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rhetoricandlogic · 2 years

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'Upgrade' takes a unique, fun path to the end

July 14, 20223:41 PM ET

Jason Sheehan

Blake Crouch has always been a dependable storyteller.

He spins out grounded, accessible tales with an admirable internal precision no matter the genre. He can do spooky. He can do spec-fic that shades over into near-future sci fi. He does disaster and mystery and procedurals that all feel effortless. Crouch's books are fun the way a summer blockbuster is fun. And on the page, he exudes the smooth, slick confidence of someone who knows exactly where he's going and just how to get there. Even his surprises seem like clockwork. They all go off precisely when he wants them to.

His newest, Upgrade, is no different. In it, he does the dependable science-fiction trick of imagining a future altered by one significant technology and a character significantly impacted by said technology, then mushing the two of them together to see what happens next.

Here, we have a mildly dystopian near-future world where gene editing technology has advanced to a point where nearly anything is possible. Want to make all malaria-carrying mosquitos be born male so the species dies out and the disease is eradicated? Done. Want to build a dragon from crocodile and Komodo genomes? There's a guy in Vegas already working on that — special order for a client, worth millions. But because nearly anything is possible, gene editing has also been outlawed. It's too dangerous. Too many mad scientists out there. That's ingredient A.

Ingredient B is Logan Ramsay — disgraced scientist, paroled felon, currently employed by the Gene Protection Agency, the federal law enforcement branch that enforces the laws against gene editing and goes after the rogue scientists, hidden labs and dealers in proscribed genetic material. Logan's mom was Miriam Ramsay, one of the world's most brilliant geneticists, now dead by suicide. Miriam is the reason all this gene stuff is illegal now in Crouch's world. Because Miriam was working on a gene project to make rice crops more hardy and accidentally caused a global famine that killed 200 million people. Logan was working with his mother. That's why he went to prison. That's why he is where he is now.

And when we meet Logan, he's just a regular guy. Or a regular science-fiction gene cop, anyway — barfing nervously before raids, running around in a HazMat suit saying things like I fastened the magnetic straps on my inductive body armor and took my weapon out of the go-bag. There's a specificity to Crouch's language that tends to take him down cul-de-sacs of jargon and gear-porn. He drops brand names and technical specifications the way other writers use commas. He obviously learned a fair bit about genetics while researching the details of Upgrade and he never misses a chance to talk about it. But it's cool. Much of the book happens in Logan's head (we see all of it through his eyes in a tight, first-person, single-narrator set-up) and I have zero doubt that he, the character, would totally talk that way — the kind of guy who couldn't cook you a burger in the backyard without explaining, in detail, the make and model of his grill and precisely why he'd chosen that one in particular.

Needless to say, Logan doesn't stay a run-of-the-mill gene cop for long. I mean, just check the title. The book is called Upgrade. And this Logan? He's going places. First, into the basement of a house in Denver in search of a clandestine lab on a bogus tip from the world's most obvious White Collar Bad Guy (they caught him in an airport wine bar, ferchrissakes), then to a hospital quarantine room when the otherwise empty basement turns out to contain a homebrew IED. Logan lives, seems to suffer no ill effects (other than being slightly blown up), is released, goes back home to his loving wife and teenaged daughter, but soon discovers that he's quietly developing...superpowers.

OK — not superpowers superpowers, exactly. Except that yeah, basically superpowers.

It starts with being able to read faster and remember things better. Then he beats his very smart daughter at chess (something he hasn't been able to do in years). And before you know it, his bones are getting denser, his muscles are getting stronger and the gene cops — the ones he used to work for — are throwing him in supervillain jail and accusing him of self-editing.

Now stop a second. Crouch could've just gone on from this point and told a dull, standard-issue technological superman story. Dude gets magical sci-fi powers, saves/destroys the world, the end. But what's interesting about Upgrade is that Crouch doesn't do that. Instead, at exactly this moment, we're introduced to Miriam Ramsay's other child. Logan's sister, Kara.

Kara the black sheep. Kara the soldier, the loner with her Montana survivalist cabin and bag full of guns and burner phones. Kara, who is also developing powers she can't explain.

Kara is the hinge point at which Upgrade pivots, becoming a kind of modern Romulus and Remus yarn about two siblings each given remarkable powers and asked to use them to repair a world dying from starvation, war, disease and climate change. By the time they're done, Logan and Kara will both be like gods walking in a world of mere mortals — each with a very different view of what must be done to save humanity, and at what cost.

Crouch doesn't linger. He knows how to do a chase, when to blow stuff up and when to bring the house lights down. Like I said at the top, he's walked similar trails before. He knows where he's going.

But what makes Upgrade special is that his path is unique. He takes turns that are unexpected, explores some stunning vistas along the way, and even if the endpoint is a little bit obvious, watching him get there can be a lot of fun.

Bloody, grim and occasionally pedantic, but still fun.

#Blake Crouch #Upgrade #mahreviews #long post

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readerbookclub · 4 years

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Before introducing our newest book list, I want to say sorry about this month. It’s been underwhelming to say the least. So far this year was very chaotic (packing up to move countries, having the plane tickets cancelled, and getting into Oxford?!). Between everything that happened, I neglected this club. But I’m very excited and well-prepared for next month, so it won’t happen again at least in the foreseeable future. We also have several enthusiastic new members who’ve messaged me, so hopefully our discussion will be even more lively this time!

Now back to our newest book list. Not to brag, but I think this is the best one yet. Time Warp is a collection of books that bend and play with time. It’s such an interesting topic that includes books from many different genres. Several of your recommendations also fit in perfectly. So let’s jump right in!

Typically stories play out over the span of weeks, months, or even years. But what if a writer were to shrink that timeline? Not to days or hours, but the mere seconds it takes to ride an elevator? Well, that’s what Jason Reynolds did in our first book, a story that lasts for a single elevator ride:

Long Way Down, Jason Reynolds:

A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if WILL gets off that elevator.

***

Our next book warps time in a slightly different way. What if every time you woke up, you found yourself in the same day (a sort-of Groundhog Day situation)? But unlike Groundhog Day, you wake up in different bodies. This thrilling book was suggested to me by one of you, and I absolutely loved the premise:

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton:

Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others. With a locked room mystery that Agatha Christie would envy, Stuart Turton unfurls a breakneck novel of intrigue and suspense. For fans of Claire North, and Kate Atkinson, The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a breathlessly addictive mystery that follows one man's race against time to find a killer, with an astonishing time-turning twist that means nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

***

Now we move on to an exciting genre: time travel! This next book was recommended to me by @earphonesandquills and I just had to put it on the list. A sci-fi love story between two people on opposite sides of a war:

This is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone:

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war.

***

Typically, the protagonists of time-travel books are very intelligent people. But what would happen if someone wasn’t so competent? What if they fucked it up? That’s exactly what the protagonist in our next book does. Coming from a perfect reality, he messes up and finds himself in a horrifying dystopia (aka our world):

All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai:

You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we'd have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren's 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn't necessary. Except Tom just can't seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that's before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland. But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and—maybe, just maybe—his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future—our future—is supposed to be.

***

Our final book is something I never knew I needed until I found it. I have spent way too much time day dreaming about a scenario where I find myself in the distant past. I imagine myself telling people about electricity and planes and modern medicine. But if they asked me to actually make something, I wouldn’t be able to. And that bothers me. This book is the solution. It’s a non-fiction guide on what to do if you were to find yourself in such a scenario (as unlikely as it may seem):

How to Invent Everything: A Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler, by Ryan North:

What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past. . . and then broke? How would you survive? Could you improve on humanity's original timeline? And how hard would it be to domesticate a giant wombat? With this book as your guide, you'll survive--and thrive--in any period in Earth's history. Bestselling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North shows you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted--from first principles. This illustrated manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up. Deeply researched, irreverent, and significantly more fun than being eaten by a saber-toothed tiger, How to Invent Everything will make you smarter, more competent, and completely prepared to become the most important and influential person ever.

***

That’s it for this month’s list. Hope you like these books as much as I do! As always, please vote here.

Member’s List (message me if you want to be added/removed): @solitarystudies @adhyayana-v @gordinmegan @appleinducedsleep @morphedphase @lilian-evans @bowieziggyfan @calebprior25 @bluebellraven @love-witch-magic @badasthesun @theeezoneee @montaguest @wanderlustingdreamer @csloreen @elfspectations @astreamoflight @engineeriblr @chemistrybaby6-022x10-23 @pepperpaprikash @bubblylion

#book list #books #book club #booklr #long way down #time travel #sci fi #the 7 1/2 deaths of evelyn hardcastle #this is how you lose the time war #how to invent everything #all our wrong todays

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thatheathen · 4 years

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“Seize the day. Then set it on fire.”

We are living in that cyberpunk dystopia now, the very type Philip K. Dick warned us that could happen and is slowly creeping its way into our personal lives/minds and that's mainly due to big internet providers and the fascist governments whipped by corporations hijacking all modes of freedom even virtual freedoms. everything is connected in the system the ruling class decided and you are a slave with in that caste system until you die. oh gee fun.

I feel bad for the devs that are forced to time crunch for this month. CD Projekt RED better compensate their workers for pushing this game out for them greedy selfish CEOs who are attached to this game that will no doubt be a hit and make tons of money, but at what cost? video game developers need to desperately unionize before its too late to even do so as most triple A games are made by wealthy liberal and or centrist elites who pretend to be progressive but actually hate unions, socialism, sharing, comradery, solidarity, grassroots fund raising cuz that’s all anti-capitalist and bad you see.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and that's exactly what cyberpunk is; it's a genre of unchained sci-fi yeah but it's also showing capitalism on steroids, corporations gone rogue and eating up all the earth's resources just to produce enough power and energy to run a whole city now requires a while country of power to push harder and harder to keep that light pollution at the maximum. animals should be going completely extinct in a cyberpunk future, what do humans even eat?

To my mind cyberpunk should be about breaking away from cultural programming that makes us hate each other, fight and kill, it always boils down to those who have and those who have not social structure. That's a lot like Feudalism and a false sense of safety for all people. Cyber-feudalism is how it's structured underneath the veil. “Seize the day. Then set it fire.”

Cyberpunk seems like a countercultural idea within the hyper-capitalist world that's still very male dominant. The feminine exist only to tantalize the masses, domestic females to slaves of profits and glamour. The brutal police forces ignoring human rights laws daily. Journalism is remotely impossible. So is the world of cyberpunk really a world of freedom and choices? Cyberpunk can be seen as a connection of like minded folk hungry for freedom and not need to fall into crime to survive. For many that’s the world you’re forced to live in or die in. rights are not natural handed from god, they are taken. cyber-rights seems like a fruitless fight in a hyper-cyber-capitalist reality; big brothers eyes everywhere. mass surveillance that would make PKD’s jaw drop. cyberpunk-world cops are thugs beyond what we could imagine and could kill you on sight if they chose and nobody will care or not be able to do anything. nobodies memories can be trusted unless you express a certain class. all the punks, rejects, anarchists, anti-corporation, hackers, etc. are all outsiders, terrorist suspects. Every queer person or Muslim or any kind of marginalized group of that era is vulnerable as the system doesn’t favor them nor see a reason to protect them, with fascist-leaning politicians WANTING certain groups of people to literally die out. Those who struggle in any unequal world are going to be feeling the most pain. Lots of pain may mean; drug addiction to numb this awful reality, mod addiction to be less human maybe or change your identity completely. Lots of pain could also mean lots of anger towards the system and the state that’s making life so miserable for the 90% the citizens who have no power. cyberpunk 2077s idea is an “anything-goes” kinda place. here’s a sci-fi GTA/Witcher3 sandbox about a fucked up capitalist future that’s super fun and action packed!! It’s okay it’s not real though. Meanwhile capitalism as it exists today is grinding down the working class including the Dev employees working on Cyberpunk as I type this. long hours for the same pay. was it worth it? will it be worth it? will cyberpunk be the GAME that will end labor abuse in the gaming industry?

People who are different, people who reject authority and anti-human social constructs, people who are spiritual without an organized religion, people so different and taboo to where the ruling elites see them as a threat, mocking those gross punks/queers/dissidents, but love their style and aesthetic because the rich have no soul and ZERO creativity. stealing is what rich assholes do best. rich people steal everyone’s aesthetic claiming it as their own and you begin to see YOUR aesthetic in the media regardless if it's offensive, it’s just unfettered anarcho-capitalist-land, there's no more restrictions to anything really. like ayn rand vision that would result in Bioshock’s world. that was a steampunk nightmare to an extent. point being the rich can do anything. money is power and it only matters to those who thirst for power. Many people just deal with money and hate at the same time cuz what other choice do people have? Poor people get no choices and all the bad days.

The rich and powerful will indulge in the vices of the poor to get another experience; meanwhile the real poor struggle to survive in this electronic hell world and your only choices are to fight and kill these hyper-corporations that run the planet's economy basically and that sucks. seems prophetic in a way to see what the future would be like if capitalism still stood and there was business as usual. I think a true dystopian cyberpunk world is full of dark skies and contagious air due to the extreme pollution i.e. climate change the previous generations of humans ignored and still ignore because profits and luxury and drugs and opulence and legacies and authoritarian rule is far more important to uphold you see. "human nature" is always condescendingly professed as an argument killer to why capitalism is the only way because hooomons are deep down real mean and violent... which is not true.

Human infants literally can't live without being held and nurtured in a healthy environment. Humans are wired to love and communicate. humans lived a long time cuz they worked together. Humans lived even longer when they learned to domesticate animals leading to agriculture. only in the last 20,000 years have humans begun to grow their ego and misunderstand its message and purpose. fascists and billionaires take advantage of human minds and fool people into thinking there's no other way to live. it's a fucking lie. human beings are disconnected with nature. wires and cables are not non-nature, those are materials derived from nature. everything is nature, but not everything is natural like human concepts fabricated by civilizations.

“Deleuze and Guattari describe capitalism as a kind of dark potentiality which haunted all previous social systems. Capital, they argue, is the ‘unnamable Thing’, the abomination, which primitive and feudal societies ‘warded off in advance’. When it actually arrives, capitalism brings with it a massive desacralization of culture. It is a system which is no longer governed by any transcendent Law; on the contrary, it dismantles all such codes, only to re-install them on an ad hoc basis.” ― Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I want a cyberpunk game where it's a good kind compassionate civilization, a star trek like society, full of infinite exploration into the cosmos and into our minds... I want a cyberpunk world worth protecting, protecting the people from sneaky politicians (demagogues) and authoritarian thugs ready to install the capitalist religion of endless self-destruction and pain. remnants of evil scatter and reform, we must always help people who struggle under capitalisms spell.

