The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon... Read More.
Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin
"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine
"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review
"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly
"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
There are issues about private industry vs. government, moon vs. Mars, each country for itself or in collaboration, etc., but these, I feel, pale in comparison with the real issue.
This week President Obama signed the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, a 3 year plan for NASA’s spending that also clarifies NASA priorities for the future. Here’s some additional information. The International Space Station is good through 2020, and there are plans for working with commercial interests to get to orbit. For deep space, NASA is going for asteroids and eventually Mars. Forget Constellation and the Moon.
New York Times science reporter Kenneth Chang is here in Wyoming a couple of days and spoke about it on campus. I got the chance to chat with him, but mostly talked about other things. I’m going to hit him up a bit more on his thoughts over dinner with a group of us from the department, but here’s something that has bugged me for years.
Space missions take years to come to frution, even decades. Political and economic cycles are shorter term, generally speaking, rarely if ever a decade.
Obama may be making the right move, but we’re close to 20 years since the elder President Bush pointed us back at the Moon, without us getting there, and now we are making a new plan.
To properly explore space, we need to make a plan we believe in, that really reflects our long-term goals, and stick to it, somehow maintaining the vision and budget over that span. I’m not against changing plans if showstoppers come up, or better opportunities arise, but we haven’t done this since the 1960s and Apollo.
Maybe commercial efforts and economics will wind up driving things. Tourism and space hotels get our foot established in orbit, with cheaper prices. Once in orbit, you’re most of the way to most attractive places to visit in the solar system. Maybe that’s ok. But as long as NASA is our main vehicle for space exploration and it’s government driven, I think we need a plan that we can stick to. I don’t know how to implement it. The American people seem more and more apathetic about space, and more and more politically crabby.
It came up in a post last week (and follow-up comments, thanks James Nicoll!) that E. O. Wilson thinks it would be a bad idea to colonize space, apparently because this is a “ruinously expensive” way to deal with overpopulation. The big space colony days were in the 1970s, after we’d landed men on the moon (yes, really, Margaret Atwood), and Paul Ehrlich and others were pushing the idea that population growth was going to lead to the collapse of civilization in just a few years. Like Malthus centuries before, Ehrlich’s predictions have failed to materialize due to a combination of economics, technology, and the use of contraceptives in the industrialized world (excepting maybe Catholics).
Anyway, overpopulation is one reason to colonize space, according to some in the past. And lets include both space colonies and colonies on other worlds like the Moon and Mars under the heading of colonizing space. Recently Stephen Hawking has urged the colonization of space to help insure the human race from extinction, in the event something bad happens to Earth (e.g., asteroid impact):
The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. [So], let’s hope we can avoid dropping the basket until we have spread the load.
Let me propose that we should go because it is there and we are a curious species that demands new frontiers. I’ll call this reason “the need to explore and learn to live in new environments.”
Let’s include reasons like escape as well. There are places to seek political or religious asylum in the world, but maybe this is still a valid reason.
Science? The far side of the moon is a great place to put future radio telescopes (as well as other kinds). How about looking for life on Mars or the moons of Jupiter, and studying those worlds long term?
Hearkening back to the cold war, maybe we should go in order to compete against each other. There may turn out to be economic boons, or just national pride on the line. Call this “fear someone else will do it and benefit.”
Speaking of economic boons, there has been talk of mining asteroids. Space hotels in low-Earth orbit may be able to make huge amounts of money down the line. How about the possibility of microgravity manufacturing of rare materials?
Maybe you have some reasons I can’t think of.
I think we should do it for a combination of several of the reasons above, whether or not it makes the best economic sense. I suspect people who visit my blog are biased, but maybe we shouldn’t colonize space. Maybe it’s a waste of money, lives, and more. I mean, most people in the world live close to the coasts here on Earth rather than in less hospitable places like the mountains of Wyoming…
So I just succumbed to one of those facebook memes:
Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen short stories (or novelettes or novellas) you’ve read that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what stories my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note.)
