Jenny Saqua

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction award nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work the last few years, so I thought I would try it again in 2013.

The fifth nominee for the Nebula award for best novel is Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal:

Plot: Jane Austen Regency characters who can use low-key magic thrown into Napoleonic Europe! In this sequel to 2010 Nebula nominee Shades of Milk and Honey, Jane and her husband, Vincent, travel to Europe after Napoleon’s exile to visit another practitioner of glamour, the magical illusions typically taught to women as part of their regimen of man-snaring arts. While there, Jane has to deal with all manner of troubles: the challenge of storing a spell in glass, the limitations her sex places upon her, her husband’s troubling silences and absences, and the still-present Napoleonic politics.

The plot, unfortunately, is a little slow to unfurl. The first third of the book sets up Jane and Vincent’s honeymoon trip to Belgium and experiments in glamour, and the second third explores developments in Jane’s relationship with her now-distant husband. It isn’t until the last 100 pages that Kowal adds jeopardy and action, with Napoleonic politics rearing its dangerous head. None of the thirds are bad; unfortunately, the middle lacks interest because Jane has little to do, and the story remains within her own head as she worries and frets about her family. I think Glamour would have been much improved if the middle of the story had been distributed throughout the book, as a subplot, while something else drove the narration. Still, each part of the story kept me interested. 3 of 5

Protagonists: Removed from her English countryside, Jane becomes a vastly more interesting character than she was in Shades of Milk and Honey. Working with her husband, Jane develops a bit of professional ambition, and she even a bit of a rivalry with Vincent. She has to confront the limitations having a family will place upon her professionally (pregnant women aren’t supposed to use glamours). No longer can the reader mistake Jane for a bit of Regency frippery (albeit an abnormally intelligent one); Jane confronts questions that vex the modern reader, albeit still in a Regency setting. Kowal also allows Jane to be a hero, and the novel ends on a heartbreaking but believable — almost necessary — note. I still can’t forget Jane’s origins, but she is a far more interesting character in the sequel than in the original. 4 of 5

Villains: Napoleon’s partisans and spies. Their presence doesn’t become evident until the final third of the story, which is too late to build much menace. The main spy isn’t condemned as much as he / she should be, and the Napoleonic partisans are almost cartoonish in their villainy. Zut alors! 1 of 5

Inventiveness: I didn’t think Shades was that inventive. While I don’t find the explorations of glamour’s implications — can it be recorded? what happens to a pregnant woman who tries to weave glamour? — that interesting, Kowal’s exploration of areas that Austen didn’t touch on as much are interesting. Glamour‘s delving into Napoleonic Belgium, pregnancy, and a woman’s professional ambition all suggest more imagination than Shades‘s tale of courtship and sisters in the well-off English countryside.

On the other hand, it’s a sequel to a book that welded together Austen and illusions, so it’s not going to blow your mind or strain your mental energies like Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren or anything. 3 of 10

Fun: On the other hand, Glamour is never impenetrable or a chore to read, unlike Dhalgren or 2312, which I read immediately before Glamour. I think that sequence in my reading list made Glamour feel far more fun than I expected; reading 2312 was like driving uphill in low gear with the parking brake on, while Glamour was like hitting the top of the hill, popping the parking brake, and shifting through the gears while roaring downhill.

I didn’t find Shades that fun, but in Glamour, Kowal backs off on the archaic (but Regency-appropriate) spellings and allows herself to venture beyond the strictly Austenian surroundings of the first book. It makes all the difference. Jane is unapologetically more modern, and the novel makes the development believable. I may not have found Napoleon’s followers compelling villains, but that doesn’t make the heroes’ struggle against them less exciting; I even found the magical experimentation interesting. Vincent is a bit of a dope, and the distance between him and Jane is occasionally tiresome, but I admit I found Glamour unexpectedly compelling. 4 of 5

Total: 15 of 30. Shockingly high; with only one book to go, Glamour is tied for second with Throne of the Crescent Moon

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work the last few years, so I thought I would try it again in 2013.

The fourth nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel and second nominee for the Hugo for Best Novel is 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson:

Plot: Terraforming combined with terrorism! In the 24th century, humanity has spread out among the planets and moons of the solar system. Humanity has colonized Mercury, Venus, Mars, the moon, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Unfortunately, all is not well on Mercury; Alex, the leader of the sole Mercurial city, Terminator, dies, and then the city itself is destroyed in a surprise attack. Alex’s granddaughter, Swan, is drawn into the conspiracies and power struggles that threaten to hold humanity back.

That plot sounds exciting, right? You hear that, and you think of a modern-day planetary romance with a hard science edge, filled with assassinations, massive loss of life, heroes making exciting discoveries and running from danger to danger. If you do think of that, I’m sorry; I’ve already oversold the book. 2312 is nowhere near that exciting. Tense moments do crop up from time to time — the two main characters wandering through Mercurial tunnels after Terminator’s destruction, the aftermath of their attempt to prevent a similar fate happening to all settlements on Venus — but Robinson seems to feel the need to assure the reader that everything will be all right. Every wound that is not fatal is repairable; want, outside of Earth, is a foreign concept. Investigation, as one character is at pains to tell Swan, is a matter of searching databases and lists, not running after bad guys and beating them up. The character is undoubtedly correct, but Robinson deprecates action and the mystery of who is behind the terrorist attack to a ridiculous degree.

I don’t think I can illustrate this better than one incident that takes place just after the halfway point of 2312: While resting in her hostel room, Swan is restrained and pumped full of drugs to make her tell everything she knows about the investigation into Terminator’s destruction; her AI and the AI of her room are unable to tell her, later, that anything amiss happened. Swan is momentarily distressed, but five pages after this event happens, it is never mentioned again. It doesn’t worry Swan. It doesn’t motivate her. It isn’t something she wants wrapped up when the conspirators are arrested. The attack should be utterly terrifying and leave an impression on her. Instead, it leaves no more mark than a baby’s breath on concrete. 1 of 5

Protagonists: 2312 has two main protagonists: Swan and Warham, a frog-faced Saturnian. Swan is mercurial in temperament and nationality, an artist and a former designer of the habitats that wander the solar system. She is reliable as a broken clock, but she rarely has any responsibility, so her indiscretions hardly seem to matter. (When she trusts her AI with sensitive information she has been explicitly told not to, for good reason, it turns out fine.) Warham, on the other hand, is a phlegmatic politician who takes “cautious” to ridiculous extremes. Of course they fall in love; they’re sexually compatible, and they are the main viewpoint characters. I will admit Robinson’s development of their attraction is gradual, realistic, and occasionally sweet; it’s just too bad I didn’t care whether either was happy.

