The Antisocial Socialist

 And now for something completely different! Today's featured episode is from lydamorehouse 's Mona Lisa Over Pod, "American Flagg!" I was looking forward to this episode since she mentioned it was happening but I was delayed due to being away for a week but I finally got to listen to it and it didn't disappoint.

WTF is American Flagg!, you ask, if you are a normal person and not like, a 60-year-old man on the internet like I apparently am. It was a very strange cyberpunk comic by Howard Chaykin that rohmie introduced me to way back in the day, which ran from 1983-88. It's set in the distant year of 2031 where a giant corporation runs the world, everyone lives in malls, and the exiled government rules from Mars, and follows Reuben Flagg, a Jewish former porn star who loses his job to AI and becomes a deputy in the Plexus Rangers. Also there is a talking cat with cybernetic gloves that give him opposable thumbs. It is pulpy and cheesy and often incoherent; I loved it when I read it and haven't looked at it since.

This—and the podcast episode—really ask the question: Does a comic need to be good? This comic was influential in a lot of ways, and it is bad in a lot of ways, and Chaykin definitely has his haters. (Note: I am not one of them, I loved his run on Blackhawk, and I think his art style is cool as hell, despite his obvious. Um. Quirks. As both a writer and artist.) The gender and sexual politics are. Um. The politics-politics are genuinely incoherent, a topic that Lyda and Ka1iban explore in satisfying depth. It's satire, but satire of what exactly?

The critiques in this episode make me like it more, actually? It's much easier to write and discuss a straightforward dystopia—works like Black Mirror or American Flagg's contemporary V for Vendetta that examine one particular social problem and exaggerate it for rhetorical effect. American Flagg! is a hot mess. I did think so at the time; it's very hard to determine what it's critiquing and I don't think that's intentional as such. But it puts the state, or the contested idea of the state, in tension with corporate interests in a way that feels a little more nuanced and prescient than it should be. It doesn't give you anyone to root for, particularly, but more challenging, it doesn't give you any ideology to root for (in a way, that echoes Watchmen, in that the best you can hope for is Nite Owl's wishy-washy, ineffectual liberalism, which it's clear neither the author nor the narrative support). I'm not making it out to be Great Art but I do think it's Interesting Art and there's a reason these two can spend 99 minutes discussing it.

So yeah, I vastly enjoyed this detailed discussion of a comic that I thought everyone had forgotten about.

(Do Transmetropolitan next???)

Currently reading: Bread and Stone by Allan Weiss. Where we last left our hero, he'd shipped off to the Great War in a fit of youthful idealism. It went about as well as you think. One really good and interesting narrative choice here is that the focus isn't on the grinding misery and trauma (though there is plenty of that too) but that so much of war is spent waiting, most people tend to run from gunfire and explosions rather than towards them, and the contribution of a single individual doesn't amount to very much. William experiences the kind of thing I've often felt at protests where you spend a lot of time standing around and don't feel like you've done anything. He returns to a vastly different Canada than he left—too late to say goodbye to his mother, who has died in the influenza epidemic despite being about the only person around who takes pandemic precautions. His father has gone back to the mines and sold most of the family farm, leaving his brother to deal with the rest. His aunt and uncle are cash-strapped and can't find him work. He instead goes to Winnipeg with his pro-union war buddy who promises him work. But times are tough everywhere, and he's instead drawn into movements of unemployed and underemployed workers, both the organizing committee of the general strike, and the veterans association, whose membership broadly supports a strike but whose leadership does not.

This book is immensely detailed—I imagine drawn from primary sources. There was a lot written at the time so someone willing to put in the effort really could get every single bit of infighting and discussion that happened in all of the organizations that were around at the time. It's impressive. It doesn't make for the most action-packed reading, but if you are really interested in the period (which I am) this is better than any non-fiction text I've read about it.

I also quite like how William is not particularly a reliable narrator or an admirable person. He's certainly idealistic, but he's an absolute himbo with a number of blind spots, especially when it regards women and immigrants. At the core of this book there's a very similar sort of debate as we see today—does the left cave to populist sentiments around marginalized groups, or does it stand its ground? (Basically, the returned soldiers tend to be pro-strike but anti-immigrant, which the elite politicians, business owners, and journalists use to drive a wedge in the movement.) The book's narrative comes down solidly on the "stand your ground" side, though...history is history and we know the strike lost.

