Views from Medina Road

Briefly–

Michael Swanwick’s Dancing with Bears – A very rich stew, and complex, with the point of view bouncing between half a dozen or so separate characters or situations, sometimes all within a single chapter. Thinking of the many Darger and Surplus short stories, this book is rather like a TV franchise given a movie budget, and so obliged to be really really big, in a way no individual short story was – here we have renegade AIs trying to bring the destruction of the world in their hatred of humanity, in addition to D&S’s scheme involving 7 virgins intended for the Duke of Moscovy. Still, fabulous writing, a joy to read, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph.

Jack McDevitt’s Firebird – McDevitt is a slightly guilty pleasure for me; I’m compelled to read his books, even though his 10,000-year hence future is by no means visionary, in any singularity sense; it depicts sophisticated folks on faraway planets living in nice homes, dining in restaurants, attending seminars, much like anyone in the current 1%; yet also having easy access to FTL flights to nearby and faraway planets and systems. And yet – this is hard SF, in a space opera hard SF sense, meaning that given established rules about how FTL travel works, the novel establishes a mystery about certain disappearing ships that is resolved in a brilliant and moving fashion.

Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch – Surprisingly not dissimilar to Harry Potter, but with a third world setting and culture, more colorful set pieces, and higher stakes.

More comments on recently-read books, by Goldstein, Wolfe, Joyce, Cline, Wilson, Haldeman, Gibson, McDonald, and Scalzi, in the next couple days.

I could not figure out why the sidebar column of cover images was appearing only on the main page of this blog, but not the individual post pages.

I hadn’t meddled with the WordPress settings for a while – and I suspect in the interim, the theme I’d been using, now mysteriously called ‘Unnamed Lite’, had been revised. Some conflict between widgets was interfering with one of the two sidebars. Simplest solution, just install another two-sidebar theme. This one is called Coraline. I edited out the php to display the background image, and hardcoded a display of my preferred image… Now I can update the cover images roll.

Too many things going on recently to have had time to update the blog. But briefly–

Have not followed up on those tickets, beyond what I reported earlier.

Latest development on the website is that I’ve set up, just today, a WordPress blog for the Magazine pages — i.e., the monthly table of contents, Locus bestsellers, and New & Notable books. So now, every post I do (posted in the middle column of the website homepage) will be part of the RSS feed for the site.

I *have* read a few books lately, and my next step will be to update the book images in the right pane — now a year out of date — to indicate those books I’ve read lately.

I’ve also seen a few films this month, of which I will mention, again briefly–

J. Edgar: had its moments. DiCaprio is very good; he disappears into his role. Armie Hammer, less so; I wasn’t convinced by his attitude, for the time, or by his old age makeup, which was terrible.

Source Code (saw on DVD): technically impressive, Jake Gyllenhaal very good, as is Vera Farmiga. But the premise undercuts itself at the end, tries to have it both ways. Is it virtual reality, or multiple worlds?

The Descendants: marvelous and moving. Maybe my favorite of the year. Only a tiny bit in part because I happened to visit the north coast of Kauai about a year ago, and so recognized and empathized with those settings and local attitudes. Clooney really is terrific.

Hugo: marvelous and thrilling. I’d read the book, knew where the film was going and — perhaps because of this, because seeing something you’ve read and internalized and now see in a shared reality — made it all the more satisfying.

The Artist: pleasantly amusing, a treat for films buffs who know movie history. The Arclight theatre in Hollywood where we saw this had displays of the costumes from this movie. I noticed the heavy lifting of Bernard Hermann’s Vertigo score near the end, apparently subject of minor controversy.

The Adjustment Bureau (again on DVD): Matt Damon — like Jake Gyllenhaal, and Leonardo DiCaprio actually — is a really good actor. The film is well-made, if not rigorous in its deployment of the premise. The ending is too easy — OK, no problem, you’re good!

Shame: yes, Michael Fassbender is amazing. There are beautiful, and excruciating, scenes here. Does Fassbender’s character reform at the end? Or is he doomed to a lifetime of compulsive behavior, the way alcoholics never entirely recover, only momentarily suspended by a feeling of shame? My partner and I debated this after seeing it.

