The Secret Lair

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi is the 2010 Locus award winner for Best First Novel. The story takes place in the 22nd century; petroleum is a distant memory and giant agricultural conglomerates fight wars and wipe out local crops with genetically-engineered plagues to create markets for their genehacked grains. Thailand is the last holdout against these Calorie Companies, maintaining a closely-guarded seedbank that contains what may be the last natural food-bearing flora on the planet.

The Calorie Companies want in and the Environment Ministry wants to keep them out. Making matters difficult is the Ministry of Trade, which is doing all it can to loosen border restrictions and open up trade with the rest of the world—in direct conflict with the goal of the Environment Ministry.

In the middle of the mess, and soon to become a far more important part of it than she would ever imagine, is Emiko, a windup girl (genetically engineered “New Person”) whose very presence in Bangkok is illegal. Emiko works in a brothel, a toy for those with more exotic (and perverse) tastes than are easily satisfied by the real girls. She is a prisoner of fear, knowing that the Environment Ministry White Shirts enforcers are kept at bay only by the bribes her patron pays. Should the bribes stop, Emiko would surely be mulched, processed and turned into the methane that provides so much of Bangkok’s energy.

This was, simply put, a fantastic book. The post-petroleum world Bacigalupi created is complex and compelling (a great exploration of what the world might look like after the petroplague in Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason’s Ill Wind or simply the depletion of the world’s oil reserves) and the idea of genehacked grain and a food supply that is largely controlled by companies in Des Moines is fascinating (especially after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan). Then there are the characters: Emiko the windup girl; the White Shirts, Captain Jaidee “The Tiger” Rojjanasukchai and his Lieutenant, Kanya; Anderson Lake, the Calorie Man looking for a way to undermine the Environment Ministry; and Hock Seng, the Yellow Card refugee from a China torn apart by religious conflict. Bacigalupi winds their separate stories together expertly, creating distinct voices for each and making them all sympathetic, even though their motivations often counter one another.

In this episode of The Secret Lair podcast, the Overlords get together to discuss a couple of recent movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. Note that both Overlords were in their new powered armor suits while recording this episode, which completely explains the tin-can quality of the audio in the recording. Really.

Discussion: Iron Man 2 and Sherlock Holmes

• Iron Man is Overlord Johnson’s OMG Best Superhero Movie EVAR, so the sequel had a lot to live up to.
• Holy analogy, Iron Man! Iron Man 2 : Iron Man :: The Dark Knight : Batman Begins
• Hey, Black Widow: Vere is your aksent, comrade?
• Overlord Miller would have preferred Nick Fury: Agent of M.E.N.A.C.E.
• Justin Hammer was a good California millionaire.
• Overlord Miller felt that Whiplash was a little shoe-horned into the story.
• Overlord Johnson thought Whiplash was pretty cool, but his demise was weak.
• Gwyneth Paltrow, Jon Favreau and new-Rhodey (Don Cheadle) had a lot more to do this time around.
• Howard Stark is Walt Disney.
• Overlord Miller seems to think that Robert Downey Jr. will be relegated to a cameo in the upcoming Avengers movie; Overlord Johnson disagrees.
• War Machine was pretty darn cool.
• The new Iron Man armor was pretty cool, too. Let’s avoid the West Coast Avengers version (AKA Silver Centurion), though, okay?
  
• How about that Iron Baby?
• We take a slight tangent to discuss:
  • Chris Hemsworth as Thor.
  • Chris Evans as Captain America.
  • Jake Wyler is another Chris Evans role (Not Another Teen Movie).
  • Do not do this with Captain America’s shield. Ever again.
    