#thatheathen #cyberpunk #crunch #capitalism

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thehorrorofbiopolitics-blog · 5 years

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Part V: Children of Men

As Huang discusses, the genre of science fiction horror grounds viewers in an affective anxiety that binds them to the symbolic essence of society by creating a threat that exists as impossibly outside, and definitively inhuman. In effect, the affective anxiety of sci-fi horror serves to render as other that which threatens to leverage the fragility of the human subject. However, what changes when this monster, this Other, emerges from within the human subject themself? How might the affective anxiety that occupies the realm of speculative horror operate differently when the precarious destruction of the agential human subject manifests not as a Thing but a state of being? This section of our project attends to this provocation in the context of Alfonso Cuaron’s film Children of Men.

Based on P.D. James’ 1992 novel by the same name, Cuaron’s 2006 adaptation of Children of Men takes place in dystopian London in the year 2027. Two decades of species-wide infertility with no known cause has led humanity to spiral into relative chaos. As a televised piece of political propaganda shown on a city bus declares, “The world has collapsed [and] only Britain soldiers on,” thus revealing that the now heavily militarized Britain represents a final bastion for humanity. As such, society devolves into a state of exception wherein the state disregards law in favor of sovereign power. The main conflict of the film emerges from this hyper-militarization and state of exception as the thousands of refugees and undocumented immigrants who arrive at the city’s borders en-masse are brutalized by guards and locked in cages. This poses a distinct problem for the film’s main anti-hero, Theo Faron. At the request of his former wife, Julian Taylor, Theo hopes to safeguard a secretly pregnant, immigrant woman named Kee against the government and a predatory anarchist group--the Fishes--as she attempts to reach Tomorrow, a boat owned by the utopian Human Project whose main goal is to save humanity from extinction. Thus, the film’s protagonists must navigate a politically-charged nightmare world where infertility and military occupation underscore the precarity of all human life. In Cuaron’s dystopian vision of tomorrow, the horror of no-future is seemingly juxtaposed by the miracle of childbirth. Despite the potential limits of Cuaron’s imagined reproductive futurity, this project hopes to critically interrogate the spectre of birth as it operates within the affective realms of horror, precarity, and large-scale trauma. Through an analysis of gore, violence, and abject subjecthood, we hope to illuminate the affective threads that underscore the film’s distinctly biopolitical message.

The Endriago Subject

In Sayak Valencia’s Gore Capitalism, she defines endriago subjects as those who use necroempowerment (the use of violence to achieve status and power) to confront and change their circumstances, and subsequently, legitimize underground economies, which can eventually have an ever-growing influence. The Fish, an underground anarchist movement in Children of Men, and their revolutionary goals are clear examples of necropolitics and the endriago subject in that they have reinterpreted biopower and the capacity for upending it based significantly on the logic of a “warlike clash of forces,” (Valencia 211). The physical bodies of these dystopian dissidents and ungovernable individuals are now those which hold power over the individual body and over the general population as well. The Fish have been able to create a power parallel to the State without subscribing fully to the doctrine of the state, while they simultaneously dispute its power to subjugate groups of endriago subjects. If we are to analyze endriago subjects who participate in the criminal economy in accordance with the rules of the market – rather than how the media portrays them to the masses – they are, in actuality, perfectly legitimate entrepreneurs who strengthen the economy; “violence and criminal activities are no longer seen as an ethically dystopian path, but as strategies available to everyone; violence comes to be understood as a tool to acquire money that allows individuals to purchase both commercial good and social status,” (Valencia 74).

For the necropolitical, the body is essential because it serves as a critical commodity; the body’s care, preservation, freedom and general maintenance are sold to the public as products, thus transforming the body into a profit-making commodity. Through the clear vulnerability of human subjecthood and corporeality in Children of Men, the market has set out to capitalize on life itself through this idea of endangered corporeality, thus turning the body into a profitable commodity. This is seen in the way that Kee is treated by The Fish after Julian, her pacifist shepherd, dies. The new leaders of the Fish are intent on keeping Kee and her baby in their camp as a tool for their reach for power over the state. Thus, Kee’s pregnant body is no longer her own, but rather it is viewed as a political tool for refugee/Fish suffrage by those who are not a part of the elite. War and violence ensues around her as she attempts to break free from the Fish in order to make it to safety with The Human Project. She does not wish to serve as a symbol and is more focused on her well-being rather than be used for political gain. The human population, in the film, is constantly in close proximity to death, forcing humanity to renegotiate death’s role in the context of their society in order to force themselves (the endriago subjects) into the discourse, thus constantly perpetuating the gore and violence that takes place around them.

Gore

Gore as a structure of affect is seen clearly in Children of Men when Theo Faron’s estranged ex-wife Julian Taylor is brutally murdered. Julian, the non-violent leader of the Fish movement in the beginning of the film, represents the potential for a pacifist future--an imagined resistance that does not rely on the stacking up of bodies for political power. Her death in the movie ultimately takes place as she attempts to secretly transport Kee, a pregnant African refugee, to people she has made contact with at The Human Project in order to assure the safety of her and her unborn child. According to Julian’s plan,nce Kee was received by The Human Project she was poised to serve as a symbol of hope; her protection and the protection of her baby was to represent the antithesis of the violence and gore of the world around them. As they are driving to safety, however, Julian suddenly gets shot in the throat by a group of unnamed rebels that emerge suddenly out of the forest they are driving along. Her death is bloody and violent, and somehow, she is the only person in their car who ends up dead. The other characters in the scene, including Theo and other members of Julian’s coalition, witness this violence and are horrified. Covered in blood and broken glass, Julian’s cohort attempts to revive her to no avail. This death is an important moment in the film. As it occurs at the beginning of the film, Julian’s gory death represents the death of a pacifist futurity – which inherently signifies the end of the anti-violence movement in the Fish group. Later in the movie, it is shown that members of the Fish were the ones who organized the hit on Julian; once she is dead, a man named Luke – who was part of organizing the hit – is elected to take her place as the leader of the Fish. He states his reason for killing Julian being that he didn’t believe that the movement would be successful without the use of violence against the government and people in power – thus reaffirming the necropolitical order of things and reasserting women’s positions on the outskirts of gore capitalism and, mirroring the gender disparity that takes place within the formal state.

Violence as Control

The importance of systematic violence as a means of control within Children of Men is exhibited by the creation of camps and cages by the government as a means of biopower over already subjugated subjects. The issue of “homeland security” (Trimble 249) is used as a justification by the government to enact the violent militarization of the state whilst spreading national fear – regarding refugees immigrating the UK – which furthers the biopolitical power of the state and allows the state to deem whose life is worth saving while others are eventually thrown out of the country to fend for themselves. In the film, there is a certain level of indifference shown by those who are a part of the elite – and therefore the state – as represented by Theo when he walks past one of the cages full of immigrants. This is in part due to the way the mass media has clearly framed fugees, who are typically racialized by brown people (specifically Arab speaking people) which has made it exceedingly difficult for those who are privileged enough to be a part of the elite to perceive, accept and act in reality – or in other words it has made ally-ship seem counterproductive to national safety. Violence is a key part of contemporary capitalism which means that “both the media and the government (and its representatives) are controlled by corporate interests. Thus we find evidence of how the media is interconnected with the State and obeys direct orders from it in order to skew the information that is broadcast to the public, buttressing consumerist, acritical and silent imagos” (Valencia 242). The use of concentration camps in Children of Men highlights the use of pain/violence as a political tool and the commodification of the marginalized bodies in the deregulated neoliberal market.

Children of Men was released in 2006 and is supposed to take place in 2027. The near futurity of this film adds to its gore in that it instills a panic in the audience. Not only does it instill fear, but it leads the audience to think about preventative measures to keep a crisis like this from happening while placing continued importance and focus on fertility as a means of global power. Children of Men thus produces affective anxiety as a result of narrative trauma. The trauma depicted in the film occurs not interpersonally or individually, but at the level of the human population. The trauma of mass sterility and infertility requires the audience to confront the possibility of a futureless world. At one point early on in the film, Theo asks his cousin, a wealthy man who preserves damaged, yet historically relevant works of art, what keeps him going, since “one hundred years from now there won’t be any sad fuck to look at any of this.” To this, his cousin replies, “You know what it is, Theo--I just don’t think about it.” As demonstrated through this exchange, within this moment of mass trauma, past, present, and future become one as human infertility renders the past unmemorable, the present unlivable, and the future incomprehensible. Thus, this traumatic reckoning operates through affective anxiety that urges viewers to reconsider the normative teleological ordering of things that guarantees, through the figure of the child, a better tomorrow.

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shuga-hill · 6 years

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Life’s Code: Blockchain and the Future of Genomics

In an era of hotly contested debates surrounding data ownership, privacy and monetization, one particular piece of data could be said to be the most personal of all: the human genome.

While we are 99.9 percent identical in our genetic makeup across the species, the remaining 0.1 percent contains unique variations in code that are thought to influence our predisposition toward certain diseases and even our temperamental biases — a blueprint for how susceptible we are to everything from heart disease and Alzheimer’s to jealousy, recklessness and anxiety.

2018 offered ample examples of how bad actors can wreak havoc with nefarious use of even relatively trivial data. For those concerned to protect this most critical form of identity, blockchain has piqued considerable interest as a powerful alternative to the closed architectures and proprietary exploits of the existing genomics data market — promising in their stead a secure and open protocol for life’s code.

Encrypted chains

Sequencing the human genome down to the molecular level of the four ‘letters’ that bind into the double-stranded helices of our DNA was first completed in 2003. The project cost $3.7 billion and 13 years of computing power. Today, it costs $1,000 per unique genome and takes a matter of days. Estimates are that it will soon cost as little as $100.

As genomic data-driven drug design and targeted therapies evolve, pharmaceutical and biotech companies’ interest is expected to catapult the genomics data market in the coming years, with a forecast to hit $27.6 billion by 2025.

If the dataset of your Facebook likes and news feed stupefactions has already been recognized as a major, monetizable asset, the value locked up in your genetic code is increasing exponentially as the revolution in precision medicine and gene editing gathers pace.

Within the past year, unprecedented approvals have been given to new gene therapies in the U.S. One edits cells from a patient's immune system to cure non-Hodgkin lymphoma; another treats a rare, inherited retinal disease that can lead to blindness.

Yet, here’s the rub.

Genomics’ unparalleled potential to trigger a paradigm shift in modern medicine relies on leveraging vast datasets to establish correlations between genetic variants and traits.

Generating the explosion of big genomic data that is still needed to decode the 4-bits of the living organism faces hurdles that are not only scientific, but ethical, social and technological.

For many at the edge of this frontier, this is exactly where Nakamoto’s fabled 2008 white paper — and the technology that would come to be known as blockchain — comes in.

Cointelegraph spoke with three figures from the blockchain genomics space to find out why.

Who owns your genome? Resurrecting the wooly mammoth… and blockchain

For Professor George Church, the world-famous maverick geneticist at Harvard, the boundaries between technologies in and out of the lab are porous. Having co-pioneered direct genome sequencing back in 1984, a short digest of his recent ambitions include attempts to resurrect the long-extinct mammoth, create virus-proof cells and even to reverse aging.

He has now placed another bleeding-edge technology at the center of the genomics revolution: blockchain.

Last year, Church — alongside Harvard colleagues Dennis Grishin and Kamal Obbad — co-founded the blockchain startup Nebula Genomics. Church had been trying for years to accelerate and drive genomic data generation at scale. He had appealed to volunteers to contribute to his nonprofit Personal Genome Project (PGP) — a ‘Wikipedia’ of open-access human genomic data that has aggregated around 10,000 samples so far.

PGP relied on people forfeiting both privacy and ownership in pursuit of advancing science. As Church said in a recent interview, mostly they were either the “particularly altruistic,” or people concerned with accelerating research for a particular disease because of family experiences.

In other cases, as cybersecurity expert DNABits’ Dror Sam Brama told Cointelegraph, it is the patients themselves who generate the data and are “sick enough to throw away any ownership and privacy concerns”:

“The very sick come to the health care system and say, ‘We'll give you anything you want, take it, we’ll sign any paper, consent. Just heal us, find a cure.’”

The challenge is getting everybody else. While no one knows exactly how many people have had their genomes sequenced to date, some estimates suggest it is around one million.

Startups like Nebula and DNABits propose that a tokenized, blockchain-enabled ecosystem could be the technological tipping point for onboarding the masses.

By allowing people to monetize their genomes and sell access directly to data buyers, Nebula thinks its platform could help drive sequencing costs down “to zero or even offer [people] a net profit.”

While Nebula won’t subsidize whole genome sequencing directly, a blockchain model would allow interested buyers — say, two pharmaceutical companies — to pitch in the cash for someone’s sequence in return for access to their data.

Tokenization opens up the flexibility and granular consent for enabling different scenarios. As Brama suggested, a data owner could be entitled to shares in whichever drug might be developed based on the research that they have enabled or be reimbursed for their medical prescription in crypto tokens. Contracts would be published and hashed, and reference to the individual’s consent recorded on the blockchain.

Genomic dystopias

Driving and accelerating data generation is just one part of the equation.

Nebula ran a survey that found that, rather than simply affordability, privacy and ethical concerns eclipsed all other factors when people were asked whether or not they would consider having their genome sequenced. In another study of 13,000 people, 86 percent said they worried about misuse of their genetic data: over half echoed fears about privacy.

These concerns are not simply founded in the dystopian 90s sci-fi of Hollywood — think Gattaca’s biopunk imaginary of a future society in the grips of a neo-eugenics fever.

As Ofer Lidsky — co-founder, CEO and CTO of blockchain genomics startup DNAtix — put it:

“Once your DNA has been compromised, you cannot change it. It’s not like a credit card that you can cancel and receive a new one. Your genetic code is with you for all your life […] Once it’s been compromised, there’s no way back.”

Data is increasingly intercepted, marketized and even weaponized. Sequencing — let alone sharing — your genome is perhaps a step further than many are willing to take, given its singularity, irrevocability and longevity.

DNABits’ Brama gave his cybersecurity take, saying that:

“The consequences are very difficult to imagine, but in a world [in which] people are building carriers like viruses that will spread to cells in the body and edit them — it’s frightening, but in fact, all the building blocks are already there: genome sequencing, breaches of data, gene editing. People are now working to fix major health conditions using gene editing in vivo. But we should assume that every tool out there will eventually also get into the wrong hands.”

He added, “We're not talking about taking advantage of someone just for one night with GHB or some other drug” — this would impact the rest of an individual’s life.

This April, on the heels of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, news broke that police detectives had mined a hobbyists’ genealogy database for fragments of individuals’ DNA they hoped would help solve a murder case that had gone cold for over thirty years.

Law enforcement faced no resistance in accessing a centralized store of genetic material that had been uploaded by an unwitting public. And while many hailed the arrest of the Golden State Killer through a tangle of DNA, others voiced considerable unease.

This obscurity of access has implications beyond forensics. While Brama’s dystopia may be some way off, today there are concerns about genetic discrimination by employers and insurance firms — the latter of which is currently only legally proscribed in a partial way. Grishin echoed this, noting that in the U.S., “you can be denied life insurance because of your DNA.”

