Seattletastic

This past weekend we flew up to Washington to visit Jennifer’s sister and her husband and daughter. It was an enjoyable time; I like my sister-in-law and her family, and my niece F (not her real name) is a blast to hang out with.

A few highlights:

  • During the flight up, one of the passengers in first class proposed to a flight attendant over the in-flight loudspeaker. To make it sound less weird, the attendant was off-duty and flying up to Seattle on her own business in economy, and not one of the attendants who was working the flight. I also got the impression that the passenger and the flight attendant had actually been dating for awhile, so this wasn’t a random proposal.
  • Saturday was a relatively laid back day. After watching F in her diving class (she’s quite skilled for her age), we had lunch at Claim Jumper, then went to Borders to pick over the remains of their stock. I picked up How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont, and Peter & Max: A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham (the creator of the Fables graphic novel series, and an all around nice guy).
  • Sunday we went to the Pacific Science Museum to see their special exhibit on fear. It was there that I learned about the Amygdala and its role in the fear response to danger. I decided then and there that the amygdala is my favorite brain structure. For most of my life, it was Broca’s area, but this exhibit changed my mind.
  • There was nothing exciting about the flight back, except that I started reading How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and Jennifer read the entirety of The Hunger Games on my Kindle. The whole thing. Yes, she reads that fast.

And that’s about it, really. That’s two weekends in a row that we went out of town for some fun. At this point, we don’t have any trips planned until February, so our weekends promise to be dull until then.

(On another note: This weekend is Dragon*Con. Those of you who are attending, please have a wretched, awful time. This will make me less jealous of you.)

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Brief Review

Cover of 'How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe'How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
by Charles Yu
Vintage, 2011

After a couple of people at WorldCon recommended How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe to me, I decided to give it a shot. I’d seen it on the shelves, after all, and the premise looked interesting. I love stories about time travel, paradoxes, that sort of thing (Doctor Who is one of my favorite TV shows — ’nuff said), so a novel that features that sort of thing should be right up my alley.

And, on the whole, it was. I can’t honestly say that this was the best book of the year, as some reviewers have said; but, then, I haven’t read that many new books this year. This novel has its comic moments (though I would probably have listed Vonnegut and Fforde as the antecedents of this novel’s humor, rather than Douglas Adams, as one of the reviewers cited on the cover did), not to mention moments of poignancy and near tragedy. I’m a fan of wordplay, and Yu incorporates a lot of that as well, with techno-babble which is obviously not meant to be taken seriously and a (very) few well-considered puns. There’s a lot here to like.

So the question I have for myself is, why didn’t I enjoy this novel more? Why would I give How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe three stars instead of four or five?

I think it’s partially because it was a chore to get into this book initially. There’s a lot of exposition in the beginning; cleverly written exposition, to be sure, but exposition nonetheless, that tells us about how time travel works in Yu’s universe. He tells us about how the vagaries of human emotions — particularly nostalgia — play into how time travel works, and in why people go to the trouble of traveling through time. These are important ideas for Yu to get across to the reader because they are important to understanding the novel’s underlying theme, but the technobabble — and remember, I love technobabble — got on my nerves. I found myself rolling my eyes and muttering, “Again?” at certain passages. By the time I reached the midpoint of the novel, which is where it really begins and the plot clicks to “activate”, I was more annoyed than amused. Of course, once the plot did click in, then the novel, with the themes and ideas that had been developed in the first half, really shone. In short, I felt the first half of the book could have been cut by, oh, at least half, probably three-quarters, without losing the important ideas that are developed thematically in the rest of the book.

The second half of the book is more enjoyable, with its meta-fictional devices and its evocation of time loops and the Ontological Paradox (which just happens to be my favorite of the time travel paradoxes), but still far too reminiscent of Vonnegut for me to feel like there was a lot of originality here. Don’t get me wrong here: I like Vonnegut, and I grant that it’s very hard to evoke him without sounding like a pastiche, and Yu manages to do that here. Still, I wish there were more Yu and less Vonnegut in this novel. And I wish I could make this paragraph make more sense than that.

In short, then: I did enjoy How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and would recommend it to other people looking for comedic science fiction, though I’d offer some caveats (e.g., “Just stick with it through the first half, I promise it’ll work out”). But would I call it a masterpiece of the genre? I’m not certain. I think it’s flawed, but shows promise. I know that Yu will publish more novels, and I know that I will read them.

Coda

Take a look at the images from Cosplay for a Cause gallery. There’s some great creativity and talent in these costumes, of course, but there’s also a lot of cleavage and hourglass figures. Don’t think that I object to cleavage and hourglass figures, because I don’t. I just wonder about expectations.

What do you think? Do these images set unrealistic expectations for women who want to cosplay themselves? For how women in the “geek community” should look if they want to be taken seriously by others, especially men?

Or am I over-thinking this?

In Which I Realize I Have Much to Learn

Today, GeekFeminism.org ran a thought-provoking article entitled, “‘Geek girls’ and the problem of self-objectification“. It’s worth a read, especially if you’re interested in issues of geekery and feminism.

There’s a lot of sexism in geek culture. We geeks, nerds, dorks, whatever, like to believe that we have overcome the various prejudices and hangups that exist in the society at large, just because, say, we read Heinlein’s books and enjoyed his stories of alternate sexualities. But the sexism persists nevertheless: whether it’s a booth babe being ogled by a fan or a woman computer scientist receiving death threats for her comments on a tech forum, it’s there. The objectification is there, just as it exists in society at large.

