BLOGTABLE V: Cyberpunks on the State of Science Fiction, Then and Now (Part 1)

Welcome to a special edition of Blogtable! Normally, a prompt is issued by a regular contributor to nerds of a feather, flock together, which is then answered by three guest bloggers in turn. However, this time we have four esteemed guests, each of whom was gracious enough to lend their time and energy to this project. And what guests they are! Please join us in welcoming:


Rudy Rucker

Photo by Sylvia Rucker

Rucker's novel Software (1982) is considered by many to be the first cyberpunk novel ever published (as well as the first in which a mind is downloaded into a robot body). Both it and sequel Wetware (1988) won the Philip K. Dick Award. The full Ware Tetralogy is available free via creative commons license, or as a trade paperback with a nifty introduction by fellow cyberpunk innovator William Gibson. (Get the paperback, though--it's well worth it.) Rucker has published 17 additional novels and 5 short story collections, many of which feature his signature "transrealist" approach to science fiction writing. He is also a prolific writer of non-fiction--you can check out his Collected Essays, including "Transrealism" and "What is Cyberpunk," at his website. Rucker's latest book is his hefty Journals: 1990 - 2014, a tome which in some ways anticipates Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle as a transrealist work of self-reinvention.


Paul Di Filippo

Photo by Rudy Rucker

In addition to contributing the excellent short story "Stone Lives" to Mirrorshades (the essential anthology of early cyberpunk), Di Filippo is author or co-author of 13 novels and 15 short story collections, including the highly influential Steampunk Trilogy. He is also a prolific reviewer and essayist--where, this humble blogger suggests, Di Filippo sets an impossibly high bar for the rest of us wannabes. (I mean, come on.)



Bruce Sterling

Photo by Rudy Rucker

Sterling has been called the "unofficial spokesperson" of cyberpunk and "Chairman Bruce" for his role in the emergence of the style. He edited the fanzine, Cheap Truth, that served as the ideological center of the nascent movement, edited Mirrorshades and has authored a number of critically-acclaimed and influential novels (including the excellent Islands in the Net and Schismatrix Plus). Sterling has worked as a journalist, teacher, activist and speaker, and is involved in multiple projects investigating the intersection of art, design, technology and social interaction.



Pat Cadigan

Photo by Christopher J. Fowler

Cadigan is author of the seminal cyberpunk/postcyberpunk novels Mindplayers (1987), Fools (1992) and Tea from an Empty Cup (1998), which are collected in this fantastic omnibus--as well as the equally good Synners (1991) and Dervish Is Digital (2000).  She is a two-time winner of the prestigious Clarke Award (for Synners and Fools), and in 2013 won a Hugo for the novelette "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" (Edge of Infinity). Cadigan is also a prolific writer of short fiction, and one of the authors who--many years ago--convinced a certain blogger that science fiction could work as serious literature. [See also: my recent review of Mindplayers.]


Background

This special edition of Blogtable was inspired by a recent symposium hosted by the University of Southern California, which both Vance and I attended. "Visions and Voices: Cyberpunk - Past and Future" was, in a word, fascinating--and featured enough material to build a year's worth of Blogtables (check out the videos to see what I mean). But it was the first panel, featuring cyberpunk pioneers Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling, that really blew my mind. So much so that I spent about 10 minutes composing a question about how and to what degree one might compare the state of the field of science fiction today to what the cyberpunks rebelled against.

Unfortunately, time ran out before I could ask it. Thankfully both Rudy and Bruce agreed to answer my question via email--only by that point, the idea had grown in my mind. I needed to turn this into the next episode of Blogtable--the biggest and boldest yet. Enter Paul and Pat, each of whom enthusiastically agreed to participate. Frankly, I'm still amazed that everyone said yes. And humbled, because these are four people whose work I've admired for a long, long time.  

Because this Blogtable is so big, however, we're going to split it into two parts. Today we are posting the question and the responses by Rudy Rucker and Paul Di Filippo. Tomorrow, we'll repost the question alongside the responses by Bruce Sterling and Pat Cadigan.

But enough about all that...to the question!


EPISODE V: In which The G attempts to draw a tenuous historical parallel...

At the USC symposium on cyberpunk, Rudy Rucker recalled how cyberpunk emerged in reaction to the prevalent "arena rock" quality of science fiction in the 1970s--its emphasis on spectacle, elitism and tired, endlessly-rehashed tropes. Fans of the era, Rucker suggested, were comfortable "wallowing in their castles and space navy bullshit." Cyberpunk aimed to transgress, disturb and upend these conventions and expectations.

Arguably we stand in a similar position today. Bruce Sterling, speaking on the same panel as Rucker, argued that science fiction lacks a "rhetoric of the 22nd century" analogous to the rhetoric of the 21st that served as the pulse of 20th century science fiction. Similarly, the critic Paul Kincaid has framed the problem as one of "exhaustion"--a loss of faith in the idea that the future is knowable, and consequent retreat to formal explorations, the old "castles and space navies" tropes, and the comforting simplicity of nostalgia (including for cyberpunk).

As Sterling and Kincaid both note, few practitioners seem to be looking forward and engaging in rigorous speculation on the future. Yet even in this environment, there are voices within the community loudly complaining that science fiction is too challenging, too intellectual--essentially that it is not "arena rock" enough. 

So my question is: what would it take, in today's environment, to restart the kind of transgressive thinking that fueled cyberpunk? What lessons can writers, critics and fans draw from the 1970s and 1980s, and what should they specifically ignore about that context? What does science fiction need to do, or be, or try to do or be, to break out of its current inertia?


Rudy Rucker

That’s very much a multipart question, G man.  So I’ll give a multipart answer, breaking it into sections with italicized headers.

1. Why SF?

When I’m talking aloud I get loose and I say things that I wouldn’t write in an essay.  So it’s amusing to hear that on the USC Cyperpunk panel in 2015 I spoke of “castle and space-navy bullshit” as being kinds of SF that I don’t enjoy.

My point was that I prefer to see SF that’s about ordinary kinds of people, as opposed to being about aristocrats, power elites, military officers, or police. To this end, I often use my so-called transreal approach of basing my characters on myself, my friends, or people I casually know. It’s a way of making the SF real, and not veering off into the writing about generic kinds of characters. Above all, I don’t want to base my characters on characters in movies, TV show, or other books I’ve read. I want them to be real people in a SFictionally doctored world.  I want them to be transreal.

I like the idea that SF acts as a funhouse mirror to show us what our current lives are really like.  And there’s the persistent wishful hope that SF might raise people’s awareness and somehow change the world. Like, during the long years when the US was under the yoke and lash of the Bush-Cheney administration, I made a point of writing novels in which the US President was a stupid and evil man—I had Dick Too Dibbs in Hylozoic, and Joe Doakes in Mathematicians in Love. I was doing my part for political change—as surely as if I’d been handing out leaflets door to door. It almost goes without saying, by the way, that a transreal book is intrinsically antiestablishment. The goals of individuals are forever antithetical to the goals of power elites.

2. The Birth of Cyberpunk.

Jumping back to the birth of cyberpunk—it’s not like it was a considered and well-thought-out campaign. In 1980 my biggest beef with the SF scene was that my books weren’t getting much attention. I’d hoped to find a home in the SF world, and I had a feeling I wasn’t welcome there.  And now in 2015, thirty-five books later, I have much the same feeling about SF!

