However, as a reader, I definitely enjoy reading more at night. Sometimes this does cause me to stay up late with a particularly good story, but overall I find reading relaxing and a beneficial transition to sleep. Maybe that’s why some studies have shown that extended periods of reading have a similar effect on the brain as meditation does.

Thank you to my family and all of my new and old friends who have supported me and my writing. I couldn’t have persevered without you.

PHASE SHIFT (working title)

Available Spring 2011

Summary:

Starship Captain LARA SOTO left love-of-her-life Commodore MICHIO “MITCH” YOSHIDA eleven years ago when the Star Union forced all of her kind into mandatory military service — and he didn’t take her side. Lara’s kind are Chimerans, those born with a parent from each of the known parallel dimensions: Terra and Creed. When Terra’s S.U.S. Interlace goes missing with Lara’s brother on board, she must put aside the pain of betrayal and team up with Mitch to find him.

This week, I’m taking part in the round-table discussion in SF Signal’s Podcast #3 with John Anealio (filling in for an ill Patrick Hester), Jay Garmon, and SF Signal lead-man John DeNardo to discuss media tie-in novels. In the discussion we talk about James Cameron’s Avatar novelization, various Star Wars series, as well as other tie-in novels such as Willow’s series Chronicles of the Shadow War written by X-Men’s Chris Claremont and George Lucas. Later, John Anealio and John DeNardo sit down with PYR author Jon Sprunk to discuss his latest novel, SHADOW’S SON.

LISTEN NOW

I’m blogging in the Parallel Universe event over at the Galaxy Express. Parallel Universe is a science fiction romance online event that will coincide with the Romance Writers of America’s 30th Annual National Conference (July 28-31 in Orlando, FL). Parallel Universe will feature a series of guest posts from authors and bloggers on a variety of science fiction romance topics.

My contribution to the event is a post on Embracing The Other:

Science Fiction and Science Fiction Romance present an opportunity to embrace the “other,” whether that other is the other gender, the other ethnic group, the other sexual orientation, or the other from another planet. From the many Danger Gal profiles I’ve written for my own blog, I’ve been confronted with asking myself as a writer and a reader: Why is this character this gender? Why is this character from this ethic group? Do these elements enrich the story or are they just default self-limiting tropes?

Come join us!

We spend a lot of time in Romance talking about “Alpha Heroes” — those larger-than-life wealthy guys in very manly professions sporting muscles (ahem) poking out everywhere. But where are the geek heroes? Really, the brain is the biggest sexual organ, so where are the likes of computer hacker and activist Logan Cale (Dark Angel), linguist Dr. Daniel Jackson (Stargate: SG1), and astrophysicist Dr. Rodney McKay (Stargate: Atlantis)?

Hermione Granger is definitely a strong character in the Harry Potter stories and a good role model in young adult fiction. She is highly intelligent and is rewarded and respected for that intelligence. The adults around Hermione encourage her to develop her already finely-honed intellect. While certainly one of Harry’s sidekicks, it’s clear that Hermione has plenty going on in her life besides Harry’s exploits. She is a well-rounded secondary character who doesn’t fall into many of the girl friday sidekick stereotypes. (A few people think Hermione is a Mary Sue character for J.K. Rowling.) Having said all that, there’s something that’s always bugged me about the Harry Potter universe.

Why wasn’t Hermione the main character in this series?

Haven’t we seen enough stories like this with a boy as the main character? Luke Skywalker anyone? (who was originally supposed to be female). The movie UP is about a young boy and an old man. The robot in Wall-E is portrayed as masculine. Toy Story is about a boy’s cowboy and spaceman toys. Ratatouille’s main character is a young man. The dog in Bolt is male. The main character is Kung Fu Panda? Boy. The Incredibles is mostly about the father. I haven’t seen the Percy Jackson flick, but it seems like a Harry Potter wannabe — and I assume the main character is Percy Jackson, boy hero. Ice Age? Three male main characters.

Some of these stories have great female secondary characters like Hermione, Kung Fu Panda’s Tigress, and The Incredibles’ Helen and Violet. However, there’s really only one movie I can think of — aside from Disney princess movies — that has a female lead character and that’s Susan from Monsters and Aliens. Susan will definitely be a Danger Gal profile in the near future.

