P. Aaron Potter's Blog
March 12, 2015
On the pasing of Leonard Nimoy, andSir Terry
THERE IS NO JUSTICE.
ONLY HIM.
ONLY HIM.
September 15, 2014
GamerGate
What kind of person uses "Social Justice Warrior"...as a *pejorative*?
Doesn't that pretty much tell you everything you need to know?
Doesn't that pretty much tell you everything you need to know?
July 9, 2014
Even in death we are in the midst of holy crow, somebody reprinted my novel.
Yep.
About two months ago, looking my 44th birthday square in the eye, I decided to ditch my publisher. I'll explain all that in a later post, when I've processed it more fully, but the important thing is, at the same time, I was contacted by a group of authors who wanted to put together a bundle of books on the subject of gaming, VR, et. al., who asked if I'd be interested in participating.
Lo and behold, just a few weeks after agreeing, the "Game Masters" collection has launched at StoryBundle.com:
http://storybundle.com/games
It's a pretty sweet deal: pay what you want, divvy up the proceeds however you see fit, and even chip some money off to charity while you're at it.
Being wanted is really one of the nicest feelings there is.
About two months ago, looking my 44th birthday square in the eye, I decided to ditch my publisher. I'll explain all that in a later post, when I've processed it more fully, but the important thing is, at the same time, I was contacted by a group of authors who wanted to put together a bundle of books on the subject of gaming, VR, et. al., who asked if I'd be interested in participating.
Lo and behold, just a few weeks after agreeing, the "Game Masters" collection has launched at StoryBundle.com:
http://storybundle.com/games
It's a pretty sweet deal: pay what you want, divvy up the proceeds however you see fit, and even chip some money off to charity while you're at it.
Being wanted is really one of the nicest feelings there is.
January 15, 2014
Wisdom
Here's a useful aphorism: when you are contracted to complete 12 whiteboard spc.fic. reviews inside a 4 day period, your mixCraft flanger will probably interface badly with YouTube compression, and you'll have to recomposite and re-render your .AVI files.
I think that's a broadly useful piece of wisdom, which everyone could easily apply to their own lives. I should probably secure the bumper sticker printing rights.
I think that's a broadly useful piece of wisdom, which everyone could easily apply to their own lives. I should probably secure the bumper sticker printing rights.
August 2, 2013
In Defense of the Red Wedding
I'd preface this with "spoilers," but I strongly suspect that the only person who was likely to not know all about this topic would have been me, about a month ago.
That's when, as I noted in my last post, HBO aired the now-infamous episode of Game of Thrones, "The Rains of Castamere," containing the 'Red Wedding' sequence from A Storm of Swords. And lo, throughout the land was heard a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the people did howl at the injustice of it all, and many there were wearing black armbands, and many a fan didst smirk knowingly, and sorority girls did cry most unhappily, for Rob Stark was kinda cute, and verily the Late Night Comedians didst have material nigh unto a week thereof, and the birth of a goat with two heads was reported, but then it turned out to just be two goats really close together.
Now the tendency has been to nail George R.R. Martin to Whedon's cross. "How dare you," rage the critics, "kill all these nice people?" He is presented to the public as a grimdark fantasist, offering us a bleak, even nihilistic, universe, in which Bad Things happen to Good People. Paul & Storm beg him, "stop killing our favorite characters, please," and after the Red Wedding, everyone in America seems to be joining in on the chorus.
I disagree. Of MAJOR characters - and that's a key point - Martin hasn't killed anybody who hasn't thoroughly deserved it.
Westeros certainly isn't a benevolent universe. It won't go out of its way to take it easy on you. Being polite at the dinner table does not guarantee a longer lifespan. This is not a Disneyfied landscape. But, then again, neither is Nature, out here in the real world. We went hiking into the Grand Canyon last week, and being less than two feet from a 950-foot drop will clarify things in a real hurry if you have any depth perception at all: nature does not like you. It will not make excuses because you're a nice person. Gravity works the same for Mother Theresa as it does for Osama bin Laden, and anyone who thinks that their monthly charity work will get them a break if they step too near the crumbly cliff edge will have a longish while to contemplate the flaw in their reasoning, though they will likely be too busy screaming to appreciate it much.
Ned Stark does not get whacked because he is a nice guy in a mean universe. He gets whacked because he's foolishly expecting mercy from people who have demonstrated, right in his face, that they aren't going to offer him any. He'd dumb. Importantly, the corollary is true: his kids who act intelligently by either accommodating the Lannisters until they can get away (Sansa, thus beating the Lannisters at their own game) or running off to gather their strength (everybody else). Only a complete idiot would think Joffrey Lannnister would do anything other than what he did. Ned, who has already by this point in the narrative demonstrated a remarkable ability to misread people from Robert Baratheon to Tyrion Lannister, qualifies.
