1 Comment

My (Science-loving, Steam-Powered) Heart Beats For Atomic Robo

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on February 18, 2012 in Books I Recommend

Sometimes a girl needs a little fun in her life. A moment to enjoy some good old fashioned science-fuled ass kicking. A happy ending would be nice too. So, what’s a girl to do? I got my hands on volume 2 and 3 of the Atomic Robo trade paperbacks.

If you haven’t heard of Atomic Robo, go read my review of the first book.

This series is written like someone handed Brian Clevinger a list of all the things that make my heart sing. Tesla, mad science, heroic action, Carl Sagan, giant robots, evil Nazis, and Scott Wegener’s adorable art style? Oh, pitter patter.

Vol. 2, Atomic Robo and the Dogs of War, collects the five-issue mini-series, complete with cover gallery, pin-ups, and bonus stories. It shows more of Robo’s adventures in World War II, introduces a plucky British heroine, and there’s some evil genius-designed weather cannons.

It also has a brief appearance by James “Scottie” Milligan, a Scotsman and a hero. He was Scott Wegener’s grandfather.

That the creators of this comic wrote in Wegener’s grandfather, in order to allow him to live again in Atomic Robo, is the biggest part of why I adore this book. It’s written and drawn by people who want to be a part of this world, so much that they will populate it with their favorite things, their joys and sorrows and loved ones. This is he one great power we have as writers – the ability to remake the world in whatever image we want, to fix its flaws, to ressurect the dead, to make it right. When it’s done well, as it is in this case, it’s breathtaking.

Vol 3, Atomic Robo and The Shadow From Beyond Time, combines AR with my other great love: HP Lovecraft. I did tell you they write this series just for me, didn’t I? Let’s start with the fact that “Tesla Heavy Industries” had, in 1926, a storefront office with “Science While You Wait!” painted on the window. Throw in the Tunguska blast, Howard P Lovecraft babbling like a mad man, Carl Sagan, lightning guns, tentacles, and … I don’t want to give away the rest of the story but if you like that sort of thing, this is the book for you.

Oh, and Robo’s wearing argyle socks. I’m just saying.

Tags: , , Permalink
1 Comment

More from Folklore: Aesop’s Fables

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on February 13, 2012 in Reading, Writing

We’re moving on to The Conference of the Birds (link goes to Wiki) in tomorrow’s class. Before I switch gears, I wanted to share some facts and thoughts on a misunderstood genre of writing: Aesopic fables.

The word “fable” comes from the Latin ”fabula” (a “story”), itself derived from “fari” (“to speak”) with the -ula suffix that signifies “little”: hence, a “little story”.

Aesop’s fables have grown from an early group of Greek stories – attributed to a single source – into a genre, describing a type of stories, regardless of author. We now refer to this body of stories as the “Aesopic tradition”. Fables are generally short, insightful, tales, meant to convey a message in only a few sentences. There are several parts to a fable, not all of which are required but most of which appear over and over again. These include:

  • the moral, with or without an explanatory promythium or epimythium
  • using animals or gods as main characters
  • often explains acts of nature, such as why an animal is of a certain color
  • not (originally) meant for children

A promythium is an explanation of the fable’s moral placed before the story, just as an epimythium comes after the tale. It became very common to add these notes to fables, particularly in the middle ages, in case the reader didn’t get quite the same message that the author intended. When a fable doesn’t have these notes, it’s said to have an endomythium – the moral of the tale is inside the story, and we’re supposed to know what it is.

These moral messages go back to the beginning of fables and speak to the point of having a fable in the first place. Early scholars talk about the original Aesop, who cannot be proven to have existed at all but who may have lived in the 6th century BC, as an angry, sarcastic, stumpy, misshapen, dwarf of a slave*. He was born deaf and mute, but – after helping a priestess – was granted speech as a gift by her goddess. He promptly used his new gifts to denounce his master, the slave system, and pretty much everyone and everything he ran into. He told allegorical stories in order to explain his meaning to people he assumed weren’t as smart as he was, and eventually so angered the people of Delphi that they framed him for stealing in order to have an excuse to shove him off of a cliff. Moral of that story: being smart and clever won’t help you if you’re still an ass to everyone around you.

His stories lived on long after he did, through the oral tradition. Socrates and Aristotle wrote about him; Babrius wrote his fables down for (possibly) the first time; and Pheadrus, Hesiod, Epicharmus of Kos and Phormis all wrote their own fables. The tradition carried on through the middle ages (the Church had several of its own fable writers), found popularity again in 17th century France, and into modern day. There’s significant evidence that the fables didn’t originate with Aesop but that he was himself carrying on an earlier Sumerian tradition of story telling using animals**, but it’s Aesop who gets the fame.

Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , Permalink
7 Comments

Someone Else’s Life

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on February 10, 2012 in Life

Imagine that you don’t have anyone else in your life. No one, not a spouse or a child or a roommate. No job either, no school, no pets to feed, no homework to finish, no bills to pay. No one to impress. No responsibilities at all.

Just for a week, let’s say, so you don’t get lonely or miss anyone or feel guilty about taking the time off. One week to live in a vacuum, to spend with yourself. The question is, who would you be?

This might seem like a silly question, but the truth is a big part of who we are is based on what we think we have to do. How we act around others when we want to attract or repel someone. It’s only when we are alone – and specifically when we drop everything that we’re doing for anyone else – that we can see clearly what we want for ourselves. Most of the time we don’t even think about what we lose when we lose the people in our lives. Of course, we think we’ll miss them. But we don’t think, will I still make pancakes for breakfast if my son isn’t here to eat them? Or, would I get up at 5 am and go running if the dog didn’t need to be fed? 

Continue Reading »

Permalink
Leave a comment

Review: Brian Wood’s DMZ (graphic novels 1-3)

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on February 10, 2012 in Books I Recommend

    

Set in a near future where a second American civil war rages, a lone journalist is stranded in the middle of New York City, now a brutal no-man’s-land. Mirroring current events, DMZ is an unforgiving look at what a ‘war on terror’ can do to a civilian population.

I’ve been told that I need to start reading Brian Wood’s Vertigo series, DMZ. I meant to, I really did. From what I heard, it was exactly the kind of book I like: dark, gritty, urban, bleak, yet full of unexpected hope. I looked forward to it, but wasn’t certain when I’d find the time. Now that it’s coming to an end, I finally picked up the first three graphic novels, which collect issues 1 to 17, and … it’s everything I was told to expect.

The story begins with Matty Roth, photo intern, being dropped into the middle of a war zone. As if being left behind weren’t bad enough, he’s got people shooting at him and strange girls pointing guns in his face and an alarming tendency to faint under pressure. Poor Matty. He can get out or he can bunker down and turn his misfortune into a chance at the big time, a chance to be the only working journalist in the DMZ. Which just happens to be Manhattan, caught in the crossfire between what’s left of the USA and the “Free States” currently occupying New Jersey and points west.

Wood shows a NYC we can imagine without having to squint too hard. It’s a brilliant premise, turning a city with as much cultural weight as NYC has into a hotly contested battle zone. It turns familiar territory into a whole new world, an alternate history two steps to the right of where we are now. To say that Wood loves this city is an understatement – it serves as both backdrop and character for two of his other titles, New York Four/Five and The Couriers, and he lives in Brooklyn - but in DMZ it’s transformed.

There are all kinds of little bits of fun in the book too, meant for people who have a vague idea of what New York is, as both a historical landmark and a place where the cutting edge is sharpest. Central Park? The Zoo? The Flatiron Building? They’re in the books. Art installations and vegan restaurants and Chinese gangsters and tattooed girls whose thong underwear is visible over their low-rise jeans? Here. All the bits of truth that become ideas when they filter out of the city and into popular media can be found, eventually, in DMZ, but they serve as anchors, pulling the book back into our world, and giving us landmarks to guide us along the way.

Wood has to be given credit for another bit of world building – even though the book is marketed at an arguably male (and white male, at that) audience, because that’s still the bulk of the comic book buying population, his characters are not only white or male. His main character is, sure, because we have to give the reader a person to identify with, but most of the other white males in the book are military, soldiers. Matty’s friends and neighbors are the people you’d expect to see living in New York today. To have whitewashed the city would have been an unforgivable sin, and one I’m glad Wood didn’t make. In addition, he gives us the full range of humanity’s potential, so that it isn’t just the white men who save the day, but the black architecture student, the hispanic female med student, the elderly Chinese “grandfather”, and so on.

Yes, of course, there are the punks and the thieves and the whores. It is still New York.

What makes DMZ work for me is that while there is a big war going on, and Matty, as the “outsider” does have to reflect on why it started and where it’s going, the bulk of the people in the story don’t have time for that kind of philosophizing. It’s not a book where people sit around a diner talking out their big ideas on long swathes of dialogue. There’s running and hiding and exploding bombs and dying children and conspiracies and fucking and making mistakes and trying not to die. A lot of simply trying not to die. It gives the story a frenetic layer of action on top of which can be thrown a little heavy thinking, if there’s time.

There are 72 issues in the series, before it ends, and I think I’m going to have to read them all.