  • Overlord Miller is looking forward to the Green Lantern movie, but we have some concerns about how the power of the ring will be realized on-screen.
• And finally we get to Sherlock Holmes, which Overlord Johnson felt was a bit reminiscent of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
• Overlord Miller was relieved, as it could have been much, much worse.
• Holmes’ fighting strategy brought to mind Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.
• Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) appears in the very first of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories, “A Scandal in Bohemia.”
• Was the movie too “steampunk-y”? What have we got against steampunk, anyway?
• Madam Overlord Johnson felt the plot lacked any sort of mystery.
• Who will portray Moriarty in the sequel? Perhaps one of Overlord Miller’s man-crushes.
  • And now we’re on a Doctor Who tangent. That’s the royal “we”, where Overlord Miller is the royalty and Overlord Johnson is a bloody peasant.
  • Are we really talking about a porn parody of the old Batman television series? Apparently so, but we say “cultural touchstone,” so it’s okay. There’s a fully-clothed trailer for Batman XXX: A Porn Parody on YouTube, of all places.
  • Finally, Overlord Johnson isn’t quite ready to declare steampunk a complete failure as a genre of fiction just yet; he very much enjoyed Gail Carriger’s Soulless, a review of which can be found on this very site.

Lairkeeping

• The podcast will be on hiatus for the next six weeks or so, but we’ll be updating the blog between now and then.
• Our theme music is “Skullcrusher Mountain” by Jonathan Coulton.
• Visit us on the web at trip-dubs dot thesecretlair dot com.
• Try StatusNet for those short updates. This service is invite-only, so send us a note if you’d like to join.
• Got something to say that 140 characters just won’t cover? Say it on our community site.
• Coming up on The Secret Library, The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Really. Any day now.
• The Secret Lair blog is powered by WordPress.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:56 — 47.6MB)

This morning. we bring you a little something to ease you into your week. Remember Pachelbel’s Canon? You know…they play it at weddings, graduations, all manner of social gatherings.  No?

Let us remind you. Here are some of the best performances, remixes, and re-imaginings of the classic we could find on the interwebs.

A bit of commentary from Rob Parovian:

An arrangement by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet:

A song and dance(?!) from “Le plus grand cabaret du Monde” via TVFrance 2:

Now, as Ms. Jackson said, gimme a beat:

And finally, some talented hands:

“What are you doing?” Marc asked.

The angel held up a finger. “One second,” he said, his eyes fixed on the television. “This guy is going to blend an iPod.”

“What are you doing in my house?” Marc asked.

“I’m eating Doritos,” the angel replied. “And drinking Cherry Vanilla Diet Dr. Pepper. And watching infomercials…aaaand the iPod will blend! Of course it will!”

“Look,” Marc said. “I don’t know who the hell you are or what you want, but the cops are on their way and—”

“No they’re not,” the angel said.

“What?”

“The police, the cops, the fuzz; they’re not on their way…well, not here, anyway.” The angel still hadn’t taken his eyes off the television.

“Of course they are,” Marc insisted. “I called 9-1-1.”

The angel took a swig of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper and set the can back on the end table about two inches from the stack of coasters. “Lying to a messenger from the Almighty isn’t just bad form, it’s impossible,” he said. “You heard the television, assumed Norah had left it on when she came to bed—again—and came down to turn it off. You didn’t wake your wife, you didn’t call the boys in blue, you didn’t even bother to grab the Louisville Slugger you keep behind the bedroom door.”

“How the fu-” Mark started.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the angel interrupted, waving an admonishing finger in Marc’s direction but still watching the television. “Language, please.” On the screen, a man in a lab coat was pouring golf balls into a kitchen blender.

Marc closed his eyes tight, then opened them again. The television was still on, the angel was still sitting on the couch—on his side of the couch. “What—” Mark began, then closed his mouth.

The angel finally looked up, staring at Marc for a moment, his head cocked to one side. He pointed to the bag of chips in his lap. “Doritoes.” He picked up the can of soda—Norah’s soda; Marc never drank diet. “Dr. Pepper.” He picked up the remote with the other hand, waggling it as if it were a bone and Marc a dog, then gestured toward the television. “Infomercials.”

“I don’t understand,” Marc said.

The angel sighed. “You never do. Oh, not ‘you’ you, but…you know, you in the general ‘all of humanity’ sense.” He pressed a button on the remote and darkness was upon the face of the living room.

Marc panicked, reaching for the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, but his hand met cloth instead. “Let’s have a little talk,” the angel said. “How about we go into the kitchen? Maybe get something to drink.”

The kitchen light was on; Marc could see it off to his right. It definitely hadn’t been on before. The angel guided him to the breakfast nook and Marc sat.

