Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 21

Orchid

I got an orchid last Christmas. After it stopped blooming, I kept it, because it still looked green and healthy. Now it has bloomed again, and here it is.

Rambling While the Coffee Brews

This is a post from the Wyrdsmiths' blog, written when I noticed that all the recent posts have been by Lyda Morehouse.

Sheesh. Lyda is carrying this blog by herself at the moment. That isn't fair. I have been pretty good about updating my personal blog. But I've been really bad about doing the Wyrdsmith's blog.

I have a problem: I have spent most of my life in Minnesota. Minnesotans don't brag, which means self-promotion is very difficult. Even giving news is hard, if the news is positive. On the other hand, I don't like giving bad news. Why depress my readers, especially in the time of year when the days shorten and the holidays approach? We should be happy now. The leaves are turning. The days are crisp and clear. The last flowers are blooming. Halloween in coming, followed by Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I need to convince my partner Patrick to drive out into the country, so we can see the ghosts hanging from trees and the leaves in bright orange pumpkin yard bags. And I need to think about buying a pumpkin at the Farmers Market and carving it.

Good news. I started all this by talking about good news and self promotion. Remember to check my column at Strange Horizons. Sometimes I say something interesting. The next column, not yet up, is about the World Fantasy Award. The object itself is a very ugly bust of H.P. Lovecraft. Does it need to be changed?

I have a collection coming out in November from Many Worlds Press. It's fantasy stories based on Icelandic literature and folklore. Trolls! Ghosts! Vikings! Elves! The Devil! Puffins! A gigantic hydroelectric dam!

The title of the collection is Hidden Folk.

The coffee is now brewed and in my cup. I can stop self promoting.

It may not be obvious, but I usually post at Wyrdsmiths when I have a story out or some other kind of good news. I have a fair amount of good news, but of course it's hard to share, due to the Minnesota personality.

Anyway, here are two pieces of good news. I now need to think about the topic of the next essay. Maybe I will write about Charles Stross's decision to move to urban fantasy.

The Pre-War (or Eternal War) World

I have been thinking about writing about what it is like to live in a crumbling empire. Maybe I should, now that the Icelandic volcano is maybe slowing down.

I had a conversation with a couple of other science fiction writers when the Soviet Union collapsed. I pointed out that the US was not that much more stable than the USSR. One of the other writers said, "Absolutely. I give the US three more years."

This is typical of SF writers. We always think things will happen more quickly than they do. Anyway, that was 1991. Now, 23 years later, the US government and empire looks more and more dysfunctional. But it could still continue for decades. There is even (I suspect) some possibility that it could straighten itself out and keep going.

Immanuel Wallerstein, who is worth reading, says no. This crisis cannot be fixed. We are in for 50 years of chaos, as the whole world destabilizes. The question, according to Wallerstein, is -- what comes next? Will we build a better world, or will the bad guys build a worse one?

Right now the "first world" nations, the US and Europe and Japan, are all stuck in economic stagnation, which shows no sign of ending.

The US government seems unable to work on any of the country's problems, though it does manage to do an effective job of suppressing civil liberties.

America is entering another war. I have spent my entire life watching the US fight wars and covert wars. The old goal was to put a "more friendly" and "freedom loving" government in place. Usually this meant a rightwing dictator, such as Pinochet in Chile or the Shah in Iran. The goal these days seems to be to smash nations and create failed states, unable to protect their citizens or their natural resources. We see this in Iraq and Libya.

As climate warming gets worse and as resources become more limited, I expect there will be more wars -- to control oil, minerals, water, maybe land. And there will be civil wars, which the Pentagon appears expect here, among other places. It's the only explanation I can see for giving military equipment to American police departments.

The US should be planning for global warming, repairing old infrastructure, building new windmills, solar energy farms, dikes. Insulating every building in the country, for heaven's sake. Painting roofs white. This is not happening. Instead the money goes into war and policing and to the top 1%, who must be planning to buy themselves a new planet.

Boy, it is hard to write about this stuff. It's painful and angering. I can't imagine the greed and fear and failure of imagination that has gotten us here.

So what do we do?

It seems to me we are dealing with a huge failure of imagination. The people in power in the US and Europe ignore the huge environmental and social problems that the face the planet -- and them, since they are stuck here. SF writers turn to urban fantasy, when we should be talking about redesigning Earth. The time requires something like Kim Stanley Robin's Mars trilogy or Pamela Sargent's Venus trilogy. I'm not the person to write this.

Writing Science Fiction

Charles Stross has posted on why he is shifting away from writing science fiction to writing urban fantasy. I found his reasons interesting, though I don't agree with him. I am trying to work back to something close to science fiction, though I am not sure my crooked bookkeeper octopus is scientific, even though they are amazing creatures. (This is a reference to a current story, which no one needs to understand.)