This May, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened a probe into popular consumer genetic testing firms — including 23andMe and Ancestry.com — over their policies for handling personal and genetic information, and how they share that data with third parties.

23andMe and Ancestry.com represent a recent phenomenon of so-called direct-to-consumer genetic testing, the popularity of which is estimated to have more than doubled last year.

These firms use a narrower technique called genotyping, which identifies 600,000 positions spaced at approximately regular intervals across the 6.4 billion letters of an entire genome. While limited, it still reveals inherently personal genetic information.

The highly popular 23andMe home genotyping kit — sunnily packaged as “Welcome to You” — promises to tell people everything from their ancestral makeup to how likely they are to spend their nights in the fretful clutches of insomnia. The kit comes with a price tag as low as $99.

This July, the world’s sixth largest pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), invested $300 million in a four-year deal to gain access to 23andMe’s database, and the testing firm is estimated to have earned $130 million from selling access to around a million human genotypes, working out at an average price of around $130. By comparison, Facebook reportedly generates around $82 in gross revenue from the data of a single active user.

Battle-proof, anonymized blockchain systems for the genomics revolution

In this increasingly opaque genomics data landscape, private firms monetize the genotypic data spawned by their consumers, and sequence data is fragmented across proprietary, centralized silos — whether in the unwieldy legacy systems of health care and research institutions or in the privately-owned troves of biotech firms.

Bringing genomics onto the blockchain would allow for the circulation that is needed to accelerate research, while protecting this uniquely personal information by keeping anonymized identities separate from cryptographic identifiers. Users remain in control of their data and decide exactly who it gets shared with and for which purposes. That access, in turn, would be tracked on an auditable and immutable ledger.

Grishin outlined Nebula’s version, which would place asymmetric requirements on different members of the ecosystem. Users would have the option to remain anonymous, but a permissioned blockchain system with verified, validator nodes would require data buyers who use the network to be fully transparent about their identity:

“If someone reaches out to you, it shouldn't be just a cryptographic network ID, but it should say this is John Smith from Johnson & Johnson, who works, say, in oncology.”

Grishin added that Nebula has experimented with both Blockstack and the Ethereum(ETH) blockchain but has since decided to move to an in-house prototype, considering the 15 transactions-per-second capacity of Ethereum to be insufficient for its ecosystem.

DNABits’ Brama, also committed to using a permissioned system, proposed using “the simplest and most robust form of blockchain — i.e., a Bitcoin-type network.”

“The more powerful and the more capable engine that you use, the larger the surface attack.”

Lie-proofing the blockchain

23andMe is said to store around five million genotype customer profiles, and rival firm Ancestry.com around 10 million. For each profile, they collect around 300 phenotypic data points — creating surveys that aim to find out how many cigarettes you (think) you’ve smoked during your lifetime or whether yoga or Prozac was more effective in managing your depression.

A phenotype is the set of observable characteristics of an individual that results from the interaction of his or her genotype with their environment. Generating and sharing access to this data is crucial for decoding the genome through a correlation of variants and traits. But as Grishin notes, being largely self-reported, the quality of much of the existing data is uncertain, and a tokenized genomics faces one hurdle in this respect:

“If people will be able to monetize their personal genomic data, then you can imagine that some people might think, ‘If I claim to have a rare condition, many pharma companies will be interested in buying access to my genome’ — which is just not necessarily true. The value of a genome is kind of difficult to predict and it's not correct to say that if you have something rare, then your genome will be more valuable. In fact many studies need a lot of control samples that are kind of just normal.”

Education can help make people aware that they won’t be making any more money by lying and that a middle-of-the-road genome might be just as interesting for a buyer as an unusual one. But Grishin also noted that a blockchain system can offer unique mechanisms that deter deception, even where education fails:

“Blockchain can help to create phenotype surveys that detect incorrect responses or identify where an individual participant has tried to lie. And this can be combined with blockchain-enabled escrow systems, where, for example, before you participate in a survey, you have to deposit a small amount of cryptocurrency in an escrow wallet.”

If conflicting responses indicate that someone has tried to lie about their medical condition, then their deposit could be withheld in a way that is much easier to implement within a blockchain system than compared to one using fiat currencies.

2018: Viruses and chromosomes hit the blockchain

Even with just a fraction of the population on board, given the data-intensivity of the body’s code, a tsunami of sequence is already flooding the existing centralized stores.

The complex, raw dataset of a single genome runs to 200 gigabytes: In June 2017, the U.S. National Institute of Health’s GenBank reportedly contained over two trillion bases of sequence. One of the world’s largest biotech firms, China’s BGI Genomics, announced that same month that it planned to produce five petabases of new DNA in 2017, increasing each year to hit 100 petabases by 2020.

In his interview with Cointelegraph, Lidsky proposed that the raw 200 gigabyte dataset is unnecessary for analysts, emphasizing that initial genome sequencing is read multiple times “say 30 or 100 times,” to mitigate inaccuracies. Once it’s combined, he explained, “the size of the sequence is reduced to 1.5 gigabytes.” This still requires significant compression to bring it to the blockchain. As a reference, the average size of a transaction on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain was 423 kilobytes, as of mid-June 2018.

Average transaction size on the Bitcoin blockchain, 2014-18. Source: TradeBlock.com

In June, DNAtix announced the first transfer of a complete chromosome using blockchain technology — specifically IBM’s Hyperledger fabric. Lidsky told Cointelegraph the firm had succeeded in achieving a 99 percent compression rate for DNA this August.

Nebula, for its part, envisions that even on a blockchain, data transfer is unnecessary and ill-advised, given the unique sensitivity of genomics. It proposes sharing data access instead. The solution would combine blockchain with advanced encryption techniques and distributed computing methods. As Grishin outlined:

“Your data can be analyzed locally on your computer by you just running an app on your data yourself […] with additional security measures in place — for example, by using homomorphic encryption to share data in an encrypted form.”

Grishin explained that homomorphic techniques encrypt data but ensure that it is not “nonsensical” — creating “transformations that morph the data without disturbing it”:

“The data buyer doesn't get the underlying data itself but computes on its encrypted form to derive results from it. Code is therefore being moved to the data rather than data being moved to researchers.”

Encrypted data can be made available to developers of so-called genomic apps — something that Nebula, DNAtix and many other emerging startups in the field all propose as one means of providing users with an interpretation of their data. They could also provide a further source of monetization for researchers and other third-party developers.

But is ‘outsourcing’ genomic interpretation to an app that simple? The decades-old health care model referred patients to genetic counselors to go over risks and talk through expectations, helping to translate what can be bewildering and often scary results.

Consumer genetic testing firms have already been accused of leaving their clients “with lots of data and few answers.” Beyond satisfying genealogical curiosity and interpreting a range of ‘wellness’ genes, 23andMe can reveal whether you carry a genetic variant that could impact your child’s future health and has — as of 2017 — even been authorized to disclose genetic health risks, including for breast cancer and Parkinson’s.

Blockchain may not fare much better when it comes to leaving individuals in the dark, faced with the blue glow of their computer screens. Nebula and DNAtix are both considering how to integrate genetic counselors into their ecosystems, and Grishin also proposed that users would be able to “opt in” to whether they really want to “know everything,” or only want “actionable” insights — i.e., things that modern medicine can address.

Blockchain and big pharma

Prescription drug sales globally are forecast to hit $1.2 trillion by 2024. But closing the feedback loop between pharmaceuticals and the millions of people who take their pills each and every day still faces significant hurdles.

Drug development relies on correlating and tracking the life-cycle of medical trials, genetic testing, prescription side effects and longer-term effects relating to lifestyle; tokenization can incentivize individuals and enterprises to share data that is generated across multiple streams. As Brama outlined:

“Lifestyle data comes from wearables, smartphones, smart homes, smart cities, purchasing, commercial interactions, social media, etc. Another is carried by everyone, and that's our genome. The third is clinical and health-condition data generated in the health care system.”

Brama used the analogy of a deck of cards to explain how blockchain could be the key to starting to bring this data into connection, all the while protecting data owners’ anonymity.

An individual can hold an unlimited number of unique addresses in their digital wallet. Going into a pharmacy to purchase a particular drug — say, vitamin C, stamped with a QR code — would generate a transaction for one of these addresses. A visit to a family doctor might generate a further hash for a diagnosis on your electronic medical record (EMR) — say, a runny nose. This transaction goes between the caregiver and another wallet address.

A user might choose to put the correlation between transactions for their different wallets on the blockchain and make it public for people to bid on the underlying data. Or, they might keep the correlation off-chain and send proof only when, say, an insurance firm or research institute advertises to users who have a particular set of transactions:

“You hold the deck. You look at the cards, you decide if you say, if you don't say. And you can put them on the table and let everyone see, or you can indicate privately that you actually have these. It really leaves the choice and the implementation up to you.”

Biotechnological frontiers

Professor Church has made an analogy that likely rings bells for anyone plugged into the crypto and blockchain space, saying that “right now, genome sequencing is like the internet back in the late 1980s. It was there, but no one was using it.”

Blockchain and the vanguard of genomic research have perhaps come closer to each other than ever before. Now that the DNA in our cells is understood as a life-long store of information, a new and disruptive technology is needed to securely and flexibly manage the interlocking networks of the body’s code.

The advent of genomics raises questions that cannot be settled by science alone. For all of our interviewees, blockchain could be just the key to creating the equitable and transparent means of ownership and circulation that would ensure these helices of raw biomaterial don’t spiral out of control.

#health #blockchain #dna

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honestlycoolearthquake · 3 years

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Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot raises critical considerations – however in all probability not those you suppose

Elon Musk introduced a humanoid robotic designed to assist with these repetitive, boring duties folks hate doing. Musk recommended it may run to the grocery retailer for you, however presumably it might deal with any variety of duties involving guide labor.

Predictably, social media full of references to a string of dystopian sci-fi motion pictures about robots the place all the pieces goes horribly improper.

As troubling because the robotic futures in motion pictures like I, Robotic, The Terminator and others are, it’s the underlying applied sciences of actual humanoid robots – and the intent behind them – that must be trigger for concern.

Musk’s robotic is being developed by Tesla. It’s a seeming departure from the corporate’s car-making enterprise, till you take into account that Tesla isn’t a typical automotive producer. The so-called “Tesla Bot” is an idea for a glossy, 125-pound humanlike robotic that may incorporate Tesla’s automotive synthetic intelligence and autopilot applied sciences to plan and observe routes, navigate visitors – on this case, pedestrians – and keep away from obstacles.

Dystopian sci-fi overtones apart, the plan is sensible, albeit inside Musk’s enterprise technique. The constructed setting is made by people, for people. And as Musk argued on the Tesla Bot’s announcement, profitable superior applied sciences are going to should be taught to navigate it in the identical methods folks do.

But Tesla’s vehicles and robots are merely the seen merchandise of a much wider plan aimed toward making a future the place superior applied sciences liberate people from our organic roots by mixing biology and know-how. As a researcher who research the moral and socially accountable improvement and use of rising applied sciences, I discover that this plan raises considerations that transcend speculative sci-fi fears of super-smart robots.

A person with large plans

Self-driving vehicles, interplanetary rockets and brain-machine interfaces are steps towards the long run Musk envisions the place know-how is humanity’s savior. On this future, vitality might be low cost, ample and sustainable; folks will work in concord with clever machines and even merge with them; and people will grow to be an interplanetary species.

It’s a future that, judging by Musk’s numerous endeavors, might be constructed on a set of underlying interconnected applied sciences that embrace sensors, actuators, vitality and knowledge infrastructures, techniques integration and substantial advances in pc energy. Collectively, these make a formidable toolbox for creating transformative applied sciences.

Musk imagines people finally transcending our evolutionary heritage by applied sciences which are beyond-human, or “tremendous” human. However earlier than know-how can grow to be superhuman, it first must be human – or no less than be designed to thrive in a human-designed world.

This make-tech-more-human strategy to innovation is what’s underpinning the applied sciences in Tesla’s vehicles, together with the intensive use of optical cameras. These, when linked to an AI “mind,” are meant to assist the autos autonomously navigate street techniques which are, in Musk’s phrases, “designed for organic neural nets with optical imagers” – in different phrases, folks. In Musk’s telling, it’s a small step from human-inspired “robots on wheels” to humanlike robots on legs.

Simpler stated than accomplished

Tesla’s “full self-driving” know-how, which incorporates the dubiously named Autopilot, is a place to begin for the builders of the Tesla Bot. Spectacular as this know-how is, it’s proving to be lower than absolutely dependable. Crashes and fatalities related to Tesla’s Autopilot mode – the most recent having to do with the algorithms struggling to acknowledge parked emergency autos — are calling into query the knowledge of releasing the tech into the wild so quickly.

A sequence of crashes involving Tesla’s autopilot know-how has prompted a federal investigation. South Jordan Police Division through AP

This monitor document doesn’t bode properly for humanlike robots that depend on the identical know-how. But this isn’t only a case of getting the know-how proper. Tesla’s Autopilot glitches are exacerbated by human conduct. For instance, some Tesla drivers have handled their tech-enhanced vehicles as if they’re absolutely autonomous autos and didn’t pay ample consideration to driving. Might one thing comparable occur with the Tesla Bot?

Tesla Bot’s ‘orphan dangers’

In my work on socially useful know-how innovation, I’m particularly serious about orphan dangers – dangers which are arduous to quantify and simple to miss and but inevitably find yourself tripping up innovators. My colleagues and I work with entrepreneurs and others on navigating a majority of these challenges by the Danger Innovation Nexus, an initiative of the Arizona State College Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute and International Futures Laboratory.

The Tesla Bot comes with an entire portfolio of orphan dangers. These embrace doable threats to privateness and autonomy because the bot collects, shares and acts on doubtlessly delicate data; challenges related to how persons are possible to consider and reply to humanoid robots; potential misalignments between moral or ideological views – for instance, in crime management or policing civil protests; and extra. These are challenges which are hardly ever coated within the coaching that engineers obtain, and but overlooking them can spell catastrophe.

Whereas the Tesla Bot could seem benign – or perhaps a little bit of a joke – if it’s to be useful in addition to commercially profitable, its builders, buyers, future shoppers and others should be asking powerful questions on the way it would possibly threaten what’s vital to them and learn how to navigate these threats.

These threats could also be as particular as folks making unauthorized modifications that improve the robotic’s efficiency – making it transfer quicker than its designers meant, for instance – with out interested by the dangers, or as basic because the know-how being weaponized in novel methods. They’re additionally as delicate as how a humanoid robotic may threaten job safety, or how a robotic that features superior surveillance techniques may undermine privateness.

Then there are the challenges of technological bias which have been plaguing AI for a while, particularly the place it results in realized conduct that transform extremely discriminatory. For instance, AI algorithms have produced sexist and racist outcomes.

