Sunday, July 31, 2011
The movie version
Today's Sunday NYT Magazine has a pretty good rant by Alex Pappademas, "The Prescription to Save Ailing Superheroes," about why comic book movies almost universally suck. Pappademas contends the problem is the way the narrative orthodoxy of fan culture constrains any auteur factor that might otherwise rejuvenate the material:
As a fan of comics, I understand why fans want comic-book-movie directors to act like respectful stewards, but as a fan of movies, I want to see these movies directed by megalomaniac geniuses who’d rather fly to Cannes in coach than crowd-source one iota of their vision. Maybe then we’d get superhero movies that honor comics’ tradition of inventiveness, instead of D.O.A. brand-extensions like “Green Lantern,” a glorified video-game cut-scene of a movie in which Ryan Reynolds once again plays a jerk who learns to be less jerky.
I’m not suggesting that Marvel give “Thor 2” to somebody like Lars von Trier, much as I’d love to see what that guy would do with Norse mythology and a nine-figure budget. But since the whole reason Hollywood keeps making superhero movies is that they (theoretically) come presold to an audience that buys opening-weekend tickets no matter what, why not turn over these huge canvases to filmmakers who want to splatter them with similarly huge ideas?
Pappademas is right to cite fan culture as culprit, but I doubt that liberating the filmmakers from the fans would really do the trick (not to suggest I wouldn't dig Tarantino's Luke Cage, or Cronenberg's Dr. Strange, or Godard's The Watcher). I remember walking out of the theater after screening the Favreau/Downey Iron Man, baffled by how the experience of finally getting a perfect cinematic realization of a comic I always enjoyed left me feeling completely empty, the film unable to imprint any real lasting impact on my brain.
I grew up reading comics, and enduring the persistent adolescent disappointment of live action versions that failed through technological insufficiencies that rendered all SFX as juvenile self-parody. The 1970s Spider Man "scaling" walls in the style of Adam West's Laugh-In, Bill Bixby's ennui-drunk bus stop drifter Bruce Banner, J.D. Salinger's son as a low-budget Captain America, Alec Baldwin's post-pulp Shadow, Roger Corman's Fantastic Four, Billy Zane's Ghost Who Walks.
[フレーム]
All of that accumulated frustration, when finally met by perfect realizations of the comic fantasy as real world, only resulted in a deeper sort of frustration. Part of the cause may be the brain numb from visually processing all of that CGI—the mind sees the wires even if sub-cognitively. But I think the bigger, root reason is that successful cinematic depictions of superheroes obliterate the narrative negative space of the original comic form, and thereby deprive the mind of the imaginative lebensraum that is the real source of wonder.
Comic book superheroes are not meant to be real. They are meant to exist in pen-and-ink, occupying panels, sometimes straddling the white void between the panels. The semiotic vernacular of superheroes is an indigenous product of the form, one which works best operating within the form's inherent abstractions and opportunities for the mind to do the work of closure between the page and the things it doesn't show. Considering comic book movies of any sort through the analytical prism articulated so definitively by Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics, this conclusion seems compelled.
In his NYT riff, Pappademas is on to something when, after considering all the failures of crowd-bound superhero movies to generate a satisfying experience, he looks in the margins of fandom and finds the far more interesting way that Network Culture deals with film versions of our favorite comics—it *imagines* them:
If that’s too much of a risk, why not give them to craftsmen who understand that not every movie based on a superhero comic needs to operate in a genre called “superhero”? A few years ago, the film-geek Web site Chud.com posted a hoax review of a lost masterpiece from Clint Eastwood and Sam Peckinpah: a stripped-down and brutal take on Batman that abandoned every aspect of the mythos except the vigilantism and the car. Only the fact that this movie never existed keeps it from being my favorite superhero film of all time.
Surely an atemporal invention of an imaginary Peckinpah Batman is the right angle of attack for carrying on these narratives in the age of Gothic High Tech? (Not that having Mickey Rourke as a loco Russian with a nuclear bullwhip is a bad thing.) Coming soon: Terrence Malick's 1973 High Evolutionary, John Woo's 1983 Cantonese Nick Fury and J.D. Salinger's Bucky Barnes, AWOL in 'Nam with Alice Cooper and the Beav.
[フレーム]
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Rocketeer revisited
I am a big fan of Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer. I have been for a long time. Take a look at that drawing at right. That's the official logo and t-shirt design I worked up for Aggiecon 23 way back in 1992. That's Texas A&M University's historic Ol' Sarge mascot incorporated into the design, which got a lot of chuckles because of the incongruity. The convention was wary about spending so much to have a multi-colored shirt printed up, but in the end every last shirt sold out, and to this day I'm measurably proud of my brief and otherwise unremarkable career as an artist.
I'm a sucker for the swash-buckling, cliffhanger adventures of the 1930s pulp adventure heroes. I deeply love the movies Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and enjoyed the short-lived TV series Tales of the Gold Monkey so much that I wrote up a springboard to relaunch it as an ongoing comic book series in the early years of our new century. Lest you think that was a product of wishful thinking and ill-advised fan fiction, I actually got as far as discussing licensing with Universal before the comic publisher got cold feet and backed out (for the record, Universal wasn't even sure if they still owned the rights. Most of the people I spoke with hadn't even heard of the series. Can I pick a hot property, or what?). But The Rocketeer? Wowness!
For those of you unfamiliar with The Rocketeer, let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up: Cliff Secord, a Gee Bee racing pilot in 1938 discovers a stolen rocket pack designed by Doc Freakin' Savage that allows a man to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. With the aid of his airplane mechanic buddy Peavy, he debuts an air show stunt act as the Rocketeer to make enough money to keep his bombshell "art model" girlfriend Betty happy, but soon runs afoul of mobsters and Nazi agents who want to steal the rocket pack. Oh, the Feds and Doc Savage (along with Savage's assistant Monk and Ham) want the rocket pack, too. Cliff, headstrong and passionate, doesn't always make the wisest of choices. Mayhem ensues. And that's just the first story arc. The second, "Cliff's New York Adventure," follows up immediately on the first with Cliff chasing his now-estranged girlfriend to New York City, where he runs into that other great pulp character, the Shadow, who enlists Cliff's help in thwarting a serial killer. That's just aces in my book. Stevens was careful never to name or overtly identify any of these trademarked characters, but the homage is clear enough to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the genre. In 1991 a well-regarded movie version was put out by Disney, which combined elements of both storylines to craft a more cohesive plot. The "Betty" character was changed to "Jenny" and her overt sexuality toned down, while Cliff was somewhat less of a lunkhead in the film, but other than that, the spirit of the film is remarkably faithful to the comic, evidence of Stevens' close involvement with the project (one thing that surprised me is that there is not Neville Sinclair/Errol Flynn analogue in the comics. I'd heard the Errol Flynn connection for years, obviously from people who'd never actually read Stevens' original).