My take on writing SF is that science and technology are changing so quickly now -- and in so many ways -- that it's difficult to imagine the future. Stross mentions that FTL seems unlikely. Yes, but theoretical physics is in a really strange state right now, and I'm not sure anyone knows what is possible.

I heard Greg Ryman talk about the mundane SF movement a number of years ago. Among the ideas that he dismissed as unreal was nanotechnology, which was happening when I heard Ryman. It's real. Biotechnology is real. Robots are real. We don't know if AI will happen, but lots of people think it's possible.

The other problem with writing SF is climate change, which is happening right now, in the context of a political and economic system that does not seem able to act. How do we write about this? It's real. It's horrifying. It may foreclose our future. I could write really dark, dystopic YA science fiction, but I don't want to.

I am not much interested in urban fantasy or in dystopian YA. We (writers and people in general) need to find a way forward and an idea of what kind of future we want. I would like science fiction to work on this, though it won't be easy.

Literary Gentrification and Cultural Appropriation

This is from a 2010 review of Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue by Hal Parker. I found it in Foz Meadows' blog:

Reappropriating genre literature under the aegis of high culture has become a familiar convention of postmodern literary fiction; really, “literary genre fiction” is arguably a genre of its own at this point. Even more common is the practice of saturating a novel in a given milieu to such a degree that the milieu itself comes to serve as the “brand” of the novel. There, however, lies the rub: While Mr. Chabon is white, much of the milieu providing the “brand” of Telegraph Avenue (soul and jazz music, Blaxploitation films, the Black Panthers, Oakland and its environs) is unmistakably black. What this means is that “literary genre fiction” now runs the risk of becoming a kind of sophisticated “literary gentrification”—a process by which a predominantly black milieu is appropriated by a white novelist as a springboard. Put simply, is the story of “Brokeland,” whatever it may be, really Mr. Chabon’s to tell?

I don't have an opinion on Chabon's book, which I have not read. But I kind of like the term "literary gentrification," especially since I don't have to worry about doing it myself, since I am not a literary writer.

I wrote an essay at Strange Horizons about "Writing What You Don't Know," which is about cultural appropriation, and I don't want to repeat myself, except to say I'm not entirely comfortable with the term cultural appropriation. Per the online Merriam Webster, appropriate means:

1: to take exclusive possession of : annex (no one should appropriate a common benefit)
2: to set apart for or assign to a particular purpose or use (appropriate money for the research program)
3: to take or make use of without authority or right

Meaning # 3 is the one we are talking about here, I think. But humans constantly borrow from one another, and they usually do it without authority or right. Every culture is made up of bits and pieces taken from other cultures; and this is done without respect for trademarks, copyrights or patents, which are all recent concepts, tied to capitalism and the theory that ideas are products that can bought and sold.

Having said this, I support the Navajo Nation in protecting its name.

I prefer terms such as racism, exoticism, disrespect or ripping off without credit to explain borrowing we don't like.

Reading the Classics

The following are my comments on a facebook discussion about creative writing students, smart kids at an East Coast college, who find the old classics -- Shakespeare and Milton -- difficult, who can't get through the language and the unfamiliar culture. I wrote:

A friend of mine teaches creative writing at a state college in the Midwest. Her kids are almost certainly not as smart as the kids described here. She says her students don't read. They want to write, but they seem to have no real interest in books. So, my question is, do the kids you teach read? How much? And what do they read? -- I find it hard to imagine being a writer without across-the-board voracious reading of almost anything.

I grew up on fairy tales, myths, legends, fantasy and science fiction. I wonder if that makes older literature easier and more appealing. Realistic fiction is a late comer. Most of the early work has at least some fantastic elements. Look at Shakespeare. Ghosts, witches, fairies. Look at Beowulf. A monster. A dragon. What more could one want? But this doesn't explain students today who read fantasy but don't like the older works.

Science fiction teaches you to decode stories -- to figure out words you don't know, to understand unfamiliar settings and characters with strange motivations. So decoding a folk tale or Shakespeare doesn't seem so difficult.

Most of the kinds of fiction I have listed I read on my own, and the teachers of the time would probably have disapproved of science fiction and fantasy and Mad Magazine and comic books. But I suspect the reading helped me later.

I'm not putting in the other, interesting comments, because I don't want the hassle of getting permission. It was a discussion with many people, many of them teachers.

Light and Mood

Yesterday was overcast, gray and gloomy, with a little rain, but not enough. If it's going to be dark outside, I want rain or snow. Right now rain would be better. Anyway, the outer darkness influenced my mood, and I spent the day in a slough of despond. I've been told the slough is pronounced 'slew.' I pronounce it 'slow,' which seems to fit better. That long 'ohhhhhh' at the end is like a sigh or moan. So, I spent much time on the couch playing computer solitaire and thinking dark thoughts. Nothing was achieved except a load of wash and a grocery run and thinking about a brief essay I am due to write. Today is sunny, and my mood has amazingly lifted. In case you are wondering, I do have a light box and use it. It helps.

