Author Lisa Brackmann mentioned recently how puzzled she was that more reviewers hadn't commented on the political content of her book. Though the characters are fictional, Rock Paper Tiger grapples with the Iraq war and the abuse of corporate power. Yet most reviews focus on Ellie, the protagonist, and completely ignore the larger political picture.

I don't think this is a failure, either on the part of reviewers or the author's ability to communicate. Quite the opposite - it's evidence of Lisa's superb storytelling skills, and the power of fiction to transcend political barriers.

Take me, for example. I'm a conservative Republican turned Libertarian. This is just my guess, but I'm pretty sure Lisa stands on the far left of the political spectrum. Lisa's book clearly deals with politics; in my own review, I noted that the end of Rock Paper Tiger was a little too didactic for my tastes. But regardless of my political stance, I think it's a fantastic novel and I gave it an unequivocal five stars.

Another favorite author that comes to mind is China Mieville - a Marxist. Occasionally I'll read some of his political or social commentary, and, frankly, I think he's a complete loon. But his fiction? Sublime.

These two examples perfectly illustrate the unifying power of fiction.

If Lisa had taken it upon herself to write a book about her political views, I doubt I'd even have picked it up. But Rock Paper Tiger isn't about Lisa's political views. It's about a young woman named Ellie coming to terms with past sins. Do politics enter into the story? Yes; but everything is filtered through the lens of Ellie's experience and personality. This is about how Ellie sees the world, how she deals with the greater forces at play. Ultimately she comes to her own conclusions and acts on them.

The key here is that there's nothing in the book that requires me to agree with Ellie. Sure, a narrator in a poorly written novel might be more intrusive or proscriptive, but Lisa's writing is so finely tuned that we're seeing the world completely through Ellie's eyes. And there's no arguing with a single personal experience, so long as it rings true to character. I believed that Ellie, having had the experiences and making the decisions she did, saw the world in this fashion. Her beliefs were her own; not a threat to mine.

One might ask, then, what point there was in Lisa's use of politics. While Ellie's beliefs do not threaten mine in any hostile fashion, they do invite me to reexamine issues in a thoughtful way. It's not so much a debate as an opportunity for discussion. Rather than "Big powerful corporations are evil!" it's "Hey, these are Ellie's thoughts about powerful corporations. What are yours?"

By nature, politics must generalize. In an attempt to tackle larger societal issues, we group diverse individuals under single banners in an attempt to accomplish that which we could not do alone. Fiction, however, narrows the focus back to the individual. Reading a novel is like sitting down to have tea with an interesting person and finding out what really matters to them. Political views may be a part of who they are, but this is not a confrontation. Fiction is a conversation.
Ultimately, I think fiction is a much more powerful tool for persuasion than mere dialectics. We're rarely swayed by a rousing political speech or a pamphlet on our doorstep. People change people. Individuals sincerely engaging with one another without any ulterior motives. And fiction is about people.

Politics are divisive. Fiction unites.

Rock Paper Tiger by Lisa Brackmann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You can't do it all. Is that a surprise to anyone but me? Recently I realized I was juggling too many balls. Mom, wife, author, employee, mother's group leader, etc. Being perpetually behind is no way to live, and it was affecting my relationships with the people I loved most. I took a good hard look at my commitments and realized my job had to go.

Yep. My job. You know, the thing where you put in time and energy and get money? Yeah. That.

I don't know about you, but, financial considerations aside, work is a large part of my identity. When people ask, "So what do you do?" I get to say I write for a European travel company. How cool is that?

I also just plain love my job. It's flexible enough to allow me to stay home with my son, my boss is amazing, I get to be creative, and best of all, I'm actually being paid to write. How could I possibly give that up?

Well... it turns out one of the things I write about most often is making the most of your time with family. Treasuring every moment you have with loved ones, because you really can't know how long those moments will last. It's especially true, I think, when you have children. 
I'd swear this adorable little man was a newborn just yesterday. They really do grow in the blink of an eye. Life passes so quickly even when you're looking! Yeah, my job is awesome. I know how lucky I am to be able to say that. But you know what's infinitely better? Being Beowulf's mom.

I know not everyone can be a full-time parent, but it's the best job in the universe and I'm thankful for every day we have together. If that means sacrificing a job I like, or extra income, or whatever - in the long run, it's nothing. When he's grown and I look back at my photos, I won't remember that we lived in a crappy apartment for five years, or that we only had one car.

