My Favorite Things in Books, 2016

The longer the live, the less I believe in objectively good literature. Even subjectively good literature is a concept deserving some scrutiny. When we listen to someone "love" a book, they're generally gushing about one part of it. Too Like the Lightning's plot twists, or Uprooted's dauntless quirkiness.

So this year I don't want to tell you about the "best books" I read. Instead, let's talk about my favorite things in books. Those things that define our memories of the book long after we've put it down. Come with me. Let's enjoy things together.

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

There is this theory that all Secondary World Fantasy is told to us in translation. The people of Wizard of Earthsea and Sword of Truth don't actually speak English - they live on planets where there was never an England. So all such works are in a contrived translation to us. But that translation has almost always default to a nigh-facsimile of Proper British or Chicago Manual Style English. Thus Sorcerer of the Wildeeps is jarring because its dialogue is relayed entirely in levels of African American Vernacular. Consider:

“Y’all do what you want,” said Mosteyfa called Teef. “But this nigga here?” They called him that for the obvious reason: long, snaggled, missing… “Is going all the way to Olorum.”… pewter-black, moss-green, yellow… “My ass ain’t tryna go right back up to the desert.”… cracked, carious, crooked. “A nigga need some rest behind that motherfucker!”

Demane felt much the same, crudity notwithstanding. A unanimous rumble rolled across the gathering of brothers.

“Anyone?” said the captain. His right hand pantomimed a man walking away, left hand waving goodbye.

“Come this far,” said some brother, “might as well go on.”

“I ain’t never seen Olorum, noway,” said another brother.

“Silver full-boys, y’all!” said a third. “Much as we can grab, y’all!”

There is nothing any more contrived about any of this language than Lord of the Rings's Middle Earth having tobacco and potatoes, or all the Fantasy novels that use the words "aphrodisiac" and "volcano" in worlds where worship was never held for Aphrodite or Vulcan. Wilson mentions "volcanic" in his first chapter, which has to be deliberate. This is fiction highly informed by cultures ignored by too much of mainstream American Fantasy. And while it has great contents all the way to the monster stalking the heroic party at the end - and that monster is the freaking coolest Fantasy monster this side of Helene Wecker's Golem - it's the language that allows access to so much character and culture. After this and The Devil in America, Kai Ashante Wilson has proven one of the most promising voices in our genre.

An Open Letter to Wolverine and Archie (RIP)

Dear Wolverine and Archie,

I was in elementary school when they killed Superman. It was big and dramatic; my mother ordered my brother and I separate copies of the black-bagged issue without even asking us because it seemed so culturally important. Being a villain-kid, I was just happy to see such an annoying icon scrubbed, but I was interested. The cafeteria buzzed with speculation about how it happened. It was a pop culture event.

It's been a stupid twenty-two years since then. The decreasing relevance of superhero comics has led the industry to many stunts, including killing characters whenever they get desperate for attention. I'm afraid you two are the most recent victims, and I sincerely apologize to you both that you had to share an announcement month. Archie, you're not even a superhero. You both worked hard enough to deserve better P.R. You're both iconic in such different ways that you getting stunt-murdered at the same time makes it all feel like… well, stunts.

And your announcements came only weeks after Marvel announced the who-dunnit murder of The Watcher. Oh, for a meta-comic about The Watcher observing this desperate trend.

Even as a villain kid, you were my hero, Wolverine. I was a runt like you. This is a perplexing week, as I should be upset that you're going to die, and yet, I'm not. If anything, I'm upset that I'm not upset. The problem is that you'll be back, probably in the next two years. Why, just last week Marvel resurrected Spider-Man after a year of being dead. He's alive again in time to make his own movie premiere.

Not only did Superman come back, but his killer, Doomsday? He's been killed and resurrected at least three times. In the last few years they've killed and resurrected Batman, the female Robin, Captain America, Nightcrawler, Superboy, Wasp, and Thor. Every dead Flash has come back. Marvel and D.C. brought back the perennial tragic sidekicks Bucky and Jason Todd almost in parallel, to identical drama with their mentors and antihero lives.

