Urban Fantasy & American Gods

'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman reinvents myth by taking the 'Percy Jackson' route (or rather, inventing that route?) and putting classic, historical gods into the modern world. Like 'Percy Jackson', 'American Gods' put logic to the gods existence by saying that humans belief in them is what makes them exist and what gives them power. Unlike 'Percy Jackson' though (where just the influence of the Greek gods in modern society and the work of their demigod children is enough o keep them in power), the gods in 'American Gods' need the belief to be of them in particular and they need the old ways followed. Also unique to 'American Gods' is the modernization of having new gods come into existence. Gods of media, the internet, conspiracy theories, the stock market, and anything else humans believe in or worship with a religious intensity. 

I think this country is one of the few that this story would have worked best in. The concern with how the old will merge with the new is one a lot of people feel the pressure of, especially in a country as new as America. Having a war between the old gods and the new American ones was a good way to personify that struggle, especially since the new gods wants to do away with the old ones entirely. 

Another way the story makes the old myths relevant is by making the gods be in hiding with the rest of us. In 'Percy Jackson' the gods can exist around humans, but often chose to only walk among them when its convenient. In 'American Gods' they have no choice, because they (or a part of them) were brought over when their believers migrated to the America, and now they are essentially stranded. They gain their power and worship how they can, through trickery usually. 

Along with creating gods for modern sensibilities, 'American Gods' also uses the conflict of it's world to parallel current concerns and fears. 

The Martian & Space Opera

'The Martian' by Andy Weir has been dubbed some of the most accurate sci-fi to date, and it's film adaption (which is pretty accurate) is considered the most scientifically accurate sci-fi film ever. It's overall an entertaining read, even if it can be heavy on space-science explanations, but the way it's told makes up for that.

Another interesting part of the story is the tropes it combines. The most prominent being the classic tale of Man vs. Nature. This kind of story is elevated in an interesting way by setting it on a foreign planet instead of on Earth. It's a survivalist story, but instead of being about a man fighting a bear, or a hurricane, or freezing snow, it's about an astronaut. The story of a marooned man often takes place on a mountain or a island, so putting it in the not-so-distant future, on a not-so-distance planet is a genius way to revive the genre and make it interesting. 

It's out in the same category as other space operas, such as 'Star Wars', 'Mass Effect', and 'Firefly' though I'm not sure I'd call 'The Martain' a space opera like those other stories. According to wiki, a Space Opera is defined as "a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking." As far as I can see, the only thing that matched Weir's story to this subgenre is the risk-taking and maybe the melodramatic adventure.

I would honestly call it a 'survival film' instead of a Space Opera, seeing as though it hits all of the genre markers of those kind of stories, just set in space. It even has the trope often included in this genre, which is to have some sort of captain log, where the main character keeps track of their days spent alone and how they survive.

Honestly, I'd call 'The Martain' a 'Cast Away' on Mars instead of a Space Opera.

The Future

Honestly, I'd love to be optimistic about the future but it's rather hard to. I mean, theres the obvious fact that climate change is going to change our life for the worst in our lifetime and no one with power will do anything about it, and also the terrifying parallels to America's current leaders politically with some horrible moments in history, mixed with the technology that would be amazing if I wasn't for the types of people and governments that will use them, and more and more. 

Basically, I don't think that it's going to be a good time, and I think the next few decades are going to be scary and horrible. Sometimes I'd rather not think about it too hard. Sometimes I think I should have picked a career path that would have more power to change things, instead of the one I wanted to do. Sometimes it feels like nothing can change it besides a handful of uncaring people, so why bother?

I don't envision a very good future past my lifetime, though a part of me will always hope that people an and will change for the better. I think that nothing is permanent, not even corruption, and I like to think that maybe one day the people who care will be able to take over. Most of the time my realism tells me this is impossible, but it's a good thought. 

The Fiction of Ideas

'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale' by Phillip K. Dick (which is the inspiration for the film 'Total Recall', apparently) focused on a technology where someone could pay to have memories implanted of a adventure, one they would not know was fake. As the story goes, a humorous series of events shows that the requested fake memories of the main character were actually repressed memories that he actually experienced (like stopping an alien invasion? Okay??). 

Besides the plot itself, this concept of memories is one that is pretty dystopian. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Black Mirror' did a episode focused solely on it sometimes soon. But memories being taken or planted is one that is terrifying to many, and if it were ever possible, would be a dangerous power for the corrupt to have. Particularly the worlds governments. Dick's story doesn't really focus too hard on that angle, weirdly enough, but I think a lot of modern stories probably would. 

