Zero Summer

I am moving (today) into a new townhouse that is awesomely close to my work, awesomely close to church, awesomely close to a gorgeous lake and public library, and full of awesome roommates. However, slightly less awesomely, we don't have internet there yet. So I shall see you when I see you.

So, I have sworn to myself that, as a voting member of WorldCon, I must read all the Hugo nominees in time to cast my ballot. As of last night I have completed two of them, which means I am now only monstrously behind instead of insanely behind.

Rollback was the first one I read, and I enjoyed it a good deal: it's one of those books that you slurp up in a few hours like a smoothie. I wanted to love it, because about 1/4 of it was characters having discussions about morality, and seriously, I could read that kind of thing ALL DAY. The problem was, all the characters worked from the unquestioned premise that morality was simply an evolutionary strategy, which in my opinion made the discussions a whole lot less complex and interesting than they could be. Dude, what is the point of discussing morality if you're not going to bring in Platonic archetypes at least?

About the characters, I have only this to say: ( spoilery observations on feminine psychology )

Next I read The Last Colony, which on the whole was a lot of fun. It actually stirred in me nostalgic memories of Timothy Zahn's Spinneret, which I read as a teenager. They're both about small, struggling Earth colonies that become focal points in galatic politics, but Spinneret is about creating a colony, deciphering mysterious alien technology, and sticking it to the United Nations, while Last Colony is about building a colony, deciphering mysterious alien organizations, and sticking it to the Colonial Defense Force that rules all of human space.

My main problem with Last Colony is that it was far too short, and I don't mean that in an "I wanted more!" way, I mean that in a "SLOW DOWN PLEASE, MR. SCALZI!" sort of way. It seemed that the characters would discover a problem, and then five pages later someone would get an idea, and then the book would jump straight to the characters triumphantly implementing their idea. It made for a fast-paced read, but at times I felt like I was reading an outline of a story, when I really wanted to be living vicariously through the characters.

On the bright side, the main character's wife got to show off her super-mega-warrior skills, and that was pretty awesome. She was my favorite.

(In all honesty, I think I enjoyed Spinneret more. But that may have been because I read it when I was thirteen, which we all know is the golden age of science fiction.)

(Now that I think about it, I remember that as much as I enjoyed Spinneret, I was tremendously shocked when I first read it because someone said "damn" every few pages. Oh, my poor lost innocence.)

First of all Eustace has been cast! He will be played by Will Poulter, whom I haven't seen in anything, so I have no idea how good he will be. But, going by the picture in the NarniaWeb article, at least he looks the part.

Sci Fi Catholic has an interesting and thoughtful post on what he calls Sheldonism: the tendency of some Christian authors to assume that unless a book is wholly devoted to explicitly promoting Christianity, it is (a) not really Christian, and (b) not worth writing. His example is the 1896 novel In His Steps by Charles Sheldon, who apparently coined the phrase "What Would Jesus Do?" (Bet you didn't know it was that old.)

Jen at Et Tu? has a hilarious post on hospitality in the house of scorpions. (I personally dread the day when I shall be a wife and mother whose children expect her to defend them from the insect world, because I go into hysterics when flies get too close to me.)

Why is it that webcomics continue to sum up my life?

So I'm sitting in Tully's by the window, and there were two sparrows hopping around outside, one of them a little smaller and the other, and the little one would flutter its wings like a hummingbird while the big one put crumbs in its mouth.

AHHHHHH CUTE.

Shockingly, many problems with pacing can be fixed by cutting out boring scenes where nothing happens.

Who knew?

If any of you were thinking of going to see M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening?

DON'T.

On the other hand, Enchanted = awesome, and I am totally voting for it to win the Hugo.

Sometimes it's good to remember that, no matter what your day was like, it was probably better than this:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Scuba divers swept away in strong currents survived 12 hours in shark-infested waters before scrambling onto a remote Indonesian island where they faced yet another threat: a Komodo dragon.

The divers — three from Britain and one each from France and Sweden — came face-to-face with the giant, carnivorous lizard on Rinca's palm-fringed beach, and fought it off by pelting it with rocks and pieces of wood, Pariman, a port official said Sunday.

. . . The divers encountered treacherous currents after plunging from their wooden boat off Tatawa island on Thursday afternoon. They drifted 20 miles from their dive site before swimming to Rinca, their last chance to avoid being swept into the open ocean.

"We struggled against the current for several hours, but eventually stopped," Laurent Pinel, 31, of France, told The Sunday Times of London. The group tied their diving vests together to preserve energy, he said. Once on the island, they scraped mussels from the rocks for food, he said.

The divers ran into the Komodo dragon on Friday afternoon. The next day, rescuers aboard one of 30 boats searching the waters spotted them waving frantically on the shore and took them to Flores island for medical treatment. [Source]

(Peter Kreeft quotes this in one of his podcasts, and for the sake of this quote I have only listened to it about five times in the last two days.)

