Except that the day job has caught up with my brain again.

Seen this morning in the news:
–The Great Bank Robbery (in French): er, it would seem one of our most prestigious banks, a Paris branch of the Credit Lyonnais, was robbed movie-style by a bunch of thiefs who dug into the vault from one of the neighbouring cellars, tied up the security guard, and calmly proceeded to empty 200 safes–before leaving with their loot, setting fire to the whole building so they couldn’t be traced. The friend who pointed this out to me was reminded of Sherlock Holmes’ “The Red-Headed League”. Not entirely inaccurate…
-(via Charles Tan) “Falling from Grace”, a romantic comedy that apparently couldn’t sell in the mainstream–because the main character is Asian, and they’d have had to pigeonhole it under “Asian-American movies”. I have watched the trailer, and cannot for the life of me fathom why the Asian thing would be a problem. It doesn’t even seem like her private life is particularly and spectacularly “Asian” (whatever that would mean) in a way that might possibly disturb the faint of heart–sure, there’s a few specific quirks, but all in all you could imagine the same kind of movie with any colour for the main character, adapting the various sub-episodes. But, because the actress is not White, it becomes a special interest movie.
*headdesk* I think Hal Duncan is right when he calls the whole phenomenon “segregation”: it fits the definition pretty much bang to rights (not the “Black/White” issues, but the larger meaning of separation). It seems to me like a side-effect of quotas: you fit people into little boxes (like “please check the appropriate box: which race are you?”), and then you carry this over into, well, pretty much every aspect of daily life: “if you fit into such and such a box, then you’ll like this–we’ll put it into a special section so you can head right over and be among like-minded people”. And the über-box is for people who don’t check any of those boxes, who don’t have quotas, and who become (or rather remain) the mainstream. It’s scary as heck, from where I stand (admittedly not in the US, and in a country where intolerance has a whole different slew of expressions).

Ok, end of rant, I swear. Back to my Miles Vorkosigan reading (God, those books are so funny it hurts. Poor Miles).

Fellow VDer Rochita Loenen-Ruiz’s beautiful tribal story, “Hi Bugan ya Hi Kinggawan”, is now online at Fantasy Magazine. I first read it a year ago at VD4 in England, and just knew this awesome piece of prose would find a good home. Go read it!

If not for the Mama-oh’s quick actions, you would have grown up without a mother. With a bamboo tube, and a woven blanket, she captured your mother’s spirit just as it was leaving her body, and so your mother was restored to life.

Your father came to see you when he was told all was well.

He looked at you, and he looked at your mother, then he took you in his arms and he gave you your name.

“We will call her Bugan,” he said.

“A wise choice,” the Mama-oh replied. “The Sky Goddess will be pleased.”

There was a Canyao. A carabao was killed, two pigs were offered up, and rice wine flowed freely.

Read more.

BF and I watched this one this week. Clint Eastwood stars (and directs) as Walter Kowalski, a rather acrid Korea veteran who develops a relationship with his neighbours, a family of Hmong immigrants (the Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia, present notably in Vietnam). He takes the son of the family, Thao, under his wing, and tries to protect them from the depredation of a local gang.

The first two thirds of this are rather good: Walter is a pretty unpleasant character, bitter and casually racist, and the movie depicts rather well the culture clashes that follow as he attempts to cohabit with his neighbours. There’s some nice set pieces, with everyone acting pretty well, and you learn to know both Walt and the Asian family next door.

Where the movie falls apart, though, is in the last third. The “war” with the gangs comes to a head when Thao’s sister Sue (who initially introduced him to the family) is beaten up and raped on her way home, and things go downhill there. Walter concocts a weird revenge plan which basically amounts to getting killed in front of witnesses so the gang can be arrested by the police. What’s really annoying about that is that the movie seems to take it as a given that the police won’t arrest anyone unless a white veteran gets killed. By doing so, it dismisses Sue’s testimony as basically worthless, which is bewilderingly racist or misogynistic, or both. I know accusations of rape are a bit iffy sometimes, but when the victim has been beaten black-and-blue beforehand, I don’t think there should be much of a problem as to material evidence.
And, to cap it all, the last shot of the movie is Thao driving the titutar car along a stretch of beach–without his sister or his girlfriend–giving the viewers a very clear message as to what this movie really is: it’s about Man with a capital M, and virility and general chest-thumping, gorilla-style. The women are just accessories no one gives a darn about. They exist to be protected, to cook and to chatter in the kitchen, to be sisters and girlfriends and facilitators–and to be raped, when the script requires it. Even before the rape, Sue had completely vanished: as soon as she had performed her designated role of introducing Thao to Walter, she becomes insignificant, part of the background–and the rape is just the confirmation of that.

I’m sorry, are we in the 21st Century, or is this still the Wild West?

…I’m going to Eastercon at Heathrow. Starting to feel quite excited, as I’ll have a chance to see people I haven’t spoken to in a while. Sadly not able to take my Friday off as I originally intended, but I still hope to have a good time.