(in no particular order)
1. Sandkings by George R. R. Martin
2. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison
3. The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin
4. The Star by Arthur C. Clarke
5. Neutron Star by Larry Niven
6. Unaccompanied Sonata by Orson Scott Card
7. Feedback by Joe Haldeman
8. Dinosaur by Walter Jon Williams
9. Think Like a Dinosaur by James Patrick Kelly
10. Guts by Chuck Palaniuk
11. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
12. Peaches for Mad Molly by Steven Gould
13. Persistence of Vision by John Varley
14. Thor Meets Captain America by David Brin
15. Day Million by Frederick Pohl
Honorable mentions: Johnny Mnemonic by William Gibson, Into the Miranda Rift by G. David Nordley, Dying in Bangkok by Dan Simmons, All Summer in Day and A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, The Hole Man by Larry Niven, Light of Other Days by Bob Shaw, Of Mist, Grass, and Sand by Vonda McIntyre, The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth and Home is the Hangman by Roger Zelazy, Flowers of Aulit Prison by Nancy Kress, Marrow by Robert Reed, Dogfight by William Gibson and Michael Swanwick, Nightfall by Issac Asimov…Hmm, now that I’ve given it more than 15 minutes I might revise the list!
I don’t read short stories as often as novels. Most of my short story reading has been restricted to classic anthologies, Dozois’s Year’s Best Anthologies, Hartwell and Cramer’s hard science fiction anthologies, a few years in the 1990s when I did read Analog and Asimov’s regularly (and reviewed for Tangent sometimes). I focused primarily on science fiction, but let slip in a few stories like “Guts” I read in Playboy a few years back that disturbed me quite a bit at the time. Not too many stories by women writers on my list or honorable mentions, I see…hmmm….I like short stories by Octavia Butler, Connie Willis, Nancy Kress, and Vonda McIntyre, among others, but it seems they didn’t strike me as “most memorable,” and a lot of the newer women writers I like seem to write really high quality prose, stylish stuff, when frankly it’s idea that sticks with me best. I can’t second-guess my list — the stories on my list have really hung around in my brain, when hundreds of others have vanished.
What sticks with you best? What are some of your most memorable stories?
We’re going to treat astronomers as a subset of physicists here.
Sure, some do. A lot don’t.
One time I went camping with a group of guys I didn’t know too well. They came from a wide range of backgrounds, and a lot of them were Christians of various fundamentalist stripes. One of these guys asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was an astronomer. He immediately asked me, first thing, “You don’t believe in God, do you?” No, I don’t, I told him. There’s not nearly enough evidence to convince a scientist who uses his methodology in his every day life. I wouldn’t say I’m sure that some entity “God” as defined by someone somewhere doesn’t exist, but I don’t see any compelling evidence for anything resembling the deity offered up by any organized religion. They won’t offer evidence either, and claim you need something called “faith” that means, as far as I can tell, the willingness to believe in something just because other people tell you to. That’s crap. Faith is not a virtue in my experience.
I can understand someone staying in a church to keep their family happy, or to keep their social connections and social life stable. I can’t see anyone with intellectual integrity swallowing all the things associated with any organized religion. For example, the body and blood of Christ, as the Catholic Church asks their followers to do. Why not have a blood test following transubstantiation? “That’s a question you shouldn’t ask.”
There’s a follow-up question asking “What is your favorite astronomical feature?” in the video. I’d have to be a little cheeky and abstract, and say that it’s one I can’t identify. Nature can’t abhor a vacuum and I can’t abhor something I can’t identify and am fascinated by such a puzzle and have to solve it. If the question was “object” or “image” I might say something different, but “feature” is pretty generous. I’ll take the puzzle. “Heavenly object” will get a different kind of response…
One final point. Religious and spiritual people sometimes like to redefine “God” to mean whatever they like, the way Margaret Atwood redefines science fiction (and doesn’t even stick to her own definition). Einstein got caught up in this, using the term too often when he didn’t mean what most people conventionally mean, although he would admit to it unlike Atwood. I know some people who try to redefine the Big Bang as “God” so…whatever. Not a very useful conversation a lot of the time.