"That Dust itself which is scattered so rare in Heaven, whereof all worlds, and the bodies that are not worlds, are made, is at the centre. It waits not till created eyes have seen it or hands handled it, to be in itself a strength and splendour of Maleldil. Only the least part of it has served, or ever shall, a beast, a man, or a god. But always, and beyond all distances, before they came and after they are gone and where they never come, it is what it is and utters the Heart of the Holy One with its own voice. It is farthest from Him of all things, for it has no life, nor sense, nor reason; it is nearest to Him of all things for without intervening soul, as sparks fly out of fire, He utters in each grain of it the unmixed image of His energy. Each grain, if it spoke, would say, I am at the centre; for me all things were made. Let no mouth open to gainsay it. Blessed be He!"

--C. S. Lewis, Perelandra

This just went up on NarniaWeb:

SciFi has posted a video of the red carpet at the Prince Caspian premiere in New York.

Douglas Gresham says: "We still have five books to do. I'm working right now on pre-production on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I'm already starting discussions on The Silver Chair. And we're just toying with the idea of doing The Horse and His Boy after that. So we are thinking ahead." This would be consistant with the original published order: The Silver Chair was published in 1953, and The Horse and His Boy in 1954.

Silver Chair and Horse and His Boy are the two most movie-ready Narnia books, so seeing them get adapted would be fantastic. (Jill! Eustace! Puddleglum! ARAVIS!) And by the time they're done with Dawn Treader and Silver Chair, the actors who did the Pevensies will be old enough to play their grown-up selves. (Really all they need is for Susan to look old enough to marry, and she could practically manage that already.)

Plus, Silver Chair and Horse and His Boy don't use any of the same actors, so they could (theoretically) be filmed at the same time . . . as could Magician's Nephew . . . and then they could release them over eighteen months for a Narnian triple-whammy . . . okay, that wouldn't happen, but I can dream, right?

I have lots of stuff to get done and not nearly enough time, so what do I do? Make Narnia-themed icons, of course. So that I can pretend I'm doing a public service, I present them to the internet. Screencaps are from NarniaWeb and here.


( 31 icons behind the cut! Yes, I have no life! )

(Posting a day late, but hopefully better than never--)

"Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires."

--J. R. R. Tolkien, in a letter to one of his sons

(1) topayz4 has finished putting together a fantastic site of information about the Viable Paradise writing workshop. If you're at all interested in VP--which I would highly recommend to anyone interested in writing SF/F--then check out The Viable Paradise Index.

(2) DarwinCatholic, having gone to see Prince Caspian, has a great little post up about the problem with those vast, wind-swept vistas so popular in fantasy movies today. Something that writers as well as moviemakers would probably to well to keep in mind . . .

(3) A vague memory of this image floated into my head the other day, and I could not rest until I had googled it out of obscurity. Since the internet is for sharing, I give you . . .



. . . the Mano Poderosa, the "Most Powerful Hand" of God. The people standing on the fingers are St. Joachim, St. Anne, St. Joseph, and the Virgin Mary; the Child Jesus is on the thumb. The University of Dayton International Marian Research Institute website has this to say about it.

This image, the Mano Poderosa is quite popular throughout Mexico, and is often sold on holy cards and votive candles. The meaning of the hand may derive from ancient times as a sign of magical protection and benediction. Historian Carla Wisch explains, "Within popular Catholicism, the Omnipotent Hand symbolizes the all-powerful hand of Christ. With its stigmata, the severed hand evokes the image of Jesus' hand nailed to the Cross. It most likely evolved from pre-Christian pagan rituals that prophesied the coming of Christ. In Europe it was known as the "Anna Hand," for St. Anne, and was used as a mnemonic device to help the faithful recall the order of prayers and confessions." [Source]

I first encountered the picture in Los Angeles, where the supermarkets always had the candles in glass jars with pictures on the front; this was one of the more popular designs.

On Saturday, Megan the Roommate and I went to see Prince Caspian. As the credits rolled, this is how our conversation went:

ME: I love Caspian. I am going to kidnap him and marry him.
MEGAN: Except he's probably not Catholic--
ME: (about to explain how Aslan = Jesus and Caspian loves Aslan, and since Narnia never had a Protestant Reformation it's all PERFECTLY COOL so long as we also kidnap a priest to marry us)
MEGAN: --or real.
ME: Oh. That.

But you want to know about the movie, not my reality-challenged matrimonial plans. Quick verdict: as a film, quite good, albeit with a few flaws. As an adaptation . . . some good bits, but some major flaws. And I cannot wait to see it again.

In the meantime, though, there's nitpicking and analysis. At nauseating length, and no particular order.

