I just got my copy of Turn Coat so I'm re-reading the series. I didn't realize how short and, honestly, incomplete these reviews were. Plus I want more people to read The Dresden Files. So there we go....

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Grave Peril by Jim Butcher

REVISED: 9 July 2009

"Hell's Bells" count: 26

If you're reading this series in sequence (which you absolutely should be, or things will stop making sense very quickly), you've got a good handle on how the world of Harry Dresden operates. He's a lone wolf, so to speak, standing up to the Occult Forces of Chicago with only the support of his contact in the Chicago PD, Lt. Karrin Murphy. There's also intrepid investigative reporter Susan Rodriguez, for whom Harry's feelings are slightly more than professional.

There's also the mysterious White Council of Wizards. While you may think that belonging to a worldwide magical fraternity might be a good thing, Harry Dresden would most certainly disagree. To be fair, he has a history - he did kill his mentor using black magic, which is something so bad that it's number one on their list of Things a Wizard Must Not Do, which comes with one free beheading. His associates in the White Council barely tolerate him, and make it very clear that he's worth more to them dead than alive. But more about this in other books....

The point is that Harry so far has been a fairly small-time operator. Yes, he takes down evil sorcerers and vicious werewolves, but mostly on his own. In this book, the camera pulls back a little and we learn more about his world and his connections, and a broader story starts to emerge.

The most interesting of these additions is Michael Carpenter, an associate of Harry's whose view of the world comes from a very different place. Michael is a religious man, a committed Christian who sees Harry's use of magic as impure and sullied, but associates with him anyway because they have a shared goal: the elimination of evil. Michael Carpenter is the Fist of God, one of the three Knights of the Cross. As such, he wields a faith powerful enough that even Harry can feel it. Oh, and he also wields a giant sword. With one of the nails from the True Cross worked into it. Amoracchius is a powerful weapon against evil, and a prize that anyone would be glad to have.

In this book (as in all his books), Harry is given more trouble than he can handle. It begins with ghosts, as so many things do. The ghosts of Chicago are being stirred up by something - they're acting out in ways they would never act, causing an above-average amount of chaos and disorder in the city. And when there's ghosts around, tearing up the pediatrics ward of your local hospital, who is it you're going to contact telephonically? That's right - Harry Dresden.

The ghosts are the least of his worries, however. The force behind them, the malicious entity that is driving the ghosts mad, is of far more concern to him. There's something out there, a Nightmare, that is out for blood. It's attacking Harry and his friends, and doing it through their dreams. Not just Harry's friends who are in good with the supernatural, but some of his Muggle buddies as well. This thing is angry, evil, and can tear a person's soul apart, leaving an empty husk that does nothing but try to scream.

As if that weren't enough, the Red Court of Vampires is having a party, and they want Harry to come. Sounds lovely, right? A costume party with the vampires, a promise of protection to all invited guests - how can you have a better night? Myself, I'd start by not hanging around a house full of vampires and their allies. Especially when the hostess, a high-ranking member of the Court, has a serious personal grudge against me. The vampire Bianca wants Harry deader than dead, and she manages to set of a complex series of events to make sure it happens.

This book, as I said, expands the Dresden universe a bit. It assumes that the readers are fairly comfortable with what we know, and gives us a lot more to think about. The world-wide spread of vampires, the hide-bound White Council, and the ramifications of having a Faerie Godmother. In the previous books, we saw Harry come out on top against small-scale foes - now the camera pulls back to show us how he goes up against larger institutions.

In this book, Dresden is almost always out of his league - although I can't imagine who would be in their league while facing a hoarde of really pissed off vampires while being on the brink of death already. Buffy, probably. Or River Tam. Anyone written by Joss Whedon, I guess. But Dresden makes it through. Not in the "Finding reserves of strength you never knew were there" style found in the Whedon Supergirls, but more in the "This just might be crazy enough to work, unless I kill myself doing it in which case it might not go so well after all" style.

Plus, it has my favorite trope of modern fantasy fiction - even if the hero wins, he doesn't actually save the day. In fact, things get a whole lot worse. Which is all gravy for Jim Butcher, because it means he has all the more material to work with for the rest of the series.

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"There should be some kind of rule against needing to kill anything more than once."
- Harry Dresden, Grave Peril
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This week it's Hardcore Zen by Brad Warner. Give it a listen and learn a little about Zen and punk rock and figuring out the meaning of life. Then tell your friends, so they can see how worldly and educated you are.

And don't forget to send your guesses as to next week's book - my listeners in Spain are kicking ass, and I'm sure the American contingent isn't going to let themselves be beaten by Spain, right? Remember the Maine, people!!

I just got my copy of Turn Coat so I'm re-reading the series. I didn't realize how short and, honestly, incomplete these reviews were. Plus I want more people to read The Dresden Files. So there we go....

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Book Three

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

UPDATED: 5 July 2009

"Hell's Bells" count: 9

When a book about werewolves has a joke taken directly from Young Frankenstein (“Werewolf? There! There wolf! There castle!”), you know you're in very good hands. That's the kind of joke that a very small percentage of readers is going to get, but it's guaranteed that those readers who do get it will be very appreciative.

Once again, consulting magician Harry Dresden has gotten himself into trouble. A few months ago, he nearly got himself killed taking down a drug-pushing warlock who wielded disturbingly strong levels of dark magic. Now, he has a different... hairier problem to deal with.

People are being ripped apart in Chicago. Not normal gangland killings, or even comfortable, familiar drug shootings, no. People are being literally torn apart, limb from limb, guts for garters, that sort of thing. The killings are violent and frightening, and both the Chicago police and the FBI would really like to know who's behind them all. Unfortunately for Harry Dresden, all avenues point towards the supernatural.

If that weren't bad enough, his talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time has made Harry an object of suspicion almost any time something weird goes down. He's used to that, though. What with just being relieved of the Doom of Damocles (a rather pretentious-sounding magical probation), and still being in the bad books of the White Council of Wizards, to say nothing of the powerful mobsters, Harry has more enemies than he can really keep up with. He doesn't need any more, and he most certainly doesn't need enemies that are red in tooth and claw.

For that matter, ti would probably be simpler if it were just one werewolf. But it isn't. Of even if it were just one kind of werewolf. Which it isn't. Or even if all the werewolves in question were relentless, evil killing machines. Which, of course, they aren't. Not all of them.

So now Harry has to throw himself into the fray again – to the wolves, as it were – and risk life and limb for people who don't quite appreciate all the hard work he does. At least, not until a ravaging loup-garou nearly kills them all. But that would help anyone through a crisis of faith, I think.

As with the first volume in this series, I really enjoyed this book. Jim Butcher has an excellent sense of humor, and it really shines through in Harry's narration. Dresden often breaks the fourth wall in his narrative, acknowledging to both himself and the reader that he's about to do something that most people would consider to be insane.

One of the things I really enjoy about reading these books is the multi-sensory experience of reading them. Butcher knows that we have many senses, and also knows that a great number of writers only engage a couple of them. So he throws as much sensory information as he can at us, engaging our senses of touch and taste and smell to make the scene that much more convincing. What's more, he has a gift for an economy of description – what's the most important sensory input for each scene? He knows it, and focuses our attention on that.

Plus, he's put together a very well-ordered magical universe. The rules are clear and binding, letting us know exactly what harry can and cannot do in order to get out of his troubles. The work that Butcher has done in preparing the world of Harry Dresden shows up very clearly.

