Try this recipe for a Brazilian Avocado Shake

A Brazilian friend of mine introduced me to the idea of the avocado milkshake, which is a great summertime food in his country.

Blend at high speed the following ingredients:

• 1 Avocado
• Milk, 3 cups
• Ice, 1 cup
• Sugar or Sweetener, 6 tsp.
  

If you'd like to kick it up a notch, just melt some semisweet chocolate and dilute it slightly with milk, and then drizzle it on top!

Robert Novak dies; Simon Belmont and Abraham van Helsing wanted for questioning

Robert Novak died today, which I refuse to believe until I see the stake through his heart.

The Dick Cheney of the pundit class, as we know, played a big role in the outing of Valerie Plame, the sleaziest hit operation of the sleazy Bush years. Further, Novakula debased the role of political commentary for liberal and conservative alike with his insider status and beltway chumminess, and played a large role in the transformation of the political journalist into employee of political parties.

Boy, I hate looking at Novakula's mug. The best way to get it out of your head, you ask? Why, yes, I do happen to have some pictures of international vixen Melissa Ford on hand for this very purpose!

Julian Perez Goes to the Movies: District 9

The entire audience I saw District 9 with removed our jaws from the floor. What an extraordinary, thoughtful science fiction picture. I would say it's the best science fiction film since Blade Runner.

The thing that is so extraordinary about District 9 is that it is not predictable, and you can't predict where it is going, and your feelings about characters change from moment to moment.

Take for instance, the introduction, where we hear about the arrival of the "prawn" aliens to Johannesburg. The aliens are physically revolting, malnourished, believed to carry disease. They are (with respect to Victor Hugo) Les Miserables. There's a point at which pity transforms into disgust, particularly when we see the aliens start riots in JHB, eat cat food (a delicacy to them), and root through peoples' trash. I started to be as physically revolted as the people of Johannesburg, who want the aliens far, far from them. I started to mentally imagine what it would be like if one of these prawn creatures moved next door to me, and I will say, I was revolted.

People are tired of the proximity of District 9, the walled off alien slum, and it's easy to understand why...it helps at a visceral level, these things are just plain gross: they are deliberately designed to be distasteful to be around, a combination of an insect and a shrimp. The movie does a good enough job that despite our liberal, humanitarian instincts we see pictures like the above picture with suspicion and as near laughable examples of useless idealism that doesn't solve real problems. I suppose that must be how racists and reactionaries see "multicultural" and "can't we just get along" types...a very disturbing comparison the movie doesn't let us forget.


We are then introduced to our hero, a white South African that works with the mercenary and arms dealing corporation (MNU) that is working to evict the aliens from JHB into another slum, District 10, 200 miles away. Van de Merve is an over-eager, perky and loathesome desk jobber you instantly hate: he got his job because he's married to the boss's daughter. While we have no love for the prawns at this point, he comes off as infuriating and patronizing, "talking down" to the aliens, and exploitatively getting them to sign the Eviction notices that would make MNU's mercenary transplantation to District 10 "legal."

I should mention at this point that this review has some spoilers, but it's necessary to do so for descriptive purposes that others can understand exactly why I was so impressed with this movie.



We also learn that part of the reason that the MNU has such an interest in District 9 is because of the alien weaponry, which they want to exploit as it is both high-tech and unusable to humans. Apparently the reason that the aliens don't often use the weapons to protect themselves is because (and this is barely touched on but important) it is speculated the majority of the aliens are members of a "worker-class" that are lost without a leadership, which may explain their malaise. While raiding the slum den of a particularly intelligent-looking mantis (named by the humans "Christopher Johnson") and his young son, van de Merve is exposed to a strange alien liquid which Christopher Johnson had been collecting for over 20 years in the trash and landfills that make up the area.

Van de Merwe starts to transform into a prawn, and because of his transformation it is noted he can use alien weaponry. Being the truly greedy corporation that they are, the MNU immediately sets to work on killing van de Merwe, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Van de Merwe escapes, and hides in District 9.

All the while, you're thinking, "ha ha, van de Merwe, you sure got yours, didn't you? Somehow the fact you're 'punished' like this is poetic justice."

That feeling instantly changes when the friendless van de Merwe, rejected by his wife, comes to District 9 and hides in a slum shack with a rotting cardboard box as a cover. Suddenly your feelings turn from distaste to pity, and this is not the last time the movie makes us change our mind about characters. There's more to come, of course.

Van de Merwe hides out in the very shack of Christopher Johnson, who immediately understands why the human is changing: he was exposed to the chemical, which Christopher needs to return his race home.

What was effective about this film was how utterly it reverses our earlier view of the "prawns" as monsters with the character of Christopher Johnson. Sensitive, intellectual, and with a young son that wants to go home, he emerges as the most sympathetic character in the film. It was amazing to see this happen, because instead of the Prawns being monsters, surprise! They're people like us, with a family.


One of the great dangers of adventure movies is, it's possible to fixate so totally on action and adventure stunts, that you forget that part of what makes them work is not the hero being in peril, but the fact that we like the hero so much that we actually care whether or not he lives or dies. It is this sense of something being at stake that makes our hero's peril truly alarming and involving.

My blog's regular reader and commenter, David Morefield, once did a routine on why Errol Flynn's movies were so fantastic, and as evidence, he points to his dramatic fight sequences, skillfully done by a great athlete and choreographer. Now, I do agree that Flynn's fight in the Sea Hawk is dramatic, but all the great choreography and fencing skill in the world won't matter if we don't actually care enough about the hero that we feel there's something at stake if he loses.


In Errol Flynn's defense, he usually played his characters with enough likeability and his great personal charisma and style that we did indeed care what happened to his character. But that's the trouble with a lot of action-adventure movies: so much is focused on delivering great exciting stunt pieces and fight scenes that it is sometimes easy to confuse their entertaining flash and style with what really makes them exciting: the sensation of experiencing real emotions when the hero is in peril and the relief of knowing whether he will survive.

Despite the fact Raiders of the Lost Ark had the most exciting scenes ever captured on film, none of it would have mattered if we didn't have an emotional investment in the likeable and unique character of Dr. Henry Jones, Jr., because otherwise we'd just be looking at the pictures instead of involved.


What makes District 9 extraordinary is, it isn't an escapist film, so there isn't the guarantee that our characters will survive or that there will even be a happy ending, which heightened every emotion. This is what, at times, makes "dark" movies so much more emotionally challenging in a way "light, escapist" movies aren't: because the outcome is necessarily in doubt, we the reader are that much more involved in seeing our hero win. When I started watching District 9, I had a feeling that it was the sort of movie that wouldn't have a happy ending, so for that reason I was very anxious and totally interested.

I am a big fan of adventure stories, superhero comics, and yes, even dramatic battle sequences, which sounds very much at odds with my insistence on believeable characters, realism, and the necessity of a sense of peril. But I don't see it that way at all. If anything, it is even more important for genre action and adventure films to do this. People throw around talk of "believeable" characters all the time but often forget why it is so important to have them: if we don't like them and believe in them, we don't care what happens, and consequently the movie is less engrossing.

