Untitled Writers' Group

Lisa Leutheuser — Ann Arbor Sunset

I REGRET TO SAY THAT I'M REMOVED MY SUNSET IMAGE DUE TO MULTIPLE UNAUTHORIZED USES OF THIS IMAGE. Look, people, it's pretty darned rude, not to mention illegal in the US, to use someone's copyrighted material without asking permission. There is an email address on this site. You could have made use of it. There is no excuse.

Taken at 5:19pm on December 27, 2003 with a Pentax Optio S4 ultra compact digital camera, using the night photography setting and no flash.

What does this have to do with writing?  Absolutely nothing.  But it was a stunning sunset.

Erica Schippers - Top 15 Comic Books

I thought I'd do something from the comic side of the continuum. These are in no particular order, and few of them are just things that I really like. This is not meant to be the top fifteen best comics of all times.

1) Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis - "Do not offend the chair leg of truth! For the chair leg of truth is mighty and terrible!" This comic is funny, horrifying, graphic, and adult in all the right ways (as in, politics, not sex).

2) Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai - There really is nothing else out there like Usagi. Literally trasnlated as 'Bunny Bodyguard', Usagi is an anthropomorphic comic set in medieval Japan that follows the life of a wandering ronin. Supernatural phenomenon are limited to those found in Japanese mythology. This is a warm-hearted and historically accurate book with moving, human stories.

3) Powers by Brian Michael Bendis - Ok, so I like cop shows. This is a cop show set in a world where superheroes are real and dressing up in costume if you're not a hero is illegal. Features a team of cranky ex-superhero and his even crankier, petite, foul-mouthed, blond partner. Good, engaging stories, and I like the art a lot, although it might not be to everyone's taste.

4) Top Ten by Alan Moore - Another police drama set in a city where every citizen, from poorest slum-dweller to corporate honcho, has unusual powers and abilities -- not to mention an alter ego and costume. Lots of fun, but Alan Moore will probably never finish it. I think he's wandered off.

5) Elektra Assassin by Frank Miller - The only Elektra story I really like. The Bill Sienkiewicz art is amazing, and the story is told in a weird, disjointed, utterly effective format.

6) Barry Ween, Boy Genius by Judd Winick - You'll never believe a comic with 'Fuck' in it that many times could be so funny, inventive, touching, and tragic.

7) Girl Genius by Phil Foglio - Actually, just read everything by Phil Foglio.

8) Hellboy by Mike Mignola - Unique and quite good art, good characterization, and spooky stories. What more could you want? And one of the characters is named 'Abe Sapien'.

9) The Desert Peach by Donna Barr - What if Erwin Rommel had a gay younger brother? You'd get the wonderful blend of history, politics, and humor that is The Desert Peach. Does this woman even need to pencil? Damn.

10) Hellblazer by Garth Ennis - Hellblazer has sucked for a long time, but it was at its best when Ennis wrote it.

11) V for Vendetta by Alan Moore - Superficially a distopic tale set in future England, this is a tightly constructed work of art that speaks to what it really means to be free. It's often eclipsed by Watchmen for its significance to the comic genre, but remove the context of comics history and V rises as a superior story.

12) Hitman by Garth Ennis - Hitman is gross, gratuitous, and really funny. It's Ennis at his best. Bueno!

13) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vols. I & II by Alan Moore - Nothing like the movie (except for character names), these books are proper Victorian adventures peopled by literary figures from the time period and genre. Lots of fun, sometimes rather horrifying. No Tom Sawyer or Dorian Grey.

14) Bone by Jeff Smith - Classic fantasy with a Pogo sensibility and some twists. Because individual issues are published very irregularly, I would suggest sticking to the graphic novels.

15) Savage Dragon by Erik Larson - I admit it, I'm twelve. There are more significant comics I could mention, but this is one I read issue by issue as it comes out. Savage Dragon manages to embody more comics cliches than you can shake a stick at while never taking itself seriously. It's fun, it's silly, it has lots of fist fights.

Lisa Leutheuser — My Short List of Non-Fiction

Happy Boxing Day!

Here are five non-fiction titles that I particularly enjoyed in 2003. Listed alphabetically by author.

By the Sword, Richard Cohen — A fascinating, if sometimes confusing, history of dueling. Focuses primarily on the Western world.

Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder — Paul Farmer makes you want to go out and change the world. This story is amazing, even more so because it's true. I'm still chewing over this one and how it is changing my view of the world.

Between Silk and Cyanide, Leo Marks — The story of a British World War II code maker and breaker. Very neat.

