A Speculative Linkdump

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Cora

I’m pretty busy at the moment with a big translation job, so here’s yet another bunch of links, this time vaguely speculative fiction themed.

Sheila Finch has a great post on fairytales, sexual taboos and animal shifters at the SFWA blog. Much food for thought there, also with regards to the PhD.

Dan Rebellato reappraises John Wyndham’s works at The Guardian.

The Guardian also has an older article on Wyndham, written for his centenary.

John Wyndham is undoubtedly of prime importance to British science fiction, if only because Nigel Kneale and the writers of Doctor Who and The Avengers ripped off Wyndham all the time and every other British writer of science fiction rips off Nigel Kneale, Doctor Who and The Avengers to some degree. So Wyndham is more the father of modern British SF than H.G. Wells. And in fact, I like both The Day of the Triffids and The Kraken Wakes quite a bit, though it is difficult to separate Day of the Triffids from its many official and unofficial (in the form of Doctor Who, Avengers and X-Files episodes) film versions.

However, my first experience with Wyndham was The Midwich Cuckoos or rather the 1960 film adaption Village of the Damned. And I violently dislike The Midwich Cuckoos. How could I not hate it – after all, it combines some of my most hated speculative fiction tropes in one handy package; Evil monster children, supernatural miracle pregnancies and a resolution in which murdering children is portrayed as a good thing. I gave up on Torchwood, a show I utterly loved in its first season, because of two of those three sins (and because they sidelined and killed off my favourite character), so you can imagine how I felt about Wyndham.

But perhaps it really is time to reappraise The Midwich Cuckoos, especially since I’ve never read the actual book.

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Some TV Linkage

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Cora

I’m a little tired and don’t have much time today, so have some TV-related linkage instead:

Salon has a terribly condescending article about half of Sweden watching a particular Disney holiday special every year on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

Funnily enough, I know exactly which Disney Christmas Special the article refers to. It was a staple of Christmas Eve afternoon television in Germany, when I was a kid, though it never gained the holiday cult status it apparently has in Sweden. That’s reserved for the 1980 adaption of Little Lord Fauntleroy starring Alec Guinness and Rick Schröder in his Ricky days and the Czech fairy tale adaption Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella, both of which are much beloved Christmas classics in Germany.

The condescension dripping from every single word makes the article truly difficult to stomach. Those wacky Swedes, they all sit down at the same time to watch something on TV, how quaint! And this thing they all watch is an old Disney holiday special (while Americans at least collectively tune in to watch something enlightened and relevant such as – say – the Superbowl). And they take it so seriously that they get annoyed when someone talks over the film (as opposed to Americans who absolutely love visitors talking over relevant bits of Mad Men or True Blood or Breaking Bad or whatever the latest must-see drama is these days). And guess what, those silly Swedes don’t even mind that the animation style is dated (or maybe, they just think that today’s CGI animation is ugly crap and prefer the classics). Finally, the cartoons are also terribly racist and those liberal pacifist Swedes don’t mind (more likely, they don’t mind the supposed racism, because to a Swede and indeed most other Europeans a black doll saying “Mammy” is just a doll saying “Mammy” and not an instance of deplorable racism).

Meanwhile, Americans will happily watch that treacly bit of propaganda and praise of mediocrity that is It’s a Wonderful Life year after year after year, even though it’s twice as long and only a tenth as amusing as a vintage Disney Christmas special. And actively harmful, too. Watching It’s a Wonderful Life, you suddenly understand why the US is having a combined banking and real estate crisis. Because if Americans kids are presented the idiotic and downright irresponsible banker character played by James Stewart as the highest manifestation of wise finance management, it’s no wonder that some of them grow up to become inept bankers.

Talking of TV classics, apparently, the BBC has made a new series of Upstairs, Downstairs, a continuation of the 1970s costume drama.

I watched the original with my parents, back in the bad old days of three channels and very little to watch on either of them. Of British costume dramas of the 1970s, I always preferred The Onedin Line (it had tall ships and adventure and gorgeous clothes and handsome actors – what’s not to love) and All Creatures Great and Small (cute animals, likable characters, vintage cars and Peter Davidson – what’s not to love). I rewatched Upstairs, Downstairs a few years ago and it had some moments of utter brilliance – e.g. the understated way the show handles a main character dying aboard the Titanic. Much more effective than that bloody film, though we don’t even get a single shot of the sinking ship. But I still never warmed up to the show like I did to The Onedin Line and All Creatures Great and Small, probably because I intensely disliked half of the characters (both up- and downstairs) most of the time. Plus, Upstairs, Downstairs was also liberally peppered with anti-German remarks from various characters, which is always a black mark against any show (Call me funny, but I don’t like watching or reading stuff that hates me). Part of that comes with the WWI setting, but All Creatures Great and Small was partly set during the run-up to WWII and still managed to avoid that problem.