I never could figure out what Swan did for a living or even if a living was necessary in this brave new system. Warham worked as a diplomat / politician for the Saturnian moons, but even that job did not prevent him from taking weeks off to reintroduce animal species to Earth or wander from planet to planet. Either he wasn’t very important, or interplanetary diplomacy does not require an intensive work schedule.

I couldn’t help but feel the story followed the wrong people. Robinson devoted a few chapters to Kiran, an Earther whom Swan helps get into space. He ends up on Venus, where he quickly (and somewhat unwillingly) becomes a double agent; because of this, his story is exciting, and he himself greets everything on Venus as novel and with wide-eyed wonder. Kiran’s chapters are so exciting, so enjoyable, that I grimaced whatever the story returned to Swan and Warham, who career between doing nothing and doing something rash but ultimately harmless. 2 of 5

Villains: There are villains in 2312, but throughout most of the book, the authorities have only vague ideas that they might be a threat, and they aren’t linked to the terrorism until the end of the book. They have only a momentary presence; they are menacing in the same way lightning is menacing, with as much explanation, although lightning can’t be thrown onto a prison ship to wrap up a storm. 1 of 5

Inventiveness: In one sense, 2312 is not inventive: the solar system has been colonized and made ready for human habitation in hundreds, if not thousands, of novels. However, I must admit Robinson invents; his solar system is an exercise in literal world building. He lays out the science for the reader in an understandable and occasionally entertaining way. His habitats — hollowed out asteroids that recreate or hybridize old Earth biomes — are the transports around the solar system. Each heavenly body is prepared for human habitation in different ways, their science carefully and individually considered. The plot and characters did not deserve the detail and thought Robinson put into his setting, but I have to admire Robinson’s world of hard-science planetary romance. 6 of 10

Fun: Fun is always a subjective term. What’s a thrill ride for me might be tedious for another; what tries my patience might be absorbing for another. Robinson’s novel is about how the solar system ended up terraformed and what will be used to advance the cause of humanity even farther after the events of 2312, not in a thriller or a mystery. The story itself is filled with politics and traveling from one planetary body to another, and Robinson fills in the gaps with the science of terraforming. If a speculative look at what humanity might do to leave Earth and the science behind it thrills you, you would probably term 2312 “fun.” I, on the other hand, find the book dull, as lifeless as a painted ship on a frozen sea, and no amount of science or low-key romance can change that. 1 of 5

Total: 11 of 30. Ahead of Ironskin but behind The Drowning Girl and Throne of the Crescent Moon for the Nebula (and behind Throne for the Hugo). That seems right, but I would not be surprised to see 2312 win one of the awards: it’s the only science fiction book nominated for the Nebula, and it’s the only hard-science sci-fi book nominated for the Hugo. That has to gain the book some supporters, and Robinson is an author who has won both best novel awards in the past.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work the last few years, so I thought I would try it again in 2013.

The third nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel and first nominee for the Hugo for Best Novel is Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed:

Plot: Monster hunters crossed with Arabian Nights, with a bit of political unrest thrown in. Ghuls are haunting the lands around the great city of Dhamsawaat, and ghul hunters Adoula and Raseed are the city’s only real defense against the supernatural invasion. Worse, the city is oblivious to the threat, and the ghuls are stronger and more numerous than the aged Adoula has seen in many years. Dhamsawaat itself is gripped by an incipient revolution, fomented by the Falcon Prince against the corrupt Khalif.

That sounds stirring, right? But Throne’s plot has two difficulties. The biggest is that it lacks much action for the middle half of the book, and the heroes seem to make little progress toward their goals. In fact, they lose ground during that time. As a plot choice, that’s defensible, but for it to work, the protagonists have to carry the story. These protagonists can’t. Secondly, the plot feels formulaic, aside from its setting: the anticipated romantic entanglements, awkward team-ups, disbelief of officials, and big battle with the enemies (with each of the main protagonists getting his or her special opponent) happen in due course. The unanticipated parts, which involve religious zealots, are loosely related to the plot, relating to only a couple of characters. 2 of 5

Protagonists: There are five of them, and each gets at least a few turns as point-of-view character. Dr. Adoulla Makhslood is the last of the ghul hunters, and he’s getting too old for this shit. Raseed bas Raseed, his partner, is a religious warrior who is as swift with a sword as he is with his condemnations of loose morals, a category that includes any human behavior that is fun. Zamia Banu Laith Badawi is a 15-year-old shapeshifter whose ability to turn into a lion didn’t save her clan from being obliterated. Of course Raseed and Zamia fall in love almost immediately; why do you ask? Dawoud (magician) and Litaz (alchemist / healer), Adoulla’s middle-aged friends, fall into the story when things get too hot for Adoulla.

These protagonists can’t carry the reader’s interest. The best of the five protagonists are married couple Dawoud and Litaz, but they spend most of their time being reasonable and healing / counseling the lead three. Raseed and Zamia are dull and stiff. Adoulla has more life as a character, but he’s of a type you’ve seen a lot before. Having the old man as the hero is a bold choice — I saw one review claim it was “like retooling Star Wars and giving Obi Wan Kenobi the lead,” although that’s overstating it a bit — but I would argue he’s not clearly the lead. As I said, Ahmed puts us in five different heroes’ heads (plus one villain’s). The book is only 275 pages, and spreading the story among the five doesn’t leave enough room for any of them to breathe or come alive. When the book is put away, their diluted narratives wash from the mind. 1 of 5

Villains: The heroes battle ghuls, who are hungry, near-mindless constructs created by the evil Mouw Awa and Orshado. The ghuls pose more than a little threat to the heroes, especially the skin ghuls, which cannot be destroyed. But part of the reason they are threatening is because Adoulla, Litaz, and Dawoud are older and weaker than they used to be; against more vigorous protagonists, the ghuls’ absence in the middle half of the book would be keenly felt. Mouw Awa is a jackal-headed shadow who tortures a guardsman throughout the book but encounters the heroes only twice; he’s intimidating when he appears, and his backstory is sickening, but he refers to himself in the third person and uses archaic diction, which makes him difficult to take seriously. Orshado, the ghul of ghuls, is the mastermind, and he’s evil for evil’s sake. He shows up at the end to be killed, mainly, and readers never understand his motivations. 3 of 5

