Coming to America: A Horror Story

I just finished reading The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick. It’s about a family exiled from a parallel dimension who end up as refugees in post-9/11 Nevada. The blurb on Amazon compares it to Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, but I think that’s going a tad too far (especially since that book is one of my favourites).

Frankly, the science fiction aspect of The Necessary Beggar doesn’t figure that strongly into the story. Ghosts and reincarnation figure very prominently in it so it could actually be more easily classified in the fantasy genre.

To be honest, the alternate dimension thing could have been cut out completely and it would have worked out just as well by being a magical realist story about refugees from like Afghanistan or Somalia. But doing the story that way requires a lot more research to get the culture right and I can’t help thinking that was the main reason the family came from a made-up country.

If you’ve read immigrant stories before then a lot of this book will be familiar – it’s got migrants going through the everyday trauma of navigating a foreign culture, feeling an aching and unquenchable yearning for a lost home, clashes between tradition and American modernity, that kind of thing. I feel like there’s a Salman Rushdie novel in here struggling to break through.

Lost in space

I bought the solo journalling game Bucket of Bolts and I’m digging it so far. How it works is that it gives you some writing prompts as you create the story of a spaceship beginning from its construction, going through the many adventures it’s had with its different captains, and ending with its inevitable final journey.

THE SHIP
A midsize freighter, rugged and adaptable.

SHIP CREATION
- You were constructed by a team of starship engineers—describe them, their design principles and political affiliations.
- Add three Traits describing your Ship then draw it. Sketch out the layout of modules and its silhouette, considering the materials used.
- Give your Ship a model name and simple factory designation.

SHIP QUESTIONS
Answer these during play. You don't need to answer them all.

- Every ship needs a good name. What is it and why?
- Across the galaxy there are spaceports in every shape, size and standing. Why do some feel like home more than others?
- Your last Captain installed a secret modification that they never got to use. What does it do?
- Your customised systems allow for a unique manoeuvre that many of your Captain's have attempted. What it is, and what does it come to be called by tale tellers and imitators?

It’s a fun way to get one’s creative juices flowing, while its guided structure prevents the stereotypical writer’s panic at being faced with a blank page. It even comes with a ship generator so you don’t get stuck with trying to imagine what your ship looks like and a soundtrack to listen to as you meditate on your choices. I mean, last night words were fairly flowing from my pen.

The Ship
-constructed for exploration + science. 
-modification of existing template for university researchers. -
-customized to survive high-pressure & high-radiation environments with the most expensive & most sensitive sensors available along with ample computer power for analysis 
-designed for year-long voyages
-apolitical scientists unappreciative how their exploration directly aids the empire
- public funding & grants subsidize the research 

Nimble, Sleek, Precise
The Don Quixote (Raptor-class HX-1138) (sketch of ship vaguely resembling Defiant from Deep Space 9)

The High Era
A Science Expedition
Captain Jacques Jazmere 
-Phd student who gathered fellow iconoclasts to find ancient alien civilization 
-records unclear where it was but crew is certain its remo
are in a distant region of space
- crew rigged a time travel antenna to pick up ancient sig 

Love & Triumph: Captain discovered a wormhole shortcut to deep space & named it the Cervantes wormhole
The ship is named Don Quixote because of its romantic quest

You can even use this game to create the backstory for a spaceship your characters might use in a space RPG like Traveller or Starfinder.

Bottom line? It’s a fun structured way to get creative for a couple of hours.

