Star Trek: The Trekening

This is not about books. It is about a series of movie films and film movies.

I just read a thing on slashdot that was half people who loved the new Star Trek flick and half people who didn't. (Also, the fact that this debate was happening on slashdot caused a nerd-vortex to create a singularity infinitely more dense than even a large red-matter blackhole. It destroyed the universe and created an alternate reality, which is why you woke up with a mustache today. Check the mirror!)

I had some misgivings about the flick, I will admit. The thing took certain trips to certain wells that, honestly, I had assumed had long ago gone dry. For instance, did anyone see that Star Trek movie about the renegade Romulan who doesn't look like the Romulans we're used to who had like a doomsday device thing? It was called Star Trek: Nemesis and it was awful. But, it was also called Star Trek and it was pretty good.

But rather than discuss the merits of said new film (shortened review: it looks great and has all the bits that you could possibly want, except they're assembled in a way that doesn't make much sense, except you probably won't notice that it doesn't make that much sense until you really start thinking about it, except by then you liked it already anyway so it doesn't matter.) I'd like to point out how crazy the show was in the first place.

Sample comment from slashdot:

It may not be the worst movie ever, but it is kinda like releasing a Sherlock Holmes movie where he runs around with a giant gun killing people until he solves the crime. Yeah, it might be a good action movie or whatever, but is hardly consistent with the philosophical underpinnings of the original work. That so few Star Trek fans "get" this is a bit unnerving.

My response: Are you &*%$ing kidding? Have you ever SEEN Star Trek? This sort of logic can only be the result of someone who has long forgotten what the hell happened every week on the original show.

First point: the most "philosophical" episodes were also frequently the most heavy handed and leaden. For instance, seen an episode called "Let that be your last battlefield"? It's like, so deep. There are these two guys fighting each other, and like one guy is black on the left and white on the right, right? But this Other guy is like the opposite. And like, they want to fight each other. I think it's like, about racism, or something, or like, the Sneetches, and like, it really makes you think.

Also, every third episode, they find a planet that's an exact recreation of Earth. "Woah it's just like Chicago in the 20's! On a whole planet!" "Woah they built a whole planet of Nazis!" "Woah there's a whole planet of cowboys!" "Woah a whole entire planet of 19th century dandies!" (I may or may not have made up one of these examples. I bet you can't even Tell though!)

Also, every 4th episode ended with a logical conundrum making a computer explode.

Also, every 5th episode involved a god-like alien taunting everyone.

Also, every other episode involved Kirk punching some dude for no great reason.

Also, every SINGLE episode involved Shatner taking his shirt off, and seducing a hot alien. Check it for yourself. Every Single Episode. That I can think of right now without checking wikipedia.

So seriously. Let's have some sense of proportion here. It was as fun show. Let's not make it into something it wasn't, because it wasn't anything that it wasn't. (Seriously. Follow my logic.)

There was a space series where most episodes ended in a quiet, philosophical conversation about the ramifications of various things. It was called "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

Yeah. So. "Philosophical Underpinnings" my blue Andorian ass. The original series was about Kirk punching people and harassing women, McCoy hating on Spock, Spock making out with women while being all smart and stuff (seriously- the guy did it all the time!), Sulu swordfighting, Checkov mispronouncing things, Uhura wearing a miniskirt, and Scotty whining comically.

All these things are in the movie, so I'm pretty sure that the "philosophy" people dreamed up a different show. I believe it is called "Skittlebrau."

From your bookseller: Have you heard of the library?

I hate the following question format:

"Do you have a book for kids about ________?"

The answer is almost certainly 'no' and the fact that you're asking (and by 'you' I don't mean you, the person reading this, but the hypothetical 'you' who calls up bookstores with odd questions) suggests that you spend no time in bookstores OR libraries.

Indeed, school libraries do often carry books that fit this format. I remember, in elementary school, often checking out the sort of book that might as well have been called, for instance, "A book about snakes" because that's what it was. A book, with some pictures of different snakes, and short paragraphs with big letters to tell you different things, about snakes. The title of this particular book was probably Snakes. They had books about, as far as I can remember, literally every animal that I was already familiar with, which was literally several different animals. There was also a book about every state, and a book about every country that I'd already heard of, all in one small, low-ceilinged elementary school library. Remarkable!

