Mutiny Up My Sleeve.*

 

Michael Burnham: All my life, the conflict inside me has been between logic, and emotion. But now it's my emotions that are fighting. I think about him and I want to cry. But... I have to smile. And I feel angry. But I want to love. And I'm hurt, but there's hope. What is this?

Ash Tyler: Ah, it's just... being human.

[She looks at him curiously, then offers him her hand]

Michael Burnham: Michael Burnham. Pleased to meet you.

Ash Tyler: Ash Tyler. We've met.

Michael Burnham: Have we? Let's try it again.  

Lethe: Star Trek: Discovery

To my surprise, I've somehow managed to watch all the episodes of Star Trek: Discovery to date.  For the record, this is more of an accomplishment than it sounds. I exist in a continual state of media deficit and there's a long list of things that have just dropped off my radar due to lack of time.  Having stayed in sync with Discovery, I’m pleased to say that I'm cautiously enjoying it.

 

Why cautiously, you ask?  Well,on the positive side, so far almost everyone in the cast of Discovery is delivering a noteworthy performance.  Although I was very impressed by Michelle Yeoh’s brief turn as Captain Georgiou (and disappointed by her premature departure), Jason Isaacs is now presenting us with a good solid take on Captain Lorca, who came to us as a cipher and is being filled in very nicely as the show develops.  Doug Jones is doing a brilliant job as Commander Saru - I don’t know if I should congratulate him or his makeup team, but the result is a completely believable alien character. 

It's a shame that Mr. Jones doesn't get more work as himself.  I realize that his slim physique makes him an ideal candidate for roles like Saru or Abe Sapien in the Hellboy series, but it would be interesting to see him perform without prosthetics more often. That being said, his ability to express emotion in spite of a substantial barrier of molded latex is astonishing.

Sonequa Martin-Green is excellent as Michael Burnham.  I hadn't seen much of her on The Walking Dead (see media deficit, above) but she's doing a very good job of showing us the challenges of Burnham's situation:  dealing with the ambiguities of being raised in a culture dedicated to logic and emotional control, and still coming to terms with the very different expectations and assumptions of human society.  Her performance is natural and believable: as with all good acting, it doesn't feel like acting at all.

However, I do have some misgivings about the show itself.  I constantly find myself wondering why they felt it necessary to make this show part of the Star Trek universe. It doesn’t feel very Trek-like at times:  the technology and uniforms don’t really match canon, the Discovery’s magical instantaneous mushroom** drive is one of the strangest pieces of technological bafflegab ever, and to be honest, I'm not wild about the look of the re-re-imagined Klingons very much. (Or their place in the plotline, for that matter.  Is it my imagination, or does everything just slow to a crawl every time we get a subtitled guttural update on the state of the Empire?)

The bridge of the Discovery is loaded with three or four new entries into the Star Trek catalogue of species, none of whom appear in any of the programs set in Discovery's future (or its past).  So far, except for Saru they're all ciphers, set dressing with no explanation - if the creators of the show just wanted to fill the seats, why not go with aliens from the original series?  The good news is that Discovery has been approved for more episodes, so hopefully we're going to start finding out about some of the other crewmembers as the show progresses.  Regardless, there's no reason that they couldn't have been Andorians, Orions, Denobulans, Kzinti***, or Tellarites, all of which already exist in canon.

Finally, I'm concerned that they're going to rely too heavily on Michael Burnham's logic-based contrarian nature.  It would be far too easy to reduce her dynamic to an internet meme:

MICHAEL:  I think we should do the thing. 

SOMEONE:  I order you not to do the thing.

MICHAEL:  Imma do the thing, because I was raised by Vulcans.

SOMEONE:  Doing the thing was right, but we still don’t trust you, because mutiny.

There’s a fine line between character consistency and lazy writing, and, frankly, this is what did Wesley Crusher in.  Too many of the early Next Generation plots irritatingly relied on some product of Wesley’s genius to save the day, to the point where it burned out the character's ability to contribute to storylines.  I've been relieved to see that recent episodes of Discovery have shown us more of Burnham's background and exposed some of her weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which helps to provide greater depth to the character.  Please keep working on that side of things, people - I'd really hate to hear anyone saying, "Shut up, Michael!" in a future episode.

- Sid

* This is the title of my favourite Max Webster album, and as such I am painfully pleased to be able to use it here.

** Yes, Laurie, a magic mushroom drive.  Seriously, watch the show if you don't believe me.

*** Actually, I've always been a little doubtful about the validity of the Kzinti in terms of canonicity.  Science fiction author Larry Niven was invited to adapt one of his Known Universe short stories as an episode of Star Trek: The Animated Series in 1973, which perforce added his felinoid Kzinti to the Star Trek universe.  Regardless, I suspect that almost everyone considers them to be part of Niven's continuity rather than Star Trek's.