Attack of the Marxists

Summary and author's notes of the fanfic Comrade Skywalker: Episode III: Revenge of the Capitalists by An Aroused Koala (user's avatar is Anakin Skywalker wearing a red Che Guevara t-shirt)

"Episode III: Revenge of the Capitalists by An Aroused Koala

Karl Marx's birthday is May 5th. Star Wars day is May 4th. Coincidence? I
think not. This is the story of Anakin Skywalker - the legendary Comrade destined to seize the means of production and bring equality to the galaxy - as he discovers his Communist calling. (Please read this in the same voice as the Clone Wars opening narration)

Palpatine and Dooku Corporately Collude

AN - This is the third installment in the Comrade Skywalker series. It follows on from COMRADE SKYWALKER: ATTACK OF THE COMRADES, which in turn is the sequel to COMRADE SKYWALKER: THE PRIVATE PROPERTY MENACE. Please consider reading said fictions first, as together they form the most efficient path to Marxist enlightenment.

Happy reading Comrades! May the Revolution be with you!"

It’s wonderful to find something as deranged as this fanfic.

Episode III: Revenge of the Capitalists by An Aroused Koala

Karl Marx’s birthday is May 5th. Star Wars day is May 4th. Coincidence? I think not. This is the story of Anakin Skywalker – the legendary Comrade destined to seize the means of production and bring equality to the galaxy – as he discovers his Communist calling. (Please read this in the same voice as the Clone Wars opening narration)

Palpatine and Dooku Corporately Collude

AN – This is the third installment in the Comrade Skywalker series. It follows on from COMRADE SKYWALKER: ATTACK OF THE COMRADES, which in turn is the sequel to COMRADE SKYWALKER: THE PRIVATE PROPERTY MENACE. Please consider reading said fictions first, as together they form the most efficient path to Marxist enlightenment.

Happy reading Comrades! May the Revolution be with you!

The Internet lately has become smaller and smaller, a thing circumscribed by the consolidation of media and the demands of website and app owners. But there are still people out there keeping alive the anarchic and chaotic spirit of the early web.

I mean, rewriting the Star Wars movies so that Anakin Skywalker is a communist? Who would think to do that? This fic writer, that’s who. And good lord, they’ve also written a fic about Trotsky?

How great a thing it is to feel so powerfully that you must unleash your emotions to share it with the world. I feel nostalgic for those noisy days of yore.

The Book of Tongues

This is definitely the end of popular science books for me, I’m three for three in disappointment with Languages Are Good For Us by Sophie Hardach. It’s about, uh, it’s actually kind of hard to explain because it goes all over the place. I guess it’s an overview of how humans use language and writing, but not in any systematic sense. It basically covers interesting language stuff from the author’s research interests.

And don’t get me wrong, there actually is interesting stuff here that I didn’t know about before or never looked into too deeply. It covers the development and use of cuneiform writing as well as the story of its decipherment, it examines the story of Hernan Cortes’ translator Malinche and her role in the conquest of the Aztecs, it covers the creation of the secret language Unserdeutsch by children who spoke Tok Pisin but were forced to speak only German at missionary boarding school, and maybe some other stuff I’m forgetting.

But there’s also stuff in there that I don’t really care about and I can’t even justify as forming necessary connective tissue in the book since the book doesn’t really have an intellectual framework. There’s a chapter about how the word “kamunun” in Akkadian over the millennia became “cumin” in English and the networks of trade by which the spice was spread around the world, there’s a part about how multilingual London’s children are which contains a lament from the German immigrant author about Brexit, there’s another chapter about the Eskimo-Aleut language family which mentions the author’s fears over COVID-19 and her wish that she could make a research trip to Canada instead of just reading about these languages, there’s a whole thing about Japanese sensitivity to the seasons and their relationship to seasonal foods which comes across to me as too Orientalist.

So if I take the stuff that I liked and balance it against stuff that I was lukewarm on then my final opinion on this book is that I wish I’d read something more technical about languages. Anyway, this really is it, no more popular science books for me.

The Lands below the Winds

My vow to read more non-fiction from actual experts instead of popular science stuff came across the barrier of accessibility. For instance, I’ve always had a thing for Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory so I went to look for one of its foremost applications, Janet Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. The public library only has a copy in its reference section, so I can’t borrow it, and while a classic in intellectual history it’s not a popular book like Guns, Germs, and Steel so it’s kind of pricey. Plus I don’t even want a copy – I’m not a big book collector and I don’t even have copies of my favourite works of fiction, much less academic works. But such is the lot of certain classic works of non-fiction.