I can't recall when I actually became aware of the existence of Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. I was aware of the character in comic form before the movie adaptation came out in 1991. I almost certainly did not know about it prior to the fall of 1988, when I arrived at college and discovered my first dedicated comic book retailer. Up until then, I'd lived in a very small town and hadn't seen comics with any regularity until the local grocery store started carrying Marvel and DC on the magazine racks in 1987 (I know the date well, because I still have Silver Surfer no. 1 in my long boxes--oh, that Ben Grimm!). Somewhere along the line, I came across The Rocketeer and got all giddy. I can't recall if it was in the back pages of Starslayer or a later incarnation. I just remember the designs and artwork were killer, and I'd never seen anything like it. I also never owned anything like it either. For some reason or other, I never managed to acquire a single issue of The Rocketeer in comic form, with the exception of the Peter David/Russ Heath movie adaptation, which doesn't really count. Area comic shops didn't have it in their back issue bins. When Wizard World came to Texas in November of 2003, I made the long trip up to Dallas (along with Mark Finn) with the intent to buy every single comic book that ever featured Dave Stevens' inspired creation. I went home empty-handed. There were plenty of Cerebus collections, but no Rocketeer anything. I turned to Ebay and discovered the joys of being sniped constantly or watching back issues go for outrageous sums. For a comic I was ostensibly a big fan of, I was having a hell of a time getting my hands on any. At some point, I gave up and forgot about it.
Enter IDW Publishing. Before Stevens' untimely death in 2008, the wheels were set in motion for a collected omnibus publication of all of Stevens' Rocketeer stories from the previous two decades. The Rocketeer: The Complete Deluxe Adventures is a magnificent book. I can't stress that enough. It's also quite costly at 75ドル retail (a non-deluxe edition, The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures, can be had for around 20ドル). I also feel obligated to point out there's the Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer Artist's Edition available for the bargain price of 250ドル (although it was initially offered by IDW for 100ドル), which reproduces Stevens' page layouts with pencil marks, liquid paper and all the artistic detritus that comes with producing a comic. I'm not that hard-core. But what does the deluxe edition bring to the table that the other doesn't? Lots. First of all, it's got a gorgeous, full-color slipcase, as seen two images up, and is oversized with lush, lush, lush artwork. Both of Stevens' completed Rocketeer adventures: The Rocketeer and The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure simply pop off the page with all-new coloring by Laura Martin. Every single page could be framed as a work of art. I'm telling you, it's that good.
This book is a trove for Stevens fans. As you can see above, there are a generous number of page breakdowns along with Stevens' original, hand-written scripts on yellow legal pad. You don't get more authentic than this. While entire scripts aren't reprinted, and his breakdowns only give a hint to his fluid creative process, they're valuable reference material for aspiring comic writers as well as artists on how one particularly gifted creator made his magic. There's also a nice section on the legendary Bettie Page, the 50s pin-up icon who was the direct inspiration for Cliff Secord's girlfriend "Betty" in the comic. I don't know if any Rocketeer fans are unaware of the story by this point, but The Rocketeer helped revived mainstream interest in Page, eventually prompting Stevens to track her down and discover the former model (living in modest conditions) was not receiving any compensation from all the businesses profiting from her likeness. Stevens took on the role of her financial guardian of sorts, and Page was able to live out her life in relative comfort. It's a nice story, and reaffirms that people can do nice things for each other because it's the right thing to do. I also learned that B-movie "Scream Queen" Brinke Stevens (who also happens to be Dave Stevens' ex-wife) modeled for the iconic Betty photo session splash in the initial storyline's run. Learn something new every day.
There's a host of pencil sketches, designs and memorabilia ideas packed into the book that makes me want to cry, they're so beautiful. There's one sketch for an unproduced metal sign Stevens worked up that I'd love to have hanging in my office. But the most distressing thing about the collection is how damn few Rocketeer stories ever got published. It seems like there should be a lot more, since Stevens first published his masterwork in 1982 and a pretty good movie adaptation came out in 1991. But Stevens only completed two storylines that together barely fill the number of pages we've come to expect for a "graphic novel." And even so, "Cliff's New York Adventure" is open ended, with Cliff and Betty's relationship issues unresolved and Cliff still on the East Coast with the ownership issues of the rocket pack unresolved. Stevens' gleeful obsession with pulp-era characters--populating his two Rocketeer stories with unnamed versions of Doc Savage and the Shadow--is a clear precursor to Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--so it's no surprise that his next proposed storyline picks up directly after "New York Adventure" ends, finding Cliff in New Jersey and involved with another character that first appeared in 1938, Superman. And not just any Superman, but the Superman of 1938, as Siegel and Schuster created him, literally "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound." As if that's not enough to get any comic geek's heart pumping, Stevens sets the epic team-up on Halloween, 1938. Yeah, Orson Wells' Mercury Theatre broadcast of "War of the Worlds." Except that the alien invasion is real, and the Rocketeer and Superman have to team up to save the Earth. And defeat a giant robot as well. Naturally, DC Comics turned the story down and it remains unpublished to this day. Philistines!
But there is always hope. IDW Publishing has brought back the character with The Rocketeer Adventures , a mini-series anthology backed by an all-star lineup of talent. The collected volume is due out in November, and I can't wait to see what extra goodies are packed in there. Hopefully, this new mini-series will beget another, and perhaps even an ongoing. In a perfect world, we will never have to go so long between Rocketeer stories ever again, even if Dave Stevens is no longer around to share them with us.
I'm a sucker for the swash-buckling, cliffhanger adventures of the 1930s pulp adventure heroes. I deeply love the movies Raiders of the Lost Ark and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and enjoyed the short-lived TV series Tales of the Gold Monkey so much that I wrote up a springboard to relaunch it as an ongoing comic book series in the early years of our new century. Lest you think that was a product of wishful thinking and ill-advised fan fiction, I actually got as far as discussing licensing with Universal before the comic publisher got cold feet and backed out (for the record, Universal wasn't even sure if they still owned the rights. Most of the people I spoke with hadn't even heard of the series. Can I pick a hot property, or what?). But The Rocketeer? Wowness!
For those of you unfamiliar with The Rocketeer, let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up: Cliff Secord, a Gee Bee racing pilot in 1938 discovers a stolen rocket pack designed by Doc Freakin' Savage that allows a man to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. With the aid of his airplane mechanic buddy Peavy, he debuts an air show stunt act as the Rocketeer to make enough money to keep his bombshell "art model" girlfriend Betty happy, but soon runs afoul of mobsters and Nazi agents who want to steal the rocket pack. Oh, the Feds and Doc Savage (along with Savage's assistant Monk and Ham) want the rocket pack, too. Cliff, headstrong and passionate, doesn't always make the wisest of choices. Mayhem ensues. And that's just the first story arc. The second, "Cliff's New York Adventure," follows up immediately on the first with Cliff chasing his now-estranged girlfriend to New York City, where he runs into that other great pulp character, the Shadow, who enlists Cliff's help in thwarting a serial killer. That's just aces in my book. Stevens was careful never to name or overtly identify any of these trademarked characters, but the homage is clear enough to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the genre. In 1991 a well-regarded movie version was put out by Disney, which combined elements of both storylines to craft a more cohesive plot. The "Betty" character was changed to "Jenny" and her overt sexuality toned down, while Cliff was somewhat less of a lunkhead in the film, but other than that, the spirit of the film is remarkably faithful to the comic, evidence of Stevens' close involvement with the project (one thing that surprised me is that there is not Neville Sinclair/Errol Flynn analogue in the comics. I'd heard the Errol Flynn connection for years, obviously from people who'd never actually read Stevens' original).