Samuel R. Delany's 'Aye and Gomorrah' focuses more on a physical change, where astronauts are neutered and are sexually repressed because of it. And about how there are humans who find that sexually arousing. 

I think both stories, along with modern stories like 'Black Mirror' are dipping into how technology will interact with human nature. I think 'Aye and Gomorrah' worked a bit better than Dick's short. And I think modern stories like 'Black Mirror' do this even better than the other two combined. Most of the episodes of 'Black Mirror' focus on how we will change our minds through technology, and the dangers of missing that technology with the corruption of human nature. 

For instance, 'The Entire History of You' is about an implant that allows for people to record every moment of their life and replay is back at whim, allowing for a disconnect form the present and a obsessive attention to details. 'Playtest' is about an implant that allows the user to experience the virtual world like its real, and 'Men Against Fire' merges the two technologies some to use on soldiers so that they view their opponents as inhuman monsters, and so that any memories they have of who they really are killing is wiped away and replaced with something easier on their consciences. 

All of these stories are just to examine where we are going to go with our technology and how its going to affect everyone on a person-by-person basis. Its a genre thats going to last a while, since we are all just trying to keep up with and adapt to the ridiculously quick release of new technologies, along with trying to figure out how to form our lives around them. 

New Weird

Weird, defined as 'suggesting something supernatural; uncanny'. In modern days, I think we associate the weird less with the supernatural, and more with the alien. Both as something actually extraterrestrial and as something unfamiliar and foreign. Uncanny, still, but now rooted some in the possible. This is the new weird. 

In the suggested content this week I read/watched, if you look past the unusual storytelling methods, you'll find the story is usually pretty comprehensible, straight-forward, normal (in the context of a story). 'Jack' by China Mieville, when stripped down from the Reformed and the science fiction elements, is a story about a Robin Hood type who died a martyr. 'Cabin in the Woods' is about an organization who is tasked with finding people to be sacrifices to appease the Old Gods. 'Under the Skin', under its quiet and unsettling filming, is about aliens who harvest humans for food, nothing more. 

For all of these, what makes it weird is the way it's told. The lack of a linear storyline, a narrator that confuses the story long before they explain it, or just a general lack of straight forward explanation. We as a society is very used to a certain method of storytelling, and when thats twisted or stripped from something then we feel unbalanced and weird. 

As a culture we are drowning in content, so any story that can tell us something we can understand, but tell us it in a new, weird way is something we are drawn to. It's compelling to get an old story told a new way. It's just strange enough to keep us watching/reading, but just close enough in explanation to what we know that we don't feel lost. 

I think there are stories out there that have the tone of the weird, but also have a hard to follow explanation, and therefore are a bit more dividing as stories. 'The Aquatic Uncle' for instance, or 'Annihilation'. Both stories were perhaps told a bit more straightforward but had no easy to comprehend explanation at the end. Their actual content was more confusing and required more thought. 

Tan Tan and Diverse Sci-Fi

Nalo Hopkinson's 'Tan Tan and the Rolling Calf' is interesting as a sci-fi because it takes advanced technology and merges it with Caribbean mythology and vernacular. It makes you as a reader question why sci-fi (and fantasy while we are at it) are so focused in on white cultures and languages, particularly when the very genre is one that anything can happen. 

The most notable part of 'Tan Tan' is the use of a writing style and voice that doesn't fit the 'grammatically correct' way of writing and talking that white English speaking scholars have invented and enforced. 

Another notable aspect is the fact that the religious aspects and the technology and town and planet names are all based on Caribbean or other black cultures. For instance, the planet (or dimension?) that Tan Tan is originally from is named after the leader of the Haitian revolution, Toussaint Louverture. And the planet they are currently exiled to, New Half-Way Tree is named after a town in Jamaica. Often the character call out to gods such as Anansi (with Tan Tan in particular feeling a strong affinity to him), and the creature Tan Tan adopts is named a rolling calf, which is a creature from Jamaican folklore. 

Just the process of making the main character and the culture non-white, non-western pushes against the majoritarian culture. The story itself isn't one that is too out side the box of mainstream sci-fi, and its a pretty easy to follow an cookie-cutter story (even has a happy ending!), but it's the world-building decisions that make the story stand out. Like with 'Attack the Block'— which is just a story of kids on their bikes fighting monsters, one we've seen dozens of times— but choosing to set it up in a low-income housing black and to make the kids part of that world (and predominately non-white) made the story something unique and ground breaking. Because the culture you grow up in effects your responses to events around you and to the morals that will be brought forward from those events. 

Literary Speculation: Do We Need Genre?

