April 3, 2009
March 30, 2009
A Few Good Stories
Vandana Singh, Suchitra Mathur and I are teaching a three-week speculative-fiction workshop at IIT-Kanpur in June/July this year. The application form is here, and the announcement is here. IIT-K doesn’t have a web link yet.
There have been other SF workshops in India of course, but they’ve been sporadic affairs designed to teach beginners. Our focus is a bit different. We’re aiming to help the semipro writer get to the next level. We also intend to make this an annual affair. The long-term goal is to create a network of desi spec-fic writers. Right now, there’s a lot of talent, but they mostly work in isolation. We hope to change that.The instructors may be different year to year, but the overall goals of the workshop will remain the same. Sustainability is important here, because it’s probably going to take a couple of decades of effort to make a real difference. But I try not to dwell on that part.
Suchitra Mathur at IITK had to do most of the hard work in setting up the workshop, and now we’ll reap the benefits of her hard work. I know. It is unfair. I know. But look yaar, I didn’t design the Matrix.
p>But this blog is not about the workshop. It’s about putting together a list of spec-fic stories for the workshop. One problem with writing workshops is that the participants are all working off different stories. It helps to have a common pool of stories for discussions about voice, point of view, dialog handling and so on. Making the list is a lot of fun, but it’s also turning out to be a lot harder than I thought. It reminds me of the scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack talks about the art of making a compilation tape:
“A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to hold the attention. Then you have to take it up a notch, but not blow your wad, so maybe cool it off a notch, and you can’t put the same artist twice on the tape, except if some subtle point or lesson or theme involved, and even then not the two of them in a row, and you can’t woo somebody with Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” and then bash their head off with something like GBH’s “City Baby Attacked by Rats,” and… oh, there are a lot of rules…”
Exactly. So what would be the killer first story?
February 4, 2007
Reason & Religion: Odd Couple Redux
Just finished watching the debate between Sam Harris (The End of Faith) and Reza Aslan (No God But God) on C-SPAN. The topic:
"Does the Bible provide timeless prescriptions for our daily lives? Or does its inclusion of practices such as slavery preclude its ability to act as such a guide? Are Osama bin Laden’s grievances with the United States purely theological, or also social and political? Reza Aslan, author of "No god but God," and Sam Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation," take up these questions in this debate at the Los Angeles Public Library. The event also includes discussion on contemporary trends in Islam– including whether or not Muslims are unique in their religious fervor– and debate over the concept of the Koran as a perfect and immutable document."
Does that sound like a perfect evening or what! Jonathan Kirsch, a bearded, soft-spoken, bear-like dude with a no-nonsense legal letter-pad, kept the men from making any sudden Tysonesque moves. Kirsch’s the author of A History Of The End Of The World. After a book like that, I guess he can handle anything.
The score? Well, Harris won. Reza circled round and round a profoundly oft-misunderstood point about profound transcendent experiences that had profoundly to do with context and interpretation sensitive to people’s transcendent experiences that profoundly need no validation external to the fact of it being a profound transcendent experience.
Okay. That’s unfair. Reza’s a smart guy. He’s articulate to a fault. He was at his best when he dealt in facts. When Harris claimed that the Israel-Palestine conflict was a religious one, it didn’t take Reza long to demonstrate Harris didn’t know what he was talking about. But for the most part, Reza tried to explain away the irrationality of religion via rational arguments. It’s the kind of contortion that’d get even B. K. S. Iyengar’s knickers in a twist.
As I see it, Reza’s main argument was that most rational questions about religion were misconstrued. He claimed that Religion wasn’t about facts, the domain of science, but about "a sacred history." "Sacred history" is a lot like ordinary history except that true/false is replaced with significance/non-significance. For example, to ask whether Moses really parted the Red Sea or whether the god Ganpati really has an elephant’s head is to miss the point. The correct question was to ask what these stories mean for their believers, why they matter. To keep harping on truth, evidence and logic was to be unsophisticated. Profoundly unsophisticated.
