Science fiction is more than a Spock costume

I may have blogged about science fiction before, but that was before I used labels. If it is not labelled and therefore not searchable, it lives in a rarely visited hovel with car phones and beanie babies (though these are making a comeback). And this is not another discussion of how interest in science fiction, comics and musicals waxes during years of social turmoil, because, like, duh. When bankers are jumping from buildings and Kanye still thinks he's god, who doesn't want to imagine they are a suave superhero in a cape rescuing screaming (always screaming) women. Or something.

No, no, the Point of this blog post is that I like dystopian and post-apocalyptic fiction, as well as a difficult one to define: fiction about the city - not just set in it or a travel guide or a map, but wherein the amorphous spirit of the city is a character - and this is mostly labelled science fiction so that it doesn't have to live in the same hovel that Kanye (who?) will one day inhabit.

The genres of science fiction and fantasy do not have fans, they have cults. Compare the fans of Legally Blonde with those of Star Trek. Unless things have changed in the last 6,5 minutes since I checked my RSS feed, blondes whose peroxide has burnt its brand logo in their brains and who trip over crucial evidence in a trial and claim to represent women's lib, do not host massive conventions that even the producers of Legally Blonde and Twilight now attend.

I am not a cult fan. Of anything much, including life. (Nor am I blonde, nor do I scream (I tried once and all I got was a scraping caw) and the fool who tries to rescue me will get a weapon from my weapons belt lodged in his eye socket.) Except books. I will go to the grave insisting that The People's Act of Love (yes, that book, and shut it) is the best book written in the last two centuries and I would proudly host a convention in the topic, although I wouldn't dress up as one of the characters because they sound smelly.

Woman on the Edge of Time was a surprisingly powerful novel - surprisingly because I had never heard of it before a friend recommended it. (I could go on a rant about how literary literature written by women (nevermind anything that has a socialist flavour) and science fiction are herded into their own hovels. But I won't.) It is about a woman whose one alter ego is in a psychiatric hospital (the kind where they throw away the key) and the other finds herself in an utopia of the future.

This sounds like a Bruce Willis movie, which isn't a bad thing because 12 Monkeys is still sitting with me and I enjoyed Looper. Now here is a more appropriate place for aforementioned rant. The novel has distinct feminist and socialist flavours. It was written in the 70s, when the world (read America) was more idealistic in that it believed that the ideal could be won if you fought for it. (Now their children are doing the same; search Anonymous + hackers and OccupyChicago/SanFrancisco etc.)

How does that make you feel? Are you less or more likely to read the novel than when I initially recommended? Why? I'll admit that if I had known, I would have hesitated to pick it up now. It sounds... heavy, I would have said. I being the person with Ulysses, a book that is undecipherable according to those in the know i.e. who have finished it, on my dresser and Murakami's 1Q84 on the bookshelf. I being the person who reveres The Road as cruel, beautiful and illuminating.

This was not what I had intended to blog about. I was going to follow up with The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. But this is another heavy novel, full of feminism and socialism and human rights, and I am too tired to lift it, so I guess you're too tired to read it. If you're still there. You might be reading through the troves of articles about Anonymous - now there's a real life story designed to extract the idealist in you. (Ask Kanye to sort it out.)

I do like the list of things I like above. I enjoy novels that pick me up out of my comfort zone so that I can view the world around me, without feeling like none of this chaos can be contained or sanitised. These novels outline my own ideals, so that I can scratch up the edges in the real world. So I guess I have tricked myself and returned to the original tired premise. It's tired in part because of the labels we have stuck on it. Science fiction is more than a Spock costume. That is the type of fiction I like.

The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog: Part 1 of 1

I promised. I offered up a handful of things I don't really want. Including My Point. My Point is like the law prohibiting jay-walking: it is a good idea but who really abides by it? Apparently there's a municipality nearby that is concerned about drunken people running across the highway. There are bridges, but I mean really, don't we all think we are invincible as squint at our shoes and concentrate on slowing the world around us down? We can't even sound out jay-walking then.

Granted I am still squinting at my shoes willing them to move while the rest of y'll impersonate Usain Bolt. Which still means you only have a one in four chance of making it.