D.C. pulled "Blackest Night," a Green Lantern story that brought back every dead character in their universe, and boldly ended it with the characters surmising the dead could never return again and death was now permanent. A year later, D.C. rebooted its universe and brought back a bunch of those same dead characters.

Remember when Marvel killed Ultimate Spider-Man, a Spider-Man from another universe, and tried to convince the public they'd killed the one they actually knew about? Just to get on CNN? Later they killed the real one, but as you both know, he's back.
 

This has devalued death, which ought to be the greatest stakes in all the combat-based stories superhero comics keep telling. Archie, you've never been about fighting, so it's not fair that you're been sucked into this, but you have. I honestly wonder if you'll return, too, the next time your publisher needs attention.

And Wolverine? Death may be the rest you deserve, but it won't be permanent. In the last ten years Marvel has already killed and resurrected your nemeses, Sabretooth, Gorgon and Cyber. When Psylocke died, you yourself visited a friend in NYC for a method of bringing her back. That guy can probably hook you up if you want it.

You both have no control over your mortality, just like me. But if you could write for your own comics, don't you think the interesting story at this point would be about a universe where death isn't permanent and what it does to people's psyches? If C-list heroes routinely rise from the grave, does the public no longer fear death? How does religion change? What happens to the blood feuds between heroes and villains when bloodshed doesn't end anything?

There are stories there. There's an upheaval of the way I live, and the way you both will probably be living again in a few years.

I'm sorry that I'm not sorry you died. You deserved better.

Best,

John Wiswell

Great Ways to Fail the Bechdel Test

Some comic by somebody talking about the Bechdel Test.

In the last year the Bechdel Test has received well-deserved scrutiny. The test is simple. Does your movie have:

a) two named female characters

b) who talk to each other

c) about something other than a man.

If the movie passes A, B, and C, it’s instantly a feminist and progressive. If it fails, it’s a piece of misogynist garbage.

Does that sound wrong? That’s because it is; I made up those consequences. Culturally, we’ve never decided what passing or failing the Bechdel Test means about an individual movie. The test has become dogma for some people, however, and once their numbers grew we got the reasonable pushback. Are Pacific Rim and Gravity truly faulty films? Are they anti-feminist? Are they the enemy for not being feminist enough?

Look: I like this test. It’s dumb, but it’s a tool that’s provoked me to check my own fiction. Novelists use this thing all the time, even if our industry has a slightly better batting record than Hollywood. Since taking it to heart I’ve written about the same number of women (they’ve always been big in my work), but I’ve been more conscious about having them interact with each other. My page count of my second novel is approximately one quarter women talking to each other, and having just admitted that, let me promise they’re mostly talking about flesh-eating robots and flying cities, so please don’t close this tab and run from your browser screaming.

Martin, Grossman, Butcher, Abercrombie: all the bravest female voices.

The Bechdel Test is fundamentally useful in at least one way. We’ll talk about that starting next paragraph, but living in the now, let’s confess that it’s unhelpful in at least one significant way: criticizing an individual film. Failing the Bechdel Test is never the reason a movie sucks. In most flawed movies, it’s one of a litany of shortcomings, and it’s usually not one of the integral shortcomings. And there are many good movies that shouldn’t have had anyone question whether the screenwriter should strive to pass the test. Milk is not an inferior film for lacking two women of significant agency talking about something other than the center of the bio-pic. Alien 3 is actually an interesting movie for featuring only one woman, and flawed as its execution is, in a series that puts so many angles on women, that film uses isolation among male convicts for provocation.

And yes, I realize Alien 3 is not a good movie, and this means there are flawed movies where screenwriters still shouldn’t have striven to pass the test, but alas we’re in the next paragraph and that means we need to talk about the fundamental value of the test. In-fighting about the Bechdel Test tends to derail from its helpful function: criticizing an endemic failure of entertainment industries.

Though I still think Daredevil was okay.

