Warehouse 13; Sci Fi's B- 6:45 PM

Between the cancellation of Caprica, the addition of WWF (seriously, wrestling?  On the Science Fiction channel?  WTF?) to their lineup and the changing of the channel’s name to Scy Fy (WTF does that even stand for?), I had just about completely written off the Sci Fi channel as a noble but failed experiment.  Then my father-in-law and brother-in-law had to go and show me Warehouse 13.

Now, at first I was extraordinarily skeptical as we tried to jump in at the end of season two- not a good place to begin.  None of the show’s strengths were showcased and many of its shortcomings were at the fore.

During our last stay in Houston there was considerable dead time to fill and Michele’s brother and father convinced us to give the show another try with predictable results.  It sucked us in.  For those not familiar, the premise of Warehouse 13 is that certain brilliant individuals or particularly dramatic events in history imbued inanimate objects with supernatural qualities, some good, some bad.  Our protagonists are Agents of the Warehouse, the organization that finds and secures these artifacts so as to avoid letting them harm innocents out in the world.  The idea is neat enough and some of the historical references give you that warm and fuzzy I’m-so-smart feeling when you figure out what the magical artifact is right before they reveal it on the show.  Add to that some reasonably likable characters; the pudgy, brilliant and oft-be bothered Arthur Nielson, mentor of the younger heroes, the neophyte cyber-nerd-cum-secret-agent Claudia Donovan, and the also-brilliant, responsible, earnest but vulenrable Secret Service Agent Myke (pronounced Micah) Bering and you’ve got a fairly entertaining yarn.

There are flaws… ohhhhh, are there flaws.  First of all, Secret Service Agent Peter Lattimer, the male lead, gets only so much mileage with his, “look I’m such an immature slob, but I go with my gut and that’s supposed to make up for the fact that I can’t go five minutes without making a funny face or over-selling my slapstick to the point that it sucks all the oxygen out of a scene,” character.  Don’t get me wrong, he’s entertaining about 40% of the time, but he eventually just starts grinding my nerves into dust.  Also, they expressly set his background as a Marine, and imply through his choice of athletic wear that he went to Dartmouth.  I’m calling BS on both counts as he displays no martial skill throughout the course of the first three seasons, nor does he display intellect that could be described as anything other than pedestrian.

Despite all of this, Pete is good for a gag and the writers (notably, Jane Espenson of BSG and Buffy fame) know how to play for laughs.  So, after you drink enough of the Warehouse kool-aid, it’s not that hard to forgive Pete for being an idiot in hero’s clothing.  The REAL burr under my saddle about this show is the way they handle the action. 

Look, I know TV shows and movies in the past just accepted as axiom that villains would monologue and pass up on opportunities to kill the hero(s) and that the heroes would return the favor until the dramatic climax of the show.  You know what?  Too many people have bucked that trope and it DOES. NOT. WORK. ANYMORE.  Not that heroes and villains can’t make mistakes, but when an obvious solution is staring the heroes (or villains) right in the face and authorial fiat insists they remain retarded- that’s EFFING ANNOYING.  So often our intrepid heroes end up in the dramatic pointing their-gun-and-exchanging-dialogue scene with the villain of the week when the easiest thing in the world would be to stun the bastard (yeah, they’ve got ray guns with a reliable stun setting, they don’t even need to cap people most of the time) tie him up AND then question him.  Does this ever occur to them?  Nope, they point the gun indecisively at the bad guy until the baddie finds a way to smack the ray gun (called a Tesla, yes, after him) out of their hand and engage in a dramatic martial arts fight, or use an artifact to make a daring escape or, worse, somehow take control of one of the heroes.  It’s MADDENING.  It snaps my suspension of disbelief when, week after week, the heroes do stupid shit that anyone with an ounce of common sense, much less combat trained former-marine-former-secret-service-super-duper-secret-WH13 agents, wouldn’t do.  Once or twice in a show is easy to get over, repeatedly and reliably at the end of every dramatic arc?  Oh, no, that’s not a venial sin, that’s a mortal one.  I actually got so mad at the season 3 finale I chucked the remote across the room.

Even given the sloppy resolution of the show’s action, it’s still a fun show with characters you can care about.  And it does fall squarely in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy vein, so good on the network for actually airing it.  It’s also fun to see a parade of guest appearances from veteran actors of great science fiction shows like Star Trek: Voyager, Battlestar Galactica (keep your eyes peeled for Caprica Six and Colonel Tigh), and Firefly (awww, Kaylee and the Doctor, finally together).   I recommend it for any fan of the genre.  It most certainly does not reach the level of greatness of BSG ’03, which I recommend without qualification to anyone of taste regardless of genre preferences, but it is a good way to kill 45 minutes for all of us nerds.

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole 6:55 PM

I was very excited when I started seeing the buzz for Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Control Point.  As a soldier with aspirations of writing genre fiction, I’m always happy to see a veteran succeed in getting people to pay for scribbles on dead tree.  As a show of solidarity, I actually paid full price at a Barnes & Noble rather than downloading a kindle version or waiting for used copies to show up on Amazon.  The premise was exciting; modern military hardware plus MAGIC equals CHAOS- in a good way.  Moreover, I was excited to read in his “Big Idea” spot on John Scalzi’s blog that Cole was focused on depicting not just the action of the military, but the bureaucratic reality which leads, frequently, to absurdity.  Like many Science Fiction and Fantasy readers, I always enjoy the merging of the fantastic and the realistic.  So it was with great enthusiasm I dove into the book.

