Reprint: Transgender Saints!

 

Christianity has long revered saints who would be called ‘transgender’ today

Sarah Barringer, University of Iowa

Several Republican-led states have restricted transgender rights: Iowa has signed a law removing civil rights protection for transgender people; Wyoming has prohibited state agencies from requiring the use of preferred pronouns; and Alabama recently passed a law that only two sexes would be recognized. Hundreds of bills have been introduced in other state legislatures to curtail trans rights.

Earlier in the year, several White House executive orders pushed to deny trans identity. One of them, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” claimed that gender-affirming policies of the Biden administration were “anti-Christian.” It accused the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of forcing “Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith.”

To be clear, not all Christians are anti-trans. And in my research of medieval history and literature, I found evidence of a long history in Christianity of what today could be called “transgender” saints. While such a term did not exist in medieval times, the idea of men living as women, or women living as men, was unquestionably present in the medieval period. Many scholars have suggested that using the modern term transgender creates valuable connections to understand the historical parallels.

There are at least 34 documented stories of transgender saints’ lives from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally appearing in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints made their way into vernacular languages.

Transgender saints

Of the 34 original saints, at least three gained widespread popularity in medieval Europe: St. Eugenia, St. Euphrosyne and St. Marinos. All three were born as women but cut their hair and put on men’s clothes to live as men and join monasteries.

Eugenia, raised pagan, joined a monastery to learn more about Christianity and later became abbot. Euphrosyne joined a monastery to escape an unwanted suitor and spent the rest of his life there. Marinos, born Marina, decided to renounce womanhood and live with his father at the monastery as a man.

These were well-read stories. Eugenia’s story appeared in two of the most popular manuscripts of their day – Ælfric’s “Lives of Saints” and “The Golden Legend.” Ælfric was an English abbot who translated Latin saints’ lives into Old English in the 10th century, making them widely available to a lay audience. “The Golden Legend” was written in Latin and compiled in the 13th century; it is part of more than a thousand manuscripts.

Euphrosyne also appears in Ælfric’s saints’ lives, as well as in other texts in Latin, Middle English, and Old French. Marinos’ story is available in over a dozen manuscripts in at least 10 languages. For those who couldn’t read, Ælfric’s saints’ lives and other manuscripts were read aloud in churches during service on the saint’s day.

Euphrosyne of Alexandria. Anonymous via Wikimedia Commons

A small church in Paris built in the 10th century was dedicated to Marinos, and relics of his body were supposedly kept in Qannoubine monastery in Lebanon.

This is all to say, a lot of people were talking about these saints.

Reprint: Why we fall for fake health information – and how it spreads faster than facts

 

Why we fall for fake health information – and how it spreads faster than facts

Should you share that health-related Instagram post? Catherine McQueen/Moment via Getty Images

Angshuman K. Kashyap, University of Maryland

In today’s digital world, people routinely turn to the internet for health or medical information. In addition to actively searching online, they often come across health-related information on social media or receive it through emails or messages from family or friends.

It can be tempting to share such messages with loved ones – often with the best of intentions.

As a global health communication scholar studying the effects of media on health and development, I explore artistic and creative ways to make health information more engaging and accessible, empowering people to make informed decisions.

Although there is a fire hose of health-related content online, not all of it is factual. In fact, much of it is inaccurate or misleading, raising a serious health communication problem: Fake health information – whether shared unknowingly and innocently, or deliberately to mislead or cause harm – can be far more captivating than accurate information.

This makes it difficult for people to know which sources to trust and which content is worthy of sharing.

The allure of fake health information

Fake health information can take many forms. For example, it may be misleading content that distorts facts to frame an issue or individual in a certain context. Or it may be based on false connections, where headlines, visuals or captions don’t align with the content. Despite this variation, such content often shares a few common characteristics that make it seem believable and more shareable than facts.

For one thing, fake health information often appears to be true because it mixes a grain of truth with misleading claims.

For example, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, false rumors suggested that drinking ethanol or bleach could protect people from the virus. While ethanol or bleach can indeed kill viruses on surfaces such as countertops, it is extremely dangerous when it comes into contact with skin or gets inside the body.

Stopping to check the facts helps stem the spread of misinformation. World Health Organization adaptation from Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris in The Spinoff, CC BY-SA

Short Book Review: A Romp Through Lovecraft's Arkham

 The Ravening Deep (The Sanford Files), by Tim Pratt (Aconyte)

I’m a long-time fan of Tim Pratt, from his imaginative science fiction to his thoughtful, accessible novels set in gaming worlds. I quite understand why he undertook an adventure that’s part of Aconyte’s Lovecraftian “Arkham Horror” series—it’s a hoot! While it helps to have a superficial knowledge of the mythos, it’s not necessary. Pratt guides us into this world of mysteries and cults, the superficial normal, and the deeply horrific reality beneath.

Poor Abel Davenport! First, his fishing business dries up, then in a drunken stupor he unwittingly becomes the chief priest of a long-dead god (a gigantic, planet-devouring starfish, I kid you not), and before he knows it, the spirit of the aforementioned god has cloned him into extremely not-nice doppelgangers in its scheme to recover the last bit of its mortal flesh. Then there’s Diana Stanley, a shopkeeper who joined Arkham’s Silver Twilight Lodge in the mistaken belief it was a service club, only to learn, once it’s too late to back out, that its rituals are far darker…and bloodier. Ruby Standish, cat burglar par excellence, joins forces with Diana and Abel to pull off a heist at the Silver Twilight Lodge. Now the three of them must convince Carl Sanford, master of the Lodge, where the true danger lies. Part horror novel, part thriller, and very much part tongue-in-cheek romp, The Ravening Deep is a quick, delicious read that left me wishing for the next adventure…and just a wee bit wary of my seafood.

