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Saturday, December 1st, 2007
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11:46 am
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Your Cat & Other Space AliensThat's the title of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) maryturzillo's volume of poetry out from Van Zeno Press. Go out and buy it. Now.
In Your Cat & Other Space Aliens, Mary manages to express the complete range of human exultation and sadness in short, jewel-like paragraphs. Joe Haldeman calls her book "...a huge banquet of food for thought, as well as a display of poetic virtuosity and intense emotional complexity." The book has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
It is an amazing book.
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| Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
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11:58 am
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Things I Am Not Making UpI knew there was a new film version of Beowulf in the works, co-written by Neil Gaiman. eleanor and I had seen a preview, and my first thought was, "I don't remember so many women in the book." So I was prepared to be underwhelmed.
I almost choked on my coffee this morning, though, while reading the New York Daily News "Fall 101," a roundup of coming attractions in film and music, and found out who would be playing Grendel's mother. That devil-shaped woman is played by none other than pillow-lipped serial adopter Angelina Jolie (last seen making grief unbearably telegenic as the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl in A Mighty Heart).
Having read that, I couldn't help wanting a better look at this cinematic train wreck. Imagine my childish delight when I Googled up a Los Angeles Times review and found: "Later, Grendel's mother (Jolie) seduces Beowulf so that she can produce a replacement heir that will allow her to reestablish her dominion over the kingdom."
But Neil Gaiman is sensitive to the integrity of the original text. The LA Times piece wraps up with this:"I have no idea if this thing is going to work because it isn't done yet," Gaiman said. "But because it's so hyper-real and immersive, once you are two to three minutes in, I think it will own you for the full 90 minutes."
Gaiman is also a vocal proponent of an unrated version of "Beowulf" down the line.
Even more than nudity, Gaiman said, "I just really miss all the swearing."
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| Monday, August 27th, 2007
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7:43 am
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A Three Hour TourThe Redhead (eleanor) and I toured Governor's Island on Sunday. It had been 27 years since I'd been stationed there with the U.S. Coast Guard, and the homely government architecture brought up a lot of nostalgia.
In 1996 the Coast Guard decamped and turned the property over to New York, which is now in the process of deciding how to ruin develop it.
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| Friday, August 24th, 2007
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5:55 pm
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| Monday, May 14th, 2007
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7:40 am
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ExcrescencesFrom today's Get Fuzzy:I am bloated with steamy wondrousness. My poems are not so much written as they are excreted.
Really, I couldn't have said it better myself.
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| Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007
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9:39 am
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But Will He Pimp It?The AP moved a story this morning about mckitterick's newest vehicle purchase: a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that was buried in brand-new condition under the lawn of the Tulsa County Courthouse in 1957, and is scheduled to be unearthed June 15 as part of the Oklahoma Centennial.
The only question worth asking is what color Chris will paint the vehicle.
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| Sunday, January 14th, 2007
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12:05 pm
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| Saturday, January 6th, 2007
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4:27 pm
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Open Letter to Salon.comI wrote this to Salon a week ago, I'm posting it today in response to an entry pegkerr made about a Garrison Keillor piece in Salon.
Walter Thompson
Manager, Salon Premium
Dear Mr. Thompson:
I'm sorry to say I won't be renewing my Salon subscription in January.
I used to love Salon, but it has become the digital equivalent of the Jerry Springer Show: all opinion, all the time, very little of it informed. The editorial standard now seems to be how many letters a given piece will generate. And I have to tell you, every time I read the letters section I want to take a shower afterward. I don't know what it takes to exclude a letter from your pages, short of a death threat, but your "Editor's Choice" designation is merely an abdication of editorial responsibility.
If it was possible to support just the AP feed, War Room, Heather Havrilesky, Joe Conason, Patrick Smith, and maybe one or two others like them, I would. I can't justify underwriting the self-indulgent auto-eroticism of Garrison Keillor; the always-angry, always self-absorbed Debra J. Dickerson (who appears to be the love child of Ayelet Waldman and Anne Lamott), and Cary Tennis, who is quite possibly the last person on Earth from whom I'd seek advice.
I'm troubled that you've turned Salon into a blogger collective, in which opinion pieces, rather than reporting, now dominate the pages (including "news" stories in which the news is merely the hook upon which the writer hangs his or her disquisition). I'm troubled that so much of the content seems designed to pump up the volume on the letters page, rather than inform readers or unpack a complex issue. I'm troubled that so many pieces spotlight the trivial difficulties of relatively privileged people.
