Sound the shofar! L'shana Tova!

I wish family and friends mazel and hazlocha today on the last night of Rosh Hashanah, highest of the Yamim Noraim. I wish everyone a happy 5769, full of mitzvahs.

If you like apples and honey, boy, is today ever your day. (Technically, the last day of Rosh Hashanah starts at sundown tonight, which is why I'm blogging here tonight. But you know what I mean.)

According to the Midrash, Rosh Hashanah is a day of atonement and rememberance for all the bad things we've done, as we go in judgment before God. My list is especially longer than most. I take some comfort in the fact God, being omnipotent, probably knows that guy at Macy's had it coming to him.

It's times like today I reflect on all the great Jewish men (Moses, Jesus, Einstein, Oscar Schindler), and one stands above the rest: Harlan Ellison. Neil Gaiman wrote the best description of Ellison I ever heard: "Some people live in castles, but Ellison lives in angry old Jew man world."

Everyone even remotely connected to science fiction knows who the guy is, and has a favorite Ellison story. My favorite is definitely that one where the sound effects guy in charge of "sweetening" the laugh track on a sitcom uses the communication reel to have a conversation with a long dead woman whose voice was recorded for the tracks. In the end, instead of laughing at the sitcom, the track boos and hisses their unfunny gaffes.

It's not the most popular story, but it's the most utterly Ellisonesque one. It combines sweetness and sentimentality with humor and bitter, opinionated cynicism, along with its glorification of average people.

Any story of Ellison's that glorified the average man was that one he did about a bitter nebbish that was revealed, by visitors from the future, to actually father children that would start a nuclear war that destroys the world. The office worker agrees to kill himself to save the world - because it was the first and only time in his life he was ever important. A very bittersweet ending.

Discovering Ellison's science fiction was something of a revelation for me. I started off as a science fiction fan reading Heinlein's juveniles, which I still love (especially HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL and STARSHIP TROOPERS, which I read to the point of memorization). I read a few of the Poul Anderson FLANDRY OF TERRA books, and I thought he was one of the best heroes in science fiction. I had read Phillip Jose Farmer's VENUS ON THE HALF-SHELL, which to this day, I insist is his best book even over RIVERWORLD, and I was just getting into Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and A.E. van Vogt.

I found the "New Wave" writers all around the same time, around fifteen: Ellison, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, and the rest. I got into them after I read 1984 - which was a shocking book to someone that thinks of science fiction in terms of Heinlein and Burroughs. I was astonished there was no space patrol to come around and save the day at the end. It was a totally different kind of science fiction that I looked for ever after, and that's how I discovered Ellison and the rest of his contemporaries.

This was science fiction that wasn't formulaic, or adventure stories (though with his astonishing gift for flexibility Ellison could write both of those). Ellison's canon of work is legendary: "Repent, Harlequin!" and "A Boy and his Dog" among them.

To this day, I dislike admitting that I'm a Heinlein fan, because on the off-chance the other person is also a Heinlein fan, they'll start falsely thinking we have something in common. Heinlein fans, by and large, are a creepy bunch that close ranks around their hero with cultlike defensiveness.

They read Heinlein not for the spirit of adventure, but for a search for competent white male father figures they can project themselves into to forget their own very real human weaknesses and insecurities. Come to think of it, they remind me a little of the more loathesome fans of Hal Jordan or "Classic" Superman, who perpetually demand his immortality and guaranteed, constant victory with such loudness that it's psychologically intriguing.

Me, I already have a father figure: he's called my Father. And even he's a mortal, fallible human being.

And Edgar Rice Burroughs? Forget it. Every single fan of his, except Genevieve back in High School, was a giant tool. True story: I went to an ERB convention hosted on Miami Beach. The first sign I noticed something was up was that every other car in the hotel parking lot was a bright racing-red "Midlife Crisis" douchecar. When I finally got there, I was the only person in the convention to be under 30 that wasn't a trophy wife. It was like you got one as a door prize, available in your choice of Blonde or Asian.

The two kinds of fans I'm most comfortable around are Ellison fans, mostly because you can't appreciate Ellison without a sense of humor. Also, I have a passionate distaste for moralists, godbotherers, hypocrites, nosy people, busybodies, preachers, and the smug in general, prudes who dislike curse words and nudity on television, or who object to wholesome, All-American bloodthirsty violence.

Oscar Wilde once said that patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. If so, courtesy is the virtue of the hypocrite. Ellison's work tends to repel these people like crosses repel vampires.

Anyway, Ellison as a person is just plain cool. Admit it: it was one of the coolest moments in science fiction when Ellison backed Raymond Palmer in a corner and got that midget to admit that the Shaver Mystery was all a hoax he invented to sell magazines. Or remember when Christopher Priest (author of THE PRESTIGE) turned his Richard Dawson-like smarmy, sarcastic British wit on one of Ellison's dead friends? When Ellison tacked Christopher Priest, Priest's words were "You wouldn't dare hit me in front of all these people."

Big mistake!

Ellison has an acid wit and doesn't suffer fools gladly, but he's likeable because he only goes after the big guys, the same way Don Rickles only insults guys like Frank Sinatra. Ellison called Shatner an exhibitionist that would have sex with a moose in a store window for attention. He pulled his entire "Star Trek" scripted movie (that by the sound of things was absolutely mindblowing - the Enterprise journeying to the dawn of time) because the idiot executive said something like, "And could we have Mayans at the dawn of time? I like Mayans." Ellison's reaction was as hilarious as it was predictable.

I guess that's the lesson we can take away this Rosh Hashanah from Ellison is this: there's a little Harlan Ellison in all of us. Now that's something I can dip my apple to!

Ketiva ve-chatima tova!

My She-Roes: Good Female Science Fiction Writers

As shocking as it is today, there wasn't much of a place for women in science fiction and fantasy, both as writers, readers, editors, and even characters. When James H. Schmitz published his girl-telepath detective stories about Telzey Amberdon, the reaction was, "this could have been changed to a male character with no trouble."

I doubt that, but that's missing the point: the mentality was, unless there was a compelling reason to have them, a woman protagonist was hard to take seriously. Small surprise then, that most female sf writers have gender-ambiguous names, or use a male pseudonym.

I like these women not because they're women, but because they can write, because they create incredible worlds and live up to the promise of what science fiction is about.

LEIGH BRACKETT

She was the best writer of two-fisted men's science-adventure, but she wasn't a man.

Leigh Brackett wrote not only science adventure stories, but she succeeded in multiple fields of endeavor. In her 40 year career in Hollywood, Brackett wrote the screenplays for, arguably, the best Film Noir of all time (THE BIG SLEEP), the best Western (RIO BRAVO) and the best science fiction film (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK), the last of which she wrote in her seventies.

