Gobblin.net’s Year In Review Pt.1 6 comments

It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means. A week ago I had every intention of doing my part for blogging tradition by posting a top 10 list or two, but try as I might, I couldn’t really think of any category of stuff that I had 10 things worth recommending or punditizing. I love video games, for example, but considering that I still haven’t played GTA4, Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, Gears of War 2, Left for Dead or Wrath of the Lich King, would a top-10 list mean anything? So I guess I’ll buck the list trend and post my very personal highlights and trends of the past year. Nothing too formal — just a chance to reflect in public. Part 1 covers food, music and books. Part 2 will recap highlights in movies, games and life.  Even though there aren’t any rankings to dispute in the comments section, please do share your own highlights and hopes! Read more »

Anathematize This 2 comments

After three months on the wait list, I finally got my library copy of Neal Stephenson’s Anathem. Twenty pages in, I was ready to concede that XKCD nailed the book with a graph:

Thankfully I kept pushing through. It’s not the pretentious or misguided imagineering of the sort that sent Clive Barker’s initially brilliant Imajica into a pear-shaped spiral. No, Stephenson is decidedly in the Lewis Carrol world of word play, only in a more nerdy, less whimsical mindset. This is a book for people who like words, and if you feel the need to apologize for the language to justify the book (as many bloggers and online reviewers seem to do), then I think you’re missing the point.

Generally speaking, I don’t mind a few made up words here and there (I must like them or I’m a total hypocrite, given how I sprinkle them in Return to Labyrinth), as long as the words feel like the people in that world would actually use them in normal conversation (which is where I thought Imajica gets a fail). J.K. Rowling does this brilliantly for the most part. Stephen King is a talented jargonsmith (Lobstrocities = portmanteau perfection), but sometimes he seems a little too gratuitous with his faux-mots (does anyone in the world of the Dark Tower NOT carry their gun in a “Docker’s Clutch”?)

Anybody care to nominate a best or worst book for made-up words?

I’ll withhold final judgment on Anathem till I’m finished, but for now, I’m glad I stuck it out.

Also for bookophiles, definitely check out this list of the year’s best book covers.

Also, also, update: Oh, crap. I pre-ordered The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Collector’s Edition months ago, and promptly forgot about the order until I just received a shipping notice. The deluxe binding better be worth the pricetag!

Fullmetal Freelancer 12 comments

This weekend I dug into the script edit for the 20th volume of Fullmetal Alchemist. The series is noteworthy for me as:

1. It’s the highest number of volumes that I’ve been involved with editing/adapting a manga series
2. It’s the last translated manga series I’m still involved with
3. 20 volumes is quite an achievement for a monthly series that has long since passed its anime heydey
4. The series amazes by continuing to get better and tighter with every volume!

Any anime fan who’s followed the scene for the last five years is probably quite familiar with this ongoing tale of angst and alchemy, but if you’ve only experienced Fullmetal in its animated form, you’re really missing out. The manga, still going strong in Japan and the US (courtesy of Viz), diverged from the anime back in volume 9.

In the anime, characters opined on the horrors of war and unchecked primal sins, but in the end, the characters managed to remain firmly in the innocent realm of adolecense. Evil, in the anime, remains a very fantastical thing. Characters serve symbolic roles as shockingly adult themes are gracefully skirted around, but I never felt like Ed and Al’s world was really… real.

The manga take on the Elric brothers’ journey deals with many of the same themes, but instead of bringing the world down to the level of its teenage protagonists, it challenges the characters and the readers by keeping the world distinctly adult. It isn’t just the gritty take on war and genocide (volumes 16 and 19 are largely dedicated to flashbacks in which entire cultures are wiped out). Even though Fullmetal is a shonen manga from a teen magazine, characters like Roy Mustang, Scar, Izumi Curtis and, at long last, Van Hoenheim, are as richly drawn as the adults in a seinen manga mangazine. The series never panders — it’s just great drama.

The manga-ka, Hiromu Arakawa (a woman in a man’s world) coninues to amaze with art that continues to improve in detail, but remains grounded by its focus on character. Even as the scope of the series grows more epic, her art style becomes more intimate. Hers are the most soulful eyes I’ve seen in a shonen series

I’m credited as rewriter on this series, but mostly, I consider myself more of a copy editor and caretaker. The translator, Akira Watanabe, does an absolutely incredible job. It doesn’t really need a “rewrite” in the sense that some other translations I’ve worked on do. There’s an occassional stiff line, and sometimes he uses a combination of words that are a little too verbose to fit in small balloons, but really, my role is more like a chisel than a sledgehammer, which is how it should be.

