Anthony Marchese's Blog

Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Consider Phlebas has everything I love about science fiction: a large universe to explore, diverse cultures and characters, and moral and metaphysical questions to ponder.

This made it all the more disappointing when none of these facets of the plot were explored to my satisfaction. Everything that was done in this novel has been done elsewhere and better (in my opinion): a ringworld (Larry Niven), self-aware machines that run everything (Asimov), and amoral “Free Companies” (Alastair Reynolds and the Firefly TV series).

I can’t help but feel Banks took a little too much inspiration from Star Trek in crafting this universe (granted, only TOS would have been out when the book was published):
-Every planet has humanoids
-Their FTL is called “warp drive”
-The CAT’s crew die off like redshirts
-The bad guys are the species that are least human-like

Still, I do love the universe that Banks created. The Culture is fascinating to me and I want to read more about it, but the two books I’ve read in this series have both left something to be desired.

I do enjoy Bank’s use of language. The drone and AI characters are fun. I plan to continue reading the series in the hope that his later works will provide a plot worthy of the setting.

View all my reviews

“I keep flashing back to my experience after 9/11. Were you thinking about that when you wrote this piece?”

That was the feedback written at the end of the latest short story I submitted to my writing critique group.

Like most people alive on September 11, 2001 I remember the moment I realized it was no usual day. I was halfway between my science and social studies classes when the principal got on the intercom and told the teachers to turn on the classroom TVs. We had a substitute and watched the news through that whole class. My next class was home ec. Our teacher made us a deal that we could watch the news through the second half of the period if we spent the first half quietly working on our sewing projects. It was the most eerily voiceless class I’ve ever attended. She turned the TV on and we watched as the towers came down.

September 11th, 2001 was the day I learned the words/phrases: “Islam” “Osama Bin Laden” “World Trade Center” “Afghanistan” and several more which I now hear almost daily. Before that day, the only countries I’d learned anything significant about were those that bordered the US and Italy (due to my heritage). Like most of my generation, 9/11 was a major “coming-of-age” moment.

On the anniversary last year, the organizer of an online writing group I follow posted a picture of the NYC skyline and asked us if we’ve ever incorporated the event into our writing. “No” I thought. I mostly write science fiction. My stories are set centuries in the future, often in other star systems.

But then it hit me… I do write about 9/11. Almost all my stories are about 9/11. There’s an undeniable pattern in my fiction. Most of the narratives begin with an enormous, tragic event. The first novel manuscript I ever wrote started with the destruction of an entire planet and the loss of a billion lives. The same novel begins another character’s story arc with a nuclear explosion. I have a story about a memorial being constructed at the sight of a far-future industrial accident. Another story details the fall of a galactic civilization in the wake of a naturally-occurring shift in fundamental physics.

Obviously, this is not unique to my sci-fi writing. The story arc for season three of Star Trek: Enterprise is about humanity responding to a devastating surprise attack. 9/11 has clearly played no small role in our modern fascination with apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian stories.

Most of my stories fit together into a history of the future. This universe appears to have one theme weaved throughout: disaster. These stories usually describe human reactions to a disastrous event. The timeline is punctuated by these events, and every one of them is a reflection of 9/11.

But these stories do not tend to be pessimistic. Human failings and our worst nature are often the driving force of the plot, but I generally bring my main characters to a positive, if not ideal, resolution. This suggests that I subconsciously have a positive outlook on human potential.

My 12-year-old self saw not only horrors on that day, but also heroism. Bin Laden may have become the tyrant or extraterrestrial menace of my fictional universe, but the heroes I saw became its protagonists. The first responders and community leaders who stepped forward on 9/11 will always be the characters my stories honor.

Wattpad.com recently held a contest to create a story based on Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”. The full first season the the TV adaptation is available on Hulu.com. I had just finished reading the novel when the contest was announced, and I had already been thinking about writing a story set in the same universe. So, I jumped at the chance to do so. My entry was not selected for the top 25, but I’m still pretty happy with the result. You can read the winning entries here: MyHandmaidsTale

Backlash

“It’s legal now.” Marcus said, rolling his eyes. “What’s the point in protesting? They aren’t going to take it away.”

“I want to believe that, Babe, but I know too much history. There’s always a backlash to this sort of change.” He steps up behind me, his body presses against mine. He wants to shut me up, he’s heard enough politics for today. I don’t turn away from the table though. Instead, I add the purple arc to the rainbow on my sign.

Marcus kisses my neck as I drop the paintbrush into a cup of water. A jolt goes through my spine. He will not be ignored. I’m about to turn around and let him distract me when he says, “All the tweeting and protesting, that’s what will cause a backlash.”

I shake him off and turn to face him. Grabbing his hand I lift his engagement ring to eye level. “Can you point to any other time in human history that you could wear this? Just one? What we have now is the exception, not the rule. There are forces ready to take it from us at any moment if we aren’t constantly reminding them that it’s our right.”

