Virginia Tech Blame Game

While most people respond to a tragedy like Virginia Tech with shock and sadness, a contemptible few immediately react by claiming the event as strained support for their pet political theories. Two particularly shameful examples from the past week are pertinent to the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genre community. They come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, but should be offensive to all rational readers regardless of their politics.

The first is a long letter to Locus Online posted there on April 21. It is a bizarre, paranoid rant by Marleen Barr, who once taught at Virginia Tech and fancies herself a pre-eminent feminist science fiction critic. In Barr’s view, Cho Seung-Hui’s killing spree was a misguided but understandable reaction to the intolerable lack of diversity at Virginia Tech and the infuriating existence of George W. Bush.

Barr explains that Cho selected his first victim to make a statement about sexism at Virginia Tech: “I think that Cho Seung-Hui picked a female to be his first victim in order to make a statement about how Tech responds to that which is Other in relation to white male patriarchy. He knew that one shot dead female would be treated as, well, ‘just’ one shot dead female. No need to shut down the campus.” (Never mind that the other dorm victim, Ryan Clark, was male.) Cho then purposefully targeted only minority faculty for his shooting spree, as a peculiar form of backlash against the lack of diversity on campus. (To make this theory fly, Barr ignores Kevin Granata and assigns Jamie Bishop to an unorthodox minority: German teachers with long hair.) All the white students Cho shot simply “were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

How the President is responsible for all this is unclear, but Barr feels the need to mention Bush and members of his administration by name a dozen times in her letter – all the while using the annoying rhetorical tactic of denying she is saying what she is saying even as she says it: “I will presently refrain from comparing the Cho Seung-Hui gun-in-hands hyper-masculine action hero image to that of the theatrical spectacle of Bush on the aircraft carrier.” (In the words of Inigo Montoya, that word “refrain,” I do not think it means what you think it means.) Barr’s best moment is where she points out that Bush once served turkey to soldiers in Iraq and a Hokie, the Virginia Tech mascot, is a castrated turkey. Her point is entirely obscure, but hell, it sounds anti-Bush, so that’s all good.

Barr’s theories are not just nutty, they are vicarious terrorism. She seizes on an atrocity that someone else has committed and assigns blame to whatever it is about society that she dislikes. It is every bit as wrong-headed and offensive as when Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on feminists and gays.

The second comes from Mary Grabar, a conservative columnist at Townhall.com, who teaches English at someplace called Clayton State University. In an April 24 column titled “The making of a mass murderer--In english class,” Grabar attributes Cho’s murderous rampage to the fact that he took a class in horror literature and film at Virginia Tech. She wonders whether this directly caused the massacre, implying that Cho learned how to commit murder by watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in class (if only he had – he would have killed fewer people using a chainsaw). Even if not, she asserts that this class reflects an educational system that wastes time on unworthy topics and weakens students by undermining their moral resolve and religious beliefs, with the natural end result of an “egotistical, narcissistic, soulless, anti-Christian, anti-authority, anti-hero” like Cho Seung-Hui.

Poking around on the Internet, I managed to find the course description for this class in Contemporary Horror (scroll down to English 3984). Alongside The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Stephen King, the course covers Horace Walpole, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom Grabar dismisses as “titillating ephemera” beneath the dignity of a legitimate English course. The course description does not explicitly indicate that Professor Stevens would take course time to “scoff at the notion of original sin,” but Grabar is quite confident he did.

How sad it is that someone who teaches college-level English cannot imagine how the tools of literary analysis might apply to anything more recent than Shakespeare and Chaucer – although the Virginia Tech course guide also lists classes on Shakespeare and Chaucer. (I’ll “refrain” from mentioning the hypocrisy that Grabar teaches Poe in her own American literature class or that she wrote her PhD dissertation about some hokey modern sci-fi writer named Pynchon.)

Ironically, Grabar describes great literature as that which “engages us in moral questions.” But there is no contemporary branch of literature as closely concerned with raising moral questions and confronting evil than horror fiction. One could not get far into many of the books covered in the Virginia Tech course, such as The Female of the Species by Joyce Carol Oates or the graphic novel From Hell by Alan Moore, without considering serious and important moral issues. It is a shame that Cho did not learn from the moral issues in these authors’ works, but then neither has Mary Grabar, so if you see her coming toward you, best dive for cover.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Gunning for the Buddha by Michael Jasper

In honor of Jamie Bishop, one of the victims of last week's massacre at Virginia Tech, the Book of the Week is Gunning for the Buddha (2005), a collection of short stories by Michael Jasper. While Michael Jasper is a promising author who writes in a variety of styles and genres -- he even recently published a paranormal romance under the pseudonym Julia C. Porter -- the reason Gunning for the Buddha is our Book of the Week is the book's striking cover art by Jamie Bishop.

