Quote of the day: Cyberpunk's origins

"In a sense, it’s a generational thing. In 1980, the writer Bruce Bethke –whose short story “Cyberpunk” inadvertently christened the genre –was working at a Radio Shack in Wisconsin, selling TRS-80 microcomputers. One day, a group of teenagers waltzed in and hacked one of the store machines, and Bethke, who’d imagined himself a tech wiz, couldn’t figure out how to fix it. It was after this incident that he realized something: these teenaged hackers were going to sire kids of their own someday, and those kids were going to have a technological fluency that he could only guess at. They, he writes, were going to truly “speak computer.” And, like teenagers of any era, they were going to be selfish, morally vacuous, and cynical."

From an  article by Claire Evans in Motherboard...

Exhaustion in the field

An interesting discussion of what Ben Rosenbaum brought up earlier this year, the boredom, here framed as exhaustion, of science fiction, at Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolfe's the Coode Street podcast.   They were talking to Peter Kincaid about his review in the L.A. Times that discussed this re: the best of revues.

These conversations speak to me particularly, as a reader, when they discuss what is SF vs. stories taking place in a science fiction setting.  And stories that are vigorously performing SF vs. expanding its horizons truly.  Need to think about it more.

Autumn harvesting

We went apple picking on a co-worker's farm, four huge bags worth barely making a dent in the trees.  The horses live up there, an hour north of the Twin Cities.  Cool but sunny day, good for fall harvest work. 

My garden was frosted this morning, so I picked the last peppers and squash.  The parsnips and kale are happy though.

I watched an interesting set of classic documentaries about L.A. yesterday while cooking lentils, kale, and curtido (in anticipation of trying my hand at pupusas tonight).  "The Exiles" followed a group of San Carlos Apaches around L.A. during a regular night, mostly the Bunker Hill neighborhood before it was razed in1969.  The other short docos showed Bunker Hill as the city was planning its demise and the elevated railcar that went up that hill, the Angel's Flight, before it was taken apart.

The wikidescription: "(The Exiles (1961) is a film by Kent MacKenzie (6 April 1930, Hampstead, England -16 May 1980, Marin County, California) chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the district of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, California. Bunker Hill was then a blighted residential locality of decayed Victorian mansions, sometimes featured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, John Fante and Charles Bukowski. The structure of the film is that of a narrative feature, the script pieced together from interviews with the documentary subjects. The film features Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, and Tommy Reynolds. Filming was done in 1958."

More here.  The soundtrack, rock 'n' roll music from The Revels, keeps things moving despite the lack of strong structure and dramatic actions.  The daily normal sights from 50's L.A.  are truly fascinating, because so much has changed.

I've moved on to an audiobook of Phillip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, which I have not gotten into enough to discuss.  I'm also reading Becoming Emily by local author Rachel Gold, a trans YA novel that has gotten good reviews.  I met Rachel at the Golden Crown Society convention and a reading and this made me want to check the book out...  To be reviewed...

A Viking stirs stuff up

Our not very winning football team who spent the last few legislative sessions thrusting their stadium proposals down our throats (and into our tax bills) finally shows the other side of having so much influence.  (The Lynx, our winningest team, in contrast, plays under Timberwolves logos and does not have a link on the Strib front page, unlike the losingest men's teams.)

Punter Chris Klewes has been thumbing.his nose at a lot of ideas about what NFL and football players should and should not do:  a summary.  Dave Kopay, our local E and all the dudes who waited or never came out should be happy.

Meanwhile,  this and  this are complicating football's very small world lately...

Ear candy

Lately I have been mired in a small but detailed book that has slowed my pace a bit still Wallerstein's Historical Capitalism.  It's truly fascinating and I have to really think about it.  Also reading Peter Edelman's recent discussion of U.S. poverty policy, So Rich, So Poor, a good summary of his body of work on the issue.  And some anthologies on globalization and global economics.  Complementary.

I made up for this by reading tasty snack Lee Lynch's classic Naiad novel The Swashbuckler, which is good and as a bonus focuses on the inner world of butches in early 60s NYC (IIRC the years) who have their doubts about the rules and healthfulness (hi Anita - I still think healthiness sounds better) of the gay scene and the nuclear family imperative.  The main character, Frenchie, is from a French immigrant family and her main love interest is a Puerto Rican recent immigrant, and their relationships with her families are weaved into the story in interesting ways.  Not the usual gays in the ghetto without larger lives story, yet the ghetto's importance at the time is primary.