I very rarely go into a story because of the listed genre. As a whole, I honestly feel like genre as we know it is on it's way out. If I think about the genre too much when searching for new books, I often am bored of everything because I'm assuming it's going to follow the genres to a T. For instance, one of my all-time favorite stand-alone novels is 'More Than This' by Patrick Ness. On Goodreads, this novels genres are listed as: Young Adult, Sci-fi, Dystopia, and LGBT.

With the exception of the LGBT marker (which I read less as a genre marker and more as a specific content one), just based on the genres I probably wouldn't have picked up the novel. Those are the same markers for 'The Maze Runner' or 'Divergence', and neither of those types of books are ones I'm super into.

But, I read 'More Than This' because the author is one I love, and found quickly the story itself barely follows the trends present in those genres. Even more strange,  all of these books share the same genres with 'The Handmaid's Tale'. While 'The Handmaid's Tale' may be considered the same genre as many YA dystopia novels, it is no 'Hunger Games'. 

Similarly, 'The Aquatic Uncle' is considered a sci-fi, but it shares almost no similarities to any sci-fi I've ever read. Honestly, I feel that most stories have moved past genre, and due to the amount of content being produced, most authors are aiming for being more literary (with a few exceptions, such as those who make bank on recreating the same story over and over within a genre, quality notwithstanding). I think this is true for books, movies, television, even music. It's so easy for everyone to be influenced by everyone else that placing every popular thing into one specific genre is hard. 

I don't think it's necessarily important to differentiate genre for a story, unless we as a whole let go of our preconceived notions of what a genre is. If we just consider it shorter way to get the idea of the type of world and if we make it more specific (for instance, dystopia clearly shows what type of universe we are getting into, but fantasy is vague and can mean anything), then it'll be fine to label stories with it, but if we keep up with the idea that the genre determines the content on a moral or specific level then it's just going to limit some great novels to a set of genre-rules and make it harder for authors working outside of those genres to get recognition. 

I think that the reason genres are still around is because it's easier and quicker for publishers to market them, but they will probably have to start redefining and creating new genres for this method to keep working for the content being created. Or, just get rid of genre markers entirely and move towards content markers. LGBT, for instance, very rarely means it's a 'gay book' but instead that there is a gay character. If we extended that to note the notable content (such as dragons, politics, gods on earth, coffee shop romance, etc) then they will be more useful.

In the end, I think stories like 'The Handmaid's Tale' have been beyond genres for decades, and it's just going to take the world time to catch up with it. 

Steampunk and 'Leviathan'

The steampunk elements in Scott Westerfeld's 'Leviathan' were very promenient, though perhaps not fitting for the real-world time period he chose. 

Basically, the world follows the beginning of World War I, but instead of just Germans versus allies, the sides are broken up more clearly as Clankers vs Darwinists, respectively. The countries on the Clankers side have their technology based in diesel machines, often with legs (the typical steampunk aesthetic), while the Darwinists have genetically modified animals that are used as weaponry and technology, such as the titular giant whale that is part war machine and modified to be have a hydrogen bladder, so it can fly like a blimp. 

Beyond that, the story follows the timeline of World War I, with the exception that Archduke Franz Ferdinand's nephew (now the heir to the throne) survived and is in hiding, and is one of the main characters. 

Puts more of a versus thing onto world war i, since that war was a lot less cut in stone. It was set based more on interlocking ally-ships causing a war after the archduke was assassinated.

Having a much more clear cut us vs. them conflict for WWI is an odd choice, seeing as how the real war was mainly a series of unfortunate events (starting with the Archduke's assassination) paired with a lot of ally-ships causing tensions to rise and explode in one big war. It was more a war with sides but no stances, unlike WWII. 'Leviathan' takes this war and puts more solid ethical and technological differences between the two sides. I guess the reasoning Westerfeld added this element in was to make the moral of the book (that uniting and compromise are important) more clear-cut for younger audiences, but I feel he may have chosen an odd war to do this with. But I do supposed it would have been harder to push that message with any war involving Nazis. 

Honestly, this novel didn't seem to have a good reason besides cool worldbuilding and aesthetic purposes to add the steampunk elements, and I wouldn't say it focused super hard on the moral implications of either of the sides like some other cyber/steampunk stories do. While something like 'Blade Runner' uses the androids to question humanity and what makes us human, 'Leviathan' barely grazes the moral implications of genetically modifying animals to be mashed with war machines. Perhaps the rest of the trilogy goes more into this, but the first book mainly sets up the world, the conflict, and the characters.