The Quiet Earth.

It's become a sort of standard assumption in science fiction that an apocalyptic event would mean the end of civilization.  Depending on the event, that would certainly be the case - obviously the sort of destruction caused by an extinction level asteroid strike or a nuclear war would push things below the level at which our current society functions on a planetary basis.

But not all end-of-the-world scenarios involve extreme property damage. Is the threshold for civilization based in any way on the size of the population?

Let's posit a pandemic scenario which wipes out 95% of the world's population, but without the sort of theatrics which normally accompany this sort of disaster in fictional descriptions.  In other words, maybe we don't panic. Yes, we swamp the hospitals, and yes, an awful lot of people die, but why would that make the government collapse?

We'll set some ground rules. Our nemesis is an untreatable contagious disease that kills its victims in less than a week, and it's spread by airborne transmission.  As with Captain Trips in Stephen King's The Stand, if you catch it, you pretty much die.

The current population is 7.5 billion people, so we're left with about 375 million after the infection burns out, which is more or less the population of the world in 1000 AD.  (In reality, the less organized and compliant a country's response to an emergency, the greater the loss of people, but let's keep the math simple and just say that 1 in 20 people are left alive right across the board, without any bias toward either democratic societies or brutal dictatorships.)

So we assume that the response to the catastrophe is controlled and organized.  Inevitably, there would be a certain percentage of unrecorded deaths, but for the most part, the victims come to their end in hospitals or under some other form of final care.  A brutal simplicity is enforced: there's no time for individual burials, just daily truck convoys to the mass burial sites. Over time, there are fewer trips - and fewer truck drivers - until eventually the virus burns itself out.

What does the world look like afterwards?  How many links can break before the machinery of our society ceases to function?

Logic says that we condense, that everything pulls in toward the center - whatever the center happens to be.  We're left with massive amounts of unnecessary infrastructure, but the framework of everyday life is still there, and I would think that in some odd way, it would all balance out.  If you were a bus driver before the epidemic, you're still a bus driver, and you have about as many passengers on a daily basis, but 19 empty buses are left to rust at the depot.  Karli and I live in a small apartment building that holds about 20 people - now there's just one of us, no more lineups for the washing machines.*

But what if our landlord is dead?  Is there anyone left to collect the rent? For that matter, why would anyone stay there - 19 out of every 20 homes are now empty, why stay in an apartment? How would the government control squatting?  Or would they even attempt to?
  
Perhaps looting and squatting would become acceptable activities as the government urged people to clearly indicate what homes are inhabited, and created a system by which you apply to take over the empty home of your choice. The remaining locksmiths would become very busy, especially people who can re-key vehicle ignitions.  As with houses, there are a lot of cars left, and no reason not to trade up.

A certain percentage of empty buildings might simply be demolished.  After all, if everyone living in three story walkups like ours has moved into an empty house, it seems wiser to simply eliminate those buildings rather than abandoning them to decay and eventually collapse.

Businesses combine and vanish, as employers without staff seek out workers without bosses.  As with residential property, there's a process in place to take charge of rare materials, inventory and factory space. 

When it's all over, it's a quiet world.  There are no traffic jams.  There are no lineups.  And hopefully it's a kinder, gentler world than the old one, a world where people are more tolerant, friendly and affectionate.  If 95% of the people you loved were gone, how could you not treasure the ones who were left?

- Sid

* In my heart, I would hope that there would actually still be two of us.  And the cat, of course.

New York X: But then again, too few to mention.

 

And so, back from New York.  It seems odd to say that we had a whirlwind tour of Manhattan, given that we had almost eight full days, but it speaks volumes to say that we didn't manage to fit in everything that we had planned, even with just over a week. (Karli's sister and her family went for four days - now that's a whirlwind visit!)

 

However, even with the limitations of time, we did pretty well:  two visits to the Empire State Building (daylight and nighttime); a backstage tour of NBC Studios;  the MOMA, the Met, the Whitney and the Museum of Natural History; the 9/11 Memorial, which may or may not count as a museum at this point in time; a wonderful wander through Central Park and a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge; two Broadway shows, Wicked and Chicago; some excellent dining experiences, with particular praise for Co. Pizza, Tacombi, Ivan Ramen and PizzArte; and the endlessly entertaining experience of just walking the streets of the city.

I'd also like to thank Michelle for our ideal little AirBnB pied-à-terre in Chelsea. And, as always, my girlfriend Karli was the perfect travel companion - New York would have been dull and tedious without you, my love.

But I do have one regret from the trip: I didn't find the used science fiction bookstore of my dreams.  Given the pivotal position that New York occupies in the development of modern science fiction, combined with a general belief that if you want to buy something, it will be available in New York, I had high hopes for finding a few gems to add to my collection.

