Happy 40th Star Wars!

Yikes, this means my own 40th is just over a year away… Hm, let’s not think about that… Enjoy some of my Star Wars fanart instead! 😀

But Star Wars! I loved Star Wars as a kid, even if I encountered the toys first, and then read the novelizations (in 2nd grade) before seeing the movies (I take this as contributing to my ability to still enjoy the spaceships and lightsabers of the prequels, however painful some of the writing–for me SW has always been more about stimulating my own imagination than spoon-feeding me Lucas’ vision). I wanted to be Luke Skywalker so badly (and will still brag occasionally about having the same MBTI type as Luke–INFP), and confess that I still have a few lightsabers lying around the house. Alas, my hairline no longer allows me to wear a Skywalkerian mop.

Given how strong a driver Star Wars was of my personal fantasy life (and my creative ambitions–started writing my own science fiction novel in 3rd grade, though I never completed it), I had a complicated relationship to the Expanded Universe stuff when I first became aware of it with Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn series. I mean, sure, it’s great to see other people enjoy exploring that universe with the same passion as I wanted to, but it also suddenly made it all feel less personal (I had a similar crisis when I first realized Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was already super popular–I still tend to gripe about the movies, even if I do watch them…). But I came around, and even if the quality of the EU material varied wildly, I figured, hey, there seems to be some degree of canonicity in these from Lucasfilm’s perspective, may as well enjoy it. (nothing against fan-fiction, btw, but having something count as “canon” implies more coherence with the greater whole, and so lets it feel more substantial to me…)

And then they go and change it all. Argh. OK, I do agree that there was a lot in the EU that should never have been (I didn’t get all that far with the EU stuff, but saw a fair sampling), but I sympathize with those Star Wars enthusiasts, who got into writing or illustration because of the original trilogy, who were suddenly left out in the cold (and the feeling that the Star Wars Universe had suddenly become incoherent as a whole was not pleasant). I’ve met/corresponded with one of those authors, Kathy Tyers, a handful of times over the years, and appreciated hearing how Star Wars had inspired her to pursue her own writing career (I believe Kathy is involved with Lucasfilm in a different role now, but didn’t find any info on that online so won’t make any claims…). I’ve picked a bit at the new EU novels, and am not thrilled so far–but then again, most of what I looked at was written for the YA level, and I confess I tend to get quite frustrated with the quality of prose in that market. Similar gripes about the latter half of Episode 7–I love love love the new characters, and the story runs quite well for the first half, but once the plot gets caught up in the recycled McGuffin of Star Killer base the story becomes way more formulaic and way less interesting–same with the dialog which suddenly becomes abysmal even by children’s movie standards (Episode 1 all over). But ya know, that’s how it is with such a huge franchise, more so once the MBAs are given a say…

All in all I think I’ve given up a bit of the feeling that I grew up with that Star Wars was “mine”–maybe for the best. I’ve got too many of my own projects to pursue, and somehow never enough time for them all. As far as space opera goes, I would still like to pursue this project one day–should have done more on that this past year, but again, just too many things I’m trying to cover.   Meanwhile, whatever support you can send my way via my online shop would be greatly appreciated. 🙂  Hopefully will have an Etsy shop or something like that up soon too for my traditional art. My fan art in this post is not for sale, alas–don’t want to get in trouble with the Jedi…

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Book recommendation: brush up your Swedish with Swedish Tutor

Whoops, I think I was supposed to post about this over a year ago. @_@ It was at that point that this book came out–too late for me to use in my teaching at Berkeley, but I have it in mind for next time I might get to teach Swedish. 🙂

Swedish Tutor: Grammar and Vocabulary Workbook is by MY former Swedish teacher (twice! At Uppsala International Summer Session, which anyone who wants to study Swedish should go to!) Ylva Olausson. I’ve had many Swedish teachers over the years, and in the last decade have found many more as colleagues, and amazing as they all are, Ylva is among the best. In addition to teaching in Sweden, she has also taught in Spain, Korea, Finland, and Scotland, so she is quite familiar with the needs of international Swedish learners of all sorts.

My own read-through of this book has been a bit light and scattered so far, as I got it when I already had my texts set for my beginning Swedish course. This is the sort of book I would recommend after taking a full year of Swedish at an American school (first year covers levels A1-A2 at the institutions I’ve been at, though you might find it useful earlier than that as well), and while it might be nice to teach with as a supplementary text, it is designed with the independent student in mind, the person who has a working knowledge but wants to brush up, review, or fill in the gaps. While each chapter does take the time to introduce the grammatical concepts covered (all in English, note), this is still very much a workbook, rather than an introduction (like Rivstart) or a grammar (like Essentials of Swedish Grammar or Swedish: An Essential Grammar)–the descriptions and explanations here will be most useful as reminders, or as an alternate way of explaining things (I have always found it helpful to have grammatical concepts articulated in different ways at different points in my learning process–seems to provide the space needed for those “aha!” moments).