Inventiveness: As many other reviews have mentioned, non-Western cultures are not abundantly used in science fiction and fantasy. For that, Throne scores highly on the inventiveness scale. As I said above, though, neither the plot nor characters are innovative. If I thought of ghuls as zombie analogues, I’d have to knock the rating down by quite a bit. However, their strength and method of creation sufficiently differentiate them from zombies. 7 of 10

Fun: Throne is a sword-and-sorcery tale, but it is a bit too reserved and a bit too respectful to ever break into the “fun” category. During the middle half of the book, the only action happens on shopping trips. Religion is a major facet of Dhamasawaat culture, and that is reflected in the narration; “God” is invoked, implored, or cursed almost continually, and that air of reverence makes the story feel stiff even when Adoula is farting. Unlike The Drowning Girl, however, Throne is not a depression meme. 2 of 5

Total: 15 of 30. Well above Ironskin but trailing The Drowning Girl.

I received a rejection for “How to Win a Bar Fight” on Sunday, which is impressive, in its way: Lore is so dedicated to rejecting my story the staff comes in on weekends to do so. ⁹¹ The average response time for Lore is around 90 days, according to Duotrope, but I got my rejection in three. That brings the number of rejections in April to five, which is a record for me.

The quick rejection doesn’t mean anything, other than what’s in the rejection letter: Sorry, not for us at this time, better luck next time, we look forward to hearing from you again. It might be a form letter, but a writer can’t read anything into it other than the words on the screen (or page).

But of course it means something. Your story doesn’t fly to the top of the reject pile like a rocket sled on rails for no reason. Communication is more than words; we communicate in many ways, like body language, tone, and response time.

It doesn’t mean anything. It obviously means something bad. It doesn’t. It does. It doesn’t …

There’s nothing to gain from reading the tea leaves in this way. Speculating over the inscrutable pronouncements of people I’ve never met who live hundreds of miles away is like deciphering an old hermit’s gnomic utterances, except the old hermit means something more than what he says. Trying to find hidden messages in those brief form letters leads only to madness. Even if there were messages to be found, what would it profit me? The most I could learn about the story itself is that it’s bad. That’s … unhelpful.

So: on to Shimmer, which labels itself “speculative fiction for a miscreant word.” Maybe I’ll have better luck there than I have had with the dozen other markets I have submitted “Bar Fight” to; it would be difficult to have less luck, unless the magazine e-mailed me the digital ashes of my story or started harassing me through mail and over the phone about how poor my story was.

Magazines don’t do that, do they? I kinda hope they do, as long as they don’t do it to me.

Three things about the Psionics Handbook by Bruce R. Cordell:

1. Complete from “Astral construct” to “XP loss”: I would not have acquired this book if I were not trying to gain a complete collection of 3rd edition D&D books. I am not interested in psionics in D&D; in fact, I once got a free book from Wizards of the Coast for telling the company how uninterested I was in psionics. Still, I got the Psionics Handbook, and since I had it, I thought I might as well read it to see if it was as wrongheaded as I had so long thought.
   
   It might not have been wrongheaded, but it was boring as all hell. At least for the first four chapters. Occasionally it was confusing — almost opaque.
   
   The reason for this is that the Psionics Handbook hews closely to the organization of the 3rd edition Player's Handbook. That means, rather than explaining psionics in a rational manner — overview, how psionics attack and use powers, etc. — the order is: psionic player classes, psionic skills, psionic feats, and then an actual chapter on the concept of psionics. By that point, I hardly cared how you were supposed to use psionics; the book had spent three interminable (but somehow still only eight pages or so) chapters describing power points, attack and defense modes, and powers without showing how they went together.
   
   So maybe I wasn’t the ideal audience for this book.
   
   
2. Drawing power: Still, there is something that I was excited to see, and that was in the monsters chapter. Githzerai and githyanki are the big draws here — they were two of the biggest stars in the original Fiend Folio — but some of the endearingly goofy first edition monsters make their 3rd edition debuts in the Psionics Handbook as well. Brain moles are stupid but fun, and the intellect devourer was one of the creatures that made even first-edition players ask, “What the hell were they smoking, and can I have some?” The starfish-shaped snouts of the brain moles are gone — they’re just little moles that can attack you psionically and cause brain disease — but the intellect devourers look exactly the same: like a brain with four powerful legs.
   
   
3. On the other hand …: Psionics lie on the wrong side of the division between fantasy and science fiction, but the Psionics Handbook does do a good job of integrating mental powers into worlds based on being able to cast magic spells, with Cordell making mind powers seem the same as magic.
   
   And that’s a bit of a problem: psionics are too similar to magic. The psionic powers look and function just like magic, except instead of a spells / level system, psionics use a point system. Most psionic powers are clones (or at least close cousins) to magic spells. The default option for psionics and magic is that they work on the same channel — dispel magic and dispel psionics will both dispel magic or psionics, for instance, and psionic resistance and spell resistance each will work against either magic or psionics. (There’s a variant rule titled “Psionics are different,” which the author deprecates for game balance reasons.)
   
   When it comes down to it, there’s only one thing that gives psionics a different feel, and that’s psionic combat. Psonicists are allowed to choose different attack and defense modes; each defense gives different bonuses and penalties against each different attack mode, but both combat modes are revealed at the same time. It’s a big game of rock / paper / psychic crush, which sounds like fun. The best defense mode, though, is not to have psionic powers, which is like saying the best way for the Lions to beat the Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day is not to field a team.
   
   Or, to put it more directly, the best way to deal with the Psionics Handbook is to ignore it.

