My Recent Reading List (December 2020)

Being that I'm a high-school teacher, I get a lot more time off than the average bear. This past week-ish, I've been using my free time to either catch up on reading or take notes from books I've read previously but had sitting around for weeks or months.

Here's a partial list of books I've read, books I'm reading, and books I've heard about and am trying to get hold of. If any of these sound interesting, please buy through Amazon because these are Associates links. :)

Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War-This is about how the South was far from united during the (American) Civil War. It makes the very strong case that if you combined the poor whites and the slaves, the majority of people in the South actually opposed secession, and many people who had supported it became disillusioned as the war went on owing to the mistreatment of the common people by the Confederate government, widespread poverty at home, draft-dodging by the rich and the plantation owners, etc. This is prime research material for the sequels to Battle for the Wastelands, since this world is roughly between the Civil War and WWI in terms of technology and social development (with the exception of slavery) and the late-war Confederacy provides a good example of how a society during this time period could collapse internally.

(The Confederacy also made some obvious mistakes that Grendel, the Wastelands series' Big Bad, can avoid. For example, the planters promised to grow food crops to feed the Confederate armies...but instead grew cotton and tobacco for the mountains of cash they could make. Although the cotton trade helped the Confederacy secure armaments and other useful materials from abroad--the book doesn't touch on that--it also contributed to starvation at home that prompted riots in the cities and desertion from the armies. Grendel, who's been a soldier since he was fifteen and is now in his mid fifties, will have the experience to know this is a bad idea and the dictatorial power and strength of will to make sure this doesn't happen.)

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind-A condensed history of the human race I got as a birthday present but only now just got around to reading. Very simple and to the point, very detailed. Some interesting ideas about the nature of human thought processes versus that of our extinct kindred like the Neanderthals and how that extends to things like the establishment of communities beyond the tribe (i.e. a nation, a religion, an economic system, etc). I'd already read the author's book Homo Deus, but not this one.

Artemis-Another birthday book I've only just gotten started on. Crime and shenanigans in the first city on the Moon. :) This is by the author of The Martian, which I found in a free-book box but haven't read yet.

A People's History of the Civil War-This covers a lot of the same ground as Bitterly Divided (it is, after all, by the same author), but also includes the experiences of Native Americans out west and poor people, white and black, in the North. Basically there was a very strong anti-conscription movement in the North, which is typically only discussed in the context of the New York City draft riots. Given how I've noted the steampunk era was full of class conflict, I can mine this for information as well.

Stars In Their Courses: The Gettysburg Campaign-In Battle for the Wastelands and its companion novella "Son of Grendel," most of the action is centered on a platoon (30-40 men) or company (100 men). The largest combat sequences in Battle involve forces that are perhaps a brigade (3,000 to 5,000 men) in size. Things scale up in the sequels significantly. I've also requested author Shelby Foote's novel about the Battle of Shiloh from the library to similarly pillage, since a novel would go into more detail about the experiences of a man on the ground so to speak.

A Nest of Corsairs: The Fighting Karamanlis of Tripoli-This is an older book about a pirate dynasty that ruled Tripoli as the (nominal) subordinates of the Ottoman sultan, but it has some truly vivid descriptions of the environment of Ottoman Tripoli that I copied wholesale into my notes to use as inspiration for sequences in the Wastelands world involving the Iron Desert as well as a "flintlock fantasy" set in a fantasyland version of the early modern Mediterranean. Although it's old-fashioned in some of its language, it's a very interesting read.

Dominion: How The Christian Revolution Remade The World-The Cobb County library has it but the Atlanta-Fulton library doesn't, so I requested an interlibrary loan. Since those are closed down right now, who knows when I'll actually read it. This book discusses the Christianization of Rome and the resulting effects on both Roman and broader Western society. Based on the reviews, the author (although not a Christian and sometimes very critical of Christianity) makes the argument that this improvement has been broadly positive.