The Strand bookstore was a great location, but I obviously misunderstood their position regarding used books. They do purchase used books, but their inventory - at least the portions that I browsed - seemed to be entirely hardcover or trade paperbacks, and relatively recent ones.  I didn't browse through their Rare Books section, but I feel that used science fiction paperbacks only qualify as "rare books" in a few cases (and when they do, they become a rather expensive commodity).  Similarly, Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books was an intriguing little spot, but not a used book venue.

I had hoped that Singularity and Co. would be that store, and all evidence on line indicates that, at one point, it would have been exactly the place I was looking for.  However, online evidence also suggests that both the store and the associated scanning endeavour came to an untimely end (to the frustration and irritation of its Kickstarter™ supporters) leaving behind nothing but an empty rental space in Brooklyn and the digital equivalent for their web site.

Further research indicates that had I broadened my search, I might have found what I was looking for in one of the surrounding boroughs, but with the exception of our brief jaunt over to DUMBO, our plans never extended to leaving Manhattan.

Ah, well...there's always next time.

- Sid

New York IX: Angels in America.

"New York, the city of a million stories. Half of them are true, the other half just haven't happened yet." 

Sam Garner:  The Angels Take Manhattan, Doctor Who

Did you know that Central Park isn't a natural phenomenon?  Until I took the Big Bus tour of Manhattan, I shared the popular impression that the Park was a little piece of wilderness that had been set aside as a common space during the growth of New York.

I was quite surprised to discover that, in fact, every tree, rock, pool and pathway in Central Park is deliberate, the result of the Greensward Plan which was drafted in 1856 by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux.*  Olmsted and Vaux treated the park as a blank canvas - their plan called for a complete reconstruction of the 843 acre location, creating a deliberately picturesque and pastoral oasis in the centre of Manhattan. 

Regardless of its origins, Central Park has a special place in the hearts of Doctor Who fans as the location of the poignant farewell to Doctor companions Amy and Rory in the Season 8 episode The Angels Take Manhattan, filmed on location in New York.**

 

It's always interesting to visit a filming location and see how the production version compares with real life - or real geography, in this case. For example, Rory certainly covers a lot of ground on his coffee run near the start of the episode: the trio are enjoying their picnic near the southeast corner of the park, and he encounters a Weeping Angel near Bethesda Terrace, which suggests that he must have gone to the Loeb Boathouse for coffee. That would be about a solid half mile of walking, depending on exactly where he started.  On the other hand, he's just escaped from a conversation about the signs of aging on his wife's face, so he may be deliberately taking his time.

 

Subsequent action takes place throughout the city, although I'm not sure about the location of the cemetery in which the Doctor says his final farewell to Amy (not counting her appearance for Matt Smith's final episode).  We were able to find the park bench where the Doctor reads Amy's final farewell to him, though.

"Hello, old friend, and here we are. You and me, on the last page."

"I should have worn a bow tie for this, bow ties are cool."

When Karli and I visited Bethesda Fountain during one of our strolls through Central Park, I was sharply reminded of the downside of the immobile Weeping Angel lifestyle, the one that never seems to come up on the show...

...pigeons.

- Sid

* Okay, almost every.  The original plan did not include playgrounds, and the Zoo also was not part of the original plan, but was rather the result of informal donations of exotic animals to the Park, which led to the founding of an official home for the menagerie in 1864.

** Mostly on location.  They did some additional greenscreen shooting in Cardiff when they got home.

New York VIII: 18 Miles of Books.

As a bibliophile*, there was obviously no way I was going to visit New York without shopping for books.  (We also did some shoe shopping for Karli - it's important that both people in a relationship get to enjoy their interests when travelling together.)  We managed to get to three bookstores during our time in Manhattan, which between them represented almost the full spectrum of independent book retailing.

(Come to think of it, I can’t think of many chain bookstore spottings during our time in Manhattan, which probably speaks to the difficulties of maintaining a storefront in the age of internet shopping.)

On Thursday morning, we made our way to Greenwich Village via the High Line, New York's groundbreaking elevated railway-park conversion.  After an excellent lunch at the trendy Spotted Pig, and a quick photo op at Carrie Bradshaw's brownstone**, we stopped at Book Book, located on Bleecker Street in the heart of the Village.

Book Book is very much the archetypal small generalist bookstore: a little bit of everything with a focus on mainstream fiction, discounted hardcovers, and an acceptable selection of affordable remainders.  It's a well-lit space, with a good layout that makes for easy browsing.

Due to the limitations of Book Book's modest footprint, their science fiction and fantasy section is almost non-existent, restricted to five shelves at the back of the store. That being said, I have to give them credit for its comprehensive nature. If someone told me to stock five shelves with what I considered to be the best of science fiction and fantasy, I would be hard pressed to improve upon Book Book’s tiny perfect offering.