***Minor Spoliers May Follow***

Control Point definitely delivers on all the aforementioned anticipation.   The book delivers a complex, unique universe that melds the thrill of combat, the moral complexities of asymmetrical war and unconventional security threats (in this case, individuals with the ability to lay waste on an epic scale with no weapon other than their own minds), and the inane contradictions and asinine drudgery of the military lifestyle.  The magic, despite being based primarily on elemental bending with the addition of dimensional gating (reference the Marvel Comics X-Men character Blink for an idea of what that entails) and a few other talents, was exciting and fun.   The combination of magic with MAC (Modern Army Combatives) makes for a very cool visual, but does make the system more closely resemble “bending” as depicted in the Avatar cartoons.   Regardless, the magic system is logical and well-designed in that it allows for superhuman feats without making the characters into untouchable demi-gods.  A bullet still puts a wizard down.

Unfortunately, as many reviewers have already noted, the book does suffer from one very serious flaw.  The protagonist, Army Aviator First Lieutenant Oscar Britton, is a wishy-washy child who seems, at least by his actions, more interested in his own survival and freedom than in any concept of the greater good.  This would be workable if Britton were being presented as an anti-hero, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.  From his lengthy mental moralizing about how awful the US government is to deprive magicians in general of their rights and how brutal they are with, “probes,” that is those who manifest ability in a prohibited school- anything other than elemental bending or healing- Oscar is supposed to be a conscientious everyman hero. 

From the get-go we are exposed to the “system” by its representative, the arrogant and overbearing aeromancer (airbender) who goes by the call-sign Harlequin.  Harlequin is, in many ways, another permutation of the overbearing “fed” overriding and bullying the noble and competent hero from a lower echelon of the security apparatus (Oscar).   In the opening chapters of the book we are treated to a battle between Oscar’s aviation unit and Harlequin’s SOC (Supernatural Operations Corps) team on one side and two “selfers,” magicians who have refused to be drafted into the SOC or be confined.  By the time the good guys are on the scene, the selfers have killed a bunch of high school teachers and students.  We are then treated, mid battle, to Oscar agonizing and refusing to put down the more dangerous of the two because she’s a teenage girl.  Look, I get it, no one wants that on their conscious and yes, shooting a fifteen year old girl is different than drilling a military-age-male a new butthole where his forehead used to be, but she’s a superpowered murderer- able to kill you and who knows how many other people at this point.  Your job description as a military officer does not include the divine right to feel good about yourself and the things you have to do.  It does include choosing the least painful of terrible options.  I've little patience for people who flinch because something makes them feel icky. Do.  Your.  Effing.  Job.

Which is exactly what Harlequin does.  Oscar freaks out when Harlequin appears to kill the girl selfer (in actuality she’s put into a super-secret black ops group for probes, but we'll get to that later).  With that brutal example in mind, Oscar runs when he manifests his gating ability.  This decision is justifiable, given what he's just seen.  The book then treats us to some exciting chase sequences as Oscar accidentally summons magical beasts and murders two men in his attempts to escape Harlequin’s pursuit, all the while griping in his head about how unfair the system is.

Ironically, Oscar’s moral objections to the system are fairly well-justified when examined rationally.  In this universe Americans who manifest an authorized magical ability immediately get the choice to go-to-war-or-go-to-National Institute of Health Monitoring Facility.  Those who manifest an unauthorized ability disappear, ostensibly killed, but more often recruited into a black ops unit called Shadow Coven to do the impossible and deniable for Uncle Sam.  It’s a completely unjust system and the protagonist is correct to find it objectionable. 

The only problem is that when you look at the actual results, Harlequin, champion of the status quo and the nasty fascist overseers, actually does a hell of a lot more good than Oscar. He also seems a hell of a lot more concerned with duty, and the good of the nation than our oh-so-righteous hero.  When Oscar goes rogue after manifesting his gating ability, he ends up killing two people- yet is too busy worrying about his own situation and the horrible, unjust evil system that Harlequin props up to feel much guilt about it.  And it IS!  It really is an unjust evil system that doesn’t even give a nod to our long-held national value of individual liberty- but by the time Oscar is captured, he’s acted like such a selfish douche that he makes Harlequin look like a noble and responsible officer and, by his own actions, provided ample justification for the oppressive methods the government uses to regulate magic.

After being captured and having a bomb implanted in his heart, Oscar is coerced into the secret, publicly disavowed Shadow Coven as a contractor.  He is immediately transported via dimensional gate to a world known as "Source."  Source is populated by diminutive and often hostile creatures dubbed goblins and many other magical creatures.      

The action Oscar experiences with the SOC is plenty satisfying; raids on Apache insurgents, fighting a powerful and nasty Russian selfer in the sewers of NYC, fights with goblins on the alternate world of the source.  Unfortunately we are treated to more of Oscar’s self-centered moralizing and, as a new treat, a large dose of wishy-washy flip-flopping as Oscar begins to see the value of the SOC and enjoy his role within it, only to start agonizing again because those SOC guys are so darn mean.

Along the way we get a mixed bag of supporting characters, a de jure love interest healer, the teenage girl we thought dead from the beginning of the book ends up on Oscar’s badass Black Ops “Shadow Coven,”  alongside a nerdy necromancer, a vanilla terramancer (earth bender) who can control animals and a psychotic team leader nicknamed “Fitzy.”  Fitzy reminds us that the SOC is still baaddd no matter how many lives they save or how much it looks like de-regulating magic would be a total disaster.  His poor treatment of a friendly goblin is apparently justification enough for high treason.