I have to point out, though, that of eight or so recent movies, one of them has a female lead. That’s not exactly a good track record. (UPDATE: I thought of one more after I wrote this: Ella Enchanted, but again, that’s a comedy and what’s at stake is not the world.) Aside from Disney princess movies can you think of any aimed at children and young adults that have a girl or young woman as the main character? (Please don’t say Twilight. I’d recommend a young woman read about Hermione Granger any day over Bella Swan). Buffy hasn’t been on screen for some time, but that show was really never meant to appeal to the same audience the Harry Potter stories.

So, in the comments, talk about your favorite girl hero and if you can’t think of any, what kind of heroine would you like to see? What books would you recommend with young or teenage heroines? Two on my list include The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester and pretty much anything by Rachel Caine in her Morganville Vampires series about Claire Danvers.

On screen, I’d like to see a more serious movie version of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Disney has a show called Wizards of Waverly Place with a female lead, but it’s a comedy and doesn’t deal with issues on the same level Harry Potter does. I’d love to see an update to Nancy Drew or something similar.

NOTE: In a sad example of how this type of story is just plain missing, take a look at this accidental search I did on Amazon while writing this post.

This week’s Danger Gal profile is on Neytiri from the blockbuster movie Avatar portrayed by actress Zoe Saldana.

It’s challenging to unpack my thoughts on this movie, especially keeping in mind that I have very much enjoyed Cameron’s previous films. I don’t want to have a knee-jerk fan-girl “I loved it!” response, but neither do I want to completely pan it. There are good and not-so-good elements in this movie, but I still think Neytiri stands out and is worthy of a Danger Gal profile.

One of the primary criteria for a Danger Gal profile is that the character must kick ass. I have in the past fudged a little on this point when other attributes seemed very important, but nothing like that is necessary with Neytiri. She knows herself, has confidence in her warrior abilities, and so does everyone else in her life. While certainly there are some anti-feminist aspects of her character and this movie, I tend to agree with Vocal Eyes when she says:

“Typically, women are portrayed as one or the other: the frigid one who knows better or the bimbo. The two have become mutually exclusive, as if a desire for love and sex cancels a desire for unrelated aspirations, values, and loyalties. Yet, Neytiri has it all; she is beautiful, sexual, intelligent, and follows her heart and her brain.”

“Though Neytiri’s role has been criticized as sex shaming and antifeminist, I think her place as a strong, resolute warrior woman with human desires for love and passion helps dismantle binaries between frigid women concerned with their rights and bimbos who have never heard of feminism.”

One of the main feminist criticisms of this film and of Neytiri specifically is that the character has breasts even though Cameron admitted the the Na’avi aren’t “placental mammals.” This is a blatant Science Fiction world-building “FAIL” and should be acknowledged as such. Having said that, Na’avi of both genders are portrayed as variations of mammals. Female Na’avi have breasts, but male Na’avi are built like caricatures of male mammals with the inverted “V” body shape prevalent in Romance genre heroes — extremely broad shoulders and narrow hips. To be blunt, I’m surprised there haven’t been more crude jokes about what Na’avi -Jake is hiding under that loin cloth. In that aspect, I think the objectification is fairly equal. The world-building fail had a purpose and that was to enable human mammals (i.e., the audience) to relate – and root for – the Na’avi. Moreover, despite Cameron’s enthusiasm for this aspect of the story, Neytiri is not defined by this attribute. In contrast to male Na’avi forms, Neytiri’s body shape is not really a caricature of the female one as compared to other female cartoon characters like Jessica Rabbit.

On the subject of bodies, FlowTV has a thoughtful article called “’I See You?’: Gender and Disability in Avatar” by Michael Peterson, Laurie Beth Clark, and Lisa Nakamura that critiques the story’s message on disabilities:

“When Jack Sully transmits his consciousness into the hybrid Na’avi body that he eventually comes to occupy permanently, a world of limits is evoked. We can see that the bias against disabled people is exactly the same in the future as it is at present… Sully’s spinal injury is repairable, but he can’t afford it. However, as we see during the avatar-training scenes, the disabled body is viewed as ‘waste’ that a thrifty military industrial complex can recoup… Sully is given the ability to acquire a prosthetic alien-soldier body not as compensation for his disability, but in spite of it–his genomic capital as the identical twin to his scientist-brother makes him the only possible match for the cloned Na’avi body, a technology far more expensive and precious than his own defective body.”