Of course, werewolves are fun monsters to play with, mainly because of their symbolic significance. Man and beast in one body, a loss of control and a joy in doing so – the werewolf is the beast we all fear to become. And this is important to Harry as well – as he tells us in this book and most of the others, he has a dark side to him. He knows what it's like to reach into the bleak recesses of his soul and to use magic towards evil ends. He's done it before, and the understanding that he could do it again is a shadow that constantly follows him. When he sees the various werewolves that are terrorizing the city, he sees himself in them. He sees the monster he could become, and he rejects it. Or at least holds it at bay for as long as he can.

It's great to watch Harry, because he's such an underdog. He gets beaten up, outsmarted, outclassed again and again, but he keeps coming back. He keeps finding that one little way through his problems that allows him to come through victorious. As far as he's able to, anyway.

And in the end, isn't that true for all of us?

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“Well, we'll just have to hope that this wasn't a loup-garou, I guess.”
“If it was a louper, you'd know. In the middle of this town, you'd have a dozen people dead every time the full moon came around. What's going on?”
“A dozen people are dying every time the full moon comes around.”
- Harry Dresden and Bob, Fool Moon
------------------------------------------

"Kimigayo," by the way, is the Japanese national anthem, and one of the most dolorous, un-inspiring tunes I have ever heard in my life. In any case, here is The United States of America for you, in two minutes and two seconds:



For more info, read this.

via Scalzi

I just got my copy of Turn Coat so I'm re-reading the series. I didn't realize how short and, honestly, incomplete these reviews were. Plus I want more people to read The Dresden Files. So there we go....

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Storm Front by Jim Butcher

REVISED: 4 July 2009

"Hell's Bells" count: 3

Back in 2006, I made a trip to the States for a wedding. It was good fun, and I figured that while I was there, I'd go and see some other friends and family up and down the East Coast. While in the Albany Area of New York, I was taken to a fantasy/science fiction bookstore so that I could fill up on books - a precious commodity, given their expense and rarity here.

What I found when I walked in was shocking - I had no idea what to buy. I was so far out of the loop of SF/F news that I didn't know who was good, who was terrible, which mammoth mega-series were worth investing in and which were better off avoided. So I did the perfectly rational thing - I asked my friend for advice.

With very little delay, he picked this book out for me and said, "You need to read this. But," he warned, "you'll want to read them all." I hemmed and hawed a bit, did some mental calculations of suitcase volume and density, and purchased the first three books of the Dresden Files series.

My friend was right. I plowed through those books like nobody's business and then fumed that I couldn't go right into the next one. Any series that makes you practically itch for the next book has definitely got something going for it, and it all starts right here.

Harry Dresden is a wizard for hire in Chicago. He is, as far as he knows, the only wizard for hire, and this is both good and bad. Good in that he gets all the weird cases that only a wizard can really handle, plus the bonus of being a standing consultant for the Chicago police department. Bad in that he's pretty much on his own, wizard-wise, in a city that is just aching to go supernaturally crazy.

As this book opens, Dresden is trying to scrape enough together for the rent, and he's hit with two cases at once - a woman looking for her missing husband and the police looking to find out who made two people's hearts burst from their chests. Chasing either lead means danger, but he can't afford not to take either one. He needs the money, and he needs to keep a good relationship with the police....

Someone, somewhere is breaking the most sacred laws of magic. Binding, killing, coercion and destruction, all uses of magic that are utterly forbidden by the White Council, the mysterious council who oversees the world's wizarding community.

In the best traditions of gritty detective fiction, the two seemingly unrelated cases eventually merge into one very dangerous investigation, one which challenges Harry and his allies to do more than they'd ever done before.

Butcher has done some fantastic work here for a debut novel, and set the stage for a long and fruitful series. He sets up his world in an efficient fashion, giving us everything we need to know in order to get the story he's about to tell, and dropping little hints of what's to come. I really have no complaints.

Well, maybe one. But it's small, all things considered.

As Dresden tells us in his narration, the world he lives in is one that has seen magic pushed back for the better part of a century in favor of Science. "The largest religion of the twentieth century," he calls it, and that kind of set off a little red flag in my head.

I've heard the old "Science is just another religion" canard before, and I know that it's nonsense - science doesn't require faith, it doesn't require any kind of leaps or hope or suspension of disbelief. Religion certainly does - no one prays with absolute certainty that their prayer will be answered - there's always a chance (and often a good one) that nothing will come of it. But hold a stone a few feet off the ground and drop it, and that stone will damn well fall to the ground. Moreover, it'll fall at the same speed when dropped from the same height, no matter who drops it. Every time. No praying, no intercession. Just science.

What makes Dresden's comment even more interesting is how scientific he is in his working of magic. He has a work space in his basement that he refers to as a lab, and explains to the reader the way that magic works. The principles of Circles, and the necessary elements that constitute a potion. When Harry talks about the power of True Names, he tells us about a known effect of using someone's name for spellcraft, one that will work for any wizard, so long as he knows how to say the person's name the right way.

As an interesting aside to that, Harry gives us his full name - Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden - right at the beginning of the book, on page two. This would imply an interesting level of trust between the narrator and the reader, as the character knows full well the dangers of letting one's full name get out of your hands.

He talks about rules and laws, cause and effect, as things that he's studied and remembered because they work. If magic were truly non-scientific, there would be no way for Harry (or any other practitioner) to predict what would happen when a spell was cast. But when he draws a circle and gives it a bit of a charge, Harry knows exactly what will happen. This alternate world may have sources of energy that ours doesn't, and certain physical laws that vary from ours, but science is no less present in Harry's magic than anywhere else.

So, that one little nitpick aside, I found this to be a very enjoyable book. What's more, it was an excellent introduction into what has turned out to be a fantastic series. I can't wait to see how it all turns out in the end....

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"There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power."
Harry Dresden, Storm Front
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So, the big news of the weekend - Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska, without having finished her first term. The message to Alaskans that she posted doesn't give any real explanation for it, other than:

I've never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title to do this - to make a difference... to HELP people. So I choose, for my State and my family, more "freedom" to progress, all the way around... so that Alaska may progress... I will not seek re-election as Governor.

She does mention something telling, though: "I’ve explained why… though I think of the saying on my parents’ refrigerator that says 'Don’t explain: your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.'" I've heard this before, and thought it was an interesting, though ultimately selfish personal philosophy. Your friends aren't mind-readers, after all, and even the best of friends might want to know more about the inner workings of your mind. Especially when you're doing something like quitting your job for no other reason than "I want to."

As for your enemies, well, that depends on your interpretation of the word. There are plenty of people standing in line to tear Sarah Palin down, and while I'm sure they would have loved to poke holes in whatever explanation she chose to give, now they have the freedom to make shit up. On the other hand, if you assume that not all of your enemies hate you just to hate (i.e. they're your enemies for honest, rational reasons), you always have the chance to turn an enemy into an ally by explaining why you are doing what you're doing. The irrational haters are a lost cause, but they're the minority. If you can give your enemies a sound, reasoned explanation of your position, they'll be not so much enemies as respected opponents. And those are always better.

I would change the refrigerator proverb to, "Tell the truth. Your friends deserve it, and your enemies won't be able to say you lied."

Via Lawyers, Guns & Money, a line from an interview with Palin about running, which is now unintentionally hilarious:

I betcha I'd have more endurance. My one claim to fame in my own little internal running circle is a sub-four marathon. It wasn't necessarily a good running time, but it proves I have the endurance within me to at least gut it out and that is something. If you ever talk to my old coaches, they'd tell you, too. What I lacked in physical strength or skill I made up for in determination and endurance. So if it were a long race that required a lot of endurance, I'd win.