Sea Stories: My Life In Special Operations-This is an autobiography of Admiral William McRaven, a longtime Navy SEAL who ultimately planned the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. A lot of interesting stuff about the military in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, plus some of the Wastelands books involve dirigible raids with assassination in mind, so I can use this as a model.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic In History-I haven't read this yet, but I have put it on hold from the library. It's about the Spanish Flu, which spread like COVID-19 but killed far worse, and its effect on science, world politics, etc. There are a bunch of people ahead of me in the line for it at the library, so a lot of people are seeing the COVID-19 parallels.

Civil War Commando: William Cushing and the Daring Raid to Sink The Ironclad CSS Albemarle-I vaguely remember reading about this episode as a child in one of my grandparents' Civil War books, but I recently heard about this on the History Unplugged podcast. This sounds like a pretty cool episode in and of itself, plus it's more research material for Wastelands. The Atlanta-Fulton library doesn't have it and interlibrary loans are shut down, so I might have to bite the bullet and buy it.

FALLEN EMPIRE What Might Have Been #2: Independent Stories

In a previous post, I described how I would have continued writing in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire science fiction universe had Amazon continued the Kindle Worlds program. My main focus would've been the "Choi and Watson" prequel series ("Ten Davids, Two Goliaths" and "Discovery and Flight"), but I had several ideas for independent stories.

Fallen Titan-This one takes place in the aftermath of "Ten Davids." The survivors of the Imperial warships the Tri-Suns Alliance rebels destroy--mostly trainees--have to survive on the swampy surface until rescuers arrive. Survive while being hunted by...something. This is loosely based on accounts I've read about the Battle of Ramree Island during World War II in which Japanese soldiers were attacked by crocodiles. The protagonist is an Imperial enlisted seaman ("starman" since we're dealing with spacecraft) under the thumb of an abusive superior who gets progressively sick of her to the point they he frags her and calls the Alliance salvaging crews overhead for rescue instead of waiting for the Imperials. In the canonical series Buroker has protagonist Alisa Marchenko reference the Imperial military's stern disciplinary practices (potentially including flogging), so many members of the Tri-Suns Alliance might've been Imperial personnel who'd deserted due to mistreatment. This one is fully outlined and partially written.

Rebellion of the Dead-I'd heard on a podcast that zombie fiction fans were voracious readers, so what better way to make some cash than by writing a zombie story set in the Fallen Empire universe? This ties in with the ruthless side of the Alliance mentioned in the canonical novels--the zombie virus is created by the Alliance, not the Empire, to compensate for their lack of numbers. The zombies can be controlled by pro-Alliance Starseers (more on them later) or simply unleashed as indiscriminate weapons like Arcturus Mengsk uses the Zerg in the original Starcraft. Fully outlined and partially written.

Apprentice-The Fallen Empire universe features a subspecies of humanity called "Starseers," who have psychic abilities. They're divided between a good (or at least neutral) faction and an evil group called the chasadski, which want to take over the Tribus Solis system much like their ancestors had attempted centuries past. Although some took sides in the rebellion, most stayed neutral and pursued their own goals. This particular story was inspired by "Darth Maul: Apprentice," a Star Wars fan-film in which Darth Maul hunts a group of Jedi who find his training ground. However, when the villainous chasadski Lord Thomas Smith has sole "Good Starseer" survivor Khaila Sokolov--powerful but young and relatively untrained--at his mercy, he decides not to kill her. Instead he claims her as his new apprentice (and heavily implied concubine). This is very much like Dryden Vos did Qi'ra in the back-story for the Solo film, even I don't recall using the movie as a model.


(I recall discussing this one with Lindsay and pondering this as the back-story for a member of the main villain's entourage in one of the later books. Given how...uncomfortable...the whole plot is, I was planning a second story in which a fully-trained Khaila gets the drop on Smith and disposes of him Sith Apprentice-style during a mission--incidentally like Qi'ra ultimately does to Vos in Solo. I don't have a synopsis in my notes for the second story, so I mustn't have gotten very far after outlining the first.)