I apologize for going on that tangent, but I think it was a spectacular element of District 9: we actually cared about the characters and there was a very real sense of peril. The story gave us stakes, and made us emotionally invested. I cared about what happened to Christopher Johnson, and when it looked like he might die (a real possibility at many points) I was literally at the edge of my seat cheering he'd make it through, and when I say "cheering" I mean it quite literally...and I wasn't alone.

First, we see Christopher Johnson's son looking at a globe of their home planet, and wondering wistfully what it must be like there. The little guy is cute, and we like him right away: when he sees van der Merve and his alien arm, he sets it side by side with his own and says, "we're the same!" When the chemical is taken and it looks like the aliens won't go home, the Dad is crushed to tell his son they won't see their home planet again, and rather, they point to one tent in the District 10 brochure and say, "if we're lucky, that one may be ours."

Your heart breaks. Suddenly the matter of getting the aliens off the earth becomes a matter of real desperation.

The goals of the heroes converge, as on the ship, Christopher Johnson can make van de Werke fully human again, so he can see his wife. Stealing some alien weapons, the pair go after the chemical.

Now, this is one thing I love about this movie: despite the fact it has an action sequence, there's a reason the action scene takes place and we the reader care about the outcome. That's a problem with a lot of movies that gratuitously use action scenes. I never understood why the chase scene with the Bat-Tank wasn't cut from Batman Begins, since all Batman needed to do was to have some antidote on his person to give to Rachel; the whole scene was gratuitous. Likewise, in the 2008 Hulk, it was never entirely clear to me exactly why the Hulk and the Abomination were exactly fighting about. This is what I mean when I say there is no distinction between being a fan of adventure and action and insisting on traditional storytelling values like characterization. In this film, we know exactly why Christopher Johnson and van der Merve are attacking MNU research offices.



As soon as the two return to District 9, they are immediately hunted by MNU's mercenaries. Suddenly our feeling changes on the human characters. The MNU becomes villainous, but an entirely human kind of villainy: they're dirty, ruthless men of the kind entirely believably capable of violence, who enjoy their jobs "killing prawns" sadistically, and who in general are greedy brutes capable of violence. Likewise, we also learn that Nigerian gangsters are also in District 9, brutally exploiting the prawns. They are evil in all-too-human and tragic way: the superstitious belief that if they eat prawn body parts they get their spirit inside them and get their powers. You really, really get involved in the film and boo and hiss the baddies. You feel like shouting at the Nigerian gangster, "you stupid, stupid superstitious brute, it doesn't work that way! Nothing will happen if you eat van der Merwe's body!"


This was another part of the film I liked: the way it makes humans into the heavies for tragically all-too-human reasons: greed, bloodlust and superstition. I really, really dislike movies featuring alien invasions, because they're all about our fear of the Other, or People Not Like Us. It at times frustrating to find people that dislike things like pure politics in their escapism, as in "I don't think we should trouble ourselves about seeing political and other issues in movies, I go to them for escapism."

This attitude frustrates me because, like I've said before, built in assumptions and attitudes ("politics") are a part of fiction, even escapist fiction, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Like I said, alien invasion films, even escapist ones, are based on an anxiety that I don't think come from admirable instincts.

What's even more extraordinary is, District 9 first presented the prawns to us as disgusting bottom-feeders, and then so totally reverses our expectations and gets us to root for them over the human race. If the aliens had been presented as likeable first (and perhaps something cute or cuddly), it wouldn't have been as thoughtful a film and invite us to challenge our assumptions.


When van de Merwe learns that Christopher Johnson can't come back for three years to cure him after he activates the ship, the naturally panics and steals the ship's command module, all with Christopher's son inside. Van de Merwe lies to his son, and tells him his father will soon be coming while he takes the ship. This was an interesting reversal, because we had just gotten accustomed to liking the previously jerky van de Merwe. When he steals the command ship, Christopher Johnson is captured by mercenaries, and van der Merwe gets the command ship - the very thing necessary to the aliens to return home, is shot down by his actions. It is quite literally the darkest part of the film.

If I could digress from the summary one final time, I find it interesting, very interesting, that the alien technology, while advanced, is still vulnerable to human weaponry. The command ship is downed by artillery, for instance, which makes us very anxious.

(On a related note, I find it a great tribute to reality that in a floating city, there is ground-to-air artillery and even attack aircraft. If there wasn't, it would reaaaaally strain disbelief.)

Finally, in the darkest moment, when Christopher is about to die, van de Merwe runs away from the dangerous mercenaries with gunfire. This is a totally realistic thing to do for a pencil-pusher desk jockey like van de Merwe. But to everyone's surprise, he returns to save Christopher and his son, along with the aliens' dream to return home.

This was really the high point of the film, because up until then, while we didn't dislike van de Merwe after we were filled with pity for him, nonetheless he was driven by entirely sympathetic but ultimately selfish motives, the desire to become human and see his wife again, and nonetheless had trouble acknowledging the prawn as "human." When he goes back, we see the character as totally different: someone that changed from the start of the story to the end, and ultimately became a "bigger" person. It was very impressive.

I won't say how the film ends, but the thing I liked about the ending was that it had a degree of ambiguity. In fact, the ambiguity is a little maddening for the same reason feelings of suspense or mystery are maddening. I stayed in my chair like my booty had superglue and watched the credits hoping for more.

Like I said, District 9 is one of the best science fiction movies of the past thirty years. I'd even put it in company of movies like Blade Runner. Perhaps the best advocacy I can give for this movie is that, here I am at home after catching a showing with some friends, and not only did we talk about the movie all the way back home, here I am at four in the morning on a Friday night, polishing off a blog entry about it the very night I saw it.

I know how silly it can be to try to give yourself a catch phrase, but I'd like to close this movie review, and all my future reviews, with a statement that I think is not only apt for this particular movie but summarizes my feelings toward all stories, novels, comics and the like, especially in the when we're encouraged to 'enjoy' something as "mindless fun:"

Never, ever, ever turn your brain off.

Julian Perez Conquers the Kitchen

I wanted to write a few of my thoughts on cooking a while back, and it occurred to me that I really didn't have much in the way of concrete recipes, but more like a list of a few essential things to keep around the kitchen for sudden improvisation. The one thing I always loved about Italian food was the sense of spontaneity.

That's one thing that always bugged me about the introduction most people have to Italian cooking, the books by Marcella Hazan. Hazan is to Italian food what Julia Child is French cooking, and everyone's read her Marcella's Italian Kitchen. The thing with Marcella is, she brings the kind of precision of French cooking over to Italian. Not that I have anything bad to say about French cooking, but rather, there's a certain kind of exactness about her work that bugs me.