Note that this is the first edition, and there may be some typos, etc to be fixed in the next edition. I only have one in mind that I noticed in my most recent flip-through: the rubric at the top of page 72 says “Expressing put in Swedish,” but going by what the exercise actually does, I think it is supposed to say “Expressing position” (or location, or “place”–instead of “placement” as the title implies) with verbs. The verbs used in this exercise (är, ligger, sitter, står) are used to say where something is, as opposed to where it is placed (in which case we would use transitive verbs like lägger, sätter, ställer). My guess is that this section originally also covered these latter verbs and they ended up getting dropped without the rubric being corrected. That said, the exercises themselves are still fine here, and the little marginal notes very helpful in sorting out the proper usage of the verbs used (which can bit a bit tricky for English speakers).

In any case, a great book and I gladly recommend it for anyone who wants to brush up on their Swedish for fun or who is getting ready for/in the midst of second or early third year Swedish (though very advanced learners may find it less exciting). And of course, you are always welcome to use some of my illustrations from my time teaching Swedish if you want to give those place/placement verbs a workout. 😉

Kan du beskriva Strindbergs rum?

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Recent Art Projects

 

A test-pic for what will hopefully be a series of valkyries from around the world–given that one of the defining characteristics of the Viking age was dramatically increased contact with the rest of the world.

Hey folks! Since most of my non-academic time lately has been taken up with making art, I thought I would share a few of my recent projects–and of course, I don’t update my art here very often, so keep an eye on my sketchblog, my deviantart, and my instagram. And if you would like to support me (PLEASE DO!) I have my print on demand store at redbubble as well as a wishlist on Amazon, primarily for art supplies that are a bit more difficult for me to afford. My traditional media paintings and prints will hopefully be available soon either on etsy or through a gallery, but in the meantime if you are thinking you might like to pick up any of these, just leave a message and we can get in touch!

 

First up are a couple cartoony viking pics that were commissioned for a grad student conference at UC Berkeley–I was giving a talk at another event on campus at the same time, but a former student of mine was helping organize things and requested some pics for the meal tickets. 🙂  The Valkyrie one is my favorite, but too detailed for the little tickets, alas. A print will hopefully be available soon. Thinking of adding color…

And then there is my linocut printmaking–a few pics here of my carvings, test prints, and a sketch for a potential larger future print. I’m using oil-based black ink and then when dry adding in the sky with watercolor.

Design will change a bit I expect… Gotta figure out something carvable.

And finally here process photos of three of my favorite paintings so far. Info on materials is posted for each on my deviantart, but paints for all of these are my Daniel Smith extra fine watercolors (I also got some Chinese watercolors for Xmas that I enjoy, which I used for my fanart for Sorcerer to the Crown).

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Book Recommendations for Black History Month

Not that we should confine our celebration of authors of the African diaspora to just one month (belated happy Black History Month!), but to close out February I thought I would highlight some African American authors I’ve either been reading recently or have loved for a long time (and maybe a few I’m still looking forward to reading). But to open–there’s a new Afrofuturist short fiction magazine out there called FIYAH, and it looks great! As has been pointed out lately, the world of speculative fiction is not immune to racism structural or otherwise, and black authors have suffered in the short fiction market as a result. The establishment of FIYAH does not let us off the hook, of course–the goal (or a goal) with this journal and its predecessor Fire!! of the Harlem Renaissance is for the larger discourse (or more concretely, you and I and all concrete individuals engaged in this as readers, writers, editors, etc) to see and repent its(/our) complicity in the marginalization of black voices.

Delany has been one of my favorites for a while now. Note the cover for Babel-17, which does feature a female protagonist, but an Asian one. Ursula LeGuin had similar problems with her EarthSea characters being portrayed as white on the covers of her books.

The two authors always brought up in a discussion of black science fiction and fantasy are Samuel Delany and Octavia Butler, and that will be the case here as well, though I do recognize that there were times when they were awkwardly bundled together solely for being the only black people in the room (which is not to say we can’t speak of them together as black authors–I’m doing that here, duh–but prioritizing that connection at random can certainly reinforce the marginalization we are trying to counter here). Delany, along with Ursula LeGuin, is one of the New Wave authors who became favorites of mine post-college (and to a degree post-Tolkien, or at least the point at which I embraced fantasy that was not just imitative of Professor Tollers). Delany’s science fiction writing is mostly confined to that period from the 60s to the 70s, followed by a foray into poststructuralist fantasy in the 80s, but to my tastes his early sci-fi remains fresh and original even next to the more avant-garde elements of today’s market. I especially love Nova, a novel which anticipates cyber-punk while remaining solidly in the genre of space opera, incorporates the Tarot in an interesting way (as does Calvino–lots of potential work meta-narrative moments there), and to my mind also has some nice echoes of Ahab and his white whale, though I wouldn’t push that too hard. Babel-17 is an interesting and trippy space opera with a linguistic novum at its heart, and to my mind a must-read for fans of the New Wave. Empire Star was apparently meant to be packaged with Babel-17, though this was only done more recently–equally trippy, and I hope to teach it one day. The meditations on cognition, intelligence, and the arts are all very worthwhile, and well-woven into the fabric of this weird but engaging story.

The late Octavia Butler I am less familiar with, I’m afraid, though I have been impressed with what I’ve read. I’d heard of her before, of course, but I was primarily turned on to her by Orson Scott Card’s in-depth analysis of her prose in his book on on writing science fiction and fantasy. What I’ve read of hers can be pretty uncomfortable–she had a knack for weaving the despicable and the morally ambiguous into disturbing but productive and interesting stories–but it is well worth it. I’ve been especially wanting to read her Lilith’s Brood novels for a long time, and will hopefully get to them soon!