I get where Mr. Cole is coming from, especially as a military officer.  No one wearing the uniform wants to look like the German Wermacht officer at Nurnberg saying, “I was just following orders.”  Questioning the wisdom and morality of our national policy is the duty of every citizen, military officers not excluded and perhaps especially emphasized (though we are, rightly, required to be more circumspect with our opinions in public forum).  But Oscar is not, at this point, a strong enough character to make rebellion seem like a viable option.  If the choice is between the unjust system that, however flawed, still works or following a moral midget like Oscar Britton, the unjust system may be the better choice.  Myke Cole makes Uncle Sam look pretty bad at points, but the folks with the stars and stripe on their shoulder still aren't the SS and given that, Oscar looks less like a principled champion of the downtrodden and more like a selfish jerk who gets a lot of people killed for his own reasons.  At the end of the day, I just can’t cheer for him.

I know the bulk of this review seems negative, but it’s mostly because of how much dissonance there is between the great story and setting and the weak protagonist. It’s actually a mark of the brilliance of the setting that I would STILL recommend this book to any fantasy reader, especially those with a military bent.  Cole, perhaps thanks in part to his experience as a hardcore D&D player, has a real and unique talent at creating “source material.”  The universe is worth the price of admission.  Despite my issues with Oscar Britton, I will be picking up the sequel and look forward to reading more of Mr. Cole’s work.  I think he’s got a great talent, he just needs to fine tune his process for flawing a character without making him unapproachable.

Minor Virtues: The fabricated quotations from various articles, books and individuals that head each chapter were well written, fun and definitely gave a tantalizing peak at a rich history behind what was happening on-screen.   The cover art.  Pretty awesome picture in a genre where the cover art often ranges from meh to ouch.

Minor Flaws:  Oscar’s initial aviation unit doesn’t seem terribly well defined and why weren’t the SOC using 160^th SOAR little birds or MH-60s instead of NJ National Guard OH-58Ds?  We don’t really use Kiowas to ferry troops into battle, we use them for reconnaissance and as light attack bird.  If putting a thermobaric hellfire onto the selfers had been an option, the Kiowa might have been a good option.   I suppose it is possible a Scout unit could get tagged for the job if every Pave Low and UH-60 in the armed forces were accounted for at the time...

In Memoriam 3:46 PM

Last Tuesday, in accordance with my mother's last request, I scattered my parents' ashes.  I found a nice little cove, one not too far away from one of the beaches my family used to play at on weekends when Dad was stationed at Fort Hood.  God provided appropriate weather effects, it was a cool gray day but the rain held until after I had scattered their ashes into the water and had a long time to pull myself together.  I was satisfied with their resting place, I hope to go back some time.

James, my older brother, called to tell me that Mom was ill, perhaps terminal, with some sort of lung infection on Easter Sunday right after my Sunday School class.  My chain of command was completely understanding, I was on a plane to Houston on Monday morning.  My brother met me at the airport and filled me in, warned me to brace myself.  The next few days were a miserable dredge, waiting on test results while my mother lay, semi-conscious with a tube down her throat to force oxygen into her remaining functional lung tissue.  We passed a few days like that with mom in a state of semi-consciousness and unable to communicate in any case due to the tube.

James and I split our time between his apartment and her hospital room.  I learned that half a fifth of Glenn Livet is effective anesthetic, but the side effects aren't worth it.  After a couple days, they managed to stabilize her enough to remove the tube from her mouth.  It was the same day her tests came back positive for cancer in her kidneys, stomach and cranium.  At that point, though, the doctors believed there might be some way to treat the infection that continually filled her lungs with fluid, then begin her cancer treatments.

She was off her tube for a couple days, I don't remember how many to be honest, because the whole miserable experience runs together in my head.  Then her O2 levels crashed and she had to be intubated again.   They discovered that her lungs were filling up not from pneumonia but from a tumor in her lungs that continued suppurating.  Since the cause was not bacterial, the antibiotics they had pumped into her system were ineffective against the lung flooding, though they were keeping sepsis and several other problems at bay.  The only possible solution to her lung fluids was an invasive surgery to cap the tumor and filter its suppuration directly out of the body through a tube rather than letting it fill the lungs.  Just the catheter from the lungs couldn't drain the stuff fast enough.  Unfortunately, Mom was nowhere stable enough to survive such a surgery.

For another day or two the doctors hemmed and hawed, describing stop gaps and temporary measures to keep her alive, but none willing to broach the real issue; how were they ever going to make her better?  Was there even the slightest chance that she could have another few years or even months or weeks of enjoyable life left?  We tried to corner them, but most of them evaded answering the question.

Finally the kidney and respiratory doctors, bless them, cut straight to the point.  Mom's full biopsies were clear, the cancer in her body was widespread and metastasized.  Even an otherwise perfectly healthy woman with that much malignant cancer couldn't expect to live more than six months tops even with radical chemotherapy.  With no way to treat the ulcer filling her lungs with fluid, Mom was never even going to get that far.  Given that her usable lung tissue was shrinking daily, it was doubtful she would ever regain consciousness.  With the drugs and technology available they could keep mom's heart beating for weeks, maybe even months, but they could never get her off that damned lung ventilator.  She would spend the remainder of her days with a tube down her throat.

Our mother and father, once James and I were each respectively old enough, had both made it abundantly clear to us their wishes in a situation such as this.  I wouldn't call it an easy decision, but it was a simple one.  James and I agreed to let her go.  We ordered the doctors to stop all treatments except the lung ventilator and pain medication on Wednesday morning.  That afternoon she died.

Much to my shame, one emotion trumped my grief and sorrow.

