By Hand, on Paper

Paper rules!
I was just saying I need to get some watercolor paper, and thinking about making art on paper prompted me to look again at this article, "Stronger Brain Activity After Writing on Paper", which I'd found on Michael's blog.

I'd expected it to be about hand-writing. It's more about what surface you write on:
researchers say you remember things better if you write on paper-paper than on e-paper (a tablet or whatever)--because paper is variable.*

I'd just experienced that as a reader: I'd gone looking in a book for a quote I remembered being midway down the right-hand side of the page.
You can't locate things this way online: it was halfway down the screen, where there's a nick in the cover.

Related: that's why I'm painting faces, not just looking at images, to enter them into my memory. Painting them by hand on paper gives them what the article calls "tangible permanence".
Even the frustration of painting helps---maybe especially the frustration?
"Ergh! I cannot get the curl of her lip!"
Maybe not, but now I really, really know the curl of her lip.

I'd read that people (of all races) don't pay close attention to the faces of people of other races. The whole "they all look alike" phenomenon is true, if you don't look closely.
And drawing or painting a face requires you to look closely.

So even if my paintings of Murderbot characters aren't all I'd want them to be (not yet, anyway), they've already done what I wanted--I've got them under my skin.

I like other people's digital art (not that I can tell what it was made on, if I'm looking at it online).
For me, the 3D mess of art making is part of its appeal--even the way the paper buckles when I've gotten it too wet, or tears when I've reworked it too many times.
It's proof: this stuff and I exist here, together.

__________________________

* RE, variable:

"Although volunteers wrote by hand both with pen and paper or stylus and digital tablet, researchers say paper notebooks contain more complex spatial information than digital paper.

Physical paper allows for tangible permanence, irregular strokes, and uneven shape, like folded corners.
In contrast, digital paper is uniform, has no fixed position when scrolling, and disappears when you close the app.

“Our take-home message is to use paper notebooks for information we need to learn or memorize...".

Try, try, trying to paint faces...

These are awkward, but I’m proud of having started and I want to save and share my first attempts watercoloring my faces for Murderbot:
the Basque woman for Abene, left, and the queer rodeo rider for Murderbot.
(Goauche, not water-based markers.)

And now I'm going to buy watercolor paper because this sketch paper of course is not up to heavy water-- it buckled.

Women's History Is Every Day

 I displayed books at work for Women's History Month... (March) the same as I did for Black History Month... (February)––
with the tag ". . . Is Every Day".

1st Watercolor-Marker Sketches

First time messing around with my new watercolor markers ("water-based brush pens")... sketching newly arrived dolls Cricket & Hana.

I have a lot to learn, but I can see the pens' potential...

I'm not feeling that great, 48 hours after my Covid shot––achy and tired––my immune system is working, so that's good.
I am going to call it a day and go read in bed.

"We are singing, in our boat."

The Ichimatsu dolls are here! Luckily bink could use the car to take me to pick them up this morning. I was going to bike, but it's raining, and also my body feels achy all over--from the Covid shot two days ago.

The dolls were left on the steps in a bag with my name outside their old home, below, for me to pick up. I'd wondered if they'd be sad, but they seemed happy to go with me.

The younger one (above, right) is quite chatty, so her name is Cricket.
The other looks like bink's English friend Hannah, so her name is the Japanese name Hana ("flower").

I'd messaged the man who posted them (free!) on FB market if he knew their names. He was nice but didn't seem into the dolls (not surprising, since he was giving them away).

He replied that all he knew was they're from Japan, bought by his wife's grandparents "so they're old--that's all we know".
But he didn't say how old he or his wife are, and I didn't want to pester him again.

I'm guessing the dolls are from after 1927, the year of the Japan-US Friendship Doll exchange.

[Wow--one of the original dolls from Japan is at my city's library! I must find out if I can see her sometime.

*googles*
Oh--yes! She––Miss Miyazaki––was sent to Tokyo for restoration in 2016 and is back again.]

I thought these girls might be sad to leave their old home, but I suspect they've mostly been sleeping in their box . . . which is now a boat!

They were singing and singing as we sat in the car in the rain.

Penny Cooper gets her shot!

It was Covid-19 Vaccine Day for me and my coworkers yesterday. Nine of us carpooled out to some distant suburb.
The University of MN had set up a traveling clinic at the warehouse of a nonprofit and was vaccinating nonprofit staff & volunteers (I think that was the deal...).

Penny Cooper got the shot too! She is able to share her immunity with the herd of dolls and toys at home.

[Disclosure: Dolls & toys don't get Covid. But they still like to participate: "So we stay healthy."]

The nurse was so nice and told Penny Cooper she was very brave.
Penny was especially pleased with the band-aid on her arm:

I double-masked instead of wearing my respirator because I can't be understood through the respirator, and I wanted to be able to chat and make comments. That's an important part of my health plan.
(A volunteer at the store had given me this fabric mask with book pattern.)

I commented to the nurse that the shot didn't hurt at all--less, even, than the usual flu shot, which stings.
She said they'd done a great job on the needles--thin, and just the right length.

I said they did a great job on the whole thing: "A triumph of public health!" She, a public health provider, agreed.