My 1980 malaise about SF mirrored the fact that, in the wider world, the system was bent on grinding me into dust. I’d barely escaped being sent off to die in Viet Nam. I was unable to get a secure academic job. Our nation’s leaders hated me. I’d fled reality for SF, and I wasn’t welcome in SF—so then what? Then I was lucky enough to meet some people who were writing like me.

I’ve sometimes compared cyberpunk to Beat literature. The Beats had Jack Kerouac as their angelic voice and Allen Ginsberg as their agitator.  We had William Gibson for our star.  He’s a sheerly wonderful writer—a master of language, aphorism, imagery, characterization, and attitude. And we had the manic, motor-mouthed, confrontational Bruce Sterling for our advocate.

I met Allen Ginsberg in person around 1981, and I asked him how it was that the Beats had gotten so much press. His answer: “Fine writing.”  We cyberpunks were very focused on being good writers.  We wanted to write avant garde, high-lit books that used the tropes of SF, with the added factor that our books had a rebellious, anti-establishment quality—the punk thing. And, of course, we dealt with the uneasy fusion between humans and machines. The cyber thing.

3. Trad SF and Crypto-SF.

Fast forward to 2015. Has the publishing category of SF become as plastic and bogus as it was in 1979? Time for another revolution! Is the SF industry being run by tiny cartel of greedy multinational corporations and book distributors? Is 99% of the attention and money going to 1% of the writers? Are the Nebulas and the Hugos complete bullshit?

Could be, seekers, could be.

Just in passing—you mentioned the rhetorical question of whether the SF publishing niche needs more badly written, middlebrow space operas and thrillers populated by emotional ciphers. Do billionaires need more tax breaks? Does the media run too many articles about art? Is TV news too liberal? Is the right wing being oppressed? Is science taken too seriously by congress? Is global warming a hoax?

No, no, the majority of the books being published under the science fiction label really are quite dull and generic these days.  The other day I was looking at the SF rack in an airport shop. Yeecchh. It really is like the late 70s.

But, unlike the old days, that’s not the whole story.  If you’re a regular reader of, say, the New York Times Book Review, you will have noticed that a lot of recent mainstream novels have SF elements in their plots. I’d guess that fully a third of all new mainstream novels are crypto-SF.

Of course the tame mainstream critics never use the SF label when enthusing over these new books.  The works are visionary, speculative, powerfully imagined, and magical—but they’re not science fiction. Couldn’t possibly be. The New York Times doesn’t review SF.

4. Breaking In and Dropping Out.

So where does this leave the ambitious, literary, independently-minded young author of the genre formerly known as SF? Well, even now, the SF publishing system does grant newer writers with a certain novelty credit. Nobody ever knows what’s going to sell, and they have to hedge their bets. So you do have a possibility of selling a non-traditional, transreal, politically subversive novel. Your novel, launched in the usual blaze of no publicity and no reviews, will probably bomb.  Maybe you can sell a second, but not a third.  And then what?

Maybe, if you’re enough of a shapeshifter, you can knuckle under, bloat up, and dumb down. Or maybe you can manage a YA book. Or maybe you can sell into the mainstream market—although, if you have a track record as an SF writer, the mainstreamers will be loath to consider you. You’re tainted. Potentially subliterate.

So then you might go hat in hand to a series of small publishers, abasing yourself in the hope of no advance, a shitty cover, an ugly font, no ads, five free author copies, and potentially iffy royalty payments! (Just rhetoric here—I really do love my small press friends.)

Or maybe you get into self-publishing . That’s where I’ve been at for my last two novels.  It’s not bad.  A little like being under house arrest. If you put in seven or eight painful months of trial and error, you can figure out how to create legit-seeming PDF interiors and covers for print-on-demand paperbacks. Plus you’ll make ebooks for the Kindle and other readers.  And you can sell your paperbacks and ebooks via Amazon and maybe via the one or two pipsqueak alternate venues that still happen to exist. If you do all this yourself, it doesn’t cost you anything—although you do need to get access to some software along the lines of InDesign, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Sigil and Calibre.

A plus is that, as a self-pubber, if you’re pushy and high-profile enough, you can run a Kickstarter to score the equivalent of a cash advance for publishing your book. Really when you crowd-source and offer rewards, you’re doing advance sales of a collector’s edition. You’re likely to score more money this way than you’d get from a small press, and maybe even more than you’d get from an SF industry house.

5. Reforming SF.

But these are the perhaps too gloomy musings of an old man.  What about the dream of writing a style of SF that changes the genre and gets noticed by the wider world? Okay, that’s possible.

Certainly it helps if you can band together with a couple of other writers. Starting an online ezine is a good way to do this.  In my opinion, online ezines should be free—especially if you want a lot of people to read them.  Forget about nickel-and-diming your initial readers, if you can get a groundswell of interest going, then you’ll be making money at the back end of the process, that is, when you start selling books or Kindle singles or commercial stories.

I had a little experience with this in publishing and editing my ezine Flurb from 2006 to 2012.  You can read all thirteen fab issues free online.  It was fun for me to be in touch with other writers.  Shout-outs to: Adam Callaway, Brendan Byrne, Eileen Gunn, Cory Doctorow, James Worrad, Kek, Emily Skaftun,  Leslie What, A. S. Salinas, Wongoon Cha, Mac Tonnies, Rudy Ch. Garcia, Bruce Sterling, Charlie Jane Anders, Madeline Ashby, Bef, Jon Armstrong, Paul Di Filippo, John Shirley, Seth Kallan Deitch, Anna Tambour, Howard Hendrix, Cody Goodfellow, Kim Stanley Robinson, Charles Stross, Martin Hayes, Alex Hardison, Ian Watson, Christopher Shay, Charles Platt, Lavie Tidhar, Th. Metzger, Kathe Koja, Carter Scholz, Michael Blumlein, Tamara Vining, Danny Rubin, Annalee Newitz, Marc Laidlaw, Richard Kadrey, Ernest Hogan, Terry Bisson, Doug Lain, Brian Landis and all the other deviants involved.

Flurb did get some notice—we were getting hundreds of thousands of hits. It was art, and it was interesting, but did we change the face of SF?  Hard to say. It’s not clear that our lumbering multinational commercial publishers ever look at anything but spreadsheets. A cultural democracy in action, with every consumer-dollar a vote. And just look how wonderfully democracy does in selecting the very cream of the crop to serve as our representatives in the Congress!

Another angle for changing SF from within is to start writing about a set of ideas that haven’t really been touched upon yet.  That’s a true and hardcore kind of SF endeavor. It’s not easy. You have to get yourself to look at the present day world with new eyes—as if you’re a Martian. You pretty much want to forget about all the SF plots and futurist-type prognostications.  In the same sense that your characters shouldn’t mirror characters in existing works, your ideas shouldn’t mirror futurist ideas that you might read in magazines.

A good rule of thumb here is that if most people believe something—then it’s wrong. Consider: a hundred years ago, the human race pretty much didn’t know jack shit about science or modern technology. A hundred years from now, just about every single bit of tech that we’re using today is going to be gone.What’s going to replace it? Anything you want. Make up the weirdest shit you can think of. Be optimistic. Why not a new force of nature? Why not aliens from the subdimensions? Why not telepathy with every single object that you see?

Pile on the bullshit and keep a straight face. As the immortal David Lee Roth said, “It’s not who wins or loses—it’s how good you look.”  If you and your friends can make your books fun and quirky, then maybe the soggy, stodgy SF ship of state will change its course.