Verdict: Great fun, even for those not familiar with Lovecraft’s Arkham.

Article Review: Women Viking Warriors!

Recently, I came across this article on the widespread misconceptions about Vikings.

 

7 myths about the Vikings that are (almost) totally false

Misconceptions abound about Vikings. They are often depicted as bloodthirsty, unwashed warriors with winged helmets. But that's a poor picture based largely on Viking portrayals in the 19th century, when they featured in European art either as romantic heroes or exotic savages. The real Vikings, however, were not just the stuff of legend — and they didn't have wings or horns on their helmets.

This article sparked an online discussion about the myth that all Viking warriors were male. A friend posted:

A myth they didn't cover is the one that says all the Viking warriors were male. Archaeology is finally recognizing that finding weapons and even a horse skeleton in a grave cannot ensure that the buried person was a man. (It was a myth nurtured by XY archaeologists, convinced they knew it all.)

By sheer coincidence, I saw the article below and mentioned it to my friend. I imagined her grinning as she responded:

Yes - Birka shook everything up in the field, and is making them reevaluate conclusions about a number of earlier excavations.

Weapon-filled burials are shaking up what we know about women's role in Viking society

In Birka, Sweden, there is a roughly 1,000-year-old Viking burial teeming with lethal weapons — a sword, an ax-head, spears, knives, shields and a quiver of arrows — as well as riding equipment and the skeletons of two warhorses. Nearly 150 years ago, when the grave was unearthed, archaeologists assumed they were looking at the burial of a male warrior. But a 2017 DNA analysis of the burial's skeletal remains revealed the individual was female.

Across Scandinavia, at least a few dozen women from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) were buried with war-grade weapons. Collectively, these burials paint a picture that clashes violently with the hypermasculine image of the bearded, burly Viking warrior that has dominated the popular imagination for centuries. And it's possible that, due to gendered assumptions, archaeologists may be systematically undercounting the number of Viking women buried with weapons.

Archaeologists often guessed the deceased's sex based on grave goods, such as mirrors, weaving tools and brooches, which archaeologists assumed were typically buried with females, and battle-related weapons, which archaeologists thought were typically buried with males. If a Viking Age sword was the only item recovered, for example, it was nearly always assumed to be a male grave.

Book Review: Beware the Real Neverland

 The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy (Tachyon)

Peter Pan: We’ve all read the book, seen the play, or watched the animated film, so we know the drill: In Victorian London, three children are swept away to Neverland by PeterPanSpiritOfYouth, where they have many adventures battling pirates led by the dastardly Captain Hook. They leave behind a frantic, ineffectual mother, a bombastic, equally ineffective father, and a drooling dog nanny. Author Pat Murphy asks, Is that really what happened? What if Mary Darling had once been spirited away to be a “Mother” to the Lost Boys, despite her insistence that she is not a Mother? What if she understands all too well the deception and peril of the place and its capricious leader?

In Murphy’s retelling, after emerging from the first horrific shock of finding her children missing, with only one place they could have gone, Mary Darling determines to rescue them herself. Under the innocuous facade of a Victorian wife lies a powerful woman who has fought her way free of Neverland with considerable piratical skills. Of course, she encounters opposition, first in her husband, George, who is loving but befuddled by her “independent ways.” A more significant barrier comes from her uncle, Doctor John Watson, who enlists his friend, Sherlock Holmes, in determining what ails her. Holmes decides that Mary is the prime suspect in the disappearance of her children.

As Mary embarks on her quest to rescue her children before they either starve to death in Neverland or fall prey to Pan’s careless disregard for human life, her past reveals itself in layers. In past and present, we meet old friends and allies, people whose lives have been forever altered by their contact with Neverland. We also discover the reality behind J. M. Barrie’s imperialistic misrepresentation of indigenous peoples, the role and power of women, and the importance of memory.

The Adventures of Mary Darling is a brilliant re-imagining of a familiar tale, laying bare its folly and portraying the ingenuity, skill, and heroism of Mary and a host of other characters, invented and glossed-over. My favorite was James, a sweet gay boy, one of a series of Pan’s “Toodles,” and who later as Captain Hook proves to be one of Mary’s staunchest and most able supporters. It should come as neither surprise nor spoiler that Mr. Holmes never appreciates his loss in insisting that logic is the only reality.

Highly recommended.

 

Book Review: Victorian Detective Thriller Noir

 The Nightingale Affair, by Tim Mason (Algonquin)

A deliciously twisty Victorian detective thriller focusing on a serial killer with a sinister signature targeting Florence Nightingale and her valiant nurses, first in 1855 Crimea (“the Beast of the Crimean”) and twelve years later in London.  Nightingale has dedicated her life to improving the wretched conditions in the British military hospitals in Turkey, despite fierce objections from the male doctors around her. When young women start turning up dead, their mouths sewn shut with embroidered fabric roses, Inspector Charles Field (the real-life inspiration for Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket in Bleak House) is dispatched from England to Turkey’s famous Barrack Hospital to find the killer. The suspects abound: doctors, military men, journalists, and others, most of whom would gladly see Nightingale and her uppity women packed back to London. The death of the prime suspect closes the case.

In the second timeline, the killings have begun again just as a movement to enfranchise more voters—men for now but women in the future--is getting underway. As Field gets drawn into the current investigation, he wonders if he’d gotten the wrong suspect back in Crimea or are the new killings the work of a demented copycat.

Along the way, Field encounters real figures of the day, from Benjamin Disraeli and John Stuart Mill to novelist Wilkie Collins and, of course, Florence Nightingale herself.

I found The Nightingale Affair to be a fast, absorbing read. The story moves swiftly from present to past, past to present, with characters I cared about, plot twists, chases, and intrigue.

Trigger warning for gore and misogyny-related violence.