Relief.

For the most part my relief was for her, and it was the understandable kind.  Compared to months or years of chemo, Mom's death was quiet and dignified with minimal suffering on her part.  She didn't have to endure the agony of the cancer eating her vital organs, the less-than-pleasant side effects of radiation treatment, or the dementia that would have resulted once the cancer started destroying her brain.  She died in her sleep, surrounded by her children and friends.  I think most children would be happy their parent could have that rather than a lingering miserable end.

But that's not all of it.

To say that Mom could be difficult would be akin to saying that water can be wet.  She lived her life entirely based on her own emotional state.  Hard facts, logic, clinical research- these sorts of things had no place in her life, just her gut.  And heaven forbid you get on her bad side.  My mother could teach all the Yiddish Mamas in the world a thing or two about imparting a guilt trip.  But, for all that, I loved her.

No, the guilt comes from the fact that I know she's been miserable pretty much ever since our dad died, ten years and a little over a month ago.  The last decade has been a dreary slog through life for her, while I've been busy building; my storybook marriage, my (thus far) successful career, my wonderful family.  I'm guilty because I know that while I was busy becoming one of the happiest men on the planet, my mother was enduring, devoid of her husband, and with only James and my admittedly too infrequent phone calls and visits to anchor her here.  I'm guilty because I can't help but feel happier for her gain than I am sorry for my loss.

God has finally called my mother home to be together with my father again.  She's certainly happier now than she has been at any point since March of 2002.  Even though I know what society expects of me, I can't help but feel relieved that she's gone and happy for her that her suffering, spiritual, physical and psychological, is at an end.

Which is not to say that I'm not sad, or that I don't mourn.  But if I'm honest, I'm really mourning the woman she was ten years ago.  Cantankerous, illogical, stubborn and so full of folksy-down-home-mason-jar wisdom that it made me want to wring her neck sometimes, but also fiercely loving, fanatically supportive, loyal to a fault and alive in a way most people never are.

My mother lit up a room and commanded love and respect from people just by being herself.  She was a source of constant hilarity, some of it intentional, even.  She could talk to just about anyone and have them spilling their deepest fears and hopes in an hour. She loved so completely and unquestioningly that it felt like a force of nature.

My friend Jake who, along with Joseph Turner, was very much another brother to me and James, was able to see Mom before she died, though she was intubated and unable to speak at the time.  Listening to him talk to her cut through much of my baggage with my mother, and made me feel both better and a little jealous.

Where I had spent years worrying over my mother's time-bomb medical status (life long chain-smoker, unhappy and stressed to the gills, and eating crap food and approaching her 60s, I knew we were going to have a problem eventually), or angry at her for her really awful financial decisions, or, as aforementioned, guilty because God had given me so much and all I could give my mom was the money to keep her afloat and what love I could keep untainted by all the other crap littering our relationship, Jake remembered her as she was- an amazing, loving woman who would open her home to anyone willing to show her courtesy and respect, who loved him as one of her own sons, and who, along with my father, showed him what a stable, loving marriage looks like, and how it was possible.      

I often credit my Dad with being the good example in my life, with some reason.  Gender role models are strong, and I have both consciously and unconsciously emulated my father for as long as I can remember.  But the pain of the last ten years had cast a shadow over the not inconsiderable gifts I received from Mom, both inherent and learned.

The two of them really did show me that marriage was worth it with the right person and could be a source of happiness and strength.  I feel sorry for a lot of folks who never learned that lesson.  As little as my marriage and family with Michele resemble what I grew up with, it was from Mom, as well as Dad, that I learned how to be a husband and father.

She also taught me to speak up when something appears to be complete and utter bullshit.  Granted, this trait has gotten me into trouble nearly as often as it has come to good, but I wouldn't be who I am without it, and I'm proud of her for imparting it to me.

And she gave me passion.   Not that Dad didn't feel deeply about things, he did.  He loved his duty and family and, at least by the time I can remember, wasn't afraid to express it.  But it was Mom who gave me the irrational stubborn cussedness that has seen me through the worst of it.  It was Mom who taught me to embrace those I love wholeheartedly and show the same dogged loyalty she displayed towards us.

On the phone with my friend and comrade Kellen, I described Mom's life as a tragedy sandwich.  Her childhood was marred by violence and atrocity, so much so that both her parents were dead before her fifteenth birthday and she spent many years traveling here and there by herself  or with whatever company seemed welcoming (my mother was, in fact, a carnie for awhile).  It was only after she met my father that she established some semblance of normalcy and contentment.  Not that their marriage didn't have issues, we had plenty of bumps and apparently some of the worst happened before I was even born but, by and large, those were good years for her- for all of us.  Then, right as I left the nest, she lost her anchor, and spent this last decade getting by instead of really living- a shadow of the vibrant, formidable, amazing woman who raised me.

I feel sad that she's gone, sad that I couldn't or didn't do more to make her last years better.  But more than anything, I'm happy for her and Dad and proud of both of them.  They made mistakes, huge gaping ones, but they gave me a happy, safe and loving home for eighteen years.  In this world, that's a gift not to be underestimated.




 

The “end” of the Iraq War kind of rolled right past me. Odd, I know, since my adult life thus far has been shaped, in large part, by my participation in that war. It affected how I view the Middle East, how I view my profession, how Michele and I have grown our marriage and raised our children. Most dramatically, from a philosophical perspective, it changed how I view my own country and my duty.