“This isn’t a twist-top,” the angel said, standing at the open fridge with a Coke in his hand, “do you have an—ah, never mind, there it is.” He plucked the magnetic bottle opener off the freezer door and a second later there was a soft hiss as he popped the top off the bottle.

Now that the angel wasn’t sitting in the dark living room, Marc could better see the massive, feathered wings and the long, white robes. “You don’t have a halo,” he said.

“What? Oh, no,” the angel said. “Well, sometimes. But never that gold ring or diadem or whatever that you like to put on your little ceramic collectibles. You, as in—”

“Yeah,” Marc interrupted. “‘All of humanity’. I got that.”

“Good,” the angel said, sliding easily into the seat across from Marc. The breakfast nook was small—when Marc and Norah looked at the house four years ago the real estate agent called it “cozy”; Marc just thought it was cramped—but the angel somehow managed to sit without his wings getting in the way.

“Why are you here?” Marc asked. “I mean, I’m an atheist, for crying out loud.”

The angel narrowed his eyes. “Are you? Really?”

Marc nodded. “I am.”

The angel shook his head. “Actually, you’re an agnostic. Or rather, you were.”

Marc opened his mouth to object, but wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. He was talking to an angel, after all. An angel who had just brought him a Coke.

Marc looked at the slender bottle and saw a drop of condensation trickle down the side, carving a path through all the other little droplets that clung to the clear glass. Did cold soda bottles sweat in dreams? He picked up the bottle and took a sip. It was definitely Coca Cola.

Marc took another sip, which turned into a long swallow, and when he put the bottle back on the table half the Coke was gone. He looked at the angel. “You haven’t answered my question: why are you here?”

Were angels supposed to smirk? This one sure did. “Not going to argue the whole atheist/agnostic bit?”

Marc just shook his head.

“Well, that’s another bet lost,” said the angel, “but to answer your question: this is an intervention.”

“A what?”

“You know, an intervention. An orchestrated attempt by one, or often many, people—or angels, in this instance—to get someone to seek professional help.”

“You’re joking,” Marc scoffed.

Now it was the angel’s turn to shake his head.

“You want me to seek ‘professional help’? From whom? For what?”

The angel cast his eyes toward the ceiling.

“Oh, come on,” Marc said. “You’re telling me I’m supposed to seek help from…from God? That’s what you’re—” He paused. “This…this is a divine intervention? Literally?”

“Literally,” said the angel.

“I don’t believe this.”

The angel rose to his feet, his wings unfurling behind him, the great, alabaster-feathered expanse stretching across the entire length of the kitchen. There was light everywhere, a brilliance that seemed to have no single point of origin but washed over everything like a flood, dispelling every last shadow.

“Yes you do,” the angel said, stepping out of the light. Marc saw the blow coming too late to dodge; a right cross that caught him square in the jaw and sent him sprawling across the table. He was acutely aware of the Coke bottle falling, clattering to the floor, the remaining soda spilling out onto the tile, and then the angel’s voice, seeming to emanate from all around him in Dolby ∞.1 Surround Sound: “You don’t have the luxury of not believing anymore.”

The light was gone. Marc heard Norah descending the stairs, felt the cold Coke pooling against his bare foot, saw a single drop of blood from his split lip spatter onto the table next to the ring of condensation where the bottle had stood.

“Marc?” It was Norah’s voice, from the living room. “What are you doing? Why are the lights off?”

A pause, then a wash of incandescence and Norah’s voice again. “Have you been drinking my Dr. Pepper?”

For those of you who missed it in Twitterspace last week, a new science-fiction-oriented magazine has hit the intertubes. It goes by the name Lightspeed, and its editor-in-chief John Joseph Adams describes what sets the magazine apart:

Lightspeed is an online magazine focusing exclusively on science fiction. Here you can expect to see all types of science fiction, from near-future, sociological soft sf, to far-future, star-spanning hard sf, and anything and everything in between. No subject will be considered off-limits, and we encourage our writers to take chances with their fiction and push the envelope.

