MegaMiscellanea

Neal Stephenson wrote a book called Anathem. You can buy it from Amazon or you can read about it on Wikipedia. I really enjoyed it, because it’s dense and full of interesting ideas and wonderful writing. Stephenson is a master of science fiction, and like all good writers in any genre, his craft surpasses it.

The bits about Anathem that matter to what I’m writing are these:

- it takes place on a world a lot like Earth but it’s not exactly earth and it evolved completely separately from our planet (which is to say, it’s not a long-lost colony in the future)

- the larger culture has the run of the place. They’re a lot like our worst vices – obsessed with television, movies, fantasy, escapism, money, sports, competition. Their world is called “extramuros” by the other group of people on the planet, who call themselves the “mathic.”

- there are a bunch of little colonies called “concents,” that are like a combination of cloistered monastery and university. The people in them are like monks who have only their clothes as their possessions. Their chief features are 1) they are largely self-sufficient 2) they have very limited contact with the outside world.

This contact is restricted depending on what kind of avout you are – the “unarians” open their gate to the outside world once a year. The “decenarians” open their gate to the extramuros world (and to the other avouts) every ten years, every hundred years for the “centenarians” and every thousand years to the “millenarians.” These groups mostly recruit from the newly-born and lower maths. This is to say, the Millenarians are only seen every thousand years, so most avout never see one! And because they have so much time for self-reflection and really detailed, slow, long-view studies that they’re said to have amazing, secret powers.

Well, there are all different kinds of “concents” (it’s a kind of convent, see?). Some of them even have legends about each other. One of those legendary concents is the Ringing Vale concent, known for their apparent study of “vale lore,” or martial arts.

So get this – these guys have been studying martial arts for thousands of years, mostly uninterrupted and with very little polluting contact with the fly-by-night saecular world. They don’t have a huge role in the book but it’s pivotal.

One of their central concepts is the idea of an “emergence.” The main character who hears the word spoken in context thinks the Ringing Vale avout means “emergency,” but she explains it further.

See, in the confines of a concent, you can’t really test martial arts. Sure, you can throw each other around and maybe do some hardcore sparring, but in the end it’s still nothing like real combat.

So, when some of these guys go out into the real world (which, again, is rare), they consider opportunities to test their knowledge in real-world circumstances as an emergence. It’s when they find their purpose in life – an emergence is like a hadj, a pilgrimage.

When it happens in the book, a small group of Valers (as they’re called) turn back an entire riot, in the kind of crunching, surgical, kinetic fight scene that few writers can do and Neal Stephenson can always do.

It makes me think of my own moments of emergence, and how those are what we work for.

Stay tuned for further reflection.

If these things were true:

1) I have an illness that is not easily treated and that requires hospitalization
2) I have a lot of money and nothing to spend it on

Then I would do the following:

1) Pay Hugh Laurie a few million dollars to act like Dr. House
2) Pay a writer for House to write snappy dialogue for him
3) Pay the best doctors in the world to diagnose and treat me

Everything the doctors have to tell me they will tell Hugh Laurie instead, and then he will limp into room with fake reluctance and tell me that I was going to die but then come back after a few hours, pretending that he had reached some kind of epiphany and do something clever to cure me and then tell me that I’m going to be okay.

I would even spring for a cardboard cutout of Lisa Edelstein to stand in the hallway, making this face:

Here’s my wish:

I wish I could see a video of Hugh Laurie singing and playing piano on one of my favorite Dr John songs, all while wearing a delightful hat.

What’s that you say, World Wide Web?

You granted my wish!

These songs were spilled forth from my iPod, which gave them to me in random order based on my listening habits. That is to say, they’re all 5 star songs culled from a Played Most Often playlist, and I think most relevant to my current listening habits.

The links go to live versions or videos (or even videos of live versions). I suggest that if you want to know what kind of music I listen to, you peruse this selection.

1. Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution – AC/DC
2. Teardrop – Massive Attack
3. Hi – Psapp
4. (Nothing But) Flowers – Talking Heads
5. Less Talk More Rokk – Freezepop
6. Skin O’ My Teeth – Megadeth
7. Dun Ringill – Jethro Tull (gloriously cheesy)
8. Megalomania – Black Sabbath
9. Underground – Ben Folds Five
10. Fiery Crash – Andrew Bird
11. White Queen – Queen

Dexter is like alternating current and the push-up bra – things I wish I had come up with first.

I’m a little so-so on the show called Dexter, which is on HBO Showtime and which primarily concerns the star of the show and the character I referenced before, but they’re not the same thing. The show called Dexter is also about his boring sister and the boring lives of her boring colleagues. Compared to the narrative motions of the main character, all that other junk comes through as a sparse and unfitting police procedural with forensic overtones – a genre exhaustively covered by the Law & Order and CSI franchises.

Here’s the elevator pitch: Dexter is a serial killer who only kills bad guys who have evaded or cheated the system.

I would take it one step further: Dexter is a realistic take on superhero tropes.

I can prove it, too.

Dexter = Superhero.

1) Dexter is invulnerable to emotional harm. As a sociopath, he feels no real feelings of his own – he’s forced by society and his secret identity (see below) to pretend to have feelings. This also means that he’s impossible to intimidate, and that every decision he makes is perfectlyand mathematically calculated against his personal code of honor.

2) Dexter has a code of honor. Batman won’t kill the people he apprehends. That’s his code. Dexter has one, too, defined by his mentor and foster father, Harry. Dexter even calls it the Code of Harry. By adhering strictly to this code, he makes sure that he is always serving the greater good and only murders people who deserve it (again, according to the Code).

3) Dexter was taught by a mentor. Harry was a cop, so he recognized his foster son’s proclivities at an early age. Using his knowledge, Harry taught Dexter how to identify bad people (specifically, serial killers), how to cover his tracks, how to effectively kill living things and most importantly, taught Dexter a code of ethics.

4) Dexter has a secret identity. Most everybody in Dexter’s life thinks he’s just a normal guy. They have no idea that a monster lurks just below the surface of Dexter’s smile, because Dexter has ably crafted the perfect facsimile of human emotions and behaviors. Dexter feels no personal need for a girlfriend, but society expects him to have one. Like Bruce Wayne, Dexter only pursues a social life of any kind in order to satisfy the social expectations of a man like him, which serves to deflect suspicion.

5) Dexter has the perfect job for a crime fighter. Peter Parker is a photographer, Clark Kent is a reporter, Matt Murdoch is a prosecutor and Dexter is a forensic blood expert. All four of these professions make it easy for the hero beneath the secret identity to have access to important information and to be in the right place at the right time without raising suspicions.

6) Dexter rids society of bad guys. Batman puts them behind bars and Superman banishes them to other dimensions – Dexter focuses his intense need for ritualized murder into ridding the world of evil men and women. Serial killers are known for their stalking behavior, often learning a great deal about their victims before they strike. Dexter does this, too, by accumulating information on the crimes his victims have committed. This way, he can be certain that his victims deserve to die (according to the code).

But perhaps the most compelling reason for Dexter to be considered a superhero is in the very structure of the TV show and the ways in which Dexter’s character is explored. In one scene from the third episode of the series, Dexter’s dying foster father confirms Dexter’s own suspicions: that their overly helpful nurse has been secretly overdosing and poisoning her patients. Dexter’s father whispers to his son that it’s finally come time for Dexter to use his powers for good, in order to save his father and to save the other patients needlessly suffering and dying at her hands. It’s a scene right out of so many hero narratives, from comics to movies to mythology.

So you see, HBO Showtime’s Dexter series is not just about some serial killer – he’s a bona fide superhero, an otherwise psychotic man who uses his unique talents to fight evil and make the world safer for us regular blokes. He doesn’t wear a costume or a mask, but that makes him no less a hero for it.