6. Abandoning SF.

Or maybe at this point it’s impossible to change the commercial genre known as SF.  In 2015, there’s an alternate path.  What if you sidestep the SF publishing niche, and shoot for mainstream publishing from the start?

It could be that the whole SF publishing industry is on its way out—or down. There will still be some great science-fiction books, yes, but they’ll be called something else.  Transreal, visionary, speculative—like that. And the hidebound old trad SF label might really be fated to descend into subliterature. Maybe in ten years nobody will even consider publishing a good SF novel under the old SF rubric. Maybe the old category has been eaten by parasitic Martian blimps with electric news-crawl letters on their sides, or by institutional politics left and right, or, more simply, by cultural dynamics and the processes of media change.

It’s a bit sad. For me, it’s like I grew up in a nice small town—cue the silo-fulla-corn nostalgia routine—and I go back thirty years later and it’s all strip malls, and the city core is stone cold dead. As the Pretenders put it in My City Was Gone:  “Ay, oh, where did you go, Ohio?”

The big loss for us mad-scientist, freakazoid, pinpoint-pupil SF nut-cases is that the mainstream market is harder to break into than SF publishing. Here in the nest it’s kinda okay for us to write funny. Me, back at the very start I was so daunted by the whole Brahmin Mandarin New Yorker vibe that I never tried selling into that market at all. I liked the idea of being an SF writer.  I liked the image of being a rock and roll musician instead of an orchestra violinist.

But…if the orchestras are trying playing rock and roll, however ineptly, why not try for a gig with them? If you keep your soul, you’ll still be writing SF. Maybe better than before. Educating the squares. Showing them where it’s at.

Many paths, many futures.

Write on.

7. Further Reading.

In the DIY punk tradition, I self-published my Collected Essays as an ebook in 2012, and in the fuck-it hacker tradition, I also made the essays available for free. Relative to the topics I’ve touched on here, you might check out “What is Cyberpunk,” “Cyberpunk Lives, ” “New Futures in SF,” and/or “The Great Awakening."


Paul Di Filippo

In that video referenced in the introduction to our discussion, Rudy remarks that it's awfully hard to be the speaker who has to follow the jaw-droppingly articulate and idea-overflowing Bruce Sterling.  Of course, the same might be said for following Messr. Rucker himself, as I am feeling now.  Rudy lays down a brilliant, accurate history of the past thirty years of SF (my God, where did those decades go?!?), and then projects a myriad fascinating future vectors for this narrative and thematic mode to pursue.  There is nothing I see to contradict in his presentation, or deficiencies to repair, so I will have to content myself with riffing off certain things he's said, then maybe adding a new slant or two.

First, let me structure my reply this way, in two parts.  In my personal life and in my observations about the world, I oscillate between two contradictory viewpoints, whose synthesis might be that both are simultaneously true.  So I will look at SF from each of these POVs separately.

First, "'Twas ever thus."  (And here I'm going to cite Robert Crumb's great illo of Mr. Natural atop a grinning tractor as he proclaims this truth.)

People and their cultures are eternal.  (At least until we start installing permanent changes in the human genome.)  The same old ways of being have persisted forever, since hominids emerged.  The same set of desires and responses, the same kinds of love and hate, the same issues of art and religion and politics. "They heard the call and they wrote it on the wall, before there was even any Hollywood," as Steely Dan opined about cave art.  This moment in time, this fix we are in, has happened before, many times, and will happen again.  Nothing to worry about. Hang loose.

Rudy gets at this a little bit by comparing cyberpunks to the Beats. What the Beats faced circa 1948, we faced circa 1984 (nice Orwellian synchronicity with those two dates). So the process of reinvigoration of any genre is perpetual, and nothing special for this moment.  This is something of the Buddhist View of Science Fiction.

But another constant to consider is Sturgeon's Law:  90% of everything is shit. There is  no way we can turn a marketing genre around to some kind of utopian state of brilliant perfection.   By default, the great bulk of stuff is, has been, and always will be trivial trash.  There are indeed Silver and Golden Ages, when the ratio of shit to diamonds shifts a bit in favor of gems.  Rudy and I and the other cyberpunks were lucky enough to experience one of those moments, as were the New Wave folks, as were the Campbellian Revolution folks, as were the Gernsbackians, and so forth. Golden Ages are hard or impossible to predict or manufacture. 

But I'd like to address Rudy's use of the word "elitist."  I know he's using it to mean narratives wherein upper classes receive all the attention of the storyline. But art itself is ineluctably elitist. If art means anything, it means a spectrum of quality, difficulty, impact  and performance.  The ten percent of genius that Sturgeon's Law alludes to. Unless we have sieves for genius, we will always be swamped with shit.

I guess this observation brings me to my other, antithetical viewpoint that I cherish on alternate days of the week.

This era is unique and full of special challenges and opportunities.

Rudy does a magnificent job of addressing this viewpoint.  He speaks of self-publishing, slipping under the radar of mainstream, creating ezines, etc. I would also mention the great resource of the internet allowing writers to research and communicate beyond anything that has gone before. Imagine how the cyberpunk movement was conducted with paper fanzines! But he does not mention a few of the factors that are making the life of the SF writer so difficult. How to tackle these trends and issues is not something I have an easy answer to.

First is the very lack of gatekeepers and healthy elitist attitudes. The internet has "disintermediated" the hell out of a system that worked, in however flawed and biased a way, to produce the incredible canon of SF that we all cherish. It took Frank Herbert over twenty rejections to get Dune published.  Would Herbert's career have taken off better if he had self-pubbed it with no hassle?  Maybe, maybe not (see below). The self-publishing movement, however valid and worthy in some cases, has also opened up the floodgates to a tsunami of crap. Amateurs ruin everything, I'm sorry. When asked if writing workshops discouraged fledgling writers, Flannery O'Connor said, "Not enough." It's just Gresham's Law as applied to SF:  bad fiction drives out the good. When presented by Amazon with a hundred new ebooks, 90% of which are shit, and one of which is Rudy's and nine others of which are good stuff too, guess what the odds are of a random reader buying Rudy's book, or one of the other nine? 

Whenever I hear that the field discourages Group X from entering or being heard, my immediate response is to say, "Great! Our work is partly done. Now if we could only discourage Groups A, B, C and Z as well!" (Let Z stand for white male conservative writers if you will.) The barriers to getting published should be high enough to discourage dilettantes and the talentless, regardless of any other classification they belong to. Do you know the story of the fellow who approached the Zen monastery and asked to be enrolled as a student? The Zen Master told him, "No, sorry, full up," then shut the door in his face. The student-to-be then camped bareheaded and without food or water outside the gates for three days, in rain and heat, till he fell over unconscious. Only then did the Master take him in as his acolyte. Why can't this be our template, instead of handing out "participation awards" to every Tom, Dick and Harriet who can string some two-syllable words together into a cliched story?

Another trend we are facing is the fragmentation of the audience into niches, otherwise known as the "There Can Never Be Another Beatles" problem. We could produce another whole cyberpunk-like set of genius writers, and they would go unheard, due to the immense variety of subgenres and entertainment activities available to the audience. Take a figure like George R. R. Martin, famous and best-selling enough to appear in Entertainment Weekly magazine. There are fans who have certainly never sampled him and never will. Same goes for Stephen King. The chances of producing another figure with the stature and influence of a Robert Heinlein are correspondingly reduced.