I was reminded of a joke in The Recruit. Al Pacino’s explaining– hoarse voice, bloodhound visage and all– to his C.I.A. protege why he decided to betray another three letter agency, namely, the U.S.A:
"There’s this parish priest, goes up to the pope, drops down on his knees, starts weeping, asking forgiveness. ‘Holy Father, Holy Father, what am I to do? What am I to do? I do not believe in God anymore. What am I to do?’ You know what the pope said? ‘Fake it.’ "
Perhaps Reza is in the position of that pope, asking the padre to defend something not because it was true but because it was important.
January 24, 2007
YoungUncle Wins The ALA Notable Award
Vandana Singh’s book Younguncle Comes To Town has just been selected as an American Library Association Notable Book Of The Year. The ALA award describes the book as follows:
"When the eternally childlike Younguncle breezes into the life of one
Indian family, he brings with him stories, a touch of magic, and a zest
for life that makes for an utterly refreshing read."
That’s accurate. For me, the quality that stands out the most is the text’s almost lambent innocence. Reading Ms. Singh’s book fills one with a strange and wistful longing. And the R.K. Laxman-ish illustrations by B. M. Kamath complement the text perfectly. Here’s how the book begins:
"One rainy afternoon, three children sat looking out of an open window, their fingers curled around the metal grillwork. The rain had come down like a great moving curtain, making the narrow lanes sparkle, turning the roadside ditches into torrential streams. They had watched a procession of cows canter off towards the shelter of the enormous neem tree under the corner; they had seen neighbors hurry past under wet, black umbrellas; they had seen cars and rickshaws and an oxcart splash their way through the waterlogged street. Now the rain had slowed to a murmur and the lane was empty except for a water buffalo, its black hide agleam, standing meditatively under the shisham tree on the other side."
What are the children waiting for? For Younguncle, of course. For a grown up who hasn’t forgotten how to be a child. For a proof that growing up and growing old need not be the same thing.
Come, come. That’s an adult’s response; from an uncle, not a Younguncle. Children will play in her words differently. The buffalo’s got it right. Stand in the rain, let the hide glisten. Chew. Smell the red earth and pouring rain. If you have to be indoors, find a corner, a nook, a window and a view. Chai and bhajiyas are optional. You’re in for a treat.
September 17, 2006
The Politics Of Captain Nemo
Like many current science fiction authors, Jules Verne would’ve been surprised to learn he was one. His ambitions were somewhat different. As he told Alexander Dumas, pere:
"Just as you are the great chronicler of history, I shall be the chronicler of geography."
And he proceeded to do just that. There are four recurring characters in a Jules Verne novel: air, fire, earth and water. The womb’s domain, so to speak. Verne liked to place his human characters in enclosed, self-contained, unique spaces of one kind or the other– heavier-than-air flying machines, isolated islands, floating cities, villages on tree-tops, the earth’s core, cannon-balls to the moon, steel submarines 20,000 leagues under the sea– and send them out for a spin. For the most part, his people are two-dimensional cross-hairs; their main role is keep track of places in the reader’s mind.
But there is one marvelous exception. In 1912, some forty odd years after the publication of 20,000 leagues Under The Sea, Sir Earnest Shackleton wrote in The Future of Exploration:
"…all the work of our modern oceanographers– of Sir John Murray of Challenger fame, Dr. Hjort of the Michael Sars, Prince Albert of Monaco, and of the various marine biological stations– has won less of public attention and interest than did a single one of Jules Verne’s heroes, Captain Nemo of the Nautilus. Thus does a good tale overshadow the romance of real life…."
How did Captain Nemo ever become something more than one of Verne’s story pegs? F. P. Walter provides one answer:
"…much of the novel’s brooding power comes from Captain Nemo. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he’s a trail-blazing creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes or Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero’s brilliance and benevolence a dark underside–the man’s obsessive hate for his old enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he’s a fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism, yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole….Hate swallows him whole."
It is a plausible explanation. As Captain Nemo readies to destroy an enemy ship– of unspecified nationality– he rages at the tale’s protesting narrator in an Ahab-type outburst:
"I’m the law, I’m the tribunal! I’m the oppressed, and there are my oppressors! Thanks to them, I’ve witnessed the destruction of everything I loved, cherished, and venerated–homeland, wife, children, father, and mother! There lies everything I hate! Not another word out of you!"