It would have probably needed a new title, to avoid being too blatant a rip-off, but I didn't get the chance to get started on it.

Kurultai-In the Fallen Empire universe, the victorious Alliance was only able to take control of three planets, while the Imperial capital remained under the control of the dead emperor's successor. The rest of the Tribus Solis system fell under the control of various warlord types and Mafia bosses. In this one, a retired Imperial general of Mongol background deposes the corrupt Imperial governor of his largely Mongol-Chinese planet and is chosen by the people to be the new khagan (Great Khan). Once in power, he suborns some local Imperial spacecraft and launches a war of conquest against a nearby world that had been a historical rival of his own. Like "Apprentice," I outlined it but didn't get started.

Commander of the Faithful-Somewhat similar to the above, except it's an Islamist instead of a wannabe Genghis Khan. In Angle of Truth, the adherents of the Old Earth religions are shown to have been largely exiled to one outlying planet in the system and I can't recall any discussion of serious fighting on the planet during the rebellion. Either this happened somewhere else or got squashed pretty quickly. I don't even really have a plot here, just a concept.

Both My Supervillain-Protagonist Stories Are Now "Wide"

Back in 2013 when I was in graduate school, I wrote two short stories featuring Indian-American supervillain Andrew Patel as the protagonist, "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must." Although I would consider myself a political conservative, I do agree with the concept of more minority representation in speculative fiction, not just on the grounds of giving children the chance to see themselves as superheroes but also because members of these groups have money to spend. Look at the success of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino hero of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or the Muslim Miss Marvel who will be getting her own Disney show soon. When I first tweeted them out, none other than Muslim fantasy writer Saladin Ahmed retweeted the links for me.

Although I had plans to write more stories featuring Patel, there wasn't a whole lot of reader interest compared to my alternate history and straight science fiction and fantasy projects. I've got a draft of a third story that actually links Andrew and his world with The Thing in the Woods in a Stephen King fashion (I got the idea from my friend Nic, overlord of Myopia: Defend Your Childhood), which I might include in a collection someday. However, that's likely all we'll ever see of Andrew Patel until we get to that future Thing sequel where he makes an appearance.

In the meantime, although I do make sales now and again (I sold a copy each yesterday, for example), the Kindle Unlimited borrows really dried up. According to one of the writing podcasts I listen to, one should stay in KU until the borrows stop coming in and then one should go wide on outlets like Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc.

To that end, the two tales of supervillain Andrew Patel are now "wide" on non-Amazon markets. "Ubermensch" can be found on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple here and "Needs Must" can be found in these markets here. They are also various library markets like Overdrive, but they're not live there yet.

So if you're interested in the tales of an Indian-American biomedical engineer who read a little too much Nietzsche in college and has transformed himself into a cyborg to achieve transcendence, enjoy!

On Halle Bailey's Ariel and the Egyptian 25th Dynasty

Disney recently announced that Halle Bailey, an African-American singer and actress from Atlanta (represent!), has been cast as Ariel in a live-action version of the Disney animated classic The Little Mermaid. Although I haven't seen any ugly commentary on social media about it myself, I have heard some people are getting upset and I can easily imagine this being true, either due to authenticity concerns about the source material, straight-up racism, or other issues.

Firstly, although The Little Mermaid is based on a Danish story (by author Hans Christian Anderson), the mermaid civilization is not connected to my knowledge to Danish society in any significant way. If it turns out they're descended from Vikings mutated by some kind of magic let me know, but it's my understanding that's not the case. The mermaids could easily be migrants from somewhere else who settled in the vicinity of Denmark, perhaps due to the Medieval Warm Period making their original homeland in the Mediterranean or even West Africa inhospitable. Therefore, even though the landlubbers nearby are white, the mermaids could be Semitic or even black. Although I'm generally not a fan of "if it's fantasy it doesn't have to be 'realistic'" attitude, the above explanation is a plausible one for a large Middle Eastern or black (mermaid) population in an otherwise European setting. After all, the Gypies (whose actual name for themselves is Roma or Romany) are originally from India and the Hungarians are a Turkic or Finnic people originally from Russia.