I deployed to Kuwait in late February of 2006. Shortly thereafter my unit was moved from “strategic reserve” at Camp Buehring to Southern Baghdad. For the first three months it was, to tell the truth, kind of fun. It was just dangerous enough to feel like we were doing something real, but our company wasn’t taking any casualties. I’d lived in Germany and Korea, but Iraq was something new to me, dirty and dangerous as it was. Finally I wasn’t in a classroom or going through a BS FTX run by half-baked observer-controllers, many of whom hadn’t even deployed before. I was in the shit. I was going to be a genuine veteran. When my kids asked me what I did in the Army, I wasn’t going to have to say, “well, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.”

I was an odd duck in the company. I was a brand new lieutenant of Field Artillery in an Infantry company where all the other lieutenants had been working together for well over a year. They were all pretty cool about it, I wasn’t ostracized or hazed or anything. I was just new and, being a 13A with no Ranger Tab, necessarily a different breed. All the platoon leaders and the XO were good guys, but the company commander was an outstanding officer. He was an incredibly hard worker, which in and of itself isn’t that remarkable- many career officers are super-A personalities. No, what was remarkable about him was that he pushed himself and his subordinates that hard without being a douche about it. At the time it impressed me, after experience with God-only-knows-how-many superiors in the intervening years, it now astounds me. In the short months I served under the man, I received just one ass-chewing. The Commander explained my shortcomings in performance in such a calm, professional and meticulous manner that when he was done I knew damn well that I had thoroughly deserved it.

Sadly, I never really got the chance to act on his corrections. A few days after that uncomfortable conversation we were riding back to the FOB from a council meeting when an EFP ripped our M1114 Humvee apart like a beer can. The driver and I were blown clear and wounded, me badly but not catastrophically, the driver was in much worse shape but he lived and recovered. The Commander and his gunner were killed instantly. The medics, with help from the infantrymen and God, stabilized both of us, got us on a MEDEVAC bird and my war was over. I was to go back to Iraq for another fifteen months in 2008-2009, but it was that moment in Southern Baghdad and the weeks in the hospital that followed that changed something in me.

While I was in Iraq I hadn’t worried about public opinion regarding the war. I was too preoccupied with the excitement and trepidation of finally being “at war,” and with the challenge of learning a job for which I had received almost no training. Oh, the Army trained me to be a Fire Support Officer, I could’ve integrated howitzers, mortars, attack helicopters and fixed wing close air support into the Commander’s scheme of maneuver all day long, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea then what Information Operations, PSYOP, Civil Affairs and the like were supposed to accomplish. So the protests, the recriminations, the divisions that we’re occurring back home meant little to me while I had a job to do in Baghdad.

They meant nothing to me, actually, until I found myself flat on my back in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center watching the news. Watching the protests, hearing that treasonous sack of shit Michael Moore call Al Qaeda in Iraq and Jaysh Al Mahdi, “the minutemen,” filled me with rage. Seething, poisonous rage. The 76% had sent us to war in 2003, and when things got complex, got bloody, got ambiguous, suddenly they showed up in droves to protest, comparing President Bush to Hitler, droning on about US war crimes etc, etc. I saw idiot college kids re-hash all the crap their draft dodging cowardly excuses for progenitors had taught them. All that was bad enough, but I actually found something that started pissing me off even more. It was just one phrase, bandied about by, I believe, the majority of the protest movement:

“I support the troops but not the war.”

I understand the good intention behind this statement, and five years hence, I’m a bit more rational about the whole matter. But that sentence, intended to allow civilians to advocate America’s surrender in Iraq while simultaneously assuaging their consciences that they weren’t stabbing the military in the back the way their worthless forefathers did during the Vietnam War, still gives me heartburn. My not so humble opinion is that once you’ve paid in blood, there are no refunds. I can’t make Specialist Blair or Captain Dicenzo or any of the other thousands of Americans killed un-die. I can’t re-grow the limbs or even stop the nightmares of those who’ve survived catastrophes far worse than what I’ve been through. So what’s the only thing to do with so much death and suffering? For FUCK’S SAKE YOU MAKE IT MEAN SOMETHING.

Protesters, pretending to be “supportive” of me, were trying to render my comrades’ deaths meaningless by conceding victory to a bunch of raggedy ass insurgents. It doesn’t matter that there were or weren’t nukes at that point. It doesn’t matter that the whole venture was a genuinely stupid idea. Once you’ve paid in American lives, you HAVE to secure a victory, otherwise you piss on the graves of those who laid down their lives in the defense of the Republic. The time to protest the war is before the first shot is fired, not while your own men and women are struggling to win it.

With the full benefit of hindsight, I freely admit that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq when we did. We were already committed in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea were clearly bigger threats, and our Army was NOT in proper shape to occupy (yes, occupy, let’s not mince words) a country of 30 million people. We did it anyway, but it was an unreasonable mission, and the Sec Def and Commander in Chief were irresponsible to commit us to that mission without first building our ground forces to a size commensurate with the mission. I wish it hadn’t happened but it did, and now, for the moment, it appears to be over.

So how do I feel about it?

To quote one of my favorite fictional Jews; “I’ll tell you- I don’t know.”

Despite all the divisions and recriminations surrounding the war, all the fumbles by leaders at all ranks both civilian and military, we did one hell of a job in Iraq. We stomped a multi-headed insurgency into the ground. We established, however briefly, a modicum of peace after seven years of war. And we did eliminate a family of murderous rapine lunatics that ruled absolutely over 30 million people.