I can't recall when I actually became aware of the existence of Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. I was aware of the character in comic form before the movie adaptation came out in 1991. I almost certainly did not know about it prior to the fall of 1988, when I arrived at college and discovered my first dedicated comic book retailer. Up until then, I'd lived in a very small town and hadn't seen comics with any regularity until the local grocery store started carrying Marvel and DC on the magazine racks in 1987 (I know the date well, because I still have Silver Surfer no. 1 in my long boxes--oh, that Ben Grimm!). Somewhere along the line, I came across The Rocketeer and got all giddy. I can't recall if it was in the back pages of Starslayer or a later incarnation. I just remember the designs and artwork were killer, and I'd never seen anything like it. I also never owned anything like it either. For some reason or other, I never managed to acquire a single issue of The Rocketeer in comic form, with the exception of the Peter David/Russ Heath movie adaptation, which doesn't really count. Area comic shops didn't have it in their back issue bins. When Wizard World came to Texas in November of 2003, I made the long trip up to Dallas (along with Mark Finn) with the intent to buy every single comic book that ever featured Dave Stevens' inspired creation. I went home empty-handed. There were plenty of Cerebus collections, but no Rocketeer anything. I turned to Ebay and discovered the joys of being sniped constantly or watching back issues go for outrageous sums. For a comic I was ostensibly a big fan of, I was having a hell of a time getting my hands on any. At some point, I gave up and forgot about it.
Enter IDW Publishing. Before Stevens' untimely death in 2008, the wheels were set in motion for a collected omnibus publication of all of Stevens' Rocketeer stories from the previous two decades. The Rocketeer: The Complete Deluxe Adventures is a magnificent book. I can't stress that enough. It's also quite costly at 75ドル retail (a non-deluxe edition, The Rocketeer: The Complete Adventures, can be had for around 20ドル). I also feel obligated to point out there's the Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer Artist's Edition available for the bargain price of 250ドル (although it was initially offered by IDW for 100ドル), which reproduces Stevens' page layouts with pencil marks, liquid paper and all the artistic detritus that comes with producing a comic. I'm not that hard-core. But what does the deluxe edition bring to the table that the other doesn't? Lots. First of all, it's got a gorgeous, full-color slipcase, as seen two images up, and is oversized with lush, lush, lush artwork. Both of Stevens' completed Rocketeer adventures: The Rocketeer and The Rocketeer: Cliff's New York Adventure simply pop off the page with all-new coloring by Laura Martin. Every single page could be framed as a work of art. I'm telling you, it's that good.
This book is a trove for Stevens fans. As you can see above, there are a generous number of page breakdowns along with Stevens' original, hand-written scripts on yellow legal pad. You don't get more authentic than this. While entire scripts aren't reprinted, and his breakdowns only give a hint to his fluid creative process, they're valuable reference material for aspiring comic writers as well as artists on how one particularly gifted creator made his magic. There's also a nice section on the legendary Bettie Page, the 50s pin-up icon who was the direct inspiration for Cliff Secord's girlfriend "Betty" in the comic. I don't know if any Rocketeer fans are unaware of the story by this point, but The Rocketeer helped revived mainstream interest in Page, eventually prompting Stevens to track her down and discover the former model (living in modest conditions) was not receiving any compensation from all the businesses profiting from her likeness. Stevens took on the role of her financial guardian of sorts, and Page was able to live out her life in relative comfort. It's a nice story, and reaffirms that people can do nice things for each other because it's the right thing to do. I also learned that B-movie "Scream Queen" Brinke Stevens (who also happens to be Dave Stevens' ex-wife) modeled for the iconic Betty photo session splash in the initial storyline's run. Learn something new every day.
There's a host of pencil sketches, designs and memorabilia ideas packed into the book that makes me want to cry, they're so beautiful. There's one sketch for an unproduced metal sign Stevens worked up that I'd love to have hanging in my office. But the most distressing thing about the collection is how damn few Rocketeer stories ever got published. It seems like there should be a lot more, since Stevens first published his masterwork in 1982 and a pretty good movie adaptation came out in 1991. But Stevens only completed two storylines that together barely fill the number of pages we've come to expect for a "graphic novel." And even so, "Cliff's New York Adventure" is open ended, with Cliff and Betty's relationship issues unresolved and Cliff still on the East Coast with the ownership issues of the rocket pack unresolved. Stevens' gleeful obsession with pulp-era characters--populating his two Rocketeer stories with unnamed versions of Doc Savage and the Shadow--is a clear precursor to Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--so it's no surprise that his next proposed storyline picks up directly after "New York Adventure" ends, finding Cliff in New Jersey and involved with another character that first appeared in 1938, Superman. And not just any Superman, but the Superman of 1938, as Siegel and Schuster created him, literally "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound." As if that's not enough to get any comic geek's heart pumping, Stevens sets the epic team-up on Halloween, 1938. Yeah, Orson Wells' Mercury Theatre broadcast of "War of the Worlds." Except that the alien invasion is real, and the Rocketeer and Superman have to team up to save the Earth. And defeat a giant robot as well. Naturally, DC Comics turned the story down and it remains unpublished to this day. Philistines!
But there is always hope. IDW Publishing has brought back the character with The Rocketeer Adventures , a mini-series anthology backed by an all-star lineup of talent. The collected volume is due out in November, and I can't wait to see what extra goodies are packed in there. Hopefully, this new mini-series will beget another, and perhaps even an ongoing. In a perfect world, we will never have to go so long between Rocketeer stories ever again, even if Dave Stevens is no longer around to share them with us.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
No fear of the past, either
Behold, No Fear of the Future boldly jumps into the Facebook fray, a mere half decade after this social networking site came to dominate the interwebs. Tremble at our foresight and cutting-edge initiative! "Like" us if you dare!
Coming soon: Our very own MySpace page!
[フレーム]
Coming soon: Our very own MySpace page!
Friday, July 8, 2011
Lambshead Revisited
So Monkey Girl walks into the kitchen yesterday and picks up the copy of The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities I'd set down there.
"What's this?" she asks that curious yet vaguely contemptuous way only preteens can manage. "Looks kinda cool."
"It's a new anthology," I answer. "That's my contributor copy."
"Really? You?" She flips through it a bit before setting it back on the table. Then she eyes me suspiciously. "Seriously. Why'd they send it to you?"
Somehow, I doubt Evelyn Waugh ever suffered such indignity--although to be honest, he never participated in such an outright strange publishing effort, either. The Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, is not so much a traditional anthology as it is a madcap idea hatched in the wee hours of the morning during a room party at a science fiction convention after consuming vast quantities of absinthe, Diet Dr Pepper and Mad Dog 20/20. It's a crackpot scheme, a joke anthology everyone talks about with the full understanding that it'll never happen. Except the VanderMeers have gone and made it happen.
