Gardner Dozois really disliked Return of the Jedi

The stories in The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection were published 40 years ago, so I decided to read the collection, edited by Gardner Dozois.  The biggest omission has to be Octavia Butler's "Speech Sounds", but by and large I enjoyed it.

As interesting as the stories to me (since, by and large, I was already familiar with some of the work of nearly all the authors represented) was the forward to the edition, which begins with a short history leading up to the current state of the business of SFF publishing.  The forward wanders on from here and into a variety of other topics, until Dozois starts in on the film industry.

The SF movies of 1983 were generally lackluster at best.  Return of the Jedi brought the famous Star Wars saga to a disappointing end**.  Jedi is ineptly directed, poorly paced and edited, filled with energyless wooden performances (Harrison Ford in particular stumbling through the film like one of the living dead), and marred by an impactless anticlimax which simply rehashes the big Death Star scene from Star Wars.  At the end the Good Ghosts all go to a party and sing campfire songs with the teddy bears, and everyone looks relieved that it's over.

I'm not going to argue with most of this, except to note that RotJ had three separate threads in the climax.  One is a bit of rehash of the raid on the Death Star from the first movie, and another sadly takes place on Endor instead of Kashyyyk, but the scenes in the throne room between Luke, Vader, and the Emperor did have an impact, and were a worthy conclusion to Luke's journey.

** LOL the joke was on all of us.  Dozois lived to see the next end of the saga in 2005, but died before The Rise of Skywalker.

There Is Life After College; Jeffrey J. Selingo (2016)

 I read this from the perspective of a parent whose children will need to navigate life after college, since things are very different now from when I graduated; for that matter, from when this book was published in 2016.  There are some good notes in here about the need to do internships, starting your job search relatively early in your senior year (in much the same way your college applications went out early in your HS senior year), and in your first decade out of college, move around from role to role, and company to company, in order to learn about how organizations work and what interests you most.  

There is some talk about the "7 competencies companies are looking for" that is both helpful and concerning.  For example, the author notes that students/future employees need to be able to "take tough feedback", but there is no discussion of how to recognize "tough but fair" from "harsh and abusive."  Similarly, in a discussion of one of the post-graduate "finishing schools", he quotes some of the participants talking about how they "often worked late into the night" on their projects, but there is no discussion of how to (or the need to) rest and recharge.  

There is an important question of how you do good work and have a satisfying career without being taken advantage of.  This was true in 2016, but in the light of the recent mass layoffs at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, et al, it seems an especially important conversation to have.

Life with Fast Lane

Some time ago, they began to automate toll collection on toll roads.  VT had no toll roads (still has none), so we could sign up for another state's plan.  NY/NJ had EZ-Pass, but MA had its own system called Fast Lane, which was cheaper for us to sign up for, so we did it, and it has worked very well.

In 2011, we switched vehicles, and at that time, transponders weren't associated with a particular vehicle, so we just moved the transponder to the new car and there was nothing to update in the system.

In 2016, MA changed its system so that transponders had to be associated with a particular vehicle, and they associated it with our old vehicle without notifying us.  The transponder continued to work in NY/NJ for five years.

In 2021, we finally went on a toll road in MA for the first time since MA changed their system in 2016.  The cameras on the highway noted that the transponder was not in the vehicle on file, so they disabled the transponder and mailed us an invoice.

Unfortunately, this meant that the transponder no longer worked on the NY/NJ toll roads, but we didn't know this, and our first inkling was an invoice from NJ with $80 worth of "admin fees".  We got it all resolved (back in 2021), but it required a phone call, because there was nowhere in the online form to say you were a customer of Fast Lane... except that Fast Lane is now owned by EZ-Pass, so when I finally got a hold of a customer service rep, they were able to fix it.  (yay)

In 2022, our original near 20-year-old transponder died during another trip through NY/NJ.  With a few more mailed invoices and a few more calls, that's been settled and we now have a new EZ-Pass transponder, and a fond farewell to Fast Lane.

Favorite reads of 2022

A good year.  43 books recorded, and only 1 put down without finishing.  A lot of very recent books.  Some brief thoughts:

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson (2010).  During the 20th century, 6 million black Americans moved out of the South in search of a better life.  Wilkerson focuses on the stories of three individuals to provide narratives to follow, and expertly distills her interviews with 1,200 people into sections that place these three stories into the context of the greater migration.

The Midnight Bargain, by C.L. Polk (2020).  I enjoyed how magic worked in this world, and how it highlighted the kinds of sacrifices women are expected to make, and how men often quail when asked to make the same sacrifices.

The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey (2021).  After reading this, I had kinda expected it to be on the Hugo or Nebula shortlist for best novel.  It's a very effective near future novel because you can see something like it happening.

The Prophets, by Robert Jones, Jr.  (2021).  This was painful to read, but well worth it.

The Language of Thorns, by Leigh Bardugo (2017).  A wonderful set of short stories that are tales from Bardugo's Grishaverse.  Like Tales of Beedle the Bard, but better.

