Today the Los Angeles Times ran a review of a book by a professor named Grace Lasdun. Lasdun describes her terrifying ordeal of being stalked by a madman. "Imagine," the review bids us, that a stalker "seemed affectionate, then convinced of a deep connection, then became furious and set upon destroying your life." The book — and review — tells the tale of how a stalker became convinced of a relationship with Grace Lasdun, then went on campaign of deranged hate, deluging Ms. Lasdun with dozens of anti-Semitic emails and an internet campaign of untruths, accusations of plagiarism, and vile communications with Lasdun's employers and colleagues. Her life was changed.

But this review asks something that is too rarely asked. What responsibility does Lasdun bear for a deranged stalker pursuing her, imagining a relationship that she did not want? Did she lead him on? Did she give the wrong signals? Does her language in describing the stalking suggest an unbecoming entitlement? "This lack of perspective," as reviewer Carolyn Kellogg calls it, calls into question the entire way Grace Lasdun describes her stalking. Kellogg explains how Lasdun's description of the stalker suggests a preoccupation with appearance and a lack of awareness of power differentials that might have contributed to the stalking — "Lasdun reveals actions that may have contributed to her problems without seeing the connections. She likes their flirtatious emails but at one point realizes they have become too much and suggests breaking off contact."

Reviewer Carolyn Kellogg also shows an admirable sense of empathy for the stalker, asking us to question "could Lasdun have managed his growing affections differently"?

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Not everyone can take the preposterous and examine it through the lens of the practical. Doing so for comic effect is the The Onion's gig, but those guys are old pros. Larry Niven did it for both comic and scientific effect in "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex", but most of us aren't Larry Niven. (Geek-life brag: I once talked to Larry Niven about that column at a concert of Star Wars music.) Too often the "what would happen if [extraordinary character] encountered [mundane circumstance]" shtick falls flat, like a Usenet flame war or a tiresome Saturday Night Live skit.

That's why it's impressive that attorneys James Daily and Ryan Davidson have pulled it off so flawlessly in the educational and fun "The Law of Superheroes." Their publisher sent Popehat an advance copy.

The book introduced me to the authors' blog Law and the Multiverse, which I shall now follow. The book concerns the same subject: how would the law treat the sorts of things that happens in the comics?

Is Batman a state actor? Does the newest Robin inherit the old Robin's assets or liabilities? For that matter, is Robin liable when Batman goes nuts and kills someone? How, exactly, can you expect to testify wearing a cowl? Are mind-readings admissible? All those buildings that get knocked down — who pays for them? Should the Avengers have a charter with an arbitration clause, and will it be enforceable if they do? What's better, tax-wise, for the Fantastic Four — a corporation or an LLC? And everybody in every Alan Moore comic should be in jail, right?

Those are the sorts of subjects Daily and Davidson tackle. They apply constitutional, criminal, and civil law issues to comic book heroes and villains, from the familiar to the (to me) obscure.

There are so many ways they could have handled this wrong. They could have been too serious about comics and not serious enough about the law, or vice-versa. They could have written the book in to much detail, like a law review article, or too little, like a comic book. They could have assumed too much of their readers' legal acumen, or too little. Instead, they did it just right. "The Law of Superheroes" is both entertaining and informative. People who aren't lawyers or law-geeks will learn something about the law, and lawyers and law-geeks will be thoroughly entertained at the application of familiar principles to comic extravaganzas. (This means, of course, that I disagreed with some of their legal analysis, and thought about how I would have explained it better. The book would have been intolerable had that not been the case.)

I gripe a lot here that the media does a terrible job at explaining the law to the American public. "The Law of Superheroes" shows that it can be done clearly and directly and effectively, even if you are talking about people in tights who have mood issues and talk funny. It's an enjoyable read; I suspect I'll return to it. Recommended.

IN THE MAIL: Mattaponi Queen: Stories by Belle Boggs.

I no longer write here.

At one time (this has always been Ken's site), I was the junior member of a thriving partnership, but it's evolved into a solo firm.  I'm sorry that I don't write here any longer, but for reasons various and sundry it isn't where my heart is any longer.  That's happened in the past.  I began blogging here, left for my own moody reasons (which had nothing to do with Ken), wrote my own blog which became too much work, and returned to the fold.  Primarily because I like Ken.  I've never met him.  I may never meet him, but I enjoy his virtual company.  He's the best blogger I read.

