The Third Man

This post is not actually about the great Orson Welles/Graham Greene movie. It's about a book I recently came across, The Third Man Factor. It has an ambitious subtitle: The Secret to Survival in Extreme Environments.

Fans of T.S. Eliot will recall these lines from The Wasteland:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

—But who is that on the other side of you?

This is part of the poem's 'Journey to Emmaus' section, but in the notes Eliot explained: The following lines were stimulated by the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which, but I think one of Shackleton's): it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.

It turns out that a fair number of people in extremely stressful conditions, often explorers, report an encounter with a mysterious "Other." Unlike sleep paralysis or experiences of "hauntings," these presences seem supportive or helpful and have given some people the determination to carry on and survive harrowing conditions. It's not always a get-out-of-jail free card - Geiger cites one case where a climber described the experience in his diary before dying. The book uses some neurological findings to argue that the Other is a psychological survival mechanism, a hallucination triggered by the brain in certain cases of stress.

Geiger cites some people who interpret this in a dismissive fashion - standard-issue "See, all this mystical bunk is just in your head!" rhetoric. He also quotes those who believe that something supernatural or paranormal is being encountered, beyond how the brain interprets it. The introduction to the book is from Vincent Lam, the Canadian doctor and award-winning writer. Lam is an Anglican (the last I heard anyways) and in his introduction he describes a stressful period in his life when he encountered what he believes was "a guardian angel."

Geiger himself takes a stance between these positions. He seems to conclude that it's "just" happening in the brain, but that it's a wondrous, even spiritual experience at the same time. For him, it speaks to human inter-connectedness, our need for others, and the amazing flexibility of the human psyche. There's an interview with Geiger here. The Globe and Mail reviewed the book here.

On a related note, have you seen Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends?

Robots warring (in a flooded world?)

Sometimes I wish science fiction would stay science fiction. I occasionally read or hear a news story that triggers a flashback to a hundred science fiction stories I've read on the same subject; and I have to remind myself that, no, this is here and now in the real world. The imagined future has arrived. It's not just an abstract problem anymore.

The story that did that to me today was about robots. P.W. Singer, an expert on modern warfare, and the author of books on child soldiers and mercenaries, has come out with a new book on the growing use of robots in war. There are thousands already in use, and many more in the design & development stage. You can read some articles about his book here. I heard an interview with him today. He points out some of the troubling new ethical and social issues this kind of technology creates. For example:

So, for example, if you are sending less and less Americans into harm’s way, does it make you more cavalier about the use of force? And one of the people that was fascinating that I interviewed was a former assistant secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan, who actually had this to say about these systems. He worried that they would create more marketization of war, as he put it. We might have more shock and awe talk to defray discussion of the true costs of war.... I mean, the concern I have is that it takes certain trends that are already in play in our body politic. We don’t have declarations of war anymore. We don’t have a draft. We don’t buy war bonds anymore. We don’t pay higher taxes for war. And now you have the fact that you may be sending more and more machines instead people. And so, you may be taking the already lowering bars to war and dropping them to the ground.

He suggests that in some ways we have a parallel to 1942, when atomic weapons were in development. Wouldn't it have been better to debate the morality of nuclear bombs before they were used, rather than after?

This exchange was particularly interesting:

AMY GOODMAN: What happens if a robot commits a massacre?

P.W. SINGER: It’s a great question. You know, who do you hold responsible? Do you hold responsible the human operator? Do you hold responsible the commander who authorized them there? Do you hold responsible the software engineer who wrote it wrong? And how do you hold them accountable? We don’t have good answers.

And what was funny is, one person that I interviewed was a Pentagon robotic scientist. And he said, “You know what? You’re wrong. There’s no social or ethical or legal dimensions with robotics in war that we have to figure out.” He said, “That is, unless the machine kills the wrong person repeatedly.” Quote, “Then it’s just a product recall issue.” That isn’t the way I think we should be looking at the social, ethical and legal dimensions of all of this. And that’s why we need to launch a discussion about it. Otherwise, we’re going to make the very same mistake that a past generation did with atomic bombs, you know, not talking about them until Pandora’s box is already opened.