Intellectual Integrity is the Coin of the Realm of Science
September 27th, 2010
I try not to use this blog as a platform only to rant, but I do rant from time to time. Things do get me upset, and strong emotions (good are bad) are good starting places for meaningful writing. I have a strong sense of justice and fairness, so I never have a lack of things that make me mad around me in the news — there are plenty of things in life that aren’t fair. Not too many people disagree with me when I rant about injustice.
The other thing that really presses my buttons and makes me rant are smart people, or supposedly smart people, espousing intellectually bereft positions, usually because of some political or religious bias. Margaret Atwood’s insinuations about the moon landings was a recent example, and I’ve similarly taken to task Chris Mooney, Michael Crichton, Rocket Scientists, Orson Scitt Card, and many others. Sometimes I’m really mad, and sometimes I just want to point out some hyperbole that shouldn’t be taken too seriously or too broadly (sorry, Charlie!). I’ve explained my issue with “Stupid Smart People” before, but in light of some folks whining about my treatment of Atwood, I thought I’d explain where I’m coming from and why when I rant I rant so often on this topic.
Intellectual Integrity is the coin of the realm of science. I am a trained scientist. We are trained to sniff out inconsistency and logical falsehoods. We are expected to do so in our own work before sharing it. We are expected to be scrupulously honest. We are expected to be willing to provide tests of our ideas, and to tell someone how to prove we’re wrong if we’re wrong, and to accept the results with professionalism. In a professional context, we have the buffers of editors and referees to mediate our criticisms and how we accept being criticized. In the world of media, public opinion, blogs, and a public without this training, louder criticism doesn’t seem too inappropriate.
In short, I have a hard time abiding bullshit when I hear it, and it’s harder to abide when it’s coming from someone who I think should know better.
There are topics for which one opinion is as good as another, or at least for which there is no clear right answer. When it comes to science, there is often a right answer or at least clearly wrong answers. Some of the areas in which there is no meaningful intellectual debate include the moon landings, the basic physics of greenhouse gasses, evolution, the lack of documentation for miracles and other supernatural hoo-ha like resurrections and world-wide floods, some statements about what is “impossible,” etc.
In the earlier days of the internet I used to sometimes stay up late drinking and getting mad at Creationists and other anti-science types on various internet forums. I finally broke myself of that bad habit, but the same sort of things still get me upset, and if they’re coming from someone respectable with a reputation for being a smart person, they fester and I need to rant. I can let Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, the Pope, and other less-than-genius peddlers of their particular brand of snake oil off the hook. Most of the time. We all know what they’re going to say, and we know their motives for saying it, and we know those motives trump their integrity.
I know that not everyone in the world places such value on reason and intellectual integrity, but I do, therefore I rant. I wish more people cared about being right and being honest. I know plenty of other qualities are important, too, probably more important in life in the grand scheme of things, but everyone has their priorities. I hate intellectually bereft bullshit, and will call everyone on it, including myself when I realize I’ve been an idiot (and I have been on more than one occasion).
I’m idealizing a bit here, but not too much, I think. When a scientist makes too many mistakes and doesn’t correct them or acknowledge them, when a scientist can’t be trusted to have been wholly truthful in their description of their work, analysis, and conclusions, when a scientist is perceived to have lost their intellectual integrity, they have lost everything.
Apparently Margaret Atwood, the author of the Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake, doesn’t believe that men walked on the moon. Maybe it’s worse than that — she’s trying to hedge her bets because she’s a “smart” person who knows being skeptical about this is idiotic and doesn’t want to admit to herself that she’s an idiot:
So what is it that Ms. Atwood said?