Reprint: Lower Suicide Rates in Teachers and Librarians

 

Teachers and librarians are among those least likely to die by suicide − public health researchers offer insights on what this means for other professions

One reason teachers have a low suicide rate may be that they find meaning in their jobs. Digital Vision/Getty Images

Jordan Batchelor, Arizona State University; Charles Max Katz, Arizona State University, and Taylor Cox, Arizona State University

Where you work affects your risk of dying by suicide. For example, loggers, musicians and workers in the oil and gas industries have much higher rates of suicide than the rest of the population.

But on the flip side, some professions have very low rates of suicide. One of them is education. National and state data shows that educators in the U.S., including teachers, professors and librarians, are among the least likely to die by suicide.

We’re a team of researchers at the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety at Arizona State University. We manage Arizona’s Violent Death Reporting System, part of a surveillance system sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with counterparts in all 50 U.S. states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. We collect data on violent deaths, including suicide, thanks to agreements with local medical examiners and law enforcement.

When public health researchers like us look at suicide data, we often focus on high-risk populations to learn where intervention and prevention are most needed. But we can learn from low-risk populations such as educators too.

Why some professions have higher suicide rates

Over the past 25 years, the suicide rate in the U.S. has increased significantly.

The age-adjusted rate in 2022 was 14.2 suicides per 100,000 people, up from 10.9 a little over two decades earlier, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Epidemiologists often adjust data for age to allow for a fairer comparison of incidence rates across populations with different age distributions.

But not all populations are affected equally. For example, military veterans die by suicide at higher rates than civilians, as do men, older adults and American Indian and Alaska Natives, to name a few demographics. In 2022 the suicide rate for men, for instance, was 23 suicides per 100,000, versus 5.9 for women.

The rate of suicide among the working-age population is also growing. Over the past two decades it has increased by 33%, reaching a rate of 32 suicides per 100,000 for men and eight for women in 2021. And workers in certain occupations are at higher risk of dying by suicide than others.

The reasons why are complex and diverse. Workers in construction, an industry with some of the highest suicide rates, may face greater stigma getting help for mental health issues, while people in other fields such as law enforcement may be more exposed to traumatic experiences, which can harm their mental health.

In short, some explanations are directly tied to one’s work, such as having low job security, little autonomy or agency, and an imbalance of work efforts and rewards. Other factors are more indirect, such as an occupation’s demographic makeup or the type of personality that chooses a profession. Together, factors like these help explain the rate of suicide across occupations.

Book Review: Rain as a Luxury of the Very Rich

 The Rain Artist, by Claire Rudy Foster (Moonstruck Books)

In a dystopic future, the Earth is so polluted that pure water is a luxury enjoyed only by the ultra-rich. Rivers have run dry and the seas have become so heavily saline that whales are extinct. Quadrillionaires throw artificially generated “rain parties,” complete with handmade bespoke umbrellas created for each occasion by Celine Broussard, the last umbrella maker. The front of her workshop is rented by a florist, who seems to be a gentle soul, happy to arrange artificial flowers, but who is actually a far darker, far more dangerous character. And that’s before we learn just how dark and dangerous he really is. As a result of a dynastic power struggle, Celine finds herself framed for the patriarch’s murder. Soon she’s on the run across a devastated landscape, along with her terrifyingly competent tenant and a young woman desperate to terminate an illegal pregnancy.

I loved the gorgeous, sensually evocative prose that drew me into each setting through the direct experiences of the character. I loved even the unlovable characters and how the author portrayed their crimes and shortcomings in a way that allowed me to change how I felt and make up my own mind about them. I loved how the characters changed, finding both courage and fellowship on their flight.

In many ways, The Rain Maker doesn’t fit the usual dystopian-thriller genre. With sureness and skill, the author draws the reader into the world and its inhabitants, beginning with very accessible scenes and progressing, layering subtle details upon details, into a world like and unlike our own. She doesn’t hit us over the head with bizarre elements as she slowly and carefully creates a world in which they are plausible. In this way, the book is generous with its welcome to readers who are familiar with the genre as well as those who are new, naïve.

Gorgeous and unsettling and ultimately filled with hope. Highly recommended.

Short Book Reviews: Another Fun "Laundry Files" Novel

 Season of Skulls (A Novel in the World of the Laundry Files), by Charles Stross (Tor)

I’ve loved “The Laundry Files” by Charles Stross since the first adventure, a delicious blend of spy action adventure and Lovecraftian horror, with a dry sense of humor and a touch of romance. The series begins in a present-day world where magic is a branch of computational mathematics (i.e., if you get sufficiently powerful computers, they tap into magic, often with results you really, really don’t want, like awakening ancient powers and opening gates to other dimensions). Now, many volumes later, Britain is under “New Management” and the Prime Minister is an Elder God of terrifying power. Eve Starkey, once the hyperorganized assistant to an unscrupulous magician, is just trying to get her life back and stay under the radar…and fails at both.

This latest installment has all the tension, wit, and quirky imagination of its predecessors, but with a bit more, very satisfying romance thrown in. Poor Eve has been through so much, and her ex-boss, perhaps not-so-ex-husband is such a loathsome toad, she deserves a little happiness in the end. Stross delivers all this and more.

Great fun for lovers of the series

Reprint: Legal Ethics and the Constitution

 

Justice Department lawyers work for justice and the Constitution – not the White House

The U.S. flag flies above Department of Justice headquarters on Jan. 20, 2024, in Washington. J. David Ake/Getty Images

Cassandra Burke Robertson, Case Western Reserve University

In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon tried to fire the Department of Justice prosecutor leading an investigation into the president’s involvement in wiretapping the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters.

Since then, the DOJ has generally been run as an impartial law enforcement agency, separated from the executive office and partisan politics.

Those guardrails are now being severely tested under the Trump administration.