There are two more recent authors I want to specifically mention here: N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorafor. I’d read Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms a few months ago and have been meaning to write a review, but I like to have an illustration ready before I write reviews, and never got around to making one. Maybe after I’ve read another book of hers… In any case, THTK was a solid, entertaining, and highly original bit of fantasy, and I strongly recommend it. An original cosmology, a realistic and rich diversity of cultures, courtly intrigue, and a well-developed apotheosis–this book has got it all! Again, maybe a more thorough review later. I’ve read at least one short story of hers as well, but simply with regard to her novel writing have to note that she has been quite prolific since her debut. If her other books are even half as good as THTK they are well worth reading. Do yourself a favor and check her out! You can find her website here.

I discovered Nnedi Okorafor through her collection of short stories, Kabu Kabu (I’ve read several so far and gladly recommend the collection on their basis). While I love Jemisin’s work as well, I feel more kinship to Okorafor’s narrative style. Her first fantasy novel for adults, Who Fears Death, is a skillful blend of both science fictional and fantasy tropes, set in a post-apocalyptic Africa but primarily focused on a realistically drawn and ethnically complex society featuring supernatural elements and magic practitioners drawn (to what degree I am not qualified to say) from African culture. I’m still working through this–the story is quite dark in a lot of ways (that tends to slow me down), and we are clued in early on to the fact that there will be some tragedy involved in the conclusion, but don’t let that scare you. This is a beautifully written coming of age story as well as a fantasy of the somewhat “messianic” sort (think Paul Atreides, Luke Skywalker, etc). The prequel to this book came out in 2015–I wish it were a sequel, because then I would be able to pretend the tragic foreshadowing in WFD are red-herrings, but alas…

A quick sketch from when I reviewed the first book–not as cool as the covers for the actual book, alas.

Okorafor is (deservedly) getting the most attention at the moment for her novellas for Tor.com Publishing, centering around the young heroine Binti. I’ve read the first and am making my way through the second now. I’ve already reviewed the first in the series, so check that out! In sum–space opera, with a lushly developed far-future that, alas, can only be hinted at in a shorter work like this, but also a story which acknowledges the continued existence of marginal communities and nicely works the tension between globalization (or here, galacticization?) and local identity into the main plot. It is also a story about a university, so of course I like it. 🙂  I’ve noted before that the Binti series feels a bit YA to me, though I don’t believe it is being marketed as such. I think this is a function of the age of the protagonist (though the same could be said of Who Fears Death, but that has some clearly adult themes going on), Okorafor’s experience as a YA writer (that is where she started), and the shorter form of the novella. In any case, it is delightfully good, and I heartily recommend it! You can find Okorafor’s website here.

A couple of authors on my radar but whom I have not gotten to yet: Nalo Hopkinson, who has been a significant figure in speculative fiction for a while but who does not get as much press as some others mentioned here, and Kai Ashante Wilson, who has had two novellas published with Tor.com as well.  From what I have been hearing he is an up-and-coming force to be reckoned with in fantasy, so check him out now!

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Book Review: Havsmannen (The Merman) by Carl-Johan Vallgren

Finally getting around to reviewing one of the books I picked up in Sweden a couple summers ago–Havsmannen, or The Merman by Carl-Johan Vallgren. Already translated into English, alas–I would have liked to take it on myself.

“Havsmannen” means “the merman” in Swedish, hence the English title. Regular followers of this blog may remember that a couple years back I reviewed two fantasy short stories about sea-folk, Alyssa Wong’s intense but powerful “The Fisher Queen” and JY Yang’s “Cold Hands and the Smell of Salt”, itself actually more rooted in Scandinavian “merman” and “draug” traditions than Vallgren’s novel–Havsmannen only references the general Western tradition of mermaids (even if we have a man rather than a maid here), rather than specifically Scandinavian traditions of people living in the sea. Incidentally, both Alyssa and JY are rising forces in the world of speculative short fiction, and I heartily recommend following their work.

Not a scene from the book–just one of my earlier mermaid pics. 🙂

Vallgren is no slouch either, of course. I first encountered him through his prize winning novel Den vidunderliga kärlekens historia (literally “The story of monstrous love”), in English as The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot. Both that novel and Havsmannen are great examples of a “literary” or “mainstream” author making use of the tropes of speculative fiction, something that seems to happen more often in Scandinavia (or perhaps these are just the stories I pay attention to), where the sci-fi and fantasy market is fairly anemic when it comes to native genre authors, but the related tropes find their way into “respectable” literature often enough (including, for example, Nobel Prize winner Harry Martinson’s epic space poem Aniara). A Danish review of the book cited on the inside cover describes Vallgren as blending “hyperrealism” with the supernatural element of the merman–as is often the case with the trope of “realism”, we can take this as referring to the novel’s close, “unvarnished” view of the lives of some of the most vulnerable. I assume this is an element in much of Vallgren’s work–I still haven’t finished Barefoot because I couldn’t get myself to read further once the madame of the brothel the main character grows up in decides it is time to put his very underage playmate “on the market.” Havsmannen has some tough stuff to read as well, and it is very worth a trigger warning–if you have abuse in your past, or just know that you would not be able to read through accounts of severe abuse/bullying of children, then this book is not for you. Perhaps this is no surprise, given the comparisons to Stephen King (I don’t know whether I would call Havsmannen horror per-se, but there is a definite family resemblance). Speaking of horror, this novel also reminds me very much of Sweden’s biggest writer of philosophical horror, John Ajvide Lindqvist, author of Let the Right One In, Handling the Undead, and others. I don’t know to what extent the rest of Vallgren’s oeuvre lines up with these sensibilities, but in my mind I have them grouped together as a particular way in which the supernatural shows up in contemporary Swedish literature (for a slightly different [and Finnish] realistic take on that theme, see Johanna Sinisalo’s Troll).