MIT’s Pleasure Buolamwini explains the specter of bias in AI.

Simply because we will, ought to we?

The Tesla Bot might look like a small step towards Musk’s imaginative and prescient of superhuman applied sciences, and one which’s straightforward to write down off as little greater than hubristic showmanship. However the audacious plans underpinning it are critical — they usually elevate equally critical questions.

As an illustration, how accountable is Musk’s imaginative and prescient? Simply because he can work towards creating the way forward for his goals, who’s to say that he ought to? Is the long run that Musk is striving to result in the very best one for humankind, or perhaps a good one? And who will undergo the results if issues go improper?

These are the deeper considerations that the Tesla Bot raises for me as somebody who research and writes concerning the future and the way our actions affect it. This isn’t to say that Tesla Bot isn’t a good suggestion, or that Elon Musk shouldn’t be capable to flex his future-building muscle mass. Utilized in the fitting approach, these are transformative concepts and applied sciences that would open up a future filled with promise for billions of individuals.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But when shoppers, buyers and others are bedazzled by the glitz of latest tech or dismissive of the hype and overlook the larger image, society dangers handing the long run to rich innovators whose imaginative and prescient exceeds their understanding. If their visions of the long run don’t align with what most individuals aspire to, or are catastrophically flawed, they’re at risk of standing in the best way of constructing a simply and equitable future.

Perhaps that is the abiding lesson from dystopian robot-future sci-fi motion pictures that individuals must be taking away because the Tesla Bot strikes from concept to actuality — not the extra apparent considerations of making humanoid robots that run amok, however the far bigger problem of deciding who will get to think about the long run and be part of constructing it.

Andrew Maynard doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that may profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their tutorial appointment.

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correspondencearchive · 3 years

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5. Naomi Kawanishi Reis & Alex Paik

Naomi Reis and Alex Paik discuss childhood survival mechanisms manifesting in their work, in-between-ness, their labor-intensive practices, and Naomi’s recent body of work which was shown at Transmitter (Brooklyn, NY).

Alex Paik (AP): You’ve been thinking about camouflage in an ongoing series of your work, and it strikes me that this idea of hiding and/or being invisible is central to your work. Now that I think of it, even your work in grad school, which was about these sort of hybrid utopic (or dystopic) architectures had this silence in them. There were no figures and no real record of anyone having lived or living in those imagined spaces, like they were erased or hidden. When you started talking about camouflage in recent years it really was an a-ha moment for me in understanding your work. I’d love to hear your thoughts more on the invisibility of Asians in general in the art world and the ways in which that feeling might be a part of your work.

Naomi Kawanishi Reis (NR): Camouflage was something I started using about eight years ago, in a series called Borrowed Landscape. The series was based on photographs I took in the tropical biomes of conservatory gardens, a take on landscape painting where the “nature” being depicted was a highly curated by-product of Western colonialism. Plants that were highly useful/exploitable/profitable/exotic and beautiful, collected in a place that existed outside of time, secreted away from the effects of weather and death. I translated those photographs onto printed wallpaper, upon which was placed a framed mixed-media painting that replicated a portion of the wallpaper behind it.

Naomi Reis, Borrowed Landscape II (Tropics of Africa, Asia and the Amazon via Brooklyn), 2013. Digital print on vinyl and handcut washi and mylar cutouts in maple frame, 13.5 x 14 feet. Installation view at Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, NY in “American Beauty,” curated by William Villalongo. Photograph by Jason Mandella.

NR: I was thinking about how landscape has been used in image-making throughout history to depict idealized places—like Pure Land paradise in Buddhist mandalas, the Taoist spiritualism of Chinese or Japanese landscape paintings, and the glorification of nature found in Romantic landscape paintings.

The title “Borrowed Landscape” comes from a 7th-century Chinese garden design concept (shakkei=借景, a technique of “borrowing” the view of a distant scenic element, like a mountain or lake, into the design of the garden), which felt like a fitting title for where we find ourselves today in relation to landscape. Living on borrowed time, on stolen land: ignoring the reality of our responsibilities to the land, the indigenous people it was stolen from, and the debt owed to stolen Black bodies and labor in service of white supremacy. The handmade framed painting, I suppose, is a stand-in for us as immigrant settlers on this land here in America; we’ve camouflaged ourselves into our surroundings to fit in, to survive. The land we are attempting to fit into, is itself “borrowed” (aka stolen).

These choices weren’t made consciously when I started the series; it’s only now eight years in that I’m beginning to understand the why, and finding the words to explain it. As a diasporic, racialized person both in America as well as in Japan, I’ve needed to navigate complex social and racial situations. My father’s side of the family is white and doesn’t speak Japanese, so as a kid I knew that in order to survive and be “liked” by that side, or maybe even just to be understood, I needed to downplay my otherness and be as “normal,” aka white English-speaking, to them as possible. Conversely, my mom’s side of the family is Japanese and doesn’t speak English, so to them I needed to be as Japanese as possible. Of course as a kid you get a pass to a degree and are loved anyways, but I do remember this feeling of anxiousness, that my survival and ability to be loved and cared for depended on this ability to code-switch.

Being the oldest in a family of three siblings, and because my experience was so different from my parents’ monocultural upbringing (Japanese in rural Japan for my mom, white American in suburban NJ for my dad), code-switching was an essential survival tool. Kids instinctively figure out how to protect themselves at a very young age, even before they learn how to express themselves verbally. Immigrants adapt similar survival tactics, the art of blending in. Though “blending in” is a way to survive, it also is an act of self erasure. How to survive, while not annihilating yourself in the process? You camouflage.

The reason for the absence of figures in my work probably comes from feeling absent from my own narrative, feeling a bit unmoored from belonging to any one culture. I didn't see myself being reflected in the context of mainstream Japan or in America or anywhere except for maybe sci-fi or fantasy. Growing up I often felt like a ghost, like I didn’t exist in the real world. While I had learned how to integrate enough to survive, as I was getting up to speed with my fluency and literacy in English and Japanese while going back and forth between the U.S. and Japan, I often felt I was on the sidelines watching other people live their lives and not feeling comfortable enough to fully participate. When my family moved from Ithaca, NY to Kyoto in the ’80s when I was 9 for my dad’s teaching job at a Japanese university, I was often called 外人=outside person by strangers on the street. As a sensitive kid, I internalized that othering a lot.

The architectural work I was making in grad school was a kind of perverse take on modernist architecture, multiplying and ornamenting the hell out of the piloti and flat roofs of the International Style, a style that aimed to strip all ornamentation and color to become a “pure” architecture. The absence of figures became like the blank-slate of a dollhouse, a place I could imagine roaming around in.

Naomi Reis, Vertical Garden (weeds), 2007. Hand-cut ink and acrylic drawings on mylar, 53 x 45 inches. Photograph by Etienne Frossard.

AP: I can relate so much to this, being the first-born child of immigrants. It is interesting to think about these survival mechanisms in relationship to our work. I have been reflecting recently on my site-responsive installations, how they adapt and change depending on the size, time, and location of the piece, and how this is a metaphor for how one can rearrange the parts of the self depending on the social context. Code-switching would be one aspect of this. One of the feelings I remember most from childhood, perhaps because of moving a lot as a kid, perhaps because of being Korean-American and not quite feeling Korean or American, is that of constantly feeling like I need to assess the room and adapt to it. So while you are drawn to the idea of hiding/camouflage in your work, I am drawn to the idea of constantly adapting and rearranging the different components of the self. Two sides of the same coin I guess.

NR: Ah that’s interesting. Your strategy is to go on defense, which maybe is connected to your training in martial arts, and your attraction to building communities like TSA, whereas mine is an introvert’s tendency to self-isolate, to find a way to take up space while remaining hidden—yang vs yin.

To return to your question about why work made by Asian artists seems hidden behind some kind of invisibility cloak: that’s a reflection of where we’re at culturally in America generally. Asian stories remain largely unknown; they are insufficiently featured in mainstream media and curricula, so Asians have largely remained the consummate “other” whose experience is hidden and therefore not relatable to many Americans on a heart, gut level. White America tends to project an expectation of whiteness onto others, so when your actions or motives aren't matched in a way that’s relatable to a white audience, you confuse expectations and can be seen as an unknowable other that’s doing things wrong or badly. When you are seen as an other, it makes you vulnerable to either being too too visible—a target that needs to be taken down for taking up space that we don’t deserve, as we’ve seen play out recently in the attacks against Asians in America—or not relatable/relevant and therefore invisible, an easy target for cultural appropriation or the butt of a joke.

American culture likes extremes. Black or white, good or bad, democrat or republican, man or woman. Personally I feel most comfortable in the in-between, where everything is still in the process of forming, and reforming. Queer spaces. Because they encompass, in theory, all shades of ambiguity. Going back to the idea of binary space, people tend to be attracted to things that either remind them of themselves, or on the opposite extreme, that provide a projected escape into the exotic “other.” In movies you often see Asian-ness as an alienating backdrop to heighten tension for the central white characters you are meant to identify with: Asian bodies as embodiment of a dystopian future (both Bladerunner movies, Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report); as nonsensical foreigners in their own country (Lost in Translation); as hapless natives who need saving (Last Samurai).

AP: What aspects of your work do you see as talking about the in-between?

NR: My work is maybe less aiming to talk “about” the in-between, and more just wanting to “be” in the in-between. The process of making “it,” whatever “it” ends up being—is itself what creates the space and time to occupy an in-between—a wordless space that exists for the interval while engaged in the act of making. The 間 space: a Japanese word that refers to the in-between, both spatially and temporally. This is the space in which all artists work, falling into that pocket of space-time where things are in flux.

It’s a way to give yourself permission to inhabit space—”to be” without having to translate that state of being into a binary (English/not-English; American/not American; male/female; young/old). Even now, writing this out, and to you, Alex, I am inhabiting my English-speaking self who is translating the self into a form that is legible to an English-speaker. Talking to my mom, I am inhabiting my Japanese-speaking self and all the historical cultural gendered background that goes into being that particular self. Talking to my siblings or bilingual friends, fluidly switching between English and Japanese, is a way to occupy the in-between for that interval of time, then returning to the binary world of everyday life. Didactically speaking, I suppose my work is “in-between'' in that it is kind of painting, kind of drawing, kind of collage, kind of abstract, kind of representational, kind of naive, kind of sophisticated. Kind of American? Kind of Japanese? Kind of good? Kind of bad? A physical thing that takes up space, and that space can encompass all the ambiguous in-between mushy-ness.

I didn’t feel able to pursue being an artist until I was in my mid-20s. I had a lot of shame about not being good enough, of not deserving to do it. Still do. I hadn’t gone to art school, and wasn’t encouraged to be a creative person by society or parentally. It was something I wasn’t open about, I drew and painted alone in the privacy of my room. So by the time I was in my mid-20s and realized working a normal job was killing me (I was a human resources representative at the NY office of a Japanese printing company), and that I really had to give artmaking a go, I didn’t know what I was doing.

At the time, I was fascinated by architecture. The idea that you could take a philosophy, a belief system, and turn it into a permanent structure that’s inhabitable, that can last for centuries. Maybe that fascination came from growing up in Kyoto around buildings that had been around for 1,200+ years. So when I started in the MFA program at Penn Design and was making architectural sketches in 3D-modeling programs, it came from a feeling of: if I can imagine an inhabitable place within which I can exist, I can open up a non-binary space to work within. Anytime I can overcome my inner demons or lack of talent or confidence or imposter syndrome, etc. long enough to crack open some space and just make the work, that’s a victory. Generally, in the year ahead I want to make work that comes from a place of joy. Worrying less about how my work fits in, and just focussing on creating the conditions within which I can feel more exuberant, and free. When you allow those conditions for yourself, I think you can do the same for others.

AP: Another exciting thing about your work is how it is busting out of the rectangle more! Obviously I am all about that :) Can you talk more about how that happened and how you are thinking about it?

NR: Ha! I think it comes from a desire to to be more joyful, bust out of the seams, take up more space. Allow for messiness, draw outside the lines. I want to make more space for weirdness. It must come from a desire to push against the narrowly-defined rules for acceptable female behavior that I grew up with in Japan, and the kind of bubbling rage I felt for the myriad of ways women and their bodies are policed, undermined, silenced, and funneled into serving a capitalist nationalist patriarchal system, where the myth of ethnic/racial purity is perpetuated through the education system. Harm and denial begets harm and denial, and I wanted to get out and find a different way.

AP: I love the idea of the work taking up more space than it is given. It goes back to the idea you talked about earlier of becoming an artist to create a space that didn’t exist for you previously, and of pushing against/beyond essentialist and reductive readings of art based on identity.

NR: How about you, Alex? I’ve always sensed there’s a reticence in you to talk more directly about what your work is about, to not allow yourself that level of vulnerability. For example, sometimes you refer to your time in the studio as being boring repetitive labor, and I was wondering if there might be a connection there between the type of labor involved with the work your parent’s did as owners of a dry-cleaning business. Can aspects of your work be seen as a kind of penance, or perhaps tribute, to the kind of labor that was available to Asian immigrants when you were growing up? You are the artist, so you get to dictate the terms. Why limit yourself to a mode of making that you say is repetitive and boring? Maybe there’s something important there in that repetition and boredom that you are committed to, and I want to know what it is, and why. What do you want and dream about for your work?

AP: I am becoming more comfortable with it recently. While I hesitate to draw a direct connection between the type of menial labor that my parents did and the type of work I am making, I do think that my upbringing shaped my personality and interests for sure. Seeing them work so hard and feeling the pressures of being the first-born (pressures stemming from my parents, from Korean culture, my own guilt in wanting to honor their work, my own internalized capitalism) definitely has instilled an appreciation for labor. I have always been drawn to things that require discipline and repetition—classical music, martial arts, cutting strips of paper over and over again.

I was thinking about my work through a very narrow lens for a long time, trying to keep it in the lane and lineage of the art history I was taught. Once I opened up my thinking about my work as an extension of the totality of my life experience and interests including but not limited to my Korean-American identity, it allowed me to see things in my work and myself that I hadn’t been willing to explore. That being said, I am hesitant to make my work only or primarily about my racial identity. I feel a lot of external and internal pressure that I am supposed to be making work about my racial identity.

Your work is also very labor intensive. Can you talk about how you think about that in your studio practice?

NR: I think it goes back to the in-between space, to the relief I get when I release into the labor of work; there I am temporarily free from the anxiety of not-belonging. So the more labor intensive it is, the more I get to be free. In the past several years I also have been spending more time trying to heal: learning how to meditate, and in various forms of therapy like EMDR and somatic experiencing. A healer I’ve worked with who specializes in somatic experiencing mentioned that a lot of people who’ve experienced trauma engage in repetitive labor, that there is release and relief, a self-soothing, in that labor. It makes me nervous to think that the labor-intensive nature of my work can be explained away as a form of self-medication, but on some level the creative impulse always comes from some kind of unnameable necessity.