More than two years ago, my wife and I had a problem that the internet couldn’t help us solve — namely, I couldn’t find the children’s story in which the kids in a small town hoard all the pennies, causing a shortage, then dump all the pennies on the market on April Fools’ Day. (Useless Internet.) I suspected it was either in one of Clifford Hicks’s Alvin Fernald stories or one of Robert McCloskey’s Homer Price books. When I solved the problem anyway by actually reading books, I wrote a post for the entire purpose of giving other people with the same problem the answer they so richly deserved. That is, if you wanted to know the story in which children’s book series protagonist Alvin Fernald talks about hoarding pennies as an April Fools’ joke, there was a place on the Internet that told you which story that was. And it worked: today, if you Google “Alvin Fernald pennies hoarding” or even “Alvin Fernald pennies,” my blog post is the first link that comes up.

I’ve improved the Internet!

(Don’t tell me my site came up because Google customizes its pages for its users or that I cherry picked the right keywords. And for Ra’s sake, don’t mention the post is only seventh if the keywords are the more likely “April Fools pennies hoarding.” I don’t want to hear it. I improved the Internet, dammit.)

I buy a lot of stuff on eBay. Specifically, I buy a lot of books, and I buy a lot of Heroclix.

I have little trouble with the people who sell books, as long as they ship what they sold me. Most sellers realize they need to describe the condition of the book(s) they are selling. They generally mention any damage, internal or external writing, and wear on the cover. Sometimes they don’t, but usually, any omissions are minor ones or understandable: the seller didn’t see a scratch on the cover (they can be hard to see) or the marginalia on pg. 58-9 or didn’t think the wear on the corners was that big of a deal.

Heroclix sellers are often not that considerate. Some are, don’t get me wrong. But a lot of them put up pictures and are done, other than to list shipping considerations, a couple of lines of bland sales patter, or say they don’t accept returns. That is not enough — not by a long shot. If you are selling Heroclix on eBay, you should mention the following concerns:

• Cards are (or are not) included. Older sets did not come with cards. However, all figures from sets after Avengers (released in summer 2007) should have cards.
  
• Fliers are glued, if the picture shows fliers on their stands. This is not a concern for figures in later sets, but it is important for sets before Crisis (released in spring 2008).
  
• The figures’ condition. Do not say the figures are in mint condition if the cards are not included or fliers are glued. These are not in mint condition; no retailer would list them as mint.
  
• Listing all the figures in your lot. I know you have better things to do with your time. Keep in mind, though, that I have better things to do with my money than give it to you. If you want me to be interested, a complete listing of figures is helpful. If that is out of the question, list the notable figures (super rares, LEs, pre-Avengers set uniques, and any other high-priced figures). This will help me decide that yes, I would like to own what you are selling.
  
• If you do list the figures in your lot, Odin bless you. But please put some thought into the order in which you list them. By rarity? By set? These are excellent organizational schemes. Alphabetical order is less so. Figure numbers are nice but usually not necessary; they are essential only for figure names that describe more than one figure in a set. Point values and team abilities are never necessary, but I applaud your dedication to completeness.

Is this a definitive or exhaustive list? By the Great Gazoo, no. These are merely my preferences.

On the other hand, I do buy a lot of Heroclix on eBay …

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work the last few years, so I thought I would try it again in 2013.

The second nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel is The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan:

Plot: Mental illness meets fantasy? India Morgan Phelps, whom everyone calls “Imp,” has schizophrenia. She’s on medication and seeing a therapist, but she still has moments when she cannot separate reality from fantasy, when she exhibits compulsive behavior, and when she feels her thoughts are compelled by an outside force. Still, she’s functional and mostly happy, as she maintains a relationship with her girlfriend, Abalyn, and holds down a job at an art store while painting and writing.

But everything falls apart when she stops to pick up a naked woman standing on the side of the road. Imp thinks the woman is a mermaid. She also thinks she picked up the girl a second time, months later, and that time the girl was a wolf or a ghost of a wolf. She knows her relationship with Abalyn fell apart after one of those encounters, but she’s not sure which one. And the woman fascinates and enthralls Imp, who ties the woman into her other obsessions.

So the plot explores memory and reality and truth, and it does it ably. Unfortunately, it does not do it in an entertaining way. When I say “entertaining,” I’m not complaining there weren’t enough action sequences or bon mots or conflict. Instead, I mean the plot doesn’t advance; we know what happens early on, and most of the book is Imp re-remembering it, going over the memories again and again and making her digressions into art and literature. It’s like watching someone parallel park, making false start after false start, attempt after attempt, and knowing it will all end in a collision with a parked vehicle. It’s worse than a slow-motion crash, because at least the slow-motion crash is linear. 2 of 5

Protagonist: Imp is a wounded soul. Her mother and grandmother both committed suicide, and Imp is mentally ill as well, although she still functions in society. From early in the first chapter, the reader knows Imp’s version of events can’t be trusted, and at some level, Imp knows it too. Still, she has trouble disbelieving her memories, and why shouldn’t she? For her — for everyone —the past survives only in our own minds, barring the rare documentary evidence.⁸⁶ When Imp pits what she remembers against what “logic” and others tell her and the wrong one wins, I feel real sympathy for her. She’s insane, by her own admission, the victim of a “family curse,” but her struggles and her failures are frequently fascinating.

Imp is intelligent and cultured. Her erudition is mostly limited to her obsessions, works of art and literature that have disturbed or interested her (she keeps files on them). On the other hand, she seems a bit too talented for a protagonist who is a low-achieving high-school graduate; she makes all sorts of connections to art and literature, and she excels with both words and paints. Do those abilities make her more rounded, or do they make her seem unbelievable? Certainly people like Imp, mentally ill but extremely creative and knowledgeable in their fields, have existed and will exist in the future. Still, Imp’s talents seem more like an excuse for Kiernan to make surprisingly apt references than a method of balancing her shortcomings.

As a side note, it’s remarkable that the protagonist is both a lesbian and mentally ill yet receives little hatred or revulsion for either from society. I doubt any members of either community, mentally ill or lesbian, would say that was their experience, but on the other hand, that sort of discrimination and struggling with societal pressures is not what Drowning Girl is about. The novel is about a person inside her own head and in a relationship with another woman. 4 of 5

Villains: The villains are (ha, ha) in Imp’s head, for the most part. Only one person works to harm Imp, and she’s barely explored — more a presence than a character. She does become a character near the end of the book, but like most characters and MacGuffins built up over the course of a story, she doesn’t live up to her billing.