I've also been supplementing the study of historical capitalism with listening to the audiobook of Cory Doctorow's For the Win, which focuses on capitalism's social effects and bases in the current 'globalization' incarnation.  Or avatar.  It's full of protests and strikes, a 'Webblies' gold farmer union, As You Know Bob yet useful explanations of a wide range of historic and new social engineering-based economic scams, and tales survival in the urban wastelands shaped by the web economy.  And stuff. 

The wide range of characters are likeable and make bad choices that we all make as a matter of course in HC that keep things moving rapidly.  Some aspects are kind of...  It's Cory, and it's aimed at American geek boys is how I will put it.  But it makes for good commute- to- downtown day job well- entrenched- in - the- system listening.  While cooking and doing chores too...

I tried listening to French SF novel Gringoland by Julien Blanc-Gras, but its wackiness and literary style make it difficult to follow without really focusing.  Not sure I'll have the time right now.

Otherwise, I've been trying out a bunch of SF podcasts and queer podcasts.  Galactic suburbs, a feminist SF podcast from Australia, the Outer Alliance 'quiltbag' SFF writers organization podcast, and various interview shows have been the most interesting. 

It's an easier way to find out what's going on in fandom, the world of cons, and the writerly web networks than keeping up with blogs and livejournals.  For someone who does not Facebook and uses a phone on the run much more than a computer.  Web bookmarks take up phone dataspace, but the podcast app saves to the SD card...  So thanks podcasters for all your hard work!

Bounty

It's that time of year where every neighbor, co-worker, family member, and friend is trying to give you zucchini but you're full up too...

Quote of the day: manhood

"There are two ways to define manhood. One way is to say that manhood is the opposite of womanhood. The other is to say that manhood is the opposite of childhood."

Cited by Kelley Eskridge, from a site The Art of Manliness, discussed be her here. 

Maintaining

Waiting for the plumber and reading Immanuel Wallerstein's "Historical Capitalism" while listening to Teenage Kicks on KFAI.  Beans in the pressure cooker are spitting at me.  Sorry, sorry!  It does seem meaner than the crockpot somehow. But who wants to wait.

I took out a bunch of books from thrre social/economic theory shelf and now I'm having to actually read them...  Interesting, but slow going.  Watched "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" last night, which was ok but made me want to read the book.  It was paced weird and slightly obscure, just enough to make me sleepy.  I think I stayed awake the whole time...

Le Carre's "Call for the Dead" (IIRC) made for a good audio book.  The reader had a good pace and tone and it was a pleasantly old school style of prose. 

"American Psycho" did not entertain as much as "Bright Lights, Big City."  I gave up after leafing through 20 pages of descriptions of 80s clothes, decor, and grooming habits and awful awful people, before anything happened.  Took notes on this, eh, as I tend towards these openers and have to CUT them out.  As he could have.  But then, it was probably entertaining in the 80s or shortly after when it all signified more...  But I remember being bored then too. 

The movie by Mary Harron and Guin Turner is more sly and clever, and moves along more... All that detail slides by more easily on film.

Anyway, I've earned this holidat weekend by upping my production numbers this past month.  The methods and checklists I've spent so much time developing seem to be slowly paying off.  I can't stop my perfectionism, but I think I can reign it in without feeling too much like I'm phoning it in...  It's hard when you get a lot if praise for thoroughness and complexity...

Meanwhile my favorite state workers are being told they don't deserve 2% raises after the long furloughs without pay, serious attrition amidst hiring freeze shrinkage, and multiplying duties.  Yay, business oriented economic analysis- those CEOs getting all those bonusus and raises just don't figure in...  Run it into the ground like all those Savings and Loans and banks and brokerages and businesses and farms that are the lifeblood of our healthy GDP, willya?  Sure, you betcha.

The photo is our old, one of the worst in the US, skid row (Washington Avenue) transformed into downtown residential playland.  It still surprises me every time I go there.  The dark empty lots are gone.  There's a before picture on a wall of a building I walked by before taking this photo...  Then the Guthrie decided to move and, bang, renewal.  (The people were displaced decades ago, so no real fight, AFAIK.)

Hmm.  Nothing much more to babble about.  Blondie is hanging on the telephone after she hollered for that dude to call her.  Teenage kicks rocks harder than most of the misplaced noatalgia fests aimed at my demographic, but only because it's light, lazy, and as Brit-oriented as punks and alt rockers were then.  Not all REO and Night Ranger...