What Liberals Can Learn from Charlie Kirk

/ nathangoldwag / 6 Comments

Over the last few days, if you’re active on political media, you have probably seen references to the “controversy” over a student’s failing grade on an essay at Oklahoma University. “To be what I think is clearly discriminated against for my beliefs and using freedom of speech, and especially for my religious beliefs, I think that’s just absurd.” Samantha Fulnecky has demanded that the (transgender) instructor be punished, and the school duly suspended the TA, and launched an investigation. Those familiar with these sorts of controversies will not be surprised to learn that Turning Point USA is responsible for escalating an undergrad grading dispute into a national discourse, or that Ms. Fulnecky’s mother is a conservative podcaster who is now demanding that transgender people be banned from teaching.

This is a standard playbook, one that has been repeated dozens, if not hundreds of times. We are now all arguing about the details of a Teaching Assistant’s grading rubric, while the practical outcome on the ground will be to continue the project of giving conservative students and activists veto power over educational institutions and curricula. In fact, it serves as nearly a perfect example of how TPUSA actually works to advance conservative goals, and why so much of the media discourse around it this year has been so misguided and useless.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: Ducks

/ nathangoldwag / Leave a comment

TITLE: Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands

AUTHOR: Kate Beaton

PUBLISHER: Drawn and Quarterly

DATE: 2022

I don’t usually review graphic novels on here, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never reviewed a memoir or a work of nonfiction, but this one deserves it. I’ve been a huge fan of Kate Beaton since long before she got famous, back when she was still toiling away in the webcomic mines at Hark! A Vagrant. I’ve been thrilled to see her get so much attention for her full-length graphic novels the last few years, and none of them deserved it more than her inaugural work Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. It’s a genuine masterpiece of the form, a beautifully-illustrated portrait of the stark, bitter beauty of the Alberta frontier, an exploration of how you are shaped by a culture of diaspora, at home and abroad, and a deeply personal story of leaving home and finding yourself in a new, ugly, ambiguous world of adulthood, far away from home. Ducks is an indictment of the Canadian oil industry, as well as a celebration of the people who work in it, and an attempt to portray it as it was, and how she experienced it. “Everyone’s oil sands are different, and these were mine.”

BACKGROUND:

It’s a familiar story, if you listen to Canadian folk music, especially the haunting baritone of Stan Rogers. Rogers was a from a Maritime family, who had moved to Ontario to work in the factories before he was born, and in his chronicles of the life of Canada in the 1980s, he sang about the next step, as the factories closed, and people moved west in search of jobs and money and hope. “So bid farewell to the Eastern town/You never more will see/There’s self-respect and a steady cheque/In this refinery.” Graduating from college in 2005, with a heavy load of student debt and a humanities degree she didn’t know how to use, Kate Beaton found herself making the same choice, decades later, and taking a job in the booming oil sands business of Alberta. She was there for two years, 2005-2006, and then again from 2007-2008. She paid off her debts, and made enough money to start building the career she wanted, but at the cost of experiences and memories she’ll never forget. This is the story of why she went West, and what she found there.

CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND VIOLENCE

Continue reading →

Exploring the Past Precedents of the Political Futures of New York Mayors

/ nathangoldwag / 4 Comments

It’s been a few days now since the historic victory of Zohran Mamdani in the NYC mayoral election, defeating Andrew Cuomo for the second time and winning over a million votes in a mayoral election for the first time since 1969. It’s incredibly exciting, as a backbench state assemblyman virtually unknown less than a year ago has triumphed over the scion of one of New York’s most stored political dynasties. Mere days later, months before Mamdani has even been sworn in, it has already begun inspiring talk of his political future, and what path that may take. This is premature, but it’s also unsurprising, given the context of NYC mayoral politics. Almost every mayor of my life has attempted a presidential run—Giuliani, Bloomberg, and de Blasio—with the high-profile nature of the office proving an irresistible temptation for the ambitious. It was transparently clear that Andrew Cuomo had no interest in the actual office of mayor, and that he saw the office as nothing more as a stepping stone back into state politics after his humiliating resignation. But this raises an interesting point—given how many New York mayors develop national political ambitions, how many of them pan out? The answer may surprise you, and perhaps several of the previous residents of Gracie Mansion.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: The Shiva Option