In point of fact, there's good evidence that Martin is actually penning a supremely moral universe, if morality consists not only of empathy, but wisdom about when to apply it. Arya, stuck in much more horrific circumstances than most characters, manages to be both as honorable and generous as her father (note how she treats the other prisoners during her march north from King's Landing) but smarter about when to keep her mouth shut and be honorable in secret (see her actions in Harrenhal). She thrives. By contrast, the chief victims of The Red Wedding brought their fates entirely on themselves. Frey broke the implied oaths of the laws of hospitality in his attack? Guess who broke their oaths to Frey first.
Very importantly, in Martin's universe the moral consequences only hit those generally capable of making moral decisions (at least as far as major, named characters). Much of the outrage about the broadcast version centered on the fate of Rob's pregnant wife, Jeyne Westerling. 'Hey, what's her crime?' you might ask. Nothing at all. That's why, in the book *She Doesn't Die.* In the book, she gets away, entirely. Fades off into the distance. Because in a moral universe, you don't get plugged full of crossbow bolts just for being young and falling in love. That was a change introduced by HBO in order to maximize viewer torment. It was a bad one, aesthetically but also didactically, because it means a lot of people are blaming Martin for creating a universe much more awful than the one he actually created.
Now, two important caveats, one public, one personal:
I've noted that this moral law only applies to major, named characters. As with most allegorical, or even semi-allegorical (i.e, fantasy) fiction, the 'little people,' the lesser, unnamed hordes who make up the background, peasants and such, get shot, raped, mutilated, burned alive, eaten by wolves, and generally run roughshod over by the named characters for little more reason than to provide a scorecard for which of the major characters is the biggest bastard. That's not good, but it may be a limitation of the genre rather than of Martin's writing.
On a personal level, I'd emphasize: just because I see a moral law at work in Martin's Westeros doesn't mean I'd want to live there. I had to get dragged down to that trail into the Grand Canyon by my braver family, too.
That's when, as I noted in my last post, HBO aired the now-infamous episode of Game of Thrones, "The Rains of Castamere," containing the 'Red Wedding' sequence from A Storm of Swords. And lo, throughout the land was heard a great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the people did howl at the injustice of it all, and many there were wearing black armbands, and many a fan didst smirk knowingly, and sorority girls did cry most unhappily, for Rob Stark was kinda cute, and verily the Late Night Comedians didst have material nigh unto a week thereof, and the birth of a goat with two heads was reported, but then it turned out to just be two goats really close together.
Now the tendency has been to nail George R.R. Martin to Whedon's cross. "How dare you," rage the critics, "kill all these nice people?" He is presented to the public as a grimdark fantasist, offering us a bleak, even nihilistic, universe, in which Bad Things happen to Good People. Paul & Storm beg him, "stop killing our favorite characters, please," and after the Red Wedding, everyone in America seems to be joining in on the chorus.
I disagree. Of MAJOR characters - and that's a key point - Martin hasn't killed anybody who hasn't thoroughly deserved it.
Westeros certainly isn't a benevolent universe. It won't go out of its way to take it easy on you. Being polite at the dinner table does not guarantee a longer lifespan. This is not a Disneyfied landscape. But, then again, neither is Nature, out here in the real world. We went hiking into the Grand Canyon last week, and being less than two feet from a 950-foot drop will clarify things in a real hurry if you have any depth perception at all: nature does not like you. It will not make excuses because you're a nice person. Gravity works the same for Mother Theresa as it does for Osama bin Laden, and anyone who thinks that their monthly charity work will get them a break if they step too near the crumbly cliff edge will have a longish while to contemplate the flaw in their reasoning, though they will likely be too busy screaming to appreciate it much.
Ned Stark does not get whacked because he is a nice guy in a mean universe. He gets whacked because he's foolishly expecting mercy from people who have demonstrated, right in his face, that they aren't going to offer him any. He'd dumb. Importantly, the corollary is true: his kids who act intelligently by either accommodating the Lannisters until they can get away (Sansa, thus beating the Lannisters at their own game) or running off to gather their strength (everybody else). Only a complete idiot would think Joffrey Lannnister would do anything other than what he did. Ned, who has already by this point in the narrative demonstrated a remarkable ability to misread people from Robert Baratheon to Tyrion Lannister, qualifies.