Another matter is the sheer weight of genre history. If we date SF back to Jules Verne (rather than Mary Shelley, who, while brilliant and a real forerunner, left no real school of imitators), then SF originated in 1851, with Verne's "A Voyage in a Balloon." Consequently, we now have over 150 years of literature on our backs. It's all available too, thanks to digitized books and the internet market for second-hand physical books. There's no excuse for not knowing your chosen past. It would be like trying to be a dancer and never knowing Isadora Duncan or Martha Graham. We can't reinvent the wheel, we have to put new spins on old tropes. Every now and then, a really fresh idea pops up. The Singularity was probably one such, which explains why it was glommed-onto so enthusiastically. But otherwise, every time we want to write about one of Rudy's "Power Chords," the educated, savvy SF writer (as opposed to some unschooled amateur or idiot savant) is forced to face what Hemingway saw as his own major challenge:  "to beat some dead man at his own game." It's hard work.

All of these things would be immensely discouraging, save for one ineluctable truth: great SF somehow continues to be written! When I read a new book by Rudy, or Hannu Rajaniemi or Nick Harkaway or M. John Harrison or China Mieville or Karen Joy Fowler, then my faith in our ability to produce relevant, touching, tragic, funny, hip, truly speculative SF is reaffirmed.  I study them and try to take direction and excitement from them, and improve my own work. That's the eternal process all true artists throughout time have employed.

It's like the old urban legend about the scientist who proved bumblebees are aerodynamically unable to fly.  You just have to point to a bumblebee to disprove him!

Let's all try to be the best bumblebees possible, and sting the asses of complacency, sloth, ineptness and narrow-minded lack of real visions!

[To be continued.]

***

POSTED BY: The G--purveyor of nerdliness, genre fanatic and 'nerds of a
feather, flock together' founder/administrator.

THE MONTHLY ROUND - A Taster's Guide to Speculative Short Fiction, 05/2015

Welcome back, intrepid travelers of the speculative highways and intergalactic avenues. Rest a spell and have a seat at the bar and let this storytender pour you something to take the edge off. Not sure what you want? Well I have gathered up quite a selection for this month's tasting flight, from stories with superpowers to stories where whole universe are just stalks of wheat swaying in the wind. 

For something stronger, and in honor of my recent adventures at WisCon, the shots this week are all taken from the special menu from the Bar. Go ahead and check out the image of the full Bar menu (speculative booze puns!) in my write up on Wiscon.

Otherwise, prepare your palate for some delicious stories. Cheers!

Tasting Flight - May 2015

"Zapped" by Sherwood Smith (Tor.com)

Art by Junyi Wu

A story kind-of about young people discovering they have superpowers but also about learning to empathize and reserving judgement, "Zapped" by Sherwood Smith is a strawberry daiquiri, cool and sweet and easily mistaken for something childish except it is also full of enough strength to make the hot nights of summer melt away. Laurel, the main character, can Zap things, literally using some sort of magic power to move objects from a distance. It's a power that she tries to use for good, but like with all superhero stories she doesn't always get it right. The world, after all, is more complicated than even a kid in high school can imagine. Only more so when Laurel finds out that she's not the only one with powers, and she's soon brought into a small group of kids with different gifts who want to use their powers to do good. Or at least to do no bad. It's a noble goal and one that Laurel embraces even as she gets a strange vibe surrounding the first person in the group that befriended her, a girl her age named Mercy. Because it turns out that Mercy is dealing with issues that Laurel didn't know about, prejudices that show that even in very open minded settings a seed of oppression and prejudice can germinate. Around all this the group is trying to figure out what happened to a classmate they suspect was beaten into a coma because of his sexuality and a possible conspiracy that might involve all of them and their powers. There's a lot to like here, and the character work and voice are amazing, making this a fun read, something to read and nod along to despite the at times heavy subject matter. And in the end the story leaves the readers with a great many questions, teasing them with that enchanting taste, which like a strong daiquiri will only leave them wanting more.

"By Degrees and Dilatory Time" by S.L. Huang (Strange Horizons)

Art by Milan Jaram

About a man coming to terms with replacing a part of himself, his eyes, due to illness, "By Degrees and Dilatory Time" by S.L. Huang is a Helles Bock, a brush of hop bitterness with a smooth finish and enough of a punch to make your vision blur. Marcus has been diagnosed with a rare cancer that means his eyes need to be removed. Which seems like a huge thing (and is), but is supposed to be less of an issue because there are now cybernetic eyes that can function (supposedly) just as well as "normal" eyes. Indeed, they are sometimes seen as more attractive. As provocative. To the point that people choose to have their eyes replaced for cosmetic reasons. To Marcus, though, they are not what he wants. They are to save his vision, and yet they make him different. To himself, to others. The eyes are a reminder of what he has lost and what now sets him apart. And yet at the same time that he resents his new eyes, that he hates them, he also grows to see them as a part of himself, not exactly as just a loss but also about change in general, that this too can be him, that he can be something different without being lesser, even to himself. It's a brooding story, about Marcus' fears and insecurities, but his voice is so earnest, so real, that the story just works. It's a bit of sadness, a bit of reflection, but mostly the will to keep going, the belief that things get better, that wounds heal even if the scars never really go away. And like a good Helles the story leaves the reader feeling refreshed and ready to face the world.

"A Sister's Weight in Stone" by JY Yang (Apex #72)

Art by Beth Spencer

I can think of no better description of this story than dark, and so for me "A Sister's Weight in Stone" by JY Yang is a Pinot Noir, a dark wine that's almost black like a storm at sunset or like the sea tinged with blood, but also with a complex flavor and a subtle sweetness like hope that shines through in the end. The story follows two sisters, Little Phoenix and Jade, who are traveling because of difficult times to a new city to begin new lives. On the way, though, Jade is lost during a storm, taken by creatures of the sea, leaving Little Phoenix grieving, unsure of how to proceed. Except that Little Phoenix is also a story teller. She knows how these things go, and figures that her sister has been taken beneath the waves by a dark force and that she must find a way to get her back. Because that's the way of stories, dark princes constantly snatching young women so that someone needs to rescue them. The story is heartbreaking, wrenching, and honestly you need to just go and read it because wow. Told swirling around that traumatic moment on the ship, during the storm, the story blends reality and story flawlessly, leading the reader along before hitting them between the eyes like a hammer. Like a full glass dropped back without a thought, the alcohol steaming like a train toward impact. Little Phoenix must face herself, her situation, and the truth of it all as she stands poised and ready to do whatever is required to get her sister back, as she stands ready to see if she will burn away or rise from the ashes. About grief and guilt and loss, this story has some serious layers, a rich complexity that could seem too dark at times but which is ultimately lifting and redemptive. There might indeed be crying involved, but with Pinor Noir that's only one facet of a riveting experience.

"Let Down, Set Free" by Nino Cipri (Crossed Genres #29)

With a seedpod the size of an oak tree and a wild possibility to it, "Let Down, Set Free" by Nino Cipri is a rye ale, with hints of southern whiskey and the feeling of flying. In the story a recently divorced woman finds said giant seedpod in a field. According to the government such things are supposed to be burned, but she can't bring herself to do it. It was merely lost, like her, tethered when it got caught on a fence. She sees in it her own move from the North down to Kentucky and then her own lack of direction. Being mired in a fence is not the same as putting down roots, and against what might be considered better judgment the woman decides that her and the seed are going to move on together. Told as a letter to her ex-husband, the story drifts beautifully on its way, the main character a bit numb following her husband running off with another woman and being stranded in a state she followed him to. But it's also about lifting, about taking the plunge and moving on after loss, after disappointment and abandonment. About seeking that better place, and not letting yourself get stuck somewhere that's not good for you. A moving story, with enough flavor to make a good rye, hints of smoke and earth and grain and hope. 