That said, I'll be blogging here for a few days next week, over a major political problem in my fair state, one which bothers me enough that I've spent hours digging through the mathom hall, to find my sword.  May it only wound evildoers.

Speaking of swords, let's talk about books.  Specifically the genre of "Swords and Sorcery", as Gary Gygax among others called it.  I recently re-read the collected stories of Robert E. Howard, those concerning the fictional character, place, and time who will carry his name forward not just into this century, but the next, Conan the Cimmerian, of the Hyborian Age. The appellation "the Barbarian" was popularized by others, principally L. Sprague DeCamp (a fine fantasy writer in his own right), who discovered the stories of Howard in the pages of Weird Tales  (one of the most important literary magazines of the twentieth century, which no serious person would now deny), and as with August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft, refused to allow his predecessor's work to die.

As with Derleth and Lovecraft, Howard's work was saved because DeCamp (whose own Grey Mouser and Fafhrd work is superior to what he did to Howard) re-wrote and changed the chronology of the Conan stories.  Howard was a pulp author, but so were Raymond Chandler and James Cain, authors whose genius no one disputes.  The Conan stories (along with the rest of Howard's work) have recently been reprinted, as originally written, with interpretation and comment of an almost academic stripe.  "Beyond The Black River" is one of the five best short stories I've ever read.  You might consider reading it and other stories of Conan the Cimmerian in:

The Coming of Conan

The Bloody Crown of Conan

The Conquering Sword of Conan (my personal favorite, and Howard's last, and most mature, work)

Now at this point you're saying, Patrick, you're shitting me.  There's no way that a bunch of stories about Arnold Schwarzenegger are as worthy of study as the work of, say, Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing (who reluctantly admits she's dabbled in science fiction and fantasy), but I'm saying it.  Raymond Chandler, whose work was considered trash by everyone except Ben Hecht when he wrote it, pointed out the now fully accepted truth that, "Down these mean streets a man must go."  A timeless truth Howard only wrote better at his best, and the man walked wearing sandals.

Don't believe me?  Try the Wall Street Journal.  A hundred years from now, Conan the Cimmerian will still be read and appreciated, while the works of Doris Lessing will be consigned to the one-dollar-a-mindlink (the inflation of a hundred years will make the dollar equivalent to a modern penny) Thoughtbin at Amazon.ch.

On that note, I've also been reading the re-released work of Michael Moorcock, who back when boomer males could get an erection without the aid of blue pills was considered a revolutionary in fantasy, acclaimed by such modern heroes as Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore.  While Moorcock now writes "literary fiction" (whatever that means), his most influential work (apart from inspiring the "Lawful" and "Chaotic" alignments in Dungeons & Dragons"), remains the Elric series of short stories, later re-written (by anonymous editors) and, as with Howard's work, re-assembled into some form of God-forsaken chronological  narrative series of fake novels, under the Del Ray imprint.  As with Howard's stories, the Elric series was originally written in no particular order, each story reflecting a phase in its hero's life, the last perhaps occurring decades before the next, as though told around a campfire.

And shouldn't all fantasy be appreciated out of chronological order, like yarns spun round a campfire?

Anyway, Moorcock's Elric stories, also, have recently printed in America in the original order and as originally written.  I'll just link to the first volume:

The Stealer of Souls

in which the reader is introduced to, in many ways, the 1960s' answer to Conan, a magician rendered a weakling by genetic infirmity, not a barbarian but the product of an ancient and decadent civilization, whose powers are based on magic, addiction to drugs, and a demon disguised as a sword far more intimidating than any Arthurian toy, Stormbringer.

Moorcock, by the way, when he's not writing fantasy and/or litfic, is a political theorist.  A self-proclaimed atheist anarchist who trumpets the virtues of socialism, to which I, in my non-ancient, non-decadent, barbaric mind, can only reply: Huh?

Judge for yourself, as Moorcock denounces all science fiction writers Who Came Before as racist, authoritarian, and insufficiently dedicated to government-enforced redistribution of wealth.  Tolstoy was also an anarchist and a socialist, but as a religious mystic he had little use for practicality or consistency. And unlike Moorcock (a writer I quite admire), Tolstoy was a genius.