1421: The Year China Discovered the World, Gavin Menzies — The evidence is still being collected (and some of it will be wrong), but Menzie's theory definitely bears investigating, and I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually proves to be true. Well written with fascinating ideas. Menzies's naval experience offers a fresh interpretation medieval and rennaisance era sea cartography that a land lubber historian would miss.

Fast Food Nation, Eric Scholsser — At its most basic level, this book not just about fast food in and of itself, but how fast food has changed all facets of our food industry as well as its tremendous impact on many other facets of our lives. Now that I know how mass produced meat is handled in this country, the recent discovery of Mad Cow, and how our government is responding to it, is even scarier. (Thank goodness for locally raised free-range, small production beef.)

Steven Harper Piziks--Obligatory Return of the King Musings

Okay, most of you have seen it and read the reviews. "Spectacular" and "powerful" and "amazing" and "whoa!" don't begin to cover it. Since it's all been said, however, I don't feel a need to repeat it. What follows is instead less a review and more my musings on the entire Lord of the Rings phenomenon.

We've been waiting for this for =decades,= you know. At last Hollywood has the technology to make fantasy films that don't look cheesy, that have more than just people running around in weird makeup and strange clothes. And someone has finally taken the genre seriously. Hooray!

Besides the well-done writing, the extraordinary acting, and the non-pareil special effects, we also have a team of moviemakers who have taken the fantasy genre seriously. In this film it's patently obvious that Jackson and company don't see hobbits and elves and dwarves as something out of a baby book but as something that touches everyone. Fantasy is a powerful story vehicle that deserves equal treatment with other powerful genres and shouldn't be relegated to cutesy cartoons or sugary live-action with cheesy effects. Wake up, world! Fantasy isn't just for kids anymore!

And yet I find myself agreeing with Jason in Bill Amend's Foxtrot comic strip:

http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2003/12/19/ and http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2003/12/20/

"The 'Lord of the Rings' films are for people like me to love!" Jason rails to his sister Paige. "We memorized the books. We made the web sites. We drew the detailed maps of Osgiliath on our binders." Later he complains to his mother, "What if everyone thinks it's great? What if 'Lord of the Rings' becomes, you know . . . mainstream?"

For a long time, the F&SF community owned Lord of the Rings. We and we alone knew how powerful a story it was. We were the dragons with the treasure, Gollum with his Precious And we liked this. We could curl a lip at people who said they didn't read that fantasy stuff because it was for kids or because they didn't get it or because they just weren't interested.

"What do they know?" we said knowingly to others like ourselves. "Poor shlubs. They don't have the mental capacity to understand."

Jackson, however, has shown the world that LotR isn't just for geeks anymore. His movie has rightfully blasted to the top of everyone's entertainment list. The rest of the world has discovered fantasy, and we have no choice but to let everyone play in what used to be our backyard.

And eventually we'll get used to sharing our Precious.

--Steven Harper Piziks

Lisa Leutheuser — My Top Ten Fiction Books for 2003

There's still two weeks to go, but I know I won't have much time for fiction reading before the New Year, so here are ten fiction titles that I enjoyed in 2003. (Listed alphetically by author.)

KILN People, David Brin — Very cool. Hard boiled SF dective story with an interesting twist on clones. I know some people weren't overly fond of this one, but I greatly enjoyed the author's inventive intertwining of the various points of view. (heh)

Kushiel's Dart (and sequels), Jacqueline Carey — Excellent fantasy with a healthy dose of angst that verges just short of going overboard for my tastes. This is the only fantasy I've read where the S&M elements are actually important to the plot and not just gratuitous titillation.

Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold — I so enjoyed this second fantasy by Bujold, that I re-read it right away. I almost never do that.

Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn — Delightful story set in a fully imagined fantasy world based on Japan. (Thanks for the recommendation, Sarah.)

Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon — Amazing. Beautiful. Read this book.

Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan — Mystery-thriller-science fiction. Very, very cool. I hesitate to call this "cyberpunk", lest it be labeled with out-dated notions of what that means, but the influence is there.

Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian — Of course I had to re-read this one after seeing the movie. It's even better the second time around.

Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanely Robinson — Alternate science fiction history spanning a good 1000 years. I may get around to writing a short review of this one someday as a short tagline can't do it justice. It's quite a philosophical book, so it's not one to pick up if you're in the mood for action/adventure.

Cyrano de Bergerac, E. Rostand, trans. Anthony Burgess. I really enjoyed this translation, which takes some liberties with exactness to capture in English the poetry of the original French.

Barry Ween, Boy Genius, vol 1-4, Judd Winick — Graphic novels. Oh my God. F*cking hilarious. And yet very human and touching at the same time. (How does he do it?)