A Dangerous Method: Michael Fassbender again, in an intellectual, play-based, story about Freud and Jung and their common patient. Fascinating and engaging. Could have been longer.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol: spectacular, and much more true to the original TV series — in the opening music, the setup, the tricky plot — than the earlier MI films that I saw (though I’m not sure I saw beyond the 1st one). I read newspaper articles describing how Tom Cruise *really did* do those stunts on the outside of that building in Dubai… but as I watched the film, I couldn’t quite believe that most of the scenes were not done on a soundstage somewhere… In any event, the set pieces in the film were spectacular, the plot elements satisfying closed. Highly recommended.

Finally — not as a Christmas present, but coincidentally received this past week, I have acquired an iPhone. I feel like I’ve been abruptly booted ten years into the future; though in reality, I realize I’ve been languishing in the past, while the world has moved on without me, for ten years, and now I’ve caught up. [Edit -- well, 5 years; the first iPhone was released mid-2007. Still, it seems longer.] Lots of fun; very cool. A mini 2001 obelisk in my pocket.

(Updated 22 Dec 11 — see footnote*)

Consumer Alert — for whatever good it will do, which may not be much.

About three weeks ago I decided to order tickets for a Christmas concert by Chanticleer — a 12-member, all male, a capella, choral group — at Walt Disney Hall in downtown Los Angeles. I went* to the LA Philharmonic at Walt Disney Hall website, found the concert date, reviewed available ticket prices, and selected two $75 tickets, in a section on one side of the stage (the hall has seating on all sides, including behind the stage). I clicked purchase, was advised that the total with taxes etc. would be $191, and clicked accept.

A few days later I got an email from Song Ticketing [songticketing@gmail.com] advising me that their databases had not been updated, and the section where I’d ordered tickets was sold out. They could provide alternate seating for the same price in another section. OK… I replied that I would accept the alternative.

I received, by Federal Express, two paper tickets. (You’d think they could have sent electronic documents that I could have printed out, but no, I had to sign a FedEx note to have the two pieces of paper delivered to a neighbor, since I’m not at home during the workday.)

It turned out the tickets they supplied were two $30 tickets in a section behind the stage.

I confirmed, when we attended the concert on the 15th, that the tickets were worth $30 each.

We were behind the stage — in only the 3rd row back, but looking at the backs the performers, for most of the concert. (It was nice that a few of the singers thought to turn around and look behind them, to acknowledge the applause from back there.)

After which, I replied to ‘Song Ticketing’ that I thought some refund was due.

They replied that they are a broker, of some sort, and have the right to sell any ticket at any price, above or below the nominal price, depending on consumer demand, and this is explained in the fine print on their website.

Now, I had ordered the tickets from the LA Philharmonic website, which does indicate an affiliation with Ticketmaster. And in fact, the paper tickets I received by FedEx said ‘Ticketmaster’ at the top. But no connection with ‘Song Ticketing’ was suggested. I never had reason to go to the Song Ticketing website, much less examine their fine print.

I did quick Google search and discovered Song Ticketing @ Pissed Consumer, which has many stories similar to mine.

Point of fact, the hall was not full. If it was sold out, there must have been 20% no-shows, in the orchestra section in front of the stage, and on the sides, where I’d tried to order tickets. Song Ticketing’s response might have been plausible had those sections actually been full.

So it strikes me as unethical, if not fraud, for Song Ticketing to supply cheap tickets in response to an order for expensive tickets, and claim this is OK because of fine print on some website I never had any reason to visit. I doubt any Song Ticketing employee would be happy if, say, they arranged a car loan for an expensive car and got delivered a cheaper car, with an email pointing out some excuse in the fine print on some website.

I replied to Song Ticketing and told them so, and Happy Holidays for your dicey ethics.

No reply.

Bottom line: I was charged $191, and got two $30 tickets.

Not sure how I could prevent this in the future. I sent a complaint to the LA Philharmonic website, and they responded that they had no affiliation with Song Ticketing.

I suppose I will never order tickets this way again. I suppose if I did try to order individual tickets like this again, I would be very aware – beware – of any contact with Song Ticketing, and try to divert their interference with a response to the original order.

However I did like the concert, and am pleased to recommend Chanticleer for any of your holiday, or male vocal, music needs. (I especially admired Matthew Knickman.) Amazon has complete collection.

