Confessions of a Middle-Aged Adrenaline Junkie

The Hugo voting deadline is coming up at the end of this month, so here are my thoughts on the novelettes and the one short story that I read:

Kudos to Uncanny magazine for continually bringing us fantastic and thoughtful works of short fiction. I am sorry for all the trouble the editors have had in the last year, and I'm thankful the staff kept the magazine going.

***

We Built This City by Maureen Vibbert is a story about labor relations, which, as some of us know, are the third most important thing in life. The setting is a city enclosed in a bubble, where workers have to do the dangerous work of climbing outside the bubble to clean it off. Working conditions are unpleasant.

I agree that labor relations are critically important, and I am unhappy to say that I personally failed as a labor organizer. I didn't particularly enjoy this story, and I can't say how much of that is because the storytelling was unexciting and how much of that is because this is such a sore subject for me. I have fortunately solved my problems and found a better situation for as long as it lasts, and those suffering difficult working conditions have all my sympathy.

***

The Difference Between Love and Time by Catherynne Valente is a decidedly unusual love story, where the love interest is the spacetime continuum. Imagine having a love affair with the spacetime continuum. It is more emotionally impossible than most humans. Valente cleverly presents the spacetime continuum as it might have been as a child, an adolescent, a young adult. She presents the ways it gets into fights, the ways it acts passive aggressively, the ways it is mostly not a dick. She takes us through the life of a nameless narrator character, who describes her relationships not only with the spacetime continuum but with other partners and with her mother. We hear about the narrator's parents' divorce, her mother's health, and many of her life experiences. The story is gradually revealed in out-of-order vignettes, because time is all the same to the spacetime continuum, right? The life vignettes are full of pop culture references that bring back the reader's memories of the times.

I enjoyed this story quite a bit, and I found the ending particularly meaningful. The entire work is just unutterably human. Valente uses a non-human character to tell us something important about our humanity.

***

If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You by John Chu is a tale of cautious romance involving a crimefighting superhero who also fights police and anti-Asian violence. It is told from the perspective of Steve, a gay bodybuilder of Taiwanese descent. The story flips back and forth between descriptions of videos of a flying superhero and Steve's life lifting weights in the gym, slowly building a romance with a very strong but soft-spoken bodybuilder whom Steve initially identifies only as "Sweatshirt Guy." After many weeks of lifting together, when Sweatshirt Guy asks him to help move a couch, Steve finally finds out that Sweatshirt Guy's name is Carl.

This touching story explores the secret identities of both superheroes and closeted queer people, and the frustrations of being in the closet. I thoroughly enjoyed both the romance and the superheroism.

Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills is full of poignant rage. The story is told as a series of vignettes, exploring the lives of women with unwanted pregnancies, in a near-future US with illegalized abortion. The story is interspersed with vignettes highlighting moments in the history of abortion rights. I was particularly proud when I read the parts about reproductive rights activists in the early 70's, because my father was one of them. The story builds, bit by bit, further into the future, making it clear why women's rights to control their reproduction are so critical. It does indeed tell a narrative story, with ongoing sympathetic characters, rather than sermonizing. Listening to it as an audiobook was a particularly intense experience. This is one of the most powerful works I've read. Thank you, again, Uncanny Magazine, for bringing this to us, and I hope it wins a Hugo!

All of a sudden, not only can I use the old (less obvious that I'm not really working) LJ view, I also can't filter my feed. Until this is fixed, I'm not going to be able to read LJ, unless, I guess, I remove a whole bunch of friends that I don't read. Any ideas?

I've completed my Hugo ballot. My choices are behind the tag. Feel free to copy (as I know zyxwvut will -- he copies my ballots in real elections as well).

( My Hugo Ballot )

It's time for the latest installment in my series on the Hugos. I started out going from big to small, novels to short stories, but I skipped the novelettes because I feared not being able to finish them all in time. It seemed a good bet that I could at least get through the Best Short Story nominees, and I now have. In general, I enjoyed these more than the Best Novella nominees.