I am trying to figure out the evolutionary benefit of Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe none. It's possible people did not have it before modern less-than-full-spectrum lighting. It's also possible that SAD encouraged people to slow down in the winter, when they were stuck in a tiny sod hut with six other people and a peat fire. In that case, the SAD would encourage you to sit in a heap in a corner unmoving and maybe drink brennuvin, if you were rich enough to have a bottle. If you were not rich enough, you could always write a saga. This meant you did not bother other people. Imagine being stuck in a tiny hut for six months with a loud extrovert making Italian gestures. Obviously there would be a murder before spring.

Footnote: In order to determine if SAD has an evolutionary benefit, we would have to find out if it's genetic. Do people of Northern European descent have it, if they live on the Equator? Do people from equatorial countries have it, if they live in the north? I read somewhere that SAD does not exist in places like San Diego. Then we would have to find the gene, and we would have to run tests. Put people without the SAD gene in a small hut with low lighting for six months...

Daydreaming...

No volcano news this morning, to the relief of everyone. I am drinking coffee and bracing myself for exercise at the gym. After that comes all the work I didn't do yesterday. Mostly sunny today, with a high of 71. A good chance of rain Friday and Saturday, then slightly cooler temps. I am repeating the St. Paul forecast. Talk about boring. Maybe I need to do something insanely exciting, so I can report it. But I need to get the hwarhath collection done. Writing so often gets in the way of life.

If I got really energetic I could finish all my writing projects in about a year, then devote myself to something else. But I have ideas for new stories. So much for hang gliding.

As I have mentioned before, I don't like doing the final work on stories -- revising and proofing and producing a clean file. I do like the first draft, when the story is new and I'm not entirely sure what will happen next. Once I clear out the to-do list, I can get back to the fun part of writing.

I was reading Diana Wynne Jones and listening to a broadcast of Manon Lescaut last night. Which makes me start thinking I would like to write a YA fantasy. Something rich and melodic, like a Puccini opera. I'm going to see Puccini's Girl of the Golden West in a week or two. That opera has a happy ending. Girl of the Golden West done as a YA fantasy...

Well, that is all daydreaming. I have to finish three collections and a novel first -- and proof three more novels, so they can be reprinted as ebooks. Maybe I will write a story about an artist who spends her life daydreaming of the great work she could do...

Volcano News

I have spent the past couple of weeks focusing on the Icelandic volcano. The main crater of Bardarbunga is subsiding, and this is not good news. This can be a sign that the crater itself is going to blow.
Rifts to the north of the crater, which are not under glacial ice, continue to erupt. This is producing gas which is getting blown into inhabited areas in the East Fjords. Icelandic Civil Defense has warned vulnerable people -- children, the elderly, people with respiratory problems -- to stay inside with the windows closed.

That is where things stand now. There are three alternatives, according to the Icelandic Meteorological Service. (1) The activity could gradually slow down and end. (2) There could be an eruption under the glacial ice, but not in the Bardarbunga crater. This most likely would produce ash and flooding. (3) There could be an eruption in the crater itself, which would be likely to produce a lot of ash and flooding. This last could threaten hydroelectric dams which produce a lot of the country's power -- and maybe people as well.

If you look at the previous post, you will see that the alternatives are the same ones listed there. The situation has gotten worse -- grave, per the Icelandic National News Service -- because of the subsidence within the Bardarbunga crater. Other than that, we wait and see.

I am obviously concerned about Iceland. In addition, I am avoiding thinking about the American government's latest move into the Middle East and the behavior of the Republicans at home. I feel I am living in a collapsing empire, run by idiots, in a world at the edge of ruin. It's a science fictional plot, and I don't like it.

The Eruption

The most recent report from the Icelandic Meteorological website, which covers weather, avalanches, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions:

It remains unclear how the situation will develop. Four scenarios are still considered most likely:

The migration of magma could stop, resulting in a gradual reduction in seismic activity and no further eruptions.

The dike could reach the Earth's surface causing another eruption, possibly on a new fissure. Lava flow and (or) explosive activity cannot be excluded.

The intrusion reaches the surface and another eruption occurs where either the fissure is partly or entirely beneath Dyngjujökull. This would most likely produce a flood in Jökulsá á Fjöllum and perhaps explosive, ash-producing activity.

An eruption in Bárðarbunga. The eruption could cause an outburst flood and possibly an explosive, ash-producing activity. In the event of a subglacial eruption, it is most likely that flooding would affect Jökulsá á Fjöllum. However it is not possible to exclude the following flood paths: Skjálfandafljót, Kaldakvísl, Skaftá and Grímsvötn.

Other scenarios cannot be excluded.