In February 2025, seven DOJ attorneys resigned, rather than follow orders from Attorney General Pam Bondi to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. Adams was indicted in September 2024, during the Biden administration, for alleged bribery and campaign finance violations.

One DOJ prosecutor, Hagan Scotten, wrote in his Feb. 15 resignation letter that while he held no negative views of the Trump administration, he believed the dismissal request violated DOJ’s ethical standards.

Among more than a dozen DOJ attorneys who have recently been terminated, the DOJ fired Erez Reuveni, acting deputy chief of the department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, on April 15. Reuveni lost his job for speaking honestly to the court about the facts of an immigration case, instead of following political directives from Bondi and other superiors.

Reuveni was terminated for acknowledging in court on April 14 that the Department of Homeland Security had made an “administrative error” in deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, against court orders. DOJ leadership placed Reuveni on leave the very next day.

Bondi defended the decision, arguing that Reuveni had failed to “vigorously advocate” for the administration’s position.

I’m a legal ethics scholar, and I know that as more DOJ lawyers face choices between following political directives and upholding their profession’s ethical standards, they confront a critical question: To whom do they ultimately owe their loyalty?

President Donald Trump speaks before Pam Bondi is sworn in as attorney general at the White House on Feb. 5, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Identifying the real client

All attorneys have core ethical obligations, including loyalty to clients, confidentiality and honesty to the courts. DOJ lawyers have additional professional obligations: They have a duty to seek justice, rather than merely win cases, as well as to protect constitutional rights even when inconvenient.

Short Book Review: Mammoths and Mystical Talking Birds

 Mammoths at the Gates, by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

What a gem this novella is! It’s a bouquet of reading delights with very cool premise, memorable characters—both human, avian, and elephantine—gorgeous use of language and dramatic tension.

Chih, a wandering cleric, returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey only to find…mammoths at the gate. It seems that after the death of their beloved mentor and head of the abbey, the mentor’s relatives want to bring the body to their ancestral home, a move that appalls the other clerics, as well as the “nexien,” magical talking hoopoe birds that preserve history. I loved the names of the birds, such as Almost Brilliant and Myriad Virtues. The author’s words painted a cloistered world so believable and vivid, it was hard to keep in mind this is fantasy.

I definitely want a nexien of my own! Can I name her Serene Chaos?

Highly recommended, and since it’s part of a series, there’s even more to savor.

Book Review: A Brilliant, Addictive Fantasy

 The Will of the Many, by James Islington (Saga)

The Will of the Many sets a heroic coming-of-age tale in a richly imagined, magically imbued empire. The Catenan Republic has many echoes of our own Roman Empire in names, language, conquests, politics and rivalries, and powerful families, but with a crucial difference. Its operational principle is the Hierarchy, in which masses cede their “Will,” their strength, drive, and focus, to those above them, with each successively higher rank accumulating more power. This kind of moral and physical slavery is an engraved invitation to abuse.

Within this cauldron of oppression, a young man calling himself Vis ekes out a living working by day in the orphanage that houses him and at night in the underground of street fighting. Vis has a secret: he’s never ceded his Will, and the whip scars on his back show the price of his defiance. But he harbors an even deeper secret, one that means his death if it were discovered.

Vis's life takes an abrupt turn when a Senator, very high in the Hierarchical ranks, recruits him into his aristocratic family to solve a murder and ferret out a secret in the elite Academy, one that can tear the Republic apart. It’s an all but impossible task and the price of failure is worse than death.

Vis is an engaging character, at once courageous, beset by the overwhelming nature of his task, desperate to protect his identity, and touchingly fallible. He’s perfect for bringing the reader into the often-bizarre, often-familiar world of the Academy. His friends, allies, and enemies within the school, as well as his patrician adopted father, are all beautifully drawn. Best of all, the dramatic tension and action scenes are hands-down some of the best I’ve read.

Beware, though, the book is addictive. And just when you think it’s got to wrap up, you find out it’s the first of a trilogy.

 

Excerpt: The Duty to Disobey

 From Valerie Rivera's thoughtful Substack essay on The Contrarian (read the whole thing!):

In the not-too-distant future, military members across the Department of Defense might have a difficult choice. Will they take a stand and uphold their oath to the Constitution, or will they be complicit in the downfall of democracy?
.....
As Americans, we are faced with an administration that is displaying open hostility to the Constitution. It is blatantly testing boundaries, running roughshod over established law, and careening towards autocracy.

As a young airman, I worked on a signals intelligence “watch floor” with service members from every military branch. Surrounded by computer screens and informed by data feeds, we monitored our area of responsibility for “indications and warnings” to keep our deployed military comrades safe. Most of the time, the work was predictable. But one night, there was unusual activity in our region, creating confusion that could lead to dangerous delays in reporting.

Just when it felt as if we were losing control of the situation, our watch chief, an Army sergeant first class with a booming voice, shouted across the dark room: “If you see something you don’t understand, yell ‘WHAT THE F$CK?’ and I will come over there, and we will figure it out together!”

And that’s exactly what happened. Throughout the night, we sounded the alarm and used our collective experience to make sense of the data, fulfilling our duties.

Unfortunately, the time has come yet again to stand up and yell, “WHAT THE F$CK?”

With remarkable speed, this administration has limited First Amendment rights and due process, and restricted freedom of the press. As opposition to the president strengthens, his urge to consolidate power through any means necessary grows.

The stage has been set to put the soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, and the guardians of the United States in an untenable position: to force them to choose between following orders or upholding the Constitution. In fact, the military might very well be democracy’s last line of defense.

The test is coming—and it’s coming fast.

Book Review: A Sword and Sorcery Flop

 Red Sonja: Consumed, by Gail Simone (Orbit)

I tried hard to like this book, but I failed. I never overcame my initial, extremely unpleasant impression of Red Sonja as callous, self-centered, and incompetent. Even the queen she beds and betrays dives headlong into revenge without a second thought. Jumping from one POV character to another further disrupted any engagement with the story.