So Imp’s familial insanity could be considered her antagonist, and that’s a much more interesting foe to grapple. It’s such an obvious fight, but it’s one that’s impossible to win. Who can defeat their own mind? Heroes in adventure stories do it occasionally, overruling what their mind and senses tell them at the critical juncture, but that’s a trick of the brain, a moment of sleight of mind. Imp battles her imperfect reasoning every page of the book, and she can never be sure when she’s slipped. 4 of 5

Inventiveness: If you have previously read a book about a mentally ill lesbian who rationalizes her obsession with a femme fatale using horror and fantasy tropes, I will eat a particularly tasty hat. Using a mentally ill protagonist is not new, although it is rare for the protagonist to recognize her own illness from the beginning. The exploration of memory and what it means to her (and us), her willingness and need to question her unreliable perceptions of the world, are what makes this book so worthwhile to read. Imp’s brain deviates from normal, making the flaws in the way she sees the world obvious, but all of our perceptions of the world are so processed and filtered by our sensory organs and mind that we could question their reliability as well.

Drowning Girl gains extra points for being positioned as a speculative fiction book when it, in fact, does not have any supernatural or futuristic elements. The ideas of ghosts, mermaids, and werewolves belong to fantasy and horror, but no mermaids, werewolves, or supernatural ghosts appear in Drowning Girl. Perhaps some would say its exploration of the ideas of mind, memory, meme, and culture qualify it as quasi-sci fi, but I think that’s a weak line of argument. Imp explores what the ideas in certain horror and fantasy stories mean to her, and that allusiveness is key to the novel. Drowning Girl is a mainstream novel so immersed in speculative fiction ideas that it qualifies as a speculative-fiction novel. 8 of 10.

Fun: Kiernan, through her protagonist, claims that “hauntings” and stories are memes. They convey not only ideas but emotions to those who are listen to and read them. She is certainly right; this book cast a pall over my life for the few days it took me to read it. A mentally ill woman in a doomed relationship and headed toward a breakdown does not transmit happy thoughts into your head. 0 of 5

Total: 18 of 30. That’s going to be a difficult total to beat, I think. It wouldn’t have won the Nebula last year — God’s War by Kameron Hurley scored a 20 — but that’s a score in the “winning” range.

Monday, I managed to get two rejection letters. April Fools’! (Or April Fish, as the French say. Although they say it in French: Poisson d’Avril!)

“Imps in the Infield” was dismissed without comment by Strange Horizons, while “How to Win a Bar Fight” drew a crowdsourced rejection from Crowded. Crowded’s readers are the magazine’s editors, subscribers, and writers, who are supposed to leave comments on each story they read; I received three comments, although I’m not sure how helpful they are. One boiled down to “not enough plot,” another was that the first and second halves clashed in tone. (The other was “I didn’t get it.” I don’t know what to do with that.) They are useful in that they tell me what someone thought of the story, but I don’t know if it’s worth the time and effort to gut and rebuild the story rather than concentrate on a better one.

Oh, well. Both stories are running out of professional markets. The next logical place to submit “Imps in the Infield” is Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, but I’ll have to edit the language to make sure the story meets OSCIMS’s PG-13 rating. I could submit it to another magazine, but longer stories — “Imps” is about 8,000 words — don’t have as many markets. I’ll have to decide what to do with “Bar Fight,” but I am surprised at the number of possible markets for a 3,000 to 4,000 story. Lore, perhaps?

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work the last few years, so I thought I would try it again in 2013.

The first nominee for the Nebula for Best Novel is Ironskin by Tina Connolly:

Plot: Jane Eyre with malign fey! Jane Eliot, her face scarred during the Great War with the fairies, travels to a house on the moors to serve as governess for Mr. Edward Rochart’s daughter, Dorie. Both Dorie and Jane are afflicted by the fey: Jane’s scar causes rage in herself and others if it is not covered in iron, and Dorie uses her fairy gifts to manipulate objects with her mind instead of using her hands, so she has developed little manual dexterity. Certain parts of the house, where Edward lives and creates hideous masks, are forbidden to Jane. Still, she falls in love with Edward, although at one point she thinks he will choose another, such as the beautiful Blanche Ingel. And then in the last third of the book, the fairies show up.

Jane’s story should be familiar to everyone who has read Jane Eyre or seen one of the movie adaptations or has an inkling of how these sort of romantic stories generally go, all the way down to love being confirmed when one of the parties is ill or injured. I found the romance unconvincing, but since their attraction is so obvious, my objection about their lack of chemistry or the weak development of their relationship is hardly worth noting. (Other than his estate and a certain sardonic humor, I’m not sure what Edward has to offer Jane — standoffishness and secrets, I guess, which make great wedding gifts.)

The fairy plot is the more interesting, as the malign creatures lurk in the background for the first two-thirds of the book. When they make their move, it is surprising and devastating, but it is too surprising — the fairy plan blooms, without enough setup, when the plot needs it. Given that humanity knows how to foil the fairy magic as soon as they are alerted to it, I am less than convinced by the fairies’ planning skills. 2 of 5

Protagonists: Jane is strong, forthright, and utterly dull in the way only early 19th-century heroines can be. In a better society, she would thrive, but in Ironskin, society tells her she has a place, and she stays there. She is capable of some surprising acts by the end of the book, but she spends most of the book moping over Edward, despairing at her inability to teach Dorie, and lamenting class limitations. Jane is a hero with potential, but most of Ironskin is spent developing Jane to reach modern levels of self-reliance. 2 of 5

Villains: The fairies are figures of menace in the background, and when they are there, they are effectively frightening. They are an excellent addition to the brooding moors of Jane Eyre, so that the landscape’s bleakness is turned into dread by the potential attackers. But when the fairies — mostly the Fairy Queen — are thrust into the foreground, they are less terrifying and more cackling villains exulting over the success of their plan and foolishness of the mortals. They should have stayed in the shadows. 3 of 5

Inventiveness: Ironskin is not as bereft of ideas as the later mashup novels (that is, everything after Pride and Prejudice and Zombies). But given how determined Connolly is to show Jane Eyre’s influence on Ironskin, the novel does feel a little bereft of ideas from time to time. The Great War with the fairies shows more imagination, but I would have liked Connolly to make the connections between it and Jane Eyre more seamless, especially the link between the fairy element and classism. 2 of 10

Fun: It’s Jane Eyre with fairies. I spent most of the time I was reading to Ironskin complaining to my wife about how obviously Ironskin ripped off — sorry, lovingly referenced — Charlotte Bronte’s best-known work. But a sizeable reading population obviously thinks romance, pre-Victorian literature, and a supernatural element is great fun. If you are one of them, adjust the score accordingly. 1 of 5

Total: 10 of 30. This will not stand as the leader for long.