I've been watching Salon drift toward the precipice all year, and if it isn't there yet, I don't want to watch it slide over the edge.
Best Wishes,
Bob Howe
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| Sunday, December 31st, 2006
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6:01 pm
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Writing NewsThis just in: I'll be doing a fiction reading, with fiction writer and SF academic John Langan, at the Melville Gallery of Manhattan's South Street Seaport on Tuesday, January 2, as part of the New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series.
The doors open at 6:30 p.m., and complete details can be found on the NYRSF page. The series is curated by Jim Freund, host of Hour of the Wolf, broadcast on WBAI radio.
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| Thursday, December 28th, 2006
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7:16 am
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The Year in ReviewHello my little forest friends. Anyone who reads this journal knows that I've been posting infrequently. The truth is, I've been missing out on the interactive part of the LJ experience; I haven't taken much time to read my friends' journals, much less comment on them. Mostly I've been using the journal for writing news (also infrequent), which strikes me as the digital equivalent of those horrible Christmas form letters.
You know the ones I mean: they're usually from families with young kids who don't have the time to write individual letters to all their friends, so they mail out a press release (folded awkwardly into a Christmas card) about their doings, their kids' doings, and their pets' doings. The letters often come off as boastful and condescending: not only do I have a fabulous life, home, boat, child, dog, but I have far too many friends to write to them individually.
I hate those letters. Or I used to.
I have far more sympathy for the letter writers than I used to—even the ones who own boats—because whatever else those letters say, they're also saying, "I've neglected my friends and I feel guilty about it." Mea Culpa.
This past year all my friends, on LJ and off, have probably been saying, "What the hell is up with Bob? He doesn't call, he doesn't write, and all my letters are returned, marked Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore."
 Well, I didn't buy a boat. Part of the reason I've been incommunicado, as many of you know, is that I've been working long hours at an absorbing, demanding and very satisfying job. I'm also in a serious relationship for the first time in a while, with the spheniscidaephile eleanor (pictured here presiding over her Christmas dinnertable). To say that I've been struggling to find the balance among work and life and relationships is a vast, drafty understatement. Even when I've had the time, a rare commodity these past nine months, I haven't had the energy to keep up with my friends. For that I'm sorry.
I'm not one for resolutions, New Year's or otherwise, but I'm going to try and make 2007 the year my friends say "What the hell is up with Bob? He's at the door again. Doesn't he have a life?!"
So you'll be hearing from me. Consider yourself warned.Writing NewsSo this is pretty gratifying: my novelette, "Do Neanderthals Know?" published in the December 2005 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, made the preliminary ballot for the Nebula Award. What this means is that ten of my fellow science fiction and fantasy writers found the story compelling enough to recommend it for the award. I've read half of the other works on the ballot in that category, and they are good, so it's pretty flattering to be included in their company.
Also in December, my short story, "Life Sentences," was reprinted in issue nine of Aeon Speculative Fiction, edited by the fabulous Marti McKenna and Bridget McKenna.
All in all a pretty good way to close out the year.
current music: "Hit Me Up" by Gia Farrell, from the Happy Feet soundtrack
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| Friday, October 13th, 2006
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8:38 am
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Hot AirBest Day for Radio Since the LZ-129 Docked at Lakehurst: on Saturday, October 14, I will be appearing on Hour of the Wolf, hosted by Jim Freund, on WBAI 99.5 FM, from 5 to 7 a.m.
Hour of the Wolf's format will be music, conversation with Jim about speculative fiction, and a reading by the show's guest (that would be me).
If you're not in WBAI's broadcast range (the New York metropolitan area), you can listen to the show on the web.
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| Saturday, September 16th, 2006
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2:54 pm
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| Friday, August 4th, 2006
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6:05 pm
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Writing News
• My novelette, "From Wayfield, From Malagasy," appears in the October 2006 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, at your local newsstand now. Directly following my story is a Biolog about me by Richard A. Lovett (a terrific fiction writer himself, who has stories in the September and October Analogs), who makes me seem much more interesting than I actually am.
Other Writing NewsA few friends are also having a pretty good writing week: William Shunn's (shunn) novella, "Inclination," and Richard Bowes' novel, From the Files of the Time Rangers, have both made it onto the preliminary Nebula Awards ballot. Congratulations!