Sword and sorcery in the tradition of Robert E. Howard is a stylized subgenre. The tropes are distinctive but consistent: larger-than-life characters with larger-than-life adversaries, colorful settings with mythic overtones, exaggerated action sequences, and a tendency toward florid prose. Consistency with Howard’s literary style without becoming ridiculous amounts to a high-wire act. In the hands of a master, the elements come together like an amusement park ride: breathless, engaging escapism that is ultimately emotionally satisfying. The best of these stories work by evoking psychological resonances (see Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey) in an immersive reading experience.

Alas, not only was I unable to connect with any of the characters in the book’s opening, but too many details strained my credibility even by the standards of the subgenre. For example, Red Sonja is remarkably unaware of her surroundings, allowing enemies to sneak up on her on a regular basis. She’s just plain incompetent at basic survival skills. Many details about riding and horses are wrong in the sense of being ignorant. (Example: a skilled rider on a familiar and extremely well-trained mount does not haul on the reins to halt but uses a shift in weight and pelvic angle.) Once my confidence in the author had been impaired, other things that might not have otherwise kicked me out of the story became barriers, like “firing” arrows in an era before gunpowder. That’s a linguistic bobble that has become commonplace and can be excused in an otherwise consistent setting.

On the plus side, Simone occasionally comes up with a memorable turn of phrase, action, or characterization (but not, alas, of Red Sonja).

I checked other reviews, both critical and defensive, to see what other readers thought. I wondered if I was missing something because I hadn’t read all the modern stories. The reviewers divided mostly into two camps: those with extensive knowledge of the Red Sonja novels and graphic and those who just want a fun reading experience. Some of the former novels are either critical of the many lapses in geography, nomenclature, and history, while others insist that this book cannot be properly appreciated without in-depth knowledge of the franchise. I disagree with the latter.

Good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of genre. Nobody expects high literary values from sword and sorcery, but perhaps that is a mistake. Consider the work of Tanith Lee, C. J. Cherryh or C. L. Moore. Unfortunately, Gail Simone is not in their class.

 

Boycotting Amazon? You can still read my ebooks on your Kindle!

 If you want to buy my books in print format and you're boycotting Amazon, do not despair! Your friendly independent bookstore will be delighted to order them for you. Borderlands, Mysterious Galaxy, Powell's, and others do mail orders. Some of these stores carry my autographed editions. Don't forget Barnes and Noble (for both print and ebooks).

What about ebooks? Never fear, you are not restricted to buying from Amazon for your Kindle! Buy my books in epub format from one of the many other ebook vendors (Google Play, Apple, Smashwords, and many others). Side-load to your Kindle thus:

1. Download the file and place it where you can find it on your computer (I store mine in Calibre)
2. Go to your Amazon account and locate your unique Kindle email address. It's under Account & Listsà Content & Devicesà Devices. Your device should have the Kindle email listed (one that ends in “@kindle.com”).

3. Send the file as an attachment to your Kindle email. It should instantly appear on your Kindle. 

For more detailed instructions, check out this tutorial.

In Times of War: How Will This End?

This was originally posted in April, 2022, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was getting underway. It seems just as urgent now. 

At best, uncertainty is a difficult emotional state. We live in a world of routines, reliable cause-and-effect, and pattern recognition. We don’t need to test gravity every time we take a step, which is a good thing. We make assumptions about how people we know well (or people in general) are going to behave, based on their past actions. (Erratic behavior, whether due to mental illness, substance abuse, or misreading body language, can be traumatic, especially for children.) We anticipate many things, from the functioning of traffic lights to our own digestion to the reaction of a deer suddenly come upon in a meadow, based on our understanding of “how things work.” We use these strategies all the time without thinking about it. Having a reasonable sense of how events will unfold frees up mental (and physical) energy and gives us a sense of control over our lives.

Unexpected things happen, of course. Most of the time they’re ordinary bumps and bruises like burned dinner, a sprained ankle, a higher-than-normal electricity bill, or a traffic ticket.  They can be terrible: 9-11, a hurricane, the wildfires that swept through my part of the country a couple of years ago and resulted in my family evacuating for a month. A death in the family. Often we have little or no advance warning: it’s over, leaving us stunned or horrified or grief-stricken. We don’t get to vote on what happened, we only get to pick up the pieces afterwards. At other times, we have advance notice, like the wildfires or other weather events (but not earthquakes, lived through a couple of big ones, too) or Covid-19. We grab the kids and the pets and get out of town; we wear masks and stay home, and so forth. Even if there’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves, we often have a pretty good idea how things are going to go. Not always, of course. I remember staying glued to local news while camped out in our hotel room, anxiety eating away at me as the fires got closer to our house; I’d go to sleep certain that in the morning, our place would be ashes (but it survived with only a little storm damage).

I think war is fundamentally different. On a day-to-day basis, for those in the fighting zones, it must be like a monstrous union between the Chicxulub impact, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the Black Death. Adrenaline fight-or-flight panic overload survival time, one blast at a time. But for those of us watching the catastrophe unfold from afar, anxiety takes over as the dominant emotion. Watching one horrific event after another taxes our ability to pay attention to the present moment, and that is normal. It’s in our DNA to anticipate what will happen next. In our minds, we flee to the future.

Where will Russia strike next? What weapons will they use? What can we do to shield Ukrainian civilians? Will anything come of the peace talks? What will China—or India—do?