"The Garden Beyond Her Infinite Skies" by Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld #104)

Art by Julie Dillon

A story about scale and abuse and the hope for a better world, "The Garden Beyond Her Infinite Skies" by Matthew Kressel is a wheat ale, full of the taste of wide open spaces and clean air and enough of a bite to remind you that the world is alive and growing. The story follows Aya, a Gardener who, like all her kind, exist to keep the great fields of universes in perfect order. No rot or cancer is allowed to exist, though Aya yearns for finding such irregularities, such growths that seem to promise so much more than the sterile eternity that surrounds her. Her society is one that discourages expression, where the elders routinely abuse their charges and where those charges are supposed to then pass along the abuse to their own offspring. For Aya, though, there must be more, and as her dissatisfaction grows she resolves to find someplace better. Aya and her people are completely inhuman in form, in motion, and yet like all my favorite science fiction stories, this one goes an incredibly job of showing the human in an alien character, in showing with golden clarity the scale and scope of our existence, just a drop in an endless sea, and yet regardless of size that life and sentience need to be respected. That abuse doesn't have to be handed down. That somewhere there might be a place for those who don't fit in. Like a wheat ale, the story is perfect for summer, looking out on clear skies and feeling a little better about the world.

"Restore the Heart into Love" by John Chu (Uncanny #4)

Art by Tran Nguyen

Featuring an attempt to save a world's worth of texts in danger of censorship by blasting them into space, "Restore the Heart into Love" by John Chu is a coffee stout, a drink dark and deep but also infused with the taste of waking up, as the main character in the story does again and again. The crew of the mission to save the texts is kept in suspended animation except for when repairs are needed and Max, the main character, keeps on being woken up due to failures surrounding a section of Chinese language texts, most specifically those using an older Chinese character style that the more modern China was trying to replace with a streamlined version for political reasons. Max, a man who learned the older characters in part to connect with his parents and their culture following their departure from Taiwan when it was invaded by China, at first brushes off the failures as coincidence until he discovers it is a more insidious than that, more targeted, and included a malicious program that rewrote the entire body of text into the new forms. Faced with the possible loss, he must choose what to do next, how to fulfill his mission to return to Earth with the unaltered past, to confront whatever future world it has become with the unedited and uncensored thoughts from before. It's a provocative story, one that questions language and what censorship can look like. The story uses language to create a tapestry of meaning and character, the character linked to how he connects to the various people in his life through the language. And when faced with its loss, the story builds a striking portrait of one man trying to fix what he can and bring a little heart back into the world. Like a coffee stout, it draws the reader deep while gently prodding them to wake up, to open their eyes.

Shots

"Mirror Skinned" by Kelly Sandoval (Flash Fiction Online)

Art by Dario Bijelac

About a person on a journey through space in search of something, and finding bits of it in the arms and beds in many different aliens, this story is a Space Babe, a specially made Sangria with hints of fruit and spice and something undefinable. The main character of the story moves off into the stars and changes themself as they goes, each coupling shaping them further and further away from what they were when they started but it's a transformation of choice, of joy and not of shame. The story is sensuous and melancholy, a bit sad with an element of the ethereal, the yearning for something that can't quite be defined. I loved the way the the person moves from place to place, learning from each partner regardless of gender. I loved the way they're searching out that first taste of the infinite, the boundless, and never quite getting there, but being shaped nonetheless and striving nonetheless. It's not a story of regret for them but of opening up, of bringing their life full circle and the story does a great job in capturing that quest. By the last coupling in the story there is a power to them, and they have become what they was always searching for, that taste of the unknown, of the vast and worldly. They have transcended in a way, and done so beautifully.

"This Side of Time" by Sarah Grey (Fantastic Stories of the Imagination)

This story shows a young woman using a time machine that can show possible futures to search for her perfect match, and is a The Female Manhattan, a mic of brandy, sweet vermouth, bitters, and a twist of orange. The story is told to one of those potential matches, Husband Seven-Sixty-Five, by a sort of omniscient narrator, but it's really about the values that we teach, the way we shape the world with our beliefs. The story of this woman and this man is a hard one, a difficult one, fraught with ups and downs and ultimately rather tragic. And yet it is the kind of story that happens because people can't see the future. They do the best with what they have and do the best they can but everyone is human. But here such learning opportunities can merely be sidestepped. Instead of the hardships, this woman can pick the path she wants. It's both freeing and a bit sad, because while it does let her avoid the unforeseen abuse she might have suffered, the life that was so full of promise but fell short, it also avoid learning from those experiences. And it's how we teach children to be by stressing utility and capital and all the things that make them value people not as individuals but as things. As roles and potential benefits. It's not a happy story but it works, hitting hard and then leaving the floor littered with bodies of passed over husbands.

"Application for the Delegation of First Contact: Questionnaire, Part B" by Kathrin Köhler (Book Smugglers)

At its core this story is about empathy and making contact with alien worlds, and so I can think of no more fitting drinks than a Tears of Our Enemies, a mix of Chamomile-infused Rökker, vodka, simple syrup, lemon, and seltzer. It's a provocative story, told as an actual questionnaire prompting the reader to reflect, to think, to examine themselves and think about how different cultures can see the world. Can see the universe. The goal seems to be to foster an understanding that culture is a sort of universe unto itself, that each culture is an alien world and every meeting between culture is a meeting of alien creatures, and yet also a meeting of fellows, a meeting of sentient life that deserves respect. It is an interesting experiment in form and for me it pays off, it works. The plot might not exactly be present but I don't think every story needs a plot. It prods and it brings up a lot of interesting ideas, and it does so in a way that I hadn't seen before. So this is a Tears of Our Enemies, not because we want to see them cry but because when we understand that they do cry we also must understand that we are like them, vulnerable and somewhat alone.

***

POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014. If you're still in a mood for stories, you can find his latest in this month's Lightspeed Magazine's Queers Destroy Science Fiction.

Thursday Morning Superhero

It is hard to believe that we are five weeks away from San Diego Comic Con.  I had a small bump in the road in regards to my trip, but the kindly folk at Southwest were able to change my flight as I am going to remain in the Midwest about one month longer than I had planned.  With my upcoming trip rapidly approaching, I am going to approach my weekly entry a bit differently.  I will continue to provide a weekly comic book round-up, albeit a smaller one, but I will also devote space to SDCC news that I think is of interest.  While I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, if you do not want to be spoiled by the bomb dropped in this week's Star Wars comic do not read my review.

While I am far from an expert and didn't attend SDCC before it was cool, I will be making my 7th trip to San Diego in what has become an annual tradition.  Each year I try to do something a bit different and also attempt to do less.  SDCC is an overwhelming experience and I have learned cherish the moments that are a bit off the beaten path and don't involve crazy long lines.  In years past events have included Hop Con and Funko Fun Days.  I would love for this year's new experience to attend a taping of Conan, but will more likely spend additional time in the tabletop section of the con.