“The question about the moon landing is why haven’t we been back?†she muses in the interview. “It was done in an age where computers were as big as a couple of rooms. If you even look at the [2001: A Space Odyssey], HAL the computer, and I think that movie came out in the late ’60s, HAL the computer is huge.
“We didn’t yet have microchips. So I just wonder, how did they do that? Why haven’t they done it again if it was so easy?â€
Ms. Lemire reasons, quite reasonably, that having been there and done that once, perhaps there was no need to go back.
“President Bush said we’re going back or words to that effect and then people calculated how long it would take or how much money it would cost to actually do that. It was a long time and a lot of money,†Ms. Atwood replies in the interview. “Just wondering.… just wondering about the belt of deadly radiation that people had to go through to get to the moon. And those strange shadows and why the flag rippled and a few things like that.â€
This was from a review a few years ago to a high school student. When asked more recently about this:
“It’s a running joke and also a running conspiracy theory that the moon shot took place in Sudbury. There’s another running joke that the Russian space stuff was filmed under the Moscow central subway station,†Ms. Atwood writes. “If you’re asking whether I believe either of these, on the whole, no, because too many people were involved — surely you couldn’t keep ALL of them from leaking. But the questions about the computer technology needed to do something this complex remain with us — what were they using, in those days before microchips? How heavy was it?â€
Keep in mind that the student who interviewed her does not believe she was joking at all.
So, she doesn’t really believe it was a hoax– except she’s still skeptical. Have some intellectual integrity, you idiot! Jesus Christ. She believes it really happened because so many people couldn’t be trusted not to let the cat out of the bag, except she also believe all the crap that the conspiracy folks are pushing about it. I hope Buzz Aldrin punches her in the face if she ever meets him. She’s the worst kind of stupid smart person.
To make my biases clear, I already thought she was an idiot because she’s one of those people who refuses to acknowledge she writes science fiction even though she writes science fiction. She’s an intellectual snob, and a very very lightweight one at that who has no concept of reality or intellectual consistency. Here, permit me to publicly sneer in her general direction. Whether or not you are a fan of her “literary works” I think it’s safe to say that her opinions about herself, her work, and the world in which she lives are difficult to respect. “Why haven’t they done it again if it was so easy?” She is not a rational, consistent thinker. Grrr.
An author friend of mine sent an email to a list I’m on:
I’m about to start teaching an Honors science and lit class and I have a whole bunch of various definitions of what science fiction is, but many of those are from academics or dead people (I have some who are still alive and currently writing also). But I wonder, those of you who are chest deep in actually writing, what are you definitions of science fiction?
Well, I also think consumers of science fiction probably have some good ideas about this.
I’m afraid mine comes down to “I know it when I see it” so I can call Star Wars fantasy, and forgive Star Trek or other softer science fiction that conveniently ignores the laws of physics from time to time (even while acknowledging “you canna change” them).
Unfortunately, stories that take place in the past, present, and future can be science fiction, or not. Stories on Earth, or in space, can be science fiction or not. Stories involving time travel, again, science fiction sometimes and sometimes fantasy. Stories with robots can be science fiction, or modern versions of the golem story, or fantasies about the nature of love, or any damn old thing.
There’s a school of thought that says that science fiction is just a label that marketers put on the spine of a book, regardless of what is inside, and that something I’d call science fiction gets put into a different section if the author is Stephen King, Michael Crichton, or Margaret Atwood.
I’ve posted about this before and have some links there to other discussions on the web. Definitions…so simple, so difficult.
Let me try to state my own personal definition of science fiction:
“Science fiction is a kind of story in which science or technology plays a central role, both in terms of plot and theme, and the science or technology elements are beyond our current knowledge or capabilities (without violating what we already know), permitting the exploration of novel ideas and the reaction of humanity to them.”
This definition will exclude some things others will call science fiction, such as some kinds of space opera, and stories where super science is present but takes a backseat.
Feel free to critique my definition and help me improve it, or suggest your own. I’ll forward the information to my friend.