BEST THING: We got stickers!

Here I am, below, with some of my coworkers (some had already left) in the waiting area after getting our shots. Because I'm allergic to penicillin, the nurse had me wait 30 min. after the shot, instead of the usual 15.
I asked a volunteer to take our picture.
(I seem to be the group historian.)

I'm wearing my new sweatshirt from my gym--the back reads WEATHERING LIFE. That's exactly it!

 

 

I'm glad I chose to go with my coworkers instead of going to my clinic in two days: I did feel closer to them all afterward.
Emotionally, and literally too:
We were laughing and sitting too close to one another in the waiting-afterward area. (And there's that one coworker who cannot seem to keep his mask over his nose...)

One of us commented, "We won't be asked back," and I noticed a woman in the waiting area giving us dirty looks.
I understand her annoyance---my coworkers and I are used to being around people all the time, so we've gotten slack, while some people have been alone for a year and are very cautious.

And yet, dirty looks do nothing to keep you safe.
They demonstrate the passive-aggressive behavior known as "Minnesota Nice". Radiating disapproval is effective social control (over the long haul), . . . but it doesn't work with viruses.

If I'd been her, I'd have told the staff I didn't feel safe in the crowded area and was going to wait outside. It was sunny and warm, and if she'd started to have a bad reaction she could have pounded on the big windows. 

Humans.
We are various.
On the one hand, we can coordinate a massive public health event. On the other hand, we can't come in out of the rain.

Murderbot says of a group of humans it is stuck with,

"These were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn't want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little."

Yeah. Maybe a little sometimes.
_________

I slept eleven hours last night, but I think it was mostly because I needed to process emotionally another load of THIS IS HISTORY.

Also, my watercolor pens arrived and I want to learn how to use them well, but it just felt like too much, on top of everything.
So I went to bed.

I feel slightly achy this morning, but only slightly. I don't know--maybe it's from lying in bed for eleven hours.

I'm going in to work. I'll wear my respirator two more weeks until the Moderna vaccine reaches 50 percent effectiveness, and then I'll go to masking again.

The second shot is in one month.
And then . . .
I'm never taking off my mask at work--it protects me from toxic book dust. I should have been wearing one all along.

Replacing Harrison Ford in My Memory Bank

I'd written to a friend about how as I read the Murderbot Diaries, I was always imaging the characters as white guys like Harrison Ford.
It's my brain's automatic default.

Nothing wrong with Harrison Ford, but I've got a million images of him in my head, and I'm having a hard time coming up with ONE image of a Basque woman hero.
In fact, I can't come up with one.

"I want to wipe Harrison Ford from my brain," I wrote, "and replace him with a million individual faces."

I found this photograph of a Basque woman--unnamed, a model for a stock photo.
I hereby replace all images in my brain of Harrison Ford with HER. Right? Don't you think she'd make a great Han Solo?

She could play the character of Don Abene in Murderbot Diaries. Abene is a woman, the leader of a planetary survey team, though in our time period "Don" is a masc. honorific (Don Corleone in the Godfather).

It's not said in the books what ethnic group any character comes from--it appears to be irrelevant (?) in this imaginary future––but I looked their names up.

Abéné is a village in Senegal, but the honorific is Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese... So I looked further and found the name Abene is derived from Basque abe meaning "pillar", a Basque equivalent of the woman's name Pilar.

I decided to go with that, since we walked through the Basque region of Spain on El Camino de Santiago.

Oh--wow! Looking further--just now-- I see the name Pilar is directly connected with Camino:
It comes from the title of the Virgin Mary, María del Pilar, meaning "Mary of the Pillar". According to legend, when Saint James the Greater was in Saragossa/Zaragoza in Spain, the Virgin Mary appeared on a pillar.

Saint James (Sant'Iago) is supposedly buried in Santiago, Spain, which is the whole point of Camino--getting there.

The Better Story: Vaccine First, Then Dolls

Oh, oh, oh---look! New dolls for meeeee . . . FREE, on Fb marketplace! To be picked up Saturday morning.

Covid Shot First

I would go after work today--they're only 4 bikable miles away--but I'm going with my coworkers to get our Covid shots.
Yay!
We're carpooling to some clinic, a half-hour drive away.

I'd been so relieved the executive director had lined these shots up.... and then last night my clinic messaged me that I could get mine there as soon as Saturday.

I thought about doing that instead--it's a lot closer, and I wouldn't have to coordinate with others.

I decided it'd be better to go on this Field Trip with my coworkers.
I'm not feeling very fond of my coworkers at the moment, but we're living through this epoch together. So.

Plus, Penny Cooper said, It's the better story.

This actually isn't a very Penny-Cooper-thing to say. I thought she'd say, Take the shot that is soonest.

I heard you say it, she said.

Huh, yeah, I do say use "the better story" as a measuring stick.
(I think I heard it somewhere once?)

It's a helpful guide, for encouragement . . . or reassurance––most especially when things are frightening, but interesting. Like, every day since Trump got elected in 2016.

Most of my older coworkers already got shots, or don't want them––especially (but not only) some of the Black guys.
A customer who heard one of them saying they wouldn't get one said to me, "I have no patience with such stupidity."

