by Cynthia Ward
"He is the October Surprise!" (Radio and Film)
In 2016, it seems, I did not pick the best day for a
birthday. So far, I haven't figured out
how to return my president-elect, er, present.
Suggestions welcome.
Despite my politics, I did not share the widely held liberal
view that Trump would be defeated. Once
he won a primary, I began researching international moves and finding
conversations with many of my fellow lefties maddening. "Trump'll be taken out by an October
surprise," one assured me. Familiar
with white voters' tendency to lie to look good and
with black swan and grey swan events (9/11, stock market crashes, etc) --not to mention with history--I replied,
"He is the October surprise!"
Those who do not learn history doom everyone to repeat it.
It was hard to be surprised when the media mentioned Trump
about 60 times more often than any other presidential candidate, if not every
other candidate combined. I like variety in news sources, but I rarely listen
to commercial radio during election years, since a little logic translates to a
lot of headache with every commercial break.
Still, I would've sworn there were a couple dozen other presidential
candidates across 2016. However, I literally
couldn't tune in to a National Public Radio newsfeed without hearing discussion
of or interviews with Trump voters (no graphic for NPR, but an aggregate of PBS
candidate mentions may serve as a proxy. I finally flipped entirely over to the
Internet feed for radical SoCal station KPFK and
the Progress channel on SiriusXM.
On a related note, it was indeed truly, truly horrible about
Hillary Clinton's e-mails--so horrible, I've only heard them mentioned once in
the media (KPFK) since Election Day (I'm finishing this on 12/21/2016).
But I don't want only to gaze into the abyss of 2016.
Joe and I have just watched the '50s-set 2015 film Carol,
which is based on a pseudonymously published novel by the late Patricia
Highsmith: the first-ever happy-ending
lesbian romance, The Price of Salt . I read this 1952 novel in the 1990s, so my
memories are hazy, but I suspect the pyrrhic victory of the movie's ending
essentially recapitulates the novel's. I
also suspect the book may be more ambiguous generally, given it's from the
author of such disturbing modernist thrillers as Strangers on a Train
and The Talented Mr. Ripley et seq. Whatever the case, Carol is reasonably subtle and well worth a
watch.
Recently, Joe and I revisited Suffragette (2015),
that affecting if ultimately limited film about the British suffragist movement
in the early 20th Century. I don't think it's unreasonable to make a
movie about the transformation of a fictional young, white, heterosexual Englishwoman
as she learns how the feminist movement intersects with her working-class concerns
as a low-income wife, mother, and factory worker. But I wish the film's creators had intruded
such aspects of reality as the movement's racial and sexual diversity, or put the
English-born Sikh princess, Sophia Duleep Singh, on the balcony with her fellow
radical suffragist, Emmeline Pankhurst (real women who deserve movies of their
own, not that I'm holding my breath).
Earlier, we saw the acclaimed 2014 hit, Guardians of the
Galaxy. Why? we were left
asking ourselves. Why was it a
hit? The only thing we liked about this science
fiction pic was the intelligent evolved tree, Groot, played--in, ironically,
the only non-wooden portrayal--by action movie hero Vin Diesel. Though not even present physically in the film,
he brought nuance and sensitivity to his role, reminding me it's time to revisit
his excellent early movie of shady stock salesmen, 2000's Boiler Room.
Still earlier, we saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens
(2015), which is the best of the franchise since The Empire Strikes Back
(1980), perhaps because it basically pastiches Empire and its 1977
prequel. Regarding Han Solo, a
seventysomething friend exclaimed in wonder, "A movie with an action hero
my age!" I similarly appreciated
that they let Princess Leia Organa show her age, which is close to mine. I also appreciated that the young woman co-lead,
like Leia before her, got to enjoy competence and fighting abilities without
intruding the cliché that "girls must be traumatized to gain agency." I got a little statue of Rey to keep watch as
I write.
* * *
"For this disaster we will all be present" (Books)
At press time last year, I had not yet finished reading Star-Lord: Guardian of the Galaxy, the graphic novel collecting
the Bronze Age (1970s-1980s) solo adventures of Peter Quill, the future leader
of the subsequent Guardian of the Galaxy comics and movies. Alas, what started out so promisingly degenerated
into a patch of cheesecake costuming sufficient to make Red Sonja's chain-mail
bikini look reasonable. Eventually it dissolved
like Jell-O crystals in generic bad writing about some other guy assuming Quill's
role.