In point of fact, there's good evidence that Martin is actually penning a supremely moral universe, if morality consists not only of empathy, but wisdom about when to apply it. Arya, stuck in much more horrific circumstances than most characters, manages to be both as honorable and generous as her father (note how she treats the other prisoners during her march north from King's Landing) but smarter about when to keep her mouth shut and be honorable in secret (see her actions in Harrenhal). She thrives. By contrast, the chief victims of The Red Wedding brought their fates entirely on themselves. Frey broke the implied oaths of the laws of hospitality in his attack? Guess who broke their oaths to Frey first.
Very importantly, in Martin's universe the moral consequences only hit those generally capable of making moral decisions (at least as far as major, named characters). Much of the outrage about the broadcast version centered on the fate of Rob's pregnant wife, Jeyne Westerling. 'Hey, what's her crime?' you might ask. Nothing at all. That's why, in the book *She Doesn't Die.* In the book, she gets away, entirely. Fades off into the distance. Because in a moral universe, you don't get plugged full of crossbow bolts just for being young and falling in love. That was a change introduced by HBO in order to maximize viewer torment. It was a bad one, aesthetically but also didactically, because it means a lot of people are blaming Martin for creating a universe much more awful than the one he actually created.
Now, two important caveats, one public, one personal:
I've noted that this moral law only applies to major, named characters. As with most allegorical, or even semi-allegorical (i.e, fantasy) fiction, the 'little people,' the lesser, unnamed hordes who make up the background, peasants and such, get shot, raped, mutilated, burned alive, eaten by wolves, and generally run roughshod over by the named characters for little more reason than to provide a scorecard for which of the major characters is the biggest bastard. That's not good, but it may be a limitation of the genre rather than of Martin's writing.
On a personal level, I'd emphasize: just because I see a moral law at work in Martin's Westeros doesn't mean I'd want to live there. I had to get dragged down to that trail into the Grand Canyon by my braver family, too.
June 27, 2013
Drinking the Kool Aid
I try to keep up with popular culture because it's a requirement for my job, and I love me some SFF anyway, but I've been avoiding Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" because I hate catching up to an author then having to wait around until he or she finished it. Worse still, perhaps, it has been mentioned that Martin, who is notoriously slow, aging, and visibly out of shape, runs the risk of "pulling a Jordan" as Kamil mischeviously put it on the Sword & Laser boards...which would mean I'd have to wait until Brandon Sanderson, or someone else, finished off the series for him.
But after the brouhaha about the 'Red Wedding,' I had to knuckle under and give them a try. It was going to be too hard to continue to call myself conversant in the genre without doing so, and in any case I'm always fascinated when a book becomes a cultural touchstone, and HOLY CRAP THESE BOOKS ARE GOOD.
Really. There's a tendency to be a bit distrustful of hype, naturally, when the world is so full of disappointments. I don't subscribe to Matthew Arnold's late Victorian premise that popular = bad out of sheer snobbiness, but we've got too many Justin Biebers and Twilights in the cultural matrix to be comfortable with fame as a measure of quality. Could something so popular really be *that* good.
Better. So much better. Partially, I'm going to be snobby and say, because I think people completely misread both the diagesis and didactic purpose of the series, but that's grist for a later entry. Suffice to say for now that I've become a complete junkie. I'm on book three, and considering the speed with which I've been downing these 1,000 page monsters, that's saying something.
Lordy, help me. I'm going to run out soon. Then what? I'm going to join the legions of Martin's zombies begging him to write faster.
I'm doomed.
But after the brouhaha about the 'Red Wedding,' I had to knuckle under and give them a try. It was going to be too hard to continue to call myself conversant in the genre without doing so, and in any case I'm always fascinated when a book becomes a cultural touchstone, and HOLY CRAP THESE BOOKS ARE GOOD.
Really. There's a tendency to be a bit distrustful of hype, naturally, when the world is so full of disappointments. I don't subscribe to Matthew Arnold's late Victorian premise that popular = bad out of sheer snobbiness, but we've got too many Justin Biebers and Twilights in the cultural matrix to be comfortable with fame as a measure of quality. Could something so popular really be *that* good.
Better. So much better. Partially, I'm going to be snobby and say, because I think people completely misread both the diagesis and didactic purpose of the series, but that's grist for a later entry. Suffice to say for now that I've become a complete junkie. I'm on book three, and considering the speed with which I've been downing these 1,000 page monsters, that's saying something.
Lordy, help me. I'm going to run out soon. Then what? I'm going to join the legions of Martin's zombies begging him to write faster.