 It can be no other than Wizards & Spaceships' "Against Hopepunk ft. Nick Mamatas." I complain a lot here about a certain type of book that is very popular right now in SFFH spaces, and has been basically for the past decade (albeit the earlier attempts were more interesting than the publishers' attempts to chase that wave) and yeah. It is not the biggest problem in the world, that the dominant trends in the genres I like do not align to my particular tastes. But. It's still something I enjoy talking about and reading about and listening to podcasts about, and there is no one more qualified than Nick Mamatas, the most cynical bastard in genre fiction (complimentary), to talk about it.

This is less a condemnation of individual authors and their work (in fact, it is not that at all!) but an exploration of why the economic models of the publishing and music industry work the way they do. It's a wide-ranging and I daresay fascinating discussion and Nick is extremely funny. Also there's a lot about 80s post-punk in there if that's your thing (it's mine).

You are not prepared.



( many )

I finally processed these. They're all from St. John's and Ferryland.

( cut for photos )

 Just finished: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Yeah, I think this is my Hugo best novel pick. It was really good, really timely, fucking gross, and gave me nightmares. It's very much a confluence all of Tchaikovsky's quirks—rather darkly funny narrator, alien minds, and the particular type of resolution he goes for. All of those things happen to work for me quite a bit. This one reminded me quite a bit of Jeff Vandermeer but less nihilistic and I liked the characters more.

Currently reading: The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. This was the only novel on the Hugo list where I'd never heard of the author or the book. I'm loving it so far though. It's a murder mystery set in a city where only engineered seawalls stop the things from Attack on Titan from demolishing the place every wet season. A noble is murdered in a mansion (not his mansion) via a tree growing through his body. The person charged with investigating the murder is an old autistic woman who doesn't leave her house so she gets a young man to be her eyes and ears. The murder mystery structure makes it rather different from not just this batch of nominees but the other award lists in general, which is also intriguing.

Just finished: A Sorceress Comes To Call by T. Kingfisher. I ended up really loving this one. Reading all these award-nominated books has been a fascinating experience tbh, because (with a few notable exceptions) it's all pretty high-quality, but it's just off enough from what I'd normally read that I get to speculate about where my taste deviates from other people's. Also, because this has the worst book cover I've seen in awhile—to be clear, I've seen three covers for this and they all suck—but imo is much better than the other things I've read by her so far.

Anyway, as to the actual content. This is a dark retelling of the Grimm Brothers' "Goose Girl," which I had never heard of before, and which is already quite dark, seeing as it features the severed head of a murdered horse. It actually doesn't have much to do with the original story beyond involving a horse, a flock of geese, and some unfortunate marriage proposals. But the fairy tale frame and vaguely Regency setting is one of its strengths—Kingfisher is free to do a lot of interesting character work within that structure.

Case in point: Hester. I mentioned that the story was about Cordelia and her mother Evangeline, the aforementioned sorceress, but Cordelia is really a decoy protagonist, and the heroine of the story is Hester, the sister of the man that Evangeline intends to marry. Hester is 51 with a bad knee and a cane and has refused marriage to the man she's loved for years because she values her independence. She plays cards with a group of other badass middle-aged ladies and takes zero shit. I love her. The story is really the story of solidarity between women, from Hester and her friends, to Cordelia pushing back in any way she can against her mother's abuse and expectations of marriage for her, to the maids and servants of the household. Also it has the right level of darkness for something like this—there was a genuine sense of peril that I haven't seen in a lot of the horror-adjacent works I've read lately.

Currently reading: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky. I think (unless the last book I have to read is amazing), this is going to end up being a Tchaikovsky-vs-Tchaikovsky decision for me with the Hugos. So far this one is edging out Service Model on concept alone, but I'm under halfway through, so we'll see. It's about a dissident scientist exiled to one of three newly discovered exoplanets, called Kiln. Earth is ruled by the Mandate, which believes in strict social control and scientific orthodoxy. Arton is an unreliable first-person narrator, so while he initially seems to have been exiled for following the scientific method to is logical conclusions, he quickly reveals that no, he was also a political revolutionary.