Secondly, even if the mermaid population generally is of European in appearance, ruling elites don't necessarily match up with the local population. Much of northern England was ruled by Vikings for awhile, the whole of England was ruled by different French dynasties from the Norman conquest of 1066 until the Welsh Henry Tudor took power in 1485, parts of or all of China were ruled by non-Chinese steppe peoples on many different occasions, etc. More appropos would be the 25th Dynasty of Egypt--although the Egyptians were a Semitic people, the 25th Dynasty was originally from Nubia, much farther south.

So here's where it gets Game of Thrones. Triton is originally from somewhere else and is the founder of a new dynasty, either elected by other members of the mermaid elite after the previous king dies without an heir or who seizes power in some kind of civil war. As king he exiles Ursula, ostensibly for practicing witchcraft and other sorts of bad behavior but really because she's a member of the previous dynasty. However, not only is Triton foreign, but Triton is a widower with no interest in remarrying and has only daughters, no sons. This makes his regime vulnerable and Ursula plays on Ariel's interest in human culture as part of some kind of scheme to seize power.

Yes, that's needlessly complicated for a kids movie, but they did elaborate on the original Aladdin to make the new live-action version more elaborate (Jasmine seeks to become the next ruler of Agrabah in the vein of Razia Sultan, the only female ruler of the Muslim Delhi Sultanate, Jafar is a "street rat" himself who rose to become the grand vizier). If this is too much and if Disney wants to keep Triton as a white Zeus-alike, they can always depict his late wife as being black and Ariel takes after her mother rather than her father in looks.

All Art Is Political: Yes or No?

Lately something I've seen a lot on Twitter, where I follow a lot of writers and other creative types, is the notion that "all art is political." Here is a detailed explanation of this belief from someone who popularized it and here is a rebuttal. I first heard of this notion many years before from a college acquaintance who's now a minister in a very conservative non-denominational church and an active Christian home-schooler (he said that all art has "a message" and essentially there's no neutrality), but it has gained especial prominence in recent years with the rise of various social justice movements online.

Coming from who it does (conservative Christians and the Internet social justice crowd), the whole idea sets my teeth on edge. Although historically the former has had more power than the latter (disapproval by the Catholic Legion of Decency could doom a film), political criticism of art and culture has become more prominent lately with the young-adult fiction controversies. The author-withdrawn novels Blood Heir and A Place for Wolves (the links go to discussions of each controversy individually) are two significant examples. Seriously, the apologies the YA community (or at least some of its more belligerent members) have extorted from the writers in question sound like something out of a Cultural Revolution "struggle session" (I'm not the only one to think that) and speaking as a historian this also brings to mind things like McCarthyism. It sets a precedent for political critique of works not intended to be political and, at worst, political control.

(The U.S. constitutional arrangements make legal censorship all but impossible, but the outrage machines on both sides of the political spectrum can lead to books or movies getting shelved, creatives' careers getting ruined, etc. Criticism isn't censorship, but it can become that de facto if the critics can intimidate the object of their critique or convince gatekeepers like agents, book studios, movie publishers, radio stations, etc. Look how #NoConfederate is threatening to deep-six HBO's first alternate-history project since Fatherland or the hammering of the Dixie Chicks' career.)

However, whether all art is truly political or not depends on how one defines "political," as the rebuttal article above points out. Some books or films are clearly "message fiction"--Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid's Tale as a response to the growing power of the Christian Right and the Iranian Revolution and the TV adaptation is clearly about Donald Trump, while It Can't Happen Here is a warning of possible fascism. Get Out is about how even white liberals can be dangerous to minorities and Starship Troopers was written in response to the US limiting nuclear testing and the Soviets breaking their promise to do likewise and has a lot of commentary on citizenship and responsibility. Less subtly there's Orson Scott Card's Empire and the neo-Nazi The Turner Diaries (nope, not linking to it) or the gun politics of Newt Gingrich's 1945.