I am anxiously awaiting the schedule to be announced so I can figure out how to balance time in the convention center and time at some of the amazing off-site events.  All I know this year is that I must attend the Gravity Falls panel and I already secured my daughter's prize courtesy of Mattel's voucher system.   I feel like I am in the final days of summer vacation and getting ready for another exciting school year.  I have my backpack picked out, some new clothes, and hope to make some new friends.

Pick of the Week:
Star Wars #6 - Jason Aaron just made Star Wars history.  In this week's issue, which is considered canon, we learn a bit more about our beloved smuggler Han Solo.  It appears that Han Solo was married during the events of A New Hope.  After narrowing escaping the enemy to one of his secret hideouts, his attempts at flirting with Leia are interrupted by the appearance of Sana Solo, his wife.   I personally think it is an interesting choice and am excited with the development and the impact it will have on the characters.  A good number of fans are none too pleased and most appear to have their fingers in their ears yelling "I CAN"T HEAR YOU!"   Oh yeah.  The comic is also still really good and I have been really impressed with Marvel's handling of Star Wars.

The Rest:
In a much more concise manner I will inform you that Nailbiter #13 provided valuable insight on Shannon's and Finch's romantic relationship, had the best cover of the week by far, and remains one of the best horror books on the market.  The other Star Wars books that dropped this week (Princess Leia and Darth Vader) did not have any shocking developments, but remain as some great books that any Star Wars fan should be reading.





POSTED BY MIKE N. aka Victor Domashev -- comic guy, proudly raising nerdy kids, and Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2012.

A Taste of WisCon

Image blatantly stolen from their website (sorry...)

Memorial Day weekend in Wisconsin can often mean many things. Most years, it means a return of spring, of the snow (hopefully) being gone after about six months of winter. It means renewal and finally stepping outside without all the armor the cold forces on us. It's fitting then, that it also means a return of WisCon, a convention that is, at its core, about provided space for people passionate about science fiction and feminism to meet and talk without the need for all the armor that is sometimes required for simply existing as a fan of speculative fiction.

Perhaps I don't have the best basis for comparison, as WisCon has been the only convention (aside from a Wizard World Chicago which was much different) I've attended. But it was amazing seeing many of the writers whose stories I have read and admired and while I did not have the courage to approach any to say hi they were there and I was there and that was enough in many ways. Living in Wisconsin, though, means that this convention is close enough and just the right kind of thing to get me out of my hermitage to engage with real, living, breathing people.

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the location first. Madison is a nicely sized city, and for those staying away from the convention hotels (I stayed with friends), the convention site is pretty easy to get to. Just be sure to park in the structure closest to the Concourse (the one with the $5 daily max, because otherwise parking adds up fast). On Saturday there's the Farmer's Market on the Square, less than a block from the convention, and anyone who has never had fresh (and I mean squeaky) cheese curds should be sure to check that out. Normally it's too early in the year to get too much in the way of produce, but it's always a fun walk to see what's for sale. There's tons of places to eat and drink just in general, from very fancy restaurants to more laid back bars. Plus there's the Bar in the Concourse itself, which featured a special drink menu for the Con (combining my great loves of stories and booze!).

And the puns! Oh, the puns!

There are also some bookstores that you should not miss whenever you are in Madison. The first is A Room of One's Own which is awesome and carries books new and used with a special eye for diverse books. They also always have a table in the vendor room as well, but making the trip down to the brick and mortar store is a must. I wish I had a bookstore like this in my city, but as that is not the case I settle for buying lots of books there when I'm in town. Just a few blocks away is another amazing bookstore, Rainbow Books. It's a queer-centric bookstore with its own cat! The selection of fiction isn't as robust as elsewhere but it has tons of nonfiction and has a large zine selection and did I mention the adorable cat? Because yeah, it's an amazing store.

But the Con! There were so many things to see and do. The panels were, by and large, both provocative and entertaining. Things don't really get going too much until Friday, but once things got going they really got going. That first night had both Misandry, Reverse Racism, and Other Imaginary Creatures and Death to Love Triangles. Imaginary Creatures was probably the most fun I had in a panel this year, the panelists really hitting their stride and engaging with the ideas in a powerful and hilarious manner. Death to Love Triangles, meanwhile, featured Guest of Honor Alaya Dawn Johnson and others speaking about how to subvert the "standard" tropes that continually pop up in YA and beyond.

Saturday had Sex Positive SFF and The Future of Gender: Beyond the Binary, as well as The Mixtape, an examination of science fiction in music that made me think about how science fiction can be interpreted in music even when the lyrics of a song are not explicitly speculative. Really, anyone looking to get a great reading list or music list has only to sit in on some of these panels to hear a dozen titles thrown out of works that manage to capture some aspect the panel discusses. For me it meant walking away with a great many new books and albums in my mental to-read queue. Saturday also featured a full slew of parties, but as I am not much of a party-person, I opted for dinner out with friends and some lively discussion.

Sunday was a very full day, with the morning featuring Towards More Realistic Fictional Diasporas, a great discussion on integrating immigration and diasporas into spec fiction in a way that is sensitive to those real-world populations actually displaced and scattered. And, of course, Sunday had the…fascinating panel Elim Garak's Weird Cardassian Penis, a discussion on alien genitalia, which was everything it sounds like and more. As Garak is my favorite DS9 character, it was a must-attend, and I did not leave disappointed.

And the panels were only part of the fun. The convention was also full of readings by many talented writers. Alaya Dawn Johnson had a hilarious reading of a gay zombie romance(ish) story that was great and I also attended a reading of Comics Against the Gender Binary as well as a Mythical Creatures reading featuring Nino Cipri, David J. Schwartz, and others. I also count the Guest of Honor speeches as a reading of sorts. Kim Stanley Robinson spoke about climate change, politics, and economics while Alaya Dawn Johnson stunned with a song and an impassioned speech on the importance of diverse books and the power of stories. The convention would have been worth the price of admission with that speech alone, and it was the highlight of the weekend for me.

Not that things were over. There were a few more things to do on Monday, including a panel on food in world building and the Sign Out where I may have gotten a number of things signed. It was amazing getting to talk (even very briefly) with the writers there and to have something to take home to treasure (besides the invaluable experience and reading recommendations).

I might have a book problem...

So yes, in short, WisCon was amazing! It really is something that gets me incredibly excited for stories, for reading and writing and reviewing. If you haven't, definitely consider giving next year's (big whomping anniversary year) WisCon a go. Guests of honor will be Sofia Samatar, Justine Larbalestier, and Nalo Hopkinson! If you go, you just might see me there...

POSTED BY: Charles, avid reader, reviewer, and sometimes writer of speculative fiction. Contributor to Nerds of a Feather since 2014.

Microreview [books]: Extra-Special Double-Bill! Radiant and Defiant, by Karina Sumner-Smith

An awesome sismance (the sisterly equivalent of a bromance) in post-apocalyptic magic-land!

Sumner-Smith, Karina. Radiant. Talos, 2014.
Sumner-Smith, Karina. Defiant. Talos, 2015.

Think back to the near-perfection of Terminator 2. It has it all, right? Excitement, poignancy, a bit of engagement with Deep Stuff, you name it. But have you ever thought about what it doesn't have? Romance. The main characters? An asexual cyborg, an awesome female protagonist whose worth has nothing at all to do with her attractiveness to anyone else, and a (super-annoying) prepubescent boy. The cyborg can be fatherly, and the three of them certainly come to resemble a weird nuclear family, but without the messiness of sexual attraction or desire.