If you compare the number of conversations between men about anything in film to the number of conversations between women about anything in film, you immediately find a gross disparity. Shrink the field to conversations about something other than a man, and further by speakers who are important enough to be named characters, and the results are depressing. It’s not one movie’s fault. It’s systemic, and things like Bechdel’s criticism make us more aware. Rather than succumbing to rants, we need to act on our awareness to rectify this.

Before you tell me that you don’t want stories about anybody of any gender, and that you instead only want good stories, understand that I want good stories about everything. We only get good movies about women if we have lots of movies about women, because making good art is hard, and that means lots of people need chances to make it. Generations of girls deserve better than that. If we only get Elektra and Catwoman, then probably we’ll only get Elektra and Catwoman. Yeah, I’m nauseous too.

Ask me sometime about my major gripe with the Bechdel Test and I'll probably whine about the omission of women talking in groups. We all have our nits to pick. The test doesn’t tell you how many gay characters are in popular media, or how many women are writing and directing what you consume. That’s because it’s the test tests for one thing. That part of the Torah wouldn’t have been so useful as “The One Commandments”. It’s just a thing to have in mind as we consume and create art. And it’s only a good thing if we put it to good use.

Otakon Photo Journal

I'm settling in after a long trip on the road.

Thursday alone was an 11-hour journey that's given me quite the back spasms. It was worth it.

So for today, please, enjoy this photo diary of cosplay from Otakon's 20th anniversary.

For the anniversary, Baltimore lowered the thermostat below 105 degrees for once.

The first photo I took at the convention: he wanted to be a tank, and so he was.

No one on the escalator knows the horror about to unfold before them.

A family of Majin Buus. It was then that I knew I was home.

Bathroom Monologue: A Narrative in Skin

Hers is a narrative in skin. There are castles at her ankles, drawbridges moored to the dimples on the inner junction to feet. The castle is burning, flames swaying mid-shin, and they sway whenever she jogs, cascading inked smoke to offend the clouds at her knees.

It's where tattoos of smoke ebb into tattoos of clouds that the narrative lives. Here, in the ridges and contours of inked air, the outlines of weeping and howling human faces emerge. There are no tricks; they do not murmur or tear at their hair when she does a little dance. They are remarkably still faces, frozen in mourning, caught in the cloud banks, no matter what she does. All their moist eyes peer up upon her thighs, to portraits of catastrophes that brought down the castle below. Their memories have been wrought across her midriff in sequential art that sags and wrinkles with time, and yet never loses its poignancy. Perhaps that's because she shows so few people the memories. Not all body art is public, after all.

All that is public is her face – colorless, you might call it, undrawn, never wearing make-up. All that is public are all the times she casts her eyes down upon the artifice climbing up her legs. Her expressions are a more living art. How do they look to you?

BM: Who would win: Superman or Batman?

If the writer likes Batman more: Batman wins.

If the writer likes Superman more: it's a tie or they're distracted and work together against a common third opponent. Superman fans are less awful.

If it's a fight to the death: neither of them kill people. Superman eventually wins by having a longer lifespan. Alternatively, Batman wins because Superman's died before and thus he outlived him.

If it's a race for who gets to the kitchen first: Superman, as he is much faster.

If it's a race for who gets to the kitchen first and Batman gets prep time: Batman builds the kitchen, starts in the kitchen, and wins.

If it's a race around the planet: Batman uses his superpower of money to hire The Flash, and wins.

If it's a competition of tragic origins: Batman's parents are dead, while Superman's planet is dead and in most versions so is his earth-dad. Superman wins, but since Batman is taking this worse, lets Batman think he wins.

If it's mortal combat and Batman has a kryptonite ring: Superman smothers him in lead at speeds faster than his eyes can follow.

If it's mortal combat and Batman has a kryptonite ring and infinite prep time: Superman likely also had such prep time and probably does okay with his laser eyes and ability to fight from space.

If it's mortal combat and Batman has a kryptonite ring and infinite prep time and Superman was screwing around for that infinity: the writer likes Batman.