The journey from Earth to Kiln takes 30 years and is one-way for the prisoners sent to work there, which means that the Mandate is able to tightly control information about it—namely, that there are alien ruins on the planet, so not only does it have life, but it had at least at one point sentient life. Also, the life that they do find is Jeff Vandermeer-level fucked—each organism is made up of a bunch of other organisms that live in parasitic relationships, making taxonomy a nightmare. Arton occupies a difficult position where, as a biologist, he has a certain level of privilege amongst the prisoners and is exposed to less danger than most, but also he's linked up with the more revolutionary elements and has nothing to lose but a nasty death by rebelling.

Anyway, this is really cool and I'm into it.

 Listen this is the best episode of a podcast you'll listen to all week. Maybe ever. In this podcast lies the seed of all other podcasts.

The Aurora-nominated podcast Wizards & Spaceships episode "The Ur-Pisode: The Queer Heart of The Epic of Gilgamesh, ft. Julian Gunn" is about the Epic of Gilgamesh (obviously), why it still matters after 4000 years, and most importantly, why Tablet XII is canon despite what homophobic translators have done with it over the past century or so. It's so good you guys. It makes me happy every time I listen to it. radiantfracture is just one of the most brilliant people I know and hearing him geek out about this is a delight you won't want to miss.

Standard disclaimer: I am not involved in any of this. Discussions of protest tactics are purely speculative; this is not legal advice, and if you commit an actual crime, don't post about it.
 
Courtesy of a friend who may identify themselves if they choose (thank you!) I read this article in Mother Jones about the No Sleep For ICE movement and can't help constrasting it with the #NoKings protest. Not that I'd want to disparage the latter—I think it's awesome that people did it!—but the former is an example of the kinds of tactics that we increasingly need to see.

I have a number of issues with protest marches, especially in North America. We on the left tend towards reification of historical protest movements without ever analyzing what made them effective (or not). A good example locally is the Days of Action, a series of rolling one-day strikes against the extremist right-wing government of Mike Harris in 1996. These were a resounding failure. Mike Harris and his regime steamrolled over the labour movement in Ontario, which never recovered, and despite being directly responsible for a number of deaths, continues to enrich himself by running gulags for seniors. However, these protests were loud, colourful, and most importantly, made people feel like they were Doing Something. Again—it's important to make people feel like they are Doing Something, that is how movements get built. But when a new far-right regime was elected in Ontario, the entire strategy of the labour movement pivoted to re-enact a protest movement that had been an abject failure, and so we lost again, repeatedly and even harder. 

I had the same issue with Occupy, where what had been a successful tactic in Egypt and New York was exported around the world, without regard to local conditions. It resulted in one baffling morning spent wandering the Toronto encampment, where a lone speaker used the People's Mic to communicate with five comrades. The aesthetics of protest triumphed over the old-fashioned idea that protest ought to accomplish something.

Now we are seeing LARPing of the kind of mass demos that have been happening since the 1960s, most of them failures, as the authorities are quite competent in curtailing this kind of activism, either by assassinating political opponents, kettling demonstrators, or conducting mass surveillance to be used in future disappearances. The great success of #NoKings is the theoretical embarrassment for Trump of seeing his own sad, empty birthday parade dwarfed by crowds in nearly every American city and town. To be clear—this is a success, as Trump cares a great deal about crowd numbers. But this is a regime immune to reality and shame, and entirely capable of generating AI slop to convince the death cult members that what they saw with their own eyes wasn't true.

Which is to say: It's good, it's useful, but now the tactics need to change.

To contrast, No Sleep is very targeted in its strategy and goals. Let's be clear: Every employee of ICE is a human trafficker. They should not be allowed to return to their homes and communities after a day's work, because that day's work is Nazi shit. Targeting them where they live and sleep is critical. It reminds us that these are not normal people who are doing a job, but instruments of a police state who are conducting activities that are unreservedly evil and socially unacceptable. It is a reminder both to them and anyone who cooperates with the Trump regime that, in fact, "just following orders" is famously not a defence at the Hague. Most importantly, though, it introduces friction between the regime's aims and its outcomes, rendering it less effective in kidnapping and disappearing people.