AP: It’s such a gift to been friends with you for over 15 years and also to have seen your work grow for that long. It’s exciting to see a lot of these ideas coming together in your most recent body of work that you showed at Transmitter. Can you tell me more about this recent series?

Naomi Reis, 71229 (9:17), 2021. Acrylic on washi paper and mylar cutouts, 93H x 55W inches. Photograph by Carl Gunhouse

NR: In my most recent work, I worked off of photographs my mom has been sharing of her flower arrangements on our family group chat, which is the primary way we all keep in touch (my mom, brother, and his family are in Japan, and me and my sister and her family are in NY). My siblings post photos of their young kids, I post photos of my work, and my mom posts photos of her cooking and flower arrangements. Photos of the domestic realm. This new series is an attempt to bridge the ruptures that distance can bring: geographical, generational, and cultural/philosophical. There’s definitely a lot of tension in our different ways of thinking about gender roles, so the thought was to translate those gaps of expectation into a form that heals and transforms, through the labor and care that goes into the process of making. Maybe this work is my version of a quilt or weaving piece—a labor-intensive process that is meditative, with all the analogies and histories of weaving, knitting together, mending—embedded within.

Naomi Reis, 111119 (90˚W), 2021. Acrylic on washi paper and mylar cutouts, 48H x 37W inches. Photograph by Paul Takeuchi

Born in Shiga, Japan, Naomi Kawanishi Reis makes mixed-media paintings and wall pieces that focus on idealized spaces such as utopian architecture, conservatory gardens, and still life. She has had solo exhibitions at Youkobo Art Space, (Tokyo) and Mixed Greens, NY; she has also exhibited at Brooklyn Academy of Music and Wave Hill. In 2018 she received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, and in 2015 was a NYFA Finalist in Painting. Residencies that have supported her work include Yaddo and Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Reis also is a Japanese to English translator; recent publications include the chef's monograph “monk: Light and Shadow along the Philosopher’s Path” (Phaidon Press, 2021). She received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Transcultural Identity from Hamilton College.

www.naomireis.com @naomikawanishireis

Alex Paik is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. His modular, paper-based wall installations explore perception, interdependence, and improvisation within structure while engaging with the complexities of social dynamics. He has exhibited in the U.S. and internationally, with notable solo projects at Praxis New York, Art on Paper 2016, and Gallery Joe. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at BravinLee Projects, Lesley Heller Workspace, and MONO Practice, among others.

Paik is Founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, a non-profit network of artist-run spaces and serves on the Advisory Board at Trestle Gallery, where he formerly worked as Gallery Director.

www.alexpaik.com @alexpaik

#naomireisalexpaik #naomireis #naomikawanishireis #alexpaik

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brigdh · 6 years

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Reading Definitely Not Wednesday

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. A space opera set in the relatively near future. Humans have colonized Mars and the asteroid belt, and a few scattered populations make due on the moons of planets further out. There is, however, no faster-than-light travel, no contact with any solar system beyond our own, no sentient AIs, and no aliens. A major theme of the book is the culture clash between those who live on Earth or Mars – the superpowers of this future – and those who live in the Belt, where mining is the preeminent economy and life is the hardscrabble sort where even water and oxygen have to be imported, never mind concepts like justice and equality. Different characters move from one place to the other or switch allegiances, but their origins are as baked in as we would regard ethnicity or nationality. As one character puts it, "A childhood spent in gravity shaped the way he saw things forever." Corey (who is actually two separate dudes writing under a penname) does a wonderful job of fleshing out the background worldbuilding. I loved references to fungal-culture whiskey, Bhangra as the default elevator muzak, hand gestures exaggerated to be seen through a spacesuit, and largely unintelligible localized slang (“Bomie vacuate like losing air,” the girl said with a chuckle. “Bang-head hops, kennis tu?” / “Ken,” Miller said. /“Now, all new bladeboys. Overhead. I’m out.”). It feels like a more detailed world than a lot of sci-fi does. Which is good, because the characters are not all that compelling. The two POVs are Jim Holden and Detective Miller. Holden is the second-in-command on an unimportant spaceship that works as a freight hauler, moving ice back and forth between the Belt and Saturn. Things change dramatically when a mysterious someone attacks their ship and kills everyone except for Holden and a few others, and he finds himself centrally involved in the runup to war. He has the most generic action-movie-hero personality I can imagine, with no discernable characteristics except 'idealistic' (and I really only know that because other people keep telling him he is), kinda nervous about being suddenly thrust into command but doing a good job, a womanizer (but see, it's okay because he just keeps genuinely falling in love with so many women!), and earnest. He's fine. He's not even objectionable, just incredibly boring. He comes with a crew of entirely indistinguishable followers that I couldn't keep straight, but that's all right because most of them get killed off so I no longer had to try to remember who was who. He also develops a romance that is 100% unbelievable, but I suppose that's what action-movie-heroes do, so who's even surprised. Miller is a detective on Ceres, the largest city in the Belt, who's been hired by a rich family to track down their anarchist, slumming daughter. Miller is an incredibly cliche noir protagonist - alcoholic, divorced, not as good as he used to be, cynical, a little bit corrupt but underneath it all he still remembers his good intentions – but at least that means he has more of a personality than Jim, even if it's a personality you've seen a thousand times before. On the other hand, Miller becomes obsessed with this dead/missing girl in a way that is painfully stereotypical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Two things kept this from ruining Leviathan Wakes for me. One, Miller is at least somewhat self-aware about it: This was why he had searched for her. Julie had become the part of him that was capable of human feeling. The symbol of what he could have been if he hadn’t been this. There was no reason to think his imagined Julie had anything in common with the real woman. Meeting her would have been a disappointment for them both. And two, there's a twist near the end that allows Julie to finally have her own voice in the text, and not exist solely as Miller's imagined dependance on her. It takes almost half the book for Miller and Holden to finally cross paths, at which point the missing-girl mystery and the war plot combine and take a twist for a direction I DID NOT SEE COMING. I am ambivalent on whether to spoil this; on the one hand, I read it unprepared and it was incredibly awesome to experience it that way. On the other hand, I suspect this is information that will be a determining factor for many people on whether they want to read it or not. So: halfway through, Leviathan Wakes takes a wild jump and becomes about a zombie outbreak. I would not have previously thought that 'space opera' and 'zombie apocalypse' are two genres that should be combined, but the tension and excitement skyrocket once the book takes this turn, transforming it from average quality to 'I CANNOT STOP READING, MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT'. So, good choice! The sequence with Miller and Holden trapped on a small space station trying to sneak their way past zombie hordes is one of the most thrilling I've read in ages. Leviathan Wakes is the first book in a series (apparently it was originally supposed to be a trilogy, but there's currently eight books out with at least one more planned, along with a batch of short stories) and has also become a show on the Syfy network that I haven't seen. I feel like I've spent a lot of this review complaining, but honestly I mostly enjoyed the book and am planning to read the sequels. The fact that people seem to like the characters from future books more than these ones certainly doesn't hurt! Pig/Pork: Archaeology, Zoology and Edibility by Pia Spry-Marques. A nonfiction book about everything remotely related to the farming and eating of pigs. I expected from the subtitle and the author's personal background that archaeology would be the main focus, but it turns out that's really only the first two chapters, which cover the Paleolithic hunting of wild boar and the original domestication of pigs. The other chapters turn to topics as diverse as experiments on feeding farmed pigs leftovers from restaurants, the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, a special Spanish ham called ibérico de bellota which can only be fed acorns, genetically modifiying pigs so their manure would contain less phosporus, sunburn in pigs, minature pet pigs, organ donation between humans and pigs, the terrifying tapeworms to be acquired from eating raw pork, why pork is a 'white' meat, how to make sausages, theories on why pork is neither halal nor kosher, the use of an enzyme from pig pancreases in wine production, EU food-safety regulations on traditional pork dishes, Cuba's 'Bay of Pigs', the Pig War between the US and Canada in 1859, and Oliver Cromwell's favorite pig breed. Basically if it has the remotest connection to the title, Spry-Marques has included it. She even includes recipes for each chapter, though some of them are clearly more for amusement than actual consumption – I can't imagine anyone having just finished a chapter on how eating raw pork will give you cysts in your brain is eager to try figatellu, a type of uncooked sausage from France. And it would take a braver foodie than me to taste "Asian-inspired pork uterus with green onion and ginger". In fact, as is probably not surprising for any book which touches on factory farming however briefly, you will probably come away not wanting to eat pork at all for a while. Spry-Marques's writing is breezy and conversational, which kept me turning the pages even when the structure was a bit scattered. I wish it were more focused, but it's a great book for anyone who enjoys popular science, history, or food writing. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope. A YA fantasy novel with some unusual elements. Rather than being set in vaguely medieval England or a dystopian sci-fi future, we're in a country where the technology seems to be around 1900: cars and electric lights exist, but they're restricted to rich cities, and someone coming from rural poverty might well have never seen either. Magic exists, but comes from one's heritage; you're either born with it or not. In Elsira, where our story is set, it's rare to the point of nonexistence. Our heroine Jasminda, however, does have magic, due to her father having been a refugee from the neighboring country of Lagrimar, where magic is common. Elsira and Lagrimar have been constantly at war for hundreds of years, but are separated by a magical Barrier which allows no one to pass through, except on rare occasions when a temporary breach happens and violence erupts. Elsirans are light-skinned and Lagrimari are dark-skinned, so Jasminda has dealt with fairly severe racism throughout her life. The story starts when Jasminda runs across Jack, a Elsiran soldier just back from spying in Lagrimar who has super important information that must get back to the capital as soon as possible; unfortunately Jack has just been shot and is closely pursued by a troop of Lagrimari soldiers. Jasminda and Jack team up, fall in love, and try to prevent the coming outbreak of war. The most revealing thing I can say about Song of Blood & Stone is that it's very, very YA. (As you could probably guess, what with its title that fits exactly into the pattern of the 'YA title' meme currently going around tumblr.) Almost everything that happens is easily predictable from the back cover (Jack's long-withheld backstory is clearly supposed to be a shocking twist, but it's obvious from the moment he appears), the prose is mediocre but fine, good and bad guys are clearly signalled, the real world parallels (racism, treatment of refugees, domestic abuse) are good-hearted but extremely Social Justice 101. On the plus side, the beginning was the worst part and it got better and better as it went along; several developments near the very end were so interesting that I'm tempted to read the sequel, despite my initial boredom. Overall it's not a bad book, but I'd only recommend it to people who are extremely affectionate of the most repetitive tropes of the YA genre. I read this as an ARC from a GoodReads giveaway.

[DW link for easier commenting]

#books #book reviews #james s.a. corey #l. penelope #Pia Spry-Marques #archaeology

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suchagiantnerd · 4 years

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28 Books, 1 Year

Well, 2020, amirite? Staying home with a 4-year-old and a baby really decreased my reading time, bringing me to my lowest total ever since starting this blog. Here we go!

1. Her Body and Other Parties / Carmen Maria Machado

I rarely feel stupid when reading fiction, but this collection of short stories left me feeling pretty stupid. Machado's writing is visceral and gorgeous but what she's trying to say is mostly beyond me. Overall, the collection (as evident by the title) looks at the ways existing in a woman's body is fraught. Sometimes we want to escape our bodies, often our bodies are harmed or taken advantage of against our will, sometimes our bodies fail us. But as for the more nitty-gritty takeaways, I couldn't get there. One story in particular is staying with me. In it, Machado invents new summaries of each and every episode of Law & Order: SVU, telling a tale of a living, breathing New York City that requires regular blood sacrifices and in which everyone has a doppelgänger. I liked it, but definitely didn't get it.

2. Moon of the Crusted Snow / Waubgeshig Rice

This wonderfully chilling read takes place on a remote reserve in Northern Ontario. Over the course of a few days, cell service stops, the internet goes down, and the power goes out. With no communication possible with other communities, the reserve's residents can only guess at what may be occurring down south. As autumn creeps toward winter, the snow piles up and panic sets in. Eventually, a visitor arrives via snowmobile and confirms the residents' worst fears about the state of civilization while also asking to stay on in the community. Can he be trusted? Will others follow? This was a tense page-turner looking at the importance of community, preparedness and leadership.

3. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar / Cheryl Strayed

Dear Sugar's advice to a person who didn't know whether or not he wanted kids is what turned me onto her. The answer was perfect. For someone on the fence, there is no right answer, no wrong answer. But there was a simple beauty to the way she said this. In this advice column collection, Sugar answers questions about love, parenthood, friendship, loss, death, finances, education, hopes and dreams. She insists again and again that we open our hearts and give forgiveness a chance while still maintaining healthy boundaries. And through her answers (and anecdotes) she showers love and care on so many devastated readers who are often writing to her as a last resort.

4. Girlfriend in a Coma / Douglas Coupland

We start the action with a Breakfast Club-type group of teens at a party in 1979 Vancouver. One of them, Karen, ends the night in a coma and doesn’t wake up for 16 YEARS. Also, turns out she was pregnant, and gives birth while in the coma. Richard, her boyfriend, raises their daughter with the help of his parents and friends, and by the time Karen wakes up again, the world has gone downhill. Not long after she wakes up, everyone starts falling asleep and dying except for the original group of friends and Karen’s daughter. I liked this novel as I’m a sucker for everything dystopian, but I also had to ask WHY? Why this random group of teens out of all the world? Why did Karen have to be in a coma for so long? How does it tie into the apocalypse? I still don’t know guys. I still don’t know.

5. How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence / Michael Pollan

Back in the 1960s, research on LSD was banned thanks to a moral panic. But today, scientists and therapists are starting to study its uses again. Pollan takes a deep dive into the future of LSD, psilocybin (certain mushrooms, and if I remember correctly, a substance that a certain toad secretes?!) and DMT, taking various trips himself with the help of trained guides. His vivid descriptions of each trip were the highlight of the book, and I find myself, someone who has never tried anything other than pot, wanting to try microdosing in the future.

6. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine / Gail Honeyman

The first of two contrarian reviews this year, I really didn’t like this book. I found Eleanor’s character and quirks completely unbelievable, and even discovered a little hole in the plot demonstrating that she can’t be as out of touch with pop culture as Honeyman claims she is (which I can’t reveal to you because it’s also a spoiler). I think my issue is that as far as I know, the author is not neurodivergent, whereas Eleanor is. I think this does a real disservice to readers, and would much prefer to read something like this by a neurodivergent author.

7. The Story of the Lost Child / Elena Ferrante

I finally finished the Neapolitan Quartet series! The fourth and final book finds Elena and Lila in their thirties and follows them until they’re in their sixties as they navigate professional successes and failures, new aspects of motherhood, relationship woes, and a fraying friendship. The dynamics of the friendship at the core of this series speak to me so deeply and captures so much about the passion, tension, tenderness, and competition that lurk within a longtime platonic relationship.