Socialism is the anarchism of fools.

Speaking of socialism, can we talk? Due to my partner's political proclivities, we are near bombarded with calls from Barack Obama, or his surrogates, asking for money.  I can tell it's them because they open the conversation with "Mr. [my partner's last name which is not my last name]?"  Then they go into their spiel.  At the first breathing point, I reply with…

"I'm sorry, I'm a libertarian."

At which point they go on with their talking points, ignoring what I said to be answered with a dial tone, get off the phone on their own, answer with some non-Moorcockian equivalent of "Huh?", or, most rarely, try to discuss politics in their crude, Flatlandish way with me (usually these are the college kids), a la:

"So you support children working in factories 14 hours a day?"…

To which I respond:

"Only if the children are there voluntarily, as free agents."

Mind you, I once made the mistake of donating to a Republican, and we get occasional calls from them as well.  Last election season, one of them, a college Republican sort, engaged me in a similar discussion, asking me whether, since I wasn't going to donate to McCain, I supported polygamy and bestiality.

To which I responded:

"Only if the animals are participating voluntarily, as free agents."

There are probably many flaws to libertarianism as a political philosophy, but it's the ultimate excuse when one wishes to end a stupid political conversation.

It won't surprise long-time readers to learn that I approve of Justice Scalia's majority opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchant's Association, which struck down California's ban on the sale of violent videogames to minors.  The opinion is more or less mandated by United States v. Stevens, another case we cheered.

So I won't dwell (other than to applaud it briefly) on the majority's holding that minors do have First Amendment rights, nor on the cynicism of California's attempt to end-run the First Amendment by claiming that all speech may be regulated in the name of protecting children.

I want to dwell on the concurring opinion of Justice Samuel Alito, which shows the danger posed by statutes such as California's Violent Videogame Act, and of judges who believe their opinions as art critics ought to be the law of the land.  This passage:

It is certainly true, as the Court notes, that “ ‘[l]iterature, when it is successful draws the reader into the story, makes him identify with the characters, invites him to judge them and quarrel with them, to experience their joys and sufferings as the reader’s own.’ ”  Ante, at 11 (quoting American Amusement Machine Assn. v. Kendrick, 244 F. 3d 572, 577 (CA7 2001)).  But only an extraordinarily imaginative reader who reads a description of a killing in a literary work will experience that event as vividly as he might if he played the role of the killer in a video game. To take an example, think of a person who reads thepassage in Crime and Punishment in which Raskolni- kov  kills the old pawn broker with an  axe.  See F. Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 78 (Modern Library ed. 1950).  Compare that reader with a video-game player who creates an avatar that bears his own image; who sees a realistic image of the victim and the scene of the killing in high definition and in three dimensions; who is forced to decide whether or not to kill  the victim and decides to do so; who then pretends to grasp an axe, to raise it above the head of the victim, and then to bring it down; who hearsthe thud of the axe hitting her head and her cry of pain;who sees her split skull and feels the sensation of blood onhis face and hands.  For most people, the two experiences will not be the same.

illustrates the problem perfectly.

For those who haven't read it, spoilers follow:

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As longtime readers know, we dabble in alternate history. Well, I do.  Ken's a political science major who thinks history began in 1968. But it's all wanking, as much as the long title of this post.

Still, for those who delight in this sort of wanking as much as I, here's a nifty, if deeply flawed, "counterfactual" of the Second World War with an utterly implausible (yet plausible to Hitler) thesis:

Then, too, what if Poland had agreed in 1939 to join Germany in an invasion of the Soviet Union, as Hitler wanted? If Poland had allied with Germany rather than resisting, Britain and France would not have issued territorial guarantees to Poland, and would not have had their casus belli in September 1939. It is hard to imagine that Britain and France would have declared war on Germany and Poland in order to save the Soviet Union. If Poland’s armies had joined with Germany’s, the starting line for the invasion would have been farther east than it was in June 1941, and Japan might have joined in, which would have forced some of the Red Army divisions that defended Moscow to remain in the Far East. Moscow might have been attained. In this scenario, there is no Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and thus no alienation of Japan from Germany. In that case, no Pearl Harbor, and no American involvement. What World War II becomes is a German-Polish-Japanese victory over the Soviet Union. That, by the way, was precisely the scenario that Stalin feared.