Volume 17 of Fullmetal Alchemist is the latest volume to be published in English. This volume takes place almost entirely in the frozen base of Fort Briggs. We get our first showdown (or is should that be slowdown) with Sloth, the sixth of the Homunculi, as well as a first glimpse at a new foe (who if you do the math with the seven deadly sins, you can probably identify). Volume 18 is a solid installment, but it’s volume 19 that really answers questions that longtime readers have been wondering for years now. Van Hoenheim’s backstory is incredible and casts many events of the last few volumes in a whole new light. Volume 20 is shaping up to be even better, as we get to see the undoing of one of the remaining Homunculi, as well as a return to Prince Lin (aka Greed 2.0). When after a hard days work I find myself eager to find out what happens next, I know I’m a part of something great. Arakawa-sensei, my hat goes off to you.

Toon Twisters 3 comments

Despite having several cartoonist, friends, I’ve never been very good at keeping up with webcomics–the only ones I read with any regularity are Dinosaur Comics, Penny Arcade and Achewood. Thanks to the link from Ryan North of Dino Comics, I’ve got a new favorite comic to follow up with — MS Paint Adventures! It’s basicaly an old school King’s Quest 1 era adventure game in comics form where the artist, Andrew Hussie, sets up a scenario and page by page, readers suggest the actions for the character to do, and then the next day, there’s new pages based on the suggestions. It’s really quite brilliant. Considering how deep his archives are, I’m probably quite late to the party, but for those like me who have never read it, there’s plenty of content to keep you reading!

For more choose-your-own-adventure style comics, I highly recommend the works of Jason Shiga. Whereas MSPA is a community-driven game, filtered through an artist, Shiga’s works are the insanely clever creations of one man whose brain must be structured like a moebius strip of neurons. You can try out several of his interactive works online, but to really get a sense of how amazing they are, you have to see the hand-crafted printed copies. Such is his brilliance that the comics medium alone cannot contain him! He is also a blackbelt in LEGO technic wizardry, as demonstrated by a hand-cranked arm wrestling machine that he built out of the plastic bricks. Does his brilliance know no bounds? Recently he has (no joke) taken up performing raps about Tupac’s sexual orientation. Perhaps it does.

What I Read about when I Read Murakami 4 comments

Do you have an author who, when you read their words, makes you feel as if you were the only one they were writing for all along? Someone who reminds you that books, no matter how big the print run, are an incredibly intimate medium? Haruki Murakami is such an author for me.

I was introduced to Murakami at a very formative time under very swoony circumstances. Even if the book didn’t connect with me directly, I’d still remember it for that reason. But while the passions that accompanied Norwegian Wood on first reading will forever be confined to a time and a place, my love of Murakami endures. In fact, I would credit Murakami with rekindling my actual love of reading when a film degree and career in comics distracted me from novels.

When I read Murakami, I relish the honesty. Murakami’s characters, and his voice as narrator, are disarmingly frank. The way his characters talk is definitely reminiscent of Raymonds Carver and Chandler, Fitzgerald and Salinger—as well it should as he translates the lot of them into Japanese—but for me, the author I’m reminded most of is Lewis Carrol. Murakami makes the real and the surreal equally mundane—and frightening—while keeping the “adult world” distant. His stories tend to take place in a vacuum within our reality—they are modern characters (in a very nostalgic way) but they behave according to fairy tale logic. Even though Murakami’s works can be quite erotic, it always has an aura of childlike innocence about it.

When I read Murakami, I savor the minutiae. Perhaps no other author has spent as much time describing the process of scrounging up meals from whatever’s in the fridge, consuming that meal, then washing the dishes. Murakami’s meals are never extravagant—they’re comfort food. Reading his descriptions of simple food stirs the same sense of contentment as eating a bowl of mac and cheese on a chilly fall evening.

When I read Murakami, I lose myself in the puzzle and couldn’t care less about the solution. Murakami is a master of the literary mystery. His books are filled with clues and red herrings, and joining the protagonists on literal or psychological goose chases makes for an amazing experience. My boyish brain often falls into the trap of trying to rationalize what defies explanation, but Murakami has helped me to accept that sometimes the unexplained is okay.

