Monthly Archives: May 2025

May 7, 2025 · 5:15 am

I don’t hate the game but I don’t play it.

I picked up THE SAVAGE DYARIES: The Collected Doc Savage Essays of Dafydd Neal Dyar, Volume One, to read his article on the Doc Savage novel Land of Long Juju. I knew from a reference elsewhere that Dyar had discovered that it was originally set in Latin America, which explains things like African tribes who speak Mayan and shrink heads — Donovan changed the setting but not the details (so I’m sure the dreadful racism would have been equally dreadful in the original).

The essay didn’t provide any information why it got switched but I was still glad to read it. There are also other interesting stuff — a detailed discussion on the disappeared airship that inspired part of The Lost Oasis, speculation whether the Mayans giving Doc jade wouldn’t make more sense than gold and an article about what Pat Savage really thought about her cousin (it includes the interesting reveal that Dent would have had her running a detective firm before his editor pushed for a beauty salon). This stuff is definitely useful for writing Savage Adventures.

There are also a number of essays built around the premise that Doc is a real person whose exploits were fictionalized in Doc Savage. Two interviews with Doc in the style of Philip José Farmer. Doc revealing he deliberately influenced Warner Brothers to make the 1975 movie campy. Discussing the hypothetical backstory of Doc’s mother.

I have no objection to this approach (which Rick Lai’s chronology also uses) though it’s not the path I’m taking. In Savage Adventures I assume Doc is “real” in the world of the series but not our own; reading Dyar makes me realize the two approaches sometimes lead to different places.

Lai’s chronology, for instance, involves a lot of figuring out which real countries Doc was adventuring in during Dust of Death, Golden Peril and other stories. I can simply assume fictional countries such as Hidalgo and Santa Amoza exist in Doc’s secondary reality and not worry about it. Farmer has to explain how Doc can have offices on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building when it’s an observation deck; I can note the discrepancy and move on.

Or consider World’s Fair Goblin. Set at the New York World’s Fair, it came out the same month the fair opened. Obviously if it happened then, Lester Dent wouldn’t have had time to write it up, nor his editors to go over it, then get it on the stands. Farmer declares it’s a fiction Dent wrote to cash in on a big event; Lai suggests it took place before the official opening. I can assume it happened just as Dent wrote it.

That doesn’t mean their approach is wrong. It’s the same one Sherlockians have been using to write about Holmes for years, and it’s equally legitimate for other fictional characters. Reading Dyar just made me aware how the two paths end up in different places.

Covers by James Bama. All rights to images remain with current holders.

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May 6, 2025 · 5:15 am

March winds and April showers brings forth May covers

Don’t know the artist but I do like the cover.

A chaotic laboratory scene by William Timmins

I’m not sure what’s happening on this Robert Stanley cover but I like it.

And a Sex Sells cover by Charles Binger to wrap up.

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May 5, 2025 · 3:43 pm

The New York Times: opposition to fascism should be moderate and respectful

The mainstream media have taken a lot of deserved crap for their political coverage the past decade (case in point). Whether it’s the sense that it would be biased to say one party’s worse than the other, fear of Republican rage, a reflexive conservative bias (liberals are the girly side of politics so we have to be nice), or Republican branding, they give Republicans a free pass on stuff they’d pound a Democrat for.

Something Dems deserve to be criticized for is that many of them are still reluctant to fight, still terrified of looking too extreme in the face of fascism. The NYT, however, thinks the issue is Dems are too shrill (liberals are always too shrill in the eyes of mainstream pundits). Any attempt to challenge the Felon should start by admitting he’s the president and that some of what he’s done is legal (hilzoy points out that’s a low bar). And we definitely shouldn’t criticize him for conservative policies or say that anything he’s doing that’s legal is bad. He may even have some good ideas!

Nobody’s denying he’s won the election. It’s also completely irrelevant to the Felon shredding democracy, sending people to El Salvador without trial or due process, impounding funds, claiming a right to strip Harvard of its non-profit status and demanding punishment for anyone who ever said widdle baby Donny wasn’t the bestest widdle president in all of history. And even if the Felon and RFK Jr.’s work gutting healthcare is completely legal it’s very bad.

For a simple example even the NYT can grasp, saying he wants Canada annexed is, as far as I know, legal. It’s stupid politics and stupid diplomacy. As Shakezula says of the administration repeatedly crooning about how it cherishes Canada: “The White House’s Days Without Sounding Like a Serial Killer Who Keeps His Victims’ Molars tracker remains stuck at 0.”

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May 5, 2025 · 5:04 am

Undead sexist cliche: women must become breeders!

The desire to end feminism and shove women back into being stay-at-home moms has been around since the Reagan years. That’s when right-wingers began invoking the 1950s (or more precisely, a distorted fantasy of that decade) as the point of America’s perfection, before the fall from Eden of the 1960s. Men go out and work, women devote themselves to family and housekeeping, what could be more ideal?