Let me give you an example: she has a recipe for risotto which involves a very specific vintage of Italian wine. Marcella wrote the following statement: "You can use an inferior wine, of course, and you might create a great risotto. It will not, however, be this risotto."

See what I mean? Now, thank goodness for me I live in a larger city, so I was able to find the vintage just fine. The wine she gave as totally necessary for this recipe cost well over $50 per bottle. I couldn't believe it. Now, I've had some recipes that call for pretty specific liquors in my time...one wonderful recipe for leg of lamb requires a basting in dried fruit, mint leaves, pomegranite juice and an Iraqi liquor named Arak, which I finally found after going to six Asian groceries...but shelling out fifty bucks for a wine? Now that's just crazy.

Also, Marcella Hazan popularized balsamic vinegar in the United States, to which I owe her a hearty 'fuck you' as it is now the single most overused condiment ever.

Salads, though, are the ultimate improvisational food. It's really hard to mess it up, and it encourages you to keep fresh veggies around.

A few things to always have with you if you're a salad lover:

• Dark Greens. I'm talking about arugula, romaine, and (especially) spinach. The darker the green, the better it is for you and the less chance it has of being invisible a taste in the salad. Let me tell you a dark greens story: I remember being in the cafeteria at the New York Museum of Natural History, when another goofy tourist that I rightly sized up as being either an Iowegian or Ohiowegian, asked them to take back the arugula and romaine salad because the greens had "gone dark and wilty."
  
• Dried Cranberries. I've found them to be much, much better than raisins for that sweet touch.
  
• Shredded butter-nut squash. Yes, it's not just for soup anymore. I've found it is actually a lot better than the usual carrot slices.
  

Never buy store bought salad dressings if you don't have to. For one thing, it's much easier to make your own. Asian or Thai peanut restaurant sauce is basically three parts peanut butter, one part soy sauce, one part tap water and one part lemon juice.

Here's a special recipe of mine for a special kind of Tofu, Blue Cheese and Walnut Salad:

4 cups spinach greens
1 cup cilantro tofu
1 cup white mushrooms
1/2 cup sliced cucumbers
1/2 cup butternut squash, diced
1/4 cup walnuts
1/4 cup of blue cheese, crumbled

Try a raspberry vinaigrette for salad dressing, or a combination lemon juice and (Marcella's favorite), balsamic vinegar, a mixture weighted toward the lemon juice.

On a different tack, here's a recipe for a healthy, low-fat one-person wheat and yogurt dessert salad.

1 Banana, sliced thinly
3 tbsp wheat germ
1 tbsp walnuts, crushed
1 cup plain lowfat Kefir

(Kefir is a type of Middle Eastern sour yogurt drink. It's become quite trendy these days, so you can probably get it in any supermarket.)

Toss the sliced banana, wheat germ and walnuts together on a bowl, then pour the kefir. Stir it until the wheat germ and the fruit are mixed.

L. Sprague de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias, the Krishna Stories

"Tarzan" was nothing short of an extraordinary creation. No wonder he was so popular: he went down a feral path that made him different from the rest of the human race. A lot of effort was spent by Burroughs getting us into Tarzan's inner life, his attitudes and prejudices to mankind, animals, religion. When I was a kid, I ate and drank Tarzan; his stories were pure romance and adventure, with hordes of Arabs, spy saboteurs, Tarzan hunting beside beasts, and images like Tarzan smoking cigarettes and drinking absinthe while going to art galleries in Paris, just before tossing aside his fancy duds to swing on a streetlamp to escape police.

John Carter of Mars, on the other hand, was a dud; a boring 11th-level Fighter with a nonexistent personality besides alpha male valor, an irritating Gary Stu. It's no wonder Tarzan went on to fame and fortune as a pop culture icon, whereas the duller J.C. is far less famous.



It wasn't just that John Carter was a total bore, but that his world of Barsoom was downright insane. Guns were available, but everyone fights gallant duels with cutlasses and sabers. There were a few occasions where it was just a little too "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half Century" to possibly be taken seriously: for instance, the idea that to avoid intrusion, at night houses on Mars have giant columns that raise their homes up hundreds of feet into the air (!) and how the mass transit system of Martian cities were based on shooting people out of giant guns (!). There was even one scene where, God help me, I couldn't stop laughing at the mental image: in Warlord of Mars there's a tower that turns into a giant magnet, which despite the best efforts of Burroughs's baroque prose sounds like nothing quite so much as a gigantic free-standing dildo. The giant tower magnet, when turned on sweeps a whole fleet from the air, all the battleships stuck to the surface like fridge magnets!

As a Heinlein-loving kid (Heinlein being a guy that, like all good science fiction writers, realized suspension of disbelief had to be earned and so he concerned himself with science and plausibility), I always had a feeling there was something screwy about John Carter's world and physics. For instance, his improbable hundred-foot leaps into the air "under Martian gravity." This is the kind of misunderstanding that happens when you barely hear an idea, like how when you were a kid, you heard that you would only weigh 1/5th your current weight on the Moon, and you actually thought you would lose weight! Not to mention the absence of armor from Martial society; even Stone Age people use coconut husks and tortoise shells for shields! And finally, most implausibly of all, John Carter had a baby (an egg!) with his Martian wife. Ask any genetic scientist and they'll tell you it's easier to cross a human with a geranium than an extraterrestrial.


So, along comes one of the most talented writers of science fiction's Golden Age, L. Sprague de Camp, with the determination to do a "Sword & Planet" story, but to "get it right," without technological or biological absurdities, a world that is every bit as exciting as Barsoom but which actually makes sense. And lo, the Krishna stories were created! While reading the Hostage of Zir, I have to say I was delighted for nearly every moment.



Krishna is a planet with technology in the Middle Ages range, whose primary inhabitants are antennaed green-skinned humanoids. Because of the dangers of exposing a warlike, primitive planet high technology, explorers and other human visitors are limited to the local weaponry, bows and armor and sailing ships. It's interesting to note that FTL travel is impossible in the universe of Krishna; it takes eleven years (in "real time, " though not relativistically) to jaunt to the planet and back, although because of the increase in the human lifespan that isn't a catastrophic absence. I always thought this was a great touch of realism; in many ways the freewheeling ability to zip through the cosmos in a lot of space opera really makes you forget how huge and overwhelming space actually is.



My all-time favorite of the Krishna stories is the Hand of Zei. In it, Dirk Barnavelt, a ghost writer ruled over tyrannically by his aged mother, is sent by the publishing company to find the actual explorer their works are based on, who disappeared on the low-tech world of Krishna while searching for a group of pirates that smuggle janru, a narcotic that makes men subservient to women.

What's especially interesting is that the planet Krishna has actually changed as a result of contact with human beings. At dive bars on Krishna, the singer was heard performing earth songs like "Jingle Bells" and the latest pop hits. Worse, one of the more popular games on Krishna is Chinese Checkers, although the natives call it "Chanichekr" or "Chanichekash."