On the other hand, Iraq looks about as stable as a house of cards constructed by an alcoholic with palsy once we leave. Sectarian violence simmers under the surface. There doesn’t seem to be a leader who can breach the gap between the various factions. Perhaps the last ten years have made me a pessimist, but it’s hard to believe that the current Iraqi regime will long survive without direct US military support.

I don’t know which idea depresses me more, the idea that the current Iraqi government will collapse and those who put their money on us pay a horrifying price in lives due to their “collaboration” with us, or the idea that we’re heralding the withdrawal of combat forces only to have to re invade the country two, or five, or ten years down the road. I’m not ashamed to admit that I hope it’s over. I’ve had enough of Iraq. After one very short and one very long tour I’ve no desire to ever lay eyes on that place again.

But I’ve watched the footage of Vietnamese in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) clinging to the skids of our UH-1s in 1975, and even though that war was over before I was even born, I burn with the shame of it. Will we do the same thing in Iraq? Abandon those who believed in us because it’s the easiest option? You know that’s part of the reason we’re fighting in Afghanistan still- we abandoned those we had supported during the Soviet War and, surprise, they were overpowered by those more ruthless and even less interested in anything we would recognize as civilized behavior. It’s not all pie-in-the-sky idealism when I talk about living up to our moral commitments as a nation. Inevitably you do reap what you sow.

So I can’t really celebrate. I want the war over more than any Berkley educated surrender monkey could ever dream, but I can’t escape the conclusion that either it isn’t really over, or we’re about to suffer yet another blot on our national honor which will take years to fade. God, I hope I’m wrong.

Justin's Fantasy Presidential Election 11:58 AM

Of course I cannot voice criticism or support of any Presidential candidate, but I will say that I've never exactly jumped for joy at the prospect of any of the presidential candidates in my lifetime. I was considering this while watching season five of Babylon 5. For those of you who don't know, or don't remember, that's the last season when John Sheridan (formerly commanding officer of B5) is president of the Interstellar Alliance. Naturally, I had the same thought any giant nerd would have: Why can't I have somebody like John Sheridan for my president?

John J. "Nuke 'em" Sheridan, hero of the Shadow War and President of the Interstellar Alliance, circa 2262

And then I thought; Wait, why not Laura Roslin?!

Laura Roslin, President of the 12 Colonies of Kobol and the woman who helped define "Hot Librarian."

Thus was born; Justin's Fantasy Presidential Election 2016!

That's right ladies and gents, It's John Sheridan, Hero of the Shadow War and the man who, by himself, has used more nukes in his ficitional career than any country has in reality, versus Laura Roslin, the Dying Leader who saved the human race from the Cylon nuclear holocaust and led them to Earth.

So let's break it down by category:

FISCAL POLICY: Granted Space Opera as a genre doesn't spend a ton of time on macro-economics, but we'll extrapolate from what we know:

John Sheridan: as the President of the Interstellar Alliance has to finance the Rangers (the Anlishak, not our Rangers) presumably from funds garnered from a dozen different alien governments (though Earth and Minbar probably front the lion's share). Also Sheridan has access to Michael Garibaldi, after 2262, the head of Edgars Industries and thus one of the Captains of Interstellar Industry. It's not much that we know, but what we know is tentatively positive.

Granted, the Occupy Wall Street crowd probably won't be too happy with his choice of contractors...

Laura Roslin: this may be Laura Roslin's weakest arena. Given the precarious and entirely space-bound nature of Colonial Society after the Fall, what we have in the Fleet is one of the most tightly controlled command economies (outside of the black market) depicted in any work of fiction (at least as "good guys"). This is not to criticize Ms. Roslin, given the situation it was probably the only rational set up available to those who survived, but let's face it, it's hardly the same as presiding over the economy of a free country NOT under the constant threat of genocide.

Okay, guys, I get it, working in the Tillium Refinery Ship sucks, but could you please wait until we're not all facing extinction before you go all Caesar Chavez on us...

Winner: Sheridan.

SOCIAL POLICY: As a min-archist, I tend to think the President really shouldn't have a social policy, per se, as most things falling under “social policy” are matters to be determined by private citizens, but for the sake of argument, let's look at how our candidates line up.

Roslin: Though Roslin is clearly the more liberal of the two candidates at heart, it's in the social arena where Laura Roslin has shown the most pragmatism; outlawing abortion in order to try and boost the population of the dwindling human race. Then again, it is also in the social arena that Laura Roslin has shown her most despotic tendencies; attempting to restrict the Cult of Baltar's right to peaceful assembly because of her fear of Baltar's growing popularity and her own personal hatred of the man.

Caprica Six? Check. Starbuck? Check. D'anna Biers? Check. Tori? Check. Hmm, guess I better start working my way through the extras.

Sheridan: This is the area where Sheridan comes across as a little Pawlenty- that is to say, there ain't much to say. True, Sheridan did support the establishment of a telepath colony on Babylon 5, marking himself as a proponent of minority civil rights, but when the going got tough, Sheridan handed their collective asses over to Psi-Corp, the Gestapo SS of telepaths. Not exactly an Abraham Lincoln moment.

Okay, I probably would have handed this pretentious hippie douche over to Bester five seconds after he showed up anyway...

Winner: Neither is an unmitigated success, but I'll give this one to Ms. Roslin. Her resolve is admirable, even if I don't always agree with her conclusions.

DEFENSE: The issue nearest and dearest to my heart for the tie breaker. This one's tough to call, as both candidates are probably at their strongest here. Let's see how they stack up.