You can read the whole interview here.

I also came across this story, about a new study that shows a general warming trend in Antarctica. If the West Antarctic ice sheet were to collapse, the average global sea level would go up by six meters! (I think previously the estimate was five meters.) And apparently we need that ozone hole after all, since it keeps things colder. Anyways, it's not an imminent threat (ie, not in my lifetime) but it would endanger humanity if we keep going the way we have been.

Happy Inauguration Day!

Wow, has it really been more than a month since my last post? Ouch. Sorry about that. [Insert lame but true excuses about the holidays and university workload here.]

If you have been missing my unique blend of... whatever-it-is, please head on over to Holy Heroes!! for a long post I did recently about Crucifixion in the Work of Grant Morrison. It caused Eve Tushnet to say "faboo!!!"

Oh, and there was also this little one about The Beast's God.

My next blog project (blogject?) is to post my "ten favourite books read in 2008" and "ten favourite graphic novels read in 2008." I have the lists worked out, but the trouble is coming up with something more thoughtful to say about each one, other than "Great book!" Sadly, most of the books were non-fiction - the only science fiction-with-spiritual-themes that made the list was (drum roll...) Philip K. Dick's UBIK! Ubik is the miracle product! It gets those stains out! It eliminates the heartbreak of psoriasis! Repairs your car! It walks your dog, and doubles on sax! If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you must read... UBIK!

And Happy Inauguration Day to all my American readers and, well, everyone, really. Hello to the new guy and good riddance to the other fellow!

Oh, and here's an interesting oddity. CBC radio evidently decided that President Obama wouldn't have enough to do already, so they asked their audience for help in compiling a mix of great Canadian music for him to listen to. I doubt he'll get around to it, but there are a lot of good tunes on it. Check it out!

Jamaican Echoes

As they worked, Case gradually became aware of the music that pulsed constantly through the cluster. It was called dub, a sensuous mosaic cooked from vast libraries of digitalized pop; it was worship, Molly said, and a sense of community.

from Neuromancer, by William Gibson.

I want to point out a great new CBC radio documentary about dub music. You can listen to it at the Inside the Music Audio Archive - it's called Jamaican Echoes, and it's about an hour long. It does a good job of explaining what dub is, how it developed, and how it spread around the world. Dub techniques and innovations created by Jamaican artists went on to influence huge swathes of contemporary music, from hip-hop to disco to punk to bhangra, not to mention most any style of electronic music you care to mention.

I would've liked some mention of nyabinghi drumming but I suppose that would involve explaining lots of other facets of reggae music. It's a great introduction nonetheless, and includes excerpts from many classic tracks. Be sure to crank up the bass before you listen to it, or you'll miss the point entirely.

I can't be entirely sure, but I think my first introduction to dub was reading Neuromancer, so I've always been focused on both the mystical and science-fictional elements of the music.

PS: For further exploration of the original dub remixing process, you might want to check out this podcast. It contains 21 different versions of Jackie Mittoo's Drum Song.

Robinson interview

Here's a rewarding interview with Marilynne Robinson, the Pulitzer-prize winning novelist. As the introduction says, she's "a Christian whose faith is not easily reduced to generalities." Indeed. Aside from being a very good writer, I think I would describe her as a philosopher; someone who loves knowledge and is deeply interested in reality in all the ways it comes to us. I'm posting the link here because she talks about both science and religion.

On religion:

Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I’ve found fruitful to think about.
Or:
The first obligation of religion is to maintain the sense of the value of human beings. If you had to summarize the Old Testament, the summary would be: stop doing this to yourselves. But it is not in our nature to stop harming ourselves. We don’t behave consistently with our own dignity or with the dignity of other people.