Enter the pundits and op-ed writers, predicting everything from the economic collapse of Russia and Putin being deposed, to Russia bludgeoning Ukraine into surrender to plots, to assassinate Zelenskyy to even wilder speculations. They speculate about increasingly grim futures: Is this a prelude to nuclear war? The collapse of Russia and a worldwide recession? We gobble up the columns, even though they often leave us feeling even more anxious and wretched than before.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

I think the answer lies in how predictability lowers anxiety, and the greater the stakes, the stronger the allure of a promised outcome. Not-knowing is a hellish limbo, and all too often it’s more intolerable than believing an authoritative voice with a fixed answer, no matter how grim.

I’ve started avoiding those opinion pieces. I see headlines while I’m scrolling through news, but I’m getting better at not clicking on them. Instead, I remind myself that masking anxiety with visions of doom is not likely to help anyone, beginning with myself. The truth is that I don’t have a crystal ball—and for sure the pundits don’t, either.

Working myself into a lather harms impairs my ability to think clearly. It cannot affect the outcome of the war.

Powerlessness is hard, and in evolutionary terms it’s dangerous. But when it is our true condition, the best way to manage it is by seeing it for what it is, and then finding ways to make a big difference in our own lives through good self-care and a small difference in the world.

Book Reviews: Two Fantasies by Martha Wells

Martha Wells has become one of my favorite authors. I loved her “Raksura” series and was bowled over by her “Murderbot” novellas. I thought I would follow her across genres. Two of her recent releases soar in terms of world-building imagination, but fall short in dramatic shaping and plot structure.

Witch King, by Martha Wells (Tor)

Witch King opens with a mystery as demon Kai (not “a” demon, THE demon) wakes up in captivity with a mage attempting to seize control of his magic. His immediate goal is to free himself and locate his companions. This proves to be both easier and far more challenging than it appears on the surface. For one thing, Kai’s last (dead) host body has been murdered and he’s in another, quite unfamiliar (and much less fit) body; for another, he has no idea how much time has elapsed since he’s been unconscious (a lot), what political changes are afoot in the world, and where the wife of his closest ally has disappeared to.

So far, so good, and Wells does a superb job in introducing complex characters, an unusual system of magic, and millennia of history and world-building without dumping expository lumps on the reader.

Wells then shifts to the distant past when Kai inhabited a volunteer body and lived in a rich, joyful, and emotionally warm culture. From here, the two timelines alternate chapters. A few characters, such as Kai who is almost immortal, appear throughout, but many others (many, many others) are specific only to one. Still more are alive and active in the past but distant memories in the present. Because the focus is on Kai and a few others who are present in both times, I had to search for other clues as to where and when I was.

Both storylines are filled with action and wonderful characters, situations, and relationships. Each one would be more than enough for a novel in itself. Some readers will love the weaving back and forth and all the myriad ways the past informs and shapes the present. I was one of them, but only at first. As the book went on, however, I found it increasingly frustrating trying to orient myself—which time is this? what’s been going on? who’s still alive? and, most importantly, what is the present goal or threat for the protagonist? There didn’t seem to be a single plot arc, a building dramatic tension that carried through in both past and present. It didn’t help that my favorite character from the past is long since dead in the present. Within each timeline, unrelated problems arise and are resolved. I could never figure out what the overall “Big Bad” was, especially after one candidate villain after another is eliminated. The “Big Bad” at the end seemed to come out of nowhere. Mark Twain famously said that life is “one damned thing after another.” Fiction must play by a different set of rules.

Witch King is hugely ambitious, filled with imaginative elements, compelling personal drama, and a huge landscape across time as well as space. Wells handles these elements with the effortless skill of a seasoned professional, but fails to shape them into a single dramatic story.

 

Wheel of the Infinite, by Martha Wells (Tor)

Wheel of the Infinite starts with a fortuitous encounter on the road between Maskelle, a confident and immensely powerful magic wielder, and handsome, enigmatic swordsman Rian. After she saves his life, he and a band of motley other characters accompany Maskelle to the heart of the Celestial Empire. Much later, we learn that she’s returning from exile after being judged a traitor and much, much later, that her task is to help remake the beautiful, orderly mandala known at the Wheel of the Infinite, thereby ensuring peace and harmony for the Empire. At turns, the action moves swiftly with leaps of dramatic tension or as slowly as any travelogue. In this, it reminded me of The Lord of the Rings (the books, not the movies), which alternated between seat-of-the-pants action and pages upon pages of passing scenery. Also that there’s a quest, although in Rings, the mission is much more clear and consistently present.

Maskelle was one of my favorite characters in a long while. She’s an older woman, always a plus with me, she’s quite comfortable with her sexuality (double plus), and she’s terrifyingly competent as a magician (triple plus). Once the question of whether she’ll decide it wise to take Rian as her lover is settled, he pales by contrast as a character. Many, many other characters appeared (and disappeared, some temporarily, others not so much) but weren’t around for long enough to engage my sympathy.

As with Witch King, the premise, world-building, magical system, and protagonist in Wheel of the Infinite were all marvelous. The book is highly ambitious, offering fresh, original takes on time-honored tropes. Its sheer size and scope break down under their own weight. It’s as if Wells, whose novellas and shorter novels are tightly plotted gems, hasn’t quite made the leap to books of this length and complexity. Nevertheless, both are enjoyable reads with many twists and innovations. While neither worked perfectly for me, I’m eager to read her next project.

Excerpt: Meditations on the Wise Use of Power

 From Rebecca Solnit's marvelous blog, Meditations in an Emergency:

 Here's another thing about power; the power the Trump Administration has is largely what we give it. They often cave when it is not given or when it's taken away by the courts. And they're spending power, not tending it, by breaking alliances, support, relationships, treaties. their threats to seize Greenland. They may desire to make the US weaker, because they may think a weakened country with undermined institutions may be easier to dominate, but as the heads of government they're also making themselves weaker. The administration has sabotaged relationships with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and with NATO and EU allies. So they're losing the power of alliances abroad, along with the power of public support at home.