In other graphic novel reading, Marvel's
controversially gender-flipped Thor: Volume 1: The Goddess of Thunder
proved disappointing, especially in light of Marvel's excellent race-flipped
Hugo Award winner, Ms. Marvel: Volume 1: No Normal. Thor as a woman is promising in concept, but
not so much in a storyline devoted largely to fight scenes and concealing the
identity of the new Thor from the old. To
be fair, I might've enjoyed The Goddess of Thunder more if I'd known what
role the new deity's mortal identity plays in the Marvel Universe. Alas, the Marvel Universe, like DC's, has proliferated
far beyond the comprehension of any mortal who's not a fanatic with a
photographic memory.
There's also some gender and ethnic (but not
racial) flipping in the graphic novel DC Comics: Bombshells Volume 1:
Enlisted, which combines female DC heroes and villains like Wonder Women, Catwoman
(white comics version), etc, with Rosie the Riveter-inspired female variations
on Batman, Superman, and other prominent male DC superheroes in a World War II
setting. Interesting, yes? No. While
some of the changes (lesbian Bats, Soviet Supes) are promising, others are
ridiculous. That Batwoman's heiress
alter ego is literally a professional "girl" baseball player isn't bad,
per se…but she goes on to dress like one--complete with bat weapon--as a
superhero (one can only assume sports fans in this alternate history are all blind
or stupid). John Constantine retains his
male identity and biology…but as a rabbit.
More generally, the writer seemed to be losing the struggle with the
concept. Given these issues, I was unsurprised
to learn this alt.WWII series is based on a line of collectible statuettes. Had I but known. Actually, I should've known to avoid any
project which incorporates the annoying yet boring villainess Harley Quinn, who
was apparently created only to provide unconvincing evidence the Joker is an
allosexual het.
I re-read the uneven alternate-history graphic
novel, Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst's Amazons, after learning
more about British suffrage. The
aggravating fate of Mrs. Pankhurst is not an event in our timeline, and not even
necessary to trigger the GN's subsequent events, which include an alternate
cause of World War I. On the plus side, it's
true many suffragists in our timeline learned martial arts.
In the interests of completing this post before
the end of the century, I'm not going to discuss every book I read for research
last year, but I'll mention a few titles which seem likely to interest Aqueduct
Press readers:
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and
Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild (a history of the [mostly British]
Left in the Great War; despite the subtitle, it covers earlier years as well)
The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World
War I by the late Barbara A. Tuchman (lives up to the praise)
Kings, Queens, and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front
by the late Mary Roberts Rinehart (personal account of
the first and only visit by a woman war correspondent to the Western Front)
The Last of the Doughboys by Richard
Rubin (he interviewed the last U.S. WWI veterans, including a woman, before
they were gone)
Testament of Youth by the late Vera
Brittain (the self-unsparing memoir of the feminist author, skeptic, and WWI
nurse, and the basis of the rather different but also excellent recent movie)
Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable
Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics by Kathryn Atwood (aimed I suspect
at YA readers, this is a good starting place for learning about some remarkable
women rarely remarked on in the histories)
Three of my research reads I want to discuss
more fully.
West With the Night is the 1942 memoir
of Beryl Markham, the Kenya-born, partially indigenous-raised British aviatrix,
bush pilot, and racehorse trainer who became the first person to fly
solo across the Atlantic from east to west. Written in beautiful prose envied
by Hemingway, this matter-of-fact recounting of a remarkable life makes me
appreciate memoirs which are not tell-all.
It also left me wondering if Circling the Sun, Paula McLain's smoothly
written but almost piloting-free 2016 novel about Markham, which centers on
needy romantic interactions with Denys Finch-Hatton and Baron Blixen, had anything to do with Markham's personal life. I hope not.
A Curious Collection of Dates: Through the
Year with Sherlock Holmes by Leah Guinn and Jaime N. Mahoney, is a fascinating and well-researched cross
between an encyclopedia and an almanac.