To reach the legendary Sunqar, a floating island made entirely of giant mats of seaweed like the Sargasso, Dirk Barnavelt traveled in disguise as a legendary to Qirib, a country ruled by amazon warriors, with a horrible old virago of a queen that reminds Dirk of his domineering mother. In one memorable scene, he rides the mass-transit rail system linking cities and countries, which instead of locomotives, on the low-tech world are instead pulled by gigantic bishtars, two-trunked alien elephants.


The Princess Zei of Qirib is captured by the pirates, which means Dirk has to rescue her whether he likes it or not. I love the Princess Zei. She has a big nose, talks with her mouth full, and gets off on men telling her what to do, and yet somehow she is far more fascinating and loveable than the flawless and boring Dejah Thoris.

Dirk Barnavelt leads a ship into the Sunqar, a pirate realm nearly the size of a kingdom who live on a floating island of giant ship choking seaweed mats. Someone call Doc Savage, that's the plot of the Sargasso Ogre! What's interesting is that as an American raised with ideas of equality, he has real moral problems with being the kind of brutal, authoritarian disciplinarian sort of sea captain that is required in that kind of society in order to maintain order. In addition to possible mutiny, he has to face a gvam, a hideous sea monster that is a cross between a swordfish and an octopus.

When he arrives at the Sunqar, Barnavelt finds the leader of the pirates is an alien from the planet Osiris, a giant velociraptor like creature with mental hypnotic powers, who far from being a sinister mentalist, is portrayed as a nervous, high strung hypochondriac. Dirk is able to rescue the Princess, only to find his ship beached in an escape attempt against a haunted island. The origin of the haunted stories are revealed to be brutish tailed men, who are related to Krishnans the same way Neanderthals are related to Homo sapiens.

(This is another thing I like about the Krishna books: L. Sprague de Camp's broad knowledge of everything, including paleontology. Krishna, unlike other Sword & Planet worlds, had a definite prehistory. Indeed, Krishnans themselves have a taxonomic category: Krishanthropus Sapiens, and the tailed men are Krishanthropus koloftus. There is even a Linnean explanation for why some creatures on the planet have six limbs and others four, as both families left the sea at different times.)



What I find most interesting about the burgeoning relationship between Dirk Barnavelt and the Princess Zei is, the problems that keep them from being together are real problems. One of the more irritating thing about Burroughs females, especially that useless pain in the ass Jane, is their tendency to do things that are illogical and wildly out of character for no other reason than to create the requisite conflict for the story. By contrast, in Zei's amazonian country, the husband of the queen rules for a year and then is ritually cooked and eaten. This could have just been another little side-gag to emphasize this planet's barbaric exoticism, along with the Krishnan love of attending public executions, but it is actually a major obstacle to their relationship. In fact, when the two are stuck in the Sunqar without food and are starting to starve, Dirk looks at his Princess and starts to shudder. When the two are necking, Dirk laughs and asks her if she's trying to get a little taste of him first.



In the end, Dirk returns with Zei a hero and leads a gigantic fleet against the Sunqar pirates, all of which will wear skis so they can run over the terpahla seaweed. Krishnan warfare is a beautiful thing: reconnaissance is done with hang-gliders given temporary boosts by explosive chemicals, who land on a flat-topped ship rather like a modern-day aircraft carrier with a rubber band like device for launching the gliders.

Dirk leads the army of amazons and gliders to victory, causing the pirates to honorably surrender. But when the virago Queen Alvandi, the mother of Zei who only wanted to go after the pirates as they cut into her percentage decides to maroon them, Dirk switches sides and teams up with the pirates. He thereafter discovers that his lovely Princess Zei is - surprise! Also an earthling in disguise, captured by the Queen Alvandi from slavers in disguise. The Princess knew Dirk was an earthman all along too. How? He had a belly button! As the people of Krishna lay eggs, nobody on Krishna has a navel.


Dirk Barnavelt in the end leads the pirates against the Qirib monarchy and restores equal rights for men. By standing up to Queen Alvandi, it's like he's stood up to his own mother too and declared his personal emancipation. Shortly thereafter he takes Zei, and forms a company in the Sunqar dedicated to soap production.

There's even a little sarcastic aside where Dirk Barnavelt's buddy, Tangaloa, a grossly overweight, tail-chasing Polynesian Anthropologist, warns him about the dangers of his Warlord of Mars dreams, which might as well be a chastising tut-tut to fans of all Sword & Planet stories:
"Ahem, Dirk, you know these earthly adventurers who run around backward planets exploiting the natives tend to be inferior types that can't compete with their own kind back home. They take advantage of earth's more sophisticated culture, which they themselves do nothing to create... " "Oh, foof! I've heard that lecture too. Call me an inferior if you like, but here I'm quite a guy. npt a shy schizoid Oedipean afraid of his Ma."

My summary above doesn't quite get across the marvelous sense of humor the stories have. I wouldn't be comfortable calling them parodies, the way some other analysts have, because they are first and foremost very boyish, fun adventure stories. But they do reverse expectations in a very amusing and wonderful way, and set about breaking the formula of the Burroughs narrative. The alien leader of the pirates that rules over them with mind control powers is a nervous, easily excitable velociraptor hypochondriac.

One of my favorite parts was when, as Barnavelt returns from the land of the tailed beast-men, his anthropologist friend chastises him for the destruction he wrought on a society anthropologists would like to study. Barnavelt rightly points out they were cannibals about to eat him. Tangaloa says that many Polynesian tribes in the South Pacific only became "savage to outsiders" because they were preyed on by slavers. This is an interesting observation since many tailed Krishnans were in fact, seen in the book series as slaves!

That's what I like about L. Sprague de Camp. Any other writer would have just stuck in some savage cannibals because that's what the story needs. He thought through exactly why these guys are such jerks, what would lead them to be this way historically. That's why Krishna fascinates me: this is obviously written by someone that is a world traveller, that has undergone the experience of going to a bar in Asia and then hearing the latest Top 40 song on the intercom, who knows what they're talking about when it comes to weapons and antique sailing ships.

The chapter where Dirk Barnavelt reconfigures his sails is so full of antique sailing terms that it is nearly incomprehensible jargon. Still, you can't help but be impressed, just as you would be with Tom Clancy's rapid-fire use of military acronyms and terms, because it shows this guy knows what he's talking about and has clearly thought it through.

I can't mention the Hand of Zei without mentioning how the interior illustrations are done by master pulp illustrator Edd Cartier, who also did most of the art for the original Street & Smith Shadow magazine. I tried looking for some Edd Cartier Krishna art, but none of it was online, so I scanned some from my copy and put them up here.

Man, mentioning Edd Cartier's name has got to at least double my google hits. So, here goes: Edd Cartier. Edd Cartier. EDD CARTIER.

The other Krishna stories are hilarious, full of eccentric, weird kings with unusual hobbies like clockwork toys. One of the best was the king of Kalwm in The Prisoner of Zhamanak.