So once more: Trigger Warning for graphic accounts of the abuse and bullying of children (and no, I don’t mean “he pushed me” type bullying), and Spoiler Alert for my final comments below.

The narrator of the story and the main protagonist is Nella, the protective older sister of Robert. Their parents are a mess (drunks, addicts, criminals, whom they can’t help but love at the same time their parents continually betray and abandon them), Robert has a learning disability, and throughout the story they are plagued by the increasingly serious persecution of Gerard, initially a school bully but much much more as we proceed through the book. The merman doesn’t come “on screen,” so to speak, until relatively late, though, knowing the title of the novel, we guess early on that he is the secret held in a boat shed by the mildly criminal brothers of Nella’s friend Tommy. To an extent the merman is incidental to the central action: Nella’s efforts to preserve her life and Robert’s, escape as much bullying as possible, and keep the two of them together. The desperation of their situation and Nella’s willingness to sacrifice herself and others for Robert is at the heart of everything that happens, though we do catch a nice blend of ecocritical and social themes, as the abuse and plotted exploitation of the merman (as well as the bloody business of the mink farm, where the merman is later kept) is at the hands of down-and-out working class men grasping at whatever they can to get by, or, preferably, to get-rich-quick–it saves us a bit from creating too easy an ecological villain, instead showing a messier reality “on the ground” as it were.

Perhaps as part of its “hyper-realism,” the story, or at least Nella’s narration, gestures towards a lack of narrative coherence in the “real-world.” The novel opens with Nella saying “There is no beginning and there is no ending. I know that now. For others perhaps there are stories that lead someplace, but not mine.” (my translation) Of course, the novel does actually have a narrative arc, and when we reach the end we know we have reached the end–but of course, we get to walk away. In the prologue that opens with the quoted lines, we discover that for Nella stories are what she uses to soothe Robert with the promise of a brighter future. We also know that she is aware that her “victory conditions” are likely impossible, in particular staying with Robert if they are taken away from/abandoned by their parents. This drives her distrust of adult authorities (who, to be honest, are often revealed to be incapable of resolving many of the at times quite horrific predicaments the children find themselves in), in turn prolonging the conflicts revolving around Gerard and the Merman. I find it a realistic portrayal of the reality for many children in this situation–surrounded by horrors and adults who are either untrustworthy or incompetent (or simply bound by the often problematic rules and aims of the adult world). Fulfilling the potential of speculative fiction as a genre or narrative practice, the irruption of the otherworldly merman into this perhaps too-familiar world serves to draw out these complications and make them visible in a new way. The epilogue shows the two children separated, though back in touch again–Nella’s key victory condition of staying with Robert (who is now safe, but not in the friendliest of foster care situations) has not been met, and so this story has not fulfilled the function she has for stories. No beginning and no ending, only the ongoing tension regarding Robert’s well-being. This is a story of trauma, and insofar as trauma entails a lifetime of working-through, we are certainly not meant to hold this gloomy perspective against Nella.

There are nevertheless spots of hope and positive momentum in the narrative–not the sort of nice-and-tidy happy endings of the stories Nella tells Robert (which, we must be honest, are the stories you need when you are in the position of our two protagonists–is there a sense in which their story cannot be a story “for” them? I suppose that is the case with any story about kids but written for adults…), but sacrificial love shines bright throughout, even if caught up in all the horror and impossible choices that confront our protagonists specifically as well as any neglected and vulnerable children. The merman, in addition to the thematic functions addressed above, also comes in to the semiotic system of Nella’s relationship with Robert and their parents, and his disruption of this system (or resolution of the underlying tension) is the arc and closure this story provides, even if, being a story of trauma, we must agree with Nella that in an important sense there is “no beginning and no ending.” Initially the merman is just another victim–not even one Nella is related to, and so a potentially dangerous distraction from her efforts to ensure her own and Robert’s survival. But Nella is compelled to help him, at increasingly great risk to herself. So initially the merman’s victim position reinforces Nella’s usual position of surrogate parent, stepping in where the actual adults have abused or neglected the victim. But from there the relationship is complicated, breaking up the fixed positions of Surrogate (Nella) Victim (Robert) and Adults (incompetents). The telepathic merman is physically adult (and dangerously so in spite of his weakened condition), but must be cared for. As the story progresses he uses his telepathic connection with Nella not only to request help, but to reassure and comfort–where Nella was the one to tell Robert comforting stories in which everything ends up all right, now it is Nella’s turn to be told all will be well. Can an adult promise that? No, and Nella will be more aware of that than most–but she has personally gone to great lengths to back up her reassurances, at significant cost to herself and others, and at the end, just as she is doing the same, she is finally displaced from her position as surrogate adult and gets to benefit along with her brother from the sacrificial action of the merman.