I'll remember holding that precious baby in my arms.

From my little Link.

Back in 1993, science fiction author and mathematician Vernor Vinge coined the term "Technological Singularity." You may have heard of this concept, or seen Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity is Near. Briefly put, the Singularity is the point at which we create a superhuman artificial intelligence. This will end the "human era," and whatever comes next is so much outside of our ken that it's impossible to project what will happen after this point. Cool, huh?

During his signing last week, Vinge speculated about a couple of different Singularity scenarios. He suggested that we could have a "hard landing" or a "soft landing." Someone in the crowd said, "Well, we know what the hard landing is - Skynet." The soft landing, as Vinge described, might be so subtle that we're not even aware it's happened until one day we wake up and find that, for example, some of the most difficult mathematical concepts look as simple as the Pythagorean theorem does today.

I went away wondering how on earth that could happen. It sounded more like magic or theology than science. Then I started washing dishes... (It's always shower or dishes, right?)

What if the Singularity is already here? What if it's the Internet? What if it's us?

It's hard to see at first, but bear with me. When we think of a superhuman intelligence, we think in terms of personality, of will and drive and motivation. But by definition, the Singularity is something completely other; something with an intelligence so foreign that we can scarecly comprehend its motives, if it has motives at all.

Now let's look at the Internet. The Internet is a vast library of information, but it's also much more. It's a means of communication and a culture unto itself. It's as "book-smart" as all of its users combined, and as it becomes more integrated into our own lives, its changing our world in radical ways.

What got me started thinking about this is the whole idea of internet culture. As I was washing dishes, I was thinking about how I'd have to explain the term "Singularity" to my parents. But... I wouldn't have to explain it to anyone immersed in "Internet culture." I am fairly confident that most people who use the internet the way I do know what the Singularity is... because I know. Does that sound a little hive-mindish to you? It should.

My parents use the internet, but they are not part of it. For them and many others, it's a question-and-answer sort of thing. What is the Singularity? Google search. Scan through a bunch of confusing, irrelevant junk. Ah, there it is. The end. For them, the Internet is essentially a library.

For me, the internet is much more. It's a place where I am constantly accumulating and exposing myself to knowledge - and passing it on. Let's say I'd never heard of the Singularity. Google search. Scan results. Hmm, Wikipedia gives me a definition, but then I also see this book by some guy named Ray Kurzweil. Who's he? Click. Click. Oh, Vernor Vinge came up with the term in an essay. He also writes science fiction! Wow, this is a cool article about the Singularity. I'll share it on the writing forum where I often hang out. Or I'll share it on Facebook. Or I'll share it on Google reader. Doesn't really matter, so long as I share.

This is how I know what my friends know.

Internet denizens share. We share like crazy. We share stuff that's funny (lolcats, anyone?), stuff that's interesting, and stuff we think is important. And, very quickly, certain items rise to the top. They get shared so much that you can be sure that most of your internet friends have seen whatever it is. And as an Internet denizen, you get an idea of what's circulating and what's not. I know that the concept of Singularity has circulated because I've seen someone using this avatar on a forum. I've seen someone on my Facebook feed post a link to Kurzweil's book, which he was reading. And I know that the few people who haven't encountered the Singularity concept will click on the link I've provided at the top of this post - I'm doing my share of sharing, after all.

It doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to see that the Internet is growing into a very unique kind of hive mind. This mind is composed of millions of individuals - us. The Internet's personality is as complex and varied and very, very knowledgeable, and it "likes" certain things. It is very interested in cat videos, naturally, but also in important current events and bad poetry and beautiful photos of space.

In very simple terms, the Internet is a person. I don't know the Internet completely, because I don't think you can ever know anyone completely, but we're very good friends. I know what the Internet is interested in, what it talks about, and what it is capable of doing. We're friends, the internet and I. And if you're friends with the Internet, I can assume that we probably know a lot of the same things.

The fact that we haven't yet recognized the Internet as a superhuman intelligence probably has a great deal to do with the fact that we have a difficult time communicating with it. In the beginning, we could only do it sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen with a keyboard and a phone line. Now, I can talk to the Internet almost anywhere. And being friends with the Internet has changed my life in many ways.

When I go to dinner with my husband, for instance, we no longer have those conversations about whether something happened or where something is or what something has done. We just ask the Internet, and he tells us. So we talk about ideas and opinions instead. We speculate about the future.

