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  The idea is neat enough and some of the historical references give you that warm and fuzzy I’m-so-smart feeling when you figure out what the magical artifact is right before they reveal it on the show.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.