A Book Burning in the South

It's usually a sad enough affair when one hears about a book burning in the South, but news of the latest book burning is particularly sad because the person who's doing it loves the books he's destroying.

Tom Wayne is the proprietor of Prospero Books in Kansas City, Missouri. Over the years, he's amassed a backlog of some twenty-thousand books. Recently he decided that it would be a good idea to donate that backlog to libraries and thrift shops but was nonplussed when he was told that they already had more than enough books, thank you very much.

Tom Wayne is a dispirited man. He has discovered that our culture no longer places much value in books. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, reading for pleasure has dropped over 57% in the last two decades. Tom says that he often goes to yard sales where there are four televisions for sale and only three books… a claim that doesn't sound the least bit preposterous to me.

Tom's book burning is a protest, of sorts. He describes it as the "funeral pyre for thought in America".

While, I can't bring myself to agree with his methods – I feel too much of a visceral connection to books to ever condone their burning, whatever the justification – I can certainly understand his frustration and the basic motive of his protest.

Unstructured Syllogism

First Premise: Everything is better with Kung-fu
Second Premise: Everything is better with zombies.

Conclusion: Someone really needs to make a Kung-fu movie with zombies.

Unstructured Astronomy

Poets and romantics have long lamented that science destroys our sense of wonder leaving us only the cold realities of a bleak universe. That's what Keats was going on about when he complained about Newton unweaving the rainbow.

I've always had a hard time understanding this point of view. In my experience, science reveals the universe and what it finds is a place of unexpected and surprising beauty, albeit one that doesn't always conform to human expectations.

The latest installment of this phenomenon is the discovery that when stars fade away into white dwarfs (which is the common end for the vast majority of stars in the universe) what is left at the end is a gigantic diamond.

For a long time white dwarfs were viewed as being nothing more than the degenerate remnants of once magnificent stars -- little more than cosmic husks. The notion that the final stage of a stars life is something as exquisite and beautiful as a diamond is actually rather romantic.

Whiskey Tango FoxTrot

Some of the very best newspaper comics are geek comics. The first time I ever saw Bloom County was as a clipping posted up in a computer lab. The Far Side found much of its sensibility in the very geeky world of science humor. Dilbert gained its initial impetus from its audience in the I.T. world. Even Calvin and Hobbes found popularity in geek circles well before it became established as a timeless family classic.

It is thus that I was sad to learn that the very geekiest of newspaper comic, FoxTrot, will be going to a Sunday-only format as of the start of the year. According to the sources I've read, the move is entirely the decision of Bill Amend, the strip's author, who simply does not want to spend the majority of time creating daily strips anymore.

I certainly respect his decision and I am also relieved that it's not going away entirely, as too many great comics already have (which is frustrating given the sort of dreck that never seems to go away). Never the less, I will miss my daily dose of uber-geek Jason and the rest of the family. At least we still have Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine.

Unsolicited Musings

I swear that it is not my goal to turn this into the Honor Harrington Cover Art blog, but my friend Rob, who was much inspired, created a mock up (in more than one sense of the word) of his own Harrington art using City of Heroes and Photoshop. I particularly like the shoulder kitty. (Click the pic for a larger image)




Rob is also the owner of an excellent site that's part blog, part web page. Among other things he has quite a lot of essays as well as some top notch game reviews. Be sure to check it out.

The Evolution of Honor

The feedback of my critique of the cover art for Honor at War has inspired me to do a brief retrospective of the covers for the entire Honor Harrington series. Click the pix for larger images.

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Honor stars in a gender-bending version of HMS Pinafore. It's also clear that, when she gets old and grey, she's going to be the absolutely scariest cat-lady in the whole damned universe.

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I'm not sure if Honor is going through a Goth phase, here, or if she's just really tired because she stayed up way too late listening to emo rock.

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It was big, floppy beret day down at the local minor league ball park.

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Uh oh, Michael Jackson's got a gun! We'd better beat it!

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Honor as some kind of pirate/samurai (if only she were a pirate/ninja). She'd better be careful or that amulet around her neck is going to put her eye out.

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"Don't bother me with war talk, I'm on a conference call."

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Honor as an ascended being with a very bad case of stellar acne.

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Honor takes some time out from battle to sit in the world's most uncomfortable optometrist's chair. Notice that the video thingy in front of her is displaying the image on the side facing away from her eye?

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What did I tell you? She put her eye out.

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Oh, no! Honor's disembodied head has been grafted to the Death Star and they're assaulting it with techno-dildos!

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Either she's dropping LSD or she fell into the Matrix.*

*It's been noted that this last one isn't part of the Honorverse, and that's correct (note my clever use of "she" instead of Honor), but I wanted to include it anyway, not least because it looks so much like a Harrington cover that it really ought to be one.

Unstructured Commentary

If you read science fiction, you've probably heard about Baen. And if you're familiar with Baen, you're probably familiar with David Weber. In case you aren't, imagine that Tom Clancy was a science fiction writer (and that he had the prolificacy of Stephen King) and you've got the general idea of what he's about.

Weber most famous series is the Honor Harrington series, which is loosely based on the Horatio Hornblower novels. The eponymous heroine of the story is one of those hypercompetent individuals that one only ever finds in military fiction (and spy novels, to be fair). She, and her sentient "tree-cat" companion go from humble beginnings, through victory after victory, until she's very nearly a demi-god among mortals.

But I'm not here to talk about that. Rather than judging the books, I thought that I'd judge a cover. Baen has a non-enviable reputation for producing the ugliest dust jackets in the genre. This is even taking into account the lamentable 70s when every cover looked like something out of a geeky acid trip. The cover for the latest Harrington novel, At All Costs, however, sets a new record for sheer god-awfulness.

The covers for most of the novels depict Honor with some sort of resolute and determined expression. She's usually in uniform and her hair is generally pulled back. Typically, there's some sort of space battle going on in the background (see the example in the upper-right). In the new book, however, the illustrator decided to go in a different direction. Instead of the standard-issue military pose, we have a sort of Madonna and Child (and book) thing going on. Honor has let her hair down, ditched the uniform, and picked up a kid (you can probably guess the relationship, but I don't want to be accused of spoilers).

The first thing that makes it a bit creepy is the look on her face. I think that they were trying to go for something maternal but what we actually get is a vague, slightly cross-eyed expression that makes her look like she's been lobotomized. But what really pushes it over the edge is her tree-cat. Understand that the tree-cat is supposed to be a good character. The picture, however, makes it look like some sort of Satanic imp. The fact that it's dangling a dangerously pointy bauble within arm's reach of an innocent (indeed, archetypical) baby only adds to the air of malevolence. Clearly this hell-spawned beast has bewitched our beloved Honor and is now preparing to claim the soul of the child as well!

I've included a picture just so you can see for yourself that I'm not exaggerating. Try not to have any nightmares.

Priorities

Recently, I noticed that our local Safeway had installed a number of 15 minute "Starbucks" parking slots. It was clear that they had painted over a number of handicapped slots to do so.

Lest Safeway appear too heartless, it is evident that they didn't simply remove the handicapped parking; they added a few to replace the ones that were removed. However, I couldn't help but notice that the Starbuck's lots were closer than any of the handicapped ones.

I would sincerely hope that this isn't emblematic of our culture's priorities.