But the question that Geek Feminism raises is how much of that objectification is “self-objectification”; that is, how much are women in geek culture (specifically, women who cosplay at conventions) buying into the notion that they have to look sexy in order to be accepted as a member of that culture? Take a look at this spoof PSA starring Kaley Cuoco:

Are the women who dress up at Slave Leia doing so because they enjoy feeling sexy and beautiful? Or are they doing it because they are objectifying themselves in a culture which rewards that behavior? Chatting with @HelloTheFuture on Twitter yesterday was certainly helpful for my thought processes in this regard. Certainly there are women who dress up in terrific cosplay outfits because they genuinely enjoy the attention, being sexy and attractive, winning costume contests, and so on. But how many of them do it because they feel they won’t even be taken seriously as a woman or even as a geek unless they dress and act in a way that panders to male expectations of what women should be? There are “booth babes” who are objectified in this manner, that’s for sure.

I’m still working out my feelings on this matter. I do know that however a woman dresses, that decision is hers and we shouldn’t judge her for it.

I don’t know. What do you think? What are your opinions?

Renovation: WorldCon 2011

So, that was my first WorldCon. And now I’m back.

All in all, I had a blast. It was different than what I’m used to, con-wise: the last con I was at was Dragon*Con 2006. And before that, Dragon*Con 2005. And before that, Dragon*Con 2001. Dragon*Con is a very different beast than WorldCon is. Since Dragon*Con focuses on a wider range of media, such as movies and television, than WorldCon does, there are panels on just about every corner of fandom. And there are costumes. Everywhere, costumes. Superhero costumes, Star Wars costumes, Star Trek costumes, and so on. Day and night, all over the con, you’ll see people in costumes of all sorts. Honestly, that’s one of the things I really enjoy about Dragon*Con.

WorldCon, by contrast, is a more “literary” con, focusing on the written word to the near exclusion of other forms of media. While there were panels about television shows such as Doctor WhoStargate: Universe, and The Big Bang Theory, most panels are about books and topics in written science fiction and fantasy. The guests for WorldCon are generally authors, editors, and artists, while Dragon*Con has guests from television and movies as well. For example, you might find Leonard Nimoy or Nathan Fillion at Dragon*Con, but not at WorldCon. At WorldCon, you’re more likely to run into Tim Powers, David Brin, Connie Willis, and so on.

And WorldCon is much smaller than Dragon*Con. The last time I was at Dragon*Con, there were over 40,000 people attending. At this past WorldCon, there were something like 4,000. It’s a more intimate con — though other people, such as Tim Pratt, who prefer even smaller cons, might disagree — and you’re more likely to run into the guests in the hallways. I bumped into John Scalzi just outside of his panel on his trip to the Creation Museum and shook his hand; I also talked briefly to Paul Cornell, one of the writers for Doctor Who. Pretty darn cool, if you ask me.

Some highlights:

  • The panel with Brother Guy Consulmagno, a Jesuit brother who works at the Vatican Observatory, was absolutely brilliant, and was probably my favorite panel of the entire con. I enjoyed hearing about his views on religion, science, and the intersection of the two, and how history and politics have shaped that relationship. Consulmagno is a funny, engaging speaker, and utterly brilliant as well. The fact that Paul Cornell, a writer for Doctor Who (which is a fantastic show, in case you aren’t watching it), was the interviewer made the panel even more brilliant.
  • At the same panel, I found myself sitting next to and chatting with Bill Willingham, possibly my favorite comic book writer (after Neil Gaiman); you owe it to yourself to check out Fables, his wonderful graphic novel series. He’s a neat guy, and I definitely enjoyed his company. I desperately wanted to ask him if he would join me for a beer or coffee or something, but I’m afraid I couldn’t work up the nerve. He would probably have said no, but I still should have asked.
  • The very first panel that Jennifer and I attended was John Scalzi‘s presentation on his trip to the Creation Museum. Scalzi, too, is an engaging and funny speaker, and his descriptions of the so-called “science” behind the Creation Museum were hilarious. I admit that toward the end I was beginning to wonder whether the Creation Museum is honestly meant to be taken seriously or whether it’s meant to parody Creationists in general, but I’m assured that they’re sincere. Which is depressing, to say the least.
  • I met up with two on-line friends, Erin Hartshorn and Margaret Fisk, neither of whom I’ve never met in person before, which was fun, even if I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to them.
  • Running into old friends. Running into new friends. That’s always a blast.
  • The writers’ workshop was very useful (of course you know I had to sign up for that). The two moderators — Dani Kollin and Richard Chwedyk compared my writing style (in my story, “Teh K1ng in Y3110w”) to that of Terry Pratchett, the sort of compliment that can make me glow for days. On the other hand, they pointed out some flaws that I had with craft, and they delivered these criticisms in a way that made me eager to get back to my keyboard to fix the flaws and get that story sent out the door again.

So… All in all, I really enjoyed WorldCon. I probably won’t go again any time soon (WorldCon is a traveling con, and next year it will be in Chicago), but there are definitely other cons that will be nearby that I’ll be attending. I’m so glad I went… and so annoyed that I had to come back home, to reality, and to work.