For those folks keeping score at home, the Cabinet of Curiosities is indeed a stand-alone follow-up to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, which was nominated for all sorts of awards when it came out back in 2005 (probably because I had nothing to do with it). The Cabinet of Curiosities is a good deal more inventive and wide-ranging than the earlier Lambshead book (which is actually saying quite a bit). The artwork in Cabinet alone is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with fantastic line art and seemingly vintage photography that boasts an uncomfortable authenticity at times. It's good stuff, all the way 'round. If you're a fan of the fantastic, do yourself a favor and pick up this handsome volume.
"What's this?" she asks that curious yet vaguely contemptuous way only preteens can manage. "Looks kinda cool."
"It's a new anthology," I answer. "That's my contributor copy."
"Really? You?" She flips through it a bit before setting it back on the table. Then she eyes me suspiciously. "Seriously. Why'd they send it to you?"
Somehow, I doubt Evelyn Waugh ever suffered such indignity--although to be honest, he never participated in such an outright strange publishing effort, either. The Cabinet of Curiosities, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, is not so much a traditional anthology as it is a madcap idea hatched in the wee hours of the morning during a room party at a science fiction convention after consuming vast quantities of absinthe, Diet Dr Pepper and Mad Dog 20/20. It's a crackpot scheme, a joke anthology everyone talks about with the full understanding that it'll never happen. Except the VanderMeers have gone and made it happen.
“The narrative scope and stellar assemblage of writers and illustrators…makes this a book that will be absolutely cherished by fantasy, science fiction, and steampunk afficionados alike.” – Paul Goat Allen, B&N Book ClubWriters love anthologies. Publishers hate them, so the fact that the VanderMeers con, bribe and blackmail Harper Voyager into publishing this gloriously strange book speaks volumes on their dedication and/or lack of judgment. The all-star lineup of contributors is no less impressive, including (but not limited to) Ted Chiang, Jeffrey Ford, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jay Lake, China Mieville, Mike Mignola, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Garth Nix, Carrie Vaughn... let's just say it's an embarrassment of riches and be done with it, eh? It's almost enough to forgive the misguided inclusion of a piece of flash fiction from yours truly, insignificant though it may be. A sample of my "Mother of Spirits" entry reads thusly:
Drab olive in color, with copper flecking, this three-inch-long sessile organism resembles a dessicated asparagus spear mated with a tiny artichoke. Once rehydrated in a suitable measure of clean water, in manifests a most peculiar phenomenon...There are quite a few standouts in the "Brief Catalog of Other Items" that close out the book, but chief among these is Rhys Hughes' inspired "Reversed Commas (box of)" which is as wonderful as any invented punctuation could be, so much that I wish I had a box of these handy things myself.
For those folks keeping score at home, the Cabinet of Curiosities is indeed a stand-alone follow-up to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, which was nominated for all sorts of awards when it came out back in 2005 (probably because I had nothing to do with it). The Cabinet of Curiosities is a good deal more inventive and wide-ranging than the earlier Lambshead book (which is actually saying quite a bit). The artwork in Cabinet alone is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with fantastic line art and seemingly vintage photography that boasts an uncomfortable authenticity at times. It's good stuff, all the way 'round. If you're a fan of the fantastic, do yourself a favor and pick up this handsome volume.
After the death of Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead at his house in Wimpering-on-the-Brook, England, a remarkable discovery was unearthed: the remains of an astonishing cabinet of curiosities. Many of these artifacts, curios, and wonders related to anecdotes and stories in the doctor's personal journals. Others, when shown to the doctor's friends, elicited further tales from a life like no other. Thus, in keeping with the bold spirit exemplified by Dr. Lambshead and his exploits, we now proudly present highlights from the doctor's cabinet, reconstructed not only through visual representations but also through exciting stories of intrigue and adventure. A carefully selected group of popular artists and acclaimed, bestselling authors has been assembled to bring this cabinet of curiosities to life.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Genesis Discovery
Despite an unfortunately emphatic return to Earth in which the parachute failed to deploy and the sample return capsule pancaked onto the Utah desert, the NASA Genesis Discovery Mission succeeded. Witness the June 24 issue of Science. The magazine's cover is a photo of the particle concentrator extricated from the spacecraft-pancake. Two articles announce important findings from analysis of the concentrator, changing our understanding of the composition of the primordial solar system. And these are just two high-profile examples of the journal and conference papers occasioned by Genesis samples being sent to researchers around the world who have asked for them. Not bad for a mission with a spectacular equipment failure at the end!
What saved the science was contingency planning. The nominal mission would have had the sample return capsule, dangling under a parachute, delicately snagged in mid-air by a helicopter. But design decisions were driven by considerations of how to salvage the samples even if the return capsule broke. Five silicon collector arrays that had basked in different regimes of the solar wind were each of a different thickness. Every fragment bigger than a breadcrumb revealed what array it came from. The particle concentrator and its matrix were more robust than they might have needed to be. So the concentrator, which was identified in the early proposal stage as being of potentially high scientific value, ended up mainly intact - high value science and all.
What saved the science was contingency planning. The nominal mission would have had the sample return capsule, dangling under a parachute, delicately snagged in mid-air by a helicopter. But design decisions were driven by considerations of how to salvage the samples even if the return capsule broke. Five silicon collector arrays that had basked in different regimes of the solar wind were each of a different thickness. Every fragment bigger than a breadcrumb revealed what array it came from. The particle concentrator and its matrix were more robust than they might have needed to be. So the concentrator, which was identified in the early proposal stage as being of potentially high scientific value, ended up mainly intact - high value science and all.
Monday, June 27, 2011
A sketchy report on the Apollocon that was
Apollocon has come and gone once again, and I find myself with a cup that runneth over of enthusiasm and inspiration. This is a good thing, and the primary reason I find myself attending conventions these days. Writing is a solo endeavour, and the inherent isolation of the discipline can be wearying. New Braunfels, although being in the general proximity of San Antonio and Austin, is apart enough that I do not have regular writerly contact with other folk (other than online) and breaking this isolation, I have found, is essential to replenish the wellspring of creativity. This is partly in response to the stimulating flow of ideas that abounds, but mostly, I suspect, from my deep shame that everyone else appears far more productive than I.
After having missed last year's edition due to conflicting obligations, it was good to reconnect with the Houston crowd, which differs in subtle ways from the Armadillocon and Aggiecon folks (although there is some natural overlap). For dinner, I tagged along with John DeNardo, Stina Leicht and Lawrence Person to the Cajun Town Cafe for some pretty darn good eats. Food, as everyone knows, is an integral part of the full con-going experience.
I admit to some trepidation in the early going. There were a variety of SNAFUs with scheduling, such that until Thursday night prior to the convention, I was not included on any programming. Fortunately, their crack team of pencillers-in got to work and before long I had a full slate of scheduling on which to hold forth. My contributions to Friday's Cthulhu panel were modest, since I've read only a few Lovecraft stories, but I did manage to enlighten the audience on the existence of Shoggoth On The Roof, which alone is worth the price of admission. Running hard all day, plus my general lack of sleep from the week before, caught up with me and I ended up calling it a night relatively early in the evening. Having only one real room party going on made the decision easier.
Saturday got off to a sluggish start. My energy levels were low and overall I simply felt run down. I gave it the old college try during my three panels, but if I'm being honest, the audience is fortunate there were so many other knowledgeable folks up there on the dias with me, otherwise the discussion would've spiraled downward very quickly.