( Forward the analysis! )

( Caspian )

( Peter )

( Susan )

( Edmund )

( Lucy )

( The Changes )

( The Bad Stuff )

( Son of Even More Analysis! )

To sum up:

There are a lot of flaws in this movie. There are also a lot of strengths. But what ultimately makes it work for me (aside from Caspian's lovely, lovely face--okay, I will shut up now) is the same thing as the last movie: it's really good at being a visual, emotional representation of the story. Narnia is a dazzling, jewel-colored country; Cair Paravel is a crumbling ruin; the Pevensies have become rough, ancient drawings on the walls of a cave. The Narnians are fugitives and myths, the Telmarines are builders of machines, and Aslan is terrifyingly absent and the subject of doubt until he returns. (And how much do I love that when Lucy finally sees Aslan, he doesn't speak, but roars and leaps upon the Telmarine? He's not a tame lion.)

So, yes. I love this movie quite a bit.

And now I shall let my roommate have the last word.

MEGAN: Basically, virtue and nobility are sexy.

So, I have a weakness for cute quiz memes, and when I saw superversive post this one I couldn't resist . . . and, wow, I only save the world 11% of the time? I could probably do the world more good by just staying home.

...It is easier for me to write stories in the middle of a class than sitting alone in a cafe. *bangs head*

Coyote Wild is going to publish my short story "Soul Cakes," which is a sequel to "City of Angels."

This morning I sprang (okay, crawled) out of bed, put on my lucky Viable Paradise t-shirt, and embarked on a day of Revising Like Whoa. But now I am finished for the day, and I'm remembering the days when I had just started writing.

I have been making up stories for pretty much as long as I can remember, and I first swore to be a writer at age eight. But I didn't actually start writing things down regularly until I was twelve. Back then, I was hideously embarrassed of my writing, and I wanted to keep it a total secret. (My plan was to keep everyone in the dark until I wrote a best-selling novel and everyone in my family came home raving about it, whereupon I'd tell them all that I had written it. Back then, I figured this would happen when I was about seventeen. You can all stop laughing any time now.)

Anyway. Secrecy. So, my family had a black-and-white Apple laptop, and I would sneak it up to my room under the guise of schoolwork. I would carefully lock the door, and play Monteverdi on my battered tape deck to cover the sound of keystrokes, and compose my stories in files with cryptic names like "A," "Oranges," or "DvrStry."

When I think of my early writing attempts, I think of heat: I spent long summer afternoons up there, in my upstairs bedroom where the air conditioning didn't work and the windows faced west and (of course) I never opened the door for ventilation. It must have hit 90 degrees in there sometimes. And I hate hot weather, but I would lie on my bed with sweat beading on my face and type, because I was determined to write and even more determined that nobody in my family would ever, ever, ever know what I was doing. (I'm sure they all did.)

What are your early writing memories?

...mystic, Dominican, Doctor of the Church, and She Who Dragged The Pope Back To Rome By The Ear.

"In your nature, eternal Godhead, I shall come to know my nature. And what is my nature, boundless Love? It is fire, because you are nothing but a fire of love. And you have given humankind a share in this nature for by the fire of love you created us."

--prayer of St. Catherine



(That is my church that she's holding in the icon. Dominican parishes totally rock.)

I do not have the time or brains for an original entry right now, so I leave you instead with the research links my google-fu turned upon Santa Muerte, the "folk saint"/goddess of death who is prayed to in Mexico and, increasingly, some areas of the U.S.



The 'Saint' of Last Resorts (Mexico News, 2004)

"She is a Virgen de Guadalupe in negative: That which one can't ask of the Virgen, one can ask of her," says Homero Aridjis, a poet, novelist and former diplomat who recently published a short story collection about La Santa Muerte's mysterious and increasingly firm grip on the Mexican soul.

Skeleton Force (San Diego Union Tribuone, 2004).

Every Sunday, Romo, who says he is an ordained archbishop of the "Traditional Catholic Church of Mexico-United States," holds "Masses" worshipping Santa Muerte. . . . He is building a seminary in the church to train new "priests," who will be taught philosophy and English, Hebrew and French. "This movement will grow even more," he said. "Nobody can stop it because there is freedom of religion."

The Death Cult of the Drug Lords Mexico’s Patron Saint of Crime, Criminals, and the Dispossessed (A report by the Army's Foreign Military Studies Office)

The New God in Town (TIME, 2007)

A Novena Prayer to Santa Muere (to get your faithless boyfriend back)

Muerte Santa, mi gran tesoro,	Death Saint, my great treasure,
no te apartes en ninguna ocacion:	never go away from me at any time:
Pan comiste y de el me diste, y	You ate bread and gave me bread, and
como eres la poderosa duena de	as you are the powerful owner of
la oscura mansion de la vida y la	the dark mansion of life and
Emperatriz de las tinieblas, quiero	Empress of darkness, I want
que me hagas el favor de que	you to grant me the favour that
fulano......... se presente a mis	___name___ is at my feet
pies humiliado y arrepentido y	humiliated and repentant
que nunca mas vuelva a irse de mi	and that he never leaves my
lado, mientras yo lo necesite. Y	side when I need him, and that
has que me cumpla lo que me ha	you make me get what was
prometido.	promised to me.