On science:

I read as much as I can of contemporary cosmology because reality itself is profoundly mysterious. Quantum theory and classical physics, for instance, are both lovely within their own limits and yet at present they cannot be reconciled with each other. If different systems don’t merge in a comprehensible way, that’s a flaw in our comprehension and not a flaw in one system or the other.
...Science is amazing. On a mote of celestial dust, we have figured out how to look to the edge of our universe. I feel instructed by everything I have read. Science has a lot of the satisfactions for me that good theology has.

And:

I’m not terribly persuaded by the word supernatural. I don’t like the idea of the world as an encapsulated reality with intrusions made upon it selectively. The reality that we experience is part of the whole fabric of reality. To pretend that the universe is somewhere else doing something is really not true. We’re right in the middle of it. Utterly dependent on it, utterly defined by it. If you read somebody like Wallace Stevens, he’s basically saying the same thing.

She also talks about the relationship between religion and science, about beauty, about Lincoln and Marx, about "puritanical hedonism," and well, lots of other things.

Tidbits

Wow, November has been a quiet month around here. But any of you who've been university students can understand why, I'm sure.

Åka has kindly pointed out two posts from Auxiliary Memory, the blog of James Wallace Harris. In Defining Science Fiction he attempts that notoriously slippery task and describes science fiction as a belief system, much like religion. Interestingly, though, while he is an atheist who prefers sci-fi to religion, he doesn't mean this in a triumphalistic way. Actually he's somewhat ambivalent about it, feeling that science fiction can lead a person away from reality just as much as a religion can. In the previous post, The Children of Science Fiction, he mused about the way reading science fiction can shape a person's worldview: Åka contributed some comments to that one. These are profound questions (I personally think there's more overlap or synthesis between systems) but frankly I don't feel I have the spare brain cells to wrestle with them right now - or perhaps I should say wrestle with again, right now.

Lately when I haven't been reading about literate medieval heretics, politics, or Guatemalan atrocities, I've been privileging comic books over science fiction or fantasy. It's really astonishing how many comics you can read when you should be doing homework. It's also amazing how many trade-paperback comics you can get from the Winnipeg Public Library system, too. (Libraries = cheap as free!) One great source of recommendations (besides Holy Heroes!! of course) has been Say It Backwards, a blog devoted to all things Superman. Check out this post on the ten most important stories for understanding what Superman's all about. Also the best Superman stories since 1985.

When I do get around to reading science fiction again, Anathem is at the top of my list. Here's Gabriel's glowing review, subtitled "all books should be about monks that live inside a giant clock." Right on, brother. Just don't forget the space princesses.

PS: Here's some fascinating news. Black holes are not scary things that are trying to kill us, but are in fact a stabilizing force on galaxies. "The powerful black holes at the center of massive galaxies and galaxy clusters act as hearts to the systems."

Other news: An eleven-thousand-year old temple has been discovered! Paging Indiana Jones!

Speculative newspaper

This qualifies as speculative fiction: as you may have heard, a 'special edition' of the New York Times was released yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of copies were handed out in New York and Los Angeles, and an online version has been put up. Readers were astonished to discover that American troops would be pulling out of Iraq immediately, that the "United States National Health Insurance Act" had been passed, and so forth.

Of course, none of these things are actually true - at least, not yet. The paper and website were put out by a large alliance of activists, spearheaded by those infamous pranksters The Yes Men (I believe Gawker.com was the first to offer evidence of this). The fake Times is something like the Google News good news page, except that it offers (indirectly) more concrete proposals as to how the changes described might actually be achieved (usually grassroots organizing is involved.)
To tie this speculative newspaper into the theme of this blog, here's an article with a religious connection:

American Evangelical Churches Announce New Policy of Sanctuary for Iraqi Refugees

The author? One "W. Wilberforce!" Well, William Wilberforce, the devout Evangelical politician, is long dead, but his fame as a mighty and tireless campaigner for abolition, animal welfare, and other social causes still lives on. I imagine most of the by-lines in the newspaper are of this nature. One public statement about the special edition came from a "Bertha Suttner," who is also a long-dead activist.