Jamie Bishop, son of SF writer Michael Bishop, was an artist and illustrator when he wasn't busy with his German classes at Virginia Tech. The cover of Gunning for the Buddha is an example of Bishop's preferred medium of digital art. His web site described the process of creating this image in collaboration with Michael Jasper, showing the various ideas they considered and discarded before arriving at this cover: -> 10 images for Gunning for the Buddha cover art

Media reports always emphasize the number of casualties from a tragedy such as the Virginia Tech massacre, but like each of the victims, Jamie Bishop was not a number, he was a human being with friends, relatives, talents, hopes, and aspirations. His needless death is a terrible loss for all of us.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop

The Book of the Week is Brittle Innings by Michael Bishop, in tragic observance of the massacre at Virginia Tech yesterday.

Michael Bishop is a two-time Nebula Award winner and nine-time Hugo Award nominee. Brittle Innings, a coming-of-age novel about a teenaged baseball player in the minor leagues during World War II, which sneaks in a memorable science fiction element halfway through, is my personal favorite of Bishop's works. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel of 1994. Michael Bishop is widely known as one of the most soft-spoken, gracious, and humble personalities in the science fiction community. By all accounts, his son Jamie possessed the same qualities.

Michael Bishop's son, Christopher "Jamie" Bishop, was a talented digital artist who had done the cover art for several recent books. A portfolio of his artwork is available at his website -> Memory39. I do not own any books with Jamie Bishop cover art, but I will try to obtain one for next week's Book of the Week.

In addition to his artwork, Jamie Bishop taught German at Virginia Tech. He was teaching yesterday morning when a gunman entered his classroom in Norris Hall, shot and killed Bishop, and reportedly then shot all but four of Bishop's students. These students were among approximately 32 killed and 15 wounded in yesterday's attack.

Jamie Bishop was 35 years old. He is survived by his wife Stephanie Hofer, who also teaches German at Virginia Tech but was not in Norris Hall when the attack occurred. The Los Angeles Times has a profile of Jamie Bishop at its website (free registration required): -> L.A. Times Jamie Bishop profile.

Please remember the Bishop family, and all of the victims of the senseless killings at Virginia Tech, in your thoughts and prayers.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Jackie Robinson: My Own Story

This Sunday, Major League Baseball will mark the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball's color barrier. In honor of the occasion, the Book of the Week is Jackie Robinson: My Own Story by Jackie Robinson & Wendell Smith, foreword by Branch Rickey. This rare book was published by Avon in 1949, two years after Jackie Robinson began his major league career. This book has no discernible connection to science fiction, but I had to acquire it as a loyal UCLA alumnus.

Years before Robinson broke into major league baseball, he was BMOC at UCLA. Oddly enough, baseball was his weakest sport at UCLA. He was far better known for his exploits in football (he led the nation with absurd averages of 12 yards per carry and 20 yards per punt return) and basketball (he was twice the leading scorer in the Pacific Coast Conference). He was also a star in track & field, a sport he learned to love watching his brother Mack, who won a silver medal in the 200-yard dash at the 1936 Olympics (finishing behind only the legendary Jesse Owens). Robinson was the first UCLA student to earn letters in four different sports.

After leaving UCLA in 1941, Jackie Robinson briefly played semiprofessional sports, which were integrated on the West Coast at the time, until he was inducted into the Army. He was one of the first African-Americans to become an Army officer through Officer's Candidate School (an opportunity he purportedly received through the intervention of heavyweight champion Joe Louis), but he never fought overseas because he was court-martialed for refusing an order to go to the back of an Army bus. He was ultimately acquitted and later honorably discharged, after the Army determined that the order was contrary to Army policy and Lt. Robinson was justified in defying it. From the Army, Robinson went back to sports, competing in semipro football and Negro League baseball, where he was spotted by a scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1945, visionary Dodgers owner Branch Rickey signed Robinson to a professional contract, after first obtaining Robinson's solemn oath to forbear for three years from retaliating against any of the racial bigotry he would inevitably face, a promise Robinson kept for exactly three years.