(German commandos mow down nuclear scientists and their families in Oak Ridge while gloating about how banning guns from the site only made them defenseless against armed attackers and are ultimately defeated and left hogtied by Tennessee good old boys led by either the recently-demobilized Audie Murphy or the retired Sergeant York. I'm not a fan of gun control but this is seriously overplaying one's hand. I would have depicted the good old boys ambushing the Germans, killing a bunch and slowing them down enough for the scientists to escape, but not defeating them so thoroughly and not without taking significant losses themselves once they lose the element of surprise. Considering how poorly 1945 sold, a bit of nuance would've probably been helpful.)

By the above standard, most literature isn't political. I can't think of any sort of "message" in the monster movie Deep Rising or The Hobbit (the book). Tolkien himself objected to the idea that The Lord of the Rings was "really" about World War II or that Mordor was Germany and even described what the story would have looked like if that were the case.

However, if you define "political" to include "reflective of the author's values" or "reflecting the historical or cultural context in which they're written" rather than explicit author soapboxing, things get a bit broader. Tolkien's work in general is all about human fallibility (and there's a lot of criticism of industrialization and nostalgia for rural England) and the story of the hobbits in particular is about how the humble can be more important than the great. The film adaptations of The Hobbit included the new character Tauriel because Tolkien's original book lacked female characters completely and although there were a few women in The Lord of the Rings, their roles were not substantial compared to the men. Meanwhile, Highlander has a moral of self-sacrifice--the Immortals are sterile and Connor's refusal to abandon his wife leaves her to grow old and die without the children she wanted (something she blames herself for). To avoid repeating this mistake (and save himself the pain of watching his lover age and die while he remains young a second time), Connor eschews romantic relationships for centuries.

Now to examine some of my own currently-available work to see how it counts as "political," especially if one incorporates a more expanded use of the term.

Political

The Thing in the Woods-I didn't intend for this to be a "message book" but it does reflect my values in that it's pro-gun and anti-racist. And the context of the early 2000s in the United States plays a major role in the characterization of most of the cast. Although I didn't go in intending to write a "message book" (I was inspired by a Call of Cthulhu scenario about "Lovecraft country" getting suburbanized and wanted to set it in Georgia and not New England to be different), the tale grew with the telling. The immediate sequel The Atlanta Incursion (with the publisher now) ties in with Black Lives Matter, while the in-progress third novel The Walking Worm ties in with the opiate crisis. Early 2000s cultural-political context ahoy!

Nicor-The story is antiwar even though it's on the surface an action-adventure monster story. Also a commentary on the things a man will do for women, particularly in a warlike and patriarchal society--the protagonist hopes to get enough loot and glory from going a-Viking to get a wife "or two."

Ten Davids, Two Goliaths and Discovery and Flight-Two novellas written in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire universe, during the rebellion against the tyrannical Sarellian Empire rather than the troubled aftermath. Although my stories avoid the shades of gray of Buroker's work (which I've noted resembles the Arab Spring), that the Empire created its own enemy by drumming the protagonist out of the Navy for disobeying orders by destroying the bridge of a hijacked ship with beam weapons rather than blowing up the whole ship with a torpedo and his friend is a recovering drug addict who'd been sentenced to personality-altering medical treatment of questionable value is a moral judgement. The world-building I did for Buroker goes into detail about how the Imperial system and its Alliance successor state function and that's definitely political. Basically the Empire is corrupt and abusive toward dissidents, politics and big-big business are incestuously entwined, and many of its economic policies are focused on make-work projects to keep the masses busy while the Alliance in seeking to avoid the tyranny of the Empire is rather weak militarily and perhaps a little too hands-off.