Marcus walks away from me. Like any proper married couple, our spat has killed the mood.

***

Why did I have to flash back to that moment? Why can’t I spent my last few thoughts on a time Marcus and I were happy? Not a moment that makes me angry with him.

Even now, as death looms, I think of how naive he was that day. Like everyone else, he refused to see the turning of the tide. The day our event planner canceled on us, the phone calls from his parents expressing their fear for our safety, even the day of the attack- he always thought things would go back to normal. He finally wised up the day the man in the green uniform knocked on our door, told us he had seen our marriage license in one of the burn piles, and suggested Marcus move back in with his parents. Too little, too late. The snowball was already rolling downhill. No eleventh hour revelations were going to stop it.

I try to conjure up a different image: a date, a vacation, the day I proposed. None of them will come to mind. Instead, I replay that day when Marcus was wrong. I resign myself to the fact that I am going to spend my last few breaths being angry with him.

Red cloaks and white wings surround me. Kneeling in the wet grass, I can see up into the white bonnets. There is no pity in their eyes, only hatred. These women have been told I am a rapist. They don’t know they’ve been turned into weapons.

A whistle blows.

In 2006, I was young, scared, and feeling alone. I had just come out to my closest friends, something I had sworn I would never do (I planned to take that secret to my grave). At the time, being gay meant I was going to be a disappointment. I’d accepted the idea that I would never be married or have kids. I felt more than just different. I felt “wrong”.

Then, I watched Captain Jack Harkness flirt with a man on TV. He did that… then he fought evil, saved lives, and traveled through time and space. His sexuality was inconsequential to his being a hero. When he was introduced, the Doctor told Rose “He’s a 51st Century man.”, implying that the future didn’t care about Jack’s sexuality.

Before marriage equality, before the “It Gets Better” campaigns, before Glee, before Lady Gaga…

Doctor Who told me that there was a future coming that I could be a part of.

Captain Jack Harkness was there for me right when I needed him most.

The 13th Doctor will be there for someone who needs her. That’s more important than your vague and ill-informed notions of “tradition”.

For a third year in a row I had the incredible experience attending of Awesome Con, a pop culture convention in Washington, DC.

Every year, I look forward to cosplaying at the Con. I wear a different outfit each of the three days and I try to do one new one each year. This year’s cosplays were Amos Burton from The Expanse, Wreck-it-Ralph from the movie of that title, and Ash Ketchum from the Pokemon animated series.

To get Wreck-it Ralph’s look, I started with a pair of overalls I’ve had in the back of my closet for over a decade. They were purchased to be worn when my high school show choir performed the song “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”. Despite having worked on my grandparent’s farm, I’ve never found reason to wear them since that choir performance. They were in near perfect condition, so, I felt a little bad that I had to bleach, dye, and distress them to get the right look for Ralph. I bleached out the blue color and dyed them brown to look like the overalls in the movie.

Then, I bought a cheap orange t-shirt. I cut out the collar and soaked it with a little bit of the brown dye to make it look worn. Then, I pulled out an old green shirt to wear underneath. Put it all together with a little hair gel and you’ve got Wreck-it-Ralph.

[image error]

[image error]

This may have been the best Awesome Con yet, and guess what… I didn’t meet a single celebrity. Don’t get me wrong, meeting celebrities can be cool. I met John Barrowman and Bill Nye last year, and I might write about it later. But, its also very expensive. My funds were limited this year, so I decided to forgo any photo ops or autographs, despite the impressive list of celebrities who were in attendance.

What did I do instead of waiting in massive lines and shelling out money for thirty seconds with an actor I admire? Panels. I jumped back and forth between the two buildings hosting the con and went to as many panels as I could.

Rather than meeting actors who’ve pretended to explore space in front of a green screen, I listened to scientists who are actually exploring space every day.

The best of these was the panel on the upcoming solar eclipse. On August 21st, the moon’s shadow will pass right across the continental united states and I could not be more excited. The scientists on the panel talked about what we can expect during the event, and they asked us all to download a smartphone app and act as citizen scientists by collecting data. If you want to help out with this project you can find the app here: https://observer.globe.gov/science-connections/eclipse2017

I also learned about Antarctic dinosaurs from the paleontologist who’s digging them up. A SETI scientist discussed the state of our search for extraterrestrials and his hopes for the future.

Then, I found out that one of my biggest pet peeves in science fiction was never the issue I thought it was. Dr. Erin Macdonald, who’s done work on gravity wave detection, schooled us on the different types of parallel universes and showed me the error in my objection.

One universe to another makes no sense in the many-worlds interpretation. #nerdrant I'd never considered that they might be tapping one…

— Anthony Marchese (@acmarkz) June 21, 2017

You're so welcome. Glad to help!!