As for the new version, the main question is “Why?” Why revive an almost forty years old show with only one member of the original cast remaining? Especially since there was another Brit costume drama this year, Downton Abbey, which vary much seemed to be Upstairs, Downstairs by another name. Really, do we need another tale of filthy rich people and their servants?

Besides, has the BBC no new ideas, so that they have to revive their dead shows from the 1970s instead? First Doctor Who (a revival I agree with in principle, if not in practice), then Survivors and now Upstairs, Downstairs.

I really like Jean March, who starred in both the original and the continuation, and the new version also stars Keeley Hawes, another actress I like a lot (and she’ll look fabulous in those slinky 30s gowns). But I still don’t think I’ll be watching. Some things are better left in the past.

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Boxing Day Update and some Links

Posted on December 28, 2010 by Cora

Yesterday was Boxing Day, or the second day of Christmas as we call it in these parts*, so Christmas 2010 is officially over. Of course, inofficially the Christmas season lasts up to New Year and even to Epiphany Day, i.e. January 6th, i.e. the day the three wise men arrived in Bethlehem,** since many people don’t have to work “between the years”. Schools starts up again on January 5th (no idea why they didn’t extend the holidays to Epiphany, so the Catholics among us can celebrate), so I still have some free time.

On Boxing Day, my uncle visited us for lunch. He’s all alone this Christmas, since my aunt is in hospital and has been for a while, so we invited him for lunch to get his mind of his and my aunt’s troubles for a while.

Present update:
In addition to what I mentioned before, I also got:

A very nice necklace of wooden beads. I presume my aunt bought it before she fell ill, because I somehow cannot see my uncle shopping for jewelery.
A package of cinnamon star cookies.
Money

Finally, the mailman also deigned to deliver mail to us once more today (we didn’t get any mail on December 23rd and Christmas Eve, because of the heavy snow), so we got a few late Christmas cards. And my Mom had one of her Christmas cards come back, because the postage was supposedly too low. Sometimes I hate the post office.

And now for some housekeeping: I added some links to the “Inspiration and Fun” category on the sidebar, mainly to generators, idea prompts and the like. I like using those tools to jumpstart my creativity, when I’m feeling drained and blocked. I’m lucky, I even get a sellable piece of flash fiction or a short story out of it. And if not, if the resulting drabble stalls after a few paragraphs, I still get some writing practice out of it, not to mention flushing the creative pipes to make room for bigger and better stuff.

Finally, here are some writing links:

Lilith Saintcrow has a great post on the gifts of writing.

And here are two wonderful older posts from Jim van Pelt on the local, the exotic and a sense of self-worth (so very true) and an interesting concept called the plot daisy.

*In the US, December 26th is also Kwanzaa.

** Christmas Day to Epiphany is of course the 12 Days of Christmas from the song.

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Vampiric Poo

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Cora

On TV tonight, I came across 30 Days of Night. Now I haven’t been remotely interested in the film back when it was in the theatres. But since many people have named it as an example of “vampires done right” (as opposed to Twilight, which is vampires done wrong for a certain crowd), I figured I ought to take a look out of academic interest.

The premise, vampires attack an isolated town in Alaska during the polar night, is good. But that’s really all the film has got going for it. Because 30 Days of Night is a terrible film. For starters, the vampires in 30 Days of Night no more adhere to the traditional “rules” of vampirism (most of which were made up by Bram Stoker anyway) than do those in Twilight. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – there are probably as many different types of vampires as there are vampire novels, films, TV shows. Continue reading →

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Christmas Day and some Pictures

Posted on December 26, 2010 by Cora

First of all, a Merry Christmas or a happy whatever other seasonal holiday you may celebrate.

We’ve had some more snow overnight. This is the first time since the 1980s that we’ve had snow on all three days of Christmas (Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day).

This was another quiet day. For lunch, we had pork curry, as every year. The recipe is the same curry that was served aboard the vessels of the shipping company Norddeutscher Lloyd. It’s still one of my favourite foods.

