he never really gets a sense of humor.  But he loves Hanna hugely, has sacrificed everything for her, and tried to protect and care for her, in his slightly autistic way.  Also, when he’s pissed off he does this:

7.  I think one of the sequences was filmed in the same brutalist-modern building where Aeon Flux was filmed.  Beloved wife tells me it’s a crematorium in Berlin.  Just FYI.

8.  There is no obligatory heterosexual romance.  Hanna’s on the run, racing to meet her father in a world she’s never seen before.  She’s too busy dodging thugs and figuring out remote controls to fall in love.  She does get dragged on a double-date by her impromptu friend, Sophie, and she seems intrigued by her hilarious earring-wearing French swain.  But he drops out of the picture right away, and it’s clear that the real relationship is between Hanna and Sophie.  (It’s Sophie who gets Hanna’s first kiss.)

9.  Sophie is awesome.  She’s at that awkward age: hateful to her parents, full of bravado, petulant, impatient, sweet and curious and totally terrified when she stumbles into a fight scene in which Hanna kicks the living shit out of a couple of skinheads.  She literally saves Hanna’s life, by befriending her in the middle of nowhere.

10.  Hanna kicks the living shit out of a couple of skinheads.

11.  Marissa Wiegler, the villain of the film, isn’t made of stone.  She’s done horrible things and she aims to do more, and when she’s in control she’s pretty despicable.  But when she’s out of her comfort zone–nerving herself up to shoot at Erik Heller’s car in the flashback scenes, or trapped in a shootout with him in the present day–she sweats and freezes like anyone else.  She’s the big bad wolf in the fairy tale, but we also get to see her obsessively cleaning her teeth until her gums bleed.  Layers.

12.  Chemical Brothers soundtrack.

13.  Beautiful cinematography.  Beautiful lighting, charismatic actors, interesting sets, good wardrobe.  It’s a lovely, rich movie to watch.

14.  The locations–Germany, Morocco, Finland–etc. are all pretty much genuine.  The creepy amusement park finale was filmed in an actual (creepy) European amusement park.  The Finnish scenes were filmed in subzero Finland.  Hopefully, no actual reindeer were harmed in the filming.

15.  Oh my God, I just found out that the super-creepy thug named Isaacs, who pursues Hanna for Marissa Wiegler, is Tom Hollander.  Tom Hollander?  Played hapless MP Simon Foster in In the Loop.  I mean, look at this insanity:

SAME GUY.

16.  None of these folks (except Bana, I guess) are known for making action movies, and there isn’t a huge demand for character-based, stylish, internationally-set action flicks starring teenage girls with dreadlocks and superpowers.  So this movie must have been a risk.  But it made money, according to its Wikipedia entry, which means enough people saw that setup and liked it enough to pay twenty bucks for it.

That’s hopeful, I think.  For those of us who like a little variety in our action fare, for those of us who’d like to chip away at the marketing stereotypes, maybe just make a few little scratches in the notion that all the ladies must wear tank tops in their supporting roles.  It’s not impossible, apparently.  Yay?