INSURV Has Come...

Dum dum dum!

After weeks and weeks of preparing (and oh so much painting) it's finally time for INSURV. The odd thing is that this gives me a tiny bit of down time, since there's nothing much I can do while waiting.

They're downstairs right now in radio, checking all the communications equipment. And I'm up here in my radar shop, waiting for the monster to arrive.

It's going to be a long week. But then it'll be done, and I can catch up on my reading list!

The Belated Berserkers

Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series- a space opera about ancient, automated warships that relentlessly seek to destroy all life- would make a lot more sense if its characters didn't have faster-than-light travel. The death machines are 50,000 years old; they range around the galaxy at FTL speed; they've never been stopped.

They should have found us a long time ago. After all, they have automated factories making new Berserkers, so it's not like their numbers are limited. It really shouldn't take that many centuries to survey the entire galaxy, especially since some stars are much better life-targets than others.


By the time they discover humanity, we haven't just achieved spaceflight, we've spread out so far that there are entire space kingdoms and empires. I guess this is possible- the galaxy is a really, really big place- but it would be a lot more plausible if there were no FTL travel, and it took thousands of years to cross space.

It's not like hyperdrive is necessary to the plot- quite the contrary, most of the stories involve an isolated world or colony facing the Berserker threat. I can't think of a single reason to use it. Except, I suppose, the fact that it's an sf staple; and those things are hard to get rid of.

Nostalgia For Freezing

I've got a cold, and I'm really congested. What's peculiar is this: at odd moments, it gives me flashbacks to boot camp.

Maybe that takes some explanation. Boot camp is a kind of accidental paradise for germs: you bring people from all over the country (i.e. with all their regional germs) to one central location, where they live together in an enclosed space under high-stress conditions that lower their immune systems. The result is a little-mentioned fact of life about boot camp: you're always sick. Everyone is sick. It's just one more unhappy detail.

So being severely congested keeps giving me vivid little reminders of boot camp: what particular buildings looked like, what the food tasted like, how cold Chicago can get in the winter.

(That last is particularly funny, since it's murderously hot right now, and those memories are paradoxically refreshing. Ahh, trying to get to sleep in a room whose open windows allow the snow to come in!)

The Space Gods, (Not) Revisited

As I mentioned a little while back, I haven't had much reading time lately. But I had to make time for a recent Amazon arrival, Neil Gaiman's Eternals.

Gaiman is one of my favorite comics writers; he reintroduced me to comics with his landmark work on Sandman. And I have a love of Kirby's Eternals from way back. So I delved into this with great eagerness.

I can't say that I really liked it.


I'm trying to figure out the nature of my dissatisfaction. I now notice something that I never picked up on before: Kirby's Eternals may have been the title characters, but the comic wasn't thematically about them. It was about the Space Gods, the Celestials, and the mysterious Space God things they were doing on Earth. All the really interesting and awesome moments were about them; which is why it doesn't surprise me to read that Kirby got the idea from Erich Von Daniken's fantasy-archeology bestseller Chariots of the Gods.

The Eternals and Deviants were just a sort of clunky interface with the conventions of superhero comics- good handsome superpeople vs. bad ugly superpeople. They were necessary in the practical sense that all comics were superhero comics, but I can't recall either race being that important to the plot. The Space Gods had come back, and were going to do whatever they were going to do; this was the real thrust of the series.

I suspect that if Kirby had done the series a few decades earlier, when there were still other options for comics, the Eternals and Deviants might not have appeared at all.

So- to work my way very roundabout to the point- my problem with Gaiman's work is that it's all about the Eternals. And they were actually the least interesting part of the book. It's not especially Gaiman's fault, I guess: the whole Celestial thing was wrapped up in Thor, around issue #300, which didn't leave that much more to do.

But if you're going to give up the appeal of Kirby's title- the images of awesome unstoppable giants, the mystery, the sense of impending cosmic judgement- you need something really good to put in their place. And while the writing is decent, there's... just not that much here.

The Last Hero

The Last Hero
by G.K.Chesterton

The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day,
There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away,
And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide,
Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride.
The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars,
With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars,
Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above,
The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love.
Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain,
You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain.

The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be;
I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me.
I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise,
More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes.
She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine;
The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine.
Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse?
Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress.
O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown,
You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown.

The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day,
They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way,
I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers,
As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers.
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, --
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.

Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans,
What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones?
My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease,
Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas.
To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given,
The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven.
The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see,
To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me;
One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath:
You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.

A Real-Life Update

"Update" may not be right word, though, since I haven't done any real-life details here yet.

Short version: I'm in the Navy. In about a month, my ship is going to have an INSURV inspection. This is an extremely important five-year inspection that determines whether the ship is seaworthy or not. Inspectors come aboard and spend days examining just about everything. (And everyone.)

So everyone here has gone a bit insane. We're running around trying to correct flaws in the ship, major and minor; and going over our maintenance routines, which are a critical part of INSURV and which have to be done with nitpicking exactness.

(There are always flaws on a ship. There's never enough time to get everything fixed perfectly; it's like running a household with a large family. Most of the time, it's sufficient to fix major flaws, and guesstimate what's about to wear out next. Most of the time, when we're not looking down the gunbarrel of INSURV.)

My part in this controlled chaos is normally to be an Electonics Technician for one of our radars. It's a good job, and it's not hard. But for the duration of our crisis, I've been reassigned to a new and dramatic mission:

The Watertight Door Team!

Ships are divided into watertight sections; the idea is that even if one section develops a leak, we can just close it off. All the other sections can carry it, and so the ship will stay afloat.

The system depends on a whole bunch of doors being thoroughly watertight; and my new duties are to go from door to door, checking each one, and fixing any faults that show up. (There are a lot.)

I may not blog that much for the next month, even by my undemanding average. This is keeping us really busy; and, alas, it's really cutting into both my internet time and my reading schedule.

Wind Will Blow It All Away

One of my all-time favorite religious poems, translated by Robert Bly in his book The Sibling Society:


If someone insults you,
Go on, with light heart;
If they all do it, pay
No heed to what they say.
There's no new art
In talk of that kind.
Wind will blow it all away.

If someone praises Devotion
Implying of course it's OK,
But says of course the works
Of the Law are much greater,
It's weird dogma,
Pass by, don't bother.
Wind will blow it all away.

And if they next, to make
You less open to God,
Say (to flatter you)
That you are truly great:
Turn your back
To talk of that sort.
Wind will blow it all away.

And if the world itself
Should come, money, castles,
Great sweets in its hand, just say,
"I have enough today."
For worldly things
Return whence they came.
Wind will blow it all away.

And if people name a place
(Not God's) where all sorrow
Will be settled, all be saved,
They have an evil aim.
Be strong, say no
To these odd people.
Wind will blow it all away.

-Margaret of Navarre (trans. by Robert Bly.)