The "ads" in the online version are also worth a close inspection: apparently ExxonMobil is adopting bold new environmental and social policies, American Apparel is unionizing its half-naked waifish models, and GM is bringing back its electric car, the EV1. I particularly liked the ad for a dermatologist who is putting aside his 'superficial services' in order to collect donations for rebuilding Iraqi schools. The slogans: "Be beautiful on the inside as well as on the outside!!!" and "Now you can have... A BEAUTIFUL CLEAR CONSCIENCE."

Harry Potter to be investigated?

Yes, another overly literal person has become mighty suspicious of that no-good Harry Potter and similiar characters. He hasn't actually read any of the books, but he thinks they may very well have a "pernicious" and "insidious" effect, because they may teach children to believe in magic. He is a bit better than most other fundamentalists in that he admits that he doesn't know for sure... yet. But like a good evangelist, he intends to write his own book for children to instruct them in the orthodox way.

I'm not sure what he'll think of the magic if he does get around to reading the Potter books. He'll probably approve of the magisterial British academics portrayed therein, but he'll likely be unhappy with the fact that the children spend much of their time disobeying said academics. And if he makes it to the final book he'll probably get very angry when he comes across the Christian symbolism it contains. (My thoughts on The Deathly Hallows are here.)

Alan Jacobs comments snarkily here.

The Blob, harbinger of theocracy

I don't think I've ever seen this (sort of famous) monster-from-outer-space movie. Apparently a recent book by Jeff Sharlet connects it with a shadowy world of theocratic fundamentalism, Cold War anti-communism and American neo-imperialism. Rudy Nelson, who worked on the film, thinks Sharlet makes some good points but that he's wrong about The Blob (and some other things).

Well, I haven't seen it, and this kind of thing is not exactly in my purview. It's more B-Movie Catechism territory (although The Blob might be too upscale for his tastes...!) Anyways, I'll just leave you with this amusing quote from Nelson's article:

But now it was high time for us to fill a serious scripting gap. We knew how the film would end (for sure, not by blowing up the town). An Air Force cargo plane would drop the frozen, cut-up carcass over the Arctic ice cap. But as yet we had not written any closing dialogue for the main characters. We decided on a line for Dave, the chief of police, the voice of official authority: "I don't think it can be killed, but at least we've stopped it." That didn't quite do it. No one said anything for a moment or two. Then, in a rare moment of inspiration, I suggested a closing line for Steve McQueen: "As long as the Arctic stays cold." The term "global warming" hadn't yet entered the environmental lexicon, nor had any of us entertained the thought that the Arctic would ever be anything but a solid ice pack. But there you are. My chief claim to Blob Immortality over the years has always been that I wrote that prescient last line. And since I was (as you may recall) Third Assistant Director in Charge of Daily Script Revision, who is out there to argue the point? I rest my case.

Forgive us our debts

Canadian literary icon Margaret Atwood has a habit of picking timely topics to write about. Her latest book, Payback, is about debt. She'll be delivering this year's Massey Lectures on the subject.

What does it have to do with this blog? Atwood's authored two books that can be considered science fiction, namely The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx & Crake, both of which included religious themes. And the concept of debt is central to diverse religious traditions, along with related ideas like obligation, ransom, blood-price, etc. (Since Atwood has described herself as a pessimistic pantheist, I suspect she feels we humans have ungratefully piled up staggering debts against the natural world that brought us forth.) In this CBC interview she discusses the book and touches on the religious and existential aspects of debt. For example:

"...maybe there should be some kind of accounting taking place... maybe we do owe something to somebody for the fact of our existence."

Speaking of the Massey Lectures, a different Margaret delivered the 2002 lectures: Margaret Visser. She spoke on the idea of fate. Her latest book is The Gift of Thanks, a subject not unrelated to that of debt or obligation! She was recently in Winnipeg to speak on the topic for the 2008 Slater-Maguire Lectures at St. Margaret's (no relation) Anglican Church. They don't seem to have posted the lectures proper but her sermon on "thanks" vis-a-vis the Eucharist is online here.