Of course you would.

Anyway, let the guessing games begin. Is it the beginning of a 2012 run? Will she be doing a book deal? Does she want to spend more time hunting wolves, or perhaps dedicate her time to helping the poor and disadvantaged in Alaska? Perhaps she's resigning ahead of news that she too has been "hiking the Appalachian Trail" with some young, virile Brazilian boy named Paolo, whom she raised out of poverty and set up with a beautiful condo in Rio, all with state funds that she misappropriated and is MOST DEFINITELY not the father of little Trig.

Not that I'm suggesting anything....

EDIT: As I look at the speech again, it's clear that whoever wrote it is a person who slept through English class. The last line:

In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”

"In the words of General MacArthur said." Really. Note to remaining governors: please don't let your children write your speeches.

Book Thirty-six

Superheroes and Philosophy, By Tom Morris and Matt Morris

So there you are. You've been bitten by a radioactive, alien wolverine that's been cursed by a gypsy and struck by lightning and you have finally, after years and years of waiting, been blessed with super powers. You can do things no one else can do, and you can do them faster, stronger, better and in more spandex than you ever dreamed possible. Now there's only one thing to do: pick a name, put together a costume and go fight crime!

But... why?

Ever stop and think about it? I mean, I know I would want to go out there and fight the good fight, emulating my four-color heroes, but... why? What is it about getting super-powers that makes so many men and women do what they normally wouldn't do - fight crime? Why risk their lives (or the lives of those they love) in the never-ending battle against the forces of human (and super-human) wickedness?

For that matter, why should anyone, super-powered or not, bother to do good? It's hard, thankless work, after all, and despite the old cliche, crime can sometimes pay very, very well indeed.

The fundamental question about why super-heroes do what they do is a reflection of one of the oldest questions in human philosophy: why be good? And the fact that it's the most popular theme in this book of essays suggests that there really is no single, simple answer to that.

Mark Waid, in "The Real Truth About Superman," looks at the greatest do-gooder of them all, the Big Blue Boy Scout, Superman, and talks about the philosophical journey he took when he re-invented the character's history in Superman: Birthright. To sum up, he believes that the primary drive that puts Kal-El out in the skies is not so much a desire to help the world, but to help himself, for only by being a hero can he embrace his true nature. The use of his powers to his fullest is a demonstration of his Kryptonian legacy. To hide that under the bushel that is Clark Kent would be to completely deny that part of who he is.

And what of Batman, the poor, paranoid loner? When you think of the Bat, do you think of his friends? Probably not, but of all the best-known heroes, he's probably got the biggest cast of confidantes - from his ever-present assistant, Alfred, to the unstable love of his rival, Catwoman, Batman has a tangle of friendships that normal people could not sustain - but that's Batman for you. Always has to be better than the rest of us. In Matt Morris' essay, "Batman and Friends: Aristotle and The Dark Knight's Inner Circle," we get a look at the traditional Aristotelian levels of friendship (those of utility, pleasure, and virtue") and how the people with whom Batman surrounds himself fit into these categories.

The First Family of Marvel get their due as well, when Chris Ryall and Scott Tipton look at "The Fantastic Four as a Family." In this essay, they look at the bonds of family, and what exactly that means. What is it to be "family," and how is that bond so different from others? They see the Fantastic Four as an excellent example of how the bond of family (by blood, marriage, or other means) can transcend nearly any difficulty. But in the case of the FF, what is it that's held them together for so long, despite numerous break-ups and substitutions? Is it Reed's guilt over how he nearly killed the people he loved, disfiguring one of them horribly? Is it Ben's loyalty to his friends that keeps the whole thing together, acting as a reminder of the price of failure? Or is it something else?

The book, much like the science books I've read, aims to accomplish something very important - to show that there are lessons to be learned from comic books, that they aren't just mindless entertainment for empty-headed children. Questions of good versus evil aside, I enjoyed some of the more unexpected philosophical questions - what is identity, and how can we morally hold Bruce Banner responsible for the crimes of The Hulk? How does Barbara Gordon exemplify moral perfectionism, and of the female X-Men, what to they tell us about women and heroics? And is it ethically permissible for a hero to have a secret identity, the maintenance of which requires lying to the people she loves the most?

These aren't questions that occur to the average comic book reader, I'm sure, but the average comic book reader should be able to instantly understand them. More importantly, he (statistically speaking) should be able to understand why they need to be asked. Super-heroes are us, writ larger. Their problems are our problems, only bigger, faster, and looking much better in form-fitting clothes. We must all struggle with the questions of doing good in this world, and how far our responsibility to the world extends. We all try to balance different parts of our lives, our "secret identities" that divide the different people we are from day to day. We ask ourselves about who we are, and what it is about ourselves today that makes us different from who we were yesterday, or ten years ago.

Classical philosophy suggests that humans all tend towards wanting to do the right thing, and I agree (with some reservations). The thing is, doing the right thing is often hard, and doing the wrong thing often is so much easier. In order to be good humans, we must ask ourselves these questions about right and wrong, good and evil, responsibility and plain old selfishness. And if Daredevil or Spider-Man, Wonder Woman or Barbara Gordon are able to serve as models for the best decisions we can make, then I see no reason why we should not follow their examples.

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"The more power we get, the more avidly we tend to serve ourselves, and our own interests. But this is where the superheroes stand apart. They realize that there is no real self-fulfillment without self-giving. They understand that we have our talents and our powers in order to use them, and that to use them for the good of others as well as ourselves is the highest use we can make of them."
- Jeph Loeb and Tom Morris, "Heroes and Superheroes"
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This week - "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, a classic road trip tale from the Victorian Age. Plus, an entertaining tale of travel misadventure of my own. Special to members of Spontaneous Combustion: Remember when...?

Listen and enjoy! Spread it around, and be sure to guess next week's book - the Spanish listeners are kicking everyone's butt!

Book Thirty-five

The Physics of Super-Heroes by James Kakalios

Comics have always had a rough relationship with science. Many comics had their roots in science fiction, so it cannot be said that science is entirely missing from science fiction. It's just that, occasionally, science gets in the way of a good character or a good story. When that happens, one of them has to go. Since comics are a medium for storytelling, it's easy to guess which one loses out.

As long as you can suspend your disbelief, the egregious abuse of science in comics can be overlooked [1]. Things that we know to be impossible are not only forgiven when reading comics (and many other forms of fiction, be they movies, TV or books) it is truly necessary. I mean, that's the whole point of fiction - to show us a world that isn't our own.

Still, for the nitpickers, there's plenty to object to in comics. Gross violations of the square/cube law, impossible particles, anatomical impossibilities, causality problems - you name it. It's very easy to look at the use of science in comics and point out what they're doing wrong.

So why has James Kakalios gone to so much trouble to point out wha comics get right?

Two reasons, really - he loves comic books and he loves teaching physics. And he found (much to his pleasure, I'd imagine) that he could do both at the same time, using comic book examples to boost the interest of his students, making it the kind of physics class I would have loved to have taken.

In this book, Kakalios gives us a basic physics course in a few brief sittings, starting with the Newtonian Classics and working his way up to quantum physics. By using the popular superheroes of the day, he gives us a way of thinking about physics that is not only interesting, but also makes sense.