Legendary Hollywood director Howard Hawks was almost bowled out of his chair when he read her hardboiled detective fiction, and when he called "that Leigh Brackett guy" into her office, he almost fell out of his chair. It was by all accounts, Leigh Brackett that came up with the idea that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father, but after Brackett's death in the 1980s, Lucas, that poisonous snake, changed his story.

As a person, Leigh Brackett always dressed like one of those "dress for success" articles, and she drove her red sportscar so fast that she often terrified passengers. Ray Bradbury remembers she once played volleyball with the men on Muscle Beach in California during the early 1940s.

Leigh was married to Edmond Hamilton, "the Planet-Smasher" himself, standby hack of the original space opera generation, and it's argued the only really good stories Hamilton wrote were those that the Planet-Smasher wrote under Brackett's guidance. Leigh Brackett's pupil was some punk teenager named Ray Bradbury.

Brackett's science fiction was best typefied by works like NEMESIS FROM TERRA. She took the Burroughs' style Sword n' Planet yarn and updated it, "improved" it with the sentiment she extracted from Noir and detective fiction and Westerns. It was Brackett, more than any other writer, that created the hardboiled, cynical "Han Solo" space pirate archetype, out for himself. Her villains were not pure "comic book" evil, but a kind of very real, human viciousness and ruthlessness found in gangsters and teamsters. Her heroes were every bit as nasty.

What's even more interesting was how seriously Brackett took the writing of atmosphere, something none of her contemporaries ever did: unlike Burroughs, her Mars was a shadow-filled world much like Robert E. Howard.

ANDRE NORTON

What do you call a science fiction writer that doesn't like technology, that thinks the industrial revolution was "a big mistake?"

The biggest not-so-secret secret in sf is that "Andre Norton" is a pseudonym for Alice Mary Norton. What surprises me most about Andre Norton is that she isn't the object of a cult, the way Heinlein or Robert E. Howard are.

Andre Norton's work show a fascination not with the "hard" sciences, the way Asimov or Heinlein shows, but with the "soft" ones: anthropology, human cultures, archeology. All of Norton's science fiction worlds have a defined prehistory, usually featuring billion year old "Forerunners" that preceded human beings. Her pre-Tolkien boom fantasy series WITCH WORLD had a vague primordial non-human past. She frequently featured non-white protagonists in a positive light; Native American main characters in novels like THE SIOUX SPACEMAN, THE BEAST MASTER, and even applied African culture in a science fiction context in ANDROID AT ARMS.

Andre Norton's stories are about outcasts and misfits finding their place in society, about the seduction of elite power groups, and the desire to start anew on wilderness planets. Her galaxies are usually wilderness worlds inhabited by Star Rangers that are space age versions of Daniel Boone, skilled in woodcraft, inhabited by hostile animals that are tamed by laser gun instead of Western rifles.

TANITH LEE

The first work by Tanith Lee I read, had to have been her sf ELECTRIC FOREST - a novel with so many twists it was downright unpredictable. It had at least six false endings, one after the other. This work, more than any other, "hooked" me.

Tanith Lee, unlike the rest, focuses more on fantasy than straight science fiction. Her defining qualities include a fascination with the Arabian Nights, which she used in her brilliant DEATH'S MASTER, a fascination with lesbianism, and frank sexuality. She derives more from Arabesques and the sensuousness and exoticism it implies, than the traditional Tolkien stuff.

DAINA CHAVIANO

I suppose I have to give a shout-out to my hometown girl, Daina Chaviano, don't I? A Miami-native, and the only other Miami science fiction writers I can think of, off the top of my head are the late Hugh B. Cave and...didn't L. Sprague de Camp live out his last few days in Palm Beach, if I remember right? A few friends of mine were THIS close a while back to stalking Encyclopedia Brown creator Arnold J. Sobol, but that's a story for another time.

Unlike Leigh Brackett, who died before I was born, and known J.D. Salinger-esque recluses like Cuban-born, Daina Chaviano wrote several Spanish-language books, that derive from Cuban folklore and myth. A lot of the books that inspire her, I grew up reading. My Dad had a copy of UNA BATALLA CUBANA CONTRA LOS DIABLOS (A Cuban Battle Against the Demons) on his shelf for years, and it spooked the heck out of me. Asimov was fascinated by Communist science fiction, which discouraged exploration into different types of societies out of the sentiment they were creating a new one, like good 19th Century Americans.

Because her work hasn't been translated into English, here in the States, she's mostly read by science fiction fans of Cuban descent in Miami that speak Spanish, which is a niche of a niche.

This is something I've been arguing all along: Spanish language television needs to take advantage of the resource that is the emerging science fiction writing markets. Spanish language TV, if it's at all possible, is even more thickheaded and resistant to change than North American TV: the same damn telenovela over and over. There needs to a be a science fiction anthology series on Spanish speaking TV.

Part of the reason the 1960s produced so many science fiction series of quality (STAR TREKM THE OUTER LIMITS, etc.) was because of the emergence of a real talent base from science fiction that were willing to write for television, that could produce science fiction of quality: Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison, and so on.

A similar phenomenon could be happening right now in the Spanish speaking world.

Critics: what are they good for?

Why does Judaism have kosher laws? It’s related to why we have movie critics.

I have no idea whether this article is a parody or not.

As the writer of the article is a critic herself, it’s very tempting to look at her piece as a kind of satire that she’s writing from the point of view of an adopted persona: she’s not so much making fun of critics, as she is lampooning the whole internet-generation mentality, where the collective long-term memory has less than three months, the dominance of fanboys wowed by explosions, monsters and superheroes, raging anti-intellectualism, the importance of the blogosphere over traditional media, and last but not least, an overpowering sense of illiteracy and impatience. The over-the-top use of her language, liberally sprinkled with “totally” and “superawesome” while at the same time knowing who Fritz Lang and James Agee are, leads me to believe this is a joke.

I can just imagine the author cracking up at the idea there are some people out there that find themselves agreeing with the article.

On the other hand, there is a possibility all this isn't just fun and games. First, the obviously sincere envy and distaste for film critics, a print medium job that she correctly point out isn’t as relevant as it used to be in the age of blogs.

You get to see movies for free. You get paid to watch movies. You work part-time and get a full-time salary. You enjoy a private screening of "The Dark Knight" weeks before my buds and I queue up to pay big bucks at the multiplex. And then some of you have the nerve to badmouth Batman and the Joker! Show some love for the folks who keep you in lattes and DVDs.

Another interesting point that the article brings up: what exactly is the function of the critic?

I’m regularly known for having contradictory opinions. In fact, I’ve always thought that to agree with a large number of people on anything is a weakness. However, I’m just some random asshole on the internet beholden to no one but myself. I get paid nothing, I am not in a newspaper with an official position where I have to represent the moviegoing public.