Still, I was already in the middle of reading A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads by Anthony Reid and this is definitely the stuff I was wanting. It synthesizes the current state of academic thinking about the region across multiple fields: history and archaeology primarily with a bit of linguistics and comparative theology, but it pulls together sources culled from like ten different languages so it’s a pretty impressive intellectual effort.

So far I’ve gotten through the prehistory of Southeast Asia, with the initial human settlement of the area (including arrival of other human species before Homo sapiens), the dispersal and probable driving out of Austronesians from southern China and Taiwan (which at the time was part of the mainland) into the most geographically-dispersed diaspora before modern times (from Madagascar to Easter Island), the simultaneous spread of speakers of the Tai language family (for example, Thai and Khmer) on the mainland, the early Buddhist polities (including the central role maritime Malay cities had in spreading Buddhism to China), the veneration of Shiva by early kings, the spread of Islam, and now I’ve reached the Ming dynasty expeditions of Zheng He and the modern colonial era.

Anyway, yeah, I’m enjoying this a lot more than a popular science book.

P.S.S. (Popular Science Sucks)

Sometime last year I read The Reality Bubble by Ziya Tong. It’s a somewhat interesting popular science book about the perceptual limitations of the modern worldview and its consequences on the world: for example, limitations imposed by the imposition of time measured by clocks, limitations on freedom by the constriction placed by property, and so on. It’s basically interesting tidbits and anecdotes connected together by various themes.

It’s pretty well-written but is basically just a vehicle for sharing those tidbits and anecdotes. My big frustration is when it goes into the issues of environmental devastation but only mentions capitalism kind of near the end of the book and then just stops there. So yeah, capitalism sucks, but what else should we be trying? Any ideas on that front? No? Okay then, guess we’re just screwed.

Honestly, I’m giving up on reading non-fiction recommendations from journalists and book reviewers, at least for books that cover technical subjects. I’m starting to think journalists are actually morons. “This book is incredible, this book blew my mind, I learned so much” etc. Then I pick it up and it turns out to be the kind of popular science book that’s decently written but intellectually light and covers too much of the writer’s personal experiences. Look, if I wanted personal crap in non-fiction I’d read a memoir, just give me the freaking science.

Dieu et mon droit

So how have things changed for the Taliban now that they rule Afghanistan? They have to work mind-numbing office jobs and deal with Kabul’s high rent and traffic, that’s how.

The author of the linked article did in-depth interviews with five Taliban men in their 20s and 30s who essentially grew up in the movement, and basically they hate the stupid bureaucratic bullshit they’re swimming in now and long for the days of holy war.

What I don’t like about Kabul is its ever-increasing traffic holdups. Last year, it was tolerable but in the last few months, it’s become more and more congested. People complain that the Taleban brought poverty, but, looking at this traffic and the large number of people in the bazaars and restaurants, I wonder where that poverty is.

Another thing I don’t like, not only about Kabul but broadly about life after the fatha, are the new restrictions. In the group, we had a great degree of freedom about where to go, where to stay, and whether to participate in the war.

However, these days, you have to go to the office before 8 AM and stay there till 4 PM. If you don’t go, you’re considered absent, and [the wage for] that day is cut from your salary. We’re now used to that, but it was especially difficult in the first two or three months.

The other problem in Kabul is that my comrades are now scattered throughout Afghanistan. Those in Kabul, like me, work from 8 AM to 4 PM. So, most of the week, we don’t get any time to meet each other. Only on Fridays, if I don’t go home, do we all go to Qargha, Paghman or Zazai Park. I really like Paghman and going there with friends makes me very happy. Such a place doesn’t exist in the entire province of Paktika.

