The Dotted Logline

There’s an interesting article in today’s L.A. Times about the speculative fiction collection at UC Riverside. The Eaton collection is the largest library of science fiction, fantasy and horror books in the world, but was apparently considered a joke for most of its existence. It’s only in recent years, with science fiction and fantasy moving towards the mainstream, that the school has been willing to put actual money into the project.

I remember that disconnect very well. For the most part, genre works were igdnored in my undergrad and graduate courses (though you could occasionally get away with fantasy if you referred to it as “magical realism”.  And, of course, 1984 and Brave New World were simply “dystopian”.)  However, all genres were welcome in screenwriting, and I did take two fantastic science fiction literature classes.  The whole “we spit on this or make up a new name for it here, but it’s perfectly fine in the room across the hall” attitude was certainly trying at times.
I’m glad to see academia embracing science fiction and fantasy more and more… one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed speculative fiction is its ability to examine human issues in a new light or on a larger scale.  Plus, I’d totally love a doctorate in science fiction studies.

Last night was the LA screening for Can’t Stop The Serenity. This was only the third time I’ve seen Serenity, but it was definitely the best. The first time, opening day, was the same day I moved to LA, and I had been awake for well over 24 hours straight. The second time was at home on DVD, which always involves me multitasking, and thus “listening” more often then “watching.” This time I was really able to connect with it. And of course, being in a theater full of fans who laughed, cheered, and were deadly silent at the right points was as fun as always.

I ended up winning TWO raffle prizes… a SoCalBrowncoats postcard signed by Joss Whedon (sort of a random thing for him to sign, which I find amusing) and a Firefly soundtrack signed by the composer (his “signature” is print rather than cursive, which I also find a little amusing because all my handwriting is printed, though I do sign my name in cursive.) I think that autographs aren’t as cool when they aren’t personal/obtained in person (though the items I won do have some nice memories to go along with them.) There were two movie props and a pass to Flanvention II raffled off, as well as some smaller items.

Can’t Stop The Serenity is estimated to have raised over $38k so far for Equality Now, and many screenings haven’t submitted final totals yet. I’m still amazed by the whole thing. Can you imagine a better birthday present than a demonstration of how you have inspired so many people to try to make a positive difference in the world? Better than chocolate (but not by much.)

The Browncoats are quite a contrast to the Harry Potter fandom “biography” that a friend linked me to today. Quite a long read, but a really interesting look at what happens when a manipulative and apparently rather disturbed individual takes advantage of the volatility in a fandom, using it to propel herself the heights of popularity by creating a number of “sockpuppet” identities to both attack and support her in the various dramas she instigates over the course of several years.

Of course, the fact that any fandom would have subgroups that dislike or even despise each other based entirely on what “ships” each group favors disturbs me just a bit. I’ve never been a shipper myself (Bruce/Selina 4EVA!) because I am willing to accept almost any relationship that is well conceived and explained, canon or not. (Conversely, poorly justified relationships, canon or not, annoy me. Anakin/Padme anyone?) I don’t read a lot of fanfiction anymore (pretty much only fics that friends point out to me as “must reads”) but it always amused me to read fics with conflicting ships in a row.

So what’s the point of this rather long, rambling post? Simply put: as a writer, I would prefer to inspire people to join together and fight the good fight in the real world, rather than tear each other apart over an imaginary one.

With all the hullabaloo over National Geographic’s announcement of the finding and translation of the long lost Gospel of Judus, I decided to give it a read this morning. Unfortunately, between the fragmentation of the document and the esoteric language that is fairly alien to someone really only familiar with the canonical Bible books (the talk of enlightened aeons only made me think of Final Fantasy X), it didn’t really impart much. Except that Jesus liked to laugh.

But from a story analysis point of view, the public focus of this gospel (that Judus was actually very close to Jesus, and Jesus was the one who planned for the betrayal) isn’t really in conflict with the accepted Gospels. Because there is no clear statement of Judus’ motivation in the current Bible and his agonized reaction after the betrayal could easily be seen as that of a man mourning rather than a man overcome with guilt.

Actually, one of my first thoughts when I heard the National Geographic radio ad was of my post about Snape in Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. Of course, I’m also the one with a Harry Potter bookmark in my Bible.

I’ve caught myself using the word “frack” quite a bit as of late, that being the expletive of choice in the new Battlestar Galactica TV series. Seeing as how I’m the type of person who still apologizes to the parental units for including profanity in my writing even though they really don’t care, I’m glad that science fiction and fantasy exist to introduce us to new, interesting, and non-offensive (in our reality) curses. Calvin from L’Engle’s Time Quartet understood this too: in A Wind In The Door, his favorite new curse was fewmets (dragon crap) Personally, I find fewmets to be a bit awkward to say, but to each their own.

So Yahoo had a totally unsurprising article announcing that there will be another Harry Potter movie AND another Narnia movie. What was surprising was this throwaway sentence in the middle of the article:

“Rowling released the sixth book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, last July, while the seventh and final installment is expected by the end of the year.”