As the article itself argues, “What we crave is consensus, write-ups that mirror the majority, the movie tastes of the teens and proles who rule the box office.” And also, “Shouldn't it be in the job description that if a critic sees a movie with 300 wildly applauding folks, it's against the rules to write as if that doesn't count? Like one fan wrote to a nit-picking critic: "If you do not like 'The Dark Knight' ... you should be fired because you do not speak for the people."

In other words, the film critic can be seen as having a position that isn't just giving their opinion, but is service-oriented. This is why we have film reviews in the entertainment section: to help people make decisions over where to go on a Friday night. If the film critic doesn't sync with the mentality of moviegoers, their ability to function should be questioned.

What the article seems to argue is that there is a disconnect between professional film critics and moviegoers, who are usually of an older generation, went to film school, and approach films from a different perspective. The article brings up the case of wildly popular comic book movies that critics don’t seem to "get." If that’s the case, how relevant is the function of the film critic, consulted not for their personal opinion, but for a recommendation as to the enjoyability of a movie? And if there is this disconnect, how important does the film critic become in the age of the blogosphere?

And this is something that is worth thinking about even if you don’t share the author’s anti-literacy and obvious anti-intellectual anxieties.

On the other hand, the average person is a moron. At some level, the function of the art, movie and food critic is to tell the average person they’re morons.

When the entire world was caught up in the mass hysteria that was TITANIC, the film critic of the L.A. Times had the stones to stand up and say the Emperor had no clothes. (If only someone had the guts to do the same to the schmaltzy, emotionally manipulative, dishonest FORREST GUMP as well!).

Here in Miami, there are two awards given for restaurants by the Miami Herald: one is given by reader poll, the other by professional food critics. A couple years ago, the award for “Best Japanese Restaurant” was given to, of all the places in this city, Benihana’s. Yes, Benihana's, the Applebee's of Japanese steakhouses. In an eighties ROLLING STONE magazine, there was a reader poll award given for the best guitarist in rock history, and the mental defectives chose the guitarist from the Bay City Rollers.

To answer the question at the beginning, the reason Judaism has kosher laws is a recognition of our humanity, that as human beings we don’t just shove anything in our mouths like an animal would.

And that, friends, is why we need movie critics. Because there is beauty and ugliness in the world, and it takes education and knowledge to discern one from the other. Food critics don’t just love every piece of teriyaki they shove into their mouths like the proles do, and critics know the difference between “Transformers” and “Dark Knight.”

My Dad is my hero

Dad, together with the ACLU, struck down an state travel law that prevented academics from visiting Cuba for research purposes, either with private or public money. The law was an unforgivable act of Miami intransigence, and a violation of academic freedom.

Read all about it here.

I've never been prouder of Dad. There are some things that transcend politics and the political realm, that supercede the limited boundaries of politics, for which the intrusion of politics into that realm is unwarranted: learning, academic exchange, and science are chief among them.

I was a hell of a kid to raise, a pure demon, heavy-metal music lover, and a borderline pyromaniac...but I have always been proud of my parents, and they have both given me the guidance I need to be a good and moral citizen, American, and adult. I couldn't be prouder of them.

Papa had some good old Perez-style tough talk for the supporters of the bill:

''Increasingly what has happened is that this has become an agenda for some state legislators from the Miami area who want to stake their political careers on appearing to be tough on Cuba from Tallahassee,'' Perez said. ``This was an insult by David Rivera.''

I will admit, it was fun to watch a worm like Rivera squirm. It was a blow against those that believe that the solution to political problems is to keep others isolated and ignorant.



''I think this law was a slap to Cubans in South Florida,'' Breslin said.

Ha. Bwahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahaha. Oh. My. Let me catch my breath. Muhuhuhahahaha!

Henry Cejudo Wins the Gold!

Henry Cejudo became the youngest American to ever win the gold medal in Wrestling, a sport that the United States has won only six gold medals long-term. Americans don't usually pay attention to events like Wrestling or Shotput, but the rest of the world does: Wrestling is practiced almost everywhere in the world, and is the national sport of countries like Mongolia and many Arab countries, so it's definitely high-profile.

The reason this particular victory has significance to me is because Henry Cejudo had a mother that was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. As someone with two parents that are both immigrants, this was a particularly triumphant moment for me personally. I sincerely hope the honor brought to America by Henry Cejudo shames the vicious, toxic bigots into silence.

And hell, it made for some great television, too - Cejudo's a young, photogenic guy and he burst into tears when he won.

Georgia vs. Russia

It's a bizarre bit of synchronicity that the Russia and Georgia conflict should happen right in the middle of my series about world mythology, because the region of the current conflict - South Ossetia - is one of the most mythically significant bits of real estate in the world.

First, South Ossetia is right at the mouth of the Black Sea and is generally considered to be the site of the end of Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece. Also, the Ossetians are descended from the Alanii, cavalry barbarians that were frequently employed by the Roman Empire. The Alanii loved to make use of tactics like defeating horses with huge dogs not unlike modern great danes. But more significantly, an Alanii cavalry force was dispatched to Britain led by a fellow named Artorius, who may or may not have been the inspiration for King Arthur. I should go into my theories about the origin of Arthurian legend in the future, but it would suffice here to say I'm not as convinced of the Artorius origin as Hollywood is.

The conflict is shaping up to be a bloody mess. First, it has to be remembered there are THREE actors here: Russia (obviously), Georgia, and the Ossetians. The Ossetians are an independent tribe with a long history that want independence from Georgia, and they've cozied up to Russia, who have never liked the Georgians ever since they rerouted an oil pipeline to the West to compete with the Russians. Also, Russian politicians love to scapegoat Georgians and Georgian immigrants the same way American politicians love to pander to Mexiphobic sentiment. Georgia on the other hand, won't stand for a loss of its territory, and politically giving the finger to the Russians plays well with the voters.

In essence, both sides in the war have decided to be assholes, and it looks like this is shaping up to go the distance. Like the Lebanon conflict, this is a war where everyone sees the advantage in continuing, and it would be political suicide at the polls for Russian and Georgian politicians if they back down. The big fear here is, naturally, genocide: if the Ossetians are creating a problem, a solution, for the Georgian side, is just to wipe them out. In fact, the recent U.N. Security Council meeting used the most hilarious euphemism yet for genocide when they expressed "concern for future demographic shifts in the region."

Eberron Forever!

My long overdue D&D blog post!

This week I'm beginning a new sword n' sorcery game with my college buddies, so watch out for updates and even pictures here. You know, it's funny how times change. When I was an awkward overachiever in High School, I hung out with my fellow acne-covered members of the Mathematics Honors Society (mostly Asian, of course) and spent my Friday nights playing AD&D, telling calculus jokes, and ordering out for pizza, and dreaming what it would be like to smell a girl's hair. Things are totally different these days, naturally. For one thing, we no longer have acne.