However, now I am living up my to promise, which means I get to keep him. My Point. And all the rest of the things I don't really want. You can keep them if you want? I will hold on to the permanent marker though. When I am next incapacitated, maybe I can ink the world down. You gave that up too easily. What's your game? Or do you not care? Oh, you already have one? Both a point and a marker? A guinea pig?

My promise was to keep you updated about my reading of The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. (It's not exactly Reuter's story of the day, but I have promised you many other things, and none of them were any more enthralling.) I finished the book this morning. Approximately morning. Midday.

It is shorter than Mara and Dann, despite the lengthy title (try saying it as you're drawing wings on your shoes; question: if you are flying in the direction that the world is spinning, will it appear to stay still?) and its subject. The novel is concerned with history and the discipline of History. Rather, the protagonist is concerned - agitated - and incapacitated by the idea that records of the past have been lost.

In the prequel, Mara was the one concerned with the past. Now Dann has left her at 'the Farm' with her husband and is following the fractal perimetre of the coast as if he is looking for something he hasn't left behind. Maybe the search itself, the agitation, attaches to this concern of his sister's; maybe it is the proximity to the ice mountains that are 'Yerrup'.

I understand the anxiety: of not being able to hold... well, the world in my head. Of not recording every moment, as if the importance of the moment is in its living longer. Of not understanding why an ancestor has made something or done something. Of needing to understand because knowledge is an anchor - a resurrection of truth. Unlike Dann, I recognise that you can't create if you concern yourself with keeping the past alive. If you can't create, you weaken. If you can, you go to war over what is left.

Luckily we have Google so we can just sit back and let them run things. This reminds me of a book I once read, of a dystopia created by well-meaning politicians. Granted, I trust techies more than politicians.

Not to be flip, but being flip, Dann steals something else from his sister: crying at the drop of a hat. Or the shedding of dog hair. At first, these fits seem like a strength, of being able to recognise his traumas. But, as one character puts it, every refugee in the streams of refugees has suffered, but they route when given common cause and safety. Dann... needs a bib. Ok, that was flip. I am reluctant to replace this Dann with the Dann of the first book, however selfish and arrogant.

I can't decide whether the two books are similar or different. Is anything substantially new introduced? Does the second develop or resolve the themes of the first? Are the landscapes indicators of change or is the plot consistent despite their variations? Are the characters consistent or are the differences part of something else - the development of the themes, plots, pacing - or am I reading too much into what is just an happenstance of writing a sequel?

Mara and Dann is a few hundred pages short of an epic, but that's it. The siblings travel Ifrika, becoming exiles, refugees, soldiers, servants and royalty. Mara learns and analyses, inculcating her brother in her theories. Dann's knowledge (which he shares with Mara, more usefully) is that of survival. No matter how despondent the characters are, the reader always has the sense that knowledge is around the corner. Because this is an epic and this is how epics end. If seen on a movie screen.

 The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog feels like an exposition of just one scene from the prequel, even though it takes place mainly in two settings and only one of the main characters is the same. It is Mara and Dann concentrated but also expanded. Like orange juice, if the concentrated stuff were half as good. Dann still doesn't have the same power of analysis as his sister and sometimes seems to give up his knowledge of survival, but he has a new power over people.

And there is part of the answer to our conundrum. (Remember the one about history and recording the present while living it. Remember?) ('Part of' because first prize would be actually having all the records that were destroyed, but that's a bit like drawing wings on your shoes and expecting the world to stop.)

Why are you still staring at me like that? I'm not SparkNotes; that's as far as I walk with you. Or run. That highway there? Ok, you first. I need to squint at my shoes.

Meet... My Point

I debated whether to introduce you to our mascot. This blog is devoted to serious literature and serious discussion (ok, monologues, you). And posting a meme is the greatest error a serious blog can make. Aside from using those two words side-by-side.

But the cuteness of a guinea pig (already my definition of cuteness - they look like moving furballs) with a baseball hat on, like a 'gangsta', overrules all dispute.

Alternative names: The Point, You
Habitat: The end of the third paragragraph and the very last paragraph.
Appearance: Despite his appearance as a bundle of fur animated by a crew of bacteria or circus fleas (missed me!), he is a rodent. Don't prejudice him for that! Use your forefinger to life the fur overhanging his eyes and there they are! All the better for sneaking, misdirecting and pointing.
Behaviour: Reference in the second paragraph spurs on his entrance, like a circus animal. Ow! Sneaks a red herring in in the last sentence of third paragraph or attacks in his own one-/two-sentence paragraph after the second. Sometimes wears a disguise. Permanently resides in the very last paragraph, denying the conventions of his industry, where the point is usually caged (snort with disgust now) in the very first sentence and paragraph, for SEO reasons.
Description: Has integrity, enjoys a good prank and is cute as heck. Oh, and gangsta.