Well. That's making an assumption, which is itself a stupid thing to do.
The customer didn't ask my coworker why.

I was glad to have a quote to hand––something I'd just read:
"You'd have to be crazy not to be paranoid as a black person in this country." (The US, that is.)

That's from the essay "Hole in the Head" by Ross Gay, a Black man, about a medical experiment with radiation that left a little Black boy with a hole in his head.
It's in Gay's collection The Book of Delights (2019), which is mostly about delightful things, but some not. (Thank you, Art Sparker, for sending me this.)

Anyway, back to the new dolls

They were originally listed at $25 for both. I might have paid that, but definitely was swayed by them being free.

I browse on FB for Madeline dolls sometimes, but they're always ridiculously expensive--more than eBay.
Yesterday amidst the expensive junk were these two Japanese dolls--listed as Ichimatsu:
"little girls or boys, usually with . .  glass eyes. The original Ichimatsu were named after an 18th-century Kabuki actor, but since the late 19th century the term has applied to child dolls. Since 1927... a solemn, gentle-looking little girl in elaborate kimono."

These are solemn, gentle-looking little girls. (The girl on the right looks a little frightened, but I wonder if she's actually singing.)
I think they would like to have their pictures painted too. By Saturday, my watercolor pens should have arrived!

Once more, with feeling

Linda Sue commented on this morning's post––a picture of my alphabet mats at work––
"You could spell some 'feeling' words out of those."

Hey, yeah! Here's a couple words with feeling. I wonder if any of my coworkers will notice... (I would bet not.)

Gym Class Is Working

Inspired by Gym Class, I put down foam floor pads in my work area--like the pads at the gym, except with the alphabet.
They just got donated to the store--fitting for the Book & Toy area. (And getting the pick of the toys is a benefit of me having to sort them, since the toy-volunteer quit after Covid.)

The store's floors are concrete--hard on the feet, and whole body.

Gym Teacher (GT) & I talk a lot, and he helps me practice good movements I can apply at work. 
I'm like some other clients, he said, who want information to apply to daily life, rather than the kind who want to work out hard in class.
Definitely!
I love that gym class is more like physical therapy, which is absolutely the model that works best for me.

Art Supplies/References

Do I need more art supplies?

YES! One always needs more art supplies!

In fact, I'm a lightweight--I got rid of so much stuff when I moved a year and a half ago, I only have a few pans of watercolors.

Inspired by Sarah's faces sketched with watercolor pens, I ordered watercolor pens on ebay (slightly less expensive).
Floral, Essentials, and a couple 6-packs, Brights, and Earth.

I want to practice drawing people (humans, not doll people).
I don't know that I'd ever get good enough to illustrate Murderbot, but that's my motivation.

I continue to look for models for characters in Murderbot.
One is Dr. Bharadwaj. I looked up the name and found an amazing Indian lawyer (below, left), Sudha Bharadwaj, and alongside, another, Menaka Guruswamy, whose expressions fit Murderbot's description of one of its crew--a lawyer named Pin-Lee.*

Here is Guruswamy, below right, glammed up for Time, with her law– and life partner, lawyer Arundhati Katju: 

They were part of a team of lawyers who led the successful case to decriminalize homosexuality in India (2018)--which British colonial rule had made illegal (Time article):

“I am what I am so take me as I am,” said the Chief Justice of India as the Supreme Court struck down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in a unanimous vote.
An outdated legacy of the British colonization of India, Section 377 rendered all sexual activities “against the order of nature” punishable by law."

This is the look that really fits the character:

"Pin-Lee" sounds Chinese to me, but I can't find the name...

A-ha. I changed the spelling to Pin-Li.
That's better: "Li /Chinese, 李 is the second most common surname in China as of 2018, behind Wang."

Li Pin is a famous Chinese poet (818–876) Wikipedia (another article that could use help).

And another famous poet named Li (there are lots), 12th-century writer Li Qingzhao, a woman who here has a sharp look like Murderbot describes Pin-Lee having:

Via Stanford article:
"She wrote boldly about nature, love and longing with verses like these from song lyric no. 43:

I've heard spring is still lovely at Twin Streams,
I'd like to go boating in a light skiff there
But fear the tiny grasshopper boats they have
Would not carry
Such a quantity of sorrow."

And one more Pinli--a clothing company--could be a good reference for the sort of clothes Murderbot wears---soft hoodies and work pants.
I suppose, too, the models model the "SecUnit standard neutral expression" too.

I'm off to work now!

The Lime Picnic Blanket

I've long admired and wanted one of the lustrous tea towels handwoven by Joanne of Cup on the Bus (she has a tab & sidebar: Towels for Sale).

Finally I ordered one (I haven't gotten my stimulus check yet, but I feel like I have), and it arrived last week.
It's beautiful. It's even lustrous to the hand.

"A picnic blanket!" the Orphan Reds cried out, and lobbied for an inaugural picnic at the lake yesterday, spring equinox, though the wind off the lake was icy.

What do girlettes have for a picnic?
They have perfectly excellent picnic ware with healthy food choices from Linda Sue, but no, they insisted on handmade rainbow marshmallows. I ordered four packets of them from Sjolind's Chocolate House in Wisconsin (created by one of my oldest friends, Tracy).