My game setting of choice is, naturally, Eberron. I've loved EBERRON since it came out in 2004 and became the dominant D&D game setting, and I'm not alone: a recent poll showed it to be the most popular of all third edition products. The tale of how Eberron came about is nothing short of gaming legend, the story of a wannabe that got to be. Wizards of the Coast, owners of D&D, created a contest: they were looking for someone to design a setting that would be the new centerpiece for D&D. Over 10,000 one-page proposals for a setting were sent in from all over the world.

I was one of the 10,000 game masters that submitted a setting idea for the contest. A lifelong game master, I sent in a one page proposal of my homebrewed D&D third edition setting that I was running a game in at the time, a mostly underwater world of archiapelagos and sunken civilizations called UNDERSEA KINGDOMS, which combined dark horror with an underwater setting, sort of "Conan the Barbarian in Atlantis." My proposal didn't make the cut...which is a shame, because I think my game was a lot of fun and the gang loved it. It would take Kurt Busiek to realize the potential of setting horror Sword and Sorcery underwater with his series AQUAMAN: SWORD OF ATLANTIS.

(Intriguingly enough, in the original proposal, Eberron was to have a significant aquatic component as well, something that didn't make it to the final setting. According to Keith Baker, the underwater elements were not where WotC wanted for their keystone setting and requested he leave that part out. Well, if only I had known!)

I bear no ill will against Keith Baker, because Eberron is nothing short of a spectacular and unique achievement very different from the cookie-cutter Tolkien worlds standard for D&D. It was, instead, a very pulpy, Indiana Jones style world of ancient secrets that had elements of dark Middle Ages detective stories (think IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE), and unusual twists on the very stale traditional D&D elements. For instance, Hobbits are a race of Dinosaur-riding barbarians. This is the only setting I'd ever consider playing the lamest of all Tolkienoid races, Elves. There are two Elven countries: one an aggressive group of Mongol-style horseclans, the other an Ancient island civilization that worships their dead ancestors, who incidentally live as wise zombies in Necropolis, and who often tattoo their entire face with skull tattoos.

Eberron's dominant characteristic as a setting is the widespread use of magic. After all, if magic exists, and it obeys consistent rules, it stands to reason that magic would assume important functions in the world, like communication, transport, and so forth. What's important to realize here is that this is not magic used to approximate the 1930s or technology. There are no "magical dishwashers," as Keith Baker put it, nor does anyone use magic cars or anything like that. Eberron is fundamentally a world in the Middle Ages. In fact, it offers a pretty good explanation for why technology isn't getting any higher in a world with such a long history: because of how spectacular magic is, all the research and development and scholarship goes in that direction (as opposed to things like gunpowder and the printing press).

There are some pretty spectacular examples of magic on display in the world of Eberron. One of the "sexiest" are the elemental-bound airships, sky-galleons with elementals bound in them that allow for flight. Now, it must be remembered these airships are a very unusual part of the world, and usually only the super-rich can afford them.

A big part of the visual "look" of Eberron is a sort of magical technology, with clockwork monsters, constructs, and Guillermo del Toro-style diabolical, occult machines.

Likewise, because of the advance in low-level magic, Eberron is, at least in the cities and urban regions, a far more sophisticated setting than the usual Middle Ages world. For instance, banking is a big part of the world, credit exists, and with large sums of money it is more common to write checks and bank notes. Imagine the heroes of Lord of the Rings carrying travel and identification papers!

There are a few other distinctive elements to Eberron as well. One is the idea of the Warforged. They're a race of magical golem-like constructs made of wood and metal that were designed for war, and now that the Last War is over, they have no reason to exist. They have full sentience and rights as living beings, but that's not the same as social acceptance. Like modern-day war veterans, society would rather pretend they don't exist, an ugly memory of a bad conflict. The war was the Warforged's entire reason for existing, and now they have to choose their own purpose. Some of them work 24/7 at mindless jobs so they don't have to consider questions of this kind. There are labor tensions with Warforged as well: they're strong and never get tired or ask for breaks, so naturally employers are keen to exploit them and workers are keen to resent them, sometimes justifiably and sometimes not.

Warforged are not only the most distinctive player race besides humans, but also the most popular: I've never run a single Eberron game without at least one or two Warforged.

A few more distinctive elements include the Dragonmarked Houses. Dragonmarks are magical birthmark tattoos that give magical powers, that have allowed the families that use them to become rather like the Spacing Guild from DUNE: families with jealously guarded monopolies with vast economic influence that are (theoretically) politically neutral.

I've often found that when playing with D&D vets that haven't tried Eberron before, the easiest way to incorporate their character into the setting is to make their characters members of a Dragonmarked House.

Then there's the idea of Dragonshards. Dragonshards are unique magical gems that make magic possible. Wizards place their spells in Dragonshards over spellbooks, usually. This is an example of what settings should do: introduce distinctive world specific magical treasure. In fact, to bring home the fact this isn't your garden variety D&D world, I've often given out nothing but Dragonshards as treasure awards the first few adventures.

Another thing I like about Eberron was how the setting was designed with gaming in mind. I've always felt that even though roleplaying games have an element of interactive storytelling, they are GAMES first and stories a distant second. One example of the overlap is in the continent of Xen'Drik. It's sort of like an H. Rider Haggard or Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp version of Africa, with all the racist and colonial elements removed in a fantasy context. Xen'Drik is a continent that is barely explored where, in the undiscovered jungle and desert interior, there could be, literally, ANYTHING. A lost city of gold? A dragonshard the size of a mountain? Ding! Any kind of spooky monster you like? If a race of Bee People lived on the same continent as human civilizations, history would be different to reflect their presence. But the Bee People could be placed into the depths of Xen'Drik in their own nutty ERB-style lost city with no problem.

In other words, Xen'Drik was created with a game purpose in mind. I can respect this a great deal, because it is world background and story that explains how something can be used for a game, instead of the other way around: how something is used is determined by world background and story.

Another example of this phenomenon would be how, despite the fact Eberron is a setting with distinctive characteristics from the garden variety D&D world, everything that is in D&D has a place in Eberron. This is an innovation that is absolutely terrific, especially from the point of view of a DM: it means you don't have to throw anything out. Even absolutely weird supplements like ORIENTAL ADVENTURES have a way they can be used in traditional D&D: the civilization of hobgoblins have an ancient martial tradition, so a character class like Samurai would be very much at home there. The idea of a Kung Fu goblin made my day, by the way.

This attitude is especially helpful if you're a Dungeon Master, and you just got a fantastic new adventure supplement you want to use. I've been able to insert a great many non-Eberron products into Eberron. For instance, the adventure in the back of Frostburn for 5th Level characters and the recent FORTRESS OF THE YUAN-TI adventure (which incidentally, I placed as a lost city in Xen'Drik).

I have one other nice thing to say about Eberron: for the first time in a very long while, gaming fans have had the touchstone of a shared experience. Let me explain what I mean by that. In the beginning of roleplaying games, it was very rare for a game master to create their own world or adventures, and there were a set selection of buyable Adventure Modules to run your players through. So, it was very common for two different players from two different regions of the world, one from New York City and the other from Norway, to meet and chat about how they handled the Gargoyles in room 14-B.