For example, he uses good old f=ma (with a few extra bits of math thrown in here and there) to determine exactly how fast Superman (back in his Golden Age, pre-flight incarnation) was going when he leapt over buildings in a single bound. He looks at The Flash and how he might use quantum tunneling to go through walls, as well as why running on water would not only be possible, but at the speeds the Flash reaches, absolutely necessary. And of course, the Atom gets a lot of page space when it comes time to look at the world of the incredibly small, and the quantum rules that govern it.

Could Spider-Man's webbing really allow him to swing like that, and why was Gwen Stacy's death one of the best uses of physics in a comic? How are Iceman and Storm's powers related, and how do Magneto's powers really work? Did Krypton have a core of neutron star material? Does Conservation of Energy apply to the Flash, and how does the technology work to make Iron Man's suit possible?

Two things make this book much more entertaining than The Science of Superheroes. The fiorst is the it focuses solely on science, instead of trying to split its attention between the science, the characters and the history of the comic book industry. This is a real science book, despite the presentations - there are formulas in here, and it does sag a bit in places (especially the quantum physics part, but he does warn us about that).

But that's okay, because Kakalios isn't out to debunk these heroes, and that's the other reason why this book is good. He grants them a "miracle exception" that allows them their powers, and then asks, "Okay, assuming Ant-Man can shrink down to six inches, would he still be able to do what he does?" And then he goes on to show how the hero can (or can't) do what he's supposed to be able to do.

One of the biggest problems in science education is keeping students interested. Your average high school (and college) physics class will go on about weights and levers and inclined planes, presenting the laws of the universe in a fairly abstract (and dull) fashion. Like many students, I found myself thinking, "When will I ever actually use any of this?" For most students, the answer is Never. Some goes for a lot of what's taught in high school - it may broaden your mind, but it's likely to be impractical knowledge.

But knowledge doesn't have to be practical to be worthwhile. Knowing how the universe works, what its laws and restrictions are, may not help you in your day-to-day life, but it makes you into a better citizen of the universe. It imbues the physical world with some semblance of rationality, an assurance that while we may not always like what the world throws at us, there is at least a reason for why things happen the way they do. There is consistency, there is order, and in a mixed up, topsy-turvy world like ours, that's nice to know.

What's more, this book helps do what I always try to do - bring legitimacy to superhero comics. Even in this day and age, it's very easy to look at Superman and Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four and say, "That's just kids' stuff." It's not. Okay, yes, the stories tend towards the simple, they're flashy and bright and often espouse rather basic moral schemes. But they can be examined in many lights beyond that of simple entertainment, and reveal a wealth of information and understanding about the world in which we live.

----------------------------------
"If a twisted, evil maniac like the Green Goblin can learn physics, then there's hope for us all."
- James Kakalios, The Science of Superheroes
----------------------------------

Oh, it was the sound of the internet utterly imploding.

To be fair, I loved Thriller when I was a kid, but that was about it. If anything, I appreciate Jackson more for giving us Weird Al Yankovic. Without "Eat It" to put him in the public eye, would he have become as popular as he did? Who knows, but for being generous enough to allow himself to be parodied, I thank Mr. Jackson.

I hope you get your nose back in heaven.

Oh, and Farah Fawcett... Um... I really have nothing to say about her. Never been a Charlie's Angels fan.

This week it's Death from the Skies! by Phil Plait - a rollicking adventure through the various ways in which the universe is trying to kill us. Yay!

Book Thirty-four

It's Not News, It's FARK: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News by Drew Curtis

You all know FARK.com, right? What? You've never heard of it? I'm honestly and truly shocked - unless, of course, you've been away from the internet for the last ten years, in which case you may be forgiven. For the rest of you - SHAME!

FARK is a news aggregator website, though it differs from others in that it's entirely moderated. People submit stories that they think are interesting, add what they hope is a funny tag line or title, and see if it'll be green-lit to make the front page. Over the years, as FARK's audience has grown to make it one of the most influential websites out there, FARK has become a kind of go-to site for news and commentary, though probably not the erudite, level-headed commentary we all might want.

Whether site creator Drew Curtis intended it or not, FARK has become a de facto source of news for many people on the internet who are looking not so much for the top stories of the day, but for all the strange, cool, heroic and Florida-centered news that CNN claims to have too much dignity to run. Over its decade-long history, Curtis has seen thousands upon thousands of articles, moderated countless threads about the day's news and, therefore, believes he has a pretty good idea of how the mass media works.

In this book, Curtis uses his experience as a professional newshound to look at the trends in mass media, attempting to identify the reasons why there's so much irrelevant crap out there. We all know what he's talking about - the helicopter shots of motorcades, the Missing White Women, the shark attacks, internet predators and the top ten lists of household products that could kill you and your family. We've all seen this and asked, "Why are they bothering with this crap?"

According to this book, there's two big reasons: the endless, 24-hour news cycle and sheer human laziness.

There is only so much Real News in any given day, Curtis believes, and I agree with him. The question, of course, is "What is 'real news,'" and rather than try to determine what real news is, Curtis decides to explain what real news isn't. As for the rest, we'll know it when we see it.

Of the many ways that the mass media tries to fill time and space, Curtis points out seven major ones, my favorite being Media Fearmongering. I suppose I like this because it's just so obvious and so easy. Examples include the current hype over where to relocate the world-devouring supervillains from Guantanamo, the perennial articles about how hidden earthquake faults could kill us all, and the airplane crash stories. The recent crash of Air France 447 is an excellent example.

While it is certainly a terrible thing that the plane went down, and important to the families and friends of those who died on the plane, is it really a topic the needs a week of international coverage? 228 people died in that crash, and while it's not really fair to weigh one death against another, it is estimated that that many people die in car accidents every two and a half days in the United States. The same goes for suicides in Japan. So why does the media go nuts for a plane crash, but not for unsafe driving or suicide? My guess is that a plane crash is more spectacular, more mysterious and more likely to get people's attention. Reporting on the actual number of auto-related fatalities would hit too close to home. What's more, a plane crash story probably writes itself. Change a few names and numbers, and the reporting on one crash looks pretty much like every other. That combination of spectacle and sloth makes plane crashes a godsend for reporters and editors with time to fill.

Fearmongering in the media isn't harmless either. Last year, in the run-up to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, there were a lot of articles about whether or not the LHC would destroy the world. Rather than do some investigating, ask some experts and report back that it wouldn't, the media decided to teach the controversy. Matching another of Curtis' bad news categories, they gave Equal Time to Nutjobs who claimed that the work at the LHC would destroy the world. Rather than debunk the nutjobs, they played it for all it was worth, claiming that there actually was a controversy over the LHC, when in fact no such controversy existed.

One of the effects of this was the suicide of a girl in India, who believed in the end-of-the-world scenarios. She was sixteen years old, and the news convinced her that she and everyone she loved was going to die. Can we hold the mass media directly responsible for this girl's death? Only if we can hold them responsible for the other deaths their fearmongering has caused - and here I'm thinking of the "controversy" over whether vaccines cause autism. They don't, but it's more fun for people like Oprah Winfrey to pretend they do. And so kids die.