I will have to finish up here–forgive my lengthy notes at the end, this was my first opportunity to “think out loud” about the book. This novel would fit in perfectly with my “Nordic Otherworlds” course, and I was going to assign it (while I was still reading it myself) last time I taught Reading and Composition–but on realizing how graphic and intense some of the abuse was (no, it is not like that constantly–just some high points) I decided to put it off for the time being. I haven’t read the English translation, but I’m sure it is fine. I recommend it, with all the reservations I mentioned above. No shame in deciding it is too much for you.

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Being an International Student

Dayanna has been a dear friend since our time at Berkeley, over a decade ago now. I really appreciate her willingness to be vulnerable and share her experience as a way of fostering sympathy for those affected by the current administration’s actions.

Viking Specialist at Large

A free morning leaves me able to make the explanatory post for yesterday’s image. Long time followers of this blog have probably noticed I do not comment upon politics very often. There are a variety of reasons for this. Recent political machinations being made by those in control of the US Executive Branch of government mean that I’m breaking a very painful silence, one I do in the hopes that in some small way it will help prepare people. I’ll stress now that these views, like all statements on this blog, are ultimately my opinion, but one based in a very real series of experiences. First a bit of context for those who have only met me online.

I left UC Berkeley in 2004, after receiving my BA in Anthropology. I wanted to become a medieval archaeologist specializing in the Viking world. I had 2 years of translation experience with…

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Book Recommendation: Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Series

My poor amateur watercolor skillz… A practice sketch, inspired by Leckie’s series, though done a while after reading, so I won’t claim it matches the universe of the books… Apologies for the bad scan, can’t seem to manage a good photograph or scan of my watercolors, and my photoediting options are rudimentary at the moment.

 

Since news of the first book came out, I’d been looking forward to reading Ann Leckie‘s Ancillary Justice and its two sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy. From the beautiful (if generically sci-fi rather than plot-specific) covers by John Harris to the buzz over the protagonist’s confusion over gender grammatical and otherwise (an anthropological touch that I found very well done), it seemed like just the sort of sci-fi I would like. Took me way too long to get to it though–I always have way too many books going at once (there are some many I started over a decade ago in the chaos of grad school that I haven’t been able to finish yet…), and between fun reading and work reading I just always have too much to cover–so Audible has been a Godsend lately, and I finally caught the series as an audio-book. I had a different narrator for the first book than for the other two–looks like you can get the same narrator for all three, so look into that if you go the audio route.

I am going to try to avoid a very in-depth review, since there are surely plenty of those already, and I don’t want to overdo the spoilers. I suppose my elevator-summary would be that this is a great far-future space opera, escapist fun at the same time that it brings intelligence and (let’s say) anthropological nuance to its world-building, plot, and character development. Some have pointed out a sort of kinship with Iain M Banks’ Culture novels, though we should note that Leckie has stated that she had not read Banks until after her own work was well developed. The comparison occurred to myself as well, but it is a matter of family resemblance (late 20th/early 21st century New Space Opera), rather than clear and direct inspiration–far future cultures, prominent if not main characters who are the AIs for spaceships, politics dirty, idealistic, and otherwise at scales ranging from hyper-local to galactic, the complications inherent in dealing with alien species, etc. There are significant differences as well, in particular in the political settings for the stories. Banks’ Culture is a sort of Utopian projection of liberal ideals into a post-scarcity future and the problems the Culture encounters when interacting with those very different from it, whereas Leckie’s story is set in a militant, religious autocracy that dominates the human population of the galaxy, but has run up against some very strange aliens that far outstrip them in abilities. Leckie suggests reading the work of CJ Cherryh for a more accurate precedent, and regardless whether you find them similar or not I heartily second her recommendation.

The books follow Breq, the assumed name of the last remaining ancillary (human body integrated into the consciousness and control of the AI of a ship) of the troop carrier Justice of Toren (slight spoiler, but not much–this all becomes clear fairly early). The first book is woven of two threads, Breq’s present (and the contemporary storyline of the whole series) and past (the events that resulted in Breq being the last survivor), and I felt like this was very nicely done–I was a believer by the end of the book, at any rate. The two sequels are entirely rooted in the “present” and are a bit more connected as far as plot causality goes, so you could almost think of the trilogy as two books, the second one in two volumes (but don’t worry, the middle book has a complete plot arc).

Feminine pronouns are used throughout, regardless of gender, as the Radchaai (the culture Justice of Toren belongs to) do not distinguish between male and female either grammatically or socially. I felt this was believable and well-done, and a welcome bit of social speculation added to the far-future prognostication–and it proves an interesting bit of color for plot and character development when Breq is forced to deal with cultures that do distinguish (think of a “grammar-heavy” language like Icelandic, where the forms you use must change according to the gender of the person referred to). The gender-play of the book also ties in to the central plot points of Radchaai imperialism and the question of the personhood of AIs (check out this recent article at Strange Horizons for more on that as well on the ways the term “gender” is used with expanded range in contemporary discourse on the topic–though I suggest you wait till you’ve finished the trilogy). I can’t get into these threads too much without spoilers, but I will say that I liked how Breq’s development as/insistence on being a person and not a thing is done in a way that nicely emphasizes the intersubjectivity of personhood, with Breq’s own (somewhat deeply hidden and often grudging–Breq is BAMF AF) love and compassion infecting those around her (and incidentally, the ship AIs provide a nice opportunity to bring both BAMF and rather maternal characteristics together). The divided self, recognized as itself an inescapable part of subjectivity since at least Freud, if not the Apostle Paul, is also productively exploited, as the sheer complexity and extent of the transhuman intelligences in the story entails the possibility of more obviously divided selves–and this in turn provides opportunities to explore the ways in which the “self” is more an artifact of one’s place in a social network than it is some mystical singularity out of nowhere–and all this in ways that are essential to the plot and which make the whole thing more interesting.