With the variety of campaign settings (some of which are vastly different), homebrewed rules, and the realization among Game Masters that they too can create their own dungeons and monsters, suddenly every single gaming group was a totally unique experience. This is not necessarily bad, of course: one of the great advantages of roleplaying games over the traditional forms of media like television and movies, and why I think RPGs are perceived as a threat, is because roleplaying games are interactive instead of passive activities. Yet, it is a shame this shared touchstone of game experience is lost. Until Eberron, the only shared activity gamers had were experiences with the rules themselves, the one thing that is usually more or less consistent: how Wizards tend to start off low-powered but eventually come to dominate the game in the upper levels, for example.

Eberron though, had an adventure for first level characters right in the campaign setting book itself, which left a big fat "to be continued" for further adventure modules that the game setting published. Almost every Eberron group I know ran through that first level adventure (so did I!) and ran through the others like WHISPERS OF THE VAMPIRE'S BLADE. What's interesting about the adventure supplements was how important they were to the setting. For instance, the rules for handling the all-important Lighting Rail carriages first appeared in SHADOWS OF THE LAST WAR.

My one problem with the adventures was, because a lot of the supplements had the responsibility to introduce the unique elements of the setting, so the writers made a decision to throw in "everything but the kitchen sink." The worst by far was GRASP OF THE EMERALD CLAW by the otherwise wonderful Bruce R. Cordell (who did SEA OF BLOOD, my all-time favorite adventure modules for 2nd Edition that I rewrote for my aquatic horror game), which had elements of the Dragon Prophecy and an appearance by the Lord of Blades that was totally un-needed. My group had a great time in GRASP OF THE EMERALD CLAW story, but it's one of the few times I've had to rewrite an adventure module with a big black marker, going "okay, not gonna do that, it doesn't go anywhere..."

Finally, I think I should end this article by talking a bit about the future of Eberron now that D&D has entered into a fourth edition. A lot of the FIU gamers have already dropped to their knees to suck off D&D 4th. From what I've read of D&D 4th, it's a mixed bag that I'll probably eventually get used to, just like I did when 3rd came out. In fact, the fact there is no Eberron for 4th is part of the reason I'm slow to adopt it.

All I have to say is, thank God there are no longer any Grapple checks. I really hate those moments when someone wants to do something and everybody at the dinner table whips their books out simultaneously to look it up. It's a little thing, but I like that there are no longer any racial ability penalties. Even in 3rd, that was an anachronistic throwback to the old days of game design when you could never have an advantage unless you were slightly annoyed by something.

Then again, D&D now shows elements of video game thinking. For instance, there are Encounter Powers that can only be used once per encounter. An example of this would be Tripping an enemy. You can only do that once per encounter? I don't get it. I suppose it can be rationalized by saying that tripping is a maneuver dependent on surprise, and so once enemies see you do it they get wise, and that maneuver just won't work again on them. Still, an extremely awkward way to represent a combat move.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars

Mostly I'm a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan novels, who is not for nothing one of the most romantic and exciting characters in all of adventure fiction. But, though it's not common knowledge today, Burroughs was also the "Grandfather" of modern science fiction, telling swashbuckling boys' adventure tales.

There's one easy way to determine if you'll be a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars stories. Ask yourself this question: am I a fourteen year old boy?

If the answer is no, then sadly, the moment has passed.

Part of the reason Tarzan is so readable is because of the incredible personage of Tarzan himself and his supporting cast. John Carter isn't quite as interesting as Tarzan is, and so his stories consequently suffer from this. A confederate soldier transported to a dry, dying planet Mars filled with monsters, four-armed barbarians that hatch from eggs, "radium" guns, and swordfights, John Carter eventually seeks and wins the hand of a Martian Princess.

Beats me why John Carter would shlep from one end of Mars to the other to save her. Dejah Thoris was never terribly interesting, and in the great tradition of ERB females, is something of a bimbo whose specialty is behaving wildly out of character in such a way that it creates problems for the hero.

Personally, I always preferred Thuvia, Maid of Mars - who except for La in RETURN OF TARZAN, is arguably the only interesting female character Burroughs ever created. In GODS OF MARS, Thuvia is a woman that has a natural Tarzan-like command of Banths, or Martian Lions. There's some wonderful beast-humor there where she slaps a giant banth on the nose, and the creature lowers its nose and whines penitently like a puppy hit on the nose with a rolled up newspaper! Thuvia is a naturally self-sacrificing sort, and a woman of action - she eagerly leaps off her mount at one point to delay enemies and ensure her friends escape. The final cliffhanger of GODS OF MARS has Dejah Thoris, the insanely jealous Phaidor who wants John Carter for herself, and Thuvia trapped in a hidden chamber that would not open for a full Martian year. Slowly, the door creaks to a close, and John Carter see Phaidor dive at Dejah with the knife, only to have Thuvia jump in its path. Then the door shuts completely.

What an ending, huh? Well, enjoy it while it lasts: Thuvia vanishes entirely in the next book, and by the time she gets her own book, THUVIA, MAID OF MARS, Thuvia is depressingly reduced to the usual role of female hostage in need of rescue. There was one particularly irritating scene in MAID OF MARS where Thuvia allowed herself to be captured.

Edgar Rice Burroughs had a habit of creating fascinating side characters that never get the spotlight treatment they deserve, and Thuvia is hardly even the worst example. How about the strong, handsome native warrior Mugambi, who in TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR was quite willing to protect Jane with his life when Tarzan was away, and pursued her kidnappers? He was described as "a fellow of great physique and intellect." And going back to Mars for a minute, what about Tars Tarkas, John Carter's green Martian friend, the only one of his friend to know feelings of love? Or Xodar, John Carter's friend in the Black Pirates of Omean, a great swimmer besides?

I used to eat and drink Burroughs, although since discovering Leigh Brackett and her version of gutsy sword and planet tales, it's been hard to look back at Burroughs. Brackett's men were wonderfully tough, part private dick, part cowboy, part gangster, the scruffy Han Solo character archetype decades early. And she could be creepy and atmospheric, something Burroughs, too much a romantic, never let himself be. Sure, Leigh Brackett was inspired by Burroughs just like a whole generation was...but just have a look at NEMESIS FROM TERRA to see a student that is greater than the teacher.

Roger Zelazny's Greatest Hits: "Nine Princes in Amber"

I'm very surprised that I enjoyed Zelazny's NINE PRINCES IN AMBER, Zelazny's take on the mythology of the Tarot, as much as I did. I generally dislike the traditional kind of "fairies and dragons" fantasy, opting for the more innovative and weird kind like Tanith Lee and Moorcock's. There is still a soft spot in my heart for Andre Norton's WITCH WORLD.