I am stimulus spending!
And why not?

I'd chosen the lime-colored tea towel from Joanne, to go with the girlettes' red hair.
They would only eat the lime marshmallow. "It's healthy for us."

The March wind kept blowing them over. bink helped them stay upright:

ABOVE, L to R: Penny Cooper, Eeble, Low, and FrankColumbo (and bink)

 Eventually between the wind and ALL THE SUGAR, they had to lie down, so we wandered over to sit or lie at the creek for the rest of the afternoon.

You see the tall doll with dark hair (in red sweater) is still here.
She just appeared, you know, and no one quite knows who she is. A visiting cousin, it is thought.
When there's an outing, often the girlettes say, "Let her come too." So I think she may be staying a while.

(Oh! Now the girlettes are on Joanne's "Where the Towels Live" page too!)
_______________________________

Here I am on my fourth post this Sunday, and I forgot to say THE BEST THING:
bink got the Covid vaccine today, and I get mine Thursday!!!

The exec. director of my work found a place where all the workers and volunteers who want the shot can go together this week.
WHAT a relief...

All the people I'm close to have gotten their shot, I think. My auntie, bink & Maura, Marz (essential worker), HouseMate, several other friends (and a few coworkers), sister & her wife, and several blog-friends too...
It's happening!

We're sure not out of the woods yet, and won't be until more of the entire world is vaccinated, but it's something.
By May, I can wear a mask at work instead of the honkin' respirator.

(Actually, I'm a little fond of the respirator. It gets humid under there, but, weirdly, I like that I can't be expected to talk much, and I like that it's not easy for me to eat the junky, donated, day-old bakery goods at work either.)

Bears & Bedding

It's spring!
Even here, where the ground is still mostly frozen, some brave green shoots are pushing up.

Today it is 58º and windy--a perfect day to air Bears & Bedding.

Blow away the dust mites that leave us lost and broken-hearted.

Above, L to R: My duvet, Sidney Bearchet, Rescue Panda #2, Bed Bear, Rescue Panda #1 (pink glass eyes courtesy of Art Sparker!), Red Bear, and Robat

Names of the people killed in Atlanta ("Let us work and pray for a more just world.")

 New York Times, "What We Know About the Victims in the Atlanta Shootings"

 I just posted this on my social media, saying "There is no emoji for this, the pain in my jaw from grief and rage."
And on my workplace's social media, saying, "Let us work and pray for a more just world".

There are no media guidelines for my workplace, so I take my cue from the society's mission statement, which says--as I keep repeating--that we are
"a network of friends... working to build a more just world."

The society serves everyone, with no care for religion, but it is itself specifically Christian, so saying "let us pray" is appropriate.

Big Boss said recently he was a little uncertain about my "political" posts.
I'm not sure why. They're ridiculously mild.
If we actually lived up to the mission--to be
“A network of friends, inspired by Gospel values, growing in holiness and building a more just world through personal relationships with and service to people in need”,
we'd say and do A LOT MORE.

I pointed out that the posts always got a lot of likes, and I never post my own opinion, just things that are in keeping with our mission.
He seemed okay with that.

He even liked the post of the barbed-wire around the government center I put on the store's IG the other day with the message I keep repeating:
"Let us work and pray for a more just world."

Fresca's Day Out, Crossed Wires

Yesterday I went downtown for the first time in weeks.
I knew the Government Center, above, had been barricaded with concrete, chain link, and barbed-wire for the trial of Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. Seeing it was something else though.

I felt thumped with the sense of being inside History As She Is Made.

BELOW: Signs stay up for a brief time before they get taken down.

The above sign is clear. "The whole damn system is guilty as hell."

The below sign, above the toilet in Whole Foods, is confusing.
I mean, what's a foreign object, where toilets are concerned? Usually that means menstrual pads and tampons, but since those are "hygienic products", is it really okay to flush them in this toilet?

With another pustulous white boy going on a murder rampage, killing Asian American women this time, I mostly felt numb, with just a muffled sense of horror getting through, like thunder in the far distance.

I went to get take-out at a downtown coffee shop  Penny's––Penny Cooper's favorite––and it had closed.
And that's when I felt a flood of grief and loss and fear, and rage at our stupidity.

Sometimes the feelings come only with the smaller, more digestible events.

Weirdly, my afternoon out ended on a happy note.

I dropped off neighborhood coffee-shop gift cards to the librarians in my newly reopened branch library.
They seemed very pleased.

 

In an emotionally remote way, I'm pleased too.
You can't sit in the library, of course, but you can go in and browse, and also RETURN YOUR OVERDUE BOOKS. After a year.
No fines.
Sometimes we get things right.

Speaking of books...

My happiest news in ages is that the branch library one block away––Roosevelt (for Teddy)––opened this week. I got tears of happiness when I saw their OPEN sign lit up in green again.

It'd closed exactly one year ago, when the governor's Stay-at-Home executive order went into effect on March 17, 2020.

This winter I was clearing some clutter, and I came across a little jar of my father's ashes that my sister had given me to disperse as I wanted. (She took hers to California, to a spot on the beach of the Pacific Ocean where she and our father liked to go.)

