If you watched the free 20 minute online "Story of Stuff" documentary and thought "That's great, but I wish it was drier, and more packed with an overwhelming volume of information," then this book is for you!  I hate to sound catty, but it's true.   Sadly, this book takes everything that made the documentary great, and does the exact opposite.

Charitably, The Story of Stuff (the book) could be said to be a companion piece to the documentary.  A tome for those who watched the movie and wanted to dispute the facts.  A dense brick of text, thick with footnotes, heavy on policy wonkery and clunky writing.

The genius of the "Story of Stuff" documentary is that it was told in plain English, without a lot of judgment - just the facts.  It was illustrated with an animated style of ink brush figures that are both charming and clean, giving a lot of white space to the screen, which lets you focus on what's being said.  


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I feel genuinely bad for disliking this book.  Not only did it win a ton of awards, but it's written by David Gerrold who is virtually a science fiction legend.  Nevertheless, I didn't like it.

Jumping Off the Planet concerns the Dingillian family, which is dysfunctional in a ridiculously predictable fashion.  The narrator is a teenage boy named Charles Dingillian, whose nickname is "Chigger." The word "chigger" which has the misfortune of being one of my least favorite words, thanks to its similarity to a certain other word that starts with N and also has unpleasant connotations.


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How do you work a sword fight into a futuristic sci-fi show? Well, you can do what George Lucas did and turn the weapon of honor into a sword made of lasers, or you can do what Joss Whedon and Jane Espenson did in Episode 4 of Firefly and just accept that a space show can be whatever you want it to be. Because there's no such thing as human society in space or on other planets, stories that take place in those settings can take any form the writer wishes. Given sufficient technology and enough room for every possible iteration of human civilization, there's no reason why there couldn't be an entire planet dedicated to whatever aesthetic one would want. In "Shindig" we get a closer look at planet Persephone, the first world we ever visited (not counting flashbacks) on Firefly. It's a world dedicated to the finery of an era that's bygone for us 21st century viewers, let alone the 26th century people of the show's universe. Persephone has its own isolated high society of hoop skirts, lavish balls and a code of honor enforced by duels with cold steel. Naturally, it's a great place for the swaggering brigands who live on Serenity to stand out like sore thumbs... thumbs that want to punch people.

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The new Battlestar Galactica has dabbled cautiously with homosexual characters in the past.  This kind of rubbed me the wrong way, to tell you the truth.  It was so "test the waters" and wishy-washy, and for a show that was otherwise so bold, stark, and unflinchingly human condition-y.

(Let's not pretend that Battlestar Galactica just didn't have time to mention its characters' sexuality.  They had time for an entire episode about boxing, for pity's sake!)


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In some ways, the entire world can be divided into two camps: those for whom "The Lost Boys" was (and is) a beloved and seminal film, and those who say "Corey who?"

I am in the first camp, in case you hadn't guessed, and I am saddened at the news of Corey Haim's death by apparent overdose.  Haim was exactly the same age as I am, and I had always hoped that he - like me - would have a huge comeback some day.  It could have happened!  Look at Alec Baldwin, or Neil Patrick Harris!  Or, closer to home, Keifer Sutherland.

All this talk of Corey Haim has me mulling over the unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable) question about "The Lost Boys."  Is it a movie about the gay experience?  Was Sam meant to be a gay teenager only starting to come to grips with his homosexuality?


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Now that we have identified the only gay Star Wars character, I think it's time to move on to a broader discussion of gender in Star Wars.  According to the Wookiepedia, sentient life developed on approximately 20 million planets.  Let's be stingy, and say that each planet developed only one sentient biological life form.  (Earth, after all, has humans, chimpanzees, and dolphins.)  This means that the Star Wars universe consists of 20 million sentient species of biological life form.  

Naturally, only a small fraction of these have been explored in the Star Wars universe to date.  Many more will be explored and catalogued, as the reading public's appetite for endless spin-off trilogy novels shows no sign of being slaked.  

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You may have missed the dust-up last year when a Bioware forum mod announced (from an official position) that with regards to the words gay and lesbian, "These are terms that do not exist in Star WarsThis happened with regards to Bioware's upcoming release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMORPG now due to be released in spring 2011.


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One Of Many Possible Commander ShepardsMuch has been made of the fact that you can customize the gender of your character Commander Shepard in the new game Mass Effect 2.  And if your Commander Shepard is female, then you have two choices: you can have a relationship with a male character, or a relationship with a female character.  However, male Commander Shepards can ONLY have relationships with female characters.  

Why would Bioware allow players to customize everything about their character except allowing for male homosexual relationships?  In a recent IGN review, creator Ray Muzyka explained that "it's not a wide-open choice matrix. It's more choice on a tactical level with a pre-defined character. So they're different types of narratives, and that's intentional."  

In other words, "because we said so, and we know best, that's why."


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As you may have heard, Asian-American actress Ming-Na (I guess she dropped the Wen at some point) is playing an openly out gay character on Syfy's latest attempt at a flagship science fiction show, Stargate Universe (better known as SG:U).  This is great news!  And I only wish it was happening on a less problematic show.

You can slice it down to the minutia, but suffice it to say that Ming-Na's Dr. Camille Wray is one of the most prominent lesbian characters in science fiction.  (Ming-Na is a sci fi fan herself, and I had to laugh when I saw her correcting her interviewer regarding the sexual orientation of the Kara Thrace Stabuck, who is in fact straight.)


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I had a really interesting conversation recently about the role of gender in Iain M. Banks' Culture novels.  (If you haven't read these novels, you really should.  Like, go read one right now.  They are that good.)  The Culture is a post-scarcity society, when you can be and do and have anything you want.  

One feature of the Culture is that you can remodel your body into anything you want.  Switching from male to female or from female to male is as you might imagine a rather pedestrian choice, given the options.  Wanna be a dolphin?  No problem.  Dolphin with gills?  Go for it.  Dolphin with gills and spikes and also feet for walking?  Okey dokey.


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