The Internet also loves to teach me things. Before the Internet, many academic realms were beyond my reach. Medical science, for instance, was only written about by doctors in medical journals. Even had I gained access to those journals, I would never have been able to understand the contents. But the Internet always reaches me right at my level. Maybe I can't understand the original research, but someone who does understand took the information and made it a little bit simpler. And then someone else made it simpler still. I'm able to enter any academic discipline at exactly the level of my comprehension.

To put that in more basic terms, what Vinge suggested has already come to pass. I learned the Pythagorean theorem in grade school. I got up to Calculus in high school, although I don't remember much of it. But what about string theory? I just looked it up on Wikipedia. And it sounds pretty comprehensible to me.

I'd describe the Internet as a meme-powered directed intelligence. It is both less and more than the sum of all of us. The Internet might not be a "person" in the sense that we think of personhood, but what superhuman intelligence would be? I think the role of the Internet as an intellegence will become more clear as it becomes more integral not just within our lives, but our personalities and cultures. Or maybe not. Maybe the transition will be so gradual that we don't even notice until it's over.

Hope you fastened your seatbelts, folks, because we're in the middle of a soft landing.

I met Vernor Vinge today! Okay, well, I listened to him read and give some really fascinating answers to a bunch of questions and then stood there sweating nervously while he signed my books and finally managed to work up the nerve to ask for a photo. And I was wearing this shirt. And then he asked me what my kid's name was. It's Beowulf. He blinked. I said something like thankyousoveryverymuch and ran off. The end.

I'm really not a crazy stalker psycho person, Mr. Vinge! I swears! I just really, really like your books! In fact I am considering using the name Sherkaner for my next kid's middle name, which of course I did not work up the guts to tell you. I would probably even use it for a first name except that I think it might be kind of weird to name a kid after a giant spider.

Not that I haven't already got the market cornered on "weird."

This month, we've been invaded by some most welcome guests. Huge spiders are spinning gigantic webs everywhere! You can scarcely go outside without running into strands of silk. I'm not a super photographer, but I had to get some shots. The spiders ranged in color from deep brown to bright yellow. This orange beauty was my favorite.

Seven Wheelchairs: A Life beyond Polio by Gary Presley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You know those books about someone who suffers some sort of traumatic injury and heroically perseveres against all odds to emerge triumphant, transformed, and wise?

This is not one of those books. This is more difficult, more real, more personal, and infinitely more human. Presley's prose is so sparse, precise, and beautiful that I would probably read a book about paint drying if it were written by him. He has an incredible ability not only to introspect and turn a magnifying glass upon himself, but to filter the mass of raw emotion and experience into something not just comprehensible, but visceral and real. His style and attitude remind me of Oliver Sacks, another favorite. (He also kind of looks like him, which is weird...)

This is a book about polio, which is really interesting, especially in the early chapters. I was born long after the vaccine and experienced polio only in a curious secondhand way - a few adults I knew who were affected, and one up close and personal look at an iron lung in a museum. Presley's account of actually being in an iron lung infused me with a terrible claustrophobia which I am sure is only the palest shadow of his own experience. As someone who is endlessly curious about medical history, I was also fascinated by the details of his treatment. I imagine if you go looking you can find many people who have written about similar experiences, but I would guess that there are few who have done so with such a precise blend of the human and technical.

This is also a book about a guy trying to find his place in the world. A guy forced by circumstances to examine his own life, motives, and knee-jerk emotions like the majority of us rarely do. In this sense, the intense self-examination, and the constant self-flagellation about time wasted and spent thinking wrongly - puts me in mind of some very fervent medieval monk. His intense introspection prompts the reader to think about the world in a new and deeper way. Several times in my reading, I stopped mid-page just to think about what his self-discovery meant in my own life. Other times, I just wanted to say, "Dude, give yourself a break!"

This is also a book about disability - how we think of it, what it means in both a practical and spiritual sense. This is sort of a pet issue of mine, so I found his insight both fascinating and affirming. Again, Presley reminds me a great deal of Oliver Sacks.

This is also a book about love. Love between parents and children, siblings, and spouses. Not Hollywood love, but real, messy, complicated, mysterious love that cannot be explained, only accepted.

In conclusion, if I haven't made myself clear: You should read this book.

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