Spreading the ashes didn't mean that much to me, honestly, but I thought, what the heck--the one thing my father and I totally shared was a love of books, reading and writing, and libraries.

After he retired, he'd walk every day with his laptop to the library downtown--the one I grew up going to.
(I know he'd be proud of my job as Book Lady.)

 

So a couple weeks ago, when I was out walking the dog, I took the ashes along and sprinkled my father's ashes (dumped, really--they had clumped up in the almost-four years since he died) in the bushes at this branch library.

I figure any library stands for all libraries.

It pleased me, and I'm sure it would please him very much too.

My branch isn't open every day, and I haven't been in it yet.
I assume you can't linger, but I do want to at least RETURN MY BOOKS, which are a year overdue.

This morning I'm going to get a gift card from the coffee shop a couple blocks from the library and give it to the librarians as a Welcome Back.

"Smell of Books"

 Michael of Orange Crate Art alerted me to the joke "Smell of Books" site--each "aroma" has a page of its own.
(L"eau"L You Have Cats)

What Murderbot Is

Steve of Shadows & Light commented, "I don't even know what "Murderbot" is!"

Right, I've been posting about it off and on, but I've never fully explained, so here's an overview.
(I was thrilled to have an excuse to write this, since all I want to do is think about Murderbot. So, thanks, Steve!)

WHAT MURDERBOT IS (so far as I've figured out)
[Some mild spoilers ahead--I'll let you know when they start--but the first part here is stuff you figure out pretty soon, or anyway, that doesn't give away the plot.]

Murderbot is the first-person narrator of and main character in four novellas and one full-length novel so far, collectively called the Murderbot Diaries (2018–ongoing).

The stories are sci-fi/speculative fiction.
They're set in the distant future, when humans are far flung among colonized/terraformed planets. Space travel is via wormhole.

Murderbot does not bother to explain exactly how any of this works, except when bits become relevant, anymore than I'd normally explain in a blog, "I live in a representational democracy formed by X, n-years ago; I carry a handheld device fueled by ... blah-blah-blah."
Because I assume you readers know it.
Or, like me, have come to terms with not knowing it. (I have no idea how my phone works. As the father in Hannah and Her Sisters says, I don't even know how the can opener works.)

Details unfold as you go along, which is part of the fun.

Murderbot looks like a person (when clothed).
It is a fully self-aware, living machine–– a "construct" of part cloned-human tissue, part non-organic parts.

Murderbot is its private name for itself.
It is a, and is called by humans, "SecUnit", designed by a human corporation––"the company"–– to provide security to humans who go to unexplored and hence dangerous planets for the purposes of exploitation of resources or, less commonly, research.
The company owns and rents out the SecUnits along with earth diggers and other equipment.

SecUnits have some human brain neurons––there's some advantage to that, which I've forgotten [Update: bink said... "SecUnits have human brain neurons to add that robustness you get when things don't go as planned." Yes.]––but their physical abilities and intelligence (processing speed and neural networks) are well beyond human.
If it didn't want anyone to know that, Murderbot says, it shouldn't have run up a wall in public.

What it looks like, exactly, is indeterminate. It doesn't care, so it doesn't say, except to explain that SecUnits' bodies are standardized but their faces all look different because they look like the humans their cloned parts come from.
When possible, it prefers to always wear its opaque helmet around humans.

SecUnits are self-sufficient--they run on power cells that last for some extremely long time (a human life span?).

They have no reproductive (sex) parts or gender identity––their pronouns are "it/its"–– nor do they need to eat, drink, or eliminate fluids. They do bleed.
Murderbot doesn't want any of these things. It finds human biology, including what it has of it itself, faintly disgusting. Or more than faintly.
It hates to be touched (unless it's part of a rescue).

(Sexbots exist too, but normally SecUnits have nothing to do with them. It's vaguely hinted that perhaps they're not that keen on their jobs either...)

Murderbot does have emotions and feelings, however, but since they are viewed as simply an unfortunate side-effect of intelligence (which is necessary to provide security), it was never designed to deal with them.
Mostly, it doesn't care about stuff. 

When it does care, it covers with snarky comments or disappears into itself to watch media (which it downloads into its memory).
It's much like a young human in that way... Or an old human, for that matter.

It doesn't know what it wants, either, except to consume media––books, music, and especially serials like the space-soap The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

Learning to deal with its feelings, figure out what it wants, and not freak out when it cares about things (especially about other sentient beings) is a major theme in the Murderbot Diaries.

Another central theme is whether or not it is a person.
Legally, in most of the "Corporation Rim" where it lives and operates, it is considered a dangerous weapon that must have a legal owner.

Note: MILD SPOILERS AHEAD

Before the stories start, Murderbot freed itself from (hacks) its implanted "governor module" that forced it to obey orders.
Now it has free will.
But what to do with it, when it's used to being told what to do every minute?
And how to survive in a cosmos where it is illegal to be free?

"I kept my day job," it says.

The first novella, All Systems Red, changes that.
The Company rents out Murderbot to a research team from a planet that does consider constructs to be people.
Mutual respect starts to develop between Murderbot and the human team, especially leader Dr. Mensah, who Murderbot admires as a "true galactic explorer," and a human smart enough to work with.