My other favorite Not News is Media Fatigue - what happens when the media eats itself. With twenty-four hours a day to fill, but without twenty-four hours of news to fill it, the competition for breaking news is incredibly fierce. The first network to report on a big story will basically own that story, and the other networks have to scramble to catch up. In that writhing, twisting nest of vipers, it's sometimes very hard for anyone to stop reporting on a story that has basically run its course - thus, media fatigue. Curtis has broken it down into five simple steps:

1. News breaks
2. Issue retractions
3. Talk it to death
4. Can't... stop... talking
5. Has The Media Gone Too Far?

By the time they stop focusing on the story and start talking about themselves, you can be pretty sure that you're seeing the end of it. Examples of Media Fatigue abound, and Curtis uses Dick Cheney's shooting spree and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction as examples. Really, neither of these events were news of any import. Hunting accidents happen all the time, and Jackson's boob-flash was so quick and so low-def that most viewers didn't know they had seen it until they were told they had (and probably didn't know they should be outraged until there were told they should be). But both stories generated media storms that didn't blow out until way past their expiration dates.

The point is that while the concept of news on demand is good, the execution of it has been terrible. With networks talking about health care reform in the same breath as whether or not David Letterman made an inappropriate joke, it's hard for the audience to know what they should read and what they should ignore. While the news providers' position has always been 'We leave it up to the readers to judge what's important and what isn't," that flies in the face of what we all know about human nature: people can be really, really dumb. People don't have the time or the inclination to read every story, judge it on its merits and sort the wheat from the chaff, and to pretend otherwise reveals either a profound misunderstanding of human nature or a level of cynicism that makes me look like Pollyanna.

While it may seem all patriarchal, I think we do need someone to draw the line and say what is news and what isn't. I don't know who, or how, but someone should do it if only so that we can have a news source that we can trust to give us what we need to know. Put the Britney and Elvis stories in the tabloids - if we buy those, we know what we're getting - and leave the real news alone.

The book is a good, quick read, and while it's clear that Curtis may not have the academic or professional qualifications to be a media analyst, he has whatever the internet equivalent of "street smarts" is. He's snarky and cynical, in the mold of so many people whose job it is to sit back and observe society. You can only run a news-based site for so long without noticing some patterns. He also includes some of the stories featured on FARK and select comments from users, which are usually entertaining.

While Curtis believes that there may be a way to fix the media, he doesn't believe it'll ever be done. As a fellow cynic, I have to agree - it would be far too much work and cost far too many advertising dollars to whip things into shape. The current system, from the point of view of the media outlets, works, and there's no point in tinkering with it. Perhaps the much-prophesied Death of the Newspapers will help some - the local news outlet can be resurrected by a kind of local bloggers' co-op or somesuch. I'm sure there are people out there who follow the journalistic tradition of wanting to tell people what's going on. Unfortunately, those aren't the people that the media wants right now.

So give it a read, and keep your eyes open. When you see a story about something like "sexting" or whether Tom Cruise drinks puppy blood for breakfast, ask yourself - is this news, or is it just FARK?

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"The real answer to Has The Media Gone Too Far? is yes, it goddamn very well has."
- Drew Curtis, It's Not News, it's FARK
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This week it's American Gods by the one and only Neil Gaiman. An excellent read, but I figure that goes without saying.

Give it a listen!

Book Thirty-three

More Information Than You Require by John Hodgman

FACT: The Declaration of Independence was not the original creation of Thomas Jefferson, but was instead inspired by the work of Mole-Man declarationists.

FACT: The true sport of kings, and the only one of which a professional gambler will avail himself, is that of hermit crab racing.

FACT: Andrew Jackson was the first president to wear a necklace of human skulls at his inauguration.

FACT: The first moon landing was achieved in 1802, when Napoleon Bonaparte stepped onto the lunar surface with his conquering army. The horse skeletons are remarkably well-preserved.

WERE YOU AWARE OF IT?

Well, now you are.

In his first book, The Areas of my Expertise, John Hodgman claimed that he had provided us with "an almanac of complete world knowledge" that related matters historical, matters literary, matters cryptozoological, and of course, hobo matters, among many others. A read through this book, an almanac of interesting facts that were in no way, shape or form what is commonly known as "true," was a demonstration of why fiction is inherently better than reality in that it is usually far more interesting. By the time you finished reading the book, he suggested, you truly would know everything you needed to know, regardless of whether it actually happened to be true.

So if the previous book was an almanac of complete world knowledge, why write another book? Surely complete world knowledge can't be added to? Well, Hodgman addresses that question right away. What it comes down to is very simply that, in the few short years since the publication of The Areas of my Expertise - new things have happened. I know it's hard to believe, and you may want to sit down and think about that for a moment.

Not the least of these new things is that Hodgman has become a famous minor television personality, which has gained him all the fame, riches and power you might expect. Following the publication of that book, Hodgman became a regular on The Daily Show and, of course, starred in the now-famous Mac/PC ads as the fuddy-duddy PC who puts up with the douchebaggery of the Mac.

Yeah, I really don't like the Mac guy. But maybe that's just because I really like Hodgman.

He has come down from the luxury zeppelin he bought from Emo Philips in order to provide us with more world knowledge - this time touching on what he has discovered about the okapi, the secret history of the Mole-Men, and the secret cult that lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn - an exclusive neighborhood that can be accessed only upon having reached the status of famous minor television celebrity. It's a paradise, so long as you do not antagonize the children, who are allowed to kill you at their whim.

As with the previous book, this is a good piece of entertainment. Its jokes loop back and forth on themselves, referencing passages not only elsewhere in the book, but also on the pages of its predecessor (and for the sake of convenience, the page numbering for this book picks up where that of the previous book left off.) Its facts (or "facts") are conveniently bolstered with handy charts and striking black and white photography that makes for a fascinating afternoon's reading.

The intricate creativity that has been poured into building a bizarre alternate history of the United States is one that earns only the most sincere respect from me. Anyone with an imagination fertile enough to come up with things like Your Twelve Month Spleencast (a guide to telling the future using pig spleens (tip: it's going to be pretty awful)), a Teddy Roosevelt List that puts Chuck Norris' to shame, and a complete table of Brushes of Fame (with Hodgman as the famous person) deserves every cent I can give him.

One of his great regrets, as he tells us in this book, is that The Areas of my Expertise was never made into a page-a-day desk calendar. Such a mark of true success has only been reached by such luminaries as Gary Larson and the Secret Cabal of Crossword Puzzle Writers who are battling the Jumblemancers for control of the United States. In order that his second book might escape such ignominy, Hodgman has provided an interesting fact for each day of the year on each page. So, if you tear out the pages after reading them, voila! You have a page-a-day calendar. And some of the bits are truly inspired. The listing for September 11th, for example, shows why that day of all days is truly unforgettable.

But that is not all! Not yet, anyway. He is planning to continue his work into a third volume, due out whenever he manages to finish it. I assure you, Mr. Hodgman, I will be waiting eagerly for it.

It's a strange type of humor, but then Hodgman is a strange type of guy. It's the sort of thing that only he could pull off, lying in such earnest detail that you wish it were true only because it sounds just so much fun.

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"Despite the conspiracy theories you may have read, the mole-men have never interbred with the British royal family or the Bush dynasty with the goal of infiltrating the highest reaches of government so as to harvest the blood of our babies to power the spaceliners that will bring them to the next planet they plan to pillage from within. You are thinking of the Belgians."
- John Hodgman, More Information Than You Require
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US Senator admits having affair

But - and here's the twist, folks - he's a Republican!

I'll let that sink in. I know, I was shocked too. This is the Family Values party, after all, who hold the marriage vows to be so sacred that if they were to be uttered by two men at an alter, all of society would unravel.