* Upon investigation, trying to reproduce the Google search I used when I bought tickets in the first place (I’d set the browser to keep only 7 days of history), it seems I did *not* land on the actual LA Phil website. The Google search results showed “disneyhall.boxofficelosangeles.com” at the very top — but it’s a paid ad, which I hadn’t noticed, and I must have used that to order tickets. It’s “powered by SecureBoxOffice.com”, who sent me an email receipt when I did the initial purchase. Oddly, that result appeared at the top of my search results on one PC, but at the bottom on another, though I don’t recall ever editing Google search options in any fashion on either PC.

Anyway, LA Phil is not implicated.

***Further update 22 Dec 11 evening*** — I noticed this evening that the tickets I received — delivered, inconveniently, as two pieces of paper, by FedEx (I had to sign to have them delivered to a neighbor, since I’m at work during the FedEx delivery day) — do in fact say “ticketmaster” across the top. This confirmed my earlier conviction that I’d ordered through LA Phil/Ticketmaster. Reconsidering, it seems that I must have ordered through disneyhall.boxofficelosangeles.com, which was a front for SecureBoxOffice.com, which in turn must have ordered tickets — two $30 tickets — through Ticketmaster, and passed them off to me in exchange for my $191 credit card charge. The tickets even say “purchased by AILEEN CAMPBELL”. Who would she be, I wonder? I will follow up with them tomorrow…

The maze of the Town & Country Resort became rather charming after two or three days; lots of byways to explore, lots of private places to hang out; lots of gathering places to check out.

On Friday morning I attended the Locus Foundation Board Meeting, which discussed many urgent and/or timely topics, though none of which concerned me or the website directly, at least not right away.

The spread of the resort had its downside; the feeling of a certain lack of focus, some attendees complaining how hard it was to track down folk who they knew were there (just like a Worldcon!)

I attended quite a few panels: on evil characters; on The Odyssey; on the sea — the con’s theme was “Sailing the Seas of Imagination” — this panel’s premise being, is the sea to fantasy as space is to SF? With many fascinating pro and con perspectives from David Brin, Michael Cassutt, David D. Levine, Rachel Swirsky, and Courtney Schafer. The most attended was probably the Connie and Neil show, with Connie Willis and Neil Gaiman chatting before an audience of 500 and asking each other the questions that usually they do not tolerate being asked from fans — beginning with, ‘Where do you get your ideas?’.

Saturday: A Founders of Steampunk panel, with KW Jeter, Jim Blaylock, and Tim Powers, revealing their secrets, such as a comprehensive nonfiction guide to London by one Henry Mayhew that provided them all with grist for stories and novels, and the fact that, indirectly, Roger Elwood’s request for 10 novels about King Arthur throughout the ages triggered some of the earliest steampunk novels — of which, Jeter’s INFERNAL DEVICES and Blaylock’s HOMUNCULUS are still considered the two core texts.

Also: the requisite “Year in Fantasy” panel, with Jonathan Strahan, Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, David G. Hartwell, and Jo Fletcher. THE HEROES; AMONG OTHERS; AKITA WITCH; THE SILENT LAND; [they were mixing late 2010 with early 2011 titles]; Tananarive Due, LIsa Goldstein, LOW TOWN; Steven Erikson; of course SNUFF and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS; collections by Beagle and Ryman and Powers and Kiernan and Lanagan and McHugh and Dozois; and they kept reading titles until the hour ended and the next panel’s participants pushed them out.

At the art show I bid — something I rarely do — on three works by a graphic artist named Carolyn Nicita and won two of them — the best piece having been outbid me by a member of the art show committee who’d been there to top mine as the bidding closed Saturday evening, while I was away at dinner…

The awards banquet today featured mediocre food but a relatively sparkling awards event, even though only one of the winners, and one of the lifetime achievement winners, was in attendance. Connie Willis was toastmaster, and spoke on the theme of asking con official David G. Hartwell what she should speak about and for how long — exploring various suggestions, continually returning to her fascination with the UK TV series Primeval and avoiding award show fails (like the very recent National Book Awards clusterfuck — her term), high seas Titanic anecdotes, and guest of honor revelations.. It went on far longer than her stated time-limit of 5-7 minutes, but of course no one minded; it was hilarious. I sat at a table with Scott Edelman, who recorded the whole thing and should be providing a link to a YouTube video shortly.