David Barr Kirtley's (davekirtley) story, "Blood of Virgins," appears in the October 2006 Realms of Fantasy. |
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| Sunday, July 23rd, 2006
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2:58 am
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| Friday, June 16th, 2006
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10:06 am
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| Thursday, June 8th, 2006
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11:44 pm
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Beheading the HydraInsurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is dead, another so-called “turning point” in the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. Ellen Knickmeyer writes in the Washington Post that “Critics of the U.S. military's campaign in Iraq have accused American commanders of making their own use of Zarqawi, exaggerating the foreigner's importance to suggest that the insurgency has been thrust upon Iraqi Sunnis more than it has been led by them.”
Even if this were not true, the effect of killing one leader in an insurgency/civil war has an uncertain effect on the ground, at best. The capture of Saddam Hussein himself, two and a half years ago, was supposed to have undercut the insurgency, as were the deaths of his sons, Uday and Qusay, three years ago: the violence in Iraq has of course increased horrifically since we passed those supposed milestones.
In April 1943, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, head of the Imperial Japanese Navy, was shot down by U.S. warplanes over Bougainville in the Solomon Islands. Despite the fact that Yamamoto was exponentially more important to the Japanese than Zarqawi was to the insurgency (Yamamoto was the architect of the Japanese war plan, and given the island-hopping nature of combat in the Pacific, its chief prosecutor), the Pacific war dragged on for more than two years after his death–and this at a time when the United States was fully mobilized for war.
Today the minds of U.S. politicians are not on war, but on writing discrimination against gays into the constitution, and cutting taxes for the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of Americans.
"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes," disgraced former House majority leader Tom DeLay said in 2003, just as the insurgency in Iraq was coming into malignant flower.
After the constitutional amendment against gay marriage died in the Senate, Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas said "We're making progress, and we're not going to stop until marriage between a man and a woman is protected.” This comes at the end of a month with more than 1,200 military, civilian and police deaths among Iraqis and coalition forces.
Future generations will think that giants strode the Earth in our time.
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| Sunday, May 21st, 2006
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4:19 pm
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Writing News
| My novelette, "Entropy's Girlfriend," which originally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Analog magazine, has been reprinted in the Russian science fiction magazine Esli ("If"). I don't yet know exactly how one gets a copy—when I find out I'll post the details here. |
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On another note: to those of you who've noticed my almost complete absence from LiveJournal, I wanted to say that it's because of a new and all-consuming job as the editor of internal publications for a university. I'll be more visible in my blog and your comments sections soon.
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| Sunday, April 23rd, 2006
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10:29 pm
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E-Mail FolliesThose of you who had e-mail messages to me bounce today, please resend them—I'm using a workaround through Gmail while Verizon, my ISP, lumbers towards the problem (which seems to be with their suddenly hypersensitive spam filters; two hours of my life I'll never get back).
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| Sunday, April 16th, 2006
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12:12 pm
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| Thursday, April 13th, 2006
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8:18 am
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The Mice of WarLast week journalist Seymour M. Hersh caused a stir in a New Yorker article in which he said the Bush administration was drawing up targeting plans for air strikes on Iran's nuclear plants and other strategic targets. Hersh said U.S. Special Forces were already operating covertly in Iran, and that the administration refused to take a nuclear "bunker buster" strike off the table. I learned about the New Yorker piece from fantasy writer Jeff Ford (14theditch), who had an interesting post about it in LiveJournal.
(And by the way, if you're not familiar with Jeff's work, I highly recommend you stop reading this drivel immediately and go buy a copy of The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories. His new book, The Empire of Ice Cream, is just out this month.)
In any case, I believe Hersh: he was right about the non-existent WMDs in Iraq; about the administration's push for war there; and about the abuses at Abu Ghraib. But there's nothing surprising about Hersh's article—many nations, including the U.S., maintain war plans for even the most remote contingencies. Thousands of American, Russian and Chinese ICBMs are targeted on major cities and strategic targets. That's in peacetime. Our government would be remiss in not having plans, even military plans, to deal with an emerging Iranian nuclear weapons capability. In the hands of any other administration, such war plans would still be cause for grave concern, but not terrifying. Deterrence works only if other nations can't be sure whether the U.S. will use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with WMDs. (And that is terrifying, but it's not a logic unique to the Bush administration.) "Messianic" and "legacy" are the words Hersh reports hearing most frequently in connection with the president's military adventures in Iraq and Iran.