Next stop was Carmine Street and Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books, which managed to live up to all the parts of its name - I found it lacking in both oppression and imperialistic ambitions, and it had an interesting selection of affordable reading. UNIBB and its sister store Carmine Comics each occupy about as much space as my spare bedroom, but still manage to offer interesting if somewhat cramped shopping. The store offers an eclectic range of bargain books with more of a focus on music, politics and philosophy than science fiction, but I spotted - and purchased - a hardcover copy of Give Our Regards to the Atom-smashers!, a collection of essays on comic books edited by Sean Howe, affordably priced at $7.00 after taxes.

According to Wikipedia, The Strand, New York’s best known independent book store, has about 2.5 million volumes in its four story Broadway location - or, as they prefer to put it, 18 miles of books. The problem with having that sort of inventory is, of course, finding the shelf space to display it. The Strand’s solution is relatively narrow aisles, quite high bookshelves, and a good supply of stepladders.*** This may allow them to fit everything in, but the result is that casual browsing is a bit of a challenge.

It would have been fascinating to methodically work my way through all the shelves in their Science Fiction and Fantasy section, but there are times when you just have to be realistic.  As such, I decided to let chance lead me through the stacks - and after all, it's important to keep the high cost of overweight luggage fees in mind when book shopping in another country.

I'd already picked up a reduced price copy of The Princess Bride from a display near the checkout.  My beloved die-cut cover paperback version has been due for replacement for quite some time, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take care of that.

Coincidentally, one of Karli’s friends had recommended that she read The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, a tale of supernatural romance set in New York, which was fortuitously located at eye level and all but jumped off the shelf at me. Spaceman of Bohemia, Jaroslav Kalfar's debut novel, was a random purchase - again, just at eye level, and I was intrigued by the title. It also fit the New York theme: Kalfar emigrated from the Czech Republic to the US as a teenager, and now lives in Brooklyn.

My final selection at The Strand was more deliberate - I've been planning to buy Joe Abercrombie's Sharp Ends for some time. Abercrombie's grimdark fantasy novels are excellent: original and well written, with a wildly varied cast of detailed and believable characters. Sharp Ends is a collection of short pieces which act as grace notes for the larger episodes set in the world of his First Law novels.

Sharp Ends relies heavily on an existing knowledge of those novels, and as such isn't really a good introduction to Abercrombie's work.  For example, the first story in the book, A Beautiful Bastard, would be meaningless unless the reader is aware that the titular character survives his heroic last stand, is captured, tortured, and reduced to a broken parody of his former self, and subsequently returns to his homeland to appear as the crippled, bitter inquisitor of the First Law trilogy.

Surprisingly, Karli ended up spending more than I did during our Sunday visit to The Strand, thanks to their large selection of giftable merch such as book bags, post cards, literary pins (she generously bought me a Dune pin), t-shirts, hats, and so on.  I purchased myself a t-shirt – it’s unusual for me to buy t-shirts outside of my fandom, but I felt that supporting a book store was an acceptable indulgence. 

I was initially disappointed that I didn't get to The Strand's Books By The Foot department, until subsequent research revealed what it actually was.  Apparently, if you want to create the appearance of being a literary type by having a collection of noteworthy books, but without having to actually, you know, read the damn things or some such silliness, The Strand will cheerfully sell you literature by the foot - all you have to do is measure your bookshelves and provide them with your preferences. For example, if you were a neophyte lawyer, you might want a nice leatherbound library as a Facetime background, or your interior designer could order twenty or thirty feet of colour-coded books to match your new decor.

What a sad affectation!  I may only have about a hundred feet of books, but at least I've read them all - without ever worrying about whether or not the colours clashed with the new couch.

- Sid

* And Karli bought me a pin, see!!?

** See the comment in the first paragraph about both people enjoying their interests.

*** “This is my stepladder. Sadly, I never knew my real ladder.”

New York VII: "The whole universe was in a hot dense state..."

 

We visited the Museum of Natural History today, and I have a bone to pick* with their retail people. Why in the world have you neglected to stock any of Chris Hadfield's books?  My god, the man has been a New York Times bestselling author not once but twice, his Space Oddity video has been viewed 37.7 million times, he has 2.28 million Twitter™ followers - 2.5 million people have watched the man brush his teeth on YouTube™, for heaven's sake! Does that not sound like someone whose books might be a popular sales item? Step up, people!

- Sid

 

P.S.  Just for the record, I have nothing against Mike Massimino - nice guy, also a New York Times bestselling author, been on The Big Bang Theory six times...hey!  Why hasn't Chris Hadfield been on The Big Bang Theory??**  My god, the man has been a New York Times bestselling author not once but twice...

* Given their display of fossils, this seems apt.

**  But seriously, why hasn't he?