Sheridan: Holder of the Earth Force Silver Star, the only human commander to destroy a Minbari cruiser without sacrificing himself and his ship in the process, the victorious supreme commander in war against not one, but THREE alien races billions of years more advanced than ourselves. Did I mention he's used nukes on FOUR seperate occasions, which is DOUBLE the real world historical number of two? Sheridan is unquestionably one of the finest military minds in his universe.

And I almost forgot to mention, when he defeated the Third Space Aliens, he rode a FREAKING NUKE in his space suit through the middle of the battle- and lived.

Roslin: Ms. Roslin started out a little rocky here, making some questionable early decisions, like refusing to cut losses when the civilian fleet was defenseless and under imminent threat of destruction. However, Roslin showed good judgment and an impressive ability to put aside personal feelings in empowering Commander Adama as military commander of the Fleet (though this relationship would have some serious bumps in its first year). Additionally, President Roslin showed the grit necessary to handle a clandestine enemy in her approach to the Cylon threat. My personal favorite is the occasion when she upbraids Starbuck for using, uh, “enhanced interrogation” on a Cylon skin job, then shoves the skin-job in question out an airlock when she doesn't like his answers to her own questions. Her hard nosed pragmatism allows the ragged colonials to survive when all by rights they shouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell.

And Starbuck is the good cop in this one...

Winner: This is a tough one, but I'm going to say Roslin. Let's face it, in today's environment, we don't need Julius Caesar or Patton in the White House. We need a President who can straddle a very fine line between maintaining the core principles of the Republic, while playing rough enough to thwart an enemy with no moral boundaries of their own. If we were still staring at the Soviet Hordes over the Fulda Gap, I'd probably give the nod to Sheridan, but the fact is he's too idealistic to deal with monsters like Osama bin Laden.

Frak waterboarding, eat vacumn terrorist scum!!

So what do you think? The war hero turned messianic leader of a vast interstellar alliance? Or the school teacher who rose to shepherd the broken remnants of the human race to the promised land?

It's been awhile, short version: went to Afghanistan, had another daughter, came home, waiting on command, trying to get back into writing science fiction and fantasy. Living in absolute paradise with my wife and children.

I've been monkeying with story ideas ever since the last couple months of the deployment and I've been fiddling with some outlining and such since I've been home, but something happened the other day that really kicked me in the ass.

There's a guy named Brad Torgeresen who has his novella on the cover of the latest Analog. Analog, for those not in the know, is one of two actual dead-tree magazines printing science fiction (the other being Asimov's). Analog, Asimov's and their electronic counterparts are heir to the tradition of the original sci-fi pulp magazines that first published guys named Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov and Sturgeon.

The name Brad Torgeresen hit me like a small electric shock. You see, about three years ago I was taking a halfhearted swing at getting a couple of shorts published. There was an online sci-fi magazine called Baen's Universe (now defunct) that allowed anybody, pro or amateur, to electronically submit their stories directly into a slushpile. There, the magazine editors and aspiring authors alike would be able to offer constructive criticism and the story would be considered for publication.

One of the other fledgling half-baked proto-writers with whom I had a fair bit of discussion was... Brad Torgeresen. Three years ago, he was exactly where I was; trying to break into the business. Now he's an established pro. He's won some reasonably prestigious awards, published multiple short stories and novellas and I'm sure I'll be seeing a novel from him soon enough. One of his award winning novelettes is available by itself from Analog via Kindle- I remember reading a draft of it in the old Baen's Universe Slush Pile before that magazine went under.

Three thoughts zipped through my mind, upon seeing his name on the cover of Analog- 1) Good for him. 2) It CAN be done. 3) Get of your ass and start writing, Watson. Seriously, three years ago, you two were in the same place, now he's made it and you haven't.

Okay, sure, I've had a bit going on. There was a trip to Iraq in there, and another to Afghanistan. I have two wonderful daughters and the best wife on the face of the planet, all of whom require a fair deal of attention. But the truth is that neither my family nor my career are really what stopped me from getting published. The real root is that in three years, I don't even have a rejection notice to show for my efforts, and given my writing process, it's not that hard to see why.

Instead of sitting down, outlining, writing, revising and then submitting my work to the appropriate market, my process looks more like this: Sit down, outline... outline some more, okay, maybe write a bit, crap, this sucks, never mind. Knuckle down, come back to it. Well, now I'd rather write a swashbuckling sword and sorcery story rather than a police procedural set in a future colony on Mars. Okay, let's try that then, outline... outline some more... quit color coding elements of your venue in the story... dammit, stop ripping off Weis and Hickman in general... no there isn't room for ninjas in this one either(thanks for that honey, :), okay, write for a bit, oh crap, this sucks too. You know what, I think I'd rather write some classic Space Opera anyway...

And what bruises my ego the worst, I think, is that I know I'm hardly the only person with a creative impulse that suffers pretty much this exact same neurosis. I don't even get to be unique and special in my angst and suffering. I might as well dye my hair black and start cutting myself. Blech,

Well, I have decided to start getting some rejections under my belt. The average length the magazines want for a short is 6,000 words. That takes me about three to four hours to write, once I know what I want to say. The trick is in working and re-working it into something I can sell. To keep the goal modest and realistic, I'm going to commit myself to submitting one short story per month. My first deadline is November 30th, that way I can get in a submission for the quarterly Writers of the Future Contest.

I will keep ya'll updated with the submissions, the rejections, and (eventually) the sales. Wish me luck.