Implausible for three reasons: First, it assumes that the Poles would, or could, have caved in to the Nazis, becoming a giant Finland as Hitler wished.  For those who appreciate such things, here's an old Polish joke that isn't derogatory to the noble people of Poland:

Q: A Polish soldier is confronted by a German soldier approaching from the west, and a Russian soldier approaching from the east. Which does he shoot first?

A: The German. Duty before pleasure.

Second, the larger work, which speaks of ways Hitler could have won the war, is flawed because it ignores its central character: Hitler. Hitler was no more capable of doing the "right" thing in war than he was of doing the "right" thing in politics.  A Hitler who could have sat back and let the Prussian General Staff dictate the course of the war to him would never have propelled the National Socialists to power in the first place, nor held power for six years before war, nor have scared the Russians so badly they'd made a deal to give Hitler a free hand, and cheap oil and minerals, while he dealt with France.

Third, the larger work ignores the singular character of Churchill, in his way as odd a man, and every bit as exceptional, as Hitler:

If we agree with Roberts, as we should, that Churchill personally helped lengthen the war by keeping Britain from seeking peace terms after the fall of France, then we are also implicitly saying that, absent Churchill, peace might have been made. The war-winning alliance of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union was sealed only in December 1941, and could not have been achieved had Britain left the war.

"Absent Churchill" is a tall order, in that the man was on the scene.  Removing Churchill takes us from the realm of alternate history into "what if Stonewall Jackson had survived Chancellorsville?" territory: not alternate history, but The Man In The High Castle, or Doctor Who prevents the creation of the Daleks level science fiction.

Still, for those who care, this is some fantastic semi-science fictional wanking.

Via Angus, who in an alternate reality co-blogs with the Governor of North Carolina.

(Hey, I voted for his co-blogger, even if no one else did.)

1) I have read and enjoyed George R. R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire.

2) I hate and despise my fellow man.

3) It logically follows that this made me smile.

This morning I'm very sorry to see news of the passing of Joel Rosenberg — husband and father, author, gun policy expert, and activist.

As a youngster, I thoroughly enjoyed Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series. As a writer at Popehat, I grew to appreciate a frequent commenter who went by the handle Jdog — and I was delighted to discover that it was Joel. Later, I came to admire his activism on gun rights issues and his willingness to stand up against the ethos that the rules for citizens are whatever some upjumped government lackey thinks they should be. From interchanges with him after Patrick wrote about his case here, I found that he was as delightful a correspondent as he was an author.

He leaves us too soon. My thoughts are with his family.

FRODO BAGGINS: savior of Middle Earth, or just another war criminal?

IN THE MAIL: Why Cats Paint.

MARKDOWNS ON HUGO AWARD WINNING SCIENCE FICTION. I recently looked over the full list of Hugo Award novels. I'd read less than a third,  but I'm remedying that.  Having just crossed this one off the list, I can recommend it highly.

I have resisted what amounts to a dare by Patrick to geek out in front you all over the progress of the HBO series Game of Thrones, which has had two episodes now. Suffice it to say: I am rereading the series (in my iPad this time) in preparation for the 5th book in July, I am faithfully watching and enjoying the series, I am attempting to keep my dear wife (Happy Anniversary, dear) interested in it, and I am using it to think about the necessary differences between art forms. But I am reserving the more effusive geekery to other locales, so as not to embarrass Patrick. It's really the least I can do.

That said: one of the great things about this series of tubes is its ability to deliver to us not only pure geekery in its unrefined form, but geek fusion, in which different types of geekery are combined in new and exciting ways. In that spirit, via the man himself, I give you The Inn at the Crossroads, a blog that documents attempts to re-create both medieval and modern versions of the foods described in GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire series.

I am so making the hot spiced wine this weekend.

You unlock this door with the key of imagination: A graphic history of fantasy and science fiction, from the unknown poet behind Beowulf to Vernor Vinge and beyond.

I can't do this justice by describing it, and I won't steal it for reproduction here. Just click the link.

Meaning Popehat.

I can't speak for any of the other authors (remember Brian, our resident Obamican? I don't either), but for myself I've been going through rather grueling work, combined with a worse-than-usual case of seasonal affective disorder, combined with a mid-life crisis, combined with a family medical situation that demands personal attention.  Although Popehat is a very fulfilling entertainment, my involvement here is a Thing Of Mood.