One of my old, fairly innocuous posts has been climbing up the popularity lists: The Importance of Science in Our Lives. It’s just a link to an article online with a little commentary. I see on my statistics pages that a lot of people arrive using google searches of “Importance of Science.” I wonder if this is a common school assignment for students, e.g., “Write about the importance of science in the modern world” or some other similar variation, and then off they go to google to get their answers rather than thinking for themselves. Maybe that’s too cynical. Anyway, I have been intending to follow up with some more specific and simply worded reasons that science is important to not just me (e.g., my income), but to our civilization today.
Science is important because…
1. …we don’t have to take someone’s word for something, we can test their claims.
2. …horrible diseases can be cured, or prevented entirely, and it can still provide hope for those with as-yet-incurable diseases.
3. …people who love each other can talk to each other whenever they want no matter how far apart they are in the world, and can be together the next day.
4. …science can show us what has caused mass extinctions and point the way to preventing similar catastrophes in the future.
5. …science can make us feel big and special for understanding the age of the Earth, the nature of stars, and the size of the universe, even if those things dwarf us.
6. …science saves lives.
7. …it has helped us to no longer need to worry about personal survival as our top priority, giving us more time for love, laughter, singing, and dancing.
8. …whenever one problem is solved another two rear up to take its place, so the need for science will never go obsolete.
9. …science gives us superpowers, like looking across the universe, seeing atoms, flying across the Earth or to the moon, moving mountains, and harnessing the energy of the sun.
10. …science, in the long run, is the only reliable way to figure things out in a world that is so seldom fair and impartial.
Well, those are ten of mine. I could elaborate or further justify each of these, but for now I will leave these here to ferment some more. There’s a darker version of this list that would talk about guns, nuclear bombs, and more, but I’ll pass on that for now. Violence isn’t nice, but it surely is important.
Where is the Science Fiction Writer’s Promised Land?
August 30th, 2010
When I was in Manila last month, I was happy to be able to meet fellow speculative fiction writer and blogger Charles Tan. Something he said resonated with thoughts I’d had over the years. Basically it’s this idea: if writers are paid a certain amount per book that depends on the market and their audience size, without consideration for their local cost of living, why not maximize their effective income by living somewhere cheap?
The context of my conversation with Charles was the Philippines, where it’s possible to live very inexpensively if you desire. There are also countries where writers pay no taxes, I’m told (as well as other artists in general). And inside the United States, there are a lot of places to live that are a hell of a lot cheaper than New York or California, but I’m one of only 3 SFWA members in Wyoming, and other states with low cost of living are not overly represented in writing. I suppose I could do an analysis of a group like SFWA, state by state, or even city by city, and see if writers maybe are seeking out cheaper places to live, but I doubt it from taking a glance at the state-by-state listings.
So many cool writers seem to live in expensive places!
I have little doubt that some seek the big, expensive city life for culture and stimulation. And if you’re an English writer and want to interact with others who write in English, you’d be unlikely to move as other English-speaking countries are not that cheap either.
So, if you’re a full-time American writer who doesn’t want to give up too much but does want to maximize that paycheck, what is there to do?
(This is hypothetical for me, as I’m tied to my University job and it outpays the writing — significantly.)
There have been movements by political and religious types to create ideal communities before to maximize their power and make over areas into utopias of a sort. There’s a “Christian Exodus” moving into South Carolina, for instance. For liberals who don’t want to move to Canada, there are the bluest options here. I believe I’ve heard about New Hampshire being targeted specifically by liberals and/or atheists, but I can’t find anything with google at the moment to support that recollection (anyone?).
So, I wonder if there is an ideal place to target for science fiction writers?
How about states without state income tax: Alaska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Florida, South Dakota, Washington, Nevada, Texas, and Wyoming?
How about cost of living? The ten cheapest are Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nebraska, Georgia, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Alabama and Kansas. Cities within these states can vary quite a bit, however.
Probably want at least one decent university in town.
Home prices are also an issue.