But who destroyed everything Nemo loved? Which homeland? 20,000 leagues was deliberately silent on these issues. Verne had wanted Nemo to be a Polish rebel who’d participated in the January Uprising and whose family had been murdered by Tsarist Russia for that reason. But Russia happened to be a pal of France at the moment, and Verne’s editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, "persuaded" him to omit crucial details.
August 30, 2006
Say, lovely woman, the number of bees: Bhaskara’s Lilavati
"Having bowed to the deity, whose head is like an elephant; whose feet are adorned by gods; who, when called to mind, relieves his votaries from embarrassment; and bestows happiness on his worshipers; I propound this easy process of computation, delightful by its elegance, perspicuous with words concise, soft and correct, and pleasing to the learned."
So begins Bhaskara‘s Lilavati in Henry T. Colebrooke‘s classic 1817 translation. There’s an earlier Bhaskara, also famous, so Lilavati‘s Bhaskara is sometimes referred to as Bhaskara II or Bhaksaracharya. He was born in 1114 A.D. in Vijayapura (modern day Bijapur), India.
It was a quiet time. The quiet, that is, of a hurricane’s eye. In 1114 A.D., Angkor Wat was still an idea searching for its stone, but its future builder, King Suryavarman II, was already a year old. Genghis Khan was just fifty odd years away. The West hadn’t rediscovered Euclid and Aristotle yet, but Abelard of Bath and his students were in Syria, poring over the Arabic texts that would eventually ignite the Western renaissance. The Muslims had gained a foothold in Gujarat, and in the 13th through 15th centuries, they were to reinvigorate the subcontinent. And way north of Vijayapura, about 400 miles from Delhi, the last of the magnificent Khajuraho temples were being built.
Why did Bhaskara write the Lilavati? Simple. To teach duffers. As he concludes in the Bijaganita (one of his six works):
"A morsel of tuition conveys knowledge to a comprehensive mind; and having reached it, expands of its own impulse. As oil poured upon water, as a secret entrusted to the vile, as alms bestowed upon the worthy, however little, so does knowledge infused into a wise mind spread by intrinsic force….What is there unknown to the intelligent? Therefore for the dull alone it is set forth."
Almost 600 years later, in his Decline and Fall, Gibbons was even more pessimistic:
"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."
And more recently, the late Richard Feynman– by all accounts, a great teacher– cites Gibbons with glum relish in the preface to his celebrated Lectures.
The Lilavati is a collection of worked out examples in algebra and geometry. The level of mathematics ranges between high school algebra and freshman pre-Calculus. In its time, it represented the height of 12th-century mathematics. The problems are generally addressed to one Lilavati, traditionally taken to be either his wife or his daughter. Tradition is as good a reason as any because there’s no other reason to support the claim. To modern ears, the phrasing of some of the problems is decidedly odd. Problem 2.2.16 begins with:
"Beautiful and dear Lilavati, whose eyes are like a fawn’s…."
Then there’s Problem 3.1.49 which begins:
"Pretty girl, with tremulous eyes, if thou know the correct method of inversion… "
And how can I overlook Problem 3.5.68?
"The square root of half the number of a swarm of bees is gone to a shrub of jasmine; and so are eight-ninths of the whole swarm: a female is buzzing to one remaining male that is humming within a lotus in which he is confined, having allured to it by its fragrance at night. Say, lovely woman, the number of bees."
Colebrooke, thorough as always, notes that the "jasmine" referred to is the "jasminum grandiflorum." And Ganesa, in his Buddhivilasini (1545 AD), supplies some context: "the lotus being open at night and closed in the day, the bee might be caught in it."
Indeed. The good professor’s concern is not misplaced. The hazards of being a bee are many. For poor Colebrooke, the text must have made many a warm Calcutta night even warmer.
August 27, 2006
Thomas Barnett: Mapping The Next Neo-Snafu
A couple of days ago, C-SPAN aired Thomas P. M. Barnett’s lecture at the National Defense University in Fort McNair. While it didn’t "transfix" me, as it did drdave, I’ve to admit the guy does know how to make Powerpoint slides fly. Barnett speaks like he’s firing bullet points, and has the relaxed certainty of those who think in mutually exclusive necessities.