Parts 2 & 3: Reading Mara and Dann

Dear Reader, I cheated you. This spiderweb's thread of trust that twangs between us? I danced on it. Stomp-style, not Swan Lake. Oh, that's called taking the high ground by jumping up and down on a thread in the middle of a sandstorm? Ok, then that's how I cheated you.

It's a metaphor.

No, I can't really dance on a spiderweb thread.

See, we have an arrangement between us: I post and you read. Sometimes I post and you read a year later because it popped up in a web search and you thought, lookee, another angsty literature major/writer/editor/publisher/nihilist who has taken the option of publishing her opinions without being peer reviewed.

If you could read before I could post, would we be using quantum computers? Or would you be like Kevin Spacey in that movie called Sum'in' Sum'in'? Or Bruce Willis in 12 Monkeys?

The pet guinea pig called My Point has nudged us home. While reading Mara and Dann, I wrote multiple posts. In my head. Yes, on the inside of my skull in smelly permanent market. Despite this, I can't recall a single one. Not so permanent, or so permanent they have sunk into the fleshy folds of my brain.

I finished Dann and Mara at least a week ago. Since then I have been restless. What now? The conclusion is double-edged: will we leave the characters in stasis or do we choose to hear a matching restlessness in the tone of Dann's voice? Also, what do I read next? I could choose Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, but I don't want to pollute either with proximity to the other.

I paced along my bookshelf, read a set of satirical essays, paced some more, eyed Ulysses again (now that would exorcise Lessing's dusty, starving refugees from my brain) and, without looking directly at it, pulled The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog ('General Dann' at least five times the rest of the type).

As I crawled into bed (lots of pillows to arrange in just the right geometric puzzle, y'know), I thought perhaps I had picked up the wrong one - the spines of a couple of other books look the same: dusted, with one or two purposeful figures, long titles. I was relieved. I would read whatever else it was because it wanted me to. (Self-justification is a wonderland of talking creatures and bullying objects. It's where the tooth fairy comes from.)

You know what happened, because you too come from this magical land. Or you are versed in the conventions of different types of text in different media. Or you just know I like to string you along, while really wanting to tell you my point. (Even reading is its own story.)

The average-sized, average-weight paperback with the sandblasted spine was The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. (While the cover of Mara and Dann is a classic Vintage design, with bars of gold and black, and one simple dominating image. The card stock is lighter, I think, but feels luxurious. The paper too: thinner but silky. A reader knows this is Literature of Some Weight (excuse the pun)).

Now, I was in my own sandstorm (you can replace 'sand' with an appropriate word), partly of my own making. But, and tell me if I'm alone here (knock once on your computer screen for 'yes'), deep in the recesses of my brain, next to the other posts I 'wrote', I believe everything is my fault. War, poverty, spilt ice cream. So, in my mind (but not in reality, because the upper echelons of my brain are rational), it is up to me to fix everything. Because clearly I am the only grown-up in sight. (That's 10-year-old me talking.)

At first the book was a paperweight I used to exercise my fingers and thumb. (A Kindle switches off after five minutes, which is an annoying reminder you aren't reading. Amazon can do many things, but not fix that.) Then I started to read because no one puts me in a corner, and gorged on images of war, poverty... and a puppy.

In Mara and Dann, the relationship between brother and sister is a powerful counter to the sandstorms of war and poverty around them. For me, it is the most important theme (but not the only - that would be dull) in the novel. This is up for some interesting debate, when you finish the book. The snow dog is that for me in the second novel (so far. If anything happens to that dog, I will find a portal of crazy into that world and maim the person who did it. And I don't have much (real...) experience in maiming, so it could get ugly).

Ms Doris Lessing's experiments in dystopian (is it postapocalyptic if you don't know what happened and whether everyone really did die and aren't holed up somewhere in Asia? And when an entire continent survived...?) landscape are dark but solidly knitted together. They accept the stupidities of human nature but offer some hope in the individual who is tried and found... to be a survivor. (This is a flash-summary (except, like, expanded) of what the posts stinking up my inner brain would have looked like.)