If Batman has a really cool mech he suspiciously never uses for all the other cases it'd be useful: Superman probably rips it apart and leaves him alive.

If Batman needs to establish a mythos: Superman takes a dive in front of a cameraman.

If Superman needs to establish a mythos: he does something else impressive and lets Bruce abuse some children or whatever he does with his time.

If they're on hallucinogenics, brainwashed, in an alternate universe, and think each other are figments and villains and whatever other nonsense your message board requires to justify two non-lethal characters murdering people they love and respect: Superman throws the earth into the sun, are you happy now?

Wonder Woman Movie Outline - Written in 30 minutes.

Yesterday: I ran my mouth about people saying there can't be a good Wonder Woman movie. They've taken years to produce nothing. I have myself half an hour to write how one might go and had to stop when the alarm clock rang.

Today: I'm sharing what I wrote, no editing, exposing my typos, my stream of consciousness, and some hackneyed writing. At worst, I'm showing the earliest thing in any of my creative processes I've ever put out there. I'm a little scared.

Tomorrow: I'm going to unpack my reasons for trying this, the offense of being told there's no chance of a good Wonder Woman movie when they're trying to reboot Green Lantern and Flash, and perhaps field some comments/hatemail.

We start with two points of view. Our first is Steve Trevor, grounding us in the present United States, post-Man of Steel. Our government is paranoid about what else is out there. The Fortress of Solitude was just hiding in ice? So drones and stealth pilots are sweeping as much space as possible. Trevor is piloting the most advanced human machine out there scanning for suspicious signs and jaw-jacking with friend Hal Jordan.

Our second (and main) point of view is through the island of Themyscira, removed from modern culture. Their sky shimmers with the magical barriers that keep the world ignorant to their presence; the Amazons have been hiding for a long time, and there's mention that they've refused reconciliation even with the king of Atlantis. Something awful and unspoken once happened here, but Queen Hippolyta has decreed silence and progress. She sometimes watches the modern world through a pool, ala the original Clash of the Titans, but forbids others to view of it. The Amazons do not speak of the prison of Hades that exists beneath their palace. The Amazons want to be alone, all except one. Guess who.

Bathroom Monologue: Superman has no weaknesses except…

…Kryptonite.
…magic.

…red suns, and apparently any freaking red lamp put together by a two-bit prodigy.
…the umpteen other Last Kryptonians Alive.

…the hundreds of other characters, non-Kryptonian and still depicted as equal or greater in strength.

…mind control.

…nanobots and other pesky SciFi infections.

…blackmail.

…declining ad rates. He is a newsman, after all.

…really, really sharp things, of which the DC Universe has a questionable abundance.

…the villain-of-the-week who beats him up to seem formidable when facing other heroes.

…constantly being outsmarted despite spending all his time thinking about crisis management.
…bad writing.

Bathroom Monologue: Zine Works Redux

Dale's cell vibrated on the desk, scampering over the surface like the plastic was coming to life in little bursts. He set his teeth and vengefully finished the paragraph, taking not just enough time to get back on track, but more than enough to get the wording to his standard. Finally he hit the period button with a little too much force, and picked up the phone.

"Hello?" he said, sounding unnecessarily annoyed.

"Dale!" The voice on the phone screeched. "Dale! I'm trapped in a magazine!"

"Fred?"

"In a magazine! No idea how!"

"It's okay, Fred. Calm down." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. This should not have been logically acceptable to him, but they both did a lot of drugs. "Look around yourself. What magazine are you in?"

"There are a lot of words, and a huge picture."

"What's the picture of?"

"I think it's a woman. Or an armoire. It's abstract."

"That could be any magazine. What about the words? What are they writing about?"

"Mostly ads. I think part of it's a story. Really short."

"Fiction is dying in print."

"I'm trapped in a magazine! Help!"

"Is there anything else in there?"

"Uh. A cartoon?"

"A cartoon?"

"Black and white. It's a lion on a cell phone."