Wherein Justin Forgoes an Emotional Monologue on Returning from the War and Instead Dorks Out on Something Really Random 1:48 PM

For coverage of the wonderfulness of being home from Iraq and associated topics, see our affiliate blog at thetomatobear.blogspot.com. It isn't that I am the slightest bit less overjoyed at being home than my wife, it's just that she's already said all the fuzzy emotional stuff I feel; leaving me free to dork the hell out on my blog :)

Speaking of dorking the hell out I would like to discuss a topic which is of great concern to the nerd population of America. That topic is Star Wars. Now, those of you less familiar with Nerddom and its various sub-fiefs may ask, "you like Star Wars, what's the problem?" Those of you with a passing knowledge might say; "Justin, Revenge of the Sith came out four years ago, quit whining about how much the prequels sucked and move on with your life you pathetic refugee from a Star Trek Convention." While the prequels did suck ,"JAR-JAR MUST DIE!!! AND HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN IS THE ANTI-CHRIST OF SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA!!!!" That's not actually what I'm here to talk about today. I'm here to talk about the Expanded Universe of Star Wars, and its bearing on what Michele and I have dubbed the, "going back to the well" problem.

Even most Star Wars fans stay within the Holy Writ Canon of the movies, either sticking with the dated but wonderful original trilogy or, in fact, embracing the new, shiny, poorly written, soul-less on-screen abortions of the prequels which all REAL fans see as a George Lucas giving anyone with multiple digits in their IQ the finger... oh wait, I'm not bitching about the prequels, sorry, forgot for a second. (but the Gungans ARE racist. They're like amphibious Jim Crowe's)

The point is that a wide and deep well of Star Wars fictions exists outside the six movies, and no I'm not talking about the Ewok movies that aired on the Disney Channel. The three mediums most common to Expanded Universe Star Wars Material are novels, comic books and video games. Now, one would naturally jump to the entirely logical conclusion that these products would be varying degrees of mind numbingly awful, being an OBVIOUS attempt by LucasFilm to cash in on the success of the film franchise. In many cases they are... BUT.

But then there are novels that have tightly woven plots, three dimensional characters, even explanations for some of Lucas's inexcusably sloppy plotting from the DREADFUL prequels. I was confused upon reading some of the novels because I realized that, from a purely artistic perspective, some of the stories were actually better than my beloved original trilogy because the same unbelivably neat concepts, the Force, Lightsabers, High Space Opera, were in the hands of a writer with some freaking talent. Now, don't get me wrong, there's a LOT of crap in the field, just as you would expect, but the best of the novels and comics are quality enough that I would rate them as solid Second Tier fiction; not terribly meaningful ala BSG, Heinlein, LOTR, CS Lewis, etc etc, but DEFINITELY entertaining.

Ironically, the best example of Expanded Universe Star Wars fiction I have seen, the one that almost moved from second to first tier, was not in novel, or even comic book format, but in a video game. The game Knights of the Old Republic has an outstanding story, and some real choices; what romantic relationships to pursue, what characters and sub-plots to explore and, ultimately whether to be a bright shiny Jedi Knight or to fall from grace and become a Dark Lord of the Sith.

Being a Nerd of the First Order, I have spent much time considering what made Knights of the Old Republic so fascinating to me. Believe it or not it actually takes a lot for a video game to catch my interest at all, as my wife will attest, and Knights is the only video game in the last ten years of my life that I have spent an entire day, from dawn until nightfall, playing. Even the joy of massacring terrorists in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare only held my interest for three to four hours at a time :)

Some of the success is in the format; video game RPG's really do give you a choose your own adventure feel and the particapatory nature pluses up some pretty decent writing. But the one thing that finally floated to the top from a purely fictional stand point is that Knights of the Old Republic is its own story, set within the Star Wars Universe. As good as some of the SW novelists are, they are essentially writing prequels and sequels to another man's story. Say the equivalent of a really talented writer writing Harry Potter 8. Sure, they might do as good a job as possible, but, really, they're isn't any need for a Harry Potter 8.

Which brings me back to the "Going Back to the Well" paradox. Michele and I read a lot of the same stuff (including the magnificently wonderful Harry Potter novels) and I'm prone to want more whereas she is prone to say, "enough is enough." I have lightly suggested that in order to wash out the taste of those GODAWFUL prequels (DEATH TO JAR JAR, MIDI-CHLORIANS DO NOT EXIST) she might read some of the Expanded Universe novels that, while not high literature, are FAR superior to ANY Star Wars property produced on the screen past 1984. She has politely declined due to the aforementioned sentiment encapsulated in the Harry Potter 8 analogy. There are three good Star Wars movies, why muck with it any more?

But the one day I was playing Knights of the Old Republic and found that Michele was watching the game like a movie. The reason? It was Star Wars, but not really, because it wasn't Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia, it wasn't even their descendants or ancestors, the game was set several thousand years before the movies, so it was, well and truly, a completely different story.

Therein, I think, lies the secret behind the dangerous practice of going back to the well. Sure, some fictional universes are so damn cool that they demand more material, but we don't need books about Harry Potter's career as an Auror, or even books about Albus Severus, James and Lilly Potter, and Rose and Hugo Weasely (yes, I'm THAT big of a nerd that I DIDN'T have to look up the names). What might be cool though, is reading about the struggle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald. Why that and not Hogwarts: The Next Generation? Because it's unrelated, you'd have ONE character for tie-in and that's it. Voldermort and all of his Death Eaters haven't even been born yet, you could use the universe to tell an ORIGINAL story that wasn't just new wrapping paper on an old plot. Not that I'm dying for another Harry Potter book, and NO ONE but JK Rowling should be allowed within a thousand miles of that franchise, but if there were to be more material, I think it's vital to break away in time and casting from the original material in order to find another story in a big universe.

More on this later.