And now for some photos behind the cut: Continue reading →

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Christmas Eve

Posted on December 25, 2010 by Cora

December 24th, i.e. Christmas Eve, is over now. Here in Germany, Christmas Eve is the main event, while Christmas Day and Boxing Day are the time for family visits, eating too much food and hangovers.

The snow fall has stopped by now, at least in my region, but we still have a lot of snow on the ground and frost. Luckily, none of us had to leave the house today.

We spent Christmas Eve pretty much like every year. For lunch we had roasted filet of hare with apple cranberry sauce, roasted mushrooms and brussels sprouts. Apparently, we ended up with two vegetable side dishes, because the brussels sprouts were in the pantry and needed to go.

For dinner on Christmas Eve and every night until New Year’s Eve we always have herring salad made according to my grandma’s recipe. The resulting amount of salad is huge and it generally lasts at least until New Year’s Eve, by which time you’re usually heartily sick of it and happy that you don’t have to eat it again for a whole year. I still like it, though, and would probably also make it, if I were spending Christmas on my own. Filled into jam jars, it also makes a great gift.

Photos of the Christmas tree and presents are forthcoming.

And now for the night’s loot, behind the cut: Continue reading →

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A Very White Christmas

Posted on December 24, 2010 by Cora

Well, it’s not quite Christmas yet, though it’s already in the early hours of Christmas Eve. And Christmas Eve is the main event here in Germany.

What is more, someone must have decided that as a compensation for the past ten years or so of green and wet Christmasses, we deserve a white Christmas for a change. A very white Christmas, since today we got even more snow on top of the snow we already had. It’s still snowing at the moment and will apparently continue to snow through the night. I’m at my parents at the moment, and when I opened one of the roof windows (my parents turn the heater up a bit further than I’d like), there was a fifteen centimeter layer of snow and ice on the roof.

The traffic chaos, that has had much of Europe in its grip these past few days, has gotten even worse. All evening long, there were reports on the radio that all major highways in North Germany were closed. People were advised to stay at home and not drive, unless absolutely necessary. Train traffic isn’t any better. My cousin works in Frankfurt and took the train home for the holidays. Last we heard, he was stuck in Hannover, i.e. a one hour ride away, with no idea how and when the train would go on.

I did some last minute grocery shopping, but apart from that I’m not going out in that weather again. And it doesn’t look as if the frost will let go anytime soon.

Tonight, I decorated the Christmas tree. We always get our tree from the garden (no pesticide addled supermarket trees for us) and because of the past eleven days of solid snow and frost, we weren’t sure whether we would be able to cut down the tree at all. In the end, we managed to dig one of the three likely candidates free, brush the snow from the branches and cut it down. We then let it defrost in the garage for a couple of hours (because it was still full of snow), before taking it indoors. It’s not a good tree by any means – it’s terribly slim and the branches don’t like the heavier ornaments – but it’s serviceable.

I also wrapped up Christmas presents. My own as well as those from my Dad (because he never wraps anything) and my Mom also dumped her presents for Dad on me. A lot of people believe that wrapping presents is superfluous and bad for the environment (because the paper goes to waste), but for me an unwrapped present marks a lack of respect. Giving someone an unwrapped present means, “I am obliged to give you something, but I can’t even be arsed to wrap it and I don’t respect you.” So if you can’t be bothered to wrap a present, you don’t need to give it.

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So bad you can’t say it on TV

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Cora

Hal Duncan has a fantastic post about the one word in the English language that is so bad and so taboo that you cannot use it at all.

And no, I’m not spelling it out on this blog. Not because I have a personal aversion to the word, but because I’m a teacher and I don’t want a student to accidentally stumble across this blog and pick up a word I’d rather not have them pick up. When I teach at university, that word and similarly rude and taboo terms are fair game, because everybody there is an adult. But with schoolkids I have to maintain some standards. Never mind that kids who think that saying “penis” over and over again out loud is the rudest and most daring thing ever don’t really need to know more.

I actually did teach medical and harmless colloquial terms for intimate bodyparts at one point. A girl kept asking “What is ‘penis’ in English?”, “What is ‘breast’?, etc… and thought she would shock me. Whereupon I – refusing to be shocked – asked her if I should write it down on the board for her. And did. The kids thought that was incredibly naughty, though my stand is that those are just words and no worse than the words I’ve heard them use in German. Besides, I bet that they’ll never forget those particular words, even if all other vocabulary is sucked into the memory black hole.