I think we are all thinking: "I am exhausted. I can't fight everything all at once. Where are my energies best spent?" At least, I'm thinking that. This is deliberate; this is flooding the zone, making the laundry list of bad things come so fast and furious that opponents don't have time to recover from one fight before we're thrown into another. It's very tempting to get enmeshed in weekend street demos—for one thing, for those of us who work, they can be done on the weekend—but I would encourage everyone to participate in them with an eye to what they're useful for and what they're not useful for. Remember that surveillance will be gathered on you no matter how careful you are. If you or your comrades get arrested, movement resources will need to be directed towards your defence (and you will be dragged through hell because even if you did nothing wrong, the point of charges is to destroy your employment, finances, and relationships). Stay on the lookout for smaller, more agile actions that can add friction, rather than big showy events. Don't get caught up in violence vs. nonviolence discourse, or crowd numbers.

The answer to "where are my energies best spent" is always, "whatever you can do," which for me tends to be above-ground, legal actions on the weekends. This has different significance locally because our supposedly socialist mayor who used to go to protests passed a protest ban, so imo all protest energies in Toronto ought to at least focus a little on breaking this ban so that we can all get our Charter rights back. But this may not be the conditions where you are.

Also stop using the Hey Ho chant. It reminds me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves but instead of marching over a log, they're walking headfirst into a police baton.

Just finished: Dakwäkãda Warriors by Cole Pauls, I don't have tons to say about this comic—it'll take you maybe an hour to read if that, and it's really cute and fun, and then you read the context around it and it's quite moving and beautiful as well. It's basically a language revitalization project wrapped up in a pew-pew-pew space opera story. It's cool that this exists and I want there to be more of it.

Withered by A.G.A. Wilmot. Listen, cozy horror and other cozy authors! I will make you a deal. You get one (1) scene where the asexual protagonist comes out to their appropriately diverse love interest and they talk about their sexuality and consent in a mature, healthy way, infused with Tumblr therapyspeak, and agree to just hold hands or whatever. In exchange, I want y'all to try excise or subvert toxic tropes like having your main human antagonist being a woman who is haunted by a ghost no one else can see and locked up in a mental institution for 25 years, who has no agency at all, and who at the end realizes the error of her ways and is...cut loose to just be homeless and wander forever, I guess????

Like, aesthetically, I hate cozy. I fucking hate it. I try really hard to not judge the taste of people who like it, because intellectually I get the appeal and there's nothing wrong with liking what you like, but it's very much not for me. And when I have to read and rate a cozy book, I try to keep the ideal reader in mind, not me, a grim and cynical person who likes messy characters and tension in my storytelling. I think there are some cozy, or cozy-adjacent books that are done well (Regency and Regency+magic does low-stakes, mostly good characters in ways that I enjoy, for example) and I don't want to judge the entire subgenre either.

But I do think that there's a tendency for specifically cozy fiction to use didactic storytelling (casts include one of everyone and/or a lot of twofer characters, but these identities tend to be very shallowly written except for where they reflect the author's, conflicts are easily resolved by talking things out, good behaviour is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished or reformed, discussions about emotion or sexuality are always direct and never in conflict). So if you are going to write a book that includes, for example, instructions for the reader on how to navigate a relationship with an ace person, or how to approach therapy for a mental illness, I'm going to also need you to examine your work for unintentional messaging in a way that I wouldn't necessarily do if you're writing, say, Gothic horror where the protagonist can't decide whether she wants the vampire to eat her or fuck her. 

Which is to say that in a world where we get to see multiple Zoom therapy sessions, I do not buy that a mental institution merely drugs a character and does not attempt to help her heal at all. I think that sets up a dichotomy between Good Mental Illness (you know, the kind that makes you pretty and kinda tragic) and Bad Mental Illness (where you get your mess all over other people/try to burn down the family house) that is not good or wholesome at all.

Also, the climactic battle at the end was a huge WTF.

If you, like me, would like to join in on Cozy Horror Discourse multiple years after it was live, here are some links I appreciated:

The Material Basis of Cozy Horror by Moreau Vazh
In Praise of Discomfort by Simon O'Neill

Currently reading: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky. This one starts with a robot valet murdering his master and not knowing why he did it, so, promising beginning. Humanity increasingly relies on robots to do everything, and as a result, is dying out. Charles, the valet in question, doesn't know what to do without explicit orders, and so he reports to Diagnostics, only to find that robot repairs are backed up due to funding cuts that have eliminated the entire human staff. Also he may have developed a Protagonist Virus that gives him agency and self-awareness, which he very much doesn't want.

The voice in this is great—the first two chapters are basically the robots navigating their way through the murder without being able to deviate from their programming, and it's bitingly satirical and very funny. I'm rather enjoying this.