I'm doomed.
June 16, 2013
Such Imaginative Children
So I'm sitting reading, and out of the corner of my eye I notice the eldest boy stalking past, carrying what appears to be about 50 feet of nylon rope. I think nothing of it until Michele, without actually looking up from her book, calls out "Kids, don't tie each other up too tightly!"
It occurs to me that in a normal family, that statement would be a metaphor or something.
It occurs to me that in a normal family, that statement would be a metaphor or something.
May 23, 2013
Falling in Love
Those who've read my book reviews, or watched my video reviews, will know that I don't generally indulge much in plot summary, and certainly not in extended quotation. In the first place, there are plenty of reviewers who do so, and even the back-blurb will give you sufficient plot for most books. In the second place, I have a short attention span.
But I can't help it in this case. I've fallen in love, you see. Those who know the feeling, who have truly fallen in love, know what I'm talking about: the new lover has a tendency - no, a compulsion - to catalogue the tiny details of the beloved. Not just what dress was she wearing, but how did she wear it, did her shoulder slip, for just twelve delicious seconds, out of the fabric, could you count the hairs which brushed over that exposed skin, could you describe their smell even though you were across the room? That's falling in love.
And I've fallen in love. I'm sorry. I'll have to tell my wife eventually, but I have some confidence that she won't mind terribly much, just roll her eyes a little and either indulge my raving or quietly but firmly return to her own books. She is the Smartest Person in the World, you see, and she's wise enough to know that trying to muzzle a lover in the giddy, infatuated stage would be pointless.
The subject of my adoration is Jo Walton's Among Others, and here's the passage, about 15% of the way in, which sent me over the edge:
"Gill laughed. 'I want to be a scientist,' she confided.
'A scientist?'
'Yes. A real one. I was reading the other day about Lavoisier. You know?'
'He discovered oxygen,' I said. 'With Priestley.'
'Well, and he was French. He was an aristocrat,a marquis. He was guillotined in the French Revolution, and he said he'd keep blinking his eyes after his head was off, for as long as he had consciousness. He blinked seventeen times. That's a scientist,' Gill said.
She's weird. But I like her."
You see that? The flatness of the delivery, the interjection of "I said" between oxygen and Priestly, paces the moment wonderfully. This is a completely bland slice of life which manages to convey everything important about two characters, contextualize their ages and education and hopes and concerns in less than a hundred words. It's incredibly economical. Walton follows the passage with one in a completely different tone, in which her protagonist matter-of-factly describes how haunting works, and why certain knives hunger for human blood, with the same flatness of affect. I'm utterly lost in this book.
So, in love. The condition means that I'm going to be pressing this book on everyone I meet for a while, and won't understand how they're not blown away. To the infatuated adorer, the object of devotion is beyond reproach, infinitely fascinating. And it may be that someday I'll be disappointed, that she'll wreck it with some unacceptable plot twist or mischaracterization, but for now...well.
Every little thing she does is magic.
But I can't help it in this case. I've fallen in love, you see. Those who know the feeling, who have truly fallen in love, know what I'm talking about: the new lover has a tendency - no, a compulsion - to catalogue the tiny details of the beloved. Not just what dress was she wearing, but how did she wear it, did her shoulder slip, for just twelve delicious seconds, out of the fabric, could you count the hairs which brushed over that exposed skin, could you describe their smell even though you were across the room? That's falling in love.
And I've fallen in love. I'm sorry. I'll have to tell my wife eventually, but I have some confidence that she won't mind terribly much, just roll her eyes a little and either indulge my raving or quietly but firmly return to her own books. She is the Smartest Person in the World, you see, and she's wise enough to know that trying to muzzle a lover in the giddy, infatuated stage would be pointless.
The subject of my adoration is Jo Walton's Among Others, and here's the passage, about 15% of the way in, which sent me over the edge:
"Gill laughed. 'I want to be a scientist,' she confided.
'A scientist?'
'Yes. A real one. I was reading the other day about Lavoisier. You know?'
'He discovered oxygen,' I said. 'With Priestley.'
'Well, and he was French. He was an aristocrat,a marquis. He was guillotined in the French Revolution, and he said he'd keep blinking his eyes after his head was off, for as long as he had consciousness. He blinked seventeen times. That's a scientist,' Gill said.
She's weird. But I like her."