These books remind me that the world is, war and poverty aside, mostly a sandstorm (for many of us, at least). But that the world is also something to explore. If you are curious, you will experience many things, not always pleasant, but the trick is to maintain your distance, be an individual and be curious.

More to come. No, really this time. I vow on the twanging spiderweb thread. And my pillows and permanent marker. Ok and the guinea pig.

Part I: Reading Mara and Dann

Last visit I told you about Doris Lessing and my profound encounter with her early feminist novel, The Golden Notebook. I also confided about my guilt - it's not confidential any more, is it - nothing's confidential on the internet - unless you're an NSA hacker who can hack into iPhones. Then I guess you know how to keep the lesser (Google) hackers out. Nah, Google'd just use a hybridised Gmaps to find it. And so begin the Cyber Wars. Bring it. Just wait for me to find a techie minion with something to prove.

I have a foolproof (and I mean 'fool') strategy: Say nothing, write nothing, but hear and see everything. The middle one being problematic. Do as I say, not as I do, friend!

I was fretting about how to tie my conspiracy rant (is it a conspiracy if it's true? Let's ask Wikileaks) and the sidelined subject of this post: Mara and Dann. Then I told you what to do (like in an autocrat and that's exactly what this - my blog is an autocracy, paeon - friend) and if I had an advisor (where do I get one? For free?) she would have said, "the What Did You See game! In that game, say what you can afford to, write nothing, see and hear everything."

Mara and Dann is set on a continent named Ifrika (ingenious, that) in an unspecified and difficult to decipher time. The sister and brother are born and grow up in the middle of southern 'Ifrika'. A drought is spreading from the south out, pushing columns of refugees north before it. In these columns, the only prejudice is against people who have more than others: water or food. And there is often little to stop the stronger taking what they want from the weaker.

The size of the animals is bizarrely exaggerated: water dragons and stingers about the size of dogs lurk in and around water holes, picking off the weakening animals - and people. The former is usually found on Darwin's islands and the latter is a mutant scorpion.

These scenes, in pencil on tracing paper, are laid over the southern Africa in which I live and have travelled through. I know this feeling because often I feel like a foreigner in my streets, cities, country, region and continent. I suspect this is intentional (although who can ever pin down the intentions of an author - Future Author Me plans to contradict everything anyone says - it's boring to repeat "The answer is in however you see it." Yes, well, you're not dead and the book exists in black and white, not as a hologram, so say something, dammit!) to mimic the characters' confusion and sense of displacement.

But I (the reader) have my own reservations (always!) about viewing the foreign, too. About pasting (not glue, obviously, but ctrl + v) pictures of the smiling and obsequious people you meet next to photos of oblivious animals. (Oblivious unless you smell like a fleshy meal or have a gun in one hand.) When you meet someone foreign to yourself, you catalogue their differences, right? And, be honest here, you perceive these differences as wrong or inexplicable, friend. Even ridiculous.

In Mara and Dann, these differences are mostly threatening - remember: food and water, pursuit by mutant animals, racial difference. Is this not how war curdles, whether offensive or defensive? (Ok, usually not with mutant animals.) (War, a truly ridiculous custom.) This war is not addressed in the first half of the book, but it is there traced over people's interactions, particularly in Mara's answers to the What Did You See game. (This is not your monotonous I Spy - this is how 'Mahondi' children are taught to reason.) She senses destruction, knowledge and cunning, where others see a kopje or prison.

Although, as a reader primed to read the signs, all this and more seems obvious.

Knowing what we do about the psychology of the strong confronted by the weakened (and the nature of stories), that the North is a pipedream or unreachable seems obvious. But then, I don't like (nor do I believe in, but that's another story) happy endings. So I'm betting on the sure thing: war. (FYI I think war is ridiculous, but I would also like to see a return on my money. You know, if you're interested, I know someone ...) But I think Mara already knows. I think that because of what she did see, she knows what she will see.

PS. I am halfway through the book. There is so much more to say, so I am concentrating on the political issues, as a base in her oeuvre. Also, because I want to and I am autocrat here. Though I am still thinking of a fitting designation: Queen - too haughty; Tsar - too haunted; Prime Minister - so boring ...