Each month at Lightspeed, we bring you a mix of originals and reprints, and featuring a variety of authors—from the bestsellers and award-winners you already know to the best new voices you haven’t heard of yet. When you read Lightspeed, it is our hope that you’ll see where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

I shelled out the $2.99 cover price for two reasons. First, I’m renewing my love affair with science fiction after years of fantasy reading and I loves me a a good SF short story. Second, they offer the magazine in a number of downloadable formats, one of which is ePub. That’s something I want to see more of, and so I chose to vote with my money.

The format of the magazine is an interesting mix of fiction and non-fiction writing. The features run in triplets throughout; first a short story, then an interview with the author about the short story, and finally a non-fiction essay  that is somehow related to the short story.  This pattern was repeated four times in the course of the issue and it made for an absorbing reading experience. I truly enjoyed delving more deeply into what the author was thinking and feeling when they crafted the story and the non-fiction essay was a perfect dessert to the main course. This format of small meals sustained me on a flight from Cleveland to Asheville, NC last week, and I was grateful for it.

I’m looking forward to seeing where the staff of the magazine takes it next, but I want to recommend it. If you like short fiction and also want to learn a little something at the same time, I highly recommend Lightspeed. Go buy a copy. You’ll thank yourself for it.

Bonus: Read John Joseph Adams Editorial or Vylar Kaftan’s “I’m Alive, I Love You, And I’ll See You In Reno” which is the most emotional SF read I’ve absorbed since Mur Lafferty’s “I Look Forward To Remembering You.”

This morning, in chat:

Following a brief discussion on the intertubewebs about oolong and assam teas, Overlord Johnson suggested new blend of tea that had never been seen in the wild before now. This new blend is the fabled Oolongassam.¹ Now, being the curious scientific sort, such an interesting sounding blend was just screaming to be brought to life. My research notes are as follows.

The Secret Lair Oolongassam Blend, version 1.0

Control Group 1: Stash YMY 1690 Oolong

• Color = Medium amber
• Flavor = Strong malt/grain
• Mouth feel = Average
• Classification = Oolong tea

Control Group 2: Allegro Breakfast Blend, a blend of Assam and Ceylon²

• Color = Dark auburn
• Flavor = Mellow but strong, not overwhelming
• Mouth feel = Very smooth
• Classification = Black tea

Blend: Oolong and Breakfast Blend mixed in equal parts totaling approximately³ a teaspoon of tea leaf per cup.

Steep Method: Given the fine grained consistency of the Breakfast Blend, an empty teabag was used. The brew was steeped for approximately⁴ three minutes.

Results: The final color was a medium auburn. The brew itself was strong, but not overpowering. There was a nice mild malty/grain flavor from the oolong. This aspect complimented the smooth mellowness of the assam. After initial sampling, a teaspoon of sugar and a splash of milk was added. This rounded out the tea quite nicely, pulling all the flavors together.

Rating: 4 out of 5 robots⁵

1. The exact quote was “What’s an ‘oolongasm’?” Ah, Overlords. They’re so precious sometimes. [↩]
2. Yes, it’s not 100% assam, but in my defense, finding assam all by itself proves to be a very challenging task. Especially when impatience is involved. If I ever do acquire a pure assam, there will be a version 2.0 of this blend. [↩]
3. I really must get a better measuring device. [↩]
4. Yes, I have a watch. My scientific method fu was weak that day. [↩]
5. And yes, more robots are better, as if you had to ask. [↩]

If you listened to episode thirty-something of the podcast¹ you may recall me wondering whether steampunk worked better as an aesthetic than as a genre of fiction. At the time we recorded that episode, I was reading—and not especially enjoying—The Affinity Bridge by George Mann, a novel that sported a rather boastful cover blurb:

STEAMPUNK is making a comeback, and with this novel MANN IS LEADING THE CHARGE…An engaging melodrama that rattles along at a breakneck pace. —The Guardian

Simply put, The Affinity Bridge was not my cup of tea; I felt the characters were poorly-developed and some elements of the plot seemed to have been added as an afterthought and not resolved very well. As metaphorical CPR for the genre—if one were to accept that the genre needs resuscitation—The Affinity Bridge fails to clear the airway before administering rescue breathing and completely ignores chest compressions.