One advantage I had was, I read NINE PRINCES IN AMBER "cold," without any prior knowledge of the series, so the mysteries in the beginning part of the book really were captivating. Corwin wakes up in a hospital bed after a car crash without his memory, where the nurses are determined to keep him drugged. Corwin has no memory of who or what kept him prisoner, and he discovers that he is kept prisoner on our Earth by members of his own family, all of whom have been struggling for power since their father died.

"Never trust a relative. It is far worse than trusting strangers. With a stranger there is a possibility that you might be safe."

The greatest prize is Amber, located at the center of the universe and the very model and archetype of the perfect city. Everything else in the multiverse, every other city, every other earth (even our own) is a mere shadow reflection of the true Amber. This is why Corwin and his relatives fight over Amber. Sure, they could just as easily find in the cosmos another Amber where they are rulers, but only Amber, the perfect city, is "real." Each and every one of them have a distinct appearance, fit to be placed on playing cards: Corwin's colors are black and silver, for instance.

The character of Corwin himself is one of the most fascinating in fantasy fiction. Corwin is rather like Elric in a lot of ways, and the series shows a definite Moorcock influence: Corwin is a brilliant strategist whose greatest advantage is his mind, from a family, a race that is expected to consider other races in the multiverse as disposable cannon fodder, so haughty that even insulting a Prince of Amber means the offender can be killed on the spot. Yet, at the same time, because of his time on our Shadow-Earth, Corwin is "softened," and fights between his natural instincts and his embryonic conscience. In the world of Amber, evil can only be opposed by a better class of evil, and Corwin remarks in THE GUNS OF AVALON that if the day ever comes when evil itself ceases to exist, Corwin too, would be dragged into oblivion.

Corwin is hardly a clean-limbed gallant prince, but a rough, tough scrapper, more Humphrey Bogart than Prince Charming, reminiscent of the brawling he-man heroes of Leigh Brackett. Unlike Elric, Corwin has a wonderful sense of humor: when battling a demon, the demon warns him against using the name to summon him.

"Use it? I can't even pronounce it...!"

The world that Zelazny created was nothing short of astonishing. One of the more incredible sequences features an exact double of the city of Amber, Rebma, located entirely underwater. Astonishingly, the water is entirely breathable by air breathers! Every member of the sons of Amber are equipped with a Trump Deck that enables the family to communicate with each other no matter where they are in the cosmos. What's more, the closer one gets to Amber the less likely things are to work: gunpowder, for example, doesn't ignite in any dimension close to Amber, which gives the warfare on that world an old-fashoined character.

One of the more fascinating sequences involves Corwin and his little irresponsible little brother brother Random zipping through the cosmos in a Mercedes-Benz. They watch the Mercedes-Benz shift and change as they switch between Shadow Worlds, where their brother Julian (nice name!) guards the entrance to Amber. His enchanted silver mail stops their bullets, and his huge hounds keep pace with their car, ripping bumpers off with their teeth.

"It's a good thing his hounds never hunted a car before," Random says, "or else they'd know to go for the wheels."

It's that sort of humor that defines the Amber series. It's not broad Gilbert-and-Sullivan stuff like Fritz Leiber, but a subtle, very venomous and dry kind. It's also the series's best recommendation.

Coming up next: Zelazny's magnum opus, LORD OF LIGHT!

Mythologies of the World Part 1: Finnish Myth

For my first part in a series about the myths and folklore of the world (which I'd love to eventually include something on Basque myth, the Arabian Nights, Christian Europe, and Greece), I'd like to tackle the fascinating traditions of Finland.

Often, I'm asked how Finn myth is different from their neighbors, the Scandinavians and Slavs.

First, the main hero of Finnish mythology is Väinämöinen, a rascally, horny old man, one part culture hero, another part hobo, who challenges other musicians to musical fights not unlike modern-day rap battles. He's doomed to never find love: one of his most tragic stories is his pursuit of a younger woman, Aino (still a common female name in Finland today) who drowns himself rather than marry a man so much older than she is.

Väinämöinen invented the Kantele, a type of magical harp not unlike the cwyth of Wales, from the jawbone of the giant monster Pike of the North Sea. Väinämöinen also rides a flying wooden sawhorse, reminiscent of the witch's broomstick.


There's a type of picaresque humor about Finnish myth that makes it wonderful to read. Lemminkäinen, a hotshot young hero, lives with his Mother, and what's more, Mom has to rescue him on occasion and return him to life! (How many Scandinavian heroes lived with their Mother, I ask?) One of my favorite passages from the Kalevala was where Louhi, the evil crone that rules the Northland, turns a giant house-sized bear against her foes. Naturally Väinämöinen goes out to slay the monster. Instead, he has a change of heart:

"Otso, thou my well beloved,
Honey-eater of the woodlands,
Let not anger swell thy bosom;
I have not the force to slay thee,
Willingly thy life thou givest
As a sacrifice to Northland.
Thou hast from the tree descended,
Glided from the aspen branches,
Slippery the trunks in autumn,
In the fog-days, smooth the branches.
Golden friend of fen and forest,
In thy fur-robes rich and beauteous,
Pride of woodlands, famous Light-foot,
Leave thy cold and cheerless dwelling,
Leave thy home within the alders,
Leave thy couch among the willows,
Hasten in thy purple stockings,
Hasten from thy walks restricted,
Come among the haunts of heroes,
Join thy friends in Kalevala.
We shall never treat thee evil,
Thou shalt dwell in peace and plenty,
Thou shalt feed on milk and honey,
Honey is the food of strangers.
Haste away from this thy covert,
From the couch of the unworthy,
To a couch beneath the rafters
Of Vainola's ancient dwellings."

- Kalevala, Rune XLVI

In other words, as soon as Väinämöinen gets a look at the monster bear, he says, "nah, I can't kill him, he's too cool" and instead decides to take him with him back to the land of Kalevala for some drinking and picking up girls. Now, obviously this is not exactly how St. George or Siegfried would have solved the problem! The last time I saw this sort of sly humanity in a monster was in Beowulf, where the dragon, indecisive and nervous about his lost treasure cup, paced back to his hoard and looked for it to see if it was not misplaced.

This sort of picaresque levity that almost parodies the epic myth is one point of difference between the myths of the Finns and their neighbors. It's hard to imagine an Icelandic Rune with a hero makes a monster his drinking buddy. And the Slavs? Forget about it. Slavic mythology, with gods named Graak and Kog, is so dark that it makes Norse Myth look like Rainbow Brite.