/ nathangoldwag / 3 Comments

TITLES: In Death Ground, The Shiva Option

AUTHORS: David Weber, Steve White

SERIES: Starfire

PUBLISHER: Baen Books

DATES: 1997, 2003

The first time I read The Shiva Option I was bored out of of my mind. Despite being a huge fan of David Weber’s style of space opera, I found myself having to drive myself through 768 pages of incredibly repetitive set-piece space battles through shear force of will, and once I finished, I didn’t feel much need to revisit it. I no longer own that particular paperback copy, because I gave it away during one of my periodic purges of my personal library. Then, many years later, I purchased the omnibus ebook edition of the series, I think mostly because I learned that it included an unabridged copy of Insurrection (1990), a different book in this series that I really liked. And what I discovered rereading The Shiva Option–and its prequel, In Death Ground–is that despite every single thing I remembered hating about it still being true, I had kind of developed an unironic love for it. I have since read these two books at least half-a-dozen times, maybe more. They’re not great works of literature. I’m not even sure they’re very good works of genre fiction. Certainly, David Weber has written much better. But they fill a certain niche in my reading habits that I cannot ignore, and I want to talk about, because I think The Shiva Option is the white noise machine of science fiction.

BACKGROUND:

For sixty years, the Terran Federation has expanded unmolested though the web of wormholes that nit together the Universe. Humanity is strong, proud, and confident—the possessors of the most powerful industrial plant in known space, the largest empire of colonies, and a tradition of victory that the Terran Federation Navy simply takes for granted. It was the TFN that met and stopped the fanatical Orion warriors cold in the First and Second Interstellar Wars, and the TFN that rearmed and retrained the Orion Khanate for their emergency coalition against the genocidal Rigelians. Unquestioned and unchallenged as the Galaxy’s premier power, Terra fears nothing—until now. The Bugs didn’t send any challenges. They didn’t issues ultimatums, or press demands. They simply spewed forth from their wormholes in fleets larger than anything anyone had ever seen, and pressed forward inexorably. Fleets were destroyed, colonies vanished, entire chains of wormholes cut off and silent. But the men and women of the Terran Federation Navy won’t go silent into that good night. With their allies, and their former enemies, they will stand and fight for the cause, their nation, and their freedom.

Continue reading →

Returning to Narnia (Part Two)

/ nathangoldwag / 21 Comments

I don’t remember the first time I read the Chronicles of Narnia. Possibly my dad read them to me when I was very little? It was just one of those series that was foundational to my childhood, it was always there, and everything else I read was seen in relation to it. I don’t remember the last time I read it either. I remember seeing the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in theaters in 2010 (which was awful, by the way), and thinking about maybe going back and rereading the books afterwards, so it must have been a while even then. When I first read Lord of the Rings for myself, I think in fourth or fifth grade, I was deeply charmed by the blurb on the back of my copy from C.S. Lewis. “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” Which I think we can all agree is probably one of the best blurbs ever delivered, but it also deeply amused me that two of my favorite authors had been best friends.

But Lord of the Rings has continued to be one of the foundational texts of my adulthood, as you can see from my writing on the subject. Narnia slipped away into the past. Hardly surprising, given the themes and subject matter of the books, of course, but it’s something I’ve thought about, now and again. For such important books to me, it’s been a long time since I’ve explored them. So I think it’s time to change that. I have a lot of free time on my hands right now, and so, for the first time in twenty years or so, I’m going to dive back through the wardrobe and into Narnia, and see what those books are like as an adult.

In Part One, we covered The Magician’s Nephew, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and The Horse and His Boy. Today we’ll pick up with Prince Caspian and run through the end of the series.