It’s been a decade since I’ve read CS Lewis’ Experiment in Criticism, but I was always fascinated by the way he seemed to gesture towards the interests of later Reception and Reader-Response theory. In particular he argues that there are two types of reading–reading that transforms us, and reading that is purely escapist and “fun.” Neither is necessarily morally superior to the other, and he suggests that this is more a factor of the way in which we come to a book, rather than something inherent to the book itself. But of course, the text is not absent–it is as much a part of the process as the reader (otherwise we are just projecting onto a blank screen), and a person will find some texts more challenging and difficult because they demand more of you (what texts work this way can vary depending on the person, of course), while others seem tailor-made for escapism (escapism not in-and-of itself a bad thing, in moderation–but I would suggest this is also where we tend to become more prone to masturbatory power-fantasies). Science fiction and fantasy at their best can sustain the tension between these two ways of reading quite well, and Leckie’s books, as well as many others I’ve reviewed here (Zen Cho, Lois McMaster Bujold, and short fiction from Rose Lemberg, Alyssa Wong, JY Yang, and others) do very well on this count. Highly recommended. 🙂

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Annual Christmas sales pitch

Selling my wares at the Grand Theatre in Tracy. Alas, it was kind of a slow day for all of us…

[update–I’ve added three new images to my Redbubble store–listed at the end of this post]  Hey folks, sorry this is coming so late (November was a crazy month, both for macro and micro reasons…). If you are still looking for gifts and think something Viking/Valkyrie/Tomte-themed would be just the thing, then look no further! Everything from art prints to posters to greeting cards to throw pillows to phone covers can be bought from my Redbubble print-on-demand store! If you order from Redbubble, use the code joy-vikingsbooksetc for 20% off (good until midnight tonight–the 12th–but I believe there are other sales going on this month).

Or you can also check out my DeviantArt gallery, which has a few selections not on my Redbubble page (though not everything on DA is available to buy, alas–and be warned that ordering from DA involves becoming a member and paying through their points system). To be honest, it might be too late to have anything shipped in time through DA, but you can check out the shipping options if you want. For Redbubble, if you want something by Christmas, I would choose their fastest delivery option (overnight, I think?), whatever initial delivery estimate they give, because you have to add manufacturing time to delivery time, and when I ordered a bunch of stock to table at an arts and crafts show the other week I had two products arrive days after I needed them.

And a last note before I give you a sampling of products below, I am planning on setting up an etsy shop to sell traditional media originals and some of the linocut prints I’ve started doing, but I’m afraid that’s going to have to wait a bit longer. 😦

Still the best of my clothing illustrations I think… And still hoping to continue this line with more Valkyrie illustrations.

On to my Redbubble store. No new pictures, I’m afraid (though I may try to convert some of my penbrush sketches later today), but lots of new products. Art prints, photographic prints, greeting cards, clothing (you’ll have to see all the options on the website) and stickers are the main thing here, and I believe will be manufactured and delivered the fastest. Other stuff that I think looks pretty cool: throw pillows (you know you want a Valkyrie throw pillow), journals (both hardcover and spiral–I’ve seen the latter, and I think the Valkyria: Mist one looks great), mugs (though greater variety there on my DeviantArt shop), cases/skins for phones, tablets, laptops (not all brands tho…), bags/pouches of various sorts (I ordered tote bags, but haven’t had a chance to see them yet), and other stuff which I haven’t had much time to think over (not all images work very well on all products…) but which you are welcome to check out (in fact, please do think over whether a product looks good to you–it could be one or two products were created automatically before I had a chance to decide whether they worked or not. Been a while since I’ve caught an example of that though…).

And in conclusion, here are a few of my personal faves (or if not my faves, at least more seasonally appropriate selections…).

And note that my Valkyria:Mist picture is (since it was uploaded before Redbubble had updated some things) listed separately for different products: Shirts and sweaters, phone cases (i-phone and galaxy), i-pad cases/skins, and everything else (prints/posters, cards, leggings, skirts, mugs, etc).

If you see something in my store that you think others would be into, please share links! While I appreciate family and friends buying my work, I’d like to move beyond them accounting for about 1/2 of all my sales… 😛

EDIT: New pics up on Redbubble! I’ve been meaning to digitally clean up some of my pen brush sketches, but since that is more time consuming than one would think (it took most of a day to do the Mist picture shown above–that’s not counting the original sketch), I chose two that seemed to work pretty well (though I mostly recommend them as cards/prints–if you want them as one of the other products, please consider the preview of the product first, as there may be some artifacts from image borders, etc). And last but not least, I’m putting up prints of my “Two by Moonlight” on bristol–I’ll eventually be putting the original of that up for sale on etsy, but it will also be available as a print.