BUT- you pretty much can't buy these at regular bookstores, because mostly, no one wants to buy them. I am frequently puzzled by how out of touch people are with what people actually read. "Do you have a section on aviation?" Uh, no. "Where would your books on ufos be?" Why, in the UFO section! Under the giant sign that says "UFO BOOKS." It's next to the aisle of aviation, which, in turn, is by the section on children's books "about horses."

Is it really so surprising that mostly, people read novels? Or that most of the picture books are story books? And that bookstores reflect that, rather than dividing themselves up by the dewey decimal system? "That would be under astronomy / space travel / aliens / ufos. You'll find that section in our annex, on the tenth floor." (Some will also note that libraries tend to be considerably larger than bookstores. Powell's excluded.)

Or, possibly, I don't mind the question itself so much as I mind how offended people are when I say "no." "You mean you DON'T have a section on books exclusively for first time grandmothers of adopted children from China? I suppose I'll just have to go to Borders then."

I don't think Borders has a section like that either.

Addendum: Chavez

Hugo Chavez, my favorite El Presidente, as you will already know, gave Obama a copy of Open Veins of Latin America, sending it into Mark Levin territory on amazon. This same thing happened a couple years ago when Chavez recommended Chomsky.

Just some satisfying proof that you can only read so much into political trends through bestseller lists. Also, I much like the idea that fox news and Hugo are comparably influential.

Books about Teabagging

Look at bestsellers on amazon. It's ridiculous. I like amazon's rankings more than a lot of other ones. I don't know if they're more 'accurate' or descriptive in any serious way, but I do like how much they break things down. For instance, it might seem pretty unimpressive that a book is selling at #100,045, but it also might be selling #12 in "Fiction> Occult> Vampires> Vampires vs. Werewolves> With Ninjas, Too" which gives you a better understanding of relative popularity.

They also, though, on their main page, throw in anything together, and lately that list is Scary. Ayn Rand's garbage has been way up high for a while. Tom Paine has been up high too, not because of how awesome "Common Sense" is but because of the bizarro world of tea party nuts, who think that the idea that some federal taxes may go up for some people sometime in the future is equivalent to having the king of England jerk you around.

Worst right now are the top two. These are serious nutters. Top seller for a while has been this jackass Mark Levin who uses big words so Rush Limbaugh thinks he's real smart about books. Second one is this crazier thing called 500 Year Leap. The right is extremely hostile to science, and extremely fond of religion, so all of their books are as mystical as the Hogwart's library.

I got a pretty sad call at the bookstore the other day. An older lady, trying to track down some garbage she saw plugged on hannity or glen beck or some nonsense. She went on to tell me how upset she was, because she used to think that FDR had been the greatest, but now, these assholes (my word, not hers) were "explaining" to her his secret evils.

Depressing. But, I think that being at the top of amazon's list (and levin has been up there for a while) is not necessarily a sign of anything too big. Why? Because the people who read this garbage mostly never read any books ever. So it's not like amazon's people, who used to be reading novels, who put Obama's books at the top for so long, etc, etc, suddenly switched over to being nutters. No, a whole lot of people who Never read books got told by Rush Limbaugh to read a book, so they did.

And, Stephanie Meyer is still going strong. So things haven't changed too much. I know a place where you can get tons of copies of Liberty and Tyranny. Check any yardsale in 2010.

Books in the recession

The book business is not the predicament that, say the retail music business is in, but the recession is certainly going to speed up the stresses already underway. It's going to mow down a lot of the still-operating businesses, expand some of the bigger houses, and doubtless change some of the "rules" about how book retail works.

Some of this is already obvious. A trend toward consolidation continues, with last year's Houghton-Mifflin + Harcourt (Brace Jovanich? Wasn't that a thing) creating the supergroup Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. They should have just gone with being straight up Harcourt because that's the only one of the names involved that sounds halfway cool. Ingram and Hachette are also taking over distribution for an increasing number of small houses.