Of the many things about the Hersh article that worries me, exhibit one is the current administration's incompetence in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter, though less in the public eye than Iraq, is rapidly devolving back to a medieval theocracy, over which the Taliban and various warlords are fighting for control. The government under Hamid Karzai is only a nominal impediment to the ambitions of these warring factions. As bad as Afghanistan is, Iraq is worse. The U.S. military controls only the ground it stands on, and barely that. Outside the U.S. circle of power—most of the populated areas of the country—the lives of ordinary Iraqis are becoming more nasty, brutish, and short each day. And this, don't forget, is the administration's signature effort.
Iran's population is more than two-and-a-half times larger than Iraq's; its area almost four times that of Iraq's, and has an economy almost six times as large. If an invasion of Iraq was a debacle, given this administration's track record, an attack on Iran would be global catastrophe.
It's hard to know how seriously to take Mahmud Ahmadinejad's bellicose rhetoric, but it seems obvious that if the U.S. attacks, even with "surgical" airstrikes, Iran will have little incentive not to launch attacks against the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.
The question becomes what do we do then? More air strikes? Do we bomb Tehran into rubble? I don't think the administration would launch a nuclear attack in response to terrorist attacks by Iran, even on U.S. soil, but with 125,000 troops in Iraq, we don't have a lot of other options. For that matter, even with a fresh army and no commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, an Iranian ground war would be a terrible gamble. I don't know if it could generate a world war, but a U.S. attack on Iran would certainly further inflame Muslim sentiment against us. How many people would we have to kill or subjugate to "win"?
Perhaps worst of all, there may be no good response to Iran's nuclear ambitions. Not every problem has a solution. What's truly terrifying is that this administration is demonstrably unequipped, intellectually and morally, to make these high-stakes decisions. The president and his allies in Congress have bungled every major initiative they've launched.
As I said in Jeff's blog, it wouldn't surprise me if Hersh is right, if the president's finger is on the trigger, and the military is already sending teams into Iran. Such a posture is entirely consistent with the administration's reflexive reliance on military force, completely unhitched from any concern for the consequences. Even some of the neocons are caviling at this fight, and when your recklessness can scare that cadre of ideological stoners, you know you've achieved a perfect level of irrationality.
Perhaps the most troubling thing about the way this administration conducts foreign policy is that it has taken most Americans (neocon operatives and right-wing barking heads included), so long to be troubled by it, and that more than 30 percent of the public still supports the president's war in Iraq. (I find the Thomas Friedman hawks most repellent of all: their cry is "We wanted a war, but GOSH! not this war!")
Decent, honorable people can contemplate, and carry out, horrible acts in the service of what they hope is a higher good. Roosevelt and his generals ordered an unprecedented slaughter of civilians in bomber campaigns against German and Japanese cities, in the belief they were doing so for a greater good. It's a horrible burden for the decision makers and the warriors to live with. George McGovern was a bomber pilot the 8th Air Force, flying 35 combat missions over Europe in World War II. He was disgusted by the violence and carnage, though convinced of its necessity at the time, and ran his failed presidential campaign largely in opposition to the Vietnam War. In several conversations about war and its practitioners, Rick Bowes and I have noted that the most reflexively bellicose individuals are often the ones who've never heard a shot fired in anger, or had to live with the guilt of having killed another human being.
(Richard Bowes, by the way, is another fantasy writer with whom you should be acquainted: his book Minions of the Moon, is transcendent.)
And that lack of awareness, finally, is the most damning indictment of the Bush administration. Aside from the president's cosmetic turn as a Texas Air National Guard pilot, none of the top officials in his administration have ever served in uniform, and the president himself only did so to obtain a safe perch on which to avoid the Vietnam war. That's not to say that only former combatants can make informed, humane decisions about war, but administration officials' scrupulous avoidance of combat certainly casts a long shadow over their decision to send thousands of Americans to die, and to cause the deaths of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.
The President of the United States is an elephant in a roomful of mice, some of whom he's sworn to protect; others he'd like to protect if he could; and some he'd kill immediately, given the chance. But the position carries so much power that every move the president makes, not just military decisions, kills some mice. Institute a minor rule change at the Department of Health and Human Services, and its a statistical certainty that someone will die as a result. Announce an economic program to boost development in Louisiana, and it's a given that someone, somewhere will suffer from unintended consequences. Launch a war against a foreign country, and no matter how just the cause, you can be sure thousands of innocents will die, and tens of thousands more plunged into chaos and misery.
You would think that five years of bearing such inhuman responsibility would sober any person, but not the president, apparently, nor his top advisors. Having made the gravest possible choice in Iraq with catastrophic results, the administration appears poised to repeat its mistakes in Iran. As the president thunders around the room in search of his legacy, all the mice can do is try to scamper out of the way.
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