More of a Cameo Than I Require

[If you haven't watched Battlestar Galactica Episode 4.17, "No Exit" and you care about spoilers, you should stop reading now.]

Fosco was surprised to find that last week's new episode of BSG contained a cameo appearance by John Hodgman. You know Hodgman from his guest appearances on "The Daily Show" and for his role as "PC" in those ubiquitous Mac v. PC commercials. Or you may, like Fosco, enjoy his books.

But even though Fosco likes John Hodgman (with a few reservations), he certainly did not appreciate his BSG cameo. These are the last few episodes of BSG and the revelations (and bodies) are piling up. This is a very serious time in what is a very serious television show. BSG, unlike many other cult hits, is not particularly interested in sharing "knowing winks" with its audience. But that's exactly what John Hodgman's cameo was--an "in joke" for geeks. Unfortunately, this kind of joke prevented me from taking Hodgman's scenes seriously--I was too distracted by the strangeness of John Hodgman suddenly appearing in deep space.

I can't imagine who will be make a guest appearance in next week's show. Bruce Campbell as a ridiculously overconfident Viper pilot? Patrick Stewart as a coldly imperious starship captain? Kevin Smith as a slacker mechanic? Neil Gaiman as some sort of space-goth?

N.B.: while researching this post, Fosco stumbled across John Hodgman's blog. The design is absolutely brilliant.

The End of the World (As We Know It)

And how do you feel?

Last Saturday, Fosco offered you a short story by Steven Millhauser. Well, today is not Saturday, but Fosco thinks you should take a brief (less than ten minute) break from your Wednesday to read this recent Steven Millhauser story (from The New Yorker). In this very short story, he imagines what an invasion from outer space will actually look like (if it eventually does happen). It's purposefully lacking in drama, which makes it all the sadder.

Millhauser's whole point here is that, when we finally do encounter an alien life form, in all likelihood that life form will be completely uninterested in us. And yet, it may still kill us all.

We have been invaded by nothing, by emptiness, by animate dust. The invader appears to have no characteristic other than the ability to reproduce rapidly. It doesn’t hate us. It doesn’t seek our annihilation, our subjection and humiliation. Nor does it desire to protect us from danger, to save us, to teach us the secret of immortal life. What it wishes to do is replicate.

This is the problem with all of our "humanity under attack" movies, from Signs to Independence Day to The Happening: they are all about us. But, no matter what we'd like to think, the universe does not particularly care about humanity. If we ever encounter an alien life form, we are likely to register--if we register at all--as completely irrelevant. And that's actually really scary.

Once again, Steven Millhauser does something amazing.

So say we all...

As it's been only two days since Fosco announced his Literacy Challenge 2009, he's a little embarrassed to be talking to you today about a television show. Even so, Fosco cannot contain his excitement over tonight's return of Battlestar Galactica for its final ten episode run. The solutions to several mysteries will be revealed in the second half of Season 4 (or are we calling these new episodes Season 5?), including the identity of the all-important twelfth Cylon.

Now Fosco is no sci-fi nerd; nor does he much care for space operas (he'd rather visit the dentist than watch any of the Star Trek series). But, at the insistence of both Oz and Todd, Fosco gave BSG (that's what the kids call it) a chance and got totally hooked. He essentially watched the entire series with Oz last summer. And now Fosco is about to make a bold statement:

Battlestar Galactica is the best dramatic series of the decade.

A strong claim, I know, but let's talk about it. First of all, Fosco had to use the qualifier "dramatic" because (as he's said before), "Arrested Development" is the best television show of the decade. Even so, Fosco is willing to rank BSG above dramatic series like "The Sopranos" or "Angel" (both shows that Fosco admires greatly). [N.B., Fosco has not yet watched "The Wire." It's on his list.]

What makes BSG so good is not the special effects (though they often aren't terrible) nor the acting (which has a few low points--I'm looking at you, Mr. Bamber). Rather, it's the philosophical sophistication and political relevance of its storylines. "The Sopranos" is philosophically sophisticated too, of course, but these two series explore different territory. While "The Sopranos" is concerned with the emptiness at the center of everyday American life under late capitalism, BSG considers the question of the survival of a democratic society under threat from within and without. What is the best way to govern in a time of emergency? What is the proper relationship between the military and civil society? Who (or what) qualifies as a subject under the rule of law? How is war to be carried out? What is the relationship between civil society and religion? Should one protect a society that is founded on an act of evil? Can that evil ever be remedied? These are the questions that BSG deals with. Some of them may sound a little familiar...