According to Barnett, in the summer of 1998, Admiral Art Cebrowski– the current head of the Orwellian-sounding "Office of Force Transformation"– asked him to:
"…look at the Year 2000 problem and treat it as a heuristic opportunity to explore how globalization– spread of the global economy, the rise of all this connectedness– was altering our sense and understanding of the very essential nature of international stability, international instability, definitions of crisis."
What the Admiral was saying, I think, was that he wanted his staff to spend time– what little remained– with their families, stocking up on dog chow and AAA batteries, trying on Mad Max outfits, etc. before Y2K hit the non-working fans. Barnett, however, took Cebrowski at his word.
May 14, 2006
Review: 20 Cases Suggestive Of Reincarnation by Ian Stevenson
The homepage of the Univ. of Virginia’s Division Of Perceptual Studies quotes Thomas Jefferson:
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led."
It is a fine quote, exactly the sort of postprandial statement one can imagine Jefferson making at Monticello, with a glass of Chateau d’Yquem in one hand and Sally in the other. They don’t make presidents like him anymore.
But perhaps they do. That is, if Dr. Ian Stevenson is right.
Ian Stevenson‘s a medical doctor (internal medicine) trained at McGill University, the author of many peer-reviewed articles, and a former chaired professor at UVa. Dr. Stevenson’s pursuit of the truth has led him into very odd territory. In the 60s through the 80s, he investigated cases in India, Ceylon, Brazil, Alaska, and Lebanon that were "suggestive of reincarnation."
There’s a rough pattern to these reincarnation stories. A child– usually between two and four years of age — begins to claim that he/she is actually so-and-so, now deceased. Parents resist said claims. Eventually, contact with so-and-so’s family is made. Dénouement follows. At some point, ranging from 3 weeks to twenty years, Stevenson shows up with his tape recorder and interpreter. He interviews the families, cross-checks claims, classifies events into a typology, and then re-conducts the interviews with a second translator. The book describes twenty representative cases. His conclusion:
"In the cases of the present collection we have evidence of the occurrence of patterns which the present personality is not known to have inherited or acquired after birth in the present life. And in some instances these patterns match corresponding and specific features of an identified deceased personality. In such cases we have then in principle, I believe, some evidence for human survival of physical death. I say in principle, because I continue aware [sic] of particular weaknesses in the present cases."
In short, there are events suggestive of reincarnation. I think he’s mistaken. But whatever one may think of his extraordinary conclusion, the book will induce respect. His case reports are painfully detailed, monumentally tedious and reassuringly detached. It’s shoe-leather research rather than arm-chair research. It’s Masters and Johnson sans lubrication. The book is a lovely testament to what empiricism is all about.
Assuming the evidence is not manufactured out of whole cloth (in which case the book ranks with great literature), there’s a neat little puzzle to be explained. Some of the cases are rather disquieting, especially the cases of Pramod and Swarnalata. Stevenson’s methodology is not that of the doctor or the physicist but that of the detective.
March 30, 2006
Stanislaw Lem: The Aesop Of Machines
Once upon a time in the curved and red-shifted future, Mrs. Tribodice and her child — at least, it looked like a child — walked into a Rare Books Store. Mrs. Tribodice immediately apologized:
"I’m so terribly sorry. Didn’t see you standing there. Say you’re sorry, Midget."
Midget scowled and held on to Mrs. Tribodice’s arm.
"That’s quite alright," said the Rare Books Store. "Not your fault. Part and parcel of being rarefied. Were you two looking for something?"
"Actually, yes. The Lemmiad by Trurl and Klapaucius. Midget here is quite the fan of the classics."
"The Lemmeiad, Ma!" muttered Midget.
"Um… Well. I’m afraid we only stock things a little more rarefied. How about some Ottoman poetry? The circular ghazal of Octal Girsay perhaps? Quite a marvel, I’m told. Haven’t read it myself. Gives me headache, it does, reading in circles."
Midget began to pull at his mother’s hand.
"Won’t do." Mrs. Tribodice was quite apologetic. "Midget has his heart set on The Lemmiad."
"It’s The Lemmeiad !" corrected Midget, fed up. "There’s a silent ‘e’, but it ain’t dumb! The Lemmiad is an arithmetic manual."
"See what I mean?" said Mrs. Tribodice, with a little helpless laugh.