( Hugo )

I am truly ahead of myself on the Hugos this year. I have prepared myself not only for the voting deadline, but for the nomination deadline. I've read six books that I think are likely to be nominated, so that I could do my part to make sure the right one gets nominated. I had the good fortune (or the planning fortitude) to see four of the authors read and/or discuss their books this year, which helped me get ahead. Once I was so close to being ready for the nominations, I picked up the books whose authors I hadn't seen. The six books were: The Devil's Eye by Jack McDevitt, Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi, Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross, Rolling Thunder by John Varley, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

( My Thoughts on 2008's Books )

Well, some of you have pointed out things that I've missed, and I've remembered some more stuff on my own, so I'm rethinking some of the points I made earlier.

( BSG SPOILERS - DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU ARE CAUGHT UP )

zyxwvut and I received a letter in the mail today from the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, where Dr. Shriro went to vet school. The letter said that he had made a contribution to the Feline Health Center there in Zackie's memory. Wow! I am so touched, I really don't know what to say, except to recommend him wholeheartedly. 510-848-5041.

I don't know how broadly this article has been distributed. It's a San Francisco Chronicle piece, not something from the New York Times or the Washington Post. So I'm going out on a limb and making a public post because I think everyone should see it. The article details a particular example of the type of overreaching of presidential authority carried out by Republican administrations since Nixon, sharpened under Reagan, and honed to a fine art under the present administration. It shows how this president has used a supposedly explanatory legal procedure to reinterpret the laws of Congress in his own way, as he sees fit, as he would have passed them if he could but write them himself.

Instead of upholding the Constitution of the United States of America, as is his sworn duty, this president has stomped, spit on, and shredded our governing document, and then thrown the smudged, spit-soaked pieces into a pit of fire. Thomas Jefferson must have turned over in his grave so many times that he's worn through the elbows of his jacket. His tears must have created a swamp all the way to the Chesapeake Bay. I wish that a zombie Jefferson could burst out of his grave, go running to the White House, and beat Bush and his cronies over the head with an engraved stone copy of the Bill of Rights. "Washington, Revere and I risked our lives to protect the American people from the king! How dare you install a monarchy of your own!" I imagine him stomping alternately on Bush's feet while shouting out long-held but currently-ignored principles of American government: "Separation of powers!" "Independence of the judiciary!" and of course, "Separation of church and state, you smirking, over-privileged, royalist miscreant!" The periwig powder would fly.

I'm talking to a lot of people, and I'm finding that even ordinary, politically unsavvy Americans are upset and annoyed to discover that the NSA has been poking through their old phone bills. I've been telling them that the only reason why this president has not been impeached for his blatant lies and patently illegal actions is this his party controls both houses of Congress. The only way to see him tried for his crimes and justice done, I tell them, is to vote for Democrats for Congress.

Consequently, I was entirely dismayed when I saw this other article in today's paper. "Pelosi told her party a Democrat-controlled House wouldn't impeach the president."

Well, Ms. Pelosi, why not? Just what is wrong with you and your party? Why are you so cowardly, so frightened to take a stand for truth, justice and, above all, the American way? This president, for all his faults, is no coward. He does not hesitate for a moment to pursue his avaricious goals, and push his own imperialist agenda, by any means necessary. He is unafraid to stand up for the self-interested ideology in which he believes. Democrats tread so lightly, so afraid of causing the least offense, that they are entirely ineffective. Even Howard Dean, former daring of the left wing of the Democratic Party and now party chair, is kowtowing to the religious right. This administration has not spent one moment of its entire existence worrying about offending anyone. It has alienated the entire rest of the world, with the possible exception of Tony Blair. Why are Democrats so fearful of challenging it?

Ms. Pelosi, I can only hope that your statement is merely a vacuous campaign promise designed to win the election, and that it will swiftly be ignored once you actually hold the keys to power. If voting for your party will not remove this blatantly overreaching, monarchist president from office, what hope is there for the future of freedom in the United States of America? The American experiment in rule of the people, by the people, for the people has ended, and we are once again merely serfs bowing down before a sovereign lord.

I will be performing in a Hip-Hop Open House at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA on Tuesday, March 15 at 7:00 pm. The event is a fundraiser for the Y's Youth Support Program, which provides not only summer camp and swimming lessons, but also job training and tutoring for teenagers. The Y is located at 2000 Allston Way, 1 block from the downtown Berkeley BART station.

I've been working hard on my routine for a couple of months now, and would love to see some friendly faces in the audience if you can make it. Thanks for any support.