Cover illustrations: Brian Wood, John Paul Leon
Colorist: Jeromy Cox 
Lettering: Jared K. Fletcher
Published by DC Comics/Vertigo
DMZ is co-created by Riccardo Burchielli

On the Ground. Collects Issues 1-5. ISBN 1-4012-10627
Body of a Journalist. Collects Issues 6-12. ISBN 1-4012-12476
Public Works. Collects Issues 13-17. ISBN 1-4012-14762

Tags: Permalink
1 Comment

January 2012 Recap

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on February 1, 2012 in Life, Writing

In January I started my final semester at UPenn – I’m taking 5 classes, including one on Great Story Collections, and I’m writing about that class for the blog. So far, I love my classes and my professors, but it’s massively time-consuming. Juggling everything has been a bit tricky but I think I’m getting the hang of it. Besides school, what else did I do in January?

I …

  • Watched 16 movies, and wrote about them here and here (and I’m due to write another review post for the rest).
  • Ranted about less-than-honest book reviews.
  • Wrote a 1475 word SF piece, submitted it, got rejected, did a major rewite, and submitted it to a different market.
  • Was invited to submit proposals for non-fiction essays for an anthology about a major comic book line; I pitched two ideas, the editor liked both, so I wrote formal proposals (200-300 words each) and submitted them.
  • Wrote an 800 word post for my Tech Nerd column over at Functional Nerds (I’ll link to it once it’s live).
  • Wrote a 1075 word review of Chicks Dig Time Lords for Functional Nerds (also due to be posted soon).
  • Wrote a letter for the Dear Teen Me project, which is due to be posted on February 2, 2012.
Oh and I lost 10 pounds.

I’ll admit that most of the writing got done in the last few days of the month, in one great push to not have wasted all of January. Considering everything else I had going on, I’m happy with what I did finish, but I’m still hoping that February is a much better month. Cross your fingers for me.

Permalink
1 Comment

Dear Jackass, The Book Review Edition

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on January 25, 2012 in Dear (Jackass)

Dear Jackass,

So you want to get your book sold, do you? And you think that a glowing review of your work will get readers interested? I have to agree with you there. There have been several books that I purchased based on a strong review by someone whose opinion I trusted.

Oh, you don’t want to show anyone the reviews where the reader thought you could have used a better editor, or thought your female characters had no agency, or bemoaned your complete lack of a believable plot? Well, sure, I can understand that. A good review tends to sell more books than a bad one. Your only choice is to keep sending your books out until you’ve found your market, and then post the good reviews you do get.

What? That takes too long? And no one likes your book? And you’re going to do what now? Buy a review?

Hello, jackass. This one’s for you.

First off, if you couldn’t be bothered to have your book edited, or didn’t want to spend the money on a cover by a professional artist, or included in your anthology stories by people you know (as opposed to people who could actually write), chances are you deserve that bad review. You can’t just throw a $50 cover on a first-draft novel that your Grandmother thought would be a “big hit” (but no one else would publish) and expect that mess of a manuscript to make you rich.

But you’ve done it, you’ve gone and gotten it published, and now you realize it’s going nowhere. Your solution is to turn to one of the many pay-for-play review services and throw money at them until they put stars next to your name. Do you honestly think that we, other writers and readers, don’t realize that Kirkus* is letting people buy positive reviews? So what if they said that you were going to be the next Tolkien. What they meant was that your check cleared.

Perhaps you think that the answer is to hold on to your money and just have a friend or relative review your book. Authors, editors, and even small presses do this all of the time – when they have no self respect or respect for their readers. As another example, I know an editor/author whose assistant writes glowing reviews of every book she’s worked on or written for. Now, it’s possible that the assistant genuinely loves her boss’ work; after all, she’s got a choice, doesn’t she? I mean, there are millions of well respected, famous authors dying to take on a young, inexperienced intern and make her a star, right?

Right.

What’s worse than the person writing the reviews (for money or other gain) is the fact that small press publishers link to these reviews on their websites, Twitter feeds, and so on, hoping that no one will notice the questionable provenance of those kind words. They’re assuming that we’re stupid. That we, as readers, won’t know any better, and will fork over our hard earned cash without caring where the review comes from.

Now who’s the jackass?

* For example. Not to single them out, as other magazines do this as well. Pro tip: if a magazine sells its review services, don’t bother reading their reviews.

** As a publisher and as a writer, I only post reviews of my books or stories when I feel they come from unbiased sources. Plenty of my writers talked about Cthulhurotica, for example, but you won’t find those on our Reviews page. Hell, my mom loves pretty much everything I write, but do you trust her opinion to be unbiased?

*** I should point out that my mom is bound to read this. I love you mom! #coveringmyass

Tags: , , Permalink
4 Comments

Folklore: Great Story Collections

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on January 19, 2012 in Reading

Last week I started back at the University of Pennsylvania, after a year off. I’ll be finishing my last semester this Spring, and graduating with a BA in History of Art in May.