With a face like this, you just know heterosexual romance is in the air

"But Zhaoyun, you're always going on and on about romance as the Best Thing Ever—what gives?" It's true, I'm about as romantic a person as there is. In sentimentality, I stand second to none: I cry at virtually anything. I'm almost as bad as that Brendan Fraser character in Bedazzled (you know the one I mean--Sunset Man!). The eternal dream of heterosexual union is near and dear to my mushy heart. Nonetheless, even for a terminal romantic like me, sometimes it's nice for books and movies to explore other dreams, and other kinds of love.

This brings us, at last, to Karina Sumner-Smith's glorious Towers trilogy, of which I've read the first two (in my defense, the third book has yet to be released!). At its core is the mighty bond of love (possibly Sapphic but seemingly asexual and, even if romantic in nature, obviously impractical!) between two young women and their very different types of magic. The first two novels are riveting (after the brilliant start with Radiant, Sumner-Smith may have accomplished that rarest of feats, actually surpassing her first novel with the sequel), despite knowing that obviously neither character is going to find true love—Sumner-Smith gently but firmly makes it clear that there is more to young women than who they're going to fall in love with, in the process throwing down the gauntlet on like 99% of cultural products nowadays (my favorite example is The Hundred, which is like a reality TV tell-all complete with webs of jealousy and almost immediate, and constant, speculation about who will shack up with whom in heterosexual bliss, but love triangles and so forth abound in post-apocalyptic/sci-fantasy fiction, e.g. Twilight, The Hunger Games, etc.).

As Vince Vaughn says in every movie, we "are [or can/should be] better than this." Ask yourself: do we really only care about characters when we can be confident they'll end up together? Is that all there is to their stories? Sumner-Smith has produced a resounding rebuttal in Radiant and Defiant (and, one hopes, a climactic conclusion in the eagerly awaited third volume!). Xhea and Shai form an unlikely friendship over these two books, and it certainly kept this reader entertained despite a serious addiction to romance and no prospect of a fix anytime in the future. Personally, I think it would have been even cooler if Sumner-Smith had taken it one step further and played with reader expectations (which, of course, will be overwhelmingly for some sort of heterosexual pairing by each novel's end) by introducing a likely male suitor only for him to suffer some grisly fate, or turn out to be gay, or something like that. For better or worse, Sumner-Smith has a far lighter touch than that, and weaves together a mesmerizing tale without the biggest crutch of all, romantic love.

To understand just how momentous an accomplishment this is, especially in this particular sub-genre of post-apocalyptic sci-fantasy, imagine that you didn't have me singing the series' praises, explaining how great and occasionally downright poetic the writing is, the delightfully rapid pacing and the extremely well-rounded characters. Instead, all you have is the following tag-line: "it's about two girls, one of whom is a ghost, and there are basically no boys in the story at all." Sound like a book you want to pick up? And the truth is, these are books we all should pick up, because it's such a wonderful series, but I have no idea how Sumner-Smith managed to convince the publishing industry to take a chance on her. I'm just glad she managed it, because this is the only sismance I've ever encountered and it's awesome!

The Math

Objective Assessment: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for hanging a great, fast-paced story around two young women, with no male love interests in sight, and +1 for making those two young women awesome

Penalties: -1 for not sticking it to addicted-to-romance readers by playing with their expectations

Nerd coefficient: 9/10 "A standout in its category"

[Note that a 9/10 here at Nerds of a Feather is incredibly rare, and indicates the work in question is better than all but a tiny handful of all books—ever! See here for details.]

Zhaoyun, Terminator-2/sismance lover by day, regular lover by night, has been tearfully, joyfully reviewing books and other stuff here on Nerds of a Feather since 2013.

Destiny - House of Wolves

Destiny's 2nd Downloadable Content Pack

[Destiny - House of Wolves DLC, Bungie, Activision, 2014]

Wow! A Real Plot!

House of Wolves finally delivers what so many people have been clamoring for in Destiny...a serviceable story line! I know, I know. I was a bit surprised, too. First, some backstory. You knew something was fishy when those Fallen were serving the Queen on the Reef in the original release (For the uninitiated, that's a race of aliens, a matriarch, and an area in space that another race, the Awoken, call home). Well, it turns out your instincts were spot-on. They have started a rebellion against the Queen under a Kell (read: king of a Fallen House, kind of like the Targaryens but much nicer to one another) named Skolas. He has declared himself the Kell of Kells and hopes to overthrow the Awoken and unite the Houses of the Fallen under one banner. Wait, I've seen this before somewhere. It's the Passion and Braveheart mixed up with a smattering of Mass Effect thrown in for that futuristic feel! Sneaky buggers. 

It starts out with the first real mission on Venus. A girl named Petra whose haircut looks like Gary Oldman's from Fifth Element serves as the equivalent of the Awoken Queen's National Security Advisor sends you after the Kell of Kells. Skolas runs from you like a little girl in this mission, but it wouldn't be much of a story if you killed your nemesis and the final boss in the first mission, now would it? Then again, "not very much of a story" has been kind of the theme with Destiny so it wouldn't be a complete shock. Ba-dum-ching! 

From there, you go chasing Skolas around the universe and performing bounties for Petra to earn some pretty worthless junk like shaders and banners. The bounties are actually a pretty nice addition because Skolas' Wolves spawn at certain locations around the galaxy and you don't know exactly when or where they'll show up. When they do, they're tough as nails and require a little help from at least one other player to take down most times. I won't go into spoilers on the rest of the story line, but suffice it to say the plot is significantly better than the paltry offering in the first DLC, The Dark Below, and it's a lot more clear-cut and understandable than the one from the main game. When it comes to the tale they tell, Bungie finally got it right with their new flagship title. 

The Good, The Bad, and the Downright Aggravating 

There are four portions to the House of Wolves, and Bungie has made two of them nearly completely unplayable for the solo gamer. Not only that, but without these unplayable portions, you're stuck at level 32 while the rest of the community moves up to the new cap of 34. Have fun playing PvP with first-gen gear while everybody else is running around with weapons that are 30% more powerful, you loser! Most of their other multiplayer options have come with a component called “matchmaking” that automatically hooks you up with the needed number of players (between 2 and 11, depending on the game mode) to take part in whatever multiplayer mode you choose, be it a Strike Mission where you have to face off against some of the biggest bosses in the game, or the Crucible that contains various types of team vs. team games and an every-man-for-himself option. However, for some reason known only to the programmers at Bungie known forever-onward as elitist punks, certain game modes do not offer the option of matchmaking. There is a reason that this is a major issue.

Bungie has changed the weapon upgrade system, again. The exotic weapons, which you can use in only one slot at a time for your weapons and armor, still just take an exotic shard to max out. Those can still be purchased from Xur on the weekends or by disassembling another exotic. Legendary weapons are where the changes have taken place. They require something called Etheric Light, a substance that has not appeared in the game until now, to max out. In order to level up, you have to max out your armor in order to raise your "Light" level. Therein lies the problem. 

There are only four ways to get Etheric Light: Beating the Prison of Elders on levels 34 or 35, winning the Trials of Osiris, finishing the Weekly Nightfall Strike (a level 32 mission with five enemy modifiers, which give them extreme advantages over the average alien), or reaching levels 3 and 5 in the Iron Banner. Only the fourth offers matchmaking, and it has level advantages disabled so players who have gained Etheric Light in the previous three modes are significantly more likely to win the match. 