Walking in the Reign

Here's an interesting detail from An Evil Guest: at one point in the story we encounter a hymn. The protagonist, Cassie Casey, has been talking with an older woman named Margaret who is her new assistant. As I recall, (I don't have the book in front of me so my recollection might be a little off) Margaret has been trying to convince a doubtful Cassie that she (Cassie) can sing as well as act. Cassie either tries to deflect this by asking Margaret to sing, or says she doesn't know any songs off by heart. In any case, Margaret sings a song, entitled "Walking In the Reign," which she knows from church. As is true of many people, that's the main place where she regularly sings, and those are the songs she knows best. The lyrics, to me, made it sound like a fairly recent hymn, something written in the last twenty years or so. Since An Evil Guest is set some time in the future, this would have been a song Margaret had been singing since she was a young woman, one she knew well.*

On reading this I speculated that this might be a song which Wolfe heard and enjoyed at his own church. Well, it turns out that's true, but not quite the whole story. He actually attends church with the songwriter ("hymnist?" "hymnodist?" "hymnographer?"), a man named Rory Cooney. Wolfe had asked for permission to use the lyrics, but still managed to slyly surprise Cooney with his own song at a bookstore reading. The startled-but-delighted hymnodisgrapholomogist, err, songwriter, blogs about the story here.

(via Hoof & Hide)

*Wolfe has included interesting details about people's memories of church before. I recall a story in which a character remembers his father taking him to church, and muses that it had been only as an adult that he had figured out that this was not some timeless thing, but a new or renewed interest on his father's part, stimulated by the 1960s/70s post-Vatican II folk-music-in-church/charismatic/Jesus People movement.

A surprising guest

Not a whole lot of posting here lately, mainly because I haven't been reading or watching much relevant material. I've been reading about orality & literacy in medieval (and other) culture, about Cuba & the United States, and about the RCMP's domestic spying programs. Outside of that I've been reading a number of comics, so I may be posting more frequently at Holy Heroes!!

I have however read An Evil Guest. The early descriptions were fairly accurate: it's a blend of genres, drawing on pulp fiction and early-twentieth century atmospheres. It also blends the world of "Memorare" and the world of "The Tree Is My Hat," which is a pretty amazing feat in itself. H.P. Lovecraft's mythos plays a role, for the reasonably clued-in reader.

I did find myself wondering about Wolfe's literary direction. Ever since, say, The Book of the Long Sun, he's been including bigger and bigger chunks of conversation in his novels, and there's a lot in this book. Sometimes his newer novels feel like 60 or 70% conversation with a bit of action and description mixed in. This is still tricky Mr. Wolfe, after all, so the conversations imply a lot, and they definitely show us the characters instead of simply telling about them. Still, sometimes I disloyally wonder what he's up to, if he's doing this deliberately, or if he's gotten lazy and lost his edge, or has just become very literary-Zen, or what?

Well, I was wrong to doubt. He hasn't lost his abilities. Towards the end of this book there's a chapter in which the protagonist sees through the eyes of a dead woman... (or something) and it's absolutely electrifying. We leave the careful conversations behind and are plunged into a stunning series of impressions and sensations.

So, never fear, he still has his superpowers. He's just become more and more subtle in his old(er) age.

Stephenson on Anathem

SF Gospel points out an interview with Neal Stephenson (author of Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon), who has come out with a new sf novel called Anathem. As you might guess from the title, it's got something to do with religion: future "science monks" in conflict with a devoutly religious society.