You see that? The flatness of the delivery, the interjection of "I said" between oxygen and Priestly, paces the moment wonderfully. This is a completely bland slice of life which manages to convey everything important about two characters, contextualize their ages and education and hopes and concerns in less than a hundred words. It's incredibly economical. Walton follows the passage with one in a completely different tone, in which her protagonist matter-of-factly describes how haunting works, and why certain knives hunger for human blood, with the same flatness of affect. I'm utterly lost in this book.
So, in love. The condition means that I'm going to be pressing this book on everyone I meet for a while, and won't understand how they're not blown away. To the infatuated adorer, the object of devotion is beyond reproach, infinitely fascinating. And it may be that someday I'll be disappointed, that she'll wreck it with some unacceptable plot twist or mischaracterization, but for now...well.
Every little thing she does is magic.
May 8, 2013
I am no reader
I have this impression of myself as someone deeply invested in the value of literature. I quit my (more lucrative) job as a programmer to return to the world of books. I haven't been without a book - often two or three at a time - since the age of 11. I read when I walk. I read in the tub. I read on the plane. I have been known - don't tell the CHP - to read at stoplights when I'm driving.
But I am no reader, it turns out.
A good sized novel takes me between a week and two weeks to get through, often in stolen moments between other tasks. Let's be generous and call it a week per. That's 52 books a year, or 1,560 in the time I've been an active reader. Certainly there's plenty of other, smaller reading material tossed in there, but the measure isn't going to be much north of that figure.
My wife, The Smartest Person in the World, recently emailed her mother her LibraryThing wishlist, so that she could be on the lookout for any titles which might pop up at book sales. Or, rather, that's what she thought she did...it turns out Librarything's user-unfriendly interface exported the wrog file, and what my mother-in-law got instead was a printout of every book Michele has read in the past 3 and 1/2 years.
40 books per page.
42 pages long.
Do you get that? In the time I might have read, tops, 200 books, my wife consumed 1,680 novels. More books than I've read *in My Entire LIFE!* She averages almost a book-and-a-half PER DAY. I'm not even sure that's "reading" any more. She's devouring. She's inhaling. She is a book glutton.
Desperately I ploughed through the list, hoping maybe there were a bunch of repeats, or these were short stories or something. No dice. I'd read about 10% of the titles in that list, and I recognized many of them from seeing her walking about with them.
She waved her hand at the list. "Oh, that's different," she demured. "It's not like I remember most of those. They're just, you know, a quick distraction."
At random, I named three titles. She gave me point-by-point plot summaries, character names, and then launched into a discussion of their relative stylistic merits and possible metaphoric relationships both to their genre politics and didactic elements.
Holy crap.
But I am no reader, it turns out.
A good sized novel takes me between a week and two weeks to get through, often in stolen moments between other tasks. Let's be generous and call it a week per. That's 52 books a year, or 1,560 in the time I've been an active reader. Certainly there's plenty of other, smaller reading material tossed in there, but the measure isn't going to be much north of that figure.
My wife, The Smartest Person in the World, recently emailed her mother her LibraryThing wishlist, so that she could be on the lookout for any titles which might pop up at book sales. Or, rather, that's what she thought she did...it turns out Librarything's user-unfriendly interface exported the wrog file, and what my mother-in-law got instead was a printout of every book Michele has read in the past 3 and 1/2 years.
40 books per page.
42 pages long.
Do you get that? In the time I might have read, tops, 200 books, my wife consumed 1,680 novels. More books than I've read *in My Entire LIFE!* She averages almost a book-and-a-half PER DAY. I'm not even sure that's "reading" any more. She's devouring. She's inhaling. She is a book glutton.
Desperately I ploughed through the list, hoping maybe there were a bunch of repeats, or these were short stories or something. No dice. I'd read about 10% of the titles in that list, and I recognized many of them from seeing her walking about with them.
She waved her hand at the list. "Oh, that's different," she demured. "It's not like I remember most of those. They're just, you know, a quick distraction."
At random, I named three titles. She gave me point-by-point plot summaries, character names, and then launched into a discussion of their relative stylistic merits and possible metaphoric relationships both to their genre politics and didactic elements.
Holy crap.
January 9, 2013
The Traveller
Woke up with the usual chaotic hair and bleary stare and had a vision. I'm going to muss up my clothes a little and hide in the bushes on campus, and when someone comes by I'm going to stumble out and grab them by the arm and hiss, "what time is it, man?!?" And when they tell me, I'm going to get this REALLY urgent look on my face and demand "No, you fool! What YEAR?" And then when they tell me, I'll stagger back with relief, then run off, exclaiming "thank God! I'm back! The machine worked!"
That should really make their whole day.
That should really make their whole day.