The weather was spectacular, sunny and in the low 80s F, with several comments about the poor folks back east or in Denver who were suffering snow.

The drive home was slower than the drive down on Thursday…

I sat home this morning, finishing a periodicals post, and watching the online traffic maps, until the route seemed clear for an unencumbered drive, which as I expected didn’t appear until somewhat after noon; the difficulty is driving through the vast expanse of LA city, on I405 or I5, which experience rush hour traffic slowdowns much of the morning and then again in the afternoon beginning by 4pm or so. The best case from my area in northwest LA, through the city to San Diego, is two hours; today it took about two hours 15 minutes, what with traffic slowdowns over the Sepulveda pass and then again entering SD on the 805..

The Town and Country resort, site of this year’s convention, is a maze of hotel structures, cabanas, pools, parking structures, and alleyways, which requires the handy map they give you at check-in to navigate. I parked my car and checked in, wandered over to registration, found the dealers room, and oriented myself just in time to attend the opening ceremonies, conducted by Toastmaster [not mistress] Connie Willis, who introduced the several guests of honor — Parke Godwin, Sheila McCarthy, artist Ruth Sanderson, and last but not least, that promising upcoming young writer by the name of, what was it, oh, Neil Gaiman…. who all stood up for brief, or very brief, words of acknowledgement….

After which was a presentation, which I ducked into and out of over the course of an hour plus, by the San Diego Zoo, that prominent local attraction, with two or three zoo officials not just promoting their site, but displaying *live animals* for the edification of the audience — including an armadillo, an owl, an anteater, and a porcupine, of those I saw…

Later I hooked up with the Locus worker-bees and contributors — Kirsten and her daughter Teddy, Beth Gwinn, Fran, and Karen Burnham + Curtis + 2-month-old-baby-boy Gavin — for dinner in one of the onsite restaurants. Then back to my room to check email and plan tomorrow’s post — Lois Tilton’s latest column, which you’ll see tomorrow morning.

Today’s travel music: Peter Gabriel’s New Blood CD, with impressive, substantially different versions (orchestral) of many of his best songs from “Rhythm of the Heat” to “Mercy Street”; REM’s latest album, which continues to grow on me; and the new Coldplay, which hasn’t, yet.

I’ll be driving down to San Diego tomorrow afternoon to attend World Fantasy Con, a somewhat foreshortened trip, arriving late, leaving early (Sunday after the banquet), compared to last year’s trip to Columbus OH, mostly due to dayjob work priorities. (And I’m taking my work laptop with me to check in and keep up.) I’ll be attending a Locus Foundation meeting Friday morning, but otherwise … my schedule is completely open.

Beth Gwinn stopped by last week and has stayed with us on and off, with a weekend interlude to Sacramento to visit relatives; she left today for San Diego.

I have a telescope on my balcony and we’ve been watching Jupiter’s moons for a couple weeks now. Their positions change noticeably after only an hour or two. Tonight: three on the right, spread out; one on the left, close.

A couple plugs: liked The Ides of March. Also liked, guardedly, Drive, which I would have liked better had there been fewer abrupt, violent scenes, along the lines of such scenes in the Godfather movies. Like the soundtrack though – by Cliff Martinez, who also just did Contagion.

Also, in the art-house department: a de facto gay film called Weekend, which effectively shows how quickly, vibrantly, yet sadly, a chance hookup can lead to a weekend romance that leads to an inevitable breakup due to circumstances. I always read closing credits, and from this film discovered a singer named John Grant — not the SF writer — whose album Queen of Denmark is quite nice, with a curious song about Sigourney Weaver and a lovely earworm song called “Where Dreams Go To Die”.

Somehow I seem to be seeing more movies lately than reading books. This was never my intention. I did recently finish a nonfiction by Jesse Bering and am part way through the new Richard Dawkins; will report on them soon.

I’ve written, indulgently, about R.E.M. before, so instead of doing that again I’ll just list some of my favorite songs and lyrics… not quite in chronological order; with my favorites being toward the end.