In it, a big black Nigerian named Percy Mijpa hears of an earth girl xenologist held prisoner by a Krishnan. Despite being a black African, he looks down on Krishnans like a Victorian Englishman does on "the natives," and vows to rescue Alicia Dykman.


In one of the best scenes of the book, Percy and Alicia are captured by the ruler of Kalwm like zoo animals, wondering if the Caucasian and African races on earth can interbreed together. He even has their clothes removed as they're placed in the cage. This is made all the funnier by Percy's natural uptightness and attitude of devout monogamy to his fat, jolly little wife that he left back at the spaceport. Obviously the sheer awkwardness of this scene makes it to nearly every single cover of every single edition I've seen.

All in all, the Krishna works are science fiction classics and worth reading. In the words of Reading Rainbow's Levar Burton: "You don't have to take my word for it...but I'd be pretty pissed if you didn't."

Julian's SECRET Kenyan Birth Certificate Found!

Revealing Julian as the evil Muslim plant we all know he is, the birth certificate gives his full name as "Julian Hussein Jihad Whiteykill Mr. T Perez."

Why, it would be irresponsible NOT to speculate!

The Fifteen Best Comics Characters of All-Time (Part 1, 15-11)

15. Hans von Hammer "The Hammer of Hell"

"The sky is the killer of us all."

A haunted, troubled yet duty-bound man surrounded by war and murder, much of it his own making, Hans von Hammer was a World War I flying ace based on the Red Baron called to kill and kill again, after which new nighmares of death joined the previous ones during his sleeping hours. He once befriended a wolf in the Black Forest, because the both of them are both killers, and that wolf was his only real friend.

In that sense, von Hammer was a tragic and somewhat pitiful person, an example of the very broken people that war creates on the one hand, an honorable man with a strong sense of duty on the other. Hans von Hammer had noble and chivalrous instincts: he saluted enemies even after he killed them, and refused to shoot and kill even an unarmed foe.

Enemy Ace's strip was extraordinary for many reasons, not the least of which was the tragic, morally conflicted character of von Hammer himself. It was an American strip featuring a German Ace. It was the first true strip of the Vietnam era: it showed the exhaustion and disgust with war, and none of them had happy endings. It was a dark, evocative strip with art by Gil Kane and featured antagonists like the hideously disfigured French Ace, the Hangman.

BEST COMICS: STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES #148 features the death of a dog, but that's not the only reason to like it. Von Hammer befriends a dog, Schatzi, who dies when he falls out of von Hammer's biplane. In revenge, von Hammer coldly and methodically massacres a platoon of British soldiers. Honor, senseless blood-killing that is shown to the reader not as fun but with disgust, and glimmers of humanity on the part of a lonely and tragic man. All in all, good reading. There was also a wonderful and sentimental Batman and Enemy Ace "meeting" set long after World War I done by Neil Adams in DETECTIVE COMICS #442.

14. Foolkiller

"All the days of their lives have led to this moment. They will be given their chance at salvation...to succeed or fail! It was ordained long ago in Heaven that this day they would meet...the Foolkiller!"

A religious fanatic with a demented sense of his own great purpose and mission, the Foolkiller was first introduced as seeking to kill the Man-Thing, who he correctly determined was formerly scientist Ted Sallis. "Only I cared enough to investigate his disappearance fully!" His great weapon is the Purification Ray, a nearly unstoppable blaster beam of white light only able to be wielded by the righteous. Naturally, only the Foolkiller himself is worthy of wielding it! The Foolkiller periodically returns to his tractor trailer to converse with his boss, Mike, a grisly corpse of a priest in formaldehyde that the Foolkiller himself murdered.

The Foolkiller murders at the drop of a hat for crimes like scoffing at his mission and denying God. He is a relentless pursuer that never forgets the slightest insult. The Foolkiller is nearly unstoppable and relentless: like the villains in slasher movies, he never stops, and as a fanatic he is truly threatening, ramming a truck through a diner to kill a disk jockey that insulted him.

BEST STORY: His sole appearance was in THE MAN THING #3-4, by Steve Gerber.

WORST STORY: None, as at least the original Foolkiller never appeared again.

13. Madame Hydra/Viper

"I said that we are not walking out of here into the jails of the police! The valiant outlaw called Cobra, the dedicated agent of the Serpent Crown...and the foolhardy agents of oppression...are going to end this story dramatically, as martyrs to the Serpent's Cause. That's all it is, you know, a story! A story to grow with time into a legend. A story not to be told as fact, but as inspiration! A story to breed more like me!"

Quite possibly the most terrifying, shockingly coldblooded female villain in the entire Marvel Universe, a study in the depths of human evil and fanatacism.

A fanatic nihilist, everything to Madame Hydra is meaninglessness instead of happenstance. She has no illusions about the importance of life, and holds her own with just as little value. She has the fanatic martyrdom of a suicide bomber, and like a suicide bomber, she realizes just how powerful martyrs become, as ideas that never die.

BEST STORY: Steve Englehart's CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON #181-182. The story opes with Viper murdering the original Viper and donning his costume. Then, as she reveals the death of the original to his brother, who she intends to team up with, the Eel breaks down at the loss of the only family he ever had. All the while, Madame Hydra loudly proclaims the original Viper a martyr to their cause.

It that wasn't enough, in the very next issue, King Cobra, a guy just in it for the money, is trapped in a burning building where Viper intends for both of them to make their last stand. Cobra starts to go mad as he realizes the horror of being trapped with this madman, and the Viper's soul-chilling response is printed in its entirety at the quote section at the top above.

WORST STORY: As he did with other female characters, Chris Claremont formed a fascination with Madame Hydra, and from her chilling beginnings wasted her as just another femme fatale.

12. Magneto

If the Hulk was based on the blueprint of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, Magneto owes his inspiration to one of the most magnetic characters of the literature of the 19th century, Captain Nemo. Like Nemo, Magneto sufered a terrible loss that caused him to reject the idea of the goodness of the human race and turns his back on it in disgust. Motivated by a great inner nobility, Magneto looks angrily at how human vices usurp our capacity for good: how much more we spend on weapons than on feeding the hungry, for instance. At the same time, he's motivated by anger and grief that has poisoned his soul that makes his guilty of terrible crimes.

BEST STORY: UNCANNY X-MEN #150. The ultimate, definitive Magneto story. Magneto issues an ultimatum to the world: give total power to him, which he would use for enlightened purposes while they wasted their energy on greed, or face destruction. In the end, Magneto is confronted by the X-Men and he snaps, loses his temper, and kills a child (Kitty Pride, since you asked...no wonder I loved this comic!). Realizing the horror of what he did, and what he intended to do, Magneto surrenders and abandoned his scheme.

Also, read X-MEN #1-3. Everyone remembers it as a Jim Lee artpalooza that sold a trillion copies, but few people remember that it was actually a very well-made Magneto story, where Magneto was drawn from his self-imposed exile by "acolytes" that worship him.