That being said, the morality of the Darwinists movement is something the reader themselves can ponder on, which perhaps was Westerfeld's intention (I have read another one of his series before, the 'Uglies', and he did focus heavily on the impact of technology on society, so I have hope this was intentional). I do think though that the steampunk elements were a bit tone deaf for the time period Westerfeld chose. 

It was a fun read though, and the art was beautiful. 

'His Dark Materials', the Beauty of Original Sin, and Adulthood

There are tons of books aimed at children that educate them on life's complexities. The most popular example is 'Harry Potter', which teaches children the importance of found families and hope during dark time. Along with that, there are other amazing series that are also wonderful educators, such as 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' (which teaches that life is not fair nor is it always happy, but the love you build and fight for is what makes it worth living) and— a personal favorite of mine— the 'Percy Jackson' series and its many spin-offs (which teach the same messages as the previous two and also gets bonus points for being FULL of representation of children who often don't get to see themselves as heroes; kids with ADHD, dyslexia, gay children, trans children, muslim children, so many different races and personalities, etc). 

That being said, I think one of the most profound and important pieces of literature for children (and adults) to read is Phillip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy (often better known as 'The Golden Compass' series).

Pullman tackles so many intense and important themes in this trilogy that it's hard to pick just one to focus on. What theme is most important for a child to gain an understanding of early in life? The dangers of blind religion, science for the sake of evil versus science for progress, found family vs blood family, anti-authoritarian themes, free will, aging? 

For me, when I first read this series at age 12, the one that stuck with me the most was the last one. A lot of the series aimed at children instilled a fear in me of growing up. Specifically growing up and missing the time for the adventure to start. You get your letter from Hogwarts at 11, you get claimed at Camp Half-blood around age 13 and often don't live to age 18. The Baudelaires are surrounded by examples of well-meaning but incompetent and patronizing adults. Susan Pevensie hit puberty and was no longer allowed in Narnia. 

For a child reading these books, I often felt like I was running out of time to do something great, to find real happiness and purpose. I feared puberty and the loss of childhood that would come from it. Adulthood was something to avoid at all costs. 

Pullman directly fights against that theme. He has never hidden his distain for the storylines in 'Narnia' and how they frames adulthood and sexuality, particularly for girls. This theme is one created by the Christian belief, which Pullman is often very critical of. 

In his story, which follows a young girl named Lyra, adulthood at first is something she fears. The adults in the story are self-serving and cruel, and Lyra fears the moment her daemon settles (the physical way of showing adulthood). As we learn later, many of the adults also fear this moment for the children, and aim to sever the children from their daemons in order to prevent Dust from settling in them. This severing process leaves the children stunted and soulless essentially, but the adults believe it frees them from sin (this is a parallel to genital mutilation).

A common Christian story about the loss of innocence is the story of Adam and Eve, and the Tree of Knowledge. Everyone knows the story, and knows that the Original Sin is seeking knowledge which made the couple learn shame for their naked bodies. In 'His Dark Materials' this is flipped. At the end of the booksLyra— who is called the 'New Eve'— and her friend and lover Will become the new version of Adam and Eve, after destroying the embodiment of God, with Lyra offering up Will fruit. This is a new start on the myth, this time with Eve as the hero. Pullman doesn't form this sexual awakening as something shameful, and is firm in the belief that seeking knowledge is not only necessary, but also something to revel in. 

Lyra's story arc is in direct reaction to Susan's. The same sexual awakening that condemned Susan freed Lyra. Adulthood doesn't mean the end of Lyra's life, or bar her from anything majestic, nor does it take her wonder. Her and Will know what they are accepting, the Knowledge, and they go forth with confidence that the pain of life is also worth the freedom of knowing and loving consciously. Lyra's choice saves her world and many others, bringing the Dust back, restoring the natural balance. She resets the multiverse, allowing for a life where Knowledge can exist without sin. 

This type of story was so important to me at the age I read it. I was scared and ashamed that I was aging, that I was close to puberty and adulthood. I feared that I would lose something beautiful and gain nothing, and that there was nothing I could do to stop it. So many stories for children (whether they mean to or not) push forward this narrative. 

It was a pleasure to have an excuse to reread these books as an adult, now that I'm well past the point I once feared. I firmly believe that these books are a pivotal story for children— especially little girls— to read before they hit puberty.  It doesn't shame children for aging, for becoming aware of their bodies, for wanting to know life as an adult. It revels in it, and give hope to any child reading (especially young girls, who particularly suffer in stories when they get 'too old') that adulthood isn't something to fear. 

It can be scary and big and overwhelming, but the knowledge of adult life is something to cherish. Growing up is not the end, but a new beginning.