Once evening rolled around, however, my fatigue seemed to evaporate. I attribute that to the great people around me. I had a fun dinner with Ann VanderMeer, Rocky Kelly and Gabrielle Faust as well as the dinner crew from the night before. Ann and I had some entertaining conversations, but surprisingly never once did The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities come up, despite the fact HarperCollins releases it in just a couple of weeks. I've not had the chance to hang out with Gabrielle at a convention before, but she was great fun. And Rocky is always an upbeat and entertaining fellow to have around--I can't imagine a better convention guest.
Somewhere along the line I found a few minutes to talk with Chris Nakashima-Brown about his planned revamp of the No Fear of the Future group blog, and caught up a little with Martha Wells, Bill Crider, Rhonda Eudaly, Alexis Glynn Latner and others, although the fleeting moments went by far too quickly.
That buoyant energy carried over to Sunday, even though there were many excellent room parties Saturday night, and I found excellent conversations at each of them. Interestingly enough, my last panel of the con, Fire off! The Science Fiction/Fantasy Canon, proved to be the most entertaining and engaging of the weekend. With Alexis, Lawrence and Larry Friesen (Bill Crider had to leave early and missed it) we had a grand time pulling up a wide range of yesterday's classic authors and stories to give a sweeping list of worthwhile reading for someone looking to be well-grounded in SF and fantasy literature. Dante's Inferno was one early example, and we touched on a good number of 19th century writers before we even got to Verne and Wells. My contributions included Cilfford Simak, Leigh Brackett, James Tiptree Jr., Peter Beagle, Jack Vance and A.E. van Vogt. Others brought up Stapledon, Blish, Ballard, Dick, Zelazny, Burroughs, Kuttner, Le Guin, Norton and Lafferty, plus all the giants one would expect us to touch on. Interestingly, we often recommended reading works that weren't their best-known or most successful simply because some of those more famous works hadn't aged well. We were all struck silent for a moment when we realized that a significant amount of Greg Egan's work is now more than 20 years old, thus qualifying for "classic" status.
There didn't seem to be quite so many regional writers this year as in the past, but this was more than made up for by the steampunk contingent, a literary-cum-fashion movement that shows no sign of abating any time soon. And that's fine with me, as I find the retro-futuristic style endlessly entertaining. I also learned that, yes indeed, all the other writers and artists participating are far, far more productive than I, and I need to get my lazy butt in gear and stop wasting so much of my limited writing time typing out blog posts about conventions I've attended.
After having missed last year's edition due to conflicting obligations, it was good to reconnect with the Houston crowd, which differs in subtle ways from the Armadillocon and Aggiecon folks (although there is some natural overlap). For dinner, I tagged along with John DeNardo, Stina Leicht and Lawrence Person to the Cajun Town Cafe for some pretty darn good eats. Food, as everyone knows, is an integral part of the full con-going experience.
I admit to some trepidation in the early going. There were a variety of SNAFUs with scheduling, such that until Thursday night prior to the convention, I was not included on any programming. Fortunately, their crack team of pencillers-in got to work and before long I had a full slate of scheduling on which to hold forth. My contributions to Friday's Cthulhu panel were modest, since I've read only a few Lovecraft stories, but I did manage to enlighten the audience on the existence of Shoggoth On The Roof, which alone is worth the price of admission. Running hard all day, plus my general lack of sleep from the week before, caught up with me and I ended up calling it a night relatively early in the evening. Having only one real room party going on made the decision easier.
Saturday got off to a sluggish start. My energy levels were low and overall I simply felt run down. I gave it the old college try during my three panels, but if I'm being honest, the audience is fortunate there were so many other knowledgeable folks up there on the dias with me, otherwise the discussion would've spiraled downward very quickly.
Once evening rolled around, however, my fatigue seemed to evaporate. I attribute that to the great people around me. I had a fun dinner with Ann VanderMeer, Rocky Kelly and Gabrielle Faust as well as the dinner crew from the night before. Ann and I had some entertaining conversations, but surprisingly never once did The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities come up, despite the fact HarperCollins releases it in just a couple of weeks. I've not had the chance to hang out with Gabrielle at a convention before, but she was great fun. And Rocky is always an upbeat and entertaining fellow to have around--I can't imagine a better convention guest.
Somewhere along the line I found a few minutes to talk with Chris Nakashima-Brown about his planned revamp of the No Fear of the Future group blog, and caught up a little with Martha Wells, Bill Crider, Rhonda Eudaly, Alexis Glynn Latner and others, although the fleeting moments went by far too quickly.
That buoyant energy carried over to Sunday, even though there were many excellent room parties Saturday night, and I found excellent conversations at each of them. Interestingly enough, my last panel of the con, Fire off! The Science Fiction/Fantasy Canon, proved to be the most entertaining and engaging of the weekend. With Alexis, Lawrence and Larry Friesen (Bill Crider had to leave early and missed it) we had a grand time pulling up a wide range of yesterday's classic authors and stories to give a sweeping list of worthwhile reading for someone looking to be well-grounded in SF and fantasy literature. Dante's Inferno was one early example, and we touched on a good number of 19th century writers before we even got to Verne and Wells. My contributions included Cilfford Simak, Leigh Brackett, James Tiptree Jr., Peter Beagle, Jack Vance and A.E. van Vogt. Others brought up Stapledon, Blish, Ballard, Dick, Zelazny, Burroughs, Kuttner, Le Guin, Norton and Lafferty, plus all the giants one would expect us to touch on. Interestingly, we often recommended reading works that weren't their best-known or most successful simply because some of those more famous works hadn't aged well. We were all struck silent for a moment when we realized that a significant amount of Greg Egan's work is now more than 20 years old, thus qualifying for "classic" status.
There didn't seem to be quite so many regional writers this year as in the past, but this was more than made up for by the steampunk contingent, a literary-cum-fashion movement that shows no sign of abating any time soon. And that's fine with me, as I find the retro-futuristic style endlessly entertaining. I also learned that, yes indeed, all the other writers and artists participating are far, far more productive than I, and I need to get my lazy butt in gear and stop wasting so much of my limited writing time typing out blog posts about conventions I've attended.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Walking through Walls - Borders and the Future (part 2 of 2)
Following is part 2 of 2 of my presentation to the Border Crossing Lectures in Tijuana, April 29. (yesterday's Part one here.)
3. Virtual sovereigns and real networks.
In the Big Bend region of West Texas, a strange incident occurred a few years ago in which a bunch of real cowboys went to war against the virtual border wall. As they tell the story in the liberated territory of Marfa, where conceptual artists have taken over the old Indian-fighting Army bases and poets control the radio station, a craft from the Department of Homeland Security’s fleet of “OVNIs” fell to earth. The craft was a drug blimp, one of the tethered aerostats that shimmer over the plain like clouds chained to the yard, painting a zone of sophisticated electronic surveillance across the border area and into Chihuahua. When the blimp got loose, it started bouncing around the desert like some accidental surrealism, ignoring property lines and scaring all the cattle. So the ranchers rounded up a posse, hunted the drug blimp, and “killed” it. The government tried to arrest the cowboys for destroying government property, but gave up after realizing the cowboys might fight back.