8. The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle / Stuart Turton

Dare I describe this as Downton Abbey meets Black Mirror? Aidan Bishop wakes up on the same date and in the same setting every day (Blackheath Manor on Evelyn Hardcastle’s birthday) but as a different guest or employee each time. Each night, Evelyn Hardcastle is murdered. Aidan quickly learns that his task is to find the murderer, using the different skillsets and vantage points he inherits with each subsequent body. The tension! The twists! The gorgeous setting! I loved this winding, wild novel.

9. You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance / Chani Nicholas

If you are an astrology lover and don’t know who Chani Nicholas is, you’ve been living under a rock! Follow this woman! Her practice and guidance is so inclusive - feminist, anti-racist, anti-transphobic, body positive, and all about how to discover and lean into your gifts and talents while keeping in mind the greater good and working toward a more progressive society.

10. An Ocean of Minutes / Thea Lim

I started reading this dystopian novel about a pandemic right at the start of the pandemic! Maybe not a wise decision, but it didn’t matter, because this book is a beautiful, moving read. In the near future, young couple Polly and Frank find themselves stranded in Galveston, Texas, when a deadly virus begins sweeping across the globe. Frank gets sick, and the only way that Polly can pay for his expensive life-saving treatment is if she signs up as a bonded laborer and travels to the future (yes, time-travel exists!) The couple agree to meet up in 12 years (which will really be just a few short days for Polly). However, Polly is send an extra five years into the future, and Frank is nowhere to be found. The worry I felt! Polly’s loneliness and confusion in the future! Will they find each other again? Oh boy, this was an emotional ride!

11. Where the Crawdads Sing / Delia Owens

The second of my two contrarian reviews this year, I also really disliked this book, which everyone else and their mother seemed to adore? It was bad! The plot felt really contrived, the characters were two-dimensional, and I felt icky about the author’s two Black characters and how the protagonist, Kya, interacted with them. I don’t think Delia is informed enough about the realities of the Black experience, then and now, to responsibly write Black characters. Also, the ‘twist ending’ was a snooze fest. The one redeeming factor was the author’s palpable love of and knowledge about nature. I really did enjoy reading about the coastal habitat and sea life that the Kya loved so much. Oh, what’s this novel about, you ask? It’s a combo coming-of-age / murder mystery set in the 1950s and 60s.

12. The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power / Desmond Cole

Cole is a Canadian journalist and activist shining a much needed light on racism in this country. In this book, he highlights one incidence of systemic racism in action per month during the year of 2017, focussing on police brutality, harm caused by school boards and educators, the Canada 150 celebrations, and unjust immigration policies. This book packs a punch and Cole’s writing style is really accessible. It’s a great entry point into learning about the realities of racism in Canada.

13. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds / Adrienne Maree Brown

I absolutely loved this book, though I find it hard to pin down. At its core, it encourages us to think more deeply and holistically about nature, social justice, and community. Brown is heavily influenced by Black sci-fi / dystopian master Octavia Butler, specifically Butler’s ideas around “shaping change” while living through change. It’s full of gems of wisdom, like this quote, which is one of my favourites: “Imagination is one of the spoils of colonization, which in many ways is claiming who gets to imagine the future for a given geography.” As Brown also writes about, and which we can really see in this moment, we are currently living through the tail-end of a dying society, imagined by a small few. What could we create together if everyone’s imaginings carried equal weight?

14. From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way / Jesse Thistle

Thistle’s emotional and turbulent memoir begins with a loving memory of his time as a little boy at his maternal grandparents’ home. Not long after, his parents moved the family away from their Métis community and Jesse and his two brothers soon end up in the foster care system. This experience, though relatively brief, absolutely traumatized all three of them. Later, they end up living with their paternal grandparents, who love them deeply but are extremely strict, which doesn’t work for Thistle. He hits various rock bottoms, battling with addiction, trauma and homelessness at the intersection of racism. And somehow, he manages to break free of these harmful cycles, go back to school, and become an academic and best-selling author.

15. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present / Robyn Maynard

I would call this a must-read for Canadians. Maynard breaks down exactly how Canada surveils and punishes Blackness despite its claims of inclusivity and tolerance. She explores policing, yes, but also social work, education, immigration, and education and it’s impossible not to see the levers of systemic racism at work everywhere. Fair warning though, this is a more academic text and requires real concentration.

16. Jhumpa Lahiri / Unaccustomed Earth

This collection of short stories (the last being more of a novella) was gripping. I somehow fell in love with almost all of the characters. Lahiri writes people so skillfully. I felt their longing, hope, sorrow, grief, excitement. Most of the tales take place within the Indian community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but some stories take us further afield. Lahiri picks a key relationship to focus on within each story - daughter/father, sister/brother, two roommates, childhood acquaintances - and lays them out gently under her microscope for us to see in all their intricate complexity.

17. Midnight Sun / Stephenie Meyer

Did you guys know I’m a Twihard? Having read all the Twilight novels (multiple times) way before I started this blog, this may be new information. But I’m a huge, pathetic fan and though I love Jacob, I will always be Team Edward. So OF COURSE I had to read this extremely long-awaited book, which is actually Twilight, but from Edward’s point of view rather than Bella’s. It was genuinely enjoyable, but not filled with nearly enough sexual tension for my liking. And of course, never ever read it unless you are also a Twilight fan.

18. The Sun and Her Flowers / Rupi Kaur

It’s Rupi being Rupi! I legitimately enjoy Rupi’s poetry, but I don’t love it. Some of the pieces really resonate, and others do nothing for me. But I do think she’s an important voice for young women, and specifically young women of colour. So much of her writing is about reclaiming your power, honouring the older generation of women who sacrificed so much and received nothing in return, and learning to love yourself in a society that is constantly trying to hurt you. Her poetry is always an uplifting read.

19. Conscious Creativity: Look, Connect, Create / Philippa Stanton

I’ve been following Philippa on Instagram for years as I adore her flat-lays and domestic foraging arrangements (if you follow me on IG, you may have seen my colour-themed #DomesticForaging homages to her work!) So when she published a book outlining her own creative process (and containing tons of her gorgeous photography), I had to read it. Stanton has included lots of activities meant to light your creative spark and inspire new ways of looking at things. She also writes about her experiences as a synesthete (someone who may “see” music as colours or who may “hear” shapes), which was fascinating. This is a book I’ll certainly go back to when I’m feeling uninspired. Want to follow her on IG? Her handle is @5tfinf.

20. Turkey Trot Murder / Leslie Meier

Guys, this review is the start of something BIG. Brad knows that I love to read books that are “in season” (I don’t want to read a book set in the summer during the winter, etc.). So he bought me this very niche Thanksgiving mystery novel to read in October. It’s alllll fluff, and very much in the “so bad it’s good” category. It also turns out that Leslie Meier may be one of the most prolific authors of all time, and so Brad signed me up to her “book of the month” fan club for my birthday this year, meaning I get a new, seasonally appropriate Meier classic each month. (You should also know that the “book of the month” fan club is entirely made up, and the letters from Leslie are actually written by Brad, and yes, he has designed a logo for the letterhead.)

21. Haunted House Murder / Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross

Wait, what? THREE authors? Yes, some of the Leslie Meier classics are actually novellas, so they are combined with novellas by two other authors into these seasonal collections. Also, Lee Hollis isn’t even real. Lee Hollis is in fact TWO PEOPLE, a brother/sister writing duo! So there are four authors involved in this spooky little collection. They all take place in small-town Maine, so yes, the settings are adorable and the plots are terrible.

22. Autumn / Karl Ove Knausgaard

I think I would describe this memoir (?) as a collection of magical noticings. While his wife is pregnant with their fourth baby, Knausgaard starts writing letters to the unborn child, telling them about, well, everything and anything. That project turned into this book, in which the writer observes everyday things like hands, toilets, fog, petrol, and snakes, and finds the beauty and wonder in all of them. Reading this book left me feeling very inspired and wanting to try and develop this skill in myself as I write.

23. The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century / Kirk Wallace Johnson

Back in 2009, Edwin Rist stole HUNDREDS of dead birds from the British Museum of Natural History. That fact alone is mind-boggling (how?), but it gets wilder. He didn’t steal them for nerdy science reasons, he stole them to sell to the Victorian fly-tying community. Yes, flies as in the things you attach to fish hooks. And no, not flies that will actually be used, but flies that are constructed as a hobby and art form. Wallace Johnson does a great job of conveying Rist’s obsessive passion for fly-tying and the desperation many fly-tiers feel as they try to track down increasingly rare and protected feathers from exotic (or extinct) birds. The author also has a journalist’s nose for sniffing out lies and half-truths and even tracks down Rist himself for a sit-down interview. I was riveted throughout the whole book, which lives at the intersection of history, science, mystery, and psychological deep-dive.

24. Yule Log Murder / Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross

The seasonal fluff dream team is back! And yes, a yule log features prominently in each novella. Once as a murder weapon, and once as a suspected murder weapon! These books also feature real recipes, some of which actually look pretty tasty!

25. Empire of Wild / Cherie Dimaline

This was a chilling page-turner and the second novel of Dimaline’s that I’ve read and devoured. She’s quickly become one of my favourite authors. In this story, Joan, a Métis woman living in the Georgian Bay area, is at the tail-end of the worst year of her life. Almost a year ago, her husband Victor disappeared into thin air after a rare argument between the couple, and Joan’s been searching for him ever since. One day, she wanders past a Christian revival tent in a Walmart parking lot, and the minister is the spitting image of Victor. She manages to have a brief conversation with him and it appears he has no memory of her or his prior life. Yet, in her gut, she KNOWS it’s him and resolves to return him to himself (and to her). This slow-burning horror novel weaves in the Métis myth of the Rogarou, a werewolf-ish creature who walks lonely roads looking for victims, to great effect.

26. Eggnog Murder / Leslie Meier and Lee Hollis and Barbara Ross

Another seasonal romp in which this time, the eggnog is the murder weapon in TWO of the stories! TWO PEOPLE IN TWO SEPARATE STORIES DIE FROM DRINKING NUT MILK EGGNOG AND NOT KNOWING IT WAS NUT MILK AND SUFFERING FROM A NUT ALLERGY. Anyways, I actually made one of the included recipes this time - eggnog muffins - and they were truly delicious!

27. Watch Over Me / Nina LaCour

This is a beautiful and haunting (both literally and figuratively) YA novel about the way trauma from our past follows us around, haunting our present. Mila, who’s just aged out of the foster care system, lands what seems to be a perfect job helping to teach younger children at a farm in Northern California. The farm is owned by an older couple who’ve become somewhat famous for taking in dozens of kids from the foster system over the years. Upon arrival, Mila falls in love, but soon starts to notice strange things about the way things are done on the farm, while also suffering from PTSD related to her own childhood traumas. Is there something sinister going on, or could this beautiful, isolated place become the home Mila’s always longed for?

28. Phases / h.duxbury

I started writing poetry again this summer, and quickly found lots of other poets sharing their work on Instagram. @hduxburypoetry (a fellow Ontarian, too!) quickly became one of my favourite accounts to follow, so when i learned that she self-published a poetry collection, I had to grab a copy. Her work is heavily inspired by nature and the changing seasons, which I’m a sucker for, so I really enjoyed it. Her poems also delve into grief, loneliness, love, and growth.

Well, there you have it! As for my 2020 faves, my top three reads were:

Empire of Wild

Unaccustomed Earth

Emergent Strategy

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gingerbooks · 4 years

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The Book of Koli by M.R Carey

The Book of Koli by M.R Carey, who is also the author of The Girl With All The Gifts, is a highly imaginative fable and the first in a planned dystopian and sci-fi trilogy known as The Rampart Trilogy.

I would struggle to explain exactly what the book is about as that would be spoiling it, and I found it fun to just dive in and try and work out some of the twists before the narrator Koli did!

Set far into the future, the world is not as we would normally think of it. Nature is the enemy, the trees harbour poison, and the woods house dangerous creatures. The communities must live behind fences and be guarded by lookout towers. It is not just the environment that holds danger outside the walls, but the people that roam it too, known as the “shunned men”, they are the ones that don’t belong in any village. Koli’s life sees humanity returned to back to the basics. People live in small communities, they are assigned work, and they don’t take well to outsiders. There are no electronics or technology and everything is built, farmed, or made by manual labour. The community is governed and protected by those known as “Ramparts”, who are the ones who can use what little technology is left over from the olden days. Technology doesn’t work for everyone, so the ones who can yield and use the devices hold the power. Weapons are most important, for example, one piece of technology in Koli’s village is a flamethrower. This is something to be both feared yet respected.

Certain events lead to Koli obtaining his own piece of tech – an artificially intelligent multimedia player known as the “DreamSleeve Monono Aware Special Edition”. Remember that Black Mirror episode with Miley Cyrus as an AI doll? Imagine something like that inside an MP3 player. It’s a secret too big for Koli’s village and the consequences are severe.

The tone and style of the writing is different, and certain readers may find it hard to get to grips with. The book is written as if Koli is speaking to the reader, as if he could be sat across from you telling you his story. There are deliberate spelling mistakes, and questionable grammar, as some words are written how they would be pronounced in his dialect. I think this might be because Koli is illiterate, as he doesn’t read books, and his stories are told out loud rather than written down. Because of this, I think The Book of Koli would be really good as an audiobook, as the reader could enjoy the story being told to them, rather than having to adjust to how it appears on the page. That being said, I settled into this after a handful of chapters, but I’m not certain everyone would.

I really liked the character of Monono Aware. She is a piece of technology, but there is no doubt that she is a character in every sense in this book. Koli almost relates to her as a real being, and Carey has done really well at giving her her own identity and presence on the page. It was almost as if I could hear her voice in my head when reading her parts. Again, this goes back to what I said earlier about how this book could make a great audiobook experience!

The story flows fairly well. The first third of the book is enjoyable as you find out about Koli, how his world functions, who his important to him, and what happens in his past. It might seem like a slow start for some readers, but it is necessary to understand the main character. The second third of the book was my favourite, where the plot unravels further and Koli goes on his journey. Unfortunately, I found myself wanting to skip through bits of the last part, as I felt it lingered in places and lacked tension.

Would I read the next in the trilogy? I’m not 100% sure, but Carey has definitely laid out the next part of Koli’s journey, and there is undeniably some curiosity about who he will meet next.

6/10

Thanks to Orbit and The Nerd Daily for the e-arc of this book in exchange for a review

#The Book of Koli #Book review #Fiction #Scifi #Post apocalyptic

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prometheusgaming · 7 years

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Bending and Mixing Genres in RPGs

In many systems, like Savage Worlds or Fate Core, genre is a mutable thing. Often the first question is “In which genre will play?”

Do you play a fantasy epic, a sci-fi game, a horror milieu? If you are like me, you’ve done them all ad nauseum and you crave different. That’s where bending and mixing genres comes in. Here’s a simple technique.