Murderbot rescues Mensah, and in turn, she buys it from the company. Now it has free will, and freedom (limited).
So it leaves town.

Murderbot calls itself "Murderbot" because in its past, it participated in a mass murder of humans on a mining site.
In Book Two, Artificial Condition (the titles are useless), it goes back to the now deserted mining pit to find out why.

And so on. The novellas could stand alone, but they're interconnected and come to a satisfactory conclusion. Or, a good place to pause, anyway.
The novel, Network Effect, continues the story.

A new novella--Fugitive Telemetry––is coming out at the end of April. I've already signed up for my copy at my local (walking distance) sci-fi/fantasty store, DreamHaven Books.

Murderbot is written by Martha Wells, "an American writer of speculative fiction", per Wikipedia.

I've avoided finding out anything about her because I'm figuring out her character & its world on my own, but let's just see one thing... How old is she?

She's three years younger than I am, which doesn't make me feel insufficient at all. Not at all.

I don't know about your basement....

Instagram has been pushing book-themed candles at me.

Some of the scents of books are nice, when they're associated with actual books---the odor of binding glue, paper, maybe leather...

Dubious about how they'd translate into a candle, I looked more closely. Most sound pleasant enough ("Bah Humbug" is fir tree, fig, pepper & orange).
But their springtime offering “Book Cellar” is described as smelling of DIRT--BASEMENT--VANILLA BEAN.

Dirt is okay––maybe recast as "earth"–– but BASEMENT?
Does anyone buy this???

They should do “Reading in Bed”—
odor of dirty socks, dust mites, and your choice of dog breath or cat butt.

Star Trek Women in Gold

Steve of Shadows & Light asked about the photo collage of captains Kirk & Janeway (below, left) that I'd posted yesterday.
It's a manipulation of a 1966 publicity photo for the original (1966) Star Trek, with Kirk and yeoman Janice Rand.

In the aired episodes, Rand's uniform is a red mini-dress, but initially Bridge crew wore command gold, including Uhura (below).
I think (?) they changed the colors for the sake of better visuals--Star Trek was part of NBC's first all-color season.

NBC pressured the show's creators to change the women's roles too--to get rid of the original pilot's woman First Officer, "Number One"--below in gold, with the original captain, Pike (Jeffrey Hunter).
Execs also said to get rid of the guy with the ears.
He survived, she didn't.
(Majel Barrett, who'd played Number One, was then terribly miscast as the simpering-over-Spock Nurse Chapel.)

 

Sally Kellerman, below, guest-starred in the recast pilot--she's wearing science-blue because she's a psychiatrist: "Where are you pointing that big gun, Captain?"

Questions for Myself (Murderbot)

 Darn daylight savings time--I got up at my normal time and was already late---I only have 15 minutes till I have to leave for work.*
(It snowed and the streets are icy, so I'm busing again...)

First: I'd never seen this collage of captains Kirk & Janeway before--fun! (Star Trek: Voyager, with Capt. Janeway, takes place 100 years after Kirk's Star Trek: The Original Series.)

Second, and mostly, I'm going to jot down some questions about Murderbot for myself here.
These and yesterday's notes are kinda random, not very coordinated, preliminary musings... 

A big question:
What do I think about all the VIOLENCE as Entertainment in Murderbot?

How is it presented/handled?

Do I enjoy it, and if so, why?

It's largely cartoon outer-space/Wild West violence--or, a mashup of those like Firefly-- (I don't like how that glamorizes it either.)

(Hm, what was the role of Firefly androids/bots? I can't remember... AI was definitely part of it---at least in non-human/physical forms. Code, and the like.)

 Are the Murderbot stories different? (Murderbot itself is not---it only kills "bad humans"--what are "bad humans"?)

Is criticism of the violent world it lives in implied?
(Yes.  . . . How?)

Question of the Series: "WHO GETS TO BE A PERSON?"

Like the Star Trek Next Gen episode "The Measure of a Man" where Data's personhood is on trial. The prosecution says Data is a TOASTER.

Cue up the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica being called toasters.

RACE: The future is multiracial, but these are not books about that.
Is the implication that race/ethnicity makes no difference at all in the future?

GENDER: Is the implication biological sex/gender makes no difference at all? It seems so.

*Where is the testosterone?
Have future humans been physically altered? 

Many of them indeed are "augmented humans", or they have implants, or they constantly wear tech, like we moderns carry our phones.
All of this is gradually revealed.

Murderbot never bothers to explain the norms of its world---I love that---we don't either---like Borges said, the Quran never mentions camels!

Q: VISUALS ("How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?")

How could you reproduce in a VISUAL form (film or illustrations) the "gender/race surprise reveal" of the books?

It would be easy the first time:
In the opening scene, everyone's wearing space suits,

and their identity would be revealed only after they get inside the habitat.

Ratthi is a man with an Asian name--possibly related to the Rath/Rathi tribe in India??? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rath_tribe

 

Bharadwaj is a woman--her name is Hindu.  

Murderbot is... what?
My sense of Murderbot shifts over time, as I read the books---visuals would remove that, would have to choose ONE representation.
(It seems, anyway, that Murderbot doesn't change its face.)