Of course, it’s probably completely wrong; I’m sure we would have at least heard a title by now if it were the case. Still, I wonder how many people reading the article caught that and how many of those went into a foaming frenzy.

One of the local Barnes & Noble stores has a capacity of seven hundred people. It was already full with a very, very long line outside when I arrived shortly after 11:00 PM for the midnight sale of HP:HBP. I really would have shown up a bit earlier if I’d thought there would be that many people there; it was very hot and the bugs were biting. There were store employees walking around selling water as though it were some sporting event. It was overpriced, but I was very tempted.

It was an evening of lines. A line to get a bracelet signifying that I had preordered. The very long line to get into the store itself. Waiting until the group was called that had my number in it to go get in line for the register (I was #329.) I have to say everything was pretty efficient… the books were all prebagged, and I was out of there by 1:00 AM. And all the freebie goodies were a nice touch, although most of mine will probably be hitting eBay very soon (those rubber bracelets are always way too big for me.)

As for the book itself? My thoughts below…

*SPOILERS*

And so Snape proves that he is the most loyal to Dumbledore of the entire Order. Because who else would have actually been able to kill Dumbledore, even at his own request? (Yes, Harry did forcefeed him that nasty potion in the cave, but I don’t think he would have been able to strike him down in cold blood like Snape did.) I doubt Snape will ever forgive Dumbledore for making him do that, but he did it nonetheless and insured that he is perfectly placed to assist the side of good (i.e. Harry) in the final battle. I only hope that in book 7 (EARLY in book 7), Dumbledore has some means of communicating to Harry that Snape was acting on his orders, or things are going to get very messy when they meet up.

I honestly think that this is the reason that Snape has hated Harry so much throughout the books. Because I believe that this plan was a failsafe set up before Harry even came to Hogwarts. If Snape had been able to prove that Harry was a complete waste of space as he tried to so many times, than he felt that Dumbledore would have known that he wasn’t up for the task of fighting Voldemort and Snape wouldn’t have had to go through Dumbledore’s plan. Conversely, he probably wishes Harry had been able to take care of the job before it came to this.

Actually, I had predicted before I read the book that Dumbledore was going to be in a situation where one of the good guys was going to have to kill him. My first guess was Snape, and my second was Harry, although Snape was much more likely because having to kill Dumbledore would have probably driven Harry completely mad. But it was still shocking. I had also predicted that Snape would be DADA prof, because otherwise Harry wouldn’t have had a class with him, but I was still surprised by that.

I do still want to smack the little boy who opened up his book to the end after purchasing it and screamed “Snape killed Dumbledore!” to the several hundred people waiting in line to buy it.

I finally read Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, and really enjoyed them. I did find the writing to be much better than Shadow Of The Hedgemon and was especially disappointed to learn just how much of Hedgemon was simply rehashing Ender’s Shadow. This only reinforced my belief that reading series out of order just shouldn’t be done. Though to be honest, I definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed Hedgemon as much if I had read it after the first two.

So I was in the Dollar Tree at the mall the other day because I needed an emergency hard writing surface and what did I stumble across but the sequel to the parallel novel to the book I’ve been meaning to read for quite a while. I’m loathe to read or watch pretty much anything out of order but hey, it was a dollar.

I really liked Shadow Of The Hedgemon and I’m not sure why. The whole book was really nothing more than people talking at each other. Of course, they were all brilliant people with fascinating thought processes. At any rate, I’ll be seeking out Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow now, though I feel like I already know most of what happens.

I’m not a fan of Anne Rice. I read Interview With A Vampire back in high school, and it wasn’t really my thing. Still, despite the fact she has become the scion of far too many goth/vamp wannabe kids, I’ve never had a real problem with her or her work.

I did however check out her controversial post on Amazon.com. A number of reviewers had really slammed her latest book, Blood Canticle, the final volume in The Vampire Chronicles. Her husband died during the writing of the novel so it’s understandable that the writing was not up to par with her previous work. However, rather than explaining the situation calmly or even writing a rational defense of the choices she made, she blasted back with an angry post that resulted in even MORE negative reviews, this time about her attitude more than her writing.

Most of these posts, including Rice’s, have now been removed from Amazon, but having had the chance to read her post, I have to say she didn’t do herself any favors. It wasn’t even the dangerously overflowing ego that upset a lot of other people: comments that she was above having an editor “butcher” her work and that the negative reviews were “slander”. It was the fact that her very long post was done as one huge block of text with no paragraph breaks, tons of missing punctuation, and erratic structure that jumped back and forth between subjects with absolutely no sort of organization. Not only did it invalidate her claim she doesn’t need an editor, it just helped fuel the belief that a lot of people seem to have that you don’t have put any effort into expressing yourself clearly online, because it’s “just” online. Because if a famous writer does it, it must be right.