First, explore the following 18 examples of genres and choose two to four of them as interesting to you and your group. Second, I’ll step you through some examples of how to pull them all together into a single campaign or setting.

Asian: The heroes live in an Asian or Asian-flavored land, like China or Japan. There may be warrior monks, ninjas, samurai, peasants, rice fields, and ancient temples. The heroes will learn to respect honor, justice, family, and tradition.

Comedic: The heroes are satirical, ironic, or silly. The game will have an element of humor weaved intrinsically into it. There may be talking animals, singing candlesticks, bumbling heroes, puns, animated garbage, cartoons come to life, and spoofs of television or movies.

Detective: The heroes will meet great mysteries and solve difficult puzzles. They will come across seemingly impossible scenes and learn to make sense of the subtle clues. There may be riddles, murders, betrayal, crime scenes, clues, and secret societies.

Dystopian Future: The heroes live in the future, but things have gone wrong. Perhaps the corporations have grown too powerful, the government too strict, or the artificial intelligences have conspired to enslave humanity. Whatever the cause, the future is dark, dangerous, and unsafe. There may be secret societies, conspiracies, hidden rebellions, cameras everywhere, and mind-control technology.

Espionage: The heroes will work with or for a large agency engaged in spy work for a nation, a corporation, or other large entity. There may be disguises, deception, technology, assassinations, intricate plots, dinner parties, evening gowns and tuxedos, casinos, international travel, and faked passports. The heroes may find themselves in moral dilemmas if they are asked to take heroic actions.

Fantastical: The heroes live in a fantastical place. There may be witchcraft, divine seers, supernatural creatures, magical artifacts, and impossible cities in the clouds.

Far Future: The heroes live in a future separated from us by great time and possibly great distances as well. This is likely a future where we have settled the stars and explored the reaches of the galaxy. There may be aliens, starships, interstellar travel, planetary colonies, vast reaches of deathly-black space, lasers, and technology that may be indistinguishable from magic.

Historical: The heroes live some time in the past and their world is grounded in reality. The elements of their world are real, existed, and often well researched. They will not find the supernatural. Their challenges are the challenges that man has always faced: corruption, villainy, strife, and tragedy.

Horror: The heroes are adventuring in a scary world. There are creatures under the bed, in the closet, and outside the window. The things that go bump in the night are real and they have come for the heroes. There may be vampires, zombies, ghosts, goblins, old houses, cemeteries, howling on the moors, lonely country roads, suspense, and blood-curdling screams.

Medieval: The heroes live in the Middle Ages in either historical Europe or a European-flavored world. There may be castles, peasants, knights, troubadours, the ruins of a Roman empire, and vast wildernesses as yet unexplored.

Military: The heroes will work with or for a military organization engaged in active warfare with another group. They may have ranks and a clear chain of command within the group. There may be battles, war crimes, chaos in the fog of war, great ships, secret weapons, coded messages, and corrupt officers.

Modern: The heroes live in the modern era. Civility abounds but as a thin sheen over a vicious world of great wars and political strife. There may be battlefields, airplanes, computers, technological advancements, and skyscrapers. The heroes will face existential, as well as physical, challenges.

Near Future: The heroes live in a future just around the corner for us today. Technology will be a natural, but small evolution from today’s recognized technology. There may be cybernetics, sophisticated handheld computers, low-resolution holographic displays, advanced weaponry, and hackers.

Prehistoric: The heroes live in a prehistoric wilderness. Lawlessness and brutality are the norm. Lifespans are short, safety is an unknown, and the harsh world will throw many natural challenges at the heroes. There may be saber-toothed tigers, lumbering mammoths, fierce dinosaurs, and vast dark forests and caves to explore.

Super Hero: The heroes are the stuff of comic book legend. They fight crime with superpowers no normal person can imagine. There may be capes, masks, criminal masterminds, secret lairs, rooftop vigilantes, police, henchmen, and brightly colored costumes.

Victorian: The heroes live in the Victorian era in either historical England or an English-flavored land. There may be beggars, steam-powered devices, the juxtaposition of rich and poor, overcrowded cities, carriages, parlors, and garden parties. Such a game will take place predominately in urban areas.

Western: The heroes live in the old west. There may be cowboys, Indians, sheriffs, saloons, trails, rocky foothills, wagons, prospectors, gunfights at high noon, and outlaws waiting just outside of town. It’s a rough place to live, begging to have order restored.

Wuxia: The heroes live in a world steeped in mystic martial traditions. Kung Fu and other unarmed arts abound. There may be secret Kung Fu techniques, old masters, bamboo forests, teahouses, dojos, mountaintop gurus, and fights atop darkened tile rooftops.

Now that you’ve read over the 18 genres above and selected a handful that you and your group like most, you can begin to create your mash-up.

Sit with your friends and think through all the ways you can incorporate the various genres into a single game. Ask yourself, what elements of each can co-exist. Which cannot? Don’t be quick to give up. Some of the most interesting ideas might be waiting to be discovered by your group.

Here are three examples I came up with at random.

Detective, Horror, and Medieval: Imagine a game where the heroes are medieval detectives (a town constable, a nosey monk, a knight trying to protect his village, etc…) solving mysteries and facing the unknown horrors of the Dark Ages. Many horrors are supernatural, but we didn’t include the Fantastical genre element, so perhaps it’s true that, while the horrors they face are supernatural, the heroes are ordinary men. They fight the forces of supernatural evil armed with only their wits and what few tricks they’ve learned.

Prehistoric, Fantastical: Imagine a game where the heroes are savages in a realm dominated by dinosaurs and dragons, mammoths and mermaids. They fight not only to stave off the monsters of the world but to keep their place in it. Orcs, early competitors to humanity, seek to wipe them out and become the dominant species. Armed with spears, arrows, clubs, and primitive shamanistic magic, the heroes fight for the fate of humankind.

Dystopian Future, Espionage, Wuxia: Imagine a game where the heroes are spies in the service of a shadowy, anti-governmental organization (Agents of C.H.A.N.G.E.) seeking to take down the corrupt and overreaching world government (World Order). Using the skills taught to them, they seek out and fight the agents of World Order in incredible hand-to-hand fights. They avoid weapons because World Order has outlawed them.

Comedic, Fantastical, Modern: Imagine a game where the heroes are agents serving the powerful and secretive Lords of the Holidays. The Mighty Lord of the North (Christmas) does battle through his enslaved elves and clockwork-toy armies, with the other Lords; the Lord of Nightmares and his Throne of Bones (Halloween), the Large-Eared Lord of Wonder in his mystical Wonderland (Easter), The Sadist and his Succubae (Valentine’s Day), and others. The battle rages around us, but no one can know.

Try it yourself. And don’t expect the first couple to be great. It takes a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, your gaming group will thank you for it. And if you come up with a mash-up that is particularly unusual and interesting, feel free to hit me up to share. I’d love to hear about the crazy adventures your new genre-busting heroes will go on!

Game on, friends!

#rpg #gaming #multi-genre #how to #savage worlds #fate core #gurps

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mattsagervo · 7 years

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Interview: Tal M. Klein, Author of 'The Punch Escrow'

The Punch Escrow has been a huge critical and commercial success, author Tal M. Klein's debut novel has garnered praise from everyone from NPR to Felicia Day, and with good reason. Set in the year 2147, Escrow combines a compelling story and cast of characters with masterful world-building - transporting the reader to an all-too believable future, constructed from a mix of imaginative fiction, and speculative extensions of real-world science and sociological trends.

It has garnered many favorable comparisons to Ready Player One, which does it a bit of a disservice, since it's a work of breathtaking originality. The only similarities I note are that it successfully integrates, and updates, some beloved science fiction ideas, and that it has been fast tracked to the big screen; a film adaptation is already in development at Lionsgate.

I had the opportunity to interview Klein about the book's origins and influences, what to expect from him in the future, and how he masterfully constructed the world of 2147 - from science, to music and more.

Matt Sager: Like a lot of great science fiction, The Punch Escrow has several themes, and is clearly about a lot more than a future of human replication and teleportation. How would you describe the book's plot and overall themes - or more bluntly, "what is your book about?" Tal M. Klein: I like to say it’s a hard sci-fi technothriller with a love story at its core. Joel Byram, an everyday guy in 2147 New York is duplicated en route to Costa Rica as a result of a teleportation mishap, the company that runs teleportation wants to “fix the bug” by killing one of the duplicates, religious zealots want to use his circumstance as propaganda, and his wife is kidnapped by a rogue scientist. Now Joel is fighting to save his life and in his wife in a world that has two of him. The core elements of the story are rooted in identity: Are we who society says we are? Or who we think we are? Or who those who we love believe us to be?

MS: You’ve attained huge success with The Punch Escrow - you’ve attained massive critical and commercial success, the book has been optioned by Lions Gate, and as of this writing it’s number 1 on Amazon’s Hard Science Fiction charts. Did you envision this level of attention and success for your debut novel? TMK: I set out to tell the best version of my story. That was my criteria for a “job well done.” I’m thrilled people are digging it. The credit for its success is equally shared by my wife, my editorial team of Robert Kroese, Matt Harry, and Adam Gomolin, and Howie Sanders at United Talent Agency.

MS: I’ve been told that the concept for the book came about over an argument over the plausibility of Star Trek transporters - can you elaborate on how that led to a book about teleportation and cloning? TMK: What you’ve been told is true! Back in 2012, I was complaining to a co-worker about J.J. Abrams’ over the top use of lens flare in the Star Trek reboot, when suddenly, our CEO interrupted our conversation by shouting “It’s bullshit!” It turned out he wasn’t talking about the lens flare, but Star Trek’s transporters. He was an expert in quantum physics and went on to explain that nobody in the right mind would ever step into a transporter if they knew how it worked. It was then that I realized that there wasn’t a good origin story for the commercialization of teleportation. The fact is, I initially set out the write The Punch Escrow as a textbook from the future, with scribbles in the margins by a smartass named Joel Byram. That was the first draft. By the time the final draft was done, Joel’s story became the focus on the book, and the “textbook” was relegated to liner notes, explaining the world Joel lived in.

MS: I’m very aware that you're not a fan of J.J. Abrams' lens flare. Cinematography aside, are you a fan of the new Star Trek franchise? Other than the transporter argument, has it had any influence on your writing? TMK: Hah, well, discounting for his penchant for lens flare, I’m a huge J.J. Abrams fan, the first movie of the Trek reboot was great. I didn’t really care for the second or third. MS: J.J. Abrams aside, I know that you’re a huge fan of Star Trek - which is your favorite franchise, and how has it influenced you as a writer? TMK: I’d qualify that by saying I love Star Trek, but I’m not a Trekkie. I say that because I learned my lesson at San Diego Comic Con. If you tell a Trekkie that you’re a Trekkie, they expect you to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the entire Trek cannon, which I do not possess. So, yes, I am a Star Trek fan. My favorite franchise was DS9, but my favorite season of all time was TNG Season 6. MS: Which other science fiction television shows, films, books and writers would you cite as your biggest influences? TMK: Larry Niven, Scott Meyer, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and, because The Martian undeniably catalyzed me to write my book, Andy Weir. As for television shows, I think it’s fair to credit modern detective shows like Psych and Monk for helping me wrap my mind around Rube Goldberg plot devices. Most influential was my favorite show of all time, the X-Files spinoff The Lone Gunmen. I think they really nailed the technogeek persona. Influential movies run the gamut from The Princess Bride to Donnie Darko and everything in between, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention District 9, Looper, and Gattaca. MS: The Punch Escrow strikes me as a book that's in equal parts hopeful and fearful for the future. There are themes of utopian technology corrupted by corporate interference. How much of that - the good and the ill - do you see unfolding in the present? Is your fictional vision of 2147 similar to your actual view of the future? TMK: To borrow a phrase from The Jester, There's an unequal amount of good and bad in most things. The trick is to figure out the ratio and act accordingly. I don’t think future is dystopian or utopian, it’s just us progressing along our evolutionary path. MS: Music plays a major role in the book. I understand that we have a music industry background in common. What was your career in music like, and how did it contribute to the Joel's soundtrack, and the new genre of redistro? TMK: I never think of anything I do artistically as a “career” — music and writing are my hobbies. I’m very serious about my hobbies, but I pursue them for the sake of pure joy rather than income. MS: One of the most original ideas in The Punch Escrow is the brilliant, if gross, race of genetically engineered mosquitoes. What was your inspiration for these bugs that eat lighting and crap thunder, so to speak? TMK: Everyone loves the mosquitoes! The near-scandal is that I cut the mosquitoes in the third draft of the book because I learned about bacteria that eat methane and excreted oxygen, but my beta readers freaked out on me, so I put the skeeters back. The reason the mosquitoes are there is because I wanted to solve for air pollution but in a very messy, human way. Humans tend to to opt for quick fixes and shortcuts, I think it’s because we are a breed largely driven by the pursuit of instant gratification. MS: Hard science fiction like The Punch Escrow seems to grow more relevant by the day as AI and robots are, to varying degrees, infiltrating the workforce and performing tasks that were once the sole domain of humans. Do you see this as a growing issue, and if so, need it be a threat? Is AI really capable of supplanting people, and is that really what corporations as a whole want? TMK: Will apps and robots take the place of people? Absolutely. But if we look at what happened in the Industrial Age, people were prophesizing similar doom and gloom scenarios, and that’s not how the future turned out. There will be plenty of human jobs after AI, it’s just that those jobs will be different than many of the jobs we have today. MS: How did you come up with the idea of a machine language - that is, a language by machines, for machines, cars talking to one another, etc? How surprised were you when Facebook had to shut down it’s AI because it had created a secret language for itself? TMK: If you’ve ever played with AI, it makes sense that two pieces of semi-intelligent code might form a more optimal method of communicating than our cumbersome language. I was a bit taken aback by what happened at Facebook, yes. But it wasn’t shocking. I also understand why they pulled the chord, but I kind of wish they hadn’t. MS: What do you think machines are saying about us, and if AI continues to advance, do you think that they are going to develop an opinion of us? Do you think it will be favorable, and/or within our ability to influence? TMK: Code will likely always be subservient to its programmer. As such, I think we need to add ethics to the list of engineering core competencies. If engineers exclusively focus on successful code execution without regard for anthropological outcomes in the age of AI, we may very well end up with evil robots. MS: Are there sequels in the works? What’s next for the Punch Escrow universe, and for you as a writer? TMK: I’m contractually obligated to deliver two more books that take place in the world of The Punch Escrow. One of them will likely be a sequel of sorts in that we’ll get into matters unresolved in The Punch Escrow, but the other is shaping up to be a standalone novel with a narrative that is ancillary to that of The Punch Escrow. But who knows, both are at the very early formative stages.

#The Punch Escrow #Tal M. Klein

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fmpgabby · 5 years

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Coming up with my Final Idea

My project went through a lot of variations in the first few weeks before I settles on a final idea.