The blimp was an unofficial component of the “virtual border wall” being developed as a somewhat science fictional way to secure the 2,000-mile long border between the US and Mexico. The Department of Homeland Security recently cancelled the “virtual fence” program that was being developed by Boeing for a fee of hundreds of millions of dollars. You might think that is because they figured out that imaginary fences do not keep the coyotes out. Quite the opposite: that announcement only meant that an even more sophisticated array of surveillance and repulsion technologies will be implemented at different points along the border, each tailored to local conditions. Many of these technologies are under development in San Diego at the headquarters of "HSARPA”—the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, a border security think tank modeled after the Pentagon’s “DARPA” (the people who brought you the Internet, armed space satellites, “Total Information Awareness,” and the Predator drone (also born in San Diego)). And they need your help, as evidenced by the broad solicitation for new technology proposals up on their website this year, including technologies that enable:
“Detection of, tracking of, classifying of, and responding to all threats along the terrestrial and maritime border – in particular, technologies that can:
• Classify humans versus animals in rugged terrain, concealing foliage, water obstacles, mountains, and other environmental constraints
• Lower false alarm rate with raised probability of detection...at least 90%
Operate at low power consumption levels—2 year battery life
Detect, exploit, interrogate, and remediate subterranean border tunnels
Detect and track low-flying threat aircraft
Improved analysis and decision-making tools that aid DHS watchstanders in evaluating information and making more timely and accurate decisions.
New and improved airborne sensors, including persistent, wide-area surveillance capabilities, for better land border security to assist in locating illicit activities, materials, or their means of conveyances.
The original Tijuana border wall is made of old portable landing strips—leftovers from the Vietnam War that were re-used in the Persian Gulf. Its descendant will be a force field derived from Star Trek, enabled by electronic eyes that see on, above, and below the ground.
[Pic: Author William Vollman peers through the border fence in Imperial.]
The government request for a machine that can “interrogate” a tunnel reveals the true strategy. The next generation of border fortifications will be invisible and essentially *imaginary*—an American exercise in State-sponsored science fiction very similar to Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based defense against Soviet nuclear missiles, which did not have to be *real* to break the financial back of the Soviets trying to match it. The border wall does not actually need to work to fulfill its purpose.
In her 2010 book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, University of California-Berkeley Professor Wendy Brown makes a compelling case that the real purpose of the global boom in border fortifications is to restore the idea of the sovereign State, in a world where the nation-state is diminishing in relevance and coherency. In Brown’s view, the US border wall primarily exists to reinforce in the minds of American citizens the idea that the border—and the Nation—*really exists*. Because clearly, the border wall does not fulfill its intended purpose of repelling the non-state networks that infiltrate the border every day with unauthorized commerce in people and consumables. The border wall is an authoritarian variation of the “California Map Project” of artist John Baldessari, in which he made the map real by installing giant letters spelling out “C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A” in the actual places where those letters appeared on the map. The border wall draws the line from the map in “real” space, but as HSARPA’s call for ideas shows, it does very little to make that line “real.” Its declaration of impermeability and permanence seems especially silly when one looks at how fluid the border has been over the past 150 years, or how very porous it is revealed to be in a map that overlays demographic and economic data to show how deeply Mexican culture reaches into the Southwestern US (one-fifth to two-thirds of the population of every border county), and how deeply American corporate commercial networks reach into Mexico.
[Pic: Images from John Baldessari's "California Map Project"]
To the extent the next generation border security systems will work, it will not be because they actually function as physical barriers. It will be because people *believe in them* as a representation of the idea of the country they define. Government-designed surveillance and interdiction networks, operated by the inheritors of Dr. Strangelove’s war room, really only work in Hollywood reality—as an accepted narrative of government power that reinforces the identity of the citizen living in a protective Panopticon. But information does not pay much attention to border walls, and systems of centralized authority rarely succeed in controlling naturally-occurring information networks. The more important borders in the 21st century are the the borders between cyberspace and meatspace, which are rapidly being obliterated. Do you think Beijing will really be able to build a Great Firewall of China that will keep out Facebook? Maybe you should ask Hosni Mubarak about that.
Israeli commandos have scouted out the future for us. Ten years ago, the Israeli military faced the challenge of how to control the “feral city” of Gaza—a densely populated, continuously improvised, structurally complex three-dimensional urban labyrinth where, like the Baja border, alternative networks for the movement of edge-people and edge-commerce branch out whenever their movement is blocked by linear fortifications. The Israeli Defense Force chartered its Operational Theory Research Institute, dedicated to applying the poststructuralist theories of Deleuze & Guattari to the domination of Palestine. How do you turn the city into a weapon against its inhabitants? Break down your tactics to the squadron level, use helicopters as weapons platforms in a three-dimensional wargame, turn tunnels into “sources of fractal maneuver,” and train your troops to walk through walls. In his 2007 book Hollow Land, Architect Eyal Weizman describes how the IDF learned to see the city as the networks it harbors, rather than the lines shown on the map. To combat a network of tunnels, they created their own, adopting a strategy of urban “infestation” that ignores established modes of movement through the city. Instead:
To begin with, soldiers assemble behind the wall [of a house] and then, using explosives, drills or hammers, they break a hole large enough to pass through. Stun grenades are then sometimes thrown, or a few random shots fired into what is usually a private living-room occupied by unsuspecting civilians. When the soldiers have passed through the wall, the occupants are locked inside one of the rooms, where they are made to remain — sometimes for several days — until the operation is concluded.
These tactics have proven successful in IDF attacks on Palestinian networks. The Paratrooper Commander in charge of one of the first operations, a former student of philosophy and architecture, explained his conception of these maneuvers:
'this space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. The question is how do you interpret the alley? We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. I want to surprise him! This is why that we opted for the methodology of moving through walls...Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. I said to my troops, "Friends! If until now you were used to move along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!"'
At the same time as the Israeli commandos were improvising their own anthills in the fabric of Gaza, virtual borders were being surpassed with even greater innovation in Tijuana. It was here that ingenious entrepreneurs first converted the imaginary wealth of an online “virtual world” into cash money in the “real” world, by disregarding the boundaries between the two worlds. The company Blacksnow Interactive set up the first “point and click sweatshop” here, paying unskilled workers cheap wages to spend long hours playing three simultaneous games of “Dark Age of Camelot” (a fantasy online multiplayer roleplaying game similar to World of Warcraft or Ultima Online), collecting magical talismans and imaginary real estate to be sold for real dollars on eBay. Litigation shut down the operation, but the law still struggles to maintain the newest borders between the real world and the emerging virtual worlds.
As we look at the border in an age of Network culture ascendant, we need to do so with the special goggles of a Deleuzian Israeli commando, and see the presence of the networks that are the real nervous system of the cities on both sides, networks that pay little attention to the border. The idea of the nation-state reveals its exhaustion as the states send tanks and bombers to fight non-state networks, have the secrets that sustain their power revealed overnight and en-masse through a single eccentric website, and find their decades-long grips on authority overthrown by smart mob revolutions incubated on Facebook, Twitter, and repurposed online dating sites. Network culture has little use for borders, other than as a tool of atemporal play—the way borders serve as instruments of time travel that help us escape surveillance in our present reality.