Lord Giovanni's Daughter-I didn't plan for this to be a "message story" either, but Adriana is deliberately characterized to not be a passive "damsel in distress." I also wanted to subvert the fantasy-barbarian stereotype with protagonist John Fiore, who wants to build a library with his mercenary wages. Encouraging women to take initiative? Statement on the importance of education?

Illegal Alien-This started out as a joke about the different meanings of the word "alien," but I wrote it at the time of the Si Se Puede immigrant marches and deliberately hoped to play on that. Plus the protagonist and his friends wouldn't be trying to sneak into the U.S. illegally if there was a guest worker program like the WWII braceros and the hero's back-story touches on NAFTA's effects on Mexico.

Ubermensch and Needs Must-Two stories featuring an Indian-American supervillain protagonist and his rivalry with the hero Silverbolt. I did write an Indian-American protagonist because I actually agree with people's concerns about the lack of representation. The superhero antagonist Silverbolt hates guns due to a domestic violence incident in his past and one character is a stripper and totally unapologetic and unashamed about it. Plus there's a whole lot of Nietzsche quoting. :)

"Coil Gun"-Part of the Pressure Suite collection, this one depicts global nuclear war as survivable (albeit still extremely, extremely sucky) with proper civil defense preparations and ground- and spaced-based missile defenses. It's also critical of racism and religious bigotry, as is the Afrikanerverse in general. You can see my discussion of that here and here.

Picking Up Plans In Palma-This one gets more into religion than politics in that a character (a Catholic) being in a sexual relationship with another (a Protestant) but not married is a major plot point, but it does share the same anti-bigotry moral of "Coil Gun." There's also the added twist that it's a critique of complementarianism and "biblical patriarchy" from a Christian perspective, something I also discuss in the above blog posts.

Debatable

Melon Heads-Not written with any political intention. However, the frat boys of Pi Iota Gamma are much more dangerous (and morally worse) than the titular Melon Heads, who are already suffering from diminished mental capacity and have been reduced to an essentially animalistic state by medical mistreatment and decades living in the woods. A #MeToo story written nearly 15 years early? And in the original draft the frat boys were a drug dealer and a couple of his goons, so you could argue the story makes moral judgments on drug dealing.

The Beast of the Bosporus-I started writing this as essentially "a Lovecraft story in the Ottoman Empire and not New England," but I elaborated on Sokolli's Janissary bodyguard a bit due to concerns from members of my writing group that the story could be interpreted as anti-Muslim. Now there's a Muslim character who isn't a drunk (Sultan Selim II) or a practitioner of dark magic with possible anti-Semitic tendencies (the protagonist Sokolli). Still not a "message book" and not intended to make a statement about anything.

Not Really

I am the Wendigo-My first story for which I was paid and most definitely not a "message book." However, it's also incredibly short. Furthermore, one could wring a moral out of it--the human father is a predator (albeit under utterly extreme circumstances) and is prey himself. However, that's really pushing it.

Lord of the Dolorous Tower-Two young men go meddling in the tomb of a fallen Dark Lord and trouble ensues. One of the two is clearly the dominant party in the relationship (stronger personality and somewhat more educated) and both parties' motivations include impressing girls so one could make some kind of sociological commentary, but really?

Sam-A Doberman vs. a monster that only it can detect. Perhaps a commentary on not being believed when one warns of danger? That's pushing it too.

So getting back to the original point, based on my own work alone I argue that not all art is political, but the stories that are longer and have more depth often touch on significant political, social, or cultural themes. And in the long run, it's these works that have staying power. The Handmaid's Tale will be discussed for years to come, while many schlocky paperback space opera or monster books written at the same time are sold at library book sales for a buck each. It is my hope that The Thing in the Woods is and its sequels are remembered as "horror of the early aughts" and discussed by cultural historians and the like in the same way as, say, the horror of the 1980s.

What do you think?