In both Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon, Stephenson included some despicable religious characters but also some admirable ones. I always got the sense that he knew quite well that both science and religion were complex, often ambiguous, human endeavours, situated in specific historical (and political!) contexts. The interview includes an exchange which sheds some light on his thinking in this regard:

Since Stephenson's already mentioned that the novel is at least a tip of the hat to Earthly politics, I wondered whether he sees any reconciliation possible between science and religion in our own culture. Does he believe this "reconciliation" would be like on Arbre, where a few Deolaters can work with the avout, but the two cultures remain essentially hostile to each other? Stephenson replied:

"There are many, many examples of legitimate scientists who espouse some form of religious faith, so I don't see any essential hostility. I grew up in a community of church-going scientists and engineers. The recent science/religion fireworks are driven by a theological movement that is as controversial within Christianity as it is in secular culture."

That mention of his upbringing is interesting, and certainly fits with the impressions I'd picked up from his books. I look forward to reading Anathem, and to hearing SF Gospel's reactions... maybe even a review, hmm?

Picture & post

Check out this religion-and-science-fiction tee-shirt picture at BoingBoing (via Aka.)

Plus I have, at long last, put up a new post at Holy Heroes!! This one's about the death and resurrection of superheroes. And be sure to check out the HH!! posts that DGD and Gabriel have been contributing.

Mars & Mu

Books & Culture has two new book reviews of science fiction and science fact:

Joseph Bottum gives a brief history of Mars in science fiction literature and then moves on to review Joe Haldeman's Marsbound. He points out approvingly that Haldeman has looked back and employed some of the classic sf iconography of Mars, but wishes that he'd used more:

I want back my canals and my princesses and my golden eyes. I want back a reason for the Red Planet to remain central to the science-fiction canon. I don't exactly want to go Mars, but I want once again to imagine going there.

Stephen O. Moshier reviews a book on plate tectonics and continental drift, including the history of the theory and the scientists who developed it. It also discusses the pseudo-scientific legends and religious interpretations that quickly sprang up around it (while 'sunken continents' do exist, places like Lemuria, Mu and Atlantis do not.) The book's author seems rather irritated by these legends and trumpets the triumph of science over myth & religion.

I think it's the same situation Bottum describes regarding Mars: while they may not be scientific, some images are just too apt or archetypal or enjoyable to abandon. By all means let us distinguish between scientific fact and fantasy! But let Lemuria, Mu, and Atlantis live alongside Lowell's canals, the Sorns, and the delectable Dejah Thoris in the realms of myth.

August tidbits

A few weeks ago I finished reading Something More, by Paul Cornell. The first three-quarters combines a extrapolative post-apocalyptic future, a first contact story, and a haunted-British-manor tale with theological speculation about electromagnetic fields and religious experiences. It was all fairly compelling. The last section, however, takes a wild, flailing jump towards a interplanetary metaphysical epic, a crazy blend of C.S. Lewis and Philip Jose Farmer... and crashes like a graceless, aged cat with inner-ear problems to land with a resounding thump on its side, behind the sofa, amidst the dust and lost pen caps. (Or perhaps like a kite, which you've just managed to get airborne, nosediving with a horrible 'crack!' into the grass.) It might have worked if the story had been stretched out to a trilogy. Full marks for effort, and the first three quarters are quite well-written and are worth reading on their own. The religious element is thought-provoking up until that nose-dive. Some Christian readers will find the last section ridiculous and offensive, while others will just find it ridiculous. I'll say no more, since I don't think there's much I can profitably add to Stuart Carter's review over at Infinity Plus.

In other Cornell news, he's posted pictures of a new anthology which contains one of his stories. The cover features, among other things, two people waving crosses. But not in a 'I bless you in the name of Christ' kind of way, more of a crazed-superstitious-mob kind of way. Maybe they're driving out vampires. Though, from the close proximity of the crosses to a clenched fist and a gun, I wonder if this sf anthology doesn't contain some evil Christians! Might they even be, say, ignorant science-hating theocrats?

Here's a recent interview with a Christian who doesn't hate science or science fiction, namely, Gene Wolfe. It's mostly on the art and craft of writing. (One of his stories appeared in the first volume of that particular anthology, actually.)