As we look at the robot eyes of the surveillance cameras, we need to pay more attention to how Networks let the people conduct surveillance on power. Consider the example of Trevor Paglen, an experimental geographer from California who connected the tail numbers of mysterious civilian aircraft with corporate documents and flight plans to expose and map the CIA’s secret program of “extraordinary rendition,” flying prisoners to secret prisons in faraway countries. In Mexico, UNAM’s Nelson Arteaga Bolleto has documented how the people of Monterrey and Reynosa (at least the young and middle class) use Twitter and Facebook to conduct networked surveillance of cartel takeovers of their cities. The combination of social media and ubiquitous computing through smartphones and their cousins is young, but incidents like these point us toward a future in which *the people* govern through constant real-time surveillance of those to whom power is entrusted. We already have the ability to see, and maybe walk, through border walls.
Network culture—in which most of the information ever created by human beings in the past several hundred years is immediately available at the click of a mouse—gives us the tools to see the border differently. These are the tools of hackers who repurpose networks, of musicians who create their works on laptops from mashups of a hundred other recordings. These tools reveal the atemporal nature of the border, as a space of constant change and intermixing, a process whose direction can be influenced by networked participants in its literal and semiotic space. We can see, for example, that the border is a fluid thing that has always moved. That the border is a permeable thing, and that its very permeability will define how it changes in the future. The geopolitical futurist George Friedman, consultant to major American corporations, plausibly predicts in his book The Next 100 Years that by 2030 declining population growth in the US and Europe will turn the current anti-immigration sentiment on its head, as governments from the north compete to attract immigrants from the south—and that demographic trends along the border will so radically redefine the cultural politics of the United States that the border will become either an anachronism of the old world of the twentieth century, or the focal point for military conflict—perhaps when the Tejano governor of 2050 decides the Army National Guard is under his control and he no longer wants to take orders from George Bush’s Mexican-American nephew, George Prescott Gallo Bush.
Projects like the intervention being conducted here by CECUT, Pepe Rojo and his students use these tools—the playful, atemporal tools of science fiction writers—to see alternate pasts, presents and futures of the border zone through which they are moving. To see how all of those versions of reality coexist in the minds of all of us here now, and each has the power to contribute to the manner in which those realities are manifested in the imminent future. The paramilitary fortifications of the border are also the irrigation structures of the more intermixed society to come, and our manipulations of the present can help the territory being incubated become one that is more authentically free than either of its precedents.
The movie about to be screened, Sleep Dealer, shows us a world in which `physical borders are irrelevant, because they are crossed through virtual means—whether Ramirez’s drone pilot bombing Mexican space by remote control from a California television studio, workers building American skyscrapers by controlling robots networked into their infomaquila, dreams and memories being uploaded by nomadic writers, or a young hacker manipulating satellites and listening in on covert operations from a concrete shed in rural Oaxaca. As you watch the film, see if you don’t agree that it is an excellent example of the cyberpunk aphorism: the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed. And consider how the technology of the Tijuana street is already finding its own uses for the things of the border Interzone, and how that will change the future today.
3. Virtual sovereigns and real networks.
In the Big Bend region of West Texas, a strange incident occurred a few years ago in which a bunch of real cowboys went to war against the virtual border wall. As they tell the story in the liberated territory of Marfa, where conceptual artists have taken over the old Indian-fighting Army bases and poets control the radio station, a craft from the Department of Homeland Security’s fleet of “OVNIs” fell to earth. The craft was a drug blimp, one of the tethered aerostats that shimmer over the plain like clouds chained to the yard, painting a zone of sophisticated electronic surveillance across the border area and into Chihuahua. When the blimp got loose, it started bouncing around the desert like some accidental surrealism, ignoring property lines and scaring all the cattle. So the ranchers rounded up a posse, hunted the drug blimp, and “killed” it. The government tried to arrest the cowboys for destroying government property, but gave up after realizing the cowboys might fight back.
The blimp was an unofficial component of the “virtual border wall” being developed as a somewhat science fictional way to secure the 2,000-mile long border between the US and Mexico. The Department of Homeland Security recently cancelled the “virtual fence” program that was being developed by Boeing for a fee of hundreds of millions of dollars. You might think that is because they figured out that imaginary fences do not keep the coyotes out. Quite the opposite: that announcement only meant that an even more sophisticated array of surveillance and repulsion technologies will be implemented at different points along the border, each tailored to local conditions. Many of these technologies are under development in San Diego at the headquarters of "HSARPA”—the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, a border security think tank modeled after the Pentagon’s “DARPA” (the people who brought you the Internet, armed space satellites, “Total Information Awareness,” and the Predator drone (also born in San Diego)). And they need your help, as evidenced by the broad solicitation for new technology proposals up on their website this year, including technologies that enable:
“Detection of, tracking of, classifying of, and responding to all threats along the terrestrial and maritime border – in particular, technologies that can:
• Classify humans versus animals in rugged terrain, concealing foliage, water obstacles, mountains, and other environmental constraints
• Lower false alarm rate with raised probability of detection...at least 90%
Operate at low power consumption levels—2 year battery life
Detect, exploit, interrogate, and remediate subterranean border tunnels
Detect and track low-flying threat aircraft
Improved analysis and decision-making tools that aid DHS watchstanders in evaluating information and making more timely and accurate decisions.
New and improved airborne sensors, including persistent, wide-area surveillance capabilities, for better land border security to assist in locating illicit activities, materials, or their means of conveyances.
The original Tijuana border wall is made of old portable landing strips—leftovers from the Vietnam War that were re-used in the Persian Gulf. Its descendant will be a force field derived from Star Trek, enabled by electronic eyes that see on, above, and below the ground.
[Pic: Author William Vollman peers through the border fence in Imperial.]
The government request for a machine that can “interrogate” a tunnel reveals the true strategy. The next generation of border fortifications will be invisible and essentially *imaginary*—an American exercise in State-sponsored science fiction very similar to Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” space-based defense against Soviet nuclear missiles, which did not have to be *real* to break the financial back of the Soviets trying to match it. The border wall does not actually need to work to fulfill its purpose.
In her 2010 book Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, University of California-Berkeley Professor Wendy Brown makes a compelling case that the real purpose of the global boom in border fortifications is to restore the idea of the sovereign State, in a world where the nation-state is diminishing in relevance and coherency. In Brown’s view, the US border wall primarily exists to reinforce in the minds of American citizens the idea that the border—and the Nation—*really exists*. Because clearly, the border wall does not fulfill its intended purpose of repelling the non-state networks that infiltrate the border every day with unauthorized commerce in people and consumables. The border wall is an authoritarian variation of the “California Map Project” of artist John Baldessari, in which he made the map real by installing giant letters spelling out “C-A-L-I-F-O-R-N-I-A” in the actual places where those letters appeared on the map. The border wall draws the line from the map in “real” space, but as HSARPA’s call for ideas shows, it does very little to make that line “real.” Its declaration of impermeability and permanence seems especially silly when one looks at how fluid the border has been over the past 150 years, or how very porous it is revealed to be in a map that overlays demographic and economic data to show how deeply Mexican culture reaches into the Southwestern US (one-fifth to two-thirds of the population of every border county), and how deeply American corporate commercial networks reach into Mexico.