As you've probably deduced, this reference work is centered on all things
Holmesian--a broader subject than you might think. The entries are arranged by date, letting you
read a timely entry every day and not feel intimidated by the impressive
whole. While this oversized 352-page softcover
is not inexpensive ($34.95), it would make a wonderful gift for anyone who
loves Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories, enjoys either of the current
TV series, or has a general interest in Victoriana, British mysteries, or
steampunk.
Sophia: Princess, Suffragette,
Revolutionary, the British journalist Anita Anand's first book, is the fascinating
biography of the above-mentioned Sikh princess, Sophia Duleep Singh. A goddaughter of Queen Victoria, the tri-racial
radical suffragist simultaneously experienced great power and absolute
powerlessness, which must have caused her much frustration (surely it contributed
to the stretches of deep depression). As
one would hope, the work intersects meaningfully with British and Indian
history. It also presents captivating if
inevitably too-brief glimpses of Sophia's parents, ancestors, and full and half
siblings. I hope Ms. Anand is overwhelmed
by the desire to write a biography about Sophia's intriguing fellow feminist
and beloved big sister, Catherine Duleep Singh,
who was unique in their family in finding a happy relationship, a life-long partnership
with a German woman.
Researching late 19th-early 20th
Century European history brushed me against three noteworthy novels. One is Mary Robinette Kowal's 2016 alternate
history of WWI, Ghost Talkers, in which Allied spiritualists can
communicate with the new war dead for intelligence purposes…unless the Germans
figure it out. Another is the late British author Radclyffe Hall's uneven,
decades-spanning 1928 novel, The Well of
Loneliness, in which the woman writer protagonist serves in
WWI as a volunteer ambulance driver. I
also read The Friendly Young Ladies (sometime U.S. title, The
Middle Mist), a 1943 work of contemporary fiction by the late Mary Renault, a British author better known for
her brilliant novels of ancient Greece. Like Hall's book, The Friendly Young Ladies is a novel about a woman
novelist. Renault's look at bohemian
1930s London is
considerably stronger and less melodramatic (and, I would say, more mean-spirited)
than Hall's title, but both books' central lesbian romances make it clear why The
Price of Salt was so radical when it appeared.
I could've, given its time period, but I didn't read the new,
feminist alternate history of the Belgian Congo,
Everfair, because it's set in my current era of research. I read it because I know Nisi Shawl is a great
writer, and I knew it would be a great novel.
I'm right, but since I'm her Writing the Other collaborator and
her friend, you may deduce I'm biased.
You can check out the reviews,
though. They agree with me.
When I left the 19th-20th Centuries it
was for Georgette Heyer's Regency romance novel, The Corinthian. It's a witty mix of assumed identities, jewel
thieves, cross-dressing, lies, and murder, with a plot so intricate, I frankly
cannot tell you if it makes sense. I can
tell you it was a most diverting and entertaining read, which was useful in the
immediate aftermath of Election Day.
The Corinthian reminded me I love Ellen Kushner's Regency-inspired,
largely fantasy-free Riverside
fantasy novels. Happily, Kushner and several
collaborators have released a new one--or two.
They're serial novels,
and the sequel's chapters haven't all been released yet. I'm just getting started on the second
sequence, but I quite enjoyed Tremontaine: The Complete Season One by
Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese,
and Patty Bryant. Sex, swordplay, scandals,
secrets, intersectionality, chocolate, wit--what's not to like?
Another fantasy of manners a la Heyer is Zen Cho's impressive
debut novel, Sorcerer to the Crown.
It concerns a scandalous development in the Royal Society of Unnatural
Philosophers, by which I don't refer to the failing of magic as the threat of Napoleon
rises. I mean the society's new leader is
a freed slave. Furthermore, he seems not
entirely opposed to magic by women! I
daresay you'll want to see what develops, shocking as it must prove.
In a far different mode, I re-read a few cyberpunk classics. Interesting, the difference time makes in
perception. William Gibson's Neuromancer
(1984) seemed so diverse when I read it in the 1980s. Richard Kadrey's Metrophage
(1988) didn't seem so much like a pastiche.