Gardner F. Fox (1911-1986) was a prolific and important comic creator. He was one of the architects of DC’s Silver Age, introducing the idea of Earth-Two and recreating the Justice Society as the Justice League of America. In the Golden Age, he co-created the Flash, Hawkman, Sandman, and Dr. Fate for DC and wrote some of Batman’s earliest adventures. He also worked with Marvel in the ‘70s, although his work there was not as heralded.

Fox also wrote novels unrelated to comics. In the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, Fox wrote a pair of novel series that were knockoffs of Conan the Barbarian. Kothar, the first of them, lasted five books and two years (1969-70); Fox followed him with Kyrik, who starred in four books in 1975-76. The two series are interchangeable; Kothar has a magic sword that keeps him poor, but both are lusty, bare-thewed swordsmen plagued by an excess of wizardry and a lack of wenches, wine, and wealth. (He also wrote two Llarn books before Kothar, but I can’t confirm their similarity to Kothar and Kyrik.)

I recently finished Kothar and the Conjurer’s Curse, the penultimate Kothar book. It’s a forgettable installment in a forgettable series, and I can’t recommend it to anyone but the most bored sword-and-sorcery fanatic. It’s a by-the-numbers affair, with Fox occasionally titillating the reader with descriptions of Kothar’s love interest’s bare body. Fox has a tin ear for names — Afgorkan, Merdoramon, Dwalka (Kothar’s “Crom”), Sfanol — and uses frequently near-historical proper nouns (Makkadonia, Mongrol), the hallmark of a fantasy novel that author and editor feel only indifference toward. Strangely, I don’t regret the time spent reading this book. There’s something comforting about such disposable mediocrity, especially when it’s a quick read.

The Kothar books were published by Belmont. The three pages of ads at the back give an indication of what kind of publisher Belmont was. The first page (“Science fiction thrillers”) has some authors of note — Norman Spinrad, A.E. van Vogt, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer — but none of the books are well known today. The second page lists Belmont’s “sorcery and Gothic suspense” titles, which is where Kothar probably fit. Mostly these titles feature young women / girls terrorized by the supernatural — you can almost see the women, in flimsy nightgowns, running under the full moon — plus The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft.

My guess is Belmont made most of its money on the third group, “adventure and modern romance.” The adventure stories’ descriptions are full of murder and organized crime. Belmont had a, uh, liberal definition of romance, though. Take Confessions of a Pimp by Anonymous:

Shocking underworld exposé of a pimp and his girls — their lives, loves, and adventures.

Or The Love Broker by Summer King:

How a pimp feels about his work and his girls.

Both of those sold for $1.25, by the way. Most of the adventure / romance books sold for $0.95, while the scifi and fantasy went for $0.60 to $0.75. Pimps gotta get paid, yo.

If you’re looking for slightly cheaper titillation, you can find it in The Garden of Earthly Pleasures by Ary C. Phillips:

Autobiographical story of a Tangiers harem girl — carnal delights of harem life.

Or the socially conscious thrill of The Lemmings by Charity Blackstock:

White college professor learns to love his beautiful African student.

Unsurprisingly, “Charity Blackstock” was a pseudonym. More surprisingly, the original title was the incredibly racist-sounding The Melon in the Cornfield. Yikes.

The most blatant, yet also tongue in cheek, is The Copulation Explosion by Rod Gray:

Eve Drum, the Lady from L.U.S.T., is hard at it again — this time capturing alive the man-beast creation of the bionics lab.

Remarkably, that’s part of a series. I’ve actually heard of Eve Drum, the Lady from L.U.S.T., before. According to Wikipedia and Fantastic Fiction, Fox wrote more than a dozen Lady from L.U.S.T. books; the Wikipedia page also credits (or blames) him with books in the “Cherry Delight, the Sexecutioner” series. (The Fantastic Fiction page has some, uh, interesting covers from the Eve Drum series.) This Amazon listing claims he wrote Copulation Explosion, but random Amazon listings rank slightly below Wikipedia on the reliability scale.

Wherever Belmont was getting its money, they sure weren’t spending it on cover art. Conjurer’s Curse’s cover is a muddled mess that actively repels the eye. (And it doesn’t even play to the story’s strong point: scantily clad women.) They weren’t shelling out for copy editors either — the publisher misspelled Fox’s first name on the cover and title page.

Before I went on vacation last week, I was a bit worried about the staff of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I had finished a new story (“Imps in the Infield”), and as usual, I gave F&SF the right of first refusal. The magazine had always exercised that right before, and it had done so very quickly — looking through my records, I can’t see that it had ever taken F&SF more than nine days to get a refusal to me through the U.S. Mail. But before I left for Florida, it had been fifteen days without a word from F&SF.

What had happened in those New Jersey offices? I wondered. Was it a plague, running through the staff? A strike? A general lassitude, the origins of which were obscure and would be revealed only when there was nothing left to do but savor the ironic twist?

I am relieved to say that when I returned from Florida, a rejection letter was waiting for me in the mailbox. There’s something comforting about coming home, no matter how wonderful the place you have returned from is; a rejection letter from F&SF isn’t as comforting, but it’s still nice to return to a reminder of certainty and reliability.

If you have any idea what is being sold in this auction or this auction or any of this seller's other auctions, for Quetzalcoatl's sake, please tell me. I have no idea what's going on, and I'm almost tempted to pay $10 for "Pulp City 1a" or $18 for "Axis 422222" just to find out. How can someone sell items with no information? Is it a curiosity-based transaction? Or does the seller, dr.parnassus, rely on people's willingness to do anything when presented with a cat joke or an adorable baby red panda?

Since the last time I wrote about submitting “How to Win a Bar Fight” to publishers, the story has been rejected three times. Well, I say “rejected,” but the Fantasy Faction Anthology didn’t so much reject the story as release a list of finalists (without any notification) that my name wasn’t on. I want to be angered by this, but that would be waste of time and tears. It’s still a rejection.

