I saw District 9 by Neill Blomkamp yesterday, and I still can’t get the last frame out of my head.  That such an image could matter to me, that I would care at all, much less have it haunt me, is a testament to what science fiction can do.  There’s tons of pointless techno second guessing surrounding this film in the reviews I’ve read—how does the pooba work huh?  And why don’t they explain …  Thank you, Neill Blomkamp, for not explaining all the time.  SF doesn’t need any more di-lithium crystals.  There are the usual round of reviews saying it’s good and hence not really science fiction.  I can’t help those people.  One reviewer didn’t seem to think Blomkamp was aware this isn’t a happy ending.  No—I think he got that part.  And I’m still getting it.  I loved this film.

I’ve been having computer problems, a dead hard drive, so I haven’t been posting.  I can’t watch the health care “debate.”  So much concentrated ignorance overloads my despair circuits.  The current system works fine folks say.  Take my case:  Because I was diagnosed with cancer last year, Sarah and I married, and I got on her health insurance, so that when I had a heart attack, I was insured and was able to survive and not be bankrupt afterwards.  Without last year’s cancer and Sarah’s state job, I’d be toast today.  Now who says that isn’t good healthcare?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, including a science fiction short story writer of some renown.  I had to stop reading the collection, however, because of the ill-advised afterwords appended to each story.  Each one was a “poor me” whine reminding the reader of his unappreciated genius, following with a bit of crowing about how brilliant the story was.  I found them okay, but he’s pretty much a one-trick pony far as I can tell, and the whining just got on my nerves.  The marketplace has been hard on us all, buddy.

While working on a short story this morning, I thought of “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold.  It’s one of those poems that found its way into my personal anthology many years ago and has stayed there ever since.  I love many things about it.  This morning it’s the sounds.  Enjoy.

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

This was my first time at Readercon, and once I got over the geography-of-nowhere location, I enjoyed it.  I got to hang out with friends Jeff Ford, John Clute, Patrick O’Leary, and Elizabeth Hand (though since Liz was a guest of honor, her time was much in demand).  I heard some terrific readings—Patrick and Jeff’s, as well as Catherynne M. Valente and Theodora Goss, both excellent.  The real treat was finally getting to hear the brilliant Gene Wolfe read.  And what a nice fellow!  One small criticism of the proceedings—There are several venerable figures in the field in attendance, and occasionally they have a tendency to hold forth with opinions heard many times over.  This is usually not a problem except when younger, fresher voices are drowned out.  On the panel I was on, I think you could fairly clock the number of words spoken in direct proportion to the age of the participants.  The discussion rarely limped into the 21st century.  The smart young woman on the panel was cut off by the moderator mid sentence of her first response and was rarely heard from again.

One other little pet peeve of mine surfaced again, and at the risk of revealing I’m a cranky old fart, I’ll voice it:  The Door Bangers—they’re at every con.  Why, upon leaving or entering a session do people allow the clanky, heavy doors to bang behind them?  Are they so much in their own little worlds that they don’t figure out it might interrupt the reading or discussion going on?  It takes a second to tend to the door’s closing.  And convention facility designers:  Do the doors have to be so heavy and clanking?  Perhaps I’m only channeling my mother who was driven to distraction by the smack of the screen door during the long Texas summers as my brother and I ran in and out.  But then, we were only kids.

It certainly explained a lot to me when Republicans told the world that empathy for one person necessarily means prejudice toward another.  I’d always thought empathy simply meant the ability to understand the feelings of another, no matter who they were.  So that a judge, for example, might find it comes in handy to understand the feelings of the working poor, corporate sleeze balls, the cop on the beat, crack dealers, lying vice-presidents—all sorts of folks.  All the better to understand and weigh evidence if you have a sense of where people are coming from, even people who wouldn’t know empathy if it bit ’em on the ass.  I didn’t realize Republicans can’t do empathy in stereo, much less in surround sound.  Now I get it, guys.  Thanks for clearing that up.  It explains a lot.

From the love correspondence of Governor Mark Sanford:  “There are but 50 governors in my country and outside of the top spot, this is as high as you can go in the area I have invested the last 15 years of my life — my getting here came as no small measure because I had that foundation of love and support so critical to getting up in the morning and feeling you could give and risk because you already had a full tank of love in the emotional bank account.”

Kind of gives you a lump in your throat, don’t it?