Continue reading →

Returning to Narnia (Part One)

/ nathangoldwag / 19 Comments

I don’t remember the first time I read the Chronicles of Narnia. Possibly my dad read them to me when I was very little? It was just one of those series that was foundational to my childhood, it was always there, and everything else I read was seen in relation to it. I don’t remember the last time I read it either. I remember seeing the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in theaters in 2010 (which was awful, by the way), and thinking about maybe going back and rereading the books afterwards, so it must have been a while even then. When I first read Lord of the Rings for myself, I think in fourth or fifth grade, I was deeply charmed by the blurb on the back of my copy from C.S. Lewis. “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” Which I think we can all agree is probably one of the best blurbs ever delivered, but it also deeply amused me that two of my favorite authors had been best friends.

But Lord of the Rings has continued to be one of the foundational texts of my adulthood, as you can see from my writing on the subject. Narnia slipped away into the past. Hardly surprising, given the themes and subject matter of the books, of course, but it’s something I’ve thought about, now and again. For such important books to me, it’s been a long time since I’ve explored them. So I think it’s time to change that. I have a lot of free time on my hands right now, and so, for the first time in twenty years or so, I’m going to dive back through the wardrobe and into Narnia, and see what those books are like as an adult.

Continue reading →

Equality of Man Before His Creator

/ nathangoldwag / 12 Comments

Last year, around Thanksgiving, my friend Cooper drove up from Washington D.C. to visit me in Lancaster, PA, where I was visiting family. Among other things, we went to pay our respects at Thaddeus Stevens’ grave. It wasn’t the first time I’d been there–my grandfather used to literally live around the corner from the cemetery–but there was a certain resonance, standing there so shortly after the 2024 elections. We knew then that things were going to be bad, though we didn’t know how bad, or quickly they would get there. But I saw two things that day that made me want to cry, and have stuck with me since. I don’t know that they gave me hope, exactly. But they gave me a sense of perspective, and it’s something that I have returned to repeatedly over the least year, as the work of generations is gutted in months on the whim of a tyrant and his lackeys. We are in a profound crisis of American democracy, one that will likely end with our country weaker, more corrupt, and more authoritarian than it was before, even if we successfully “defeat” the scourge of Trumpism.

I am not here to promise victory. I am here to remind you that the cause endures.

Continue reading →

The Eternal Empire

/ nathangoldwag / 15 Comments

For a long time now, one of my perennial interests has been the way that science fiction interacts with concepts of scale and scope. It’s one of those things that is usually invisible, to the mechanics of the actual story, but is absolutely load-bearing in terms of what kind of story you can tell, and how you tell it. Specifically, the root of this particular project came about from me thinking about the concept of the infinitely-large Galactic Empire, which is commonplace in SciFi enough to be a cliche, going all the way back to Issac Asimov in Foundation (1951). We see it so often that we take it for granted, and when it is interrogated or deconstructed, the trend tends to be towards exploring all of the ways in which it is a logical impossibility, a farce or a fallacy that cannot exist as it described. The Terran Empire in Poul Anderson’s Technic Civilization Saga, or the Imperium of Man in in Warhammer 40,0000, or even much of the discourse surrounding Andor, and other recent Star Wars properties. In other properties, such as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power or Voltron: Legendary Defender (which I think are the two that actually mostly inspired this), the practicalities are ignored entirely, in favor of thematic and plot use.

There’s a reason for that, of course, which is that it doesn’t really make any sense, but I don’t see why that should stop us. Which is a long-winded way of saying that I got interested in trying to imagine how such an Empire could exist, function and work. What would it look like? I wouldn’t call the ensuring project “realistic” exactly, but let’s say “serious”, in that it attempts to take the trope literally on its own terms. I’ve been thinking about this, on and off, for several years now, and the following is the result: a short story from the perspective of an alien diplomat and a illegitimate noble about what it means for an Empire to be eternal and infinite, and an appended document containing copious worldbuilding notes, a glossary, a timeline, and organizational charts of the Imperial government.