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A Grisly Tale

[note: it occurs to me that, as with many stories taken from folklore, this is a bit of a NSFW post–for those not acronym-savvy, that means not so much that it is violent, which it is, but that some of the dismembered body parts involved are (in the normal course of events) used to make babies. So reader beware.]

Happy Halloween! Now that the “Paganism Past” conference this last weekend is over, I’m relaxing today by, among other things, reading some non-Scandi folkloristic type stuff–right now Japanese Tales edited and translated by Royall Turner (who was apparently placed at the University of Oslo at one point, so it just goes to show that everything connects to Scandinavian Studies in the end). Appropriately enough today I hit the “Haunts” section of the book, and thought I would illustrate the short but grim story “The Grisly Box” for my last Inktober 2016 drawing.

Like most of the other texts in this volume, the story is from Heian-era Japan, so if I remember my Japanese history correctly (that one class in undergrad is a long time ago now…) this is prior to the Samurai, and instead the period of poetic aristocrats improvising on cherry blossoms in the court at Kyoto. Well OK, this story really has nothing to do with that. In “The Grisly Box” a bureaucrat who works for a regent is traveling home to see his family and comes across a woman on a bridge who gives him a box, which he is to 1) give to a woman on another bridge, whose name he does not need to know because she will be there, don’t worry, and 2) ABSOLUTELY NOT OPEN. Btw, his servants don’t see anyone and are wondering “What the hell is our master doing?” He takes the box, but forgets to stop at the other bridge so ends up taking the box home with him. His wife say “Well, Mr, that’s a nice box, where did you get that WHAT IS HER NAME” and, of course, because we can already tell we are in a story that is going to either stereotype women’s motives or turn them into absolute monsters, she opens it and inside there are EYEBALLS AND PENISES. (btw, spoiler alert). Then the husband is like “Oh heck, we better get this to the right person now” but when he gives it to the other bridge woman she says “hey you looked didn’t you” but he denies it, and some time later he dies. The end. I know, out of possible Japanese-themed stories I don’t know why they didn’t do this story instead of Kubo and the Two Strings…

Some comparative comments as a folklorist (OK, I am more a Scandinavianist than a Folklorist but whatever):

-Not uncommon in a patriarchal society to find female monsters/supernaturals coded as sexually threatening (male supernaturals can be as well, but they turn up in different sorts of stories), so this is not an especially surprising story to come across. The inclusion of a jealous wife highlights the theme as well, with whatever guilt we might impute to an unfaithful husband displaced onto the castrating, apparently voracious (what else do they need all those pricks for?) spooky women. I don’t have comparable castrating legends in mind at the moment from Scandi folklore (doesn’t mean they aren’t there, but my recall is not great at the moment), but we do find supernatural women coded as sexually threatening in many narratives, as with the Swedish skogsrå. The “point” of these stories (not that they were always intended explicitly as moral lessons) is not always consistent, which serves to remind us that each individual version of a legend comes from an individual, and so can be taken as part of a larger debate regarding, for example, gender norms, the status of the supernatural community, etc–but the threat in many of these stories is framed around the danger of leaving the human community, diminishing the reproductive and other capacities of that community, in favor of the supernaturals, who to some degree (not to say this is somehow the most primal or foundational meaning) stand in for competing communities in general. And of course, it inverts the usual run of things in a patriarchy–the woman becomes powerful, the man weak, perhaps simultaneously expressing patriarchal guilt (“if they treated us like we treat them…”) as well as justifying the status quo (“if we let them have power…”). But let’s also note that, again, there is no need to assume culture is monolithic, and what might seem subversive can nevertheless end up be a fairly prominent part of the cultural production–I’m thinking here of the fact that the Valkyries of Norse mythology in some instances (not all) get a fairly positive treatment while in others they seem tied to quite thoroughly patriarchal cautionary tales. Also, spooky, castrating women can be used in politically subversive ways rather than cautionary/kinky ways, and of course, subversive readings are always possible as well.

-The eyes–well, it is an easy enough Freudian move to take the eye itself as a phallic symbol. Not that we need to take Freudian symbolism and apply it “willy”-nilly (did you see what I did there?)–but if this is a matter of supernatural women subverting the patriarchy, then this is a good complement to the theme of castration, as the “woman as seen, man as see-er” is an obvious binary opposition in patriarchal ideologies (btw, I wrote a dissertation on this… well, on related things).

-The fact that these women show up at bridges is a great example of the association of supernaturals with liminal space (though I confess I have no idea if these bridge women are common in Japanese folklore or not). By liminal I mean in-between. This is easiest to see in terms of geography, as these women are found at rivers, common markers of boundaries (I think also of the fact that liminal spaces are common in oral poetry, a point I picked up somewhere but can’t remember, and that many important moments in Norse mythology take place in in-between places, like a coastline), but it has a semantic dimension as well, meaning, involving the boundaries between things/concepts. Think “both/and” or “neither/nor”–fairies show up at twilight, when it is neither day nor night, people in Scandinavian folktales, at least, are at-risk during in-between times of their life (between birth and baptism, between childhood and adulthood, etc), and (again in scandi folklore, sorry, it is what I know) you find spirits associated with water mills, which are often geographically on the periphery, between the human community and the wilderness, and semantically in-between in that it is both/and neither/nor land/water (build above a stream as it must be). The bridge location is an obvious one for a supernatural, then–both/and neither/nor land/water (which, of course, is why the Billy Goats Gruff run into a troll at a bridge). Liminality in this sense is, of course, bound up in some very basic cognitive/linguistic faculties, and so it is no surprise that this seems to be a pretty universal aspect of folk narrative (and other narrative–though this is not to say that we can’t find supposed “universals” expressed very differently, or expressive of very different concerns, from culture to culture and person to person).