WORST STORY: This one undoubtedly goes to that appalling dimwit Grant Morrison and his lengthy rampage on the X-Books, where he had Magneto smash half of New York and toss humans into ovens. It is every bit as unintentionally funny as it sounds. Another dishonorable mention (and boy, does it hurt to type this) would be Steve Englehart in an early Avengers issue, where he featured Magneto as a cackling Hanna-Barbara supervillain in the weakest story of his entire career, centered around that most riveting of mysteries, "Why is Magneto wearing the Angel's costume?"

And speaking of the Angel...

11. Candy Southern

Possibly one of the best-realized of all "hero girlfriends," Candy Southern was much, much more than just the "love interest" for a hero that pouted when he went on dangerous missions. There were occasions when we saw Candy Southern running Warren Industries, and she often joked that Southern International, her own company, would buy him out. She was someone that was able to actually lead a hero's team when her man was knocked out, a heroic story with a tragic ending. In one comic, Candy Southern actually accompanied the X-Men when her love, Warren Worthington was in danger!

Almost all hero's girlfriends are said to be independent and competent women, but Candy Southern actually was all those things the others were said to be, but never really were.

BEST STORY: In NEW DEFENDERS #138 Candy Southern had the chutzpah to (and I can't believe I'm typing this) take charge of the Defenders. In NEW DEFENDERS #145, when the others were considering leaving in the wake of the Angel's blindness and other events, Candy Southern convinced the Defenders to stay and not disband. And most incredibly of all, she remained in charge of the team for nearly the rest of the comic's run, proclaimed by the rest as Team Leader and Chief Executive Officer of the group, having final power over who was and wasn't in the group. She even built a new security system for the team's base and recruited new members, with total control over who came in and didn't.

Others might be upset by the inclusion of Candy Southern and would prefer another supporting cast member, like J. Jonah Jameson or Lois Lane. To them, I ask this: could you possibly imagine Lois Lane doing something similar for the Justice League? Did any other hero's love interest ever do anything that significant?

Another example of a good Candy Southern story would be her first posthumous appearance in UNCANNY X-MEN #306. She was merged with the same techno-organic being as Cameron Hodge and she tore apart her own form rather than let Hodge harm the X-Men. In her last, dying moments she confessed her love for Warren Worthington.

WORST STORY: NEW DEFENDERS #130, with Candy Southern taken hostage. She's not that kind of hero's girlfriend.

More to come! Stay tuned for 10-6!

What I love and hate about the Golden Age of Comics

An undead ghoul colossus towers like a god over a nightmare world at war, strutting over a battlefield and gazing on the misery, disease, genocide and corpses.

I'll never get over the contrast between that image and the peppy title, MORE FUN COMICS.

That's why I love the Golden Age: startling, evocative and dark covers that rival the luridness of the weirder pulp magazines.

On the other hand...well, the second image needs some introduction.

I love superheroes. There are only two that I actually hate, one of them is Kitty Pryde and the other is Captain Fucking Marvel. His disgusting adventures are the worst ever written in the entire genre, an embarassment and shame, a permanent black eye in the entire industry.



In case anyone wonders if the above scene is taken out of context, take it from someone that has read a few CM books in my time: every moment in Captain Marvel is like this. Every. Single. One.

The experience of reading CM comics can best be described as dying, going to hell, and discovering the devil is Austin Powers and he's trapping you forever in one of his movies.

No reason is given for why CM is even at a Beauty Pageant as a judge.

No reason is given why Captain Marvel has to measure a woman's forearm at a Beauty Pageant.

Finally, in order for a woman to have a forearm 29 inches long, she would have to be over seven feet tall.

FAIL.

The coming of the Arockalypse

Like lots of angry loners and fire-obsessed American youth, I went through a phase where I was into Heavy Metal. The angry, industrial sound expressed my state of mind, and the dark, supernatural and nightmarish themes delighted me as much as the guitar solos.

Eventually I stopped being a metal fan. Nothing happened, I just grew up.

But imagine my great joy to find the Finnish metal band Lordi, who can best be described as Gwar, except not a joke. They're like a time travel trip back to the eighties; for one thing, they're actually accused of worshipping the devil! (Ahhh, memories.)

Check out their "Hard Rock Hallelujah." It actually features such words as "On the Day of Rockening" and "the Arockalypse." I defy you to watch it and not end up pumping your fist righteously at the chant of "Hard. Rock. Hallelujah."



This is one of the few songs I'd actually like to see live: to experience their righteous pump-notes with an audience has to be something, even if it means the usual perils of experiencing a metal show live: some asshole doing a chicken dance in giant tracked boots and avoiding vomit-covered curbs and leathery, tattoo-covered white trash gorgons that just touching is enough to give a lethal STD.

The sheer, hilarious chutzpah of another one of their songs is worth listening to, if only for the lyric, "The Devil is a loser and he's my bitch."

Check it out:



By the way, the one great thing about Finnish metal bands is, considering that country's history, it's the only kind of metal band that you know won't give you a concept album centered around their love of all things Tsarist Russia.

If you've seen one Lordi video, you've pretty much seen them all, incidentally: they end up terrorizing some place with someone commanding armies of zombies.

By the way, speaking of Finnish metal bands, am I the only one that's noticed how much better the "new" Nightwish is, now that they've gotten rid of Tarja?

Have a look at their first video, Tarja-less:



Boy, more than anything else I've ever said on this blog, I know I'm going to catch hell for saying that Nightwish is better off without Tarja. For many, Tarja IS Nightwish. But I've always hated her: here was this righteous guitar and drum sound, and there was this spectral ghost diva yodeling over all of it.

"Symphonic Metal." Doesn't roll off the tongue, does it? The very name itself contains exactly what the problem was. It's like when I heard about the bombing of the Islamabad Mariott. The very nature of the problem could be expressed by the fact they blew up the Islamabad Mariott.

Incidentally, I've always found it amusing that Nightwish is the only metal band I've encountered where nearly all the fans of it I know are gay men and female. It's like they're attempting to steal the coveted title of "Official Artist of all Broken People Everywhere" from Enya.

It's not that I have a problem with metal that has a melodic component. Quite the contrary, actually...my favorite group always was the melody-heavy Judas Priest. Metal is always better at the two ends of the extreme: melodic groups like Judas Priest, and then percussion heavy groups like Slayer. The groups that try to strike a balance usually suck, much like post-Master of Puppets Metallica.

So, the problem isn't melody. The problem is, as long as Nightwish had Tarja, they always ended up sounding like New Age crap. This is inarguably true; you could play Nightwish's Gethsemane over the loudspeakers at a craft store and I guarantee nobody would notice. It would fit right in!

You might say the Pretty Young Thing they got to replace Tarja (and who looks a lot like her - gives me a real Single White Female vibe!) doesn't have that much vocal range, and you'd be right. But that's missing the whole point. The dirty little secret of rock is that the vocalist isn't that important. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of really standout hard rock vocalists, except maybe the obvious choice of Freddie Mercury, who was louder than the group itself. They got a robot that won't outsing the band, and that's ultimately for the best.