A couple weeks ago I read Murakami’s latest release—What I Talk About when I Talk About Running. At a slim 190 pages, it’s one of his breeziest works in both word count and substance. Murakami—who am I fooling, after reading this book I feel like we’re on a first name basis!—Haruki goes into great detail about his running regime, with his usual frank and conversational tone. I don’t know if it’s the translation, or the informalness of the essays collected here, but something about the style feels a little…off. It’s still 100% Haruki, but it’s almost as if he’s picked up some of the false-modesty that his characters are so refreshingly oblivious too. (Haruki’s blithe dismissal of global warming, in particular, really irks).

Still, even mediocre Murakami is top-shelf reading for me. The fact that the subject matter serendipitously coincided with my own renewed pursuit of running made it a much more engaging read than it would have been at any other time. Murakami writes about how he first took to running, when he was 32 years old and at the very start of his writing career. I try not to fall into the writer’s trap of comparing my own professional timeline with those of others (Fitzgerald had already written Gatsby by the time he was my age!), but I confess to feeling some hope when reading that Murakami didn’t even consider writing (or running!) until he was the age I was now. So what if I’ve only written licensed tie-ins so far – that’s more than Haruki had! It’s a stupid reaction to have, but I’m sure Haruki would understand.

Now when I go out to run I can’t help but think about Haruki. I might not run a marathon a year like he does, but we’ve got a little something in common, and should we ever run into each other in a Tokyo jazz bar, maybe we could talk about it over a cold beer.

Reading Rainbow 16 comments

I love books. Not just for the words inside, but the way they smell, the way they look on a shelf, the way they sit in your hand… I love old books with illustrations that speak to a different era and new books that use the latest laminating techniques for eye catching covers. Books are pretty great.

Through my teenage years and into my twenties, I never once checked out a library book – why would I need to when I had a veritable library at my fingertips at the bookstore where I worked? As it was a used bookstore, I was allowed to borrow, but I usually bought them anyway. By the time I graduated from college and left retail, amazon.com had trained me on a new way of satisfying my reading itch, sans shipping and sales tax. Working in publishing, even more books came my way – both ones I worked on and the comp copies sent from friends at other companies. It’s only when I moved—eight times in as many years—and had to cart those 20+ boxes of my prized collection, that I regretted my bibliophilia.

A few months ago, I finally swore off buying books impulsively and joined the 21st century by getting a library card. (Seeing as I live within 3 blocks of the San Francisco public library, I no longer had an excuse not to). So much has changed since I was pudgy and wee and checking out books about mice on motorcycles and vampire bunnies. Did you know that you can browse the card catalog…online?! And what more, they’ll even pull the books and have them sitting at the counter all wrapped up for you and ready to go. I know! It’s like all this time, it’s been Max Keebler day and nobody told me!

So far I’ve caught up on Kim Stanley Robinson, saved myself $20 a pop by borrowing the latest from Paul Auster and Murakami, learned about the wonders of tulips and the evils of corn courtesy of Michael Pollan, read about gold farmers, Hadals of the subcontinent, Yzordderrex and expats. On queue, I’ve got Stephenson sci-fi, Sweedish noir and some T.C. Boyle I skipped before.

The freedom offered by a library—no cost, no commitment, virtually no limits—is both exhilarating and intimidating. I’ll discover a hundred new bands in a year and see as many films and I feel pretty well informed about both, but books? As much as I love them, when it comes to reading, I’m still such a novice.

I don’t really have any point to make today—rather, I need to flex my blogging muscles just a little (as I’ve been flexing my poor legs trying to get back into jogging) before I lose all momentum. Consider this a warm up for what will hopefully be a more substantial posting in the next day or two.

We Are Scientists 9 comments

I don’t remember learning much from the two years I spent at community college. If I try hard enough, I can vaguely recall testing for mineral hardness, or learning that most archaeologists make a living by inspecting construction sites, not excavating jungle tombs (way to crush my Indiana Jones dreams, Mr. whateveryournamewas!) , but the truth is, I wasn’t that motivated by school anymore. Having sort of sabotaged my academic momentum by not bothering to really apply to universities, I found myself without any real goals or real hope for change.

I found inspiration in the summer of 1996, ironically enough, in astronomy, sociology, geology, anthropology, ecology (and plenty other -ologies)…just not in the classroom. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and its sequels, Green Mars and Blue Mars, opened my eyes to a new kind of optimism. His scientist heroes weren’t trying to take us to “The Future!”—they were trying to build a present that didn’t trip over the mistakes of the past. His books are packed with scientific detail, but they are never about science—they are about people who think scientifically. The Mars trilogy reawakened my pre-teen optimism for a glorious tomorrow, where men and women from around the world could put aside their differences and really change the world for the better! I still didn’t know what my place would be in this glorious utopian revolution, but at least I’d found hope again, and I’d discovered a damn good writer in the process.

