Author: Dotan Dimet

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Breakfast Speech

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date July 12, 2004

Ursula K. Le Guin’s speech at a BookExpo America breakfast event (link from Neil Gaiman‘s site):

Assumption 1: The characters are white. Even when they aren’t white in the text, they are white on the cover….

I have received letters that broke my heart, from adolescents of color in this country and in England, telling me that when they realized that Ged and the other Archipelagans in the Earthsea books are not white people, they felt included in the world of literary and movie fantasy for the first time. Worth thinking about?

Blather

Three Monkeys

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date July 11, 2004

According to the Chinese Calendar, 2004 is the Year of the Monkey (link link link). And so was 1968, the year I was born (August 25th, coming soon, now would be a good time to mark your calendar, wink-wink nudge-nudge, now that everyone’s moved to Trillian and isn’t getting automatic ICQ reminders).
Which means that this year, I’ll be Three Monkeys old.

Here is a collection of three monkey figures, and here’s an explanation of source for the recurring image.

Now, I detest birthdays, mine most of all, because they are “your special day”, and therefore have a tendency to make me feel totally not special, mundane, puny, and old. I can measure my life goals and achievements, and strengthen my conviction that I am quite pathetic.
But at the same time, I keep wishing that one of those damn things will be special. And I figure that my three monkeys birthday would be a fine occassion for this.
Because waiting until I’m Forty is just too depressing (although it’s a pretty short wait).
I was 12 when I was one monkey old, 24 when I was two monkeys old, and I’ll be 48 when I’m four monkeys old, and I’ll probably not live to see 12 monkeys, so no reason to wait for a Terry Gilliam marathon. Sort of gives you prespective, I think.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Robert Sheckley photo

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date July 10, 2004

Photo of Robert Sheckley, taken at the interview I conducted with him. I blame the expression on my face on lack of sleep.
Robert Sheckley in Tel Aviv (and me)

Science Fiction and Fantasy

Science, Religion and Science Fiction

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date July 08, 2004

Science, Religion and the Science Fiction Idea, Or, Where Would We Be Without Hitler? by Barrington J. Bayley (published in 1979). Bayley discusses how Science Fiction is a kind of new religion, with its sense-of-wonder as literal religious awe, and the way you either “get it” or don’t. He talks about how the space programs (of Nazi Germany, the USA and the Soviet Union) were driven by the SF faithful the Russkies, poor buggers, cut off from the pulp magazines all these years, have to make their spaceships look like something out of Jules Verne, and he closes with a lamentation about how the images and thoughts we have for so long prized have become common property., and how Science Fiction is in transition perhaps from being a living and vital religion to becoming an ossified “old” or “common” religion, focused on ritual rather than revelation:

A film was released recently in which the first manned Mars expedition goes wrong and can’t take off, so for political reasons the whole thing is faked for the benefit of the world television audience, and the pictures of astronauts purportedly on Mars are really being enacted in an American desert. The film is quite good symbol of what happens when a living cult, bound by a common secret, turns into an established social religion: the Great Science Cosmos vulgarised. Every genuine religious idea is a product of the creative mind, and has an inspirational quality while it remains secret. When it is thrown open, when it is spoken on every tongue, a reverse alchemy takes place and pure gold turns to common brass. The gates have fallen, the holy of holies has been violated, and the rude barbarian, sword in hand, stares gape-mouthed at what he cannot understand.

Oddities Resources

King Arthur, the Iranian

Post author By Dotan Dimet
Post date July 08, 2004

The new King Arthur movie claims to be based on a fresh “historical” take on the mythic king (which includes Guinevere in a leather bikini). Specifically, it references the speculation about a connection between the historical general that supposedly was the basis for the legendary figure of Arthur, and the Sarmatians, an Iranian people of nomadic horsemen who were recruited by the Romans (like many other barbarians) to serve in their military, and who were apparently stationed in roman Britain.
This article details the links between the Sarmatians and Arthurian Legend, which include the dragon banner (the source of “Uthur Pendragon”?) and the legends of the magic sword and the holy cup:

After hard but victorious battles, 5,500 Sarmatian/Alanian heavy cavalry (called cataphractarii, i.e. clothed fully in scale armour) consisting of prisoners taken in war were posted to Britain in 175.
…
The closed society of Sarmatian cataphractarii in Britain was able to maintain its ethnic features during the Late Roman period and afterwards. One reason is that their troops, called cuneus Sarmatorum, equitum Sarmatorum Bremetennacensium Gordianorum were not part of any military organization in active service. Consequently, after the withdrawal of the Roman army, they continued to live on their accustomed sites (Chester, Ribchester, etc.). They were still called Sarmatians after 250 years. A semihistoric Arthur lived about A.D. 500. He was very probably a descendant of those Alan horsemen, a battle leader of the Romanized Celts and Britons against the Anglo-Saxons, who invaded Britain after the Roman army had withdrawn. Arthur and his military leaders could therefore manage to train the natives as armoured horseman after Iranian patterns against the attacks of Angles and Saxons fighting on feet until their victory at Badon Hill.

There’s more stuff here, including parallels between the sword in the stone and Sarmatian rituals, and the close parallels in the legend about a king’s retainers reluctantly obeying his dying command to throw his sword in a lake.
Naturally, the Sarmatian Arthur has annoyed some people, but apparently not many.