Star Trek aliens I'd like to see more of

As a result of the fact Star Trek is a television show, a low information density medium, we often end up not learning much about any of the alien races and their culture. Sure, the Klingons got their "Heart of Glory," where we learned exactly how they thought, how they looked at the world and behaved, but there are many other races that didn't receive that kind of characterization or development. For instance, despite their regular and persistent use, I don't think the Romulans have ever received their "Heart of Glory." This, despite the fact they have been a part of the Star Trek universe from the beginning (they've actually been around slightly longer than the Klingons!) and were the main villains of two movies.


1. Deltans


It's easy to overlook the Deltans, because they never made any appearances beyond their initial one. For one thing, the idea was modified and became the Betazoids for TNG. Second, they are associated with "The Motion Picture," a very unpopular part of Trek lore.

But the Deltans are interesting and shouldn't be discarded. For one thing, they are a culture that considers humans to be "sexually immature." What exactly does this mean? What would a "sexually mature" society, one that has "grown up" about sex, actually be like?

Consider: there are a ton of euphemisms in our language for sex and sexual body parts (penises, breasts), and also for death. This isn't a coincidence, since cultures always create a myriad of terms to not directly discuss something they're not comfortable with.

As fundamentally sensual beings, the Deltans were actually very different from Betazoids. For one thing, according to the Gene Roddenberry novelization, Kirk always periodically imagined Ilia naked uncontrollably, for instance. No wonder they had to take a vow of celibacy!



2. Zakdorn



We first see the Zakdorn in "Peak Performance," and we learn almost everything we know about them from that episode: they're considered the greatest natural tactical minds in the universe, yet they haven't been in an actual combat for a very long time, because their reputation prevents possible aggressors from attacking them.

Mr. Worf contemptuously said, "If it isn't tested, their reputation is meaningless." Perhaps Worf is right, but I would have liked to see.

It's hard to say what the Zakdorn are actually like, or what a "garden variety" Zakdorn temperment is, as we've only really seen two: one was the swishy, excitable, arrogant Kolrami from "Peak Performance," and the other was a completely heterosexual junkyard owner in "Unification" that seemed like he was perpetually on Valium. Kolrami was able to defeat Data at a game like Stratagema because there were only a limited number of moves possible and Kolrami could antipate them all...however, when Data redefined his objective (to just fight to a draw) the game continued perpetually because Kolrami couldn't figure out his opponent's intentions.

This seems to be the way to defeat the Zakdorn, despite their very scary tactical edge: their weakness isn't so much that they are startled by unexpected tactics, which doesn't seem like a problem they'd have, but rather, their ability to out-think enemies comes from understanding their motives. If you can "fake out" a Zakdorn, or make them think you want something other than what you really want, you could probably out-think them.

One possible opportunity to use the Zakdorn emerged during Deep Space Nine: what if the Zakdorn, like the Breen and Cardassians, defected to become members of the Dominion? Now that would have been terrifying, to have the Dominion charging into battle led by the greatest strategic minds. For that matter, where were the Zakdorn, anyway? You'd imagine the Federation would have asked for their help in the greatest military problem in Federation history.

One thing I loved about Deep Space Nine was the feeling that during the Dominion War, there was a feeling a million things were going on at the same time. For the first time, the Trek universe acquired scope. This was in contrast to Voyager, where I never really believed in the Delta Quadrant; it was like the space Voyager passed through ceased to exist after they left!

One of the more impressive opportunities not pursued was the conquest of Betazed. I mean, here's a famous planet known for being sensualist and sexy, and they've been taken over by a group as ruthless as the Dominion. Surely there's a story there...



3. Tholians


The Tholians, like the Breen, were mentioned far more than they actually appeared. Which is a shame, because they're a fascinating opportunity, a "villain" race with a pedigree going back to the Original Series. This is extremely rare, because the overwhelming number of recurring alien races the original Trek gave us were usually pretty ridiculous looking, to the point where later incarnations of Trek went out of their way to not use or even mention them.

Take the Andorians, for instance. The writers of TNG deliberately stated in no uncertain terms on a number of occasions that there were no Andorians on the Galaxy-class Enterprise. There was even an interview with a head writer on TNG, when asked if any Andorians would show up on TNG, "Sorry, we don't do antennae on this show." I certainly don't mourn the loss of the Andorians, and in fact I'm a little baffled by their use in Enterprise. No matter how much goodwill one has towards the original series, no matter how much fondness or admiration, it will not change the fact that the Andorians look absolutely silly. A lesson on the dangers of nostalgia that many members of other fandoms have yet to learn, but I digress.

As for the Tholians, not only did they have a great look (or at least they were suggested to look really strange), they were sincerely menacing and mysterious, and had the good luck to appear in one of the most memorable episodes of the original series. The Tholians are, further, something very, very rare in Star Trek: an alien race that truly is alien. At times it seems that the "alien races" are just substitute human cultures. One critique of the Star Trek universe is, like the universes of Foundation or Dune, it could be rewritten so that all the alien races are different human civilizations spread across the universe, and very little of the Trek universe would have to be changed.

Often, real-world human cultures were used as the basis for Star Trek aliens: the Klingons are equal parts Japanese and Norse, and the Ferengi are even explicitly compared to 19th Century Yankee traders. While the Romulans derive their names from Rome, their culture is more like the totalitarian dictatorships of the 20th Century, a world ruled in equal parts by the military and the secret police.

The exception are the Borg, who have a radically different basis that is only possible by science fiction, who are much more what alien races are like in written, serious science fiction.

One of my favorite ideas for the Tholians came from Peter David's New Frontier Trek novels. The Tholians experience time in a nonlinear fashion, radically different from other species. For instance, when the Tholians attack a ship without obvious provocation, it may be not be because of something they have done, but something that they are going to do in the future.

Incidentally, I always thought the "updated" makeup designs in Enterprise looked silly. The CGI "Jurassic Park" Gorn, for instance, looked especially laughable. But in the case of Tholians, they was nothing short of spectacular. My reaction was "oh, so that's what they looked like, all along!"


4. Nausicaans

The Nausicaans made quite an impression when they showed up in "Tapestry" as the silent, brooding bruisers that stabbed Picard from the back and caused him to need his artificial heart. They were something that few Trek villains often become: truly intimidating, able to arouse fear. It would be fascinating to see them again. It was often mentioned in later series that the Nausicaans were used as hired thugs, bodyguards and muscle for criminal operations, a role that somehow suits them perfectly.

In fact, it's really very strange we haven't seen these guys much, considering how powerful their debut was, and how hard-up TNG was for new enemies. All but one of their appearances (just let me get to that) featured the same Nausicaan hardcore mystique: my personal favorite was the scene in Quark's bar where the Nausicaans amused themselves by throwing darts at the chest of one of their own (who it should be said, took it like a champ)!

