SF is My Shadow.

Recently, author Tobias Buckell shared with the SF/F community a rough draft of his notes on a speech he recently gave concerning the origins and the depths of his love for Science Fiction. Reading the article made me think about Science Fiction, as an art, a genre, even just the term, not exactly in the same manner as Buckell does, but how many events of my life - that are very much at the forefront of my memories – were n the presence of SF. Thus my own musings are not what so much as pondering what SF means to me, but simply engaging some vivid memories I have in general, and noting where SF was lurking. This was not only surprise, I would have titled this post My Life in Speculative Fiction, but Richard Bowes already used that title for as effective a project a title could hope to represent .

As various discussions in previous months around the online community recently has once again reinforced, what Science Fiction is, and its differentiation from Fantasy is something that eludes the most involved aficiondado, or Con or bookstore habitué, or even the practitioners of the art in setting a standardized definition, so with that in mind I start with one of my first childhood memories was accompany my family to a friend’s house while in Atsugi, Japan. I remember quite vividly as the adults were looking from something to preoccupy my time so they could socialize being led upstairs, where a beta max was running and on the screen was a figure clad and armored in all black, lifting with one arm some hapless and (apparently at the time) a foolishly loyal prisoner by the throat. I must have been 3 years old, and if not for hunger and armed with an automatic rewind feature, I could have been forgotten by parents and still be sitting there, trying to contemplate whether I indeed was gifted with the force, and if not I, if anyone I knew was (a childhood of the 80’s was much more of an innocent time than what my high school days of the 90’s would be – I sometimes think we really did something to fuck the world up). It is this first experience that makes me indeed quite bitter when thinking of the practice of self-mockery exhibited by Lucas with his prequels (but as I said, we really messed up somewhere between then and now). How far reaching is this memory? I believe it greatly influenced another landmark event in any young boy’s life – my first fight. Fast forward to Naples, Italy I remember in third grade, when encountered by my first measuring up, my first reaction was to grab the kid (his name was Reese) by the throat and throw him up against the wall in the cafeteria for spilling my cup-o-noodle – chicken flavored, my favorite – and my obento, and not having the courtesy of apologizing and disrupting my wa in dramatic fashion.. My breathing wasn’t as labored, nor did I sound as cool as James Earl Jones, but looking back I have little question where my technique came from.

While I’m not a huge fan of manga or anime, one cartoon I just fell in love with when I was young was Macross (that’s Robotech for the Americans)

I’m not telling anybody any secrets here when I say this is one of best cartoons ever - and although there is strong opinion against the series in the 90’s (recurring theme) from some self-important mob that call themselves ‘anime purists’, who do have some valid points (but what the hell is an anime purist anyway?), but mostly are just subjects of generation gaps and a tired effort to be current – this is one of the best Space Operas ever told. It really is three unrelated cartoons that were molded into an 85-episode saga spanning three generations of earth, and alien invasions of earth. Sure it had cool space-faring mecha that transformed into humanoid-shaped robots that made them the size of the alien Zentraedi (essentially enlarged humans with incredible technology), lots of action, and battle scenes, and a catchy and innocent soundtrack that worked so well it went from cornball to classic, but there was something more. I’m not too old, and I hate to remind people of perception, if not reality of that time, still made it rather startling that the entire bridge crew including the second officer) besides the captain were indeed woman, and in this series the female characters played an equal, and perhaps even majority role in the series. The Zentraedi ace was also female, and as Buckell noted the first interracial kiss in his article, this series features a marriage of the greatest pilots from each faction. More than that, this series focused on relationships, and humanity itself. An alien invasion brought to its knees by the singing of a young girl and our very culture. It’s a startling story about having everything taken from you, even your home, and still being human is a power in itself working in unison with technological advancement. It’s startlingly powerful, but offered in an incredibly reserved and innocent manner suggesting it themes as status quo, not profound. I recently purchased the remastered set and simply drowning myself in the story again. Does it lose something after 20 years? Sure, it’s a cartoon, but I haven’t been able to delete waking up in the morning - prepped bowl of cereal in tow - from my memory, like I have, no doubt, countless other things.

A couple years later, my first October fest in Munich, Germany I must have been six or seven and I think it may have been the last time I shed a non-cynical, deliberate smile until after my academic career ended. Why? I won a prize at a parlor game, and was just cheezin’ in wake of thousands of drunks with my prize, a stuffed toy of Gordon Shumway, my favorite alien, the star of my favorite television show at the time.