I can haz programming as well this year:
Saturday, Noon-1pm, Hotel Lobby: Open Autograph Session. If you want Servant of the Underworld signed… And if you don’t have the book, I have bookmarks to hand out.

Saturday, 2pm-3pm, 41 (Winchester): Writing in English as a Foreign Language. In which I meet up with Claude Lalumiere again (we were on a panel together on that very same subject at Worldcon–but in French and for a very reduced audience).

Saturday, 6pm, Royal C+D (Edwd/Vic), Book Launch Party – Shine. Drinks, French cheese and other munchies, and the chance to meet Jetse de Vries, Alastair Reynolds, Gareth L Powell and Eva Maria Chapman. Come join us for food and fun!

Otherwise, I’ll be hanging around, probably near the bar. Don’t hesitate to say hi–I should be relatively easy to spot :=)

So, meanwhile, the lack of writing updates… That would be because I’m not doing a lot of that at the moment. I’m catching up on a lot of books I wasn’t reading while writing Harbinger, dabbling in a couple short stories that don’t really want to gel, and reading up stuff on the Internet.

The BF and I have been following Peter Watts’ tribulations with the US system in a state of growing perplexity and anger–as far as I know, we have a sort of “refusal to comply” in French law, but it’s merely the fact of not stopping your car when you’re told to, and it’s punishable at most by 3 months of jail. That hesitating for a handful of seconds or even minutes before complying could land you in jail for 2-3 years is so weird as to be inconceivable (most people in France would laugh at you for suggesting such an idea, and any policeman who beats up a suspect is in big trouble. We regularly have people suggesting custody is demeaning and violates fundamental rights).

In the same vein, we’re very much bewildered by the reasons Cheryl Morgan was turned down when trying to enter the US (byzantine matters that basically boil down to the fact that when the State Department tells you that you don’t need a visa to enter the US, it counts as a refusal instead of a mere “application invalid”). I thought France had a Kafka-esque civil service, but clearly there is worse…

Really hoping things turn out for the best in both cases, but not particularly sanguine this morning. On the plus side, the healthcare law went through (again, the vitriol of some people against a government healthcare system is very much puzzling when you come from a country that has had it for decades. The ones I don’t understand are the women who are against it: men can at least pretend that they’re fit as horses and will never need health insurance for anything, but surely women know they’ll have to get into hospital at some point in their lives–to give birth?) As I said–very puzzled.

-Cheryl Morgan reviews Servant of the Underworld. I’m flattered by the comparison to Liz Williams’ Detective Inspector Chen series, which were a major inspiration (and as to the in-depth study of the society: I would love to write such a book, but it would probably require ten more years, a heck of a lot more research, and some very careful thought in order not to completely lose the reader before I even felt ready to do justice to this. The only book I’ve read which makes an attempt at such a scope is Gary Jennings’ Aztec, but I have a number of issues with it, most particularly its negative attitude towards Aztec religion and human sacrifice, which is annoying when your main character is supposed to have been steeped in said religion since birth)
–quippe at Livejournal, who’s looking forward to the sequel.
-Blushworthy one from jen-qoe on livejournal.
–SFX review, pretty positive altogether.
–Falcata Times likes a lot of things, but hates Acatl’s guts.

I remain fascinated by the range of reactions to Acatl–if he had one fault, I would have said it was his lustreless, wallflower side, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case: he ended up a lot more polarising than I thought. Interesting… (in a useless kind of way)

–The Masks of Wielstadt, by Pierre Pevel (French): Pierre Pevel is more known to Anglophone readers as the man who wrote The Cardinal’s Blades (aka a mix of fantasy and adventures à la Dumas). This is a much earlier work, first published in 2002 and the second book of a trilogy (the first book appears to be out of print, sadly). It is 1623, and the Thirty Years War is spreading throughout the Holy Roman Empire, forcing everyone from the burghers to the knights templar to choose their sides. The city of Wielstadt, protected by its dragon, has so far avoided the worst of the conflicts. But no more–for a demon in human guise has come to Wielstadt, determined to put the city upside down for its own nefarious purposes. It falls to Sir Kranz–a man who has already died once–to foil its plans.

It reads very much like Dumas, transposed to the Holy Roman Empire and with a side dash of magic. The tale actually follows several characters in addition to Kranz–his aged friend who owns a bookshop, a ruffian in the service of a few too many people, and a few more besides. It moves at a good clip with the requisite number of fights, murders, dashes across the countryside, and so on. But the universe is really well depicted, with a bite I all too often find lacking in a lot of fantasy; and it’s really refreshing to have a devout man like Kranz as a main character: for him, religion is an integral part of his worldview, and he makes the appropriate space for it in his life. Again, not something I often see in fantasy. And there are lots of cool ideas in there–the sacred blade that can only be drawn by those that have died once, the demon assassins with pitted metal masks, and the interplay between the various societies, from the Knights Templars to the beggars. All in all, a pretty good read, and I’m curious to track down the other books.