There's only one occasion where the Kalevala gets extremely dark, and that's in the story of Kullervo. What's fascinating about Kullervo is, it's one of the few mythological stories that actually depicts the realistic effects of child abuse, and the very broken people it creates, trapped in cycles of self-destruction. In the end, Kullervo dies by his own hand when, after accidentally marrying his own sister, he mournfully wonders if he ever should have lived at all. Jean Sibelius, Finland's best composer, immortalized this moment in his opera, Kullervo:



Another defining characteristic of Finn Myth, apart from the levity, is its emphasis on a very wild perspective similar to shamanism. Everything has a spirit, and everything can talk: there's a very famous part where iron itself speaks, which is vaguely reminiscent of certain Javanese myths where the metalworker's position has a mystical component. One of the more explicitly shamanistic images is when Väinämöinen descends into the open mouth of Antero Vipunen, a monstrous giant in the shape of a mountain.

Another characteristic of Finn myth is the sense of magic and the supernatural. This can only really be driven home by its contrast against something like the sheer realism of Homer's Illiad. Just about every hero in the Kalevala is a sorcerer of some kind. One of the most striking images in the entire epic is the Theft of the Sampo, where while escaping from the evil kingdom of Pohjola, Väinämöinen causes his ship to grow a face and sprout wings like a bird with his magical songs. Not to be outdone, Louhi transforms into a giant monster bird and attacks the flying ship with men on her back! This scene is understandably almost always in some form represented on the illustrations or painted covers.

Finally, the myths of Finland, though dating back to the early iron age, were only written down and organized in the 19th Century as a part of the Romantic awakening of the smaller nations of Europe. Try to imagine if French was the official language of England for 700 years, and the first poet to write in English was Byron. So important to the spirit of Finn nationalism, that in Finland, a national holiday is "Kalevala Day." When Jean Sibelius composed his symphonies in the early 20th Century in Helsinki, they were based on Kalevala themes, and his Finlandia is to Finland what the music of John Phillips Sousa is to the United States.




The canon of Finn myth was collected and compiled by the poet and nationalist Elias Lonrot, in a single work, the Kalevala. What's interesting about this is, because of the late date, Finn myth has the most explicitly Christian elements. The chief god of Finland, the sky-father Jumala, a cross between Odin and Thor who wields a hammer, is much more like the Christian god, remote and never active in His creation. Finally, in the last Rune, Maryätta (Mary) arrives in Finland and has a virgin birth.




The overall story of the Kalevala is rather like a Finnish Illiad, based on the conflict between Kalevala, land of heroes, and Pohjola, land of evil and ice magic ruled by an evil old witch. It's often been argued that Kalevala represents the Finns, whereas Pohjola represents the Lapps...which is a theory that sounds pretty unlikely to me. When in history were the Lapps powerful enough to demand tribute?

In any case, the conflict heats up when the Daedalus-like artificer-smith Ilmarinen forges an object of otherworldly wonder, the Sampo. Like the Holy Grail, the Sampo's exact nature is vague, but it generally is supposed to be a grain cover that changes anything worthless, mulch or dirt, to gold, gems and salt. Naturally the heroes of Kalevala mount an expedition to get it back. When Louhi sees the Sampo was stolen, she sends a three-headed monster that shoots plagues, a giant bear, and finally, even steals the sun. The heroes find a way to get around this, of course: the smith Ilmarinen builds in his workshop a new sun!

Connections to Other World Mythologies

The single most obvious connection is to the Estonians, who have a tradition that is very similar. The Kalevipoëig of Estonia was composed as a direct answer to the worldwide success of the Kalevala. In fact, one intriguing theory makes a linguistic connection between Talinn (the capital of Estonia) and Kalevala. Theories about Kalevala's "real" location are a dime a dozen, as common as grail myths in most of Europe. One town in Finland even renamed itself Kalevala for the purposes of tourist-grabbing!

Estonia was only converted to Christianity in the great Baltic Crusade of the 13th Century, which fit the pattern of the European Crusades: convert the heathens, but preferably the heathens that are not too far away. The conversion was undertaken by the Teutonic Knights, best known in modern times as the villains of Sergei Eisenstein's cinema classic, ALEXANDER NEVSKY, and it was done with the usual lack of style that made the child-sacrificing moustache-twirling antics of ALEXANDER NEVSKY look almost realistic.

Estonian myth even features the same protagonists as Finnish myth, just like the Romans shared the myths of the Greeks. Väinämöinen, for example, is worshipped in pre-Christian Estonia as a god of music.

There are a few connections to the Scandinavians as well. The Vannatar, or Air Maidens, are females able to fly who have great similarities to Valkyries. I've even heard an intriguing argument that there may even be a connection to Väinämöinen in Beowulf!


Where can I read more?

The absolute best translation of the Kalevala was in 1996 by Keith Bosley.

A version of the Kalevala translated in the 19th Century into English is available here, at sacred-texts.com.

Alternate Superman Outfits

Over at Project Rooftop, they're designing alternate outfits for Superman. While I like the character of Superman, I'm not exactly married to his classic longjohn look, so any makeover is interesting to me.

Now this one jumped out at me as being bona-fide badass. If I was a superhero, I'd wear something very much like this:

The cutest thing I've seen

A stop-motion movie by some British 4th Graders about the story of St. George and the dragon.

Photographs of overweight dogs

My ride in the Weinermobile

In January, when I get my teacher's certification, I'm leaving either to accept a teaching position with either the Peace Corps, or a "roadless" school district in rural Alaska (depending on who responds to my resume).


You'd think that fulfilling one lifelong dream (teaching abroad) would be enough.


Oh, no!


This year, I got to actually ride in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile!


A dream since I was six years old. The current spokesperson for Oscar-Mayer is Magaly Estrella, a good friend of mine and an FIU student, so the Weinermobile was at the FIU parking lot.

For those that have never been in the Weinermobile, it was incredible. The whole inside had that new car smell. The interior was brilliant red and yellow, like a box of french fries, with rich airplane-style leather seats. You're even higher up than on most Grayhound buses; the windows are huge and panoramic, like a fighter plane. Even the glove compartments are sculpted to look like hot dog buns!

Seven of Nine is responsible for Obama!

I was just thinking about this the other day: professional superbabe Jeri Ryan is responsible for the candidacy of my good buddy Barry.

Jeri Ryan filed divorce papers from her husband, Senator Jack Ryan. Part of the reasons she gave for wanting a divorce was how creeped out she was that her hubby dragged her to a swinger's club, where according to her divorce papers, Jack Ryan wanted her to have sex with him in public, and the place had plenty of whips and torture devices along the wall. During the campaign, the divorce papers came to light, causing the incumbent Senator to drop out.

It should be remembered that Jeri's husband's re-election was, basically, a sure thing. He was a well-liked incumbent, and he was running against some nobody named Barack Obama.

Who did the GOP decide to run instead? The craziest man in America, ALAN "AWESOME" KEYES, that's who! The guy that was in the GOP primary something like five times without winning a single state. Alan "No Chance" Keyes.

Of course Obama won!

Barry Obama is nothing short of the luckiest man in world history. Running against Alan Keyes is like being GIVEN a Senate seat.