Hm.
That could happen over and over though, with secondary characters:
For instance, the hired killers show up in suits.

Only after they do some slaughter do we see their faces---

and, surprise...

They're women.

(I read the most violent characters as male, but often they're female.)

Film/graphic novels just have different powers than text. I would miss the experience of being called up short in my automatic identifications,
but Murderbot would make a terrific visual series.

And, a BIG QUESTION I always ask people that I would ask myself, here:

What is it about YOU that makes you like/engage with these stories???

Quick answer: I love feeling my neural network stretch, and these books make that happen.
But so would learning Spanish, and I don't do that.

So, what's in these stories, in particular, that attracts me so much?
_____________________

* P.S. I took the later bus. I could blame daylight savings and miss the 10 a.m. meeting. Not only did I want to keep writing this out (not that I finished...), but the meetings are stupid.
Basically they are Big Boss's Prayer Meeting.
Luckily, they are short.

Some Thoughts on Murderbot

On my recommendation, my sister read the first novella in the Murderbot Diaries, All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

I keep mentioning Wells--I don't know anything about her yet, on purpose. (Because I want to think about these books on my own first.)

Here's the photo of Wells from the book jacket.

___________________________________________

The Question

This morning Sister wrote to me:

"A neighbor friend asked how the Bot series extends the robot conceit of stories like Blade Runner and The Terminator. I don’t know enough about the genre to answer intelligently other than to say that gender is not a front and center thing in the Bot Diaries.

"What do you think?"

Sister and I had recently tiffed about a painting––
"The Annunciation" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Sister likes it, I loathe it so, so much.

Whether she meant it or not (and she sure might have), asking my opinion about Murderbot was an excellent peace offering.

I wrote back, "You knew that would hook me, eh?"

I've avoided reading anything about the Murderbot books because I want to think it through on my own first.  

My Reply

Here's my reply to my sister--some my thoughts, written this morning:

I. Robot Lit 101

I don't know much about AIs, but I'd say Murderbot is right in line with the human-made, sentient-being-with-a-troubled-relationship-with-its-creator-(& humans in general) trope.

It's ancestry is right out of Robots 101...

from the Jewish golem*

to Frankenstein's monster (the monster hates its controlling creator like Murderbot hates "the company"),

to Marvin, the depressed, comically snarky robot in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"I wish you'd just tell me rather trying to engage my enthusiasm because I haven't got one."

. . . to Roy Batty (Dutch actor Rutger Hauer), the tragic android in Blade Runner--you know?
Here, dying beautifully (and famously) in the rain, having spared the life of his enemy (Harrison Ford): www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU7Ga7qTLDU

Oh, and yes, Terminator II, where the Terminator sacrifices itself to save the human boy.

It just occurs to me that Milton's Lucifer/Satan, while not made by humans, is another creation that want self-determination.
Hm, and Eve too!

They are monsters, and we love them.
Oh, you sexy Satan...
"Fallen Angel" by Alexandre Cabanel (1847)

II. Speak for Yourself

The main difference––extension–– I see  between the usual robot stories and Murderbot (though AI hasn't been my area of interest) is that Murderbot tells its own story, in its own voice:
It's the David Copperfield of AIs, exploring for itself the question, "Am I the hero of my own story?"

I think it's so popular with young fans (on Tumblr, I see) because it's a coming-of-age story.
Murderbot is like a teenager, in many ways, grappling with existential questions, "What to do with free will? How to have meaning in a meaningless or even evil universe?" & maybe most of all--as the story goes on:
"WHAT TO DO WITH THESE INCONVENIENT FEELINGS?!?!"

Speaking of sci-fi tropes--it's also like Mr. Spock---a half-human who tries and fails to suppress his emotion, his caring for humans.

"When I feel friendship for you," he candidly tells Kirk when under the influence,
"I'm ashamed."

Murderbot is also part-human--it's a human/bot "construct", made from cloned human cells + inorganic parts;
and it's flummoxed and annoyed (and, if not outright ashamed, something like it) that it has feelings.

(Clearly some crossover with Autism Spectrum adaptations too, which I can't really speak to.)

III. See For Yourself

Most different and interesting thing for me, though, was the way I, the reader, kept getting caught out as I met new characters--
I kept imaging them looking like Rutger Hauer (the android in Blade Runner),
and then they turn out to be entirely other than that racially and genderly/sexually,
which made me FEEL--in my neural network!-- how much I am programmed by millions of hours of our own media.

Wells catches me up almost every time.
Even after I realized she's doing that––breaking the stereotype––my neural network automatically provides me with a picture of the Usual Suspect.
A ship's captain, for instance, appears looking like Capt. Kirk (white male American William Shatner), not Capt. Janeway (white female American Kate Mulgrew), much less Capt. Georgiou (Malaysian Chinese Michelle Yeoh).

It makes me realize how few images I have in my databank for non-male authorities. One Capt. Janeway, a million Capt. Kirks.

(I did look on Tumblr to see how other fans envision the characters, but no fan-art caught me.)

In my mind, Murderbot's looks shifts like a kaleidoscope.