"Is the caption ironic?"

"No duh it is!"

"Is it ironic but not funny at all?"

"How'd you know?"

"I just resubscribed to The New Yorker. I think you're on my coffee table. I'll get you in a minute."

Dale switched his cell off and looked at the monitor. He read the paragraph to himself a couple of times. Fred could wait – he knew better than to read Dale’s stuff without asking.

Bathroom Monologue: What ‘Earth’ Means Abroad, OR, Monologue for Sinestro

“I’m not going to earth myself. I will deal with the real threats to my fledgling corps of fear. I only had to meet you to know – you, granted the greatest weapon in the universe, went home and barely made fourth-from-the-top of your League. Does this say that earth is home to unbeatable wonder women and supermen? No. The ring operates based on the capacity of its user, and you, the best of earth, can barely make it into fame for yourself. Earth possesses scarcely the intelligence to reach the stars, and no will to do anything with it. So I will not be assaulting earth. It will be the rookies of my corps that guts your backwater insult of a planet. Earth is what I feed to my young. Goodbye, Hal Jordan.”

Bathroom Monologue: Boy of Steel

I remember when the Man of Steel first learned how to turn his skin. He was the Boy of Steel back then, living in the Hawkins’s basement since his parents ran out on him young. He was a confused boy even before he turned bulletproof. Just struggled with his C-average and afterschool job at the dog pound.

He had all the opportunities in the world. You develop a talent like o that, and you’re set for money. The military would have drafted him if it was legal. The NFL threw money at him, and two of the crappier cable networks offered him his own show. I saw someone from the Google annoying him on the walk home from school, trying to talk him into being the official mascot of Chrome. Whatever the hell that is.

The other kids were miserable to him. They’d stick magnets to his back, or steal his homework and leave it in the cans-recycling bin. Boy of Steel just needed companionship, which is probably why he kept his job at the pound for so long, and started adopting when he had the money.

He adopted all the dogs that bit – the traumatized ones that didn’t know better – to live in the Hawkins’s basement with him. Because he was steel whenever he wanted, they couldn’t hurt him, and he could really gradually get them comfortable around people. This was near the end of his teens, but I think they helped break him in, too, because shrugging off all that biting makes talking to girls easier. The dogs that never could get comfortable around people, I guess he kept. He still has twp Springer Spaniels and a Corgi of Steel living with him. It’s kind of a family.

Bathroom Monologue: The Newcomer

Simon fell into the keyboard arrays, armored legs twisting as he sought orientation. He felt drunk, even though he hadn’t touched a bottle since last night. Montgomery stepped in to help, but Simon put up a robotic gauntlet to stop the approach. “Just keep briefing. Touch me and I’ll sue you for sexual harassment. I’ve got very good lawyers.”

“As you will.” Montgomery took two steps away from him, struggling to keep his eyes on the PDA rather than Simon’s busted suit. “His first appearance this morning was at 10:01. It’s conveniently time-stamped on an ATM camera. He stopped two men from mugging an elderly woman cashing her social security check. It’s on Youtube.”

“What a sweetheart.”

“At 10:05 he stopped a locomotive with his bare hands.”

“Bare hands?” Simon asked, pulling off his armored gauntlets. As soon as the servos disconnected, they snapped from the frame and thunked to the floor. He shook feeling into his fingers and found contusions all the way up his forearms.

“His bare hands,” Montgomery confirmed. “Three minutes later police saw him take those bare hands into a warehouse being held up by the Mastiff Brothers. They emptied five clips into his forehead and didn’t even disturb his spitcurl. The Mastiffs are in custody, though they already have three appeals filed.”

Simon stroked his chromium mask, searching around the hand-shaped dent over the faceplate for the release valves. “Shot in the bare forehead?”

“One would presume, sir. There may be video this afternoon.”

Simon lingered on that as steam spat out from the valves. He let the crumpled chromium mask drop to the floor, then wiped his brow. He didn’t think he was bleeding. “Did he do anything between getting shot at 10:08 and 10:21?”