Here's something else that's interesting: Republicans in general have to answer to a base of religious, family-values types. Sex scandals alienate this base, and finish GOP candidates, which is not often true for Democrats. If Bill Clinton had been a Republican, Monica Lewinsky would have finished him.

Maybe that's no longer true, though. After all the gay sex scandals (Foley, Craig, et. al.) last year when the College Young Republican chief that seduced several students, you could hear a sigh of relief from Republicans everywhere. "A straight sex scandal? Oh, thank God!"

Englehart's Doctor Strange and the British New Wave

One of the best characteristics of good adventure comics and good comics writers, the most literate and intelligent (Englehart, Gerber, et. al.) is their ability to use their comics to have a discussion, to interact with the forces around them. If the nation is in malaise from Watergate, the comics should reflect that. If Christian fundamentalism has become a frighteningly powerful force in our culture, the comics should show that, too.

One of Stan Lee's greatest realizations was how Marvel Comics reacted to the antiestablishment, antiheroic strains of Modernism, just as much as Arthur Penn and Frances Coppola would take Truffeaut and Goddard, and from inside the studio system, start the American New Hollywood Cinema.

This characteristic, of responding to the greater world, is (mostly) lost now because of how comics writers have come to look at superhero and adventure books as being nostalgia-oriented. They view it as inherently for children (instead of for older children, intelligent children, teens, adults, and intelligent adults) and as a consequence write books with a lot less sophistication and credit to the reader. These writers also view comics as unable to have a dialogue with the bigger world, so they write comics about comics. I'm talking about writers like Mark Waid, Grant Morrison, Jeph Loeb, and (at least post-1990) Alan Moore.

All this may sound a little weird when we're talking about fun, escapist adventure books. I'm not so sure, though. One of the interesting paradoxes about escapism is, the best kinds of escapism are based on experiencing emotions that we wouldn't ordinarily like to feel, but we enjoy in a story.

For instance, take Ben Grimm. He's an ugly monster, alone and alienated from the human race by his grotesque appearance, a character capable of great self-pity and who depends on his strength because he feels he doesn't have anything else to offer anyone.

Obviously, this isn't escapism in that, for instance, people want to BE Tarzan, because of his freedom, physical prowess, and exciting life. But it still is escapism! The defining characteristics of that most escapist of all literature, romance novels, is that at the end one of the lovers dies of cancer.

The greatest adventure comics writer of all time, Steve Englehart, realized how important it was for his work to interact with the world around him. Englehart's CAPTAIN AMERICA AND THE FALCON was about the malaise of the Nixon years, conspiracies involving corporations that usurp American democracy, and the ruthlessness of energy/oil companies.

At the same time, Englehart's DOCTOR STRANGE was the first time that the good Doctor was influenced by the counterculture-spirited, British New Wave of science fiction and fantasy writers, personified in the magazine NEW WORLDS and represented by writers like Norman Spinrad and Michael Moorcock, and had an influence on writers like Roger Zelazny and Frank Herbert. Briefly put, the spirit of the British New Wave was the following:

1) The importance of Jungian symbolism, and the reality and significance of symbol becoming personified or real. This was the first science fiction for which psychology was important. This is also the first science fiction for whichthere was significance to dreams and the collective unconscious. Also, where the events of the story in the outer world were identical to what was going on in a character's inner mind.

2) An emphasis on non-Western, non-scientific cosmologies and means of measuring time. The idea of the "multiverse" was new to science fiction but not to Hinduism. The idea of a spirit world where real consciousness happens, for instance. This was the first science fiction where

3) Hallucinogenic drugs as the secret of the universe, as seen in Norman Spinrad's stories about a "true" drug culture, or Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius.

4) A fascination with alternate sexuality, hermaphroditism, homosexuality.

5) A rejection of fascism, right-wing politics, Toryism, anti-imperialism, antiracism, and an embracing of radical politics and the counterculture.

6) A rejection of the escapist adventure story.


All of the above are present in Englehart's rock n' roll DOCTOR STRANGE, with the exception of #4, which couldn't be delved into because of the restrictions of the comics code. Sounds like the punchline of a joke, doesn't it? The Comics Code was at first a tragedy and then it became a farce. But apparently there are still some things that, even in the crazy 1970s (when Americans still had balls) a mainstream comic couldn't do. Englehart made up for #4 in a very, very big way with his sex-filled COYOTE, the main character of whom had a sexuality almost as oddball as Jerry Cornelius himself.

But hey, let's go down these one by one.

#1) Englehart was fascinated by representing symbolic figures. He featured Death heavily, for example, as well as Eternity. Englehart did not create either one, but the way he used them, as a journey of self-discovery and enlightenment, WAS new. In one story, Englehart has Doctor Strange go through every period of his life. Every period of his life taught him something. In other words, the external events of the story were related to the character's inner world and mental state. He could never win externally because the problem was internal.

#2) Everything about Englehart's work priveledged and valorized non-Western, Indian, Shamanistic and Chinese means of thinking. This is obvious enough, but what's interesting is how Englehart applied this perspective. The best example of non-linear thinking would be in Englehart's treatment of time in the battle against Sisi-Neg.

#3) HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh boy! The biggest not-so-secret secret of the Marvel Universe is that Doctor Strange has a lot of great shit. Why do you think the Defenders hung around the Sanctum Sanctorum all the time? Englehart had to approach this subject very carefully considering how mainstream what he was writing was, but the best example would be DOCTOR STRANGE #6, where Englehart and Clea were in Central Park and a junkie approached them. "In my time, in my studies...I have dealt with many drugs to free the body and mind..."

#5) Fascinatingly enough, DOCTOR STRANGE was Englehart's least political work, though his works made Englehart's political leanings clear, along with his distrust of hysterical patriotism and corporate power. Doctor Strange had the fascination with Eastern mysticism, rejection of materialism, and distaste for violence that the counterculture had. There are only a few hints of politics. In DOCTOR STRANGE #11 the good Doctor encountered a figure that represented repression and authority, who wore a Nixon mask. There too was the villainous Silver Dagger, an insane, fanatical witch-hunter that ironically, was a student of magic. He wasn't as memorable as Gerber's Foolkiller, to be sure, but he condemned Christian religious fundamentalism.

#6) Doctor Strange, under Englehart, were not stories about the exilaration of power. Doctor Strange was ineffective when applying power, because he managed to overcome obstacles by understanding and realizing their true nature. Yes, Doctor Strange was adventure, and yes it was escapist, but what's interesting is what Englehart could accomplish within the structures of traditional comics.

By the way, everything I'm talking about here goes a million for Englehart's COYOTE, which had the essence of his DOCTOR STRANGE and MARVEL PREMIERE work boiled down, but it was done in a different context...well, it's worth a post in and of itself!

Finally, it seems rather pointless at this point to point out that Englehart, like Spinrad and Moorcock, had a giant beard and did a lot of drugs in the sixties and seventies.

.