One of the UCLA Athletic Department's greatest sources of pride (along with its 99 NCAA championships, most of any school) is its role in the racial integration of society. UCLA operated a color-blind athletic department from the time the school was founded in 1919. Few people realize that Ralph Bunche, the first black winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, went to UCLA on an athletics scholarship before distinguishing himself even more for his academics, graduating valedictorian of his class in 1927.

While Jackie Robinson is rightly celebrated for breaking baseball's color barrier, not so many remember that his former teammate at UCLA, Kenny Washington, broke the NFL's color barrier. Indeed, because Robinson had to spend a year in the minor leagues before playing for the Dodgers, Kenny Washington actually donned a big-league uniform first, in 1946. The second black player in the modern era of the NFL was another Bruin, Woody Strode, who went on to have a successful acting career. Washington and Strode got the opportunity to play in the NFL when the Cleveland Rams moved to Los Angeles, because the commissioners of the Los Angeles Coliseum insisted that the team be integrated. The Coliseum was apparently embarrassed to host an all-white team, since L.A. was well accustomed to integrated football teams, largely thanks to the successes of Washington, Strode, and Jackie Robinson, both with UCLA and with the local semipro teams, the Los Angeles Bulldogs and the Hollywood Bears.

None of the three men who broke the color barrier in the NBA in 1950 was from UCLA, but Bruin Don Barksdale was the first African-American basketball player to play for the U.S. Olympic team and the first to play in the NBA All-Star Game, in 1948 and 1953, respectively. In 1968, UCLA tennis great Arthur Ashe won the U.S. Open to become the first African-American man to win a Grand Slam tennis tournament. Ashe remains the only black man to win the U.S. Open, Wimbledon (defeating fellow Bruin Jimmy Connors in the finals), and the Australian Open. (Yannick Noah is the only black man to win the French Open, for which we try to forgive his son his annoying tantrums on the basketball court.)

Jackie Robinson: My Own Story is a digest-format book, a bit larger than an ordinary paperback and held together merely with staples rather than glue. Several publishers experimented with this format in the 1940's and 50's, before thankfully abandoning it. We will return to science fiction next week with the most rare digest book in my collection.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle by Michael Moorcock

The Book of the Week is The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, a bizarre punk rock novel published by Virgin Records and written by science fiction and fantasy author Michael Moorcock.

This original 1980 printing of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle was issued in an unusual 11" x 14" format, like a tabloid newspaper. It was printed in connection with the film of the same title about the punk rock group the Sex Pistols, and contains multiple photos of Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten, and the other Pistols.

Michael Moorcock was one of the leading voices of the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 1960's and remains an important figure in the SF/F field to this day. But Moorcock was a musician even before finding success as an author, and he remained involved with the music industry for many years. He wrote several songs for Blue Oyster Cult and collaborated extensively with the band Hawkwind.

The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle is supposedly a novelization of the film, which gave Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren's skewed view of the punk rock phenomenon. Moorcock, however, was contemptuous of McLaren and took significant liberties with the book version, weaving the story into the ongoing chronicles of his own multifaceted recurring character Jerry Cornelius. After this tabloid edition, the book had a small print run in paperback, but remains probably the most obscure entry in Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius series.

From music, next week we will make a quick foray into sports, this time with no SF connection at all.

2007 Hugo Awards nominees for best novel

Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor)
Eifelheim, Michael Flynn (Tor)
Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Ace)
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik (Ballantine Del Rey; Voyager as Temeraire)
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Analog March 1965

The Magazine of the Week is the March 1965 issue of Analog magazine. This issue contains Part III of The Prophet of Dune (really the sixth out of eight installments of the novel Dune). The stunning cover, depicting one of the giant sandworms of Arrakis, is by far the best out of the many cover images John Schoenherr did for Dune, and I am at a loss to explain why it was not used for any of the book editions.

Schoenherr was able to do a large, detailed cover image for Analog because between March 1963 and March 1965, Analog switched from digest to a glossy, oversized (8" x 11") "bedsheet" format. Bedsheet is the most common format for magazines, but is generally not used for science fiction and other literary magazines. This is because bedsheets are expensive to produce, and thus only make sense for magazines that have a large potential audience -- much larger than the small number of us geeks and weirdoes who read science fiction.

With only a few exceptions, bedsheet magazines are the largest-sized items in my collection. Next week's Book of the Week will be one of those exceptions, a book published in a format like a tabloid newspaper. This rare book is sought by collectors of both science fiction and, would you believe, punk rock paraphernalia.

