Moon/Mars stuff

So, a few days ago the fellow at Squub and I were chatting about the space program (and tangentially, I suppose, the Bush II space proposal*). He gave a very good description of why that is important to him and I greatly appreciated what he had to say. (I’d link to it directly, but the link to that specific post seems to be broken…)

Anyway, in the interests of continuing that conversation, I stumbled upon this Very Very Happy website, wherein The Mighty Reason Man talks more about Bush’s space thing and, as space-enthused person, how craptacular he thinks the whole thing is…. It’s good, go read.

A selection:
What should be a noble endeavor, one that can indeed inspire us and push us forward, has been immeasurably cheapened by this bit of political theater, and any supporter of the President who secretly dreams of mankind going out into the unknown should feel betrayed.

*And, UNBELIEVABLY, no mention of space thing in the State of the Union–which, to be sure, I didn’t actually watch, but I’ve read summaries. So, I’m going out on the summary limb here…

o, saucy brain, you poor delighted thing

i feel the cold, why, whirl in the gate
dance the wheels around and spittle outright
scorched earth, fought over that same grainy spot
just in case the meadows flow, golden
down where the lawn birds sing.

drifting awkward, feel those sailwinds heave
catch the brief scent; curlicues on the horizon
feathered spice of Kublai Khan
burnt and tangled together, with rime and fever.
grating soft cheese in the morningtime.

dallying, you whistle at the corner, hearing,
i suppose, the chittering of squirrels overhead.
not that i’m jealous. i’d do the same, if i could.
darling, you whittle at the stormer, heaving.
cold comfort in the daze that follows.

if there was ever a time to be lounging,
playing at shuffleboard–this isn’t it.
in spite of the frenzied stirring in my toes,
the weathercock’s still blowing nor’nor’easter.
it’s hard not to hear the doom in that air.

so, i’m playacting at crosswords, pen-handed,
scribbling curlicues and ancient norse runes
(i never was one for collaring in the lines)
trying to look focused, watching that sweat
sting smoke as it drops onto my glasses.

speaking of, they’re almost a pock-marked ruin.
i lurk among those deeper vision tropes,
try not to let the metaphors overwhelm.
even the cheese in my sandwich–provolone–
wants to be laced with heavy, pregnant meaning.

still, there’ll be a time for the cheese yet.
a lonesome, to be sure. you snicker?
rightly so. the first one to give in–
wheeling out the big guns, posthaste–
only feels the slightest pangs. quite right.

eventually, we’ll tire of this game,
pull pinatas out of the cheat grass
and straggle home with arms full of toys.
only once, when the tugboat went missing,
did i ever wish the skies had darkened later.

The next Hunter S. Thompson?

Okay, so he’s not as drug-crazed and off-the-wall as Hunter S., but Stephen Elliot writes engagingly about the political process in a way that I haven’t seen since finishing Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail those many weeks ago…

He even has his own website. And he writes novels, apparently.

Other than that, I know nothing about him…

UPDATE: I just stumbled across another article by that Stephen Elliott guy… and the part one that goes with it.

Also, Findory is a neat, personalized news-aggregator.

Philip K. Dick’s *Man in the High Castle*: a response

I guess it was last week or so that the Squuby fellow finished reading Philip K. Dick’s Man in the High Castle and he had some questions about it, and since I said that I would and since I recommended the book, I feel like I should present my thoughts on the thing, at any rate. Not that I’m actually certain that those aforementioned thoughts will in any way clarify those questions, but it’s worth a try, eh?

I’m not entirely certain what his question(s) about the book is/are exactly, but here’s the little bit that I latched onto, anyway:

“I don’t think I get it. If it weren’t for that I could unequivocally say I liked it. The writing is great, the surreality of the thing is just up my tree. But the whole fact of it ending up sort of leaving me hanging here saying, ‘err, what? None of it was real? Is that the thing?'”

The Man in the High Castle (MITHC) was one of the first PKD books that I read, about three years ago, and I read it in a single afternoon, so my response here will be colored by the ten or so of his other novels that I’ve read in the mean time. Additionally, I’m not going to go into a plot summary of MITHC either, because, well, I’ve read the book and HE’S read the book. It’s a story about an alternate world where the Nazis and the Japanese won in WWII, where the West coast is a Japanese protectorate and the East coast is run by the Nazis.

MITHC is one of PKD’s earlier books (written in 1962), but it’s themes or ideas are present in most (all?) of his books that I’ve read: basically, what is the nature of the reality that we perceive? Or, to put another way, the reality that we perceive is an illusion and we can only perceive the True Reality obliquely, through flaws in the Illusion.

At its most basic, I think that MITHC is a simple alternate history, What If?, novel, with the added complexity of a book within the story which is a fictional account of what appears to be our ACTUAL history: the US and Allies defeating the Nazis and Japan in the war. This addition raises questions as to the nature of artistic creation: if the author in this fictional work writes an account of our “real” history as an alternate history, what does that mean for us, who are reading a book by a “real” science fiction author about an alternate history?

The fascinating thing, for me, about PKD is that a decade or so after writing MITHC (and many others), he experienced (or reported experiencing) what he perceived to be “real” events which called into question the reality of our reality (or the reality of HIS reality) and which served to reinforce the idea that reality WAS an illusion. He experienced the thing which his science fiction novels and short stories, up to that point, had been exploring.

I find it very very interesting that so many of his short stories and novels have been recently adapted (mostly not well) into movies. An interesting idea that PKD had was that if there was a Truth out there–beneath the Illusion–then it wouldn’t appear in any obvious fashion, but as “a thief in the night”, as trash in a gutter, or commercials on the television or as trashy science fiction novels…

I could go on and on about this, but I think I’ll stop for the moment. Does this help?

Oh, and if you haven’t read Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, you should.