Like some well-read wag wrote on Twitter, they wanted to be in a Gemeinschaft and instead became bureaucrats in a Gesselschaft. Although honestly, they need to learn how to chill in a sinecure position. Take up golf or something.

Rebeldía

I regret to inform you all that the trailer for Rebel Galaxy Outlaw is better than the game. As you can expect, the gameplay is basically Elite, with you flying a spaceship around catching criminals, robbing interstellar traders, and buying and selling cargo across the stars.

The neo-Western aesthetic is kind of neat in the trailer but it got kind of annoying in the game. Haha, this lizard alien talks like an American long-haul trucker. Oh neat, all the star systems are named after US states and the planets are named after podunk towns and cities in the American West. Haha haha.

And speaking of aesthetics, the game would have done better to stick to the cartoon stylings of the trailer instead of the computer graphics in the actual gameplay because at best those computer graphics are just serviceable.

The starship combat stuff didn’t really grab me, either. It was just kind of there. I suppose I could have given it a bit longer to see if it would click with me but the aesthetic wasn’t doing it for me so I just had to give up. Oh well.

Vive le roi

After three years and over 400 hours, I’ve finally finished Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

Good god, but this game really brings to the fore the colonialist and imperialist roots of the standard Dungeons and Dragons setting. “Exterminate native peoples so we can seize their land and resources for ourselves” is the explicit goal of the game, after all. Much easier to ignore this subtext in a typical tabletop adventure campaign since most players are at the “exterminate” part of the equation and the colonizing thing is usually just implied in the background.

Anyway, the goddamn final dungeon in Kingmaker is bullshit. The thing about teleporting between different versions of the dungeon sounds neat but in practice is annoying. The fights are also hard but in a grindy way, not a fun way. And there’s another quest after this dungeon if you want to fight the real mastermind behind your troubles, but that bit is at least a little better. I may go back to see what happens if I max out upgrading everything in my kingdom and just use a cheat to go through the boss fights.

However, I don’t really replay this kind of RPG so this is pretty much it. My kingdom is ruled by a lesbian tiefling queen with her tiefling consort commanding an army full of mercenary wizards. I feel like the ending presentation could have used a little more flair, but I got a lot of game out of that $35 I spent so I’m satisfied.

I’ve bought the semi-sequel Wrath of the Righteous but I’m not about to immediately jump into it, especially since I hear there’s another set of DLC that’s coming soon. Hopefully Owlcat Games has improved the annoying stuff from the first game. Incidentally, isn’t the studio in Russia? I wonder how they get paid what with all the Ukraine war sanctions.

Farewell to Wakanda

I watched Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and returned disappointed. I thought it was fine as a comic book romp but a much lesser movie than the original due entirely to not being as directly political. It has a vague something about resisting colonialism and imperialism, but it only gestures at the idea a bit and the actual central conflict is between one made-up country and another made-up country fighting over a made-up natural resource.

There’s a scene in the beginning of the movie where Wakandan soldiers fight French mercenaries trying to steal vibranium, then Wakanda captures these mercs and marches them to the UN to expose the hypocrisy of the UN Security Council classifying Wakandan hoarding of vibranium as a threat to world peace. That’s what the movie should have been about.

The conflict over vibranium was the natural consequence of what happened in the first movie and it would have been logical that it be the subject of the sequel, which is why it’s massively disappointing that it went where it did instead. We could have had metaphors about rejecting the Central African franc or throwing out Canadian mining companies but instead we got a movie about a flying Mexican guy fighting a superpowered black chick.

I didn’t hate the movie, I’m a dork for comic book shit and I actually did dig the whiz bang whale war shit, but we’ve got lots of comic book movies and zero blockbusters about pan-Africanism (besides the first Black Panther, of course). The first movie made me think, “Hey, Marvel finally learned how to overtly put politics into their movies” but its sequel makes me think, “Oh, it was just a one-off.”