My big question now is this: will the same people who basically accused John Edwards of being the horniest horndog in Clintontown go after the guy in their own party with the same overmoralistic zeal? While Sen. Ensign hasn't run for President yet, the article states that he's probably one of the front-runners for '12 - or at least he was.

So. Will Ensign be just a man, with all the weaknesses that man possesses, or will he be an immoral, lying scumbag whose poor, long-suffering wife deserves better?

Book Thirty-two

Crisis on Infinite Earths: the Novelization

Why yes, I own both the comic and the novelization. Is there something wrong with that?

Actually, here's a Little Known Fact about me: when I was in, maybe, junior high school I tried to novelize Crisis. I sat down with the comics and went through them, panel-by-panel, trying to put them into a narrative form. I tried to fill in things like expressions, reactions, to bridge the gap between the kind of story you can tell in a comic and the kind you tell in a novel. To my memory, it was pretty good, though it's no doubt lost to the ages by now. If I ever run across it, I'll either marvel at my innocent youth or cringe at my fumbling attempt to do the unnecessary.

I am not the only one who gave that some thought, it seems. To his credit, though, since Marv Wolfman was the guy who wrote the comics, I think he has far more right to put it into novel form than I ever did. But whereas mine was a straight page-by-page translation of the comic to text, Wolfman decided to tell the story from a very different angle. He decided to let is see the Crisis on Infinite Earths through the eyes of Barry Allen, The Flash.

As I said in my review of the comic series, Barry Allen was (more or less) the beginning of the Multiverse in DC Comics, so it was fitting that he be the one to narrate the end in this book. After all, he didn't get all that much page time in the comics - a few ghostly visitations, some taunting and then he was dead. Yes, his death saved billions of people, but still - for someone as important as he was, you would have thought he'd have gotten a few more pages.

The thing about The Flash, though, is that he's hard to pin down. Literally. Even on an ordinary day, we're talking about a man who can race laser beams - and win. He can alter his subjective view of time to the point where a hummingbird in flight becomes a still life. He can run fast enough to travel through time, and vibrate the very molecules of his body to a point where he can not only ghost through solid matter but pass between the dimensional barriers that separate the multiple Earths.

How any villain ever got the best of this man is beyond me. If the writers had ever taken his powers seriously, The Flash never would have had a challenge.

So who better to narrate our alternate view of the Crisis than he? The fact that he's dead by the time the book begins doesn't really make much of a difference. There's too much for The Flash to do, and suddenly the fastest man alive doesn't have enough time.

I don't really need to re-iterate what the Crisis was about, why it happened and who the main players were. None of that has changed in this version of the story - we just have a different point of view. And from this point of view, we learn many interesting things that the comic held back from us. The relationship between The Monitor and his young ward, Lyla, for example - he knew even before he found her that she would kill him. In fact that she would have to kill him, if any of the Earths were to survive the coming apocalypse. We get a much better look at the Psycho-Pirate, the mad puppet of the Anti-Monitor whose ability to manipulate emotions becomes key to the control of worlds. And we get first-person views from so many other heroes and villains that took part in the Crisis - getting a much deeper look at the work.

Most of all, of course, we get to see Barry Allen. What drives him, even in this semi-dead state, to continue to play an active part in this Crisis? Incorporeal and largely unable to interact with - let alone avert - the catastrophe, The Flash remains a witness until the time comes that he is able to (with a little time-travel cheating) free himself from his bonds and go to a death that he knows he cannot avoid, and which he also knows is not the end. Honestly, how he survives beyond death the way he does isn't very clear in this book. It has something to do with the Speed Force, a kind of semi-sentient energy field that grants speedsters their powers and provides them with a heaven when they die. His jaunts through time and space seem to be at the control of a higher power, but exactly who and what that power is we are never quite sure of.

As with any transition from one medium to another, there are changes. The villainous takeover of three Earths is gone, for example, as is the involvement of Superboy-Prime, and much of what occurs after the Anti-Monitor's ultimate defeat is completely different (and is therefore, if you've been keeping up with the DC Universe over the past three years or so, decidedly non-canon). But Supergirl's death is expanded upon, and we get to see the decisions that bring her to her doom. We know that, like Barry Allen, she did what needed to be done, knowing that it would be her end. Getting a quick look inside her head before she took on the Anti-Monitor makes her death just that much more poignant.

But also as with any transition from one medium to another, it is very hard to compare the new rendition to the original. While this novelized version of Crisis is a quick and enjoyable read, it doesn't have nearly the scope and depth and visual punch that the comic did. Because comics are such a visual medium - a story told in mixed media - you're going to lose something when you take one of those media away. While I enjoy reading this (and it's a lot easier to carry around than the Rosetta-stone-sized Absolute Edition of the comic), it's never going to take the place of the original. Wolfman is an excellent writer of comics, but he's not a novelist.

If you are a fan of Crisis and you just want another look at the old story, pick this up. If you've never read Crisis before, get your hands on the comics and let this one come to you later.

---------------------------------------------
"Barry, I know people die. From the moment I understood what they meant, I was very aware of all the memorials around me. But my mother, God bless her, Barry, she said and kept saying until I believed her, that although we have to remember the dead, we can't ever let ourselves act like we're one of them."
Supergirl (Kara Zor-El), Crisis on Infinite Earths: the Novelization by Marv Wolfman
---------------------------------------------

Book Thirty-One

Crisis on Infinite Earths: Absolute Edition by Marv Wolfman and George Perez

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the works that has affected me deeply. More importantly, it is something that has caused considerable harm to my wallet and bank account, as I have been collecting comic books for almost twenty-five years now, and it's all because of Crisis. I can still remember going to the drugstore after church one Sunday and seeing the cover to Crisis #9 - a classic George Perez group shot of some of the most terrible villains ever seen in the DC Universe. You name the baddie, I guarantee he or she was in there somewhere. I was hooked. Of course, coming into a 12-part series in issue 9 meant that I was really lost as to what was going on, but some effort and visits to comics shops eventually got me up to speed. Unfortunately, once I understood Crisis, I realized that there was much more that I didn't understand.

You can't really understand this story without understanding something of the DC Comics Universe. In the late 1950s, they published a story called "Flash of Two Worlds" (Flash #123), in which the Flash, Barry Allen, managed to, using his prodigious super-speed, vibrate through some dimensional barrier or other, and meet the Flash, Jay Garrick, that he had read about as a child in - you guessed it - comic books.

The explanation for this was simple - the guy who wrote Flash comics in Barry Allen's childhood had, somehow, "tuned in" to this Alternate Earth, watching Jay Garrick's adventures and, thinking they were fiction, wrote them up as comic books which, in turn, inspired Barry Allen as a child. So when Barry was struck by lightning and chemicals, gaining super speed, he called himself The Flash, in homage to his childhood hero.

Anyway, in "Flash of Two Worlds," Barry Allen finds out that the Flash he had read about actually existed, only on another Earth in another universe that vibrated at a different frequency from ours. Personally, I think this is a really cool idea, and my personal goal in life is to drink enough coffee in one sitting to accomplish the same thing myself.

Confused yet? Well, it did help if you were an avid comics reader for 25 years before Crisis came out. But to condense the whole thing, here you go:

In the Beginning, there was One. A Universe that grew and shaped and changed. Life was created, rose from the dust, and began to think. On the planet of Oa, located in the center of the universe, life grew with great swiftness, advancing at incredible speed. The beings of Oa embraced science and research. One Oan, a man by the name of Krona, sought to know the origin of the Universe they inhabited. Despite the warnings of his colleagues, he created a device that would allow him to do so. The result was a complete rupture of time and space, for the beginning of things must never be witnessed.