Austin, Texas comes to mind as a good option based on the above information, but having lived in Austin I know it’s gotten crowded and expensive. A suburb of Austin, sufficiently far out, might be a good idea. Michael Moorcock and Elizabeth Moon are two writers in that situation, and Howard Waldrop, notorious for living on the cheap (once in an empty septic tank, I’m told), has lived in the Austin area.
Tennessee shows up on both state lists above. Maybe Nashville or Memphis? I don’t know of a concentration of SFWA writers there, however.
Maybe income tax and cost of living aren’t super critical, as long as you’re not in a place like California or New York where they are crazy high.
Someplace not too big, not too small, that is cheap to live, and ideally already has some core of professional writers in the area for critique groups, parties, and science fiction culture. I know a number of great writers in New Mexico, and it’s not too expensive. It’s a state that already hosts some great observatories including the VLA, national laboratories like Los Alamos, covering the science side. Heck, Roswell is there! That’s the state that comes first to mind. How about Albuquerque? Don’t take any wrong turns there, just stop and create a rich science fiction writing community.
Not much going on there? So what? You’re a writer. Get your ass in the chair and get back to work. Take a vacation somewhere exciting.
Well, I’m going to throw out a city near Austin, Texas or in New Mexico as my thoughts. There must be other great choices out there, so what are they? Inside the USA? Outside the USA?
Inspired by this list of the scariest foods (many of which I’ve eaten, including balot and rocky mountain oysters), I was thinking about scary science fiction foods like those live worms that the Klingons eat and decided to try to think of the really distinctive foods and drinks I’ve come across in science fiction. Not exactly the food of the future, but fun to think about, especially if you’re planning a science fiction-themed party. I’m not the first to think of it (here’s another webpage about food in science fiction and one from io9.com, and they also have one about science fiction drinks) but this will be my take on the memorable stuff.
There is an entire frakking wiki for the consumables of Star Trek. The Klingon living worm thing is called gagh. Duh, sounds like “gag” for good reason. For drink, my pick is Romulan Ale. I’ve made it for parties with this recipe: 1/3 Blue Curacao, 1/3 Barcadi 151, 1/3 Everclear. That’s 66% alcohol, and it will knock you on your ass. I bet you could use this website to create an entire Star Trek themed meal, or a decent facsimile thereof.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams has another classic drink: the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster.
The best drink in existence is the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. The effect of drinking one of these is rather like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon, wrapped around a large gold brick. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will tell you on which planets the best ones are brewed, how much you can expect to pay for one, and which voluntary organizations exist to help you recover afterwards.
Take the juice from one bottle of the Ol’ Janx Spirit (see page 15 of the actual Guide).
Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V — Oh, that Santraginean seawater, it says. Oh, those Santraginean fish!
Allow three cubes of Arcturan MegaGin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzene is lost).
Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble thrugh it, in memory of all those happy hikers who have died of pleasure in the marshes of Fallia.
Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint Extract, redolent of all the heady odors of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle, sweet and mystic.
Drop in the tooth of an Algolan Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolan suns deep into the heart of the drink.
There is also the Restaurant at the End of the Universe (sequel to Hitchhiker’s Guide). What’s on the menu? Meet the meat! Hilarious! Bonus points for you if you can ID the Dr. Who actor in the scene.
The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth featured a hiding place under “Chicken Little” — a giant piece of vat-grown chicken meat. That thing always stuck with me. It’s a classic novel of 1950s science fiction, and well worth tracking down.
I love the dinner scene in Galaxy Quest. Look about 3 minutes into this clip. What’s worse? Gagh or Kep-mok blood ticks?
Star Wars doesn’t have much world-building when it comes to food, at least not in the movies. I mean, you get Luke nibbling on meat on a stick, blue bantha milk. There are websites highlighting Star Wars themed food (e.g., cakes in the shape of yoda) or discusson threads on Star Wars forums.