A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark (2021).  Now we get to the 2022 Hugo finalists.  I had really enjoyed the Haunting of Tram Car 015, also set in the world, and it was fun to return to that setting.

Light from Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (2021).  I think this was my favorite read this year.  It shouldn't work; it breaks too many rules of SFF storytelling, but everything comes together, and it's funny and sad and serious and silly and trying to be everything all at once and succeeding. 

She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan (2021).  Or... She Who Became the Son?  I liked this a lot.  Lots of juicy themes about ambition and what various characters are willing to do to get their desires.  Shades of the Empress of Salt & Fortune (locale + revenge) and The Black Sun (on the theme of one's destiny).  It's very light historical fantasy -- I was expecting a little more fantastical elements and more literal "becoming the sun", but the political maneuverings are the star of the novel.

A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine (2021).  The Hugo award-winning sequel to her Hugo award-winning A Memory Called Empire.  In the two years since reading the first book, I had forgotten how much I'd missed Three Seagrass.

Binti: The Complete Trilogy, by Nnedi Okorafor (2019).  I actually read the Binti novella some time ago, but it wasn't until 2022 that I finished the other two novellas.  I love Binti as a character because she feels very real and yet not quite like anyone else.  

If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin (1974).  By far the oldest book on the list, it was interesting to compare and contrast how styles of writing have changed in 50 years.  When Baldwin is writing about what his characters and saying, doing, and feeling, it's excellent.  There are a few times when he goes off talking very generally what it's like to be a woman or on the nature of things and I'm rolling my eyes, but I need to read some more Baldwin.  And I'm interested in the recent film adaptation.

Spear, by Nicola Griffith (2022).  I first read Slow River in 2003, and then the Aud Torvingen series and Ammonite.  I've been putting off reading Hild because it's a tome.  Spear is so wonderfully done that it makes me want to start Hild.  I'm a little worried that part of what I like about Spear is that it's a very efficient story, clocking in < 200 pages, and I'll get mired in Hild, but... it's time.

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, by Zoe Thorogood (2022)  My big present this year was a new 10" tablet.  This was my first read through Hoopla on it, and there is an excellent use of variations in style, framing, page layouts, and storytelling.  I'm reminded a little of Hyperbole and a Half, but with much richer artwork.  It's a comic book and the interface is perfect for this, so I'll be doing it a lot more in 2023.

Avatar and re-centering POV

The question of whether Avatar uses the white savior trope recently came up in an online discussion.  As often happens in an online conversation, we were talking past one another, and I hope to get together and have a zoom/meet convo, but needed to jot down some personal thoughts about it here in the meantime.

Full disclosure: we rented Avatar from Netflix on May 19, 2010, and apparently promptly watched it because it was marked as returned on May 25, 2010**, so I am relying upon internet sources to help fill in gaps in my memory; apologies in advance if I get facts wrong.

You can google white savior trope avatar and find nearly 200k hits, but the main points to me are that:

• Jake Sully is a white man***
• He is the POV character, and the action and resolution of the movie is dependent upon his choices.  The only significant choice the Na'vi get to make is: do we trust him?
• The success of the Na'vi is dependent upon Jake's prayer to Eywa being answered, in the form of the Eagles Pandoran fauna coming to the rescue

This seems like a clear-cut case of a white person depicted as rescuing non-white people who are denied agency in needing and accepting his benevolence.  

The Na'vi are not completely passive, but are entirely dependent upon a white man's choices, and they ultimately follow his lead as he "comes to know their ways" and surpasses their ability to commune with the mother goddess.  Even the title of the movie centers on the technology that allows Jake to masquerade as a Na'vi.  

Could Avatar have avoided this trope?  I think so, by re-centering the POV character on Neytiri.  If we follow her, we see more of the Na'vi and what they are like before Jake arrives.  We see their day-to-day lives and relationships, their concerns about the invaders, and what they plan to do about the humans.  We see they have agency in determining their fate, even if they have little hope of overcoming the weaponry the humans can bring to bear.  When she first encounters Jake in the forest, we are focused upon the choices *she* makes to rescue him and bring him to her clan.  If she is the POV character, then we begin to consider what she's doing when Jake's not around; perhaps she discovers for herself that Jake is a human, rather than making it something Jake reveals to her.  The Na'vi could then choose to try to use this knowledge to get him to reveal more about the human's strategy.  Simply shifting our point of view opens countless possibilities, and this is a technique applicable to any script.

None of this means that you can't enjoy Avatar as-is or must boycott the sequels.  All it means is that you should go in aware and with eyes open.

** Why, yes, I have my entire Netflix DVD rental history; doesn't everyone?

*** One might argue that Jake Sully is no longer a white man, because the avatar technology allows him to "become" a Na'vi.  For the first film, I reject this argument completely and unequivocally.  Jake is wearing a costume, and under that costume is someone whose entire upbringing is not Na'vi.  Jake can absolutely come to sympathize with the Na'vi and be accepted as an ally.  In a sequel that takes place years later, you could explore whether Jake has become Na'vi.  For the first film, if the argument that Avatar does not use the white savior trope is dependent upon Jake not being a white man, then we'll just have to agree to disagree