So.... In the Beginning, there were Many. Universe upon universe, each moving at its own speed and vibration, separated by a shadow's thickness, but each unknown to the other.

That was the idea, anyway. The whole "multiple universe" thing, after Gardner Fox wrote his "Flash of Two Worlds" story, became one of the best plot devices the comics writers at DC ever had. Finally they could have silver age and golden age heroes meet and work together. At first, there was only Earth-1 (silver age) and Earth-2 (golden age), which was odd, because the golden age heroes of Earth-2 were older. But I guess since Barry Allen (the silver age Flash, remember) was the one who broke the barrier, he gets precedence.

Anyway, like I said - at first there were two Earths. That number grew swiftly, both for plot and copyright reasons. For example: At a certain point, DC was working on the rights to own characters from Charlton Comics (The Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, etc), and they inhabited Earth-4. Then they went to obtain characters from Fawcett (the whole Shazam line), who went onto Earth-S. As if the Hungry Beast That Was DC wasn't finished, they put characters from Quality Comics (Uncle Sam, Phantom Lady, The Ray, etc), onto Earth-X.

Hang in there, I'll get to the story eventually....

There was also Earth-3, where the doppelgangers of our favorite heroes were villains, and the only hero on the planet was Luthor. Then came Earth-D, Earth-Prime, Earth-Omega and, eventually, Earth-Sigma.

Suffice to say, by 1985, there was a huge mess.... Older readers had no problem following the continuity, but newcomers were baffled, and writers were no doubt also befuddling themselves. The decision was made to clean the whole thing up, make one Earth, one timeline, and one continuity. No more parallel Earths, no more vibrating through dimensional barriers.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, it took twelve issues and the appearance of almost every hero and villain ever seen in DC Comics' fifty year history to pull it off. The research took over three years, with one guy tasked with studying every comic DC had printed since 1935 (my thought when I heard that: "What an awesome job!"). It also required the cooperation of dozens of writers and artists across all of DC's titles, and a company-wide effort to make the Crisis a truly universal event.

Our story opens with the end of the world. Or the end of a world, more to the point. A vast white cloud encroaches upon the earth, vaporizing everything in its path, without pause or remorse. Panicking, people try to flee, but to no avail. Into this horror appears a man with dark eyes and a tortured face, who watches the world die, helpless and weeping, and vanishes again as the universe becomes nothing more than a mist of free-floating electrons.

Not a bad way to start a book, eh?

The man is Pariah, and he is condemned to appear wherever great tragedy strikes, unable to help, unable to die, only able to watch. He is there when the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 put aside their evil to try and stop the wave of energy that devours their planet. Again, Pariah appears, and again the world is destroyed, but not before the planet's only super-hero, Luthor, rockets his son through the dimensions, in the hope of freeing him from his world's destruction.

Sound familiar? I thought so....

If you think you're going to know what's going on this quickly, you're wrong. A mysterious figure sends his associate, a woman named Harbinger, who can split herself among many forms, to gather heroes from Earths that have not been destroyed and bring them to a satellite that hovers in orbit. While she searches them out, one of her is corrupted by a shadowy evil that tracks her through the ice of Atlantis. She gathers them, heroes, villains and otherwise, to the satellite, where we first meet a character that had been hovering around various DC titles for a few months, always in the shadows - The Monitor.

The Monitor informs them that there is great evil abroad, that universes are perishing at an astonishing rate, and are doing so at the hand of his adversary. Waves of anti-matter are consuming the universes, and with each one gone, the Monitor's power decreases. He has a task for these heroes, spread out over millennia of Earth's history. This is the first attempt to save the worlds....

The basic rundown of the story is that there is an anti-matter universe out there, created when Krona performed his experiment, controlled by the mirror version of The Monitor. This "Anti-Monitor" wants nothing more than to see his brother dead, and to see the positive Universes brought under his control. He's a good, old-fashioned Evil Overlord, I must say.... So as each universe is destroyed by the great sweeping cloud of death, he grows ever stronger.

It has been pointed out to me that some people out there get all anal over this concept, thereby calling the whole damn plot into question. So, a bit of elementary physics. The above scenario cannot happen. When matter and antimatter collide, there is a huge burst of energy as the two forms of matter vaporize each other. Nothing is left - in "reality physics," both the Monitor and the Anti-Monitor would be playing at a zero-sum game. Given that these people are willing to accept, however, the existence of thousands of metahumans who can perform feats that also fly in the face of real physics, I think their arguments about the properties of antimatter are so much hot air. As a very wise man once said, "Blow."

Anyway, the Anti-Monitor's release is tied with Pariah's fate as well. Determined to do as Krona did, Pariah set up a chamber, of matter and anti-matter, so that he may see the beginning of all things. The result was the beginning of the end, and his world was the first consumed by the anti-matter wave. The Monitor, observing this, imbued him with his curse, using him as a "tracker" to see which universe might be the next to die.

So we have an unstoppable force tearing through the Multiverse, and it is up to The Monitor and Our Heroes to stop him. But the Monitor dies, and the worlds keep dying....

Of course you know that, in the end, the good guys win. But as with any good story, it is the telling of the tale, not the tale's end, that is important. Wolfman and Perez did some very daring things with this story, not only in rearranging the whole order of the DC Universe, but also in killing off some pretty heavy hitters. The best cover in the series, so good that they came out with a statue based on it, was the cover of issue number seven: The Death of Supergirl.

The other major character to be killed off was Barry Allen, The Flash, who inadvertently started this whole mess a long time ago. But he died well, and, as Marv Woflman says in the forward to the collected edition of Crisis, there was a way left to bring him back if they needed to. Indeed, Barry Allen's presence has not yet vanished. The current Flash, Wally West, has long held Barry to be the high ideal which he must match, but at the same time leave behind. In one version of the Legion of Super-Heroes books, the character of Xs, another super-speedster, is Barry Allen's granddaughter, and the character of Impulse/Kid Flash, is Barry Allen's nephew. So the Flash lives on, in his way. In fact, he's recently been resurrected in DC continuity - though how long that will last is anyone's guess.

On the other hand, no one remembers Supergirl. By the end of the Crisis, she had been wiped from existence, and was seen only once more, in a Christmas issue several years later, reminding the character of Deadman about what it means to work without reward. While several new Supergirls have appeared since then, unlike Barry Allen the pre-Crisis Supergirl is lost to history.

As you can probably guess, I really like this story. It has an immense cast of characters, without becoming unwieldy or dispersed. The storytelling, with its multi-universal scope, nevertheless allows you to feel for individuals, with their triumphs and tragedies. Ultimately we see that even the mightiest of mortals is, at heart, human. There is foreshadowing galore, mysteries abound, the plot twists and turns, and you get glimpses of what is yet to come - the hand in the swirling pool of stars, the image of the Flash appearing before Batman and vanishing with words of doom, the Green Lantern's ring sputtering and failing.... It all intertwines together so very nicely and really satisfies my inner comics geek.

The Absolute Edition was aimed at people exactly like me. Someone who would say, "I've read this story a dozen times, I could probably recite it... but I need it to be bigger. Like, big enough to club a man to death with." So yeah, they had me from the word go on this one, and as soon as the opportunity arose to buy it, I did so without hesitation. It really is very pretty - it's been recolored and everything, AND it comes with a companion book about how the series came to be. Fascinating reading.