As a kid, I watched the original V miniseries, and this scene stands out:
The aliens in District 9 prefer cat food:
There’s Soylent Green, of course. And Soylent Green is…ah, I won’t spoil it. If you don’t know, go watch the classic film immediately, ok?
In a similar vein, there’s the classic Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” based on the short story by Damon Knight. Forgive me, I’ve embedded a condensed version of the episode below:
I think that’s a classic one to end with. Other great examples I forgot or don’t know?
“There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday,” Dr Lamb told the annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
“Today’s superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he’s aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity.
“When not in superhero costume, these men, like Ironman, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns.
“The comic book heroes of the past did fight criminals, she said, “but these were heroes boys could look up to and learn from because outside of their costumes, they were real people with real problems and many vulnerabilities,” she said.
She’s a moron, plain and simple. It sure sounds like another case of, “Gee, things have gone to hell today compared to my generation when everything was better.” Including the superheroes apparently. You know how she did her research?
To understand how the media and marketing managers package masculinity to boys, Lamb surveyed 674 boys age 4 to 18, walked through malls and talked to sales clerks and came to understand what boys were reading and watching on television and at the movies.
She “walked through malls.” I don’t see her analyzing comic books or movies. I don’t see her actually doing any tests to see if boys exposed to current superhero movies change their behavior in negative ways compared to those that don’t. I call bullshit here. But I have a bigger bullshit to call later, again indicating that she’s not doing science, she’s projecting her own view about the world and how she doesn’t like some of the changes. Tough shit, lady.
She and her co-authors found that marketing managers take advantage of boys’ need to forge their identity in adolescence and sell them a narrow version of masculinity.
They can either be a “player” or a “slacker” – the guy who never even tries – to save face.
“In today’s media, superheroes and slackers are the only two options boys have,” said Dr Lamb. “Boys are told, if you can’t be a superhero, you can always be a slacker.
“Slackers are funny, but slackers are not what boys should strive to be; slackers don’t like school and they shirk responsibility.
“We wonder if the messages boys get about saving face through glorified slacking could be affecting their performance in school.”
WTF? Why is she going on about slackers now? Iron Man is a bad influence because he helps make boys into slackers? And I totally think she is creating a false dichotomy. Superhero or slacker. That’s it? Are you fucking kidding me??? It’s like Donnie Darko, but replacing the fear-love spectrum with a superhero-slacker spectrum. Right. And the idiot media apparently creamed their jeans to put her on tv with this nonsense. But let’s continue to the old fogey proof.
She said that original superheroes like Superman who was a reporter by day and the Green Lantern, who was a railroad engineer, were invented to fight for social justice and were a reaction to the rise of fascism.
But the new breed of superheroes only thought about themselves.
She said boys need to be taught from an early age to distance themselves from these images and encouraging them into finding the lies in the messages can help.
Yeah, she’s going back to the 1940s. Golden age Green Lantern, for instance.
This is basically a message that comic book movies are for boys only — no adult or females allowed — and that such movies should only have good wholesome messages approved by her and her ilk that are not “lies” like people act selfishly sometimes, guys like women, and use their money for big toys that go boom. Fuck her.
I had a girlfriend really upset when the Ralph Bakshi movie Cool World came out in the 1990s. It’s an adult-themed movie, but because there was animation (aka “cartoons”) the movie was for kids and had to be kid-friendly. Fuck her, too. We didn’t stay together.
Let’s take a look at things a little more carefully…it seems to me that the development of Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies was to move away from being a arms dealer and to use his wealth for the public good. Did she totally fucking miss that? YES. Because she’s a hack. A faker. A moron. And Iron Man, seems to me, has a drinking problem that he struggles with. Seems like a huge personal weakness to me.
And the movie superheroes of today…including Superman and Batman, and forthcoming is Captain America. Seems like the new superheroes are the same as the old superheroes designed to fight fascism!
And the ones with the big guns out for vengeance… The last Punisher movie I saw was rated R. If “boys” are seeing that it isn’t because it was targeted at them.