Ever since Princess Leia saw her home planet get waxed by the Death Star, witnessing the demise of one’s home planet has become the gold standard of sci-fi suffering.  The new Star Trek gives us two destroyed planets.  Billions and billions of lives, but not to worry, their cultures are preserved, and would you check out those visuals?  The best Trek in TV and movies, it seems to me, always relied on heart (sometimes too much heart) and story.  The new Star Trek has neither.

The actors here are good.  Professionals armed with hours of material showing them who they’ll become, they deliver young Kirk, Spock et. al. quite convincingly, if mostly predictably.  The young Kirk was often painful to watch, but then so was Shatner.  Too campy and cutesy by half, no one could quite decide how seriously we were to take this nostalgic exercise.  Even so, if there’d been a story to care about, things might’ve gone well.

The story, however, is just plain dopey and dull and heartless.  The villain powering the plot is a misinformed idiot from the future, more to be pitied than feared if it weren’t for his big planetary drill and his red glob of black hole stuff.  The only way to save the planet is to sword fight without getting incinerated by the blasting flames.  (The game developer wrote this bit).  The villain’s ship and its interior is way spooky but must be a bitch to work in.  Looks like it was designed by an art director in collaboration with the fight director.  All in all, the future doesn’t seem very bright.  Or interesting.  Nice tattoos though.

This movie doesn’t care about the story; it’s an excuse to do what every dumb sf movie does:  Have pointless fights (fists, swords, whatever) and blow shit up.  And oh yeah, spawn sequels.  The cash cow is mooing again.  Expect more of the same II.

This is a real good and loud blow-shit-up movie with a big cheese ball (provided by Leonard Nimoy) in the middle.  Decent science fiction?  Not so much.  A thought in its head?  $$.  A big disappointment.  The previews for other crappola sf, all seeming to sport transformers and explosions, were supposed to make us grateful for the biggest, noisiest blockbuster of the summer.  Ugh.  If you want to watch decent science fiction these days, watch television.

We returned from a wonderful vacation in Italy late last Sunday night.  Next morning, I had a heart attack, spent a couple of days at St. Mary’s, a damn fine hospital.  I have three stents in two different arteries, and I feel better than I typically did before the procedure.  So.  Never a dull moment.  Having a heart attack has proven to be something of a hectic social event, delightful, but a bit exhausting.  I’ve told the tale too many times.  The essentials are these:  I almost died, but didn’t, and actually feel better as sort of a bonus prize.  I was going to put off this blog until I’d contacted everyone who needed contacting, and I gave up.  I’m doing great.  Life is wonderful.  Spread the rumor.

Now for a little bit of Italy.  This is my favorite from Milan.  Close up and in context:

No, I haven’t lost my mind.  Yet.  I don’t mean prez of the U.S. of A.  I mean of the Byrd Park Civic League.  That’s where I’ve been lately.  In the Presidential Zone.  It all began last October when the former president resigned because he was going to move.  He still hasn’t moved, but that’s another story.  Mine was the only name in nomination.  Why?  Because I’ve been going to these meetings every other month for forever, and they all know me as the guy who reads the weird stories at the Holiday Potluck every December.  Who wouldn’t want a guy who writes stories about sadistic angels and genetically modified reindeer to be their president?

I stumbled along more or less satisfactorily, given that this isn’t exactly saving the economy or keeping us out of war with Iran, when Spring shows up, the perennial Byrd Park cruising scene goes ballistic while we’re on a weekend camping trip, and my inbox is swamped in hysteria and outrage.  Two of my favorites.  Each year young people in tricked out cars with killer sound systems come from far and wide to gray the neighbors’ hair and create edgy gridlock.  The cops always act surprised, but eventually get their act together.

For me, this meant lots of emails (oh joy!) and conversations with police.  My years of working in donut shops gave me a great deal of experience in the latter.  So this blog has been hanging out in the backseat of my life along with several other matters, waiting for a lull in the mayhem.  Yesterday was Easter, so there wasn’t much going on.  Even cruisers have mamas who want them in church come Easter, or at least not drinking in the park.  We’re about to do a little traveling and will miss the next two Sundays.  But isn’t that what presidents do when the shit hits the fan?  Do a little foreign travel?  Maybe I can find the president of some neighborhood association in Bologna and drink to the peaceful resolution of all our neighbors’ woes.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Realms of Fantasy was slated to close leaving one of my stories, “Healing Benjamin,” in limbo.  Appropriately, since Benjamin is a cat with more than the allotted nine lives, the magazine has been resurrected and Benjamin too.  The details can be found here.  I double-checked all this with friend and editor Shawna McCarthy, and sure enough, Realms will continue with her as editor.  Things will be delayed a bit.  The next issue might be May or even later.  Stay tuned.