The Matrix vs. Carl Sagan - a mashup. Now if only they could work Elrond in there somehow. "Billions and billions, Mister Baggins." (via Tom - check out his answering machines!)

Over at PodCastle, Stephen Eley reads "Cup and Table," a story by Tim Pratt about a ruthless hunt for the Grail, and by extension, for God. (Also via Tom.) With an introduction that talks about the history of the Grail (or Graal) in literature. Just a heads-up, the story itself contains some nasty language and nastier characters. Oh, and Eley's Wikipedia entry contains two religion-related factoids about him.

Lint Hatcher of Excuse Me, Ghidorah? has a new podcast in which he reads a twenty-year-old essay entitled "A Supernatural God." It's a C.S. Lewis-influenced meditation on horror and fantastic literature, a memoir of his early life up to and including college, a spiritual and psychological autobiography, and an account of his conversion to Christianity. I think I also noticed a certain Romantic influence. (via Bernhardt Varenius)

Jimmy Akin, Catholic blogger extraordinaire and confirmed sf fan, has new posts about Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. (via the Sci-Fi Catholic)

As for me, I'm currently trying to avoid thinking about fall, and reading Ubik.

Morality play

I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight. It wasn't perfect, but I do think it was the best super-hero movie I've ever seen, for a variety of reasons. The most important one, I think, is that the film makers understood that the powerful driver of super-hero stories, the thing that raises them above colourful sound and fury, is morality. They're about people making tough moral distinctions and choices. These people are bigger than us, and the choices are bigger, too, more noble or more evil, but that's so that we can see them better. They're archetypal, mythically resonant: the White Knight, the Dark Knight, but especially the Joker, who here has no real origin story and who wreaks havoc on a scale which is strictly speaking not believable. But that's to be expected, because he's not a human criminal - he's a malign trickster god, a blend of Coyote, Loki and Satan.

But to drive home the point that this is about all of us, not just heroes and their decisions, the key moral victory takes place within groups of ordinary people. The setup leading to their dilemma seemed a bit contrived, but in the context of a superhero story, that's OK too.

The film drew on the insights and highlights of older Batman stories without sticking with any particular version or becoming too cliched. I think I saw elements of The Long Halloween, The Killing Joke, Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, and there were doubtless others. People have been talking about this movie a lot, and I expect it will be continue to be talked about for a long time to come. I have a feeling we'll be seeing lots of essays and theses on this one.

Dueling news

Today this (local) news had me feeling down and really creeped out. The Free Press has three or four pages of gory details.*

But this news, from Science, is more cheerful:

"The ethical problems of using eggs can be circumvented with induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are adult cells reprogrammed to behave like embryonic stem cells. In 2006, scientists created such cells from mice and rats by introducing a combination of four genes to a culture of skin cells. Then last year, scientists showed that they could do the same thing with human cells. The new study, published online today by Science, shows that iPS cells can be successfully generated even from the skin cells of an elderly, sick person, Eggan says."

Hurray for progress in science! Especially progress that solves ethical problems rather than creating new ones.

And Boo to unprovoked homicides / decapitations by cannibal psychotics off their meds.

*They even had a story about worldwide reactions. Best were the quotes from boorish Americans informing us that Canadians were wimps, blaming the tragedy on handgun control, or explaining that this was clearly an al-Qaeda terrorist attack aimed at the USA. (Oh, just like fist bumps or reporters?) There are good rebuttals to such allegations, but it's more fun to reply in the same spirit they were made: No, your MOM is clearly a wimpy handgun controlling al-Qaeda attack aimed at the USA!!

July tidbits

The author discussed in my previous post, who employs the blogname 'Ernest Scribbler,' has kindly pointed out the fact that the draft of his science fiction novel which I mentioned has long since evolved into a trilogy. You can learn more about it here. His writing blog is also worth checking out, with posts on such topics as names in Rowling and Tolkien, and the latest issue of "Mallorn," the Journal of the Tolkien Society. (He is now the editor.)