Aaron's Book of the Year :: Glorifying Terrorism edited by Farah Mendlesohn

The Book of the Year is Glorifying Terrorism, an anthology edited by Farah Mendlesohn (with outrageous cover art by Haylee Fields and Mike Harwood).

The Book of the Year contains the first ever professional work of fiction by yours truly: "Winning Friends" by Van Aaron Hughes begins at page 205.

Glorifying Terrorism is an anthology of science fiction stories, published very recently in England as a political protest. Last year, the British Parliament included in the Terrorism Act of 2006 a provision making it a criminal offense, punishable by up to seven years' imprisonment, to publish any statements glorifying terrorism. This new offense was broadly defined to encompass any publication "indirectly encouraging the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism," including "every statement which glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts." The Act expressly states that it is irrelevant whether anyone is in fact encouraged by the statements to commit or prepare a terrorist act. The term "terrorism" is not defined in the Act (one is apparently expected to refer to the extremely broad definition of "terrorism" in the Terrorism Act of 2000), nor is any exception included for fiction or satire.

One need not be a left-wing radical to regard this as an affront to free speech. To protest this new law, respected science fiction editor Farah Mendlesohn (winner of a Hugo Award in 2005 for co-editing The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction) announced that she would edit an anthology deliberately intended to violate the law. While most of the contributors are British, Mendlesohn accepted a few submissions from writers (and at least one person posing as a writer) on this side of the Pond.

Compounding the thrill for me of actually getting something published is the fact that for at least the past decade, a great deal of the best new science fiction and fantasy has been coming from the UK. Appearing in Glorifying Terrorism are some of the very top names in the modern SF/F field, such as Hal Duncan, Gwyneth Jones, Ken MacLeod, Adam Roberts (one of my all-time favorite authors), Charles Stross, Jo Walton, and Ian Watson. The back cover of the book also features blurbs from three more great British Boom writers, China Miéville, Karen Traviss, and Ian McDonald. The McDonald quote is the greatest cover blurb ever:

"This is a bad book. The people who have written it are bad folk. The editor is a bad person. If you buy it, you are bad too. There is only good and bad in the world."

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Dune by Frank Herbert (paperback)

The Book of the Week is the first paperback printing of Frank Herbert's classic novel Dune (1965).

This original paperback edition from Ace Books is a bit uncommon -- Berkley later acquired the paperback rights and sold millions of copies, so the Berkley edition (with an orange cover) is much more frequently seen. Ace was one of the leading science fiction publishers when it printed Dune, and knew enough to stick Frank Herbert's huge glossary of terms in the appendices at the end of the book, so the paperback edition begins where it should, with the immortal line, "In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul." (But Ace marred the line with a typo: "Arrauis" instead of "Arrakis").

Oddly, however, Ace used this rather uninspired cover by John Schoenherr, instead of his superior cover for the first hardcover edition. Even more strangely, no book edition of Dune has ever used the single best cover image Schoenherr did for Dune, which you will see next week.

Aaron's Book of the Week :: Dune by Frank Herbert (hardcover)

The Book of the Week is Dune by Frank Herbert. This is the first hardcover edition, but unfortunately not the first printing. When collectors describe a book as a "first edition," what they really mean is "first edition, first printing." The Book of the Week was not part of the very first print run of Dune in 1965, but instead a later print run (the seventh) in 1966. The cover looks exactly the same as the first printing, and the book is distinguishable from the first printing only in that (i) the price on the inside flap is $7.95 instead of $5.95, (ii) it is bound in red cloth instead of blue, and (iii) the copyright page does not have the words "First Edition" and contains a row of numbers beginning with the number "6," indicating that it was printed in 1966. What's the difference? About $5,000 on the collectors' market.

Because Dune was rejected by every major science fiction book publisher, this first edition of Dune was printed by Chilton, a small publisher best known for its auto repair manuals. As a novice SF publisher, Chilton made the foolish mistake of beginning the book with an 18-page glossary of terms used in the novel. Despite this daunting opening, Dune quickly became a huge commercial success (hence the multiple printings) and won Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel.

The cover of the Book of the Week is by John Schoenherr. This same cover art had already appeared on the cover of the January 1965 issue of Analog magazine, which contained Part I of The Prophet of Dune, the second half of the novel. This was much better than Schoenherr's original Dune artwork, but for some reason Schoenherr was asked to do a new cover for the first paperback edition, next week's Book of the Week.