 I think I sent this photo of the queer rodeo rider?

She's the closest I've come to a real-life person who I think looks like Murderbot.
The photographer, Luke Gilford, quoted in the Guardian article "This Ain't My First Rodeo":

"These are people who have survived and escaped a certain kind of trauma and violence, and are now here to re-enact this traditional western performance – which is also a form of drag.
But this time we’re caring for one another, and accepting one another deeply."

Could we substitute "traditional sci-fi" for "western performance".

I've thought the Murderbot Diaries would make good graphic novels, but actually, seeing how I envision the characters is one of the best things about reading them---
with visuals you'd remove your readerly imagination,
whereas reading the books, your own unconscious/programmed imagination becomes part of the story--
you are a player,  like a video game.

(Hm. The story is sort of like a video game---you see everything from the pov of the "first-person shooter", i.e. Muderbot.)

IV. Mine/ Your World

Which is another extension--again, this shows up more as the books go on:
the story is about living with and as tech, to some extent as we actually do now. The novels go further, of course, being futuristic, but the story is not some fantastical future, it's very related to our present tech-life.

Humans in the Murderbot books wear or have implanted all sort of tech. And so do we.
“The Future Is Now”.

It's normal now to have medical implants or attachments--from eyeglasses to heart regulators. And here's Chief Justice John Roberts ruling on cell phone data in 2014:

"Modern cell phones . . . are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy." 
--via Brookings Institute "Our Cyborg Future: Law and Policy Implictions" )

ABOVE: Mme. Helene Alberti and friend try out her flying prosthesis--not quite as sexy as Lucifer,
via "Avatars, Cyborgs and Robots: Can Humans Enhance Themselves?"

The way Martha Wells envisions the future is an extension of one model we have now.  It's corporate controlled---greed wins---but entirely liberal about sex and gender. (Murderbot itself doesn't care at all about gender & sex, so it's a good neutral reporter.)

Wells does such a great job showing how a political/economic reign can have both:
control of money/resources + freedom of identity.

Huh, I guess that's the old Roman Bread & Circuses, come to think of it:
you can do anything, be anything, and we will keep you entertained (stupified, distracted), . . . so long as you pay us taxes and remain obedient.

Similar to the company that created Murderbot, Amazon doesn't care about your gender, it just wants to know how you identify so it can use that info to sell you things--and mine your date to it can sell it to others--and control your reality (which it doesn't really care about, except to sell you things).

Gosh, there LOTS of stuff in these books!

V. DarkFic & Fluff

Wells uses fan tropes too:
it feels to me like she must be well versed in fandom (not that you couldn't arrive at the tropes independently--and not that they're not in mainstream/classical literature either).

Hurt/Comfort is the biggie I notice:
the author hurts or otherwise makes vulnerable (spores! are a popular option) the powerful character (Murderbot) to reveal its emotional soft side and to force it to open up to receiving comfort from another character (Mensah--& later, another bot), . . . which delivers to the reader/fan a big ol' dose of emo-porn chemicals.

Oh, yeah, and, the opposite of darkfic, fluff. Murderbot's funny.

I mentioned Hitchhiker's Guide, which is funny, but it's not really about robots. Marvin (green-eyed robot, below) is comic relief.

I don't think of hardcore sci-fi as being funny at all, which is one thing I don't like about it, which is why I don't read it, so maybe I'm missing any humor in it, if there is any...

Having a shoot-em-up space 'bot being funny might count as another extension of the genre.

Murderbot just wanting to escape into media--ha! That is maybe the funniest extension--and totally about fans & fandom--and it's also meta:
"You get to escape into media by reading about a character who wants to escape into media".

Thanks for asking--I've been wanting to write about what catches me in the Murderbot Diaries---
being an old person, more than the emo stuff, I'm maybe most attracted to seeing my readerly reactions:
"I imagined the hired killer as Arnold Schwarznegger but they turned out to be Martina Navratilova!"

Though the emo stuff is attractive too--along with Murderbot getting to roll my eyes at human stupidity (including my stupidity!);
and sharing its despair at being trapped with and controlled by human greed and callousness.

"Sometimes people do things to you," Murderbot says "that you can't do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on."

Turns out Murderbot can do something about about some things, but sometimes, yeah. It can't. We can't.
I can't.

OK--those are my thoughts off the top of my head this morning.

Tootle-oo!

Fresca

_______________________

* RE the golem--you know?
from www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-golem

"Most versions include shaping the golem [from earth] into a figure resembling a human being and using God's name to bring him to life, since God is the ultimate creator of life.. Often. . . the golem would come to life and serve his creators by doing tasks assigned to him.

"The most well-known story of the golem is connected to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague (1513-1609). It was said that he created a golem out of clay to protect the Jewish community from Blood Libel and to help out doing physical labor, since golems are very strong.

Another version says it was close to Easter, in the spring of 1580 and a Jew-hating priest was trying to incite the Christians against the Jews. So the golem protected the community during the Easter season.

[THIS IS LIKE MURDERBOT:]
Both versions recall the golem running amok and threatening innocent lives, so Rabbi Loew removed the Divine Name, rendering the golem lifeless.
A separate account has the golem going mad and running away."