How many times has everyone been to the movies? For many, it’s countless I’m sure, and while I remember every move I have watched, only a few stick out as events I look back on. I remember it being one of the final moments that I got a long with a particular friend of mine. All men have one girl in their life that changed their entire worldview and the way they approached and thought of other woman until another one came along and removed the hate injected into their heart by the prior, also called ‘the men are dogs’ stage by women, however this is untrue, as this usually occurs after that stage when we finally come around, and is really more aptly described as ‘what goes around, comes around’. If you are a teenager and you want a good idea of who you will come to hate 10 years later in life, look no further than who you love of the opposite now. The fellas know what I’m talking about – you know – every now and then, unprompted you will just blurt out ‘I hate that bitch’, and it snaps you out of a nanosecond unconscious thought that creeps up. That’s the past traversing time itself and extending into the present in a powerful way. It’s like having postponed Tourettes, cussing someone out because I didn’t do so enough – and never could as I don’t have enough years in my life to do so - in the past. Indeed I was shocked that in watching The X-Files movie, I would experience the end of what should have been a beginning, a paradox that still baffles me with its possibilities and lost promises even today. We only watched it because we were late and it was the only movie not sold out, I look back on it as a time when ‘simply being together’ stopped being the most important element of a relationship, and I hate the goddamn X-Files to this day. The last shred and hope of idealism died not too long after.

The first Science Fiction Book I read, while being wholly conscious I was reading it ‘because’ it was Science Fiction, was Frank Hebert’s Chapter House: Dune. You know, it’s way too popular a statement around genre message boards to dismiss the all but the original Dune installment. Is the first book the best? I think so, but that’s not exactly a statement knocking the rest of the work. I’m trying to figure out what other sagas are so much more powerful and compelling, that one could take the stance to knock this sequence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m president of the ‘Stop the Madness Foundation’, hoping that Kevin J. Anderson and Brian Herbert will just knock it off with those ridiculous prequels, and I’m still hopping they lose the formerly ‘lost’ manuscript that they wrote, but there are only a handful of sequences that capture an author’s vision – proven relevant by time – with the magnitude that ‘Dune’ succeeded in.

My love for Dune began without knowledge of Paul Atredies, or his God Emperor progeny, the no-ship serving as a habitat for Duncan Idaho, Murbella, Scytale, and the ghola of Miles Teg. I just wish that after chapter house we followed in Muad’ Dib’s words “Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.”

The term Science Fiction is one I used a lot. It was the nickname (well, one of them) of one of my best friends. In this context, it was of something we simply could not explain. What he did on the basketball court baffles me even now, and somewhat has become a lore, - always mentioned when a meeting occurs amongst childhood friends. We know the term ‘playground legend’, ever community has one (well all of them not dependant on soccer moms and min-vans – and in fact find both ridiculous), but I have played on many playgrounds, and seen many of them, but my friend – he was something else entirely. At 6 foot he could dunk a 12-foot goal, the glide is something so beautiful Catherynne M. Valente couldn’t do it justice in word, and he was not just an athlete, his passes were precise, he could whip a ball behind his back across the full court and hit you in stride with a no-look, when inspired to play defense you were shut down, the jumper – a weakness in his game before – became unstoppable. Close to everyday of my life for 10 years we ran games, going to different courts depending on the day, and everyday he would just do something so unnaturally, so unique, you would force yourself to tell him the books to give himself an opportunity to play – how good was he? I had a chance to see two players play in high school, that were quite good, Tracy McGrady (who went to Mount Zion) and Jerry Stackhouse (who went to Kinston), neither of those two are the best 16 –18 year olds I have ever seen play, by a long shot. Some of my fondest memories took place on a black-top or gym, playing endless amount of games it seems, as if Science Fiction was on your team, you are not getting of the court until you decide it’s time to leave.

We all do crazy stuff when we are young. Want to have a surreal type of experience? Get loaded up on some ‘shrooms (I’m talking like a half oz. to the face) with 5 of your friends, get in a convertible (that’s top was down), and drive around during a hurricane, run into a ditch, and then walk to the house for 4 miles in the hurricane while everyone has the times of their life. What does this have to do with SF? The craziest thing was during the whole time I had the Flash Gordon theme song (you know by Queen) ringing in my head the whole time, something I probably hadn’t heard in at least 10 years prior. At any rate I remember this quite vividly as got into a lot of trouble for it, and I vowed to make some changes with my life - next time, I’m driving, because I always have Rain-X on my windshield (which works so startlingly well it could be from science fiction as well).

The one memory that never escapes me? Why the fantastic is something that always mirrorerd my steps? My earliest memories of myself, was as a child in Japan, and I would always go upstairs to watch TV (as my parents were watching news or some other completely uninteresting programming to a child). In this room we had a Japanese doll, in a glass display, and every night I would fall asleep, and dream this god forsaken doll would grow to adult size and try to kill me – with nothing less than the world on the line – and every night we would end in a draw, to be continued the next night. It scared the shit out of me, but it became something for a year that was almost like a ritual, and I don’t think I knew I was dreaming. I look back on it, and I wonder what more alarming. At such an age I thought something was actually trying to kill me, the avarice I had during the day knowing I was doing something for the world every single night.

All that is a bit incoherent, perhaps a bit strange, and is about as interesting to most as the race for the gold in Curling in the Winter Olympics is to me, but this is what I thought of after reading Buckell’s terrific article. So what is SF to me? Something with a strange, and at times a disturbing sense of humor – my most loyal audience.

Tags: books, science fiction