Steven Harper Signing

Just a short note to let you all know that Common Language Bookstore (215 S. Fourth Avenue, Ann Arbor) is hosting a reading and signing for yours truly on Thursday, December 18 from 7-9 p.m. I'll be promoting TRICKSTER, my lastest novel. Autographed copies make wonderful presents!

There will be cheese and wine for your tasting pleasure as well. You can contact the bookstore at 734-663-0036 for more information. Stop by, if you can! I'd love to see you there!

--Steven

Catherine Shaffer - Battlestar Galactica!

Wow, I really liked this. My memory of the original series is rather vague, but the remake is better than I remember the original being. I realized, after watching about half an hour of it, that I've been programmed by decades of Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon Five and other TV space operas to expect things like transporter beams, energy shields, telepathy, and so forth. So it was refreshing to see a space drama that was almost %100 science based. The only concession made was a faster-than-light travel system, and as sf writers we kinda understand why they had to do this. It was also, in my opinion, really well written. There were lots of surprises, unexpected reversals and so forth. The acting and general production values were very good. I would not have been disappointed seeing this in the theater.

My only minor quibble is with Starbuck. I love that she's a woman this time. It's a great way to update the series. But I felt they tried to hard to make her masculine, as if afraid that people wouldn't believe a more natural-acting woman could be a successful pilot. Sort of like when a black woman wins a big beauty pageant, but she's got really light skin and caucasian features. (Oh, boy, I'm going to get in all sorts of trouble now.) Starbuck was a frat boy in a skirt. If she went to my high school, the girls would have eaten her alive. I've known athletic women before, strong women, successful women. In our society, most women of this sort that I've known have been extremely, overwhelming *competent*. They can't afford to screw up, get drunk, get thrown in the brig, etc. But this is the far future, so maybe it's all different. In the end, I think I'd have been happy if they got rid of the cigar. Who smokes cigars anymore? Certainly not young, health-conscious pilots. Well, anyway, liked Starbuck, but she didn't come together for me as well as I would have hoped. I wish, instead of transplanting the original male starbuck into a female body, that they'd reinvented the character more, made Starbuck more organically female rather than...gee, I have a word or two in mind here, but I think I'll keep it to myself. I don't want any bricks through my window.

Erica Schippers - Zero Breaks the Universe, Including My Head

I'm re-reading Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Seife, Matt Zimet (Illustrator). At 256 pages, this book is surprisingly small for all of the information it contains, and that's not the only way that it is deceptive. The writing style is so friendly, accessible, and clear that it is easy to forget that many of the ideas in the book are very complex and sometimes very counter-intuitive.

Throughout the history of mathematics, zero and infinity, which are not the same thing but often produce the same problems mathematically, have simultaneously proved troublesome and provided large blinking red arrows to those places where otherwise sound mathematical and physical theories break down. This book follows the history of these two ideas from the early days of western mathematics, where zero wasn't even acknowledged as an acceptable concept, all the way through to modern day string theory and higher order multidimensional attempts to explain the places where the four-dimensional universe appears to collapse into incomprehensible singularity.

I'm not sure how accessible a read this would be to someone without a bit of calculus and physics in their background, but I will say that only a bit of knowledge in those areas will make this book a valuable investment of time. I got to the part about infinite sets that are larger than other infinite sets and had to go have a lie down until my brain adjusted, so in short my opinion of it is: this book is very good. It will make your brain hurt.

Still the Magic-Orlando by Catherine Shaffer

We set out from Battle Creek Michigan, the grandparents' home base, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. We drove south through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and finally Florida in 44 hours spread out over two days. Brent's aunt in Tennessee provided lodging on Saturday night. The Boy passed the time watching DVD's and we listened to a couple of books on tape. Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi and Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October.

Sarah Zettel--Required Reading

And yes, she will be on the mid-term. It seems I'm required reading for a college science fiction course.

http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~ccsde/syll/engl217syl.html

Studies in Literature and Culture: Science Fiction (ENGL 217)
READING-You will need the following books.

A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller
Fool's War, Sarah Zettel
Hunting Party, Elizabeth Moon (Note: This book replaces The Price of the
Stars which is not currently available.)
The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
I, Robot, Isaac Asimov
Startide Rising, David Brin
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Philip K. Dick
Expendable, James Alan Gardner
Modern Classics of Science Fiction, Gardner Dozois, ed.
The SFWA Grand Masters Volume 1, Frederik Pohl, ed.
The SFWA Grand Masters Volume 2, Frederik Pohl, ed.

I'm discussed in Unit 9, under Religion, and in excellent company.