And to end, I can’t help but note how even at the academic level it can be easy for us to think “what! penises! this is ridiculous, no one believes something like this might happen!”, given that at this conference this past weekend my friend and colleague Merrill Kaplan, who does both Old Norse lit and Scandinavian folklore like myself (but more and better, if I may say so) gave a talk reinterpreting one of the words in a particularly odd tale about the conversion in Norway in which our intrepid missionary comes across a cult in which women cuddle a dismembered and preserved horse prick. Yup. In the very lively discussion that followed (wow, people had Opinions on this…) one of the throw-away comments implied that none of us took seriously the idea that there ever actually was a cult practice like this, since it was really just totally ridiculous. Merrill (and for the record, I’m quite convinced by her argument throughout, but can’t say I am super familiar with the philological issues) insisted we had to take the story seriously–not meaning we had to assume a cult actually did look like this once, but that, however much it was meant to ridicule pagans, the story must be taken as believable against the (admittedly biased) horizon of expectations of medieval Christian Icelanders when it comes to what paganism might look like. I do find myself agreeing that, in a more explicitly historical text like the one in question (Flateyjarbók), however much the intent is to mock, it will still build on what people are willing to see as a reasonable expectation. And you know, there is so much crazy stuff (sorry, not an emic perspective there) in world religion and mythology (can’t single out my own religion here either) that at some point you have to say a horse-penis-cuddling-cult is not necessarily out of the question… Nor are spooky women collecting eye balls and pricks, apparently, at least at the level of legend.

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CalShakes’ Othello

I got to see Othello for the first time at the CalShakes outdoor theater in Orinda. My third time out there–I saw Romeo and Juliet a few years back and King Lear last year (my first time for that play too–I know, I don’t keep up with the classics so well, but what can I say, my PhD is in Icelandic lit from 800+ years ago–no time for the newbies…). The aesthetic of the CalShakes productions seems to be a sort of deconstructed, industrial feel–or maybe that’s just what they do whenever they hear I’m coming I don’t know. In any case, I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

Did a pretty hasty sketch of Othello in a hoodie–alas, too hasty to end up being a reasonable likeness of Aldo Billingslea (who has a longer face and somewhat different hair), so, um, we’ll just say I’m illustrating the concept…

Their treatment of Othello was especially minimalist–everyone sat in a circle, and those not in the scene stayed seated, while those speaking would at times look at, or circle those they spoke of. I thought it was a neat way to visualize the network of relationships as they shifted with the progressing plot. Dress was contemporary, and Aldo Billingslea (professor at Santa Clara University), who played Othello, wore a hoodie–whether this had been done yet I don’t know, but it was only a matter of time, and I thought it fit well with CalShakes’ usual way of doing things. Some of the additional bits may grate some listeners–several spoken bits added (like wikipedia-style info re: one of the sites, other random bits), occasional use of live video projected above the stage, and, right at the climatic, final moment, they broke for audience discussion. The latter is the only bit that I was bothered by, but not because it was necessarily a bad idea, and it certainly fit with what they were trying to do with the play–I just hate giving random adults a chance to talk. Which sounds bad I guess, but, well, the teacher in me just prefers working with folks who understand themselves as students and don’t have an inflated sense of their own contribution… ah, well, more likely I think it’s just that I hate being in a classroom that I’m not running, haha.

In any case–I recommend this production, at least if you are someone who can handle stripped-down Shakespeare. The play itself is already so appropriate for the #BLM lens they were going for that some might feel some of the additions edged towards preachy, but I think they come off as valid dressing.

And it is such a beautiful theater–come early for the food and booze, both of which I recommend, and picnic underneath the eucalyptus before the play starts. And they often have talks beforehand as well, though I’ve never been to those. Probably great though, I’m sure.

Hm, it occurs to me I sometimes suggest parallels in Old Norse literature when I review books, movies, etc–like my discussion of valkyries and their lovers after watching Kubo. Shakespeare isn’t as far off from my field as one might think–Hamlet is after all based in part on Amleth in Saxo Grammaticus’ History of the Danes. The tragic love story of Othello, where (spoiler alert) the general is convinced that his wife has been cheating on him with, um, well, tragic results, could I guess be compared to Ermanaric’s execution of his son, and later his young wife Svanhildr, daughter of the famed Sigurðr of the Völsung cycle (Prose Edda has a version of this), after they were falsely accused of having an affair. Of course the romance in Othello seems legit, while Ermanaric is pretty much a dirty old man who screws everything up (OK, maybe I’m projecting modern sensibilities on the text a bit…), so I don’t recommend anyone push the parallel too far…

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