Fall on Me
    a way to talk around the problem

Texarkana
    twenty thousand miles to an oasis

Orange Crush
    we are agents of the free

I Remember California
    at the edge of the continent

E-Bow the Letter
    aluminum, tastes like fear

Losing My Religion
    that was just a dream

Sweetness Follows
    it’s these little things, they can pull you under

Eleventh Track
    hold him, and keep him strong

Leaving New York
    it’s easier to leave than to be left behind

Saturn Return
    you climb into your rocketship

Fretless
    don’t talk to me about being alone

Walk Unafraid
    i’ll be clumsy instead

Bang and Blame
    you let go on me

Diminished
    does she know i sing?

The Lifting
    once you had a dream of oceans and sunken cities

Leave
    to leave it, believe it, leave it all behind

Find the River
    all of this is coming your way

Amazon.com has re-instated its California affiliates, as of a week ago. Thank you very much. Purchases through links to Amazon.com from Locus Online again credit me with a small commission. I use these accumulated credits mostly to buy books to list and profile on the site — since, unlike Locus Magazine, I do not get freebie books for the asking from publishers (since all I can offer are listings, not potential reviews). Alas, the three months since June during which Amazon decommissioned California affiliates are unrecoverable.

Other October topics will follow.

Some notes on two recent nonfiction books…

I’ve followed Dan Savage — the most popular sex columnist in the country, and sponsor of the It Gets Better movement for LGBT youth — intermittently for years, and recently noticed his endorsement for a nonfiction books called Sex at Dawn, by ones Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, which purportedly supported many of the theses that Dan has promoted in his sex advice column over the years — principally, the difficulty of monogamy and the reasons thereof.

Now, as I suspect many ardent readers do, I have bought and continue to purchase many more books than I actually have time to read. Evolutionary psychology, and sex, being two of my principle interests, I had in fact bought a copy of Sex at Dawn last year when it came out in hardcover. So, triggered by the Dan Savage reference, I picked it up and read it.

The book is a fascinating reinterpretation of the standard evolutionary psychological explanation for the difference between the sexes — to wit, that females are more choosy than males in whom to have sex with; that males are jealous of female sexual infidelity in order to protect their paternity investment; that nevertheless both sexes will take opportunities to ‘cheat’ if the odds favor an advantage in genetic promotion. And, it challenges the cultural and sociological premise that monogamy is inherent in the human species.

Their re-interpretation is based on the claim that for most of human history — the hundreds of thousands of years before agriculture changed everything — humans lived in small hunter-gatherer tribes, that the concept of one father per child was not understood (thus undermining the premise of paternal investment), and that casual sex, for a variety of reasons, was common. Numerous lines of evidence are described, including many analogies to bonoboes (based on body size, group size, anatomical propotions, etc), and to the practices of primitive hunter-gatherer tribes still in existence today.

Agriculture changed everything because suddenly property had to be kept track of, and so the hunter-gatherer tribes split into core family groups, forcing the sexual proclivities bred by of hundreds of thousands of years of group existence to be channeled into new narrow partitions.

I found the book fascinating, primarily because its willingness to reeaxamine assumptions is like the essence of science fiction.

Two other points: even if their thesis is valid, it of course does not speak to how people should live their lives today. Yes, it explains why monogamy is difficult, and so on, but no one today lives in the pre-agricultural world of small social groups. There is a whole ‘nother book there, perhaps.

Also, I don’t have the impression that this book has much impact or gravitas; in part because the authors have no track record, in part because the blurbs on the cover are mostly from pop figures, and in part because I can’t find any evidence that their revolutionary speculation has reverberated anywhere…

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Briefly second: Penn Jillette’s God, No!, subtitled “Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales”. I am myself an atheist and am fascinated by the general question of why people believe what they do (it ties to my interest in science fiction, which is about exploring one’s concept of the world, overcoming parochial and childhood influences, just as science fiction scenarios celebrate conceptual breakthroughs). And I’m a casual fan of Penn & Teller, having seen their Las Vegas show, if not their TV series.

The book is structured around Jillette’s recasting of the Ten Commandments. I found myself skimming it. The content consists of many personal anecdotes, about Siegfried and Roy, Jillette’s unsuccessful venture into an early ’70s San Francisco gay bathhouse, and many others, always gleefully vulgar and profane. They ramble. And ramble. And are only peripherally about the Ten Commandments, or atheism, or anything except Penn Jillette. It’s amusing for a while, , but I found myself thinking about all those other unread books in my stack….and moved on.