The biggest stories, though, are Borders and Amazon. Borders is on the way out, probably in a matter of months rather than years. Although they're looking up a little lately, at least so far as stock is concerned, Borders has gone through multiple round of "a new executive / board will change all this!" and none of it has worked. Borders is stuck in an awkward middle position between independents and Amazon. They cannot possibly compete with Amazon on price or selection, and unless your local independent is super lame, Borders can't compete with independence on coolness. (They aren't very competitive on selection, either. Check Borders. I think you'll find that they have a lot more manga books than your local store, and a lot more business books, and a lot more nonsense self-help books (business books for people with less money) but not a lot more of stuff that anyone would actually want to read.)

That is going to be a big problem for the publishing industry, when these guys tank. I think independents should be concerned about it too, honestly. Borders (and Barnes and Noble) have tons of stores inviting loiterers, many of whom may eventually grab the things they were thumbing through at Amazon or a used store or wherever. Basically, every Borders store is a giant book billboard, and the end of Borders will mean a lot fewer billboards. Not that I'm terribly upset about this. But, retail is not a fixed system. The end of Borders won't magically help out everybody else. It might help a little, but it will almost certainly depress the total volume of new book sales.

Amazon, on the other hand, is pushing Kindle. Kindle, I think, is going to prove to be one of those odd little evolutionary offshoots that kind of look like dead-ends, but also kind of got copied by everyone. I doubt that substantial numbers of people will ever get Kindles. It's too niche. At $300, it's too pricy. It isn't replacing any of your gadgets; it's making you carry around an extra gadget that you never had before.

Of course, downloads are like ten bucks. Ten bucks is cheap compared to 25 for that new James Patterson novel, but so what? If people who buy new Patterson hardcovers were worried about saving money, they'd just wait and get the same thing used later on Amazon for a quarter, or spend eight bucks on the mass market edition ten months later. So you Can save 15 dollars off the price of a new hardcover, but how many people are buying enough new, hardcovers in a year to actually use the Kindle enough to save money on digital books instead of losing it? Some, certainly, but I suspect not enough to fundamentally change the market.

I think Amazon's eye, then, is not so much on getting everyone a Kindle, but of being the iTunes of books. They won't be able to lock people to a player the way Apple largely has, but they can be the go-to people for ebooks down the road. I think Kindle's low eye-strain display will eventually be replicated by the notebooks and phones that everyone carries around. So when I call Kindle sort of a niche curiosity, I don't mean it's a curiosity because I think digital books will never work, but because I think there will only be a short window in which a "books only" device makes any sense. Netbooks and phones will soon be nice enough to look at that the idea of carrying a razor thin computer and a razor thin book reader will just look absurd.

I have no good guesses about what sections of the book market will get Kindle-ized the most or the fastest, because for the most part, every compelling argument one way has an equally compelling argument the other way. So for instance, you might say "romance novels and pulpy thrillers" because those are the things that you care least about displaying on your shelf afterwords. "Why yes, I AM a collector of All of Mr. Baldacci's work. So glad you noticed! I particularly enjoyed the one in which the plot to attack Washington was thwarted at the last moment! Let's have a brandy, why don't we?" But on the other hand, those are the same books that are easiest to get for a buck at a used store, or trade, or what have you, so the idea of paying ten bucks for a digital version of one of those seems kind of silly. (Of course, if it's on your Kindle, no one has to know what it is that you're actually reading. Maybe all the people who really Want to be reading Danielle Steele will start downloading her and feel liberated.)

One obvious section of the market that would seem to be a good match for digital readers is text books. They're massive and expensive, and change frequently, so it would be nice for publishers to do updates without putting a full, doubtless low-profit million page edition. And, since so many textbooks go through such frequent revisions, they lose resale value quite quickly, at least proportionately. I'm sure publishers would like the opportunity to keep us all from reselling our digital biology textbook to the next class.

The bottom line on books in the recession, though, is that they are available almost everywhere for nearly free. We all have stacks that we have been meaning to read and haven't. I can only go at max a couple of weeks without adding more food to my house (and even that is stretching it. I think there is nothing left but cans of tomatoes right now. And frozen broccoli.) but if there were some kind of weird book rationing, I could easily make do on the stuff I got for years. And that isn't even counting rereading stuff.

Which makes me speculate that although the recession will doubtless make people read more, it'll probably make us cut our spending on books rather drastically. You know, 'cause we're working through our teen vampire collections.