Since then, TM Magazine took two months to reject my story — the rejection came just in time for Christmas! — and the collection Black Apples took less than two weeks. (The story probably was not quite what the editors of the gothic fairytale anthology were looking for.)

The list of submissions I keep at Duotrope shows “How to Win a Bar Fight” has been rejected ten times in a little more than a year. This suggests there is not a market for, at the very least, this story. The lesson could become more comprehensive if I let it, which I have no intention of doing. I’ve already sent the story to Crowded, which is interesting in two ways: it pays 0.05 per word Australian, which is slightly more than $0.05 American, and the judging is partially crowdsourced, with the editors, subscribers, and authors who have submitted works to the magazine judging the slush pile. The submissions period ends in two weeks, and the judging for the next issue will be over about a month after that (I think).

At the worst, I’ll get feedback on the story. Even if its rejected, there’s always another market out there somewhere.

I’ve missed this guy, who makes custom nude versions of Heroclix. He’s been gone for a while, or maybe I’ve not noticed his auctions. I doubt I missed them — the listings kinda stand out.

I suppose you could appreciate the difficulty of the changes necessary to recraft 1.5-inch figures in this way, but I don’t see it. I really hope there aren’t people getting their libidinal jollies out of these things, and not just for the obvious reasons. I mean, the figures aren’t actually nude; he hasn’t removed the gloves or boots for most of them. (Or epaulets or capes or armbands …)

I haven’t figured out which is sadder, in its way: these, which actually take a measure of effort and skill, or this seller, who uses Victoria’s Secret ads as a background for his auction pictures and puts “SEXY!!!” in his auction titles. Oh, who am I kidding? It’s the guy who makes tiny nude sculptures of women.

The subtitle of Scott Lamb and Tim Ellsworth’s Pujols, a biography of Los Angeles Angels first baseman Albert Pujols, is “More Than the Game.” But a better subtitle might have been “God Is My Performance Enhancer” or even “God Is Really, Really Great, Guys.” The chapters alternate between Pujols’s mighty athletic feats and his mighty, mighty faith. This quote from p. 141 gives you an idea of what the book is like:

“Former Cardinals pitcher Mike Maroth recounts hearing how [Mark] Cahill told Pujols to ask people about God when they’re on first base. ‘Mark told him, “You have that time when you’re playing first base and you get these runners down there — ask them questions.” And Albert did.’ … In an interview with Charisma magazine, Pujols said that when an opposing player would get to first base, he would ask them, ‘What do you think is going to happen to you when you die?’ or ‘If you died today, where do you think you’re going to go?’”

Pujols’s beliefs are admirable, but man, I don’t think it’s cool to proselytize a runner on base. I mean, those guys are just trying to do their jobs and keep their heads in the game. They don’t need questions of cosmology bogging down their thinking. (Such as it is for most players.)

If you’re still not clear on what Pujols: More Than the Game is like, these consecutive index entries will illuminate matters:

Bible studies, 40, 88-89; Biggio, Craig, 109, 133; Bike-riding clinic, 162
Christianity, and perfection, 153; Christiansen, Jason, 72; Church, Deidre invited to, 28
Glaus, Troy, 191, 192; Glavine, Tom, 151, 153; Glory of God, 182
Personal encounter with God, 31; Pettini, Joe, 14; Pettitte, Andy, 127, 133
Poverty, 18; Power swing, 59; Praise, as spiritual threat to Christian athletes, 139; Pratt, David, 206; Prayer on baseball field, 191
Taguchi, So, 110, 112, 131, 145; talent, from God, 182, Tampa Bay Rays, 195

If you're a Christian and a baseball fan, you’ll love Pujols. If you have trouble with either … well, maybe this isn’t for you.

Here we are again, with another year of speculative fiction nominees! Grading the Hugo and Nebula nominees in plot, protagonists, villains, inventiveness, and fun — with inventiveness being the most important — seemed to work last year, so I thought I would try it again for 2012. Yes, I know the Hugos were awarded about two months ago, but stick with me here:

The fifth and final nominee for the Hugo for Best Novel is A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin:

Plot: Medieval civil war — with the greatest ice fort ever! In Dragons, the land of Westeros is in its fifth book of strife. The first book, Game of Thrones, started the War of Five Kings; now Westeros is down to two kings, one of whom wasn’t even part of the original five. But there’s a new king wandering into the picture, and a queen lingers over the sea, waiting …

(That ellipsis would, in a blurb or on a back cover, be there to add a bit of mystery to the summary. However, in my case, it’s honest puzzlement: what is she waiting for?)

That’s the overall plot. There are many, many, many individual plots, each of them with a different point of view character. Daenerys Targaryen, the queen across the sea, is trying to hold on to a city of former slaves as it teeters from internal and external pressure. A Westerosi prince comes across the sea to woo her. Tyrion Lannister, a high-born dwarf fleeing murder charges, hopes to become her advisor, but he takes forever to get there. Jon Snow commands the Night Watch, which mans the Wall (made of ice!) and keeps the barbarians and ice zombies out of Westeros. Theon Greyjoy, a traitor, has had his dreams of freedom beaten out of him by the person he betrayed his adopted family to. The dowager queen, Cersei, plots to extend her influence over her son, the boy king. Bran Stark, thought dead, freezes his ass off to learn how to talk to trees. Stannis Barratheon tries to kill a bunch of people who think he’s not the rightful king. Aegon VI, another boy king, returns to Westeros.

And those are just the main plots; one or three chapters are given to other characters, such as Davos Seaworth, Stannis’s chief advisor; Melisandre, Stannis’s priestess; Arya Stark, Bran’s sister and a trainee assassin; Victarion Greyjoy, another twit coming to marry Daenerys; the Martells, fomenting rebellion; Cersei’s twin Jaime; and Theon’s sister, Asha (although her plots overlap with the others, as does those of Barristan Selmy, Daenerys’s bodyguard).