The idea of the body being viewed as “disposable” and “waste” seems to fit with the posthuman, almost cyberpunk, world Jake’s world has turned into. In many cyberpunk stories, the body is merely “meat” and considered disposable or at least undesirable without cyber upgrades. Also, Jakes world, where people have to wear masks against toxic air, doesn’t sound that distant from the world of Blade Runner. IO9 describes this world as the following:

First up, it gives us a look at what’s become of Earth. Turns out we’ve destroyed the planet — people wear clean-air breathing masks, the world is cluttered with ads, and sounds like a cold, concrete place. At least, that’s the world that poor and unfortunate Jake Sully calls home.

Also, I have to wonder what the discussion would have been like had Jake’s character been a female paraplegic. How would we view this idea of the body as not only disposable, but also something to completely reject, as Jake does at the end of the story?

Many critics have denigrated the movie as being just another “going native” derivative work, but commenter Pastabagel over at Metafilter makes a different observation:

“… we implicity believe that science = good and religions other than today’s mainline established ones are backward or pagan, which = bad. So the natives had to be civilized and brought forward into the present out of the past, and anyone that fought back wasn’t fighting only the invader, they were fighting civilization, science and progress itself… So Cameron has eliminated the casting of the Na’vi as being in need of civilization. They don’t need it, they don’t want it, and what they already naturally have is in many respects better. So the audience now understands that it isn’t simply – stubbornness of fear of change underlying Na’vi rejection of humans gifts to them. It’s that the Na’vi simply don’t need what the humans are offering.”

There are two main differences, as I see it, between Avatar and other “going native” stories: (1) the enlightened spirituality of the Na’avi is objectively verifiable in the story, and (2) when Jake goes native there is no going back. Viewers can’t write off the Na’avi idea of Eywa as some kind of “New Age mojo” because the scientist in the story (a woman, but more on that later) verifies that it’s in fact a real, biological network.

One of the aspects of this movie that struck me and I haven’t seen criticized elsewhere was that, with the exception of Michelle Rodriguez, all of the Na’avi are portrayed by non-white actors and all of the non-Na’avi characters are portrayed by white actors. This thematically reinforces the erroneous idea of the “noble savage” that the objective nature of the planet is attempting to subvert. I would much rather have seen more ethnic diversity on both sides of the story’s conflict. IO9’s Annalee Newitz explores some of these ideas in “When will white people stop making movies like Avatar?”

Likewise, gender assumptions are functioning similarly in that on the human side of the conflict, all of those who want to destroy the Na’avi are male and it’s a human female scientist who recognizes the error. While I loved that Cameron created a scientist who also happens to be female – something we need to see more often — there are overtones that she sees the mother in Pandora’s “mother nature” precisely because of her femaleness.

On balance, I enjoyed Avatar and relished in Neytiri’s experiences. She is a strong character with her own arc and is not written as the stereotypical sidekick, or as Jezebel put it “handbags” or “girlfriend parts.” A formidable warrior, Neytiri is Jake Sully’s mentor not just in the softer emotions of falling love, but in the Na’avi art of war. Avatar is also another example of a Science Fiction Romance that doesn’t skimp on the world-building, science, or character relationships.

Having said that, I can’t help but wonder what this movie would have been like had the main point-of-view character been female and we’d seen more ethnic diversity on both sides of the story’s conflict. On this idea, Cameron should remember what has been said about him:

Gale Anne Hurd, Cameron’s second wife, and the producer of his first three films, says that Cameron always found women more interesting than men as protagonists. “He felt that they were underutilized in sci-fi, action, and fantasy,” she said. “And that just about everything you could explore in a male action hero could be explored better with a woman.”

A short excerpt of my response:

Science Fiction has a long history of meshing with other genres. A recent Mind Meld on cross-genre novels explored this topic well and cited some great examples. Science Fiction plays well with Romance specifically because Science Fiction is at its best when it is examining how technology of all sorts affects humanity and potential life elsewhere. Romance has many tools with which to accomplish this.