The big question, of course is this - after nearly twenty-five years and at least two other universe-wide reboots (Zero Hour and Infinite Crisis) that have changed the changes made by Crisis, why is this story still worth reading? Well, for one thing, the writing is solid - you can follow the story without having to buy a couple dozen other titles, and there are dramatic moments that have hung in my memory for years. In addition, there's the art. George Perez has been one of my favorite artists for years. His attention to detail and his ability to draw dozens of characters to a page while keeping each of them dynamic, interesting and individual is, in my opinion, nothing short of superhuman. If I could choose to draw like anyone, it would be George Perez, and I will never get tired of looking at his artwork.

More importantly, however, this book is about the heroic ideal. On many scales, from the small-scale of characters like Hawk and Dove or the Losers, all the way up to the big guns of Superman, the Flash and Supergirl, the idea of what it means to be a good person is presented over and over again: you do good not because it's easy, not because it will benefit yourself. You do good because it is what you must do, even when you know it could lead to tragic consequences for yourself. My model of heroism was formed in these books, and the model set by these characters has guided my moral choices ever since. Where other people take their moral guidance from Jesus or Marcus Aurelius or Oprah, I take mine from Barry Allen and Kara Zor-el and from so many others who put their lives and their interests aside for the greater good.

Can't ask for much more than that.

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"Worlds lived, worlds died. Nothing will ever be the same...."
- Psycho Pirate, Crisis on Infinite Earths #12
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Book Thirty

Death From The Skies! by Phil Plait

I've always found the end of the world fascinating. So many cultures have put together their own ideas of how the world will end, from the Norse Ragnarök to the Christian apocalypse to the Hindu cycle of creation and destruction. We live in a world that was, for a long time, unpredictable to us and on many occasions seemed to be outwardly hostile. Our ancestors faced floods and earthquakes and disease, with no idea of where these things came from, why they happened or how to stop them. And so they made myths and stories to explain the dangerous world in which they lived. From that, they extrapolated - if the world is this dangerous now, how dangerous could it be if it really tried? And so came our myths of a world that not only succeeds in hurting us, but in wiping us out altogether.

Even in the modern age we have our myths. Books, television, and movies all use the end of the world (or end of a world) to tell stories - usually about the resilience of mankind and our ability to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and rebuild human society, hopefully for the better. As good as this is for fiction, there are two problems when we try to apply these myths and stories to the real world: the world will end, one way or another, and no amount of heroics, cleverness or pluck will save us. Not in the long term, anyway.

Science has accomplished what religion and fiction could not - it has seen the future and can make fairly accurate prophecies about how this world, and our civilization upon it, will die. Renowned astronomer Phil Plait is your prophet for this trip into all the ways the world will end....

In this book, Plait looks at nine possibilities for the end of the world as we know it. In order, they are:

Death by Impact
Death from the Sun
Death by Supernova
Death by Gamma Ray Burst
Death by Black Hole
Death by Aliens
Death of the Sun
Death by Galactic Collision
Death of the Universe

In each chapter, Plait outlines the ways in which that specific event could injure or kill us, with as much science as he can comfortably put in. He explains, for example, why we can't just send Bruce Willis up to hit an incoming meteor with a nuke (it probably won't work) and why any black holes produced by the LHC won't do us any harm. He looks at how a supernova happens, what it is about a black hole that turns it into one of the deadliest weapons in the universe, and tries - very, very hard - to make the reader understand exactly how long "forever" is. (Hint: it's a lot longer than you think. Longer than that, even. Nope, keep going....)

Each chapter outlines the processes by which we could experience the destruction of our civilization or, in a few cases, the planet itself. He looks at the scientific foundations of these events, explaining in detail what it is about the sun, for example, that makes it a cauldron of chaos and torment, or why we really, really don't want to get even a smallish black hole anywhere near the planet. And I have to say, of all the unlikely ways we could be toasted, gamma ray bursts are my favorite - a deadly beam of energy from thousands of light-years away, cooking the planet all the way down through the crust and utterly devastating the planet's ecosystem so as to kill off anyone who was lucky enough to be on the other side of the world. I mean, wow. And there'd be no warning, either. By the time we knew what was happening, it'd be too late. So that chapter (with a line paying homage to Douglas Adams, even) is just mind-boggling.

Probably my favorite chapter, though, is the one about supernovas, mainly because his careful, step-by-step description of exactly how a supernova occurs made me think, "What I wouldn't give to see that in person," disregarding the fact that a) the best parts would happen way too fast for me to observe and b) it would vaporize me. Still, it's a beautiful and terrifying chain reaction, which Plait describes in fantastic detail. The other chapter that evoked the same reaction was the one on the end of the universe. Despite timelines for which the word "vast" is terribly inadequate, Plait tells us what science knows about how the universe will end - the ever-increasing expansion of spacetime, the eventual death of the stars, evaporation of galaxies, the reign of the black holes and the slow, careful deaths which even they face. It all ends in darkness, all matter gone into a few stubborn subatomic particles and the eventual collapse of the very fabric of space and time.

And as bleak and miserable is the future looks, I still thought, "I really want to see that." So if I can figure out how to live one googol years (that'd be a one with one hundred zeros after it [1]) and not have my very atoms decay into nothingness, then I'll be able to... um... be really, really bored, probably. Since after that, there's absolutely - literally - nothing to do. Until the universe experiences vacuum collapse, or a brane collision, possibly hitting the reset button on the cosmos and we get to do it all over again....

Most of what's in the book isn't new to me, but that's probably because I grew up reading Cosmos, and I follow countless science TV shows, podcasts and blogs (including Plait's own Bad Astronomy blog, which is well worth keeping up with, as well as his regular appearances on SETI's podcast, Are We Alone? and occasional guest appearances on The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe - both of which make for excellent listening). For people new to astronomy, though, this will be a rather dense learning experience - and reading it will be time well spent.

In addition to its user-friendly style, I really like the way it's arranged - from small-scale (relatively) to large, with "Things that are absolutely certain to happen" at the beginning and end, and with "things that probably won't happen" in the middle. And my favorite aspect of this book is that each chapter begins with a short vignette describing that particular end of the world, from the perspective of someone watching it happen. It's not something you often see in books of this nature, and I'm really glad that Plait decided to put it in there. It makes it a little less academic and abstract and more real.

For all its death and destruction, the book isn't really a downer. For one thing, while things like asteroid impacts and the death of the sun are inevitable, they don't have to be fatal, and Plait describes a few ways in which - in theory - we (or our distant, distant descendants) might be able to avert or at least mitigate these catastrophes. It's not easy, of course, but saving the world never is.

It's mainly a marvel at the forces that surround us in the universe. It's easy to forget, looking up at the sky from our brief, limited scale, that the universe isn't just some pretty lights drifting about in empty blackness. Things are exploding and dying, burning and freezing, moving quickly and slowly - the cosmos is replete with activity and danger. Most of the universe isn't just uninhabitable, it's actively hostile to life as we know it. And yet, without the black holes, the supernovas and the galactic collisions, without massive meteor impacts and breakaway comets, solar flares and deadly radiation - without all that, life probably wouldn't exist at all. So read this book, and take a moment to appreciate how lucky we are to be here at all, all things considered....

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"They say that even the brightest star won't shine forever. But in fact, the brightest star would live the shortest amount of time. Feel free to extract whatever life lesson you want from that."
- Phil Plait, Death from the Skies!
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[1] 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000