About the unmentionable word, the striking thing is how utterly unmentionable that word truly is. Even the sort of TV shows that have a reputation for crass language and content dance around that one. Sex and the City spells it out, but does not say it. What is more, they kept spelling out the English word in the German dubbed version, even though hardly any viewers would have gotten what they were on about. Continue reading →

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Weimar is not an adjective

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Cora

Can someone please tell this woman that “Weimar” is not an adjective?

Weimar is the name of a German city in the state of Thuringia, which happened to give its name to the first German republic, that lasted from 1918 to 1933, because the parliament first happened to convene in Weimar. Weimar has rich history and was home to both Goethe and Schiller as well as the site of the first Bauhaus among many other things. It doesn’t deserve to be solely remembered for the doomed republic that bears its name and it most definitely doesn’t deserve to be turned into an adjective by some rightwing American journalist. Coincidentally, Weimar itself was never what the author of the article would call a “Weimar city”. Never mind that it’s a stupid label anyway.

If you want to write an article about the city of Istanbul and the politically precarious situation in Turkey, feel free to do so. Though I have to point out that the article is coloured by the author’s latent islamophobia – which isn’t all that surprising, given it’s published in a very rightwing magazine. But please keep 1920s Berlin and Weimar out of it. particularly if you don’t even know what Weimar means.

For that matter, I have never understood the Anglo-American fascination with interwar Berlin anyway. I still remember how utterly disappointed I was that Cabaret was set not someplace cool and glamourous like New York but only in dull Berlin. Never mind that the “dance upon the vulcano” feeling was only part of what Berlin in the 1920s was all about. Berlin in the 1920s wasn’t all nightclubs and gay bars (why are the Americans so fascinated by the gay bars anyway?), there was also galloping inflation, streetfighting between rival political fractions, the abject poverty of the tenement blocks, so touchingly portrayed by Heinrich Zille.

Watch Berlin – Die Sinfonie der Großstadt, which has the distinction of being a lot more true to reality than something like Cabaret, because it actually intended to portray Berlin as it really was in 1927. And yes, the nightclubs and the half naked dancers are there (I don’t recall the gay bars, though it’s been a while since I’ve seen it), but they make up only a small portion of the film. Most of it is dedicated to the worklives and leisure activities of people who would never dream of going into a nightclub. The film has its shortcomings – for example, there is only one shot of an injured war veteran and only one shot of an orthodox Jew, though both groups were plentiful in 1920s Berlin.

But really, watch that and look at a few Zille drawings before going on how cool and decadent Berlin was in the 1920s.

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Solstice, Snow and Faintly Disturbing Antiques

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Cora

Last night might have been the coldest of the year – in fact it got even colder after I posted, the temperature dropping to minus 16 degrees Celsius – but this is the longest night of the year, i.e. winter solstice. It’s also officially winter now, not that the weather leaves any doubt of that fact. BTW, North Germany is even colder than the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest (and normally coldest) mountain at the moment.

This afternoon, I set out on foot to run some errands. I don’t walk a lot in the neighbourhood – most of the time I combine neighbourhood errands with those further away and drive. But driving isn’t particularly pleasant given the current road conditions, especially since most town councils and other authorities seem to have stopped believing in the virtues of keeping roads clear of snow and leave even major roads and highways uncleared. There’s some talk about there not being enough salt, but that’s bullshit. It’s only December and winter lasts all the way into February and sometimes even March. True, many councils ran out of salt last winter due to excessive cold, but only in February or so. They simply shouldn’t have run out so soon, never mind that the roads weren’t cleared last week either. I suspect that this complacency is due to a mixture of money saving and some ecological concerns (valid, but human lives are more important). Plus, there seems to be a kind of “Well, people got by last winter, so perhaps we don’t need to clear all of those roads” attitude going on. There’s also the usual suspects saying “We need to decelerate our lives”. Uhm, decelerate yourselves, guys, and leave the rest of us alone.

The weather was clear and sunny, ideally suited for walking. Never mind that being stuck indoors all day isn’t exactly conductive to anyone’s wellbeing either. I delivered a Christmas present to a neighbour’s kid, a stack of Christmas cards to the mailbox and went to the local drugstore, bakery, butcher and pharmacy.

The nearest mailbox is next to what used to be a small neighbourhood grocery, long since defunct, and is now an antiques shop. The antiques shop is going out of business, too. Not really a huge surprise there, the antiques business is tough. I should know, I worked in an antiques shop for a while in my teens and sometimes only one or two people came in per day. And that shop was located in a neighbourhood famous for its antiques stores. This one isn’t. Continue reading →

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