 They seem to have miscalculated--so far as I can tell by assuming their power is boundless, to be endlessly spent, never built up and protected, as political leaders normally do. Take the threats to seize Greenland, which is an autonomous territory of Denmark, which in turn is part of the European Union and NATO, so that any invasion of the indigenous-majority island would be an attack on these powerful alliances. The loud threats have infuriated and alienated Greenlandic and Danish and many other people around the the world. The stunt whereby the administration decided to send the vice president's wife to Greenland for what was clearly a publicity campaign pretending to be a little holiday backfired badly. 

 Usha Vance was going to attend a dogsled race, show herself about, and then the vice president decided to join her. Greenlanders made it so clear they were so unwelcome that they limited their tour to a few hours at the isolated US military base for a pathetic photo op. It was a fool's errand and they showed their weakness by backing down from something that was always a dumb idea and maybe one that shows they lack intelligence in the ordinary sense of being smart and the specific sense of having good analysis of the political situation and the consequences of given actions. Or maybe they think their power is irresistible, but a small indigenous population resisted it effectively. They certainly failed, again, to anticipate both public reaction to their conduct and the fact that the public has power too. 

 Elon Musk has helpfully just proven how resistible power is, or the folly of confusing mountains of money with outright power. He had an apparent meltdown last night over his failure to buy the Wisconsin supreme court election, in which his candidate didn't just lose but lost in a landslide. And earlier he choked up on Fox News talking about the protests against Tesla and the impact it's having on the company's valuation. Both these things demonstrate the limits of his power and the scope of our power. The Tesla protests are working. People have the power. 

Article summary: The cognitive resilience of older women

Silent X chromosome genes 'reawaken' in older females, perhaps boosting brain power, study finds

This is an excerpt from the above-titled article in Live Science. I highly recommend clicking through to read the whole thing!


Females have one active X chromosome and one dormant X chromosome in each cell. But a study suggests that genes on the dormant X get "reawakened" later in life, potentially giving the brain a boost.

Dormant genes on the X chromosome may reawaken in old age, potentially giving the aging female brain a boost that the male brain doesn't receive. This phenomenon may help to explain why, on many measures, females show a higher level of cognitive resilience in old age than males do.

There seem to be fundamental differences in how males and females age. When it comes to the brain, females have lower rates of various forms of dementia than males do, even though females live longer, on average. One exception is that females have higher rates of Alzheimer's disease than males do, although females with Alzheimer's tend to survive longer than males with the condition.

Males typically carry one X and one Y in each cell; they inherit the X from their mother and the Y from their father. Females, on the other hand, usually carry two X chromosomes — one from mom and one from dad. But each cell needs only one X to be active, so in females, the second X is "silenced," leaving only the maternal or paternal X switched on.

Among the 22 reawakened genes, one called PLP1 carries the instructions to make a key component of myelin, the fatty insulation that helps neurons send signals efficiently. It's known that mutations in PLP1 can decrease the amount of myelin in the brain, resulting in intellectual disability. It's also known that myelin can be compromised in aging and that loss of myelin function can contribute to cognitive decline.

To see if the reawakening of PLP1 might boost cognition, scientists confirmed that older female mice had more PLP1 activity in their hippocampi than the older male mice did. They artificially increased PLP1 using gene editing in both old males and old females found that both sexes performed better on tests of learning and memory after that boost.

To see if any of the findings extended to humans, the team looked at data previously collected for a large study of human brain tissue. Data weren't available for the hippocampus, but the brain tissue immediately surrounding the hippocampus showed more PLP1 activation in older women than in older men. So that hints that the same phenomenon might be unfolding in people.

Book Review: A tour-de-force of the heart

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman (Penguin)

This marvelous debut novel is mainstream, not genre, but with overtones of “domestic thriller” and superb handling of an unreliable narrator. The growth of the central character skillfully parallels the gradual revelation of her past.

At first, Eleanor Oliphant seems to be a tediously bland, often annoying office worker. Her social skills leave a great deal to be desired, she’s compulsively routine-bound, and she rebuffs every effort at friendship. Although she insists to herself and to everyone else that she is completely fine, her weekly phone chats with her emotionally abusive Mummy result in weekly bouts of heavy drinking. Her doomed infatuation with a third-rate singer provides more fodder for Mummy’s manipulations.

At first, I thought that her problem was that she was a functional alcoholic, but the situation turned out to be much more complex and nuanced. From the beginning, there are hints of a deeper, darker story. When Eleanor and Raymond, a big-hearted if physically unattractive IT guy, rescue an elderly man who collapses on the street, Eleanor gets drawn into new social circles and relationships. The walls she has built around her profound emotional damage begin to crumble. Needless to say, in Honeyman’s capable hands, there is more than one surprise along the way.

Highly recommended. A tour-de-force of the heart.

Reprint: Social movements constrained Trump in his first term – more than people realize

This article first appeared in The Conversation. I offer it here with permission because now, more than ever, we need hope. Hope and belief in our power to resist and ultimately defeat a tyrant. 

Social movements constrained Trump in his first term – more than people realize

Kevin A. Young, UMass Amherst

Donald Trump’s first term as president saw some of the largest mass protests seen in the U.S. in over 50 years, from the 2017 Women’s March to the 2020 protests after George Floyd’s murder.

Things feel different this time around. Critics seem quieter. Some point to fear of retribution. But there’s also a sense that the protests of Trump’s first term were ultimately futile. This has contributed to a widespread mood of despair.

As The New York Times noted not long ago, Trump “had not appeared to be swayed by protests, petitions, hashtag campaigns or other tools of mass dissent.” That’s a common perspective these days.

But what if it’s wrong?

As a historian, I study how our narratives about the past shape our actions in the present. In this case, it’s particularly important to get the history right.