Even after finishing The Affinity Bridge, I wasn’t quite ready to relegate steampunk to the realm of the cosplayer—I was fairly certain that the book was not the shining example of the genre The Guardian would have me believe—dirigibles and brass goggles just have way too much potential and I wanted to see if that potential could be tapped in a manner that I enjoyed.

Enter Gail Carriger and her steampunk novel, Soulless (An Alexia Tarabotti Novel; Book 1 of The Parasol Protectorate).

Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.

I’ll admit that Miss Tarabotti and I did not get off to a smashing start. “I say!” she declared after a strange vampire attempted to make ill use of her jugular vein. “We have not even been introduced!” Then after whacking the vampire with her parasol she exclaimed “Manners!” Oh, well that’s just too much, I thought. Is this woman a Victorian-era Emily Post? I was also initially put off by the fact that every other surname (e.g., Loontwill, Hisselpenny) seemed vaguely reminiscent of something from a Monty Python skit.

Even so, the first chapter established an interesting premise and by the end of the second chapter I’d not only gotten my bearings, I was entirely hooked. Soulless, I learned, owes as much to Jane Austen and Oscar Wilde as it does to Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. And though I should have recognized the signs as early as Chapter One, it wasn’t until nearly halfway through the book that I admitted to having been thoroughly hoodwinked, for Soulless is, at its heart, a romance novel.² Granted, there’s a young lady holding a parasol on the cover and the text is primarily pink, but there’s no cleavage! No bare midriff! No shapely derrière crammed into leather pants! How was I supposed to know?

If I say “romance novel” like it’s a bad thing, well…in my experience it is. I fully recognize that I am not the target audience for that particular genre, but the few experiences I’ve had with it have not been good ones. In the “paranormal romance” sub-genre, I’ve read the first three Anita Blake novels by Laurell K. Hamilton and I’m fairly certain I’ll never read another.³ I read Eve Kenin‘s Driven expecting a hybrid of Mad Max and Ice Road Truckers, not realizing that it was actually a bizarre retelling of the battle of Hoth where Han Solo had breasts and no Wookiee co-pilot.⁴ I’m not saying the experiences were traumatic, just that I’m not wired for the whole romance bit.⁵ I mean, I’m a married man, for pity’s sake!

We like to say that there are exceptions to every rule, which sounds tired and trite, but here’s yet another example that warrants the claim. Soulless is a clever blend of supernatural (or paranormal, if you must), steampunk, humor and romance, and it works. There’s enough mention of steam-powered machines and dirigibles and brass parasols (and, yes, goggles) to maintain the steampunk aesthetic, which is woven deftly into the setting and the story without being obtrusive. The setting itself (in which vampires and werewolves are integrated into Victorian-era society and politics—at least in Jolly Old England) is nicely realized and Ms. Carriger populates her world with an array of interesting (if not all terribly original) characters.

The romance worked for me because it was bawdy without being explicit, and because after our shaky start, I really liked Miss Tarabotti (and her eventual suitor); the characters played off one another well, their verbal (and non-verbal) sparring was amusing, and the supernatural element added an interesting twist, as did the supporting characters on either side.

Soulless isn’t likely to inspire me to run out and raid the Paranormal Romance section of my local bookstore, but I’m definitely going to pick up the next volume in The Parasol Protectorate trilogy, Changeless, and I’m pleased to have found a steampunk novel that does the genre well, even if there is an awful lot of kissing.

1. The one where we whinge and carry on about the sorry state of…no, the other one, no the other other one. Episode Thirty-Four, all right? Happy now? [↩]
2. You shouldn’t make me read romance novels, Johnny. My mother made me read a romance novel once…Once. [↩]
3. It was an omnibus, that’s why. [↩]
4. I swear I didn’t see the “futuristic romance” label on the spine until after I got the book home. Or the phrase “her libido is shooting into overdrive at the feel of his hard body pressed against hers on the back of her snowscooter” on the back cover synopsis. Or the postage-paid insert offering memberships to The Historical Romance Book Club and The Love Spell Club. Is it too late to plead temporary insanity? [↩]
5. I’m also saying that trying to read an action sequence written by Laurell K. Hamilton makes my head hurt. [↩]