Shortly thereafter, when I transferred to USC for film school, I read and enjoyed Robinson’s next novel, Antarctica (I even tried to persuade the development company I was interning with to option it!), but after that, fell out of touch with old KSR. By the time I checked up on him again, he was already 2 books in to his next trilogy, one about global warming. Blue Mars deals with the repercussions of global warming—does my erstwhile favorite writer really need to stoop to Roland Emmerich material now, I thought as I looked at the sensationalist covers that seemed far too Tom Clancy for my tastes. It wasn’t until last month that I finally caved.

Here we were, in the heat of election season, with my now officially confirmed guy talking about change, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it’s silly, but when I was struggling to get excited about our real world heroes, I looked again to Robinsons’ science heroes for inspiration.

Forty Signs of Rain, the first of the “Science in the Capital” trilogy starts off slowly to be sure, and chapters dedicated to daddy day care and grant endorsements weren’t exactly reigniting the old flames. It wasn’t until about half way through that you really even have a sense of what this series is really about. And it wasn’t until the second volume, 50 Degrees Below, that I realized how invested I was in the main character, Frank. The more I read, the more impressed I became with how Robinson weaves together threads of bio-engineering, politics, Buddhism, privacy, terraforming, Emerson, homelessness and neuropsychology—he forces you to question what it means to be responsible modern human. In his world, there are no pat answers, yet he isn’t afraid to take a stand. Robinson is, as always, an optimist and an idealist, and while that might at times come of as hokey, I am glad to share in it. Especially now. Welcome back into my heat, Kim Stanley Robinson. I’m sorry I ever took off your friendship bracelet.

The Force is Strong with This One 9 comments

So my next writing project has finally showed up on Amazon. Guess it’s not a secret any more! A few months back I penned a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type book for Penguin Books as a tie in for the upcoming Clone Wars movie and TV show. Unlike the rest of the bevy of books Penguin is releasing with this license, “The Way of the Jedi” features a cast of original characters, with the protagonist — a nameless Padawan — being anonymous so as to let you, the reader, cast this role as you wish. Readers of the site know this isn’t my first dabbling with Star Wars books, or my first stab at a choose-your-own-adventure story, but to write one on this scale, and for such a respected publisher… well, it was an amazing opportunity. I hope that kids will enjoy this book as much as I used to enjoy reading and re-reading the works of Edward Packard and R.A. Montgomery back in the day.

What made writing this so much fun was coming up with all the semi-gruesome “bad endings.” Yes, your Jedi-in-training can be eaten alive, turned into a cyborg, tempted to the dark side, among a couple dozen other possible fates. Not quite so simple was trying to write for what Star Wars canon is now with a personal vision from another era. Timothy Zahn and even Republic Commando have little bearing on Clone Wars. If I was an encyclopedia of nerdery before, I came out of this experience with a whole new tome of obscure jargon.

Thanks to my editor, Rob Valois (who was also the editor who got Return to Labyrinth going!) for the opportunity.

Elegy for Old Books (And the people and places that sell them) 18 comments

When your parents are no longer together, and neither lives within a thousand miles of where you grew up, when your friends and family are scattered across the country, and when you haven’t spent more than a year or two in one place without moving during your adult life, what is the place you go home to? What place serves as the nucleus of your life, where, no matter how things change, you can always count on to keep you grounded? For me, that place has been Leon’s Bookstore. And as of next month, Leon’s – my home away from home – is shutting its doors forever. Read more »

Food for Thought — Manga Tasting! 10 comments

My friend Jason Thompson, author of Manga: The Complete Guide, recently invited me over for a unique (to say the least) evening of manga smelling, tasting and snobbish silliness. The event is captured in his article for OtakuUSA. Check it out for a rare glimpse at at the madness that goes into reviewing manga (and an even rarer glimpse of bescarfed and Beard-Type me). A sample set of reviews of Rin! (a yaoi title):

JASON: This sweet nectar-like 2002 exhibits a pleasantly yeasty and honey- and raisin-scented nose. A pretty, elegant, feminine effort, it possesses excellent focus as well as depth of fruit. In short, extremely fruity.
JAKE: As someone who’s new to this variety, I find it surprisingly tame and a very mild flavor. I was expecting a bold taste explosion in my mouth, but it goes down surprisingly easy.
RYAN: A lean body, but not yet a mature and balanced finish.

Read the full article at OtakuUSA