And I have to say it’s only in a French book that you’d have lengthy footnotes about historical accuracy; and whole chapters of exposition on various subjects (Renaissance cryptography, history of secret societies). Kind of refreshing, actually, if a little surprising.

–Acquaintance: the first episode in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, mixing elements from A Study in Scarlet and The Speckled Band. This was much more fun to watch with the BF by my side: he couldn’t understand more than snatches of the Russian, but he was quick to point out to me all the places where the movie either made fun of foreigners or fell into propaganda (a scene in particular, barely changed from its original in A Study in Scarlet, has become a scathing indictment of Sherlock Holmes as a capitalist materialist–as opposed to the stalwart and dreamy Watson). Again, pretty interesting, albeit I guess not in the way the original makers intended it.

Meanwhile, in writers’ land, crits are coming in for Harbinger. Some stuff looks to be broken, and some not. I’ll have to draw a battle plan for how to revise the book, but right now I’m soaking it all in (and working simultaneously on non-fiction and two short stories).

The BFS Awards longlist has been posted–I was mightily pleased to see my Chinese horror tale “Golden Lilies” (published in the August 2009 Fantasy Magazine) in the short story category.

W00t!

(and congrats to all the friends on the list–lots of familiar names in there…)

So, in order:

-Avatar, the last Airbender:
Coming late to the bandwagon on this one, I know… Set in a pseudo-Asian continent divided in four nations, each with their own element of predilection (earth, water, fire and air), it follows the adventures of Aang, the goofy titular character, last of his tribe and destined to restore balance to the world. Complete with flying bison, a fabulous supporting cast which includes a compassionate girl from the Water Tribe, an emo Fire Prince and his tea-loving uncle[1], and all sorts of awesome beasts and lovely settings. There’s some atttempt to differentiate between nations, with the Fire Nation being more or less an explicit parallel for Japan, the Earth nation strongly inspired by the more stagnant eras of Chinese history, and the Water nation by Inuits (we see very little of the Air nation, which has been wiped out, but it brought Tibet to mind as far as I’m concerned).[2]
It’s actually pretty darn good, striking a very good balance between independent episodes and a larger story arc. Bonus points for making efforts to actually get it right culture-wise (not an expert, but I recognised a bunch of customs from Chinese history), and for having a very strong female cast on both “good” and “evil” sides.

I have seen there’s going to be a movie, which I’m not impatient for. It looks like the humour and self-deprecation that was so much a part of the series went through the window–meaning I’m afraid this is just going to be one big old “Chosen One” movie, heavy on the cool martial arts and light on actual characters. And while I’m not necessarily gunning for 100% racial representativity… seriously, guys? You needed to cast pale-eyed, pale-skinned actors everywhere you could? (except Zuko, who just looks weird). I’ve seen the trailer, and I was traumatised big time by all those pale faces in pseudo-Inuit costumes.

-The adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson:
AKA Sherlock Holmes, Russian style (made in the 70s or 80s). Apparently for afficionados. Only watched a bit of the first episode so far, and it looks to be freakishly faithful to the books. We shall see.

Started on Charlaine Harris: read the first Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Until Dark. Not wildly original, but well done; the book equivalent of comfort food. I’ve gone on to the next one while I was at it.

Also finally reading the Miles Vorkosigan books in sequence. They are made of awesome.

[1]Yup, my fave characters are Zuko and Iroh. How did you guess?
[2]Yeah, a small niggle… Not a big fan of how they played this whole nation business out, which was “everyone with their own kind” (there was only one trans-nation couple, and it formed way too late for them to do anything about it). Would have been nice to have the occasional mixed-nation character in the 70-odd episodes of the show. But I quibble. It was still very good

Mostly around the Spinrad article for Asimov’s, which is a bit like watching a trainwreck in progress. (he tries to make a bunch of good points, but they get lost in some poor phrasing and some appalling ideas)
–The original article (incidentally, in the morass of stuff that made me want to hit something, there was the bit where he gushed about the Maya novel and its rigorous research–said research including choice bits like “Ancient Mayan codices [predicting] the end of the world in our era on a very specific date shortly approaching”. Er, no, sorry? That’s Christian Apocalypse eschatology getting mixed with the Maya calendar)
-Some back-and-forth going on on Jason Sanford’s blog
–Cheryl Morgan about translation markets and the isolationist nature of the US book market
–Nick Mamatas on the stuff Spinrad gets woefully wrong
-The awesome Charles A. Tan nails a lot of what I thought about the article in his editorial for the World SF blog (also, very nice stuff about mixed heritages/cultures, which I haven’t seen that often online).

I could rant, but honestly I feel the article and the comments are self-explanatory; and I’m reassured so many people are seeing it as problematic rather than taking it as gospel. I could dissect the article point by point (and believe me, there would be a lot of points to make, but I like my blood pressure the way it i. I think instead I’m going to go back to that article I was writing about Anglophone SF vs the rest of the world…