Gabriel McKee has a post about Terry Pratchett's clarification of his recent quasi-mystical remarks on the universe. Gabriel also notes that an excerpt from his book The Gospel According to Science Fiction has been translated into Dutch! Gelukwensen!

D.G.D. Davidson has been doing some acquisitions work (sorry - library lingo...) on his science-fiction-and-religion collection. I'm acquainted with some of the books on his list, but not others. One of the books he mentions, Scientific Mythologies, has just been reviewed at length by James F. McGrath over at Exploring Our Matrix. He didn't like it.

Åka speculates about Dracula, or, more specifically, on where Van Helsing got all of his consecrated Hosts.

And last month Anactoria posted an interesting quote from Margaret Atwood (author of The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx & Crake) in which she describes what it means to be a "pessimistic pantheist," and muses on the Genesis creation account.

As for me, I'm reading Something More, by Paul Cornell. Does it contain any interesting scienti-theomological specumalation? Indeed it does.

Henry Gee and the Science of Middle-Earth

Here's an interesting-sounding book:

The Science of Middle-Earth: Explaining the Science Behind the Greatest Fantasy Epic Ever Told! by Henry Gee.

The promotional blurb reads in part: The author explores just how elves might be able to see much further than humans, why Frodo's sword turns blue at the sight of evil orcs, how the rings of power do their thing, and just about every other conundrum or piece of 'elvish magic' that have puzzled and delighted Tolkien fans for years. Throughout, Gee makes the point that science, fantasy, and nature are really more similar than one might think. Gee writes in a popular tone and style, fully explaining all science concepts and convincingly demonstrating how Tolkien's world of fantasy makes sense in a very real - scientific - way.

Now, you might think this is a pointless exercise in fandom by a fantasy fanatic with his head in the clouds... except for the fact that Dr. Henry Gee is himself a scientist, more specifically a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. He is also a senior editor of Nature, the world-renowned scientific journal, and has edited a collection of science fiction previously published in the pages of Nature. He's written popular books on evolutionary biology, genomics, and dinosaurs. The Scientific American review of the LotR book points out: In a closing essay, [Gee] argues that "Tolkien's own worldview was closer to the true spirit of science than that held by many who propose to promote the public understanding of science."

He's also written some science fiction of his own, which is available for free here. The write-up: "Jack Corstorphine is a man with a rare intuition. He is convinced that the landscape of Europe hides a civilization a million years old. Jadis Markham has a gift for analysis -- she can reach solutions while everyone else is still grappling with the problem. Together, they change the face of prehistory. But prehistory bites back. Forces almost beyond imagination are stirring in Jack and Jadis' world, among the worlds of their friends -- their scientist-priest mentor Domingo, and their adopted son, Tom -- and among the stars. The Sigil is an epic of near-future SF about the nature of the past, religion, love and the nature of humanity."

I tend to enjoy the work of people who avoid polarization or easy categorization, like those who are at home in both science and art, who are good at rigorous thinking but who also appreciate the power and beauty of myth. And it seems that Dr. Gee is one of those 'in-between' people, not only in regards to fantastic literature ("he read The Lord of the Rings about once a year between the ages of 10 and 25") but also in questions of science, religion and philosophy. According to his awfully witty blog, The End Of The Pier Show, he is Jewish, with progressive/liberal opinions on religious matters. On the one hand, he's strongly opposed to creationism and the Intelligent Design movement, and on the other he has also expressed his disagreement with the militant atheists among his scientist colleagues (for example, here, here or here) while maintaining personal friendships with many of them.*

Something that comes through loud and clear on his blog, as a powerful recurring theme, is his passion for popularizing science for the widest possible audience. The Science of Middle-Earth sounds like a marvelous contribution to that quest.

*If you strongly disagree with Dr. Gee's views on creationism, I.D., militant atheism, or The Lord of the Rings, please take the issue up with him, as I'm allergic to strenous comment box arguments.