Due to the lack of matchmaking, unless you have a Rolodex of friends who have been playing this game since it came out, you are essentially finished with it until September when the next add-on comes out. Either that or Bungie will have to add matchmaking to the parts of the game that offer Etheric Light. Sure, you can play the same Crucible and Strike missions some more, but an entire portion of one section of House of Wolves and 3/4ths of another are unplayable since Bungie, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to make the only parts of the game that allow you to level any higher than 32 impossible to reach for the solo gamer. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Even games that were designed from the ground up as multiplayers like Left 4 Dead and its sequel are playable in solo mode. 

Who Are You, My Mom? 

You Should Get Out There and Make More Friends, Brad!

Does Bungie have some investment in my virtual social life? I'm married with plenty of real friends. I honestly don't need someone to force me to meet people online. Actually, I find it pretty insulting, not to mention annoying, that they would create the game add-on in such a way that nearly half of the content is unplayable for me unless I go out and track down some strangers to play with me. Have you used your headset in an online game of Call of Duty lately? The only people you run into are 8-year-olds with mouths like a sailor, loners that somehow still think teabagging you after they kill you is funny, and people who want to quite literally come to your house and fight you. And potheads. Let's not forget the massive number of gamertags with "420" in them. It's got to be the most common three figure combination on all of Xbox Live and the Playstation Network by a 100:1 margin. I paid the same $20 that every lazy parent of the 10-year-olds online kicking my butt did. 

Should I be penalized because I'm an adult with a job and a life outside of gaming? Apparently Bungie says, "Yes," and that's why I'm finished. I'm done. I'm out. I'll freely admit that I've really enjoyed this game up until now, but I've never felt quite so screwed over by a game developer since I bought E.T. for my Atari. I'll have to think long and hard before I buy another game from Bungie unless this strange requirement to find fellow players somewhere other than inside the gamespace is ceased. I bought House of Wolves without reading too much about it. I just knew it was going to be bigger than the first DLC. However, you can bet I'll do my homework before I shell out any money for the rumored Comet: Planet of Darkness expansion in September. As much as I love being purposefully handicapped or forced into playing with some foul-mouthed kid who drops F-bombs like I take breaths, I'd better be able to play the entire package on my own or using matchmaking, or I'll be leaving Destiny alone for good. 

Thanks for the second DLC rip-off, Bungie. First they gave us half a story. Now they give us half a game. It just doesn't make sense to me at all. Most developers want to include as many players as possible, but they've managed to get rid of this one, and I suspect a few others along with me. Destiny has already caused as much controversy as Grand Theft Auto used to with its paper-thin plot and $20 mini-DLC, The Dink Below. One would think they would want to be as inclusive as possible so as to justify the game's record-setting $1 billion price tag, but apparently they don't need any more players because they've done an excellent job of turning them off and getting rid of them. Honestly, I feel like Bungie owes me ten bucks since I won't be playing half of this game, not due to a lack of desire, but because of their decisions. When I buy a bad game, I'll take the hit to my wallet. When I'm purposefully excluded from an arguably good game I've spent WAAAY too much time playing (We're talking hundreds of hours here, and I don't mean two hundred, or three, or five. Put it this way, when my wife did the math the other day, she just started laughing at me and didn't stop for several minutes), I don't feel completely out of line saying that. I don't expect it, of course, caveat emptor, but I feel like I just got ripped off by someone I'd grown to trust. It's not cool, Bungie, not cool at all. 

Sure, I have friends with Destiny. I'm a nerd, but I'm not a total loner. I have 35 friends on Xbox Live, but only seven of them bought Destiny. Two sold it back because they didn't like it. Three didn't get the House of Wolves expansion pack, and the one who did isn't enough to make up the necessary three-man team needed to play the Trials of Osiris or the Prison of Elders. We're left with one option, get on message boards and search for a third player. I've tried this several times, to no avail. I've pretty much given up on the game at this point, which is too bad. I've been playing it pretty regularly since its release, but as I can't progress any further there's not much reason to keep playing. 

I Guess I Should Talk About the Game

Since this is a review, I'll quit ranting and discuss the new additions to the game. The four new modes are:

• The story line, which I've already covered. It's tough and flushed out, but unfortunately the only major piece of House of Wolves that really shines for me. You had better have maxed out your character(s) if you want to stand a chance. I already had, so that wasn’t an issue for me, but for players who might have still been working on it in the mid-20s or lower, there’s no way they could make it through without first grinding for a month or so to hit the old level cap of 32.

• The Prison of Elders. This mode opens upon completion of the main story. It takes place in an actual prison under the Reef, home of the Awoken. It contains many wolves of the various Houses, but it also holds Fallen, Vex, and Cabal captives that have supposedly attacked the reef at one time or another. After Skolas' uprising, the Queen decided she wanted to clear it out, so you and two other players get dropped into an airlock that opens up onto the four branches of the prison. Once one of the doors opens, you have to go in and kill everything that moves. It could be any of the races, and they all have guns for some reason despite being imprisoned, or even a large Vex boss. There are level 28, 32, 34, and 35 challenges. The level 28 challenge includes matchmaking. The other three do not, and therein lies the crux of my issue with this game add-on.  

• The third new section is called Trials of Osiris. I would love to tell you about this game mode from personal experience, but unfortunately it doesn't include matchmaking so I haven't been able to play it. However, I've read up on it so at least I can tell you what it's about. It's like Skirmish, where two teams of 3 players each battle, but with several important differences. Unlike most Crucible challenges, level advantages aren't disabled, so you can get spanked by higher-leveled characters. Also, there is no re-spawning so once you're dead, you're dead. You play until you win nine rounds or lose three, whichever comes first. Reaching nine wins is one of the few ways to earn Etheric Light, and it doesn't sound easy. 

• Finally, they’ve added a Level 28 strike mission. Luckily, it has matchmaking. Sadly, it doesn’t offer you a chance at Etheric Light, either. It is fun, as strikes go. It’s somewhat similar to the Cosmodrome strike where you have to take out Sepiks Prime. That's a big, purple ball that's a lot more dangerous than it sounds. In that mission, you and two other players (who were usually combined into a team using matchmaking) have to survive several rounds of attacks from hordes of enemies, then beat a huge robotic walker that looks like a 60-foot beetle, and finally the purple ball itself. In this strike, you must face off against a Kell named Taniks in the first round, another walker in the second, and finish Taniks off in the third because he ran away from you in the first (running away seems to be a thing with these Kells). 

Summary

While I found the story to be wholly satisfying, it wasn't worth the aggravation of being stuck unable to play the other two large portions of the game without lots of online begging and a little luck, one of which I hate and the other I totally lack, apparently. I can only hope that one of the upcoming patches solves this issue, because it's ridiculous not to have matchmaking in all the game modes. They have the technology. They can rebuild it. The question is, after spending a billion dollars making the thing, do they have six million left over? 

The Math

Objective Score: 4/10. I'll give them the benefit of calling the new strike mission a fourth section and only half the game unplayable, but it's a stretch. Therefore, I've got to take half their points away from the get-go. 

Bonuses: +1 for finally getting the whole "story thing" right.

Penalties: -1 for, well, if you don't know by now then you haven't been paying attention at all and I'm not going to repeat myself. 

Nerd coefficient: 4/10. Problematic, but has redeeming qualities.