The Rare Books Store didn’t but 
managed to look as if it cared. "Yes… Let me see… Maybe I do have something that could work." It began to rummage around in its vast pockets. Shelves, books, silverfish and manuscripts began to get shoved around here and there. The Humido Delectron’s 25th century collection of Mannerist erotica — 1st edition, color plates and all — spread out in flagrante delicto.
"Oh dear me," murmured Mrs. Tribodice, "your gears are showing."
The Rare Books Store hurriedly adjusted its shelves. A book fell out. Midget caught it with his widget before it hit the ground (which was fortunate because the notoriously short-tempered ground would probably have thrown a fit and the fit would probably have landed on something else and before you knew it there probably would’ve been a dead bald man in a bathtub somewhere. Life isn’t all ha-ha hee-hee when you run the world on probabilty).
"What’s this?" asked Midget, suspiciously thumbing through the pages.
"It’s The Lemmeiad," said the Rare Books Store, with a wink.
"Then why doesn’t it say so?" Midget sniffed the book and even tentatively licked a page.
"Because it’s written in English, not Polish notation. Here, run the Kandel translator."
"Oh dear," bleated Mrs. Tribodice. "English? That simply won’t do. No meat languages–"
But Midget had already run the Kandel and was snarfing the pages down, tearing them into nice chewable byte-sizes chunks.
"Awesome!" exclaimed Midget. "Aesop’s Fables by Stanislaw and Lem. So that’s what the meat called The Lemmeiad. Which one is Trurl? Stanislaw? I bet it is. He’s my favorite. Can I have the book as a gift?"
The Rare Books Store didn’t bother to answer the Midget. It’d found the cash register deregistering under a pile of vulgar fractions, and proceeded to pull it out by its randy buttons. "Something to spice up the old femfatalatron, Madam? That Humido Delectron perhaps? Or is that all for today?"
—
In memoriam: Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006).
Image credits: Mrs. Tribodice — Mrs. Trojanka in Polish — is due to Stanislaw Lem. The original may be viewed here. The Rare Books Store was mistakenly called The Librarian by Giuseppe Arcimboldo (c. 1527-1593). The interlocked, um, machines was found in Giovanni Braccelli’s Bizarrie di varie figure (1624).
March 29, 2006
William Makepeace Thackeray: The Indian In The Closet
William Makepeace Thackeray was one of those rare writers who could criticize something without developing a contempt for it. Writing for him was a way of coming to terms with human nature, specifically, his human nature. As Gordon N. Ray in his definitive biography of Thackeray, wrote: "Closely scrutinized, his novels turn out to afford a kind of diary of his intimate life" [1]. So it is interesting that the theme of racial mixing — of miscegenation — runs like a bright red thread through Thackeray’s work.
For example, in The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan (1838), Gollian Gahagan falls madly in love with a half-breed, the fair and lovely Julie Jowler, daughter of Colonel Jowler and his Indian wife, a "hideous, bloated, yellow creature." Later on, Gahagan is chased by the lady Puttee Rooge with the "complexion of molasses" and "rendered a thousand times more ugly by the tawdry dress and the blazing jewels with which she was covered." And at one of the novel’s many crisis points, Belinda Bulcher, 100% white and "dazzling as alabaster" extracts a promise from her hero:
‘Captain Gahagan,’ sobbed she, ‘Go-Go-Goggle-iah!’
‘My soul’s adored!’ replied I.
‘Swear to me one thing.’
I swear.’
‘That if–that if–the nasty, horrid, odious black Mah-ra-a-a-attahs take the fort, you will put me out of their power.’
Gahagan promises and then goes around offering the same service to the other white ladies in the camp. However:
Fancy my disgust when, after making this proposition, not one of the ladies chose to accede to it…
Disgust? Why? That the white women preferred rape and possible survival over virtue and certain death? Thackeray was unusually sympathetic to human foibles, especially feminine ones. He was the first major English writer to see that in a thoroughly materialistic society, morality too becomes just another status symbol. But when it came to racial mixing, there is an uncharacteristic latent disgust in his writing. Phillip Davies, who first studied Thackeray’s obsessions with racial mixing, concluded:
It would appear that Thackeray was strongly conscious of what he might have imagined to be a skeleton in his closet. [2]
But just what was this skeleton?
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