Continue reading →

BOOK REVIEW: The Raven Tower

/ nathangoldwag / 4 Comments

TITLE: The Raven Tower

AUTHOR: Ann Leckie

PUBLISHER: Orbit

DATE: 2019

Fantasy, as a genre, is no stranger to Gods. It is by now an almost pro forma part of the traditional formula, for any author to populate the background of their psuedo-Medieval world with the requisite pantheon of Olympian or Norse knockoffs, usually provided simply to for one’s clerics to have a power source. The author Lois McMaster Bujold once memorably described this type of religion as “sacrifice a virgin, get a miracle.” It is mechanistic, treating the divine as simply a system for powering religious magic, or as background detail. Fantasy is about The Past™, and we know that people in The Past™ believed in Gods, and so we feel the need to populate our worlds with them. But how often do authors really try and imagine what that would be like? Bujold did, in The Curse of Chalion, one of my favorite books of all-time, and certainly my favorite fantasy take on religion. And while it still holds that crown, Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower has surged into second place. Leckie takes the idea of “Gods”, of beings of immense spiritual power, with the ability to reshape the world around them, and then thinks through what such a world would be like, for Gods and for humans both. The result is remarkable.

BACKGROUND:

The nation of Iraden is small, but prosperous and strong, and secure in its riches, for it and all its people dwell under the protection of the Raven. The Raven rules His people through His Lease, chosen servant of the God, and his sacrifice and together they have built a powerful state out of what once was mere disunified tribes and townsfolk. But now, something has changed. Mawat, Prince of Iraden, has returned home to take his place on the Bench, to find the city in turmoil. There is a new Lease, one whose accession is dogged by accusations and rumors. The Raven’s instrument, His embodiment, is silent. Within the city, nobles and merchants and citizens maneuver for power, while Mawat seeks to find answers as to what has happened to his father. And caught in the middle of this chaos is Eolo, Mawat’s adjutant and loyal servant, who wishes only to do his duty. But something very powerful, and very old, has caught notice of Eolo. And nothing for him will ever be the same again.

Continue reading →

Frogs, Newts, Robots, & Family: How Amphibia Proves its Worth

/ nathangoldwag / Leave a comment

I am profoundly bigoted against frogs. This isn’t a joke. When I was like, five years old, in Zoo Camp, they showed us a documentary about frogs or something and it had a thirty-second clip from an old horror movie about a frog-man (?) and it traumatized me for life. I was a very sensitive child. The point is, people started recommending Amphibia to me several years ago, in that it was very similar to a lot of other modern animated television shows that I like a lot, and I kept avoiding it, because I was frankly biased against the idea of giant talking frogs. Sorry, I don’t care if it’s about the importance of found families and teenagers learning valuable life lessons about growing up and also an interdimensional invasion of Earth by an army of giant newts, I don’t want to deal with it. Then, something changed. I got really bored, and ran out of other TV to watch. Also I was sick. So I watched Amphibia, and it was really good! It’s a very fun Disney animation take on an isekai plot, with some really lovely characters, fun worldbuilding, great themes, and a delightfully deranged escalation curve.

  1. The trope of “teenager or child is thrown into a fantasy world, has to learn many valuable lessons” is pretty well-worn at this point, but it gets used so often because it works, and Amphibia puts enough new spins on the formula to make it feel interesting. One cool feature is that we start in media res, with our protagonist, Anne Boonchuy, having already been transported to Amphibia, a parallel dimension inhabited by giant talking frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, etc. We get most of the first episode from the perspective of Sprig Plantar, a ten year-old frog boy in the little town of Wartwood, encountering Ann as a monster haunting the woods, and being hunted down by angry mobs. Which is a nice perspective flip! We don’t really learn the whole story of how Anne got teleported to Amphibia until the end of the first season, which helps keep the focus on her adventures, and maintains a good sense of mystery. Anne is, in general, a really fun character to follow, and is written in a really interesting and compelling style. Comparison here has to be made with The Owl House, another Disney animated show airing around the same time, also about a girl getting transported to a magical parallel dimension. But while The Owl House’s Luz Noceda is a huge nerd, obsessed with magic, who runs away to the Boiling Isles to escape a boring summer camp, Anne is–well, kind of just a slacker and a goofball. She’s irresponsible, an underachiever, someone who has been just kind of wandering through life and school willy-nilly, and who takes the same approach to Amphibia, with predictably catastrophic and hilarious results.
Continue reading →