In fact, popular resistance in Trump’s first term accomplished more than many observers realize; it’s just that most wins happened outside the spotlight. In my view, the most visible tactics – petitions, hashtags, occasional marches in Washington – had less impact than the quieter work of organizing in communities and workplaces.

Understanding when movements succeeded during Trump’s first term is important for identifying how activists can effectively oppose Trump policy in his second administration.

Quiet victories of the sanctuary movement

Mass deportation has been a cornerstone of Trump’s agenda for more than a decade. Yet despite his early pledge to create a “deportation force” that would expel millions, Trump deported only half as many people in his first term as Barack Obama did in his first term.

Progressive activists were a key reason. By combining decentralized organizing and nationwide resource-sharing, they successfully pushed scores of state and local governments to adopt sanctuary laws that limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

When the sociologist Adam Safer examined thousands of cities and dozens of states, he found that a specific type of sanctuary law that activists supported – barring local jails and prisons from active cooperation with ICE – successfully reduced ICE arrests. A study by legal scholar David K. Hausman confirmed this finding. Notably, Hausman also found that sanctuary policies had “no detectable effect on crime rates,” contrary to what many politicians allege.

Another important influence on state and local officials was employers’ resistance to mass deportation. The E-Verify system requiring employers to verify workers’ legal status went virtually unenforced, since businesses quietly objected to it. As this example suggests, popular resistance to Trump’s agenda was most effective when it exploited tensions between the administration and capitalists.

The ‘rising tide’ against fossil fuels

In his effort to prop up the fossil fuel industry, Trump in his first term withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, weakened or eliminated over 100 environmental protections and pushed other measures to obstruct the transition to green energy.

Researchers projected that these policies would kill tens of thousands of people in just the United States by 2028, primarily from exposure to air pollutants. Other studies estimated that the increased carbon pollution would contribute to tens of millions of deaths, and untold other suffering, by century’s end.

That’s not the whole story, though. Trump’s first-term energy agenda was partly thwarted by a combination of environmental activism and market forces.

His failure to resuscitate the U.S. coal industry was especially stark. Coal-fired plant capacity declined faster during Trump’s first term than during any four-year period in any country, ever. Some of the same coal barons who celebrated Trump’s victory in 2016 soon went bankrupt.

CBS News covered the bankruptcy of coal firm Murray Energy, founded by Trump supporter Robert E. Murray.

The most obvious reasons for coal’s decline were the U.S. natural gas boom and the falling cost of renewable energy. But its decline was hastened by the hundreds of local organizations that protested coal projects, filed lawsuits against regulators and pushed financial institutions to disinvest from the sector. The presence of strong local movements may help explain the regional variation in coal’s fortunes.

Environmentalists also won some important battles against oil and gas pipelines, power plants and drilling projects. In a surprising number of cases, organizers defeated polluters through a combination of litigation, civil disobedience and other protests, and by pressuring banks, insurers and big investors.

In 2018, one pipeline CEO lamented the “rising tide of protests, litigation and vandalism” facing his industry, saying “the level of intensity has ramped up,” with “more opponents” who are “better organized.”

Green energy also expanded much faster than Trump and his allies would have liked, albeit not fast enough to avert ecological collapse. The U.S. wind energy sector grew more in Trump’s first term than under any other president, while solar capacity more than doubled. Research shows that this progress was due in part to the environmental movement’s organizing, particularly at the state and local levels.

As with immigration, Trump’s energy agenda divided both political and business elites. Some investors became reluctant to keep their money in the sector, and some even subsidized environmental activism. Judges and regulators didn’t always share Trump’s commitment to propping up fossil fuels. These tensions between the White House and business leaders created openings that climate activists could exploit.

Worker victories in unlikely places

Despite Trump self-promoting as a man of the people, his policies hurt workers in numerous ways – from his attack on workers’ rights to his regressive tax policies, which accelerated the upward redistribution of wealth.

Nonetheless, workers’ direct action on the job won meaningful victories. For example, educators across the country organized dozens of major strikes for better pay, more school funding and even against ICE. Workers in hotels, supermarkets and other private-sector industries also walked out. Ultimately, more U.S. workers went on strike in 2018 than in any year since 1986.

This happened not just in progressive strongholds but also in conservative states like West Virginia, Oklahoma and Kentucky. At least 35 of the educators’ strikes defied state laws denying workers the right to strike.

In addition to winning gains for workers, the strike wave apparently also worked against Republicans at election time by increasing political awareness and voter mobilization. The indirect impact on elections is a common side effect of labor militancy and mass protest.

Quiet acts of worker defiance also constrained Trump. The early months of the COVID-19 pandemic featured widespread resistance to policies that raised the risk of infection, particularly the lack of mask mandates.

Safety-conscious workers frequently disobeyed their employers, in ways seldom reflected in official strike data. Many customers steered clear of businesses where people were unmasked. These disruptions, and fears they might escalate, led businesses to lobby government for mask mandates.

This resistance surely saved many lives. With more coordination, it might have forced a decisive reorientation in how government and business responded to the virus.

Labor momentum could continue into Trump’s second term. Low unemployment, strong union finances and widespread support for unions offer opportunities for the labor movement.

Beyond marches

Progressive movements have no direct influence over Republicans in Washington. However, they have more potential influence over businesses, lower courts, regulators and state and local politicians.

Of these targets, business ultimately has the most power. Business will usually be able to constrain the administration if its profits are threatened. Trump and Elon Musk may be able to dismantle much of the federal government and ignore court orders, but it’s much harder for them to ignore major economic disruption.

While big marches can raise public consciousness and help activists connect, by themselves they will not block Trump and Musk. For that, the movement will need more disruptive forms of pressure. Building the capacity for that disruption will require sustained organizing in workplaces and communities.

Kevin A. Young, Associate Professor of History, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.