Yes, I am aware there was an episode of Enterprise that featured the Nausicaans, but like everything Enterprise, it took the potential of these new villains and squandered it. For one thing, they colored the Nausicaans pink and made them much smaller! Even the makeup was different; they looked much more like ridiculous parrotmen.


5. Bynars


What was really amazing was, the Bynars were pushed forward in a lot of early TNG promotional material as one of the new aliens created for the series, along with the Betazoids and Ferengi.

This makes their absence all the more puzzling from every episode except their debut. I mean, they couldn't just have a few Bynar pairs running around in a toolbelt fixing things in corridor shots, on starbases or ships? They couldn't put a couple Bynars in a Federation Council chamber or diplomacy room? (Yes, I'm aware it was never technically stated the Bynars were Federation members, but still.)

The reason I like the Bynars is because they have a truly alien culture and biology as opposed to just being Japanese Samurai or Communists in outer space. They view all information in terms of 0 or 1. All of them are linked to a massive computer network on their planet, and they live as identical pairs that complete each other's sentences, and even their names are in binary code. Surely something can be done with a race that unique.

Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream"

I've always loved science fiction and adventure stories, and I like them enough to take them seriously, to think about them, and occasionally, to be alarmed by some of the more disturbing assumptions built into them: the veneration at force, for instance, and the Totally Evil Alien Race, where we cheer the hero on when he kills them, often to the point of extermination.

This brings me to Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream," a book by counterculture "New Wave" author Norman Spinrad, who wrote one of my all time favorite science fiction stories, "A True Drug Culture," about an entire society that is under the influence of drugs near-constantly, tackling a taboo topic that receives blanket condemnation by censors, a subject it's hard to imagine John W. Campbell and his stable even considering. Norman Spinrad has always been one of my favorite science fiction writers, edgy and controversial the way people in the sixties and seventies often were, a real contrast to our play-it-safe culture. Another of my favorites was the politically loaded "Bug Jack Barron," which was about an American media pundit, sort of like a morally principled version of Bill O'Reilly, that encouraged political debate on his show.

In short, Norman Spinrad was the guy that best personified what was happening in science fiction in the 1970s: its ability to be experimental and edgy, defying the traditional science fiction stories that were penned by the hundreds in the 1940s and 1950s featuring cigar chomping, wisecracking badasses that use dubious engineering to solve their problems.

Norman Spinrad was one of the chief writers of Moorcock's "New Worlds" anthology, and it's interesting to compare Spinrad to Moorcock, not the least of which because in the late period of their career they started to write historicals as opposed to straight up science fiction: Moorcock with "Mother London" and Spinrad with things like "Mexica."

Spinrad's "The Iron Dream" is a novel with a twist: it is a book supposedly written by Adolf Hitler, who in an alternate history didn't go into politics and never became Furher of Germany, and instead moved to the United States where he was involved in early science fiction fandom first as a cover artist, and finally as a writer. In addition to the pulpy, intentionally bad novel "Lord of the Swastika" written by Hitler, the book also sports a parody of science fiction academic reviewers, and fake blurbs from other writers, like "Hitler, in his debut novel is electric!" There's even a fake ad for buying other books by science fiction novelist Adolf Hitler, all with malevolent sounding titles like "Tomorrow the World" and "The Master Race."

Here's the rub, the big joke, the giant irony behind Spinrad's book: it isn't different at all from any other adventure, pre-1960 science fiction or Sword & Sorcery novel! It has the same steely-eyed hero with big muscles, a magnificent and unwavering sense of destiny and purpose, with enemies that are vile, subhuman monsters.

As Ursula K. Le Guin put it: "The prose style is prudish and stiff. There are no women at all, no dirty words, no sex of any kind: the book is a flawless example of clean obscenity. It will pass any censor, except the one that sits within the soul." The book isn't so much a parody of Hitler and Nazism, but of the entire escapist adventure genre, which loudly claims to be without realism or political content but is nonetheless loaded with ideology, such as the role of the innately superior man, the superiority of militarism and muscular, authoritative action over careful intellectual consideration and diplomacy.

I'm sure the prudish Robert E. Heinlein fans and Alpha Male worshippers will find much to admire in "Hitler's" novel, as lots of people just don't get the joke, especially those prone to fooling themselves about how certain escapist and cynically produced adventure books have no political content or statement. There was one fanzine reviewer in the 1970s that talked about how "Lord of the Swastika" was a rousing adventure yarn, but spoiled by all this stuff afterwards about Hitler. The hero of "Lord of the Swastika," Feric Jagger, is a laughably invincible superman. That's the whole spirit of the book: Ferric Jaggar is an idealized "Mary Sue" wish-fulfillment character for Adolph friggin' Hitler, and yet, he is really no different than any other Sword & Sorcery or Sci-Fi alpha dog hero. That sort of discomfort is the most thought-producing aspect of the book.

Norman Spinrad really lays it on thick: at once point it describes the hero in such loving detail it was laughably homoerotic, talking about his large muscles and sexual presence. Here's the weird part: his intentionally homoerotic description is actually no different than the many times that Edgar Rice Burroughs lovingly describes Tarzan's "nut brown body with the curves of a Greek god."

It goes without saying that Hitler's book is intentionally awful. The violence is so lurid and over the top it's a type of war-porn. The book is filled with creatures like pinheaded mutants, malevolent, mind controllers and giant ameobas with hundreds of jibbering mouths and thrashing tentacles.


In the end, the book is interesting because it places moral demands on the reader, which many Westerns and other books don't: villains are villains and Must Be Killed. It also lampoons a mentality among fans of genre fiction that I just don't get. One of my ex-girlfriends that loved Romance novels but despised generic, formulaic bodice-rippers and stupid virgin female heroines, talked about how annoyed she was by other romance novel readers, how they always say something like "oh, I don't care much for realism, it's all supposed to be a fantasy anyway."

In the end, the political statement of "The Iron Dream" is intertwined with its parody/critique of genre fiction that goes beyond S&S and science fiction pulp. In the end, truly formulaic science fiction and adventure stories don't have any value. The greatest function of crap is to inure the reader to more crap...something I was just thinking about when I saw reviews for Transformers 2 where apologist critics knuckle under to the proles and teens that made that film a box-office hit and say it was a good example of formulaic genre fiction, and so forth.

Finally, I think it's worth noting that science fiction has really cast out the idea of the idealized, fifties style alpha male Heinlein father figure. I recently reread S.M. Stirling's recent novel, Island in the Sea of Time, about how the island of Nantucket finds itself transported back to the Bronze Age, and what struck me as extraordinary was the main villain of the novel, if it was written back in the 1960s, would have been its hero: he was a clear-eyed idealist, handsome and muscular, that never questioned his own actions or explained himself, and the very qualities that would have made him heroic in fifties fiction make him malevolent and frustratingly intransigent in modern times.