[Pic: Images from John Baldessari's "California Map Project"]
To the extent the next generation border security systems will work, it will not be because they actually function as physical barriers. It will be because people *believe in them* as a representation of the idea of the country they define. Government-designed surveillance and interdiction networks, operated by the inheritors of Dr. Strangelove’s war room, really only work in Hollywood reality—as an accepted narrative of government power that reinforces the identity of the citizen living in a protective Panopticon. But information does not pay much attention to border walls, and systems of centralized authority rarely succeed in controlling naturally-occurring information networks. The more important borders in the 21st century are the the borders between cyberspace and meatspace, which are rapidly being obliterated. Do you think Beijing will really be able to build a Great Firewall of China that will keep out Facebook? Maybe you should ask Hosni Mubarak about that.
Israeli commandos have scouted out the future for us. Ten years ago, the Israeli military faced the challenge of how to control the “feral city” of Gaza—a densely populated, continuously improvised, structurally complex three-dimensional urban labyrinth where, like the Baja border, alternative networks for the movement of edge-people and edge-commerce branch out whenever their movement is blocked by linear fortifications. The Israeli Defense Force chartered its Operational Theory Research Institute, dedicated to applying the poststructuralist theories of Deleuze & Guattari to the domination of Palestine. How do you turn the city into a weapon against its inhabitants? Break down your tactics to the squadron level, use helicopters as weapons platforms in a three-dimensional wargame, turn tunnels into “sources of fractal maneuver,” and train your troops to walk through walls. In his 2007 book Hollow Land, Architect Eyal Weizman describes how the IDF learned to see the city as the networks it harbors, rather than the lines shown on the map. To combat a network of tunnels, they created their own, adopting a strategy of urban “infestation” that ignores established modes of movement through the city. Instead:
To begin with, soldiers assemble behind the wall [of a house] and then, using explosives, drills or hammers, they break a hole large enough to pass through. Stun grenades are then sometimes thrown, or a few random shots fired into what is usually a private living-room occupied by unsuspecting civilians. When the soldiers have passed through the wall, the occupants are locked inside one of the rooms, where they are made to remain — sometimes for several days — until the operation is concluded.
These tactics have proven successful in IDF attacks on Palestinian networks. The Paratrooper Commander in charge of one of the first operations, a former student of philosophy and architecture, explained his conception of these maneuvers:
'this space that you look at, this room that you look at, is nothing but your interpretation of it. The question is how do you interpret the alley? We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. I want to surprise him! This is why that we opted for the methodology of moving through walls...Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. I said to my troops, "Friends! If until now you were used to move along roads and sidewalks, forget it! From now on we all walk through walls!"'
At the same time as the Israeli commandos were improvising their own anthills in the fabric of Gaza, virtual borders were being surpassed with even greater innovation in Tijuana. It was here that ingenious entrepreneurs first converted the imaginary wealth of an online “virtual world” into cash money in the “real” world, by disregarding the boundaries between the two worlds. The company Blacksnow Interactive set up the first “point and click sweatshop” here, paying unskilled workers cheap wages to spend long hours playing three simultaneous games of “Dark Age of Camelot” (a fantasy online multiplayer roleplaying game similar to World of Warcraft or Ultima Online), collecting magical talismans and imaginary real estate to be sold for real dollars on eBay. Litigation shut down the operation, but the law still struggles to maintain the newest borders between the real world and the emerging virtual worlds.
As we look at the border in an age of Network culture ascendant, we need to do so with the special goggles of a Deleuzian Israeli commando, and see the presence of the networks that are the real nervous system of the cities on both sides, networks that pay little attention to the border. The idea of the nation-state reveals its exhaustion as the states send tanks and bombers to fight non-state networks, have the secrets that sustain their power revealed overnight and en-masse through a single eccentric website, and find their decades-long grips on authority overthrown by smart mob revolutions incubated on Facebook, Twitter, and repurposed online dating sites. Network culture has little use for borders, other than as a tool of atemporal play—the way borders serve as instruments of time travel that help us escape surveillance in our present reality.
As we look at the robot eyes of the surveillance cameras, we need to pay more attention to how Networks let the people conduct surveillance on power. Consider the example of Trevor Paglen, an experimental geographer from California who connected the tail numbers of mysterious civilian aircraft with corporate documents and flight plans to expose and map the CIA’s secret program of “extraordinary rendition,” flying prisoners to secret prisons in faraway countries. In Mexico, UNAM’s Nelson Arteaga Bolleto has documented how the people of Monterrey and Reynosa (at least the young and middle class) use Twitter and Facebook to conduct networked surveillance of cartel takeovers of their cities. The combination of social media and ubiquitous computing through smartphones and their cousins is young, but incidents like these point us toward a future in which *the people* govern through constant real-time surveillance of those to whom power is entrusted. We already have the ability to see, and maybe walk, through border walls.
Network culture—in which most of the information ever created by human beings in the past several hundred years is immediately available at the click of a mouse—gives us the tools to see the border differently. These are the tools of hackers who repurpose networks, of musicians who create their works on laptops from mashups of a hundred other recordings. These tools reveal the atemporal nature of the border, as a space of constant change and intermixing, a process whose direction can be influenced by networked participants in its literal and semiotic space. We can see, for example, that the border is a fluid thing that has always moved. That the border is a permeable thing, and that its very permeability will define how it changes in the future. The geopolitical futurist George Friedman, consultant to major American corporations, plausibly predicts in his book The Next 100 Years that by 2030 declining population growth in the US and Europe will turn the current anti-immigration sentiment on its head, as governments from the north compete to attract immigrants from the south—and that demographic trends along the border will so radically redefine the cultural politics of the United States that the border will become either an anachronism of the old world of the twentieth century, or the focal point for military conflict—perhaps when the Tejano governor of 2050 decides the Army National Guard is under his control and he no longer wants to take orders from George Bush’s Mexican-American nephew, George Prescott Gallo Bush.
Projects like the intervention being conducted here by CECUT, Pepe Rojo and his students use these tools—the playful, atemporal tools of science fiction writers—to see alternate pasts, presents and futures of the border zone through which they are moving. To see how all of those versions of reality coexist in the minds of all of us here now, and each has the power to contribute to the manner in which those realities are manifested in the imminent future. The paramilitary fortifications of the border are also the irrigation structures of the more intermixed society to come, and our manipulations of the present can help the territory being incubated become one that is more authentically free than either of its precedents.
The movie about to be screened, Sleep Dealer, shows us a world in which `physical borders are irrelevant, because they are crossed through virtual means—whether Ramirez’s drone pilot bombing Mexican space by remote control from a California television studio, workers building American skyscrapers by controlling robots networked into their infomaquila, dreams and memories being uploaded by nomadic writers, or a young hacker manipulating satellites and listening in on covert operations from a concrete shed in rural Oaxaca. As you watch the film, see if you don’t agree that it is an excellent example of the cyberpunk aphorism: the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed. And consider how the technology of the Tijuana street is already finding its own uses for the things of the border Interzone, and how that will change the future today.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)