That lots of women worked even in that decade, and that lots of women chose to ditch the 1950s sitcom-wife lifestyle (when job discrimination became illegal and no-fault divorce an option) — well, that was just some feminists using Jedi mind tricks! Patriarchy knows what women want! Allowing women to choose motherhood or not, based on personal preference, is just crazy talk.

Unsurprisingly the right wing is still obsessed with making women breed (I discussed WaPo’s profile of two of the “pronatalists” a while back). And this, in turn, justifies all there are other undead sexist cliches: women shouldn’t have careers because then they’d be at home, raising (white, conservative, Christian) babies. It should be perfectly acceptable for men to discriminate against women and advance other men at work! Etc., etc. And of course, they think birth control is bad and only sluts use it. And if a woman disagrees, discredit her by calling her ugly.

One of the reasons women are less enthused about having kids than men is they know they’ll do most of the child care. Men don’t have to see it as a major disruption in their careers; women do. Republicans want to maintain that dynamic because they’ve no interest in making life easier for women. So we have ideas such as giving medals for motherhood, $5,000 cash bonuses for kids and sex ed that teaches girls to track their menstrual cycle and make it easier to conceive (meanwhile, Indiana’s legislature removed any requirements to teach about consent in sex ed). Oh, and the Heritage Foundation, rather than worrying about teen pregnancy, is only worrying about unmarried teenage pregnancy. Which fits with the 1950s fetish: teens marrying and having babies was quite common back then. Did I mention Texas wants to ban birth control for teens? See also this.

The whole concept of undead sexist cliches is that misogyny and sexism’s view of women’s role never changes, only the rationales and the justifications for keeping women in a narrow, confining box.

For more on forced-birthers, check out Undead Sexist Cliches, available in ebook, in paperback, or you can order the paperback direct from me.

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May 4, 2025 · 5:32 am

Women who know, women who fight, women being watched: books

Nnedi Okorafor’s SHE WHO KNOWS is a short prequel to Who Fears Death? telling the backstory of one of the supporting characters. The protagonist is a woman from a salt-dealing culture, nudged by inexplicable impulses to push against her gender role; the results make her family and their community rich but inevitably brings trouble as well. Coming-of-age stories don’t work for me but Okorafor pulled this one off. I found the ending too abrupt, though; possibly it would have worked better if I’d read Who Fears Death more recently than 2011 (it’s also setting up for a V2).

My friend Ross bought me BOMBSHELLS: The Death of Illusion by Marguerite Bennett and multiple artist as a birthday present, so I’m finally back in Bennett’s alt.WW II where the superheroes are all women. In this collection everyone from Zatanna and Raven to Poison Ivy, Lois Lane and Supergirl is slowly drawn to the brutal siege of Leningrad, but can they help its people? And what about Hugo Strange and his mad plan to breed a super-race to take over from humanity? As always, a fun series with interesting takes on DC characters.

WE ARE WATCHING by Alison Gaylin has a recently widowed bookstore-owner increasingly unnerved by the way people seem to be watching her and her daughter, and chatting about them online. Still, her paranoid pothead father, an aging rocker, has to be imagining it when he claims they’re all the targets of a vast conspiracy that tried to kill him just like they did JFK — right?

He is not, of course, imagining it.

This is a thriller for the age of Qanon and Pizzagate (there’s a reference to characters searching for a secret room in the bookstore where the human sacrifices are carried out), a conspiracy born online and formed by connecting up dots that don’t exist, which is enough to drive people to kill or die for it. I don’t quite buy it could stay this tight and obsessive for two decades but it’s still an excellent book.

Covers by Ant Lucia and Marguerite Sauvage (bottom). All rights to images remain with current holders.

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May 3, 2025 · 5:19 am

Feed me, Seymour!

No movies last weekend, what with being at Ravencon and all, but the previous weekend TYG took me to Little Shop of Horrors by the local Playmakers theatre company. The tickets were a Christmas present, and the show proved well worth waiting for.

As you probably know, this was a 1980s musical inspired by Roger Corman’s low-budget SF comedy movie, Little Shop of Horrors, built around the time-honored concept of “what if a plant ate us instead of vice-versa?” The play, I think, is way better than the original film (the musical would, of course, return to the screen with Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene and Steve Martin among the cast).

Our protagonist Seymour, is an orphan raised and used as an indentured servant in Mushnik’s skid row flower shop. An idea TYG mocked — who goes to skid row to buy flowers? — and sure enough, Mushnik makes the same point early on. Things turn around when Seymour acquires the strange, exotic flower … but the only way to feed it is with human blood. Need I say things take a dark turn?