That’s just too much plot to pack into one book, even if with 950 pages. And the worst part of it is none of the stories pay off. All that happens in Dragons is that Martin is moving pieces around for the next book. The people going to Daenerys get near her but do not have a chance to achieve their objectives; in Westeros, the battles are about to begin. But nothing actually happens in Dragons. 1 of 5

Protagonists: As you might guess with all those plots, there are a lot of protagonists. Unfortunately, not many of them are interesting. When one of them does seem interesting — such as Tyrion or Barristan — it makes the other dozen protagonists you suffer through between their chapters seem less interesting. A few of the protagonists, such as Quentyn Martell, actually seem to repel interest, in much the same way ducks repel water. Almost everyone seems out of their depth; only Tyrion and Stannis know what they’re doing, and they’re the ones who find the least success.

Daenerys is the most hopeless; she has a city of fanatical freed slaves, including an army of fearsome janissaries, and three fully grown dragons, but she cannot think of how to deal with her problems. She loses control of her dragons because her training style is much the same as the parenting style of Ned Flanders’s parents on The Simpsons: “We’ve tried nothin’ and we’re all out of ideas.” 2 of 5

Villains: Well, the Boltons — Theon’s tormenters and Stannis’s putative opponents in Dragons — are wicked, evil people, and you want them to get the comeuppance it is clear it will take books to deliver. Ramsey, the bastard son, is a torturer, obviously evil; Roose, the father, cloaks his wicked deeds in soft, lying words. Cersei, although the hero of her own story, is masterfully manipulative. The other plots, though, don’t have very distinctive villains, which is disappointing. 2 of 5

Inventiveness: This is the fifth book of an epic fantasy series. Other than sexual and martial frankness, there is not much in Dragons that has not been hashed over before. And I don’t think sex, rape, and gore constitute a new direction in the fantasy genre — at least I hope it doesn’t. 2 of 10

Fun: I’ll admit this wasn’t a slog after I got into it, although that took 150 pages. But this is a spine-crusher of a novel, the kind you need to read with a weightlifter’s belt to avoid hernias; just holding the book is awkward. Martin sets a wide net with his plots, and his scope is impressive. But with his brutal characters, few of whom shrink from violence, there is little joy in Dragons, and a pervasive aura of gloom hangs over the doomed characters. (If you want to know which ones those are, I’ll give you a hint: they’re all doomed.) 1 of 5

Total: 8 of 30. Originally, I gave Dragons a 7, but I rejiggered the ratings when I realized this would tie it with last year’s Black out / All Clear, which would have been unfair. Dragons is far better — and despite having 950 pages, it is far shorter, weirdly. Dragons was nominated, I think, because people liked the book series or the TV show. Perhaps A Song of Ice and Fire is, as a series, better than any single one of the books; unfortunately, the series wasn’t nominated. In any event, Hugo voters agreed with me, selecting Dragons as the fifth best of the five books nominated … and Games of Thrones, the HBO series, won Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form), by a landslide.

The similarity of Matthew Hughes’s works to those of Jack Vance have been pointed out before, but Template is the first of his novels that, if you removed the author and copyright information, I might mistake for an actual Vance novel. Template has Hughes’s normal Vancian style recounting a story of interplanetary culture clash, missing planets, duels, goofy sports (one not entirely dissimilar to hussade from Trullion: Alastor 2262), and a search for identity and heritage. To be fair, I would mistake it for one of Vance’s more middling efforts — any of the Alastor novels, really — but that’s not to diminish the similarities, nor is that to say Template is a middling novel.

Wake of the Bloody Angel by Alex Bledsoe is one of the finest — no, I’ll go out on a limb here, the finest — novel-length adaptations of sequel to the song Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) by Looking Glass.

This little sketch is meant to be funny, mainly for repeatedly using the word “turd” to refer to the title character in E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. The clueless movie execs in the skit suggest there is a flaw in E.T., and they try to convince Senor Spielbergo to correct it by killing E.T. at the end of the movie. (The same people did a similar skit about Back to the Future, and like this one, they kinda had a point.)

I sympathized because when I saw E.T., I thought it was the most frightening thing ever. I still don’t believe I will ever watch a movie that will terrify me as much as E.T. did. I mean, for a month, I was scared that little phallic monster was going to creep up on me and … I don’t know, just creepily stare at me, I guess. Frankly, the little turd’s presence was enough to frighten me without thinking about what it could do with that glowing finger.

Why did E.T. scare the living daylights out of 7-year-old me? (Or did I see it when it was re-released in 1985? I don’t remember.) Because:

— E.T. wandered out of the darkness, and he looked so … weird, which was the same as terrifying for me. He also had that bizarre voice and had trouble communicating. It’s strange, sometimes, what frightens children. I had an attic bedroom, with the light switch at the top of the stairs. I had to walk into that darkness every night, and my imagination had already decided a host of specters were waiting up there. That old farmhouse would settle, making creaks and cracks that I knew sounded like something moving around.

But any movie could have created night terrors with that canvas. Noises in the dark, in an old farmhouse? That can be frightening, even if you live there.

— He took the kids’ candy. Thieving alien bastard.

— He drank, and he got a kid drunk. I grew up in a teetotalling household, and drinking beer was looked at askance. (Or that was my perception, at least.) But he got a kid drunk, and from my point of view, that was horrible — just about the worst thing I could think of that didn’t involve violence. (I was 7, remember.) In my defense, getting a 10 year old drunk is still looked on as pretty skeevy.

— I didn’t remember this, but he also causes the kid to kiss a girl. That would have led to fears of cooties in 1982, and today it’s sexual harassment.

— He got kids in trouble. That was truly the most frightening thing that could happen to me as a child. (I’m pretty sure I would have considered the chaos in The Cat in the Hat as an introduction to the literature of terror, had I read it as a child.) Adults didn’t scold me very often, but when they did, I felt as if I had done the worst thing ever; if some alien riff-raff had led me into misdeeds, I would have been mortified. And then I would have hated the alien. Which I did anyway, even though it was the protagonist / audience surrogate getting in trouble, not me.

All of that added up to an extremely frightening movie and alien. I watched Alien and Aliens for the first time recently, and the xenomorphs didn’t stay with me more than ten minutes after the movie ended. But sometimes, standing in my backyard in the dark, I think about E.T., and I get a little — well, not frightened. Uneasy. And I wish, very briefly, I had availed myself of the Second Amendment … just in case, you understand.

On a side note, did you know the 30th anniversary of E.T.‘s release was June 11? It’s true. I didn’t know because I ran into no ad campaigns or other reminders. Thank God.