What I really hate is this false outrage designed to bring attention to further oneself. Politicians do it all the time, and some hack “scientists.”
What we’re seeing, if anything, is a wider range of superheroes today because they’re popular. And they’re not identical, so the more you have, the more you’ll have that don’t act like the boy scout known as Superman. Did she actually do any real analysis? Here’s what one smarter guy commented on fark.com:
I am taking “todays” superhero films to be 1990s and 2000s.
Today’s superhero films[1]:
1990: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Darkman, Captain America
1991: TMNT2, Rocketeer
1992: Batman Returns
1993: TMNT3
1994: Fantastic Four, The Shadow
1995: Batman Forever, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, Darkman 2
1996: The Phantom, Darkman 3
1997: Turbo, Batman & Robin, Spawn, Steel
1998: Blade
1999: Mystery Men
2000: X-Men, The Specials (which was awesome, by the way), Unbreakable
2002: Blade 2, Spider-Men
2003: Daredevil, X-Men 2, Hulk, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
2004: Hellboy, Punisher, Spider-Man 2, Catwoman, Blade 3
2005: Electra, Batman Begins, Fantastic Four, Sky High, V for Vendetta
2006: X-Men 3, Superman Returns, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Lightspeed, Zoom
2007: Ghost Rider, Spider-Man 3, FF: Silver Surfer (SHUT UP! I’m only including it to be thorough!), Underdog
2008: Superhero Movie, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Hancock, Hellboy 2, Dark Knight, Punisher: War Zone, The Spirit
2009: Watchmen, Wolverine
2010: Kick-Ass, Iron Man 2, Jonah Hex Total Number of films listed: 61
TFA’s list of undesirable patterns of behavior, and films from the list above that could arguably[2] be categorized into one or more of these patterns of behavior:
1. aggressive (assuming aggression beyond typical “right hook to the bad guy’s jaw” level of superhero violence)
2. sarcastic
3. rarely speak about the virtue of doing good for humanity
4. exploit women
5. flaunt bling
6. convey their manhood with high-powered guns
Films:
Darkman
Darkman 2
Darkman 3
Spawn
Blade
Mystery Men
The Specials
Blade 2
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Punisher
Blade 3
Electra
V for Vendetta
Ghost Rider
Iron Man
Hancock
Punisher: War Zone
The Spirit
Watchmen
Kick-Ass
Iron Man 2 Total Number of Undesirable Superhero Films: 21 (34.4%)
So, by my estimate, the number of films that portray superheros as sufficiently virtuous and/or altruistically-motivated is right around double the number of films that portray superheroes as insufficiently-virtuous.
I’d go a bit further. We shouldn’t include R-rated films which are targeted at older audiences. Take out Watchmen, Punisher, etc., and the statistics skew even more. Spider-man is about great power bringing responsibility, or maybe the Spider-man films don’t count. Fantastic Four? The human torch usually burned his bling, and Mr. Fantastic nearly sacrificed his relationship to do the right thing. Daredevil…Batman…yeah, I remember how they decided not to take vengeance in the end, or adopt bling, sarcasm, or playboy lifestyles except as cover.
Geez, WTF is this insane woman actually talking about? Is it about movies/tv? Which ones? Or is it about what comic book store managers told her? Because that’s totally scientific. Comic Book Guy is always right and reliable!
There are some good psychologists out there. I know a few, and have read some good research. This doesn’t belong in that category. This is Crap.
Bite me, Dr. Lamb. I’m being aggressive, but not sarcastic, ok? You’re a hack and should quietly retire before you have any more effect on the world that you already do. Everyone with a brain hates you, old fart. In your day Green Lantern’s “real personal problem” was wood. Seriously. That’s a good lesson for the boys. It won’t be much better with the new Green Lantern (yellow), but they’ll probably add on some kind of characterization so he’s more interesting than the pieces of wood you think boys should be watching and emulating. You don’t have a clue and should quit before all your peers realize it. Because now, with the media attention, they just might.
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