In addition to the math and biology lecture class and bio lab I must take to graduate, I also got to pick two others to round out my semester. I went with World Music (I’m writing a paper for that class that I’ll probably post here when it’s done) and Folklore: Great Story Collections. With my work in anthologies it seems like a perfect fit, and I love classes that have interesting reading lists.

Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , Permalink
Leave a comment

More Movies from 2011 (Which I’ve Now Seen, in 2012)

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on January 15, 2012 in Movies

My massive catch-up from the cinematic offerings of 2011 continues (click here for part 1 of my mini-reviews), mainly veering away from Hollywood and into the independents.

Thank the Elder Gods for that.

I love a good Hollywood action/adventure type flick as much as the next person – and being a comic book geek, it’s possible I like them even more than most. But as a writer I’m always, always, looking for the story in everything, and much of the mainstream offerings lack witty dialogue, charming character building, or even something as essential as a workable plot. When you take away the car crashes and super powers and music montages, and just show us some people talking their way through a story, we can see the writer at work. Those are the movies I prefer.

I did squeeze in two more Hollywood movies – the romcoms Crazy Stupid Love and Friends With Benefits – before slipping back into familiar territory with One Day, The Art Of Getting By, Beginners, and Another Earth. Continue Reading »

Tags: , Permalink
2 Comments

A Look At Book Cover Design

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on January 5, 2012 in Book Design, Book History, Books

I recently made the decision to expand this blog from simply talking about writing to talking about stories. Stories told in film, in images, and – most often – in words. Though many of you know that I my field of study is art history, what you may not know is that I specifically study book history, book creation, and book art. I love Early American books the best, hand printed manuscripts on hand-made paper, pressed into a hand-built machine and gifted with words by hand-carved type bearing hand-made ink. How is that not an art?

While the evolution of book history means that the construction of most books has been industrialized (for large print runs, though there are still amazing artists making hand-crafted books, and I’ll talk more about them later) and even removed as we move into digital reading, the two places that you can still find art in a book are in the font choices, and in the cover. Some books go farther and incorporated art and design into the layout, but even the most minimal of interiors uses a font, and probably has a cover.

Book cover design is its own kind of art. It can be, when done well, its own kind of beautiful. Here are a couple of resources to get you introduced to the possibilities:

Some recent examples at The Book Cover Archive

The Book Cover Archive, “for the appreciation and categorization of excellence in book cover design”. Not only do they post their favorite new book covers, but they also offer up a blog about book design news (it doesn’t update often but I love the very visual aspect of their posts). The whole site is built around the visual so you won’t get too much design discussion but they 1300+ pages of material to scroll through give you an immersion into cover design that can’t be beat. Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , , , , Permalink
10 Comments

5 Movies I Didn’t See in 2011 (But Saw This Week)

Posted by Carrie Cuinn on January 3, 2012 in Movies

I love movies. I love how a great director and great actors can take a script, which is just the skeleton of a story, and flesh it out with sets and sounds and camera movements and jump cuts to make emotions. Turning it into the warm body of a film, with strength and heart. When I was young I attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco, and worked on a degree in Screenwriting (with a minor in Cinematography), wrote a few films (and saw them produced), and learned a lot about the film-making process. Though I figured out that screenwriting was basically organizing thoughts and notes to create an outline for someone else to finish – and therefore not enough to keep me interested – I still use some of what I learned then in my writing now.

When I went to UPenn I studied mainly Art History – which is one of the best degrees for a writer in terms of teaching you about art, culture, history, and how to think – but I also got a chance to take a couple of film criticism classes. I loved them! I’ve done classes on Japanese film, both pre-WW2 and post, noir films, and adaptations, and those four classes together showed me most of what is being put back into (recycled, adapted, homage’d) modern movies. Over the years I have learned to write screenplays, see a script cinematically, and think critically about film. But the biggest thing that informs my view of film is that I have watched so many of them. I’ve even worked in movie theaters in order to have access to all the celluloid I want. This has led me to watch a lot less “Hollywood” blockbusters, because I can see the predecessors in the work. Which is to say that I’ve watched enough classic, indie, and foreign films to know all the myriad ways that Hollywood is ripping them off. Why pay to see what’s already been done, and often done better, by someone else?

I ended up only seeing one movie in theaters in all of 2011, my all time low. I saw Contagion, which was wonderful, and that was it. This had, honestly, more to do with my year than with what was available, and so I started off 2012 by renting a handful of “hit” movies that I actually had wanted to see. In the last three days I have watched the final Harry Potter film, Super 8, Captain America, Thor, and Fright Night. What did I think?

Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Permalink
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 670 other followers