This was a fascinating read. I confess I don’t read enough older books, something I need to amend. I was directed to read this book by a YouTube video in which the creator reenacted “The Rib Story” bit. Ingersoll unashamedly lays out all the logical issues with the old testament that we are taught to ignore in Sunday school. Even if you disagree with everything he has to say, you should know why you disagree.

I think the coolest thing about this book is that it provides the reader with a snapshot of the understanding of science of the day (1879). Far too often, we think back on the past and imagine how primitive their understanding must have been. I was struck by just how much Ingersoll’s scientific understanding is in line with what we know today.

I queued this book shortly after the election, although I had heard of it years ago and had planned to read it. I decided it had to be one of the books in my PopSugar Reading Challenge for 2017, even though I did not know where it would fit. Having read it, I will be using it for the “unreliable narrator” category.

The first thing that stuck out for me was how much the author explored the origins of the dystopian world. This feels unusual. In most dystonia stories I’ve read the setting is long after the transition (Brave New World, Hunger Games) and no one alive experienced the old world first hand. Offred was already an adult before the fall of the United States and the rise of Gilead. She clearly remembers the way things used to be. For me, this made the world of Gilead feel more real. We don’t skip the transition, the narrator recounts it for us to the best of her ability.

Its easy to sympathize with the narrator, an intelligent and educated woman forced into a position where all intellectual pursuits are denied her. The author grounds everything that occurs in Gilead in historical precedent, creating a terrifyingly real world.

Slight spoiler-

The story ends rather abruptly. But, I actually like the way the author wraps it up in the form of an academic lecture. The ending reinforces the idea that the status quo is always changing. Even Gilead will not last.

I highly recommend this book.

On August 1st of 2014, the leaders of Flash!Fiction gave us this image and the word “Freedom”. My story follows.

[image error]

Schism

“300 feet or so,” I told Sara, “about the length of a football field.” I can’t believe I still think like that. I haven’t seen a football game, in over a decade. Organized sporting events quickly gave way to combat training and sparring, after the start of the Schism War.

I glanced back to Sara. She usually rolled her eyes, whenever I made a reference to something from the pre-war era, a world that had ended, before she had been born. Instead, she kept her eyes on the far shore, as it disappeared, below the horizon.

The land we approached was overgrown, and the only structures were degraded, but I knew, somewhere, in the distance, was civilization. We’d have to avoid Canadian authorities, and find stable work, but we’d be free of the warring sovereign states, the endless Schism War.

Sara didn’t understand though, and probably never would. She just stared back, silently, at the only existence she’d ever known.

You can read the other contest entries Here

We’re now a couple days into National Novel Writing Month, an annual challenge to write 50,000 words during the month of November. I’ve completed the challenge for the last four years and have served as my region’s municipal liaison for the last three. We are told that participants who complete their novel profile on the challenge website are more likely to win and to finish their novels. So as part of my pre-writing (a.k.a. procrastination) I created covers for the novel I planned to write.

The story revolves around a gay dating app that becomes the platform for a resistance movement in a future where support for the LGBT community disappears. I imagined the cover would feature a smartphone displaying the app’s icon.

The first version was completed on Microsoft Paint with clip-art and the paint feature. I was pretty happy with it, but Paint has a tendency to reduce the quality of images if you look at it wrong. Beck Muth, a writer in my NaNoWriMo region, suggested using Canva, a website for editing images. It had templates for creating book covers and in very little time I created the second version of my cover. I wondered how it would look if I added pictures in a grid, like a dating app might display, so I took some free images from Pixabay.com and pieced together the third version.

So, what do you think? Do any of them peak your curiosity enough that you’d flip it over and read the blurb or maybe download a sample onto your e-reader? I appreciate an feedback.

On March 27th, 2015 this picture was the Flash!Friday prompt:

We were given 200 works within a ten-word leeway. The story I wrote is very relevant to current events.

Blazing a Trail

At first, the grayscale image was just a blur. Pictures took a surprisingly long time to load in her new office, probably, because of the gauntlet of firewalls they had to pass through. After a moment, the image resolved.

Rachel stifled a laugh. Then, remembering that she was alone in her office, she laughed openly. The clothing was so antiquated, especially in contrast to the black suit and pencil skirt she was wearing.

She looked over the women’s faces. Only half of them even noticed the camera, before the photo had been captured. 1911, she thought, long before digital photography and selfies. Looking at the camera, or not, all the women were focused and resolute. They were prepared for the task that was about to be set before them.

If these women could blaze a trail, so could she. The knot in her stomach began to ease for the first time since the official tally had been announced.

Rachel took a breath and pushed back her desk chair. She chose to follow along the curved office wall, rather than step across the presidential seal on the floor. She took one last moment to gather her courage, then left the safety of the closed room. The torrent of press awaited.