Chairman Bruce's exhortations against effete, decaying older forms of
science fiction didn't seem like a rejection of 1970s feminist SF. But you can have feminist cyberpunk, and you don't
need a new wave of cyberpunk writers to get it. You can read the Queen of Cyberpunk, Pat Cadigan. Good entry points for this past WisCon guest
of honor's science fiction, fantasy, and horror are her excellent collections, Patterns
(1989) and Dirty Work (1993).
Speaking of feminist science fiction, you'll find a fine
example of feminist first-contact SF in 2015's The Weave,
the debut novel by Nancy Jane Moore. In
contrast to many other tales of Earthlings on a new world, this diverse work thoughtfully
explores alternatives to exploitation. It
also offers an exploration of gender unique in my experience.
Neither highly feminist nor highly diverse at this juncture
are the two issues of old-school Weird revivalist magazines I read last year, Skelos
#1 (2016) and Weirdbook #31 (2015). This doesn't surprise me overmuch;
I grew up with Weird and pulp speculative fiction as my preferred reading
material, and, as far as I can tell, such subgenres are where hard-boiled
detective fiction was when women, PoC, and queer authors began transforming it
in the 1980s and 1990s: heavily white, cis,
het, and male in authors and characters.
I know at least one editor involved in these projects pursues diversification,
so I expect to see a broadening of contributors and characters going forward.
While I don't foresee Aqueduct Press fans stampeding to acquire
the 'zines I've mentioned, Skelos #1 does include an article of feminist
interest: Nicole Emmelhainz's "Blades:
C.L. Moore and the Gender Dynamics of
Sword and Sorcery." I was
particularly intrigued by her exploration of an idea new to me, which is that
"in the imaginary worlds of the best sword and sorcery, gender becomes a
strategic performance rather than an essential source of identity." I've always assumed my teenage immersion in sword
and sorcery, sword and planet, and other forms of adventure spec-fic
contributed to my nascent development as a feminist largely in a negative
manner, by annoying me with sexist clichés; this suggests the subgenres played
an important positive role, as well.
For The Cascadia Subduction Zone I've most recently reviewed Hugo Award
winner David D. Levine's diverting debut novel, Arabella of Mars, which
blends elements of Heyer with clockpunk, Patrick O'Brian, and the
interplanetary romance (although if you go in expecting Jane Carter of Mars, as
some promotional material suggests, you will be unpleasantly surprised). My review is available, along
with other nonfiction, poems, and art from divers hands, in this free
downloadable issue of CSZ.
Most recently I've read the multi-genre writer
Tade Thompson's excellent new book, Rosewater, which provides the quote that
opens this section. This second novel moves
Thompson to book-length science fiction, but retains many of the successful suspense
elements of his West Africa-set debut novel, 2015's Making Wolf
(which I discussed last year). Rosewater is the
second "first contact" novel out of the three I've read lately that
takes place in Nigeria, but that's almost the only thing Rosewater has
in common with Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon (also discussed last year). Rosewater
is thoughtful and compelling--and, I fear, prescient. It's another demonstration of what a powerful
and important writer Thompson is.
Up next: Black Panther: Marvel Masterworks Volume 1,
collecting the ground-breaking comics about the titular black African superhero
originally published in Jungle Action (1972-1976), from the Bronze Age
greats Donald McGregor (writer) and Rich Buckler (artist), and Marvel Comics'
best-selling graphic novel of 2016, Black Panther: A Nation Under Our Feet
Volume 1, written by MacArthur Genius Grant and National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi
Coates and illustrated by long-time sequential artist Brian Stelfreeze.
Cynthia Ward
has sold stories to Asimov's SF, Shattered Prism ,
Weird Tales, and other magazines and anthologies. For WolfSinger
Publications , she edited the
diversity themed anthologies Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West
V.1-2. She has a pair of reprint anthologies forthcoming in collaboration with
the eminent editor, Charles G. Waugh , the first science
fiction professional she ever met. With fellow
Aqueductista Nisi Shawl, Cynthia coauthored Writing the Other: A Practical
Approach .
Her short novel, The Adventure of the Incognita Countess, is forthcoming
in 2017
from Aqueduct Press .
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