This was a well-done production, great-looking set and some amazing singers in the cast. Where the original show and movie were 1950s-set, this opted for the 1970s, arguing it’s a parallel for our current era (corrupt president, economy floundering, intense struggles over white male supremacy), not that that affects the show any. This gave it a different visual look from other versions but it did make most of the references in “Somewhere That’s Green” weirdly anachronistic (Leavittown! A “big 12-inch TV screen!”). That’s a minor flaw in an excellent production — even TYG liked it and she’s not a musical theater person. “Downtown, where the men are drips/Downtown, where they tear your slips!/Downtown, where relationships/are no-go!”

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May 2, 2025 · 4:39 pm

Raven(con) on the wing

(Title is hat tip to a British comic strip I read as a kid)

For the second year in a row, I attended Ravencon in Virginia Crossing near Richmond. It’s a lovely place to hang out.

The programming schedule was perfect: enough time between my panels to browse the dealer’s room or go back to my room and crash (with four pets, I’m almost never completely alone these days). I ran into a couple of friends (Wayland Smith, Lisa Hodorovych), talked to a few writers I hadn’t met. The only drawback? I didn’t get an author table so I didn’t have a chance to push my books. Despite which I sold two — one two a guy who’d bought one last year and liked it, one to a dude who liked the cover of Undead Sexist Cliches.

I was supposed to follow that up with Atomacon in North Charleston, SC, this weekend. However lugging my suitcase full of books (just in case …) and a stuffed backpack around Ravencon kicked my bursitis into high gear (the old “doesn’t feel too bad, I can lift more stuff” error). I decided the four hour drive to Atomacon, followed by more lifting stuff — I did have a table reserved — was a bad idea.

That was disappointing — I like selling books and I was one of only two panelists on a couple of panels (so it’d be a pain if I wasn’t there). I looked into flying, thought it would be affordable (probably not practical for my bottom line, but still) and it was … but by the time I’d checked the time-frame with TYG, it was $300 more and that’s with the return flight getting in close to midnight Sunday. I contacted Atomacon who were wonderfully good sports, and said they’d credit my table fee to next year.

(Cosplaying Holy Grail‘s Killer Rabbit)

I haven’t once second-guessed myself so it was definitely the right movie. And my shoulder, while improved, is still sore enough I know how much it would have hurt Monday if I’d gone.

That did give me a full week to work, which was good. I spent a lot of it research reading: The World War II Combat Film by Jeanine Basinger (that took a while. It’s a very dense book) and The Savage Dyaries by Dafydd Neal Dyar (reviews to follow). I got some work done on Let No Man Put Asunder and three movies watched for Jekyll and Hyde.

Oh, and my short story Bleeding Blue sold to Stonecoast Literary Review, my first sale in a while! Me, a literary person, imagine that!

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May 2, 2025 · 5:12 am

My two girls

“Is it time for fun?”

While Wisp sleeps with her purple-cat toy.

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May 1, 2025 · 5:15 am

Decadence is not what we think

The idea that “good times make weak men” goes back a long ways. Our Founding Fathers worried about it, comparing the hardy farmer and frontiersmen with the decadent aristocrats of Europe. Ancient Romans worried they were losing their mojo long before the Empire fell. The classic view is like this John Buscema clip from the Silver Surfer’s origin (from the Stan Lee-written Silver Surfer #1).

Zenn-La has become soft, comfortable, and is incapable of fighting back when Galactus attacks; it takes Norrin Rad, the last real man, to confront Galactus and save his world, at the price of becoming the Silver Surfer.

Thus we had some pundits taking the view the Clinton years — good economy, no external enemies — were a dystopian hellhole. What place is there for American heroism and courage if everyone is happy? How can Americans become great if they aren’t forced to sacrifice (“they” being a pronoun that invariably excludes whoever’s making this argument)? We should celebrate the courage of the Donner Party eating each other rather than build a world where cannibalism is unnecessary and sacrifices mean more than a way to survive.

I think, therefore, that the online conversation below captures the true decadence and softness of our times.

This is true in many ways. The religious right’s enthusiasm for ending the First Amendment is partly a lust for power — get control of the government and they can be the one true church! — but it’s also people who can’t imagine how bad religious violence gets (even though it’s not gone away in our own time). The Founders knew, which is why they kept religion out of the government, to evangelize America in competition with each other but without government support.

I think there’s also a delusion that they’re fighting decadence and erasing softness, toughening us up. That they believe, in the words of John Stuart Mill (who was criticizing this view) “that savage life is preferable to civilized; that the work of civilization should as far as possible be undone.” As Dare Obansajo says, it’s the logic by which Pol Pot and Mao forced people to leave the cities and labor in the fields. Not our leaders themselves of course: they’re tough guys (usually guys) who fought their way to the top. They’re superior. It’s everyone else who needs toughening up.

If the world’s going to come crashing to an end, so much the better: they’ll survive because they’re the ubermenschen, the superior individuals. Not simply because they’ve made a lot more money. We’ll either join the Donner Party in death or become better people. We should thank them!

No, we shouldn’t.

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