Inital Ideas & Thoughts-

Before I really knew what this project was about, I knew that I wanted to make something due my love of cosplay and fantasy armour. I also knew that I really wanted to make a set of wings, as it’s something i’d never done before and would give me a chance to push myself.

I knew that I would have to design the costume I made - thus I decided to also venture into character design & concept art, as this was also something I was really interested in earlier in the year.

Most cosplay armour i’d previously seen was from World Of Warcraft, so this was my primary inspiration from this stage - as well as the design of typical medieval armour. I started designing some armour ideas for fun.

First Ideas - using the Titles

This idea began to evolve as we officially started the project and had to consider the titles we were given as a starting point.

I picked the following titles and made some notes relating to them, trying to think of a possible narrative that could work:

Rose Tinted Spectacles

To have a certain view on something – i.e. you can only see the good things or the bad things. Having something that could allow you to access another view of a world - for example Spiderwick.

Anything involving separation between two worlds – i.e. like the real world and a fantasy one - or hell and the real world. So like something from another world – could be something underwater.

Virus – something infected by something else – so like maybe the character has been infected by something from another world so the armour is like covered in moss or plants/decay.

Things being hidden from plain sight - is the main character hiding a secret?

Having a character travel to a place and become infected by it.

Behind Closed Doors

Secrecy – something people aren’t meant to know about – maybe the main character has come from another world and is being kept hidden. Maybe the wings are like the result of an illegal experiment.

Crimes, undercover police, illegal actions etc.

Having an assassin style character - someone who has two jobs

Crossover

Literally crossing over to another world – so the character’s come from another universe etc. Heaven and hell – dreams/nightmares – day/night – different time periods.

I guess mixing two themes together - in her armour design?

Having a character that unites two worlds - similar to Aquaman – has both worlds in their design.

Host

Having a possessed character or something like venom – transforming character

E=MC2

Having a sci-fi/ inspired futuristic character

Aliens and characters from another world

Science experiments, linked to Behind Closed Doors - such as Maximum Ride

After considering each of these ideas, I really liked the concept of an assassin character, so I chose Behind Closed Doors as my initial starting point.

Having now decided that this character I wanted to create the costume for would be an assassin, I could work on a few other designs that would actually incorporate this theme.

Idea 1

My first proper idea was to have this concept set in a fantasy world. My character would be part of a royal guard who works to defend the king. However, at the same time she works as an assassin. No one one knows that she is the same person. She has a reputation for being able to take out 100% of people she’s asked to kill. One day she received a request to kill the king himself - while at the same time being one of the people trusted to protect him.

I really liked this idea at the time (and would perhaps like to expand it in the future) but it eventually fell short as I realised that I wanted to go more for a science fiction theme - similar to the designs in Marvel and Overwatch.

This inital idea is why several of my design sheets turned out to be fantasy based (rather than science fantasy as I am now doing) as shown below:

Idea 2

When making the pinterest boards (as well as seeing other people’s work and ideas) I was inspired by all of the science fiction designs. Because of this, I thought it would be fun to try and design a more futuristic costume for the character to see if would look good.

I designed this (right), inspired by the designs from this pinterest board which I had created.

The left design was my original fantasy armour concept. The middle design was an outcome which I created by combining the two. I took my favourite aspects from both and kept the colour palette (which was my favourite out of all the initial designs).

This was the result below. Ever since I combined both science fiction and fantasy I knew that I wanted to continue with this theme for the rest of my project.

Idea 3

I came up with this next idea after struggling to really think of a narrative for the science fantasy character. This concept was created based on my GCSE Media studies project - a show about Ancient Egypt. Along with Egyptian mythology, I was also really interested in conspiracy theories, aliens and government secrets - these all combined really well with the E=MC2 starting point.

Still liking the science fantasy concept, I began to think of an alternate reality of earth in which Ancient Egypt and its events happened in the future when everything was futuristic and technologically advanced - but also still had the egyptian gods present. These gods I thought could possibly actually be aliens (which would explain their armour design) in this world - much like Stargate. The idea would be that Egypt would be like Wakanda - completely hidden from outsiders and actually extremely advanced despite everyone’s belief. My character I planned to have based on a cat - as they were highly worshipped (and the bird/jackal appearances were already claimed by the two gods) and known for being very silent and sneaky, perfect for an assassin.

My character would be an assassin who would venture outside of Egypt and reclaim lost artefacts that have been taken.

This lead to this armour design (right) which was a redesign of the previous (left) with a more prominent aesthetic - I wanted an eye, cat and wing motif as these were all common symbols in Egyptian Mythology.

This idea was invented in a mere few days and was really more of an impulse concept - I should have developed my other ideas further before rushing into this one as it was also quickly off the table for several reasons.

For one, people that i’d asked didn’t really think that the black & gold armour was very ‘Egyptian’ looking. I also couldn’t really find a plausible reason for the character to have wings. But the major turning point was when I discovered all the research I’d have to do to back up this idea - into Egyptian films and actual factual information about the country - which honestly didn’t really interest me at all - I just liked the concept of the animal themed gods and alien conspiracies.

Idea 4

I remember shortly after coming up with the Egypt concept that I was sitting in a room surrounded by people all working on their science-fiction stories. I felt like i’d made a serious mistake in choosing it for such a huge project when it wasn’t something I was insanely passionate about. I had to sit down and consider if, three/four weeks into the project, if it would actually be worth changing my idea again. It was actually looking at my favourite artist’s work that fully convinced me to revert back to the science fiction/fantasy theme I wanted to do previously. Simon Stalenhag’s dystopian universe and environment paintings full of giant machines made me realise that this was really the sort of thing I was interested in.

I still had my main idea in mind: to create a costume with wings. But now I had to try and incorporate a typically fantasy character into a futuristic science fiction universe.

I still wanted my character to be somewhat secretive, with not everything known about her - for example an assassin built by the government as an experiment with actual wings.

Another reason for this decision change was because I didn’t want to have to ground my work into reality - with Egypt I would have to stick to realistic conventions and history whereas with sic-fi, anything was possible and would give me a lot more freedom to imagine where technology could possibly take us in the future.

I was originally going to have this story set in Egypt as a homage to my previous idea. I also wanted to have a large company who pretty much ruled the entire world - something my character could fight against and overthrow. I wanted the company to be ruled by an AI, and I really liked the concept of a future where everything you do is watched, recorded, etc. As it was set in Egypt, I wanted this AI to be called Anubis after the god. The company was known as Anubis Robotics for a while.

The company would offer people a way to live forever inside a machine - having a second chance at life even after death. But having everyone living as a machine would also make them controllable by the corporation- making them able to achieve whatever they want, including world domination.

Sakura (the protagonist) would be an assassin who wants to overthrow this company. But the point was made that she would have no reason to care as it was not involving her in any way. For this reason I decided to scrap the idea of her being a random assassin and instead, she became the scientist who invented the technology that the company uses - a benevolent girl who just wants to help people who have lost their bodies live again. Having the company turn on her and use it as a world domination and money making scheme was a lot more plausible of a reason for her to take them down.

As this idea grew, the world i’d created started to drift away from Egypt little by little - and since I wanted the company to be world dominating (not just an Egyptian company) I thought it would be better to name it after something else. I wouldn’t really be able to explain the name ‘Anubis’ anymore, but I was still really attached to it so I picked something similar sounding - Atlas.

It is interesting to note that Atlas’ design and the company’s logo was still created with Anubis in mind - hence the pointed ‘jackal ears’ he has on his head and the dog-headed logo itself.

The only thing missing was an explanation as to why the main character had wings.

This was when my story ended up becoming an alternate version of earth - a new world in itself. Since I wanted to focus on both science fiction and fantasy, I incorporated a magical energy into the world which is shared between all living creatures - thus connecting them to each other. As the magical energy transfers between each creature and returns to the earth, it is possible for it to transfer DNA between organisms - creating mutations from other species resulting in fantasy races. This allowed me to instantly have mermaids, dragons, angels etc while still maintaining the science fiction aesthetic. This magical energy was then named as Mana - one of my inspirations behind the logic of the energy was based on Annihilation’s lore with DNA refraction (which sounded ridiculous to me and everyone else watching but was still believable enough for the suspension of disbelief.).

While I started out wanting to create just a winged character with a backstory and a suit of armour, it eventually turned into wanting to create an entire narrative and alternate future which I named Windfall.

The name ‘Windfall’ is the name of the planet that is alternate Earth.

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douxreviews · 5 years

Text

Arrow - ‘Spartan’ Review

“I guess bad news wins this round.”

For once we have an episode where Daddy Issues abound and none of it involves Oliver.

In a show that focuses so intently on familial relationships particularly of the Daddy Issues variety, I was as surprised as Oliver to realize that Diggle had never mentioned his father let alone stepfather before this. It was more surprising to learn that the normally composed Diggle had grown up in such a resentment filled environment.

Diggle grew up believing that General Stewart, played by the estimable Ernie Hudson, was the coward who let his father die and then married the dead man’s wife. To add insult to injury, he then spent the rest of Diggle’s childhood trying to “toughen” both Diggle and Andy up. I may not have lived through survival training but as someone who had a literal Army Drill Instructor for a stepdad, I can attest to both the harshness and the rigidity that must have existed in the Diggle household.

That said, it’s a hard lesson to learn that one’s perspective and reality are not always the same thing. The General was not a monster. He was a man who tried to do right by the family he married into. And he cared so much that he was willing to be the villain so that John and Andy could believe their father was a hero instead of a soldier who made mistakes and got men killed.

Like the present day, the flash forwards revolved around Diggle’s family issues. After weeks of wondering what became of Diggle’s other son, we discover that J.J. has fallen far from the proverbial tree. Connor and J.J. grew up in a military household that put a premium on duty and service. In an act of rebellion, he became the leader of the Deathstroke Gang which, as rebellions go, is about as drastic as you could get. It also feels like history repeating itself. Andy and John reacted to the General in very different ways. John was determined to prove to him how an honorable soldier should behave, while it seems Andy mastered the fighting and survival skills with none of the morality to balance it out. One can only hope that J.J. escapes his uncle’s fate.

Even Emiko was not immune to the Daddy Issues bug. Dante may not have been a blood relation, but he obviously considered her family. And based on what we’ve seen, his love for her extended to grooming Emiko to take over the Ninth Circle. However, her unwillingness to sever ties with her old life appears to be a continual bone of contention between them. And his attempt to solve the problem backfired while simultaneously achieving his goal. Instead of giving Emiko clarity and purpose, her focus shifted to avenging her mother’s murder. Oliver’s Hail Mary to save Emiko gave her that opportunity. Vengeance achieved, Emiko now seems more committed to the Ninth Circle than ever. Too bad Dante won’t be around to see it.

The one possible exception to our Daddy Issues theme is Felicity. She wants a life outside of the vigilante shadows and she thought the Archer program would help her get there. Yet when her invention is stolen and used for nefarious purposes, she wonders if she has become her father. The answer is a resounding no since she was willing to destroy her creation then risk the possibility of it being used for evil. Just for the record, how does someone as intelligent as Felicity not realize how dangerous a program like Archer could be until after the Ninth Circle got their hands on it?

And on a side note. Just when I thought my distrust of Alena was misplaced, she proves me right. She may be well-intentioned but is there any doubt that Alena is responsible for Eden Corps/Galaxy One’s eventual possession of the Archer program?

Which brings us to whatever Galaxy One’s current plan is. Despite his ability to decimate the Canaries, I was a little shocked at how easily Galaxy One’s terminator was defeated in last week’s episode. Learning he was just one of hundreds brought the threat level back up to “Oh God, oh God, we’re all going to die!” parameters. Especially since there aren’t many Canaries left and Team Arrow is not what it once was. I imagine the newly hidden explosives will play a major role in Galaxy One’s ultimate demise but at what cost?

While it makes for great storytelling, every journey into the future is another reminder of Team Arrow’s failure to make Star City a better place. J.J. is a gang leader while Mia and Connor swap stories about their messed up childhoods. The Archer program has made The Glades a police state and Star City a dystopian horror show. It certainly lends credence to the Mayor’s argument that Oliver’s return to Star City made things worse and not better.

I know I’ve spent a lot of time on character rather than plot but I must admit I was particularly impressed with how tightly written this was. It succeeded in furthering the season-long arcs both in the present and future while focusing on the development of multiple characters in the context of a singular theme. It may not have been a perfect episode (I’ll always have nits to pick) but it is certainly one of the most well-crafted episodes Arrow has produced in a while.

4 out of 5 power units

Parting Thoughts:

Oliver and Emiko’s fight was particularly brutal. And either Stephen Amell has upped his hand to hand skills or he’s grown a lot less precious about his stunt double performing.

Dr. Will Magnus is straight out of the comics. And really is the world’s foremost authority on robotic engineering.

Deathstroke territory? Did Slade go bad again? Or was J.J. just trying to piss Dad and Uncle Oliver off?

Also, Mia talked about the awkwardness of Diggle family dinners in the present tense. Does that mean John and Lyla are still around?

Structurally, I understand why Rene and Oliver haven’t talked about Emiko but considering that she means the most to the two of them, it is surprising.

Does Oliver keep “Classified” folders just lying around?

Quotes:

Felicity: “Well, I’ve hacked enough government servers in my day to know that this is the Department of Defense. Not that I do that anymore, because I work with the SCPD.”

Stewart: “Now where are you? Working with the cops? Playing vigilante? That’s no career. That’s a dead end. No offense.”

Mia: “OK, Public Enemy Number One, sit tight.”

Virgil: “Pistol beats keyboard, Darling.”

Felicity: “You must be General Stewart, AKA the stepfather that John hasn’t told his closest friends about."

Connor: “Are you ever going to let me off the hook?” Mia: “Doubtful.”

Mia: “John Diggle has one son in Knightwatch and another who’s leader of the Deathstroke Gang. That must make family dinners interesting.”

Oliver: “I’d imagine his files are really, really classified.” Felicity: “'Really, really classified' sounds really, really fun. I’m on it.”

Stewart: “I wanted you to be prepared. And it paid off. Look at you now.” Diggle: “Really? We’re captured and probably going to die in here.”

Diggle: “Go to hell.” Dante: “Hold that thought.”

Stewart: “You all right, John?” Diggle: “Why did you give him the code?” Stewart: “A thank you would be good enough.”

Alena: “It’s like we’re tracking the DNA of a DNA tracker. This is so meta.”

Felicity: “Oh my God. Oh my God. I am my dad."

Connor: “I guess there are perks to having a gang leader black sheep brother.”

Stewart: “John” Diggle: “Yes, sir.” Stewart: “Call your mother.”

Shari loves sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, and anything with a cape.

#Arrow #Green Arrow #Oliver Queen #Felicity Smoak #John Diggle #Arrowverse #DC Comics #Arrow Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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