It'll get better.

Anyway, I did want to share three things, in no particular order:

John Scalzi's Old Man's War is coming to the silver screen. An entirely derivative tribute to the genius 1970s novel The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (which was itself a perverse love letter to Robert A. Heinlein), Old Man's War was still perhaps the most entertaining science fiction novel of the past decade.  Wolfgang Petersen, who directed Das Boot before going on to mediocre American movies, is at the helm.  Here's hoping Petersen has one great work left in him, because this story will make a dynamite movie in the right hands.

I've been playing a lot of Vindictus in my free time.  Emphasis on "free". Most free-to-play games illustrate the engineer's dictate "Fast, cheap, right: Pick any two."  They're either bug-filled nightmares, disguised spyware, or tedious grindfests.  You can play Vindictus in twenty minute sessions.  It's a mildly persistent world with fully persistent characters.  It combines depth of play with an action-packed interactive combat system.  It's fun as all get out, and it doesn't leave any unsightly residue on your hard drive.

But my Vindictus time may stall tomorrow, now that I'm getting my life back, and Rift is making its debut.  I've messed with the beta for Rift since December, and the game has grown on me.  Even in beta I found it more entertaining than World of Warcraft, and I think it has the depth to last me until Guild Wars 2 releases, sometime in the next century.

I'll have a full review of Rift, when I'm in the mood.

Uproar about a publisher's plan to release versions of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer that don't include the words "Nigger" and "Injun".

I must confess that this passage baffles me.

Neither the expletives nor things like the graphic details of the “horses head” scene or the brief sex scene between Michael Corleone and his first wife Appolonia are essential elements of the story that Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola are trying to tell in The Godfather. These items can be removed or modified for airing on broadcast television without taking away from the central themes of the story. This is not the case with either Sawyer or Finn, both books are set in a time period when racial tensions were a central part of life and are based, to a large degree, on the racially prejudices that Twain himself encountered as a child growing up in Missouri. This is especially true of Huckleberry Finn where, despite the fact that “the n-word” appears 219 times, it’s fairly obvious that Twain is condemning racial prejudice and that one of the central themes of the book is the process by which Huck discovers that the things he’d been taught by society by blacks were wrong, and that his companion him was, in fact, an heroic figure.

On the contrary, the "horse's head" scene is absolutely essential to a proper viewing of The Godfather, as it graphically conveys to the audience, early on and following a jovial family wedding, that Don Corleone's enviable family life, and Family, are built on a willingness and capacity to kill and to maim, and not just to kill and maim fellow criminals, but the innocent as well.

Khartoum (the horse) is a stand-in for every innocent person ever harmed by the Family.  I cannot think of a more succinct way to convey that in one shot than to show the bloody head of a horse, the innocent, at the feet of Jack Woltz, the guilty.  The horse's head teaches us at the beginning of the film that Don Corleone has arrogated the power of God.  He is willing to punish those who are without sin, as in Noah's flood where all of the children in the world were drowned, in order to reach those who deserve his vengeance.

The horse's head is art, essential to one of the greatest films ever made.

And yet, like Doug Mataconis, I still wouldn't show it on primetime network televison.

So some parents want their precocious children, the readers, to read one of the great American novels, and at an early age, but they don't want their kids exposed to the word "nigger," as Doug points out, two hundred nineteen times.

It is fairly obvious, at the close of Huckleberry Finn, that Mark Twain is against racial  prejudice.  I still wouldn't want to have the talk with my sister if I were to give my niece a copy of Huck Finn, in its original form, about why my niece had begun shouting the N-word at strangers.  And, like Doug, I'm white.

Which brings us round to Injun Joe.  Injun Joe is a murderer and a thief.  Is there some hidden message of racial brotherhood in the story of Injun Joe?  Or is Doug saying, implicitly, that the Adventures of Tom Sawyer is not great art, so it's ok to bowdlerize it.

Fortunately I don't have to care.  If I want to give my niece the story of Injun Joe in all his child-terrorizing, widow-murdering, gold-thieving glory, I can, subject to her mom's approval.  And other uncles and parents can give their kids the version that doesn't include a word that they'd rather not explain at the age of eight.

It isn't as though the original versions will be pulled from the market.