There's More to Life than Politics, I Guess

For just a moment, I want to touch on what a really great time it is for sf/fantasy in my book. I mean, I think Wonder Woman was one of the best blockbuster movies this year, and am completely happy about the potential of the coming sequel and pretty jazzed about the Justice League trailer. I'm going to preface this with a brief disquisition that will probably make your eyes glaze over if you come here strictly for the politics stuff and maybe even if, like me, you are a geek. 

I liked Batman Vs. Superman. There, I said it. Furthermore, I think Affleck as Batman is actually, among other things, what an Affleck might even be good for. He physically is Bruce Wayne/Batman-sized. He somehow inhabits Bats' obsessions and trauma vs. privileged intersections. I think the Christ-symbolism with Cavill's Superman was kind of heavy, but the addition of Wonder Woman, and the later good, solid, origin-story Wonder Woman tale, and the way both establish that meta-humans are now part of reality, were not bad--just possibly waiting for something like JL to break out the way Marvel's Avengers did. (I like Justice League just because--they were my playground pantheon.)

Speaking of Avengers--I've got a lot of love for Thor: Ragnarok. So, how would we make a Thor movie good for me--okay, be a Thor Movie, have Loki and maybe another character like the Hulk. Greeeeeaaaat. How would I make that better ? Okay, Cate Blanchet is the baddie and there's Jeff Goldblum.  And now I'm so...take my money!

Also excited for Black Panther! (Okay, what the Marvel films are doing is basically creating a thing where I just need to give them my money. How they have not realized that a Black Widow movie is the best way to make feminists give up the ducats is not a thing I totally understand, but I get that they are having a major creative arc--this is how they made me buy all the comic books in the 90's. I both still feel like the biggest mark and enjoy the sheer world-building escapism. But going with Black Panther's world is also a challenge they want to live up to. )

We Have Always Been At War with Barsoom

Pence: "We will put American boots on the face of Mars" https://t.co/bADqoanYL6 pic.twitter.com/NJ1kt4oJuz

— The Hill (@thehill) July 7, 2017

Leave it to Mike Pence to phrase a Mars-shot in a way that my brain insists on taking in the worst possible way (space totalitarianism is an American boot, stamping on the face of Mars, forever). I just don't see the Trump Administration as being the greatest fans of science or education in the first place, and I don't really trust their long-range planning skills to marshal such a scheme into fruition. Also, there might be plans to create a military branch--for space.

I've joked before about this Trump timeline not being the one I belong to. In the timeline I'd prefer, humans as a species would approach space as a non-political opportunity for exploration and cooperation in branching out off the homeworld into something less tribal, trivial and political, and face the real challenges of being not just global citizens, but solar system citizens. While it sounds like such a military branch would have a defensive mission guarding our orbiting assets, I'd worry about "mission creep". Trumpists have enough issues with earth "aliens" entering the US--I don't know if this is the leadership I'd want for a first encounter situation.

But I'm just being speculative. There are lots of reasons why I treat the Trump Administration as if it was populated by hordes of six-limbed belligerent green giants, and I was Princess Dejah Sore-Ass.

Rest in the Force

Carrie Fisher, one unbelievably witty, talented, and truly genuine person, is dead at age 60. It seems cruel that she was stricken with her cardiac event four days ago, and was hospitalized and even in stable condition before she had passed, giving her fans hope that she would rally. But that didn't happen--I only hope that she was able to know the outpouring of well-wishes people had for her before she was gone.

Best known for her role as Princess (later, General) Leia Organa, leader of the rebellion against the Dark Side-led Empire in George Lucas' cinematic epic Star Wars series, she sort of was one of my feminist heroes. She portrayed a tough, sarcastic, brave Princess who didn't always need saving--and it was great to know that the actress behind that great character was a bit like that, too. Feisty. Honest. And a fighter for a cause. Her openness about her mental health and addiction behavior helped to lessen the stigma of those conditions. She was keenly aware that she wasn't perfect in a culture that tries to fake perfection, and she was knowing, wise, and humorous about it in her writing.

Star Wars was the first film I saw in a theater, and is pretty much a touchstone for many in my generation. (It still seems a little shocking to me when I come across a forty or thirty-something who has somehow not seen any Star Wars movies. How?) I think, over the arc of that series of movies, Leia seems to be as fully-realized as a character gets--and it is in no small part because Fisher herself deeply understood how scene writing and dialogue worked (and was well known as a script doctor giving often uncredited assistance to so many projects).

It's probably purely selfish of me that I'm relieved she had finished shooting for Star Wars Episode VIII, but feel so deprived, not just for myself but all her fans, of all the interesting things she still would have had in her. Her portrayal of the older, sadder, but wise General Organa showed that (despite some of the jackassery people had to say about the weird fact that actresses actually age) the character, and the actress, had not so much aged as ripened. How I wish she had more time with us.

I don't have any ideas about what the cosmos contains, but sort of want to think she is with the Force.

Paolo Bacigalupi and the Coywolv

I had to read The Drowned Cities because I loved The Windup Girl. The future that Bacigalupi creates makes utter sense within the context of global climate change. I've never felt, when reading science fiction, such a sense that I was reading something very akin to what our future would be like. I loved The Windup Girl in part for the same reason I love The Drowned Cities: the made girl, and the half-man, are human-created artifacts that might actually survive our deep human foolishness. We are shortsighted and emotional and do stupid shit, but humans adapt, and we also create tech that adapts--a dubious gift, but a gift nonetheless.

The coywolv, a species existing in the spec-fic future of The Drowned Cities, is potentially happening just now. Just as a similar landscape is taking place.

I'm basically saying read all his stuff because he gets what the future looks like because I really think he is looking at the world we live in right now. And his vision of the future should give you all the pause you ever wanted.

I've updated Strangely Random Stuff with two book reviews--

Right here.

And I'm downloading China Mieville's Railsea as we speak. And I think I might see a reviewable movie or two this weekend. So it looks like Strangely Random Stuff reviews is possibly back in business.