“Well, you encountered him at 10:19. So he did at least one thing for two minutes.”

“If I hired you for your wit, you’re fired.”

“Fortunately I was hired because you don’t know how to make Youtube on your own. Do you want help with that?”

“Search engines were invented by rabid monkeys.” Simon braced one titanic boot on the control panel and leaned as far back as he could. The dents along his chest-chasse were so deep that neither of the hinges would come loose. He clawed at them for another impotent moment before shrugging at Montgomery. “You could get me a crowbar. Maybe a jaws-of-life?”

Loyal Montgomery traveled to the workbenches, one hand searching for the appropriate tool, while the other held up his PDA. “He was on the way to something big, possibly an earthquake in South America since that’s where he’s gone since, when 10:19 happened. It’s also on Youtube, if you’d like to see it again.”

“Not right now.” Simon pinched his eyes closed and groaned; he was only now getting feeling back in his ass. He’d never imagined how much he’d miss feeling down there.

Montgomery returned to him with a blowtorch tucked into his armpit and a crowbar in hand. He offered the tools, then stepped back, withholding them as he asked, “What are we going to do about him, sir?”

“Well, you are going to get my other suit. The Alexander Amosu with the pink tie and cufflinks.” He snatched the crowbar and dug it into his armor’s mechanized hip, grinning to himself. “Meanwhile, I’m going to see if he needs a best friend.”

Bathroom Monologue: Tug on That Cape, Redux

The best part of being a superhero happened Saturday morning. He wished he didn’t feel that way, but it was true.

On Tuesday he caught a train as it was derailing. A couple of people broke their arms. There were no fatalities. He signed more autographs for the stranded commuters than there were bruises.

On Wednesday he airlifted an iceberg to the southern Sahara. The governments assured him this would help irrigation, or at least give the locals clean drinking water for a few weeks.

He spent Thursday and Friday traveling through space to correct the trajectory of two satellites headed out of the solar system. It would have been lifetimes to build and send new ones, but now all that work was saved and new photos were beamed to earth, showing the cosmos from an angle never before seen. He took a minute to look from that angle himself, in person, before heading back to earth.

The best part was Saturday morning and he couldn’t help himself. He woke up and his costume was missing from the clothesline. His wife was still asleep, facedown on her pillow and snoring happily.

He padded to the living room and found his cape stretched over two chairbacks, forming a tent. His one son wore the pants of his costume like giant sleeves, and his one daughter wore the shirt like a flowing dress that ran over her little feet. She was drooling on his insignia. They were both transfixed with morning cartoons.

Maybe, if he were more profound, some other time of the week would have been the best. He wasn’t, though.

Bathroom Monologue: Missing: one short-haired cat burglar

MISSING

one short-haired cat burglar

lost little kitten, no collar

wears leather two sizes too small

may be in possession of rare coin collection

REWARD offered for coin collection

cat burglar need not be returned

photo of body acceptable

REWARD DOUBLED if she’s cut in half

warning: claws v. sharp

Bathroom Monologue: Spider-Manologue

“People say I’m just spider-powers and a pretty face I keep behind a mask, but I’ve got more to offer. Did you know I was a teenager when I developed a fluid that was stronger than steel? Also wrist-mounted squirt gun that could spray that fluid several hundred yards in a splitsecond. For the work of a teen, it’s surprising I wasn’t picked up by Super Soaker, right? But don’t stop there. In my garage, I made a costume thin enough that I could cling to walls through it while supportive enough that I don’t freeze my butt off on top of skyscrapers. This is a tall one, by the way. If the webbing gives and you fall, you might be dead before I can catch you. That happens sometimes. Before I could even get a learner’s permit to drive, I’d built homing devices, broken into Fantastic Four Plaza, and… well, I caught you. So I guess the radioactive spider that bit me as a teen was pretty smart, or criminals are getting a lot dumber. So what I’m saying is: I could make this a very long night for you, or you could just tell me where the old lady is.”