Now, considering that only ten episodes remain in the entire series, it would be silly for Fosco to recommend you start watching the show tonight (although SciFi Channel would love that). However, I do recommend you get the miniseries that started it all and give it a shot.

Picture of the Day

That, my friends, is Mars. And it's beautiful.

Read the story here.

Space Oddities: New Yorker Fiction

Fosco is one of the few people he knows who still reads short stories. As the novel and the memoir battle for dominance in book sales and as the "personal essay" becomes the standard non-journalistic genre for magazine publication, the short story remains almost entirely irrelevant to literary culture (to say nothing of popular culture). The short story is essentially an academic exercise at this point--a genre practiced for its own sake, with little interest from most literary readers.

The educated reader can still find short stories in two main sources: McSweeney's (which has had some financial difficulties) and The New Yorker. While Fosco enjoys much of the McSweeney's short fiction, his relationship to NYer fiction is more ambivalent. Truly, Fosco only reads about five NYer stories a year.

And yet, some of Fosco's very favorite recent stories first appeared in that magazine: Jonathan Safran Foer's "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" (6/10/02), Stuart Dybek's "If I Vanished," "Roy Spivey" by Miranda July (6/11/07), "Spider Boy," by Joyce Carol Oates.

And yet, Fosco still can't bring himself to read most NYer fiction. In fact, there is a very complicated set of rules that determine the likelihood of Fosco reading a New Yorker story.

Fosco is less likely to read a story IF

1. he's never heard of the author (sorry, Janet Frame).
   
2. dislikes almost everything else written by that author (sorry, John Updike).
   
3. the story appears to contain numerous words NOT in English (sorry, Daniel Alarcon).
   
4. it's by Roddy Doyle or Tessa Hadley (sorry, Roddy Doyle and Tessa Hadley).

Fosco is more likely to read a story IF

1. it's written by a writer whose previous work he admires (George Saunders!)
   
2. it's short (Miranda July!)
   
3. it's "ripped from the headlines" (Joyce Carol Oates!)
   
4. there is a cool picture next to it
   

So, based on the second rule #4 (cool picture), Fosco read last week's story by Jonathan Lethem called "Lostronaut." It's an epistolary short story, a form that Fosco does not particularly like. It's a one-sided correspondence from an astronaut trapped in an international space station as it begins to shut down. There are some remarkably affecting passages in the story, especially the description of an emergency space walk:

Oh, the lie of weightlessness! We feel we’re floating only because we’re forever falling, as in an elevator with no bottom floor to smash into. And so, inside the elevator, the human party continues oblivious, the riders flirt and complain and mix zero-G cocktails, or chase bewildered zero-G leaf-cutter bees. Outside the ship, our consoling elevator’s walls dissolved, Keldysh and I were two specks falling forever, specks streaming down the face of the night. Ourselves plummeting downward to the gassy blue orb, the gassy blue orb also plummeting at the same mad rate away from us.

And yet, there are also some stupid bits (like why does the narrator need to have cancer?). But, on the whole, the narrator's mix of forced good nature, gallows humor, and willing acquiescence to her fate is strangely appealing.

There is another beautiful bit at the end, as the narrator resigns herself to her fate: abandoned in void, the space station begins to shut down.

(Did you know we can’t even properly gaze at the stars now? Our breath fogs any window we turn to. We’re moisture, Chase, we’re returning to dew.)

Perhaps it's something about the times in which we live, but this kind of dreamy resignation seems appropriate right now.

Up, Down, Up, Down, Chu Chu Chu.

Fosco loves it when The New Yorker buries something cool in its "Goings On About Town" calendar. From the October 13, 2008 issue:

Oliver Sieber's photograph "Ulala, Bad Neuheim, 2007"

For those of you who don't recognize the costume, that's "Ulala"--the protagonist of fun fun fun Sega Dreamcast game Space Channel 5.

If you've never seen Space Channel 5, do yourself a favor and watch the first sequence:



It was because of Ulala that Fosco spent two years in journalism school.