The eight finalists for the 2012 WSFA Small Press Award are now available at: http://wsfasmallpressaward.org/content/

Image of what Earth may look like 5-7 billion years from now, when the Sun swells and becomes a Red Giant. by Fsgregs

After the sun puffed up into a red giant a few billion years ahead of schedule, making a cinder out of the Earth, a glowing red wasteland of Mars, turning Jupiter into a cloud of methane and ammonia gasses making all the bovine flatulence ever emitted insignificant in a way usually reserved for comparisons involving astronomical distances and national debts, stripped the rings off Saturn faster than a Estonian mail order bride after the inevitable divorce, and turned Neptune in a giant toasted marshmallow (the less said abut the fate of Uranus, the better), suddenly  the most habitable place in the solar system was poor deplaneted Pluto.

So humankind hunkerd down on its no longer quite so frozen surface and settled in for a long winters night.

The new Plutonians, seeded from a pitiful few science types who’d been out in the black too long, loved geeky irony, so nothing would do but to name the settlement, which eventually became a fair sized metropolis, after the man who had dismissed Pluto from the planetary ranks in the first place. Old wounds and memories fade though, and by the time the generations born on Earth had gone to feed the worms in the city’s central park and gone from worms to soil, and thence to pushing up daisies, visitors had quite forgotten why it was the custom to kneel in the grass of Tyson.

Actually, there’s a fairly stiff fine for explaining it.

Note: I spared no effort in not researching any of the astronomical points here, despite that, I came across an interesting piece in Astrobiology magazine titled, “Delayed Gratification Zones” which points out that during the Sun’s red giant phase, due i about 5 billion years,  the solar system’s habitable zone will move out to beyond Pluto. Go figure.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, the classic romantic loaner. Don't tell him there's no I in Win.

Just now a piece of very well meaning email, as if that’s even possible, reminded me that:

There is no “i ” in Team.

As if that actually lent credibility to and argument about cooperation versus individual effort.

I’ve always wanted a coach to actually pull that chestnut out of the fire and hold it, smoking and reeking of brimstone, under my nose. Because I’ve always wanted the chance to point out that:

There may not be an “I” in Team, but with a little work you can spell “Me,” and besides, if you’re looking for an “I,” there’s a big fat on right in the middle of win.

And remember, Heinlein said in “Starship Troopers,”

… for the man working alone, moves that take advantage of his own mobility and of the superior co-ordination of one man as compared with two — Sergeant Zim says (correctly) that any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together...

Of course, I’m no one to talk, having spent my entire professional life trying to get people to work in teams.

And though they may be messier more poorly coordinated than Sergeant Zim on his own, with just a little organizing, you’ll find they can have some pretty good “mates” in them, which is certainly worth something. Something even a thick headed dwarf could accept.

Gimli: Never thought I’d die fighting side by side with an Elf.
Legolas: What about side by side with a friend?
Gimli: Aye. I could do that.

 And that takes teamwork.

I saw The Hunger Games,last night,  and I’ve got to give it a rating of “pretty good,” though I’ve got plenty of issues with the film, which felt more like a teaser for the next two movies, in which we’re sure the main character will lead a revolt of the 99% against the 1%ers utopia, presided over by Donald Sutherland. Though the film comes in at a filling 142 minutes, it seldom, if ever, drags, driven by the central (if misleading) question: will coal miner’s daughter Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) kill all twenty three other players in the bread and circus spectacle known to this dystopic future as “The Hunger Games” (May the odds be ever in your favor)?

In this post-apocalyptic future, the 1% lives in a cool futuristic city with all the comforts of utopia: high speed trains, really big TV screens, horrible fashion sense, and spectacular contests in which representatives of the twelve districts of oppressed 99%ers kill each other off in a no holds barred there-can-be-only-one trial. The 99% are kept under the thumb of the affluent by force, fear, and just a little bit of hope, doled out in measured doses according to the whim of the country of Panem’s President, played to his strengths by the ever cynical Donald Sutherland.

Jennifer Laurence’s character Katniss offers herself up as a volunteer to enter the games when her younger sister is picked by lottery, and she’s whisked away from her Appalachian coal town poverty into a world of sweet smelling opulence…before being put out on the killing field with the 23 other contestants.

Katniss is, on the face of it, a pretty good choice for winning the games. She’s motivated because her family needs her, as her mother is something of a wreck and the father is a flashback memory we see go down into the mines to get blown to coal dust. More importantly, she’s a crack shot with a hunting bow, and a skilled poacher that keeps meat on the family table as a result. Ironically, though we’re treated to scenes showing her woodcraft early in the film, she moves around the forest in the games without any notion of stealth at all. Nobody in the movie notices though, so we’re probably not supposed to either.

Still, a word of caution: don’t sit next to any hunters or special forces types, or their snickering will probably put you off.

The game itself isn’t nearly as interesting as it should be. Katniss spends most of her time on the defensive, making friends with Roe, a sweet (read: doomed) African Panem girl, and the male “tribute” player from her own district, the hunky, affable, and ultimately forgettable Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who once threw her a piece of bread in the rain and has now professed his love for her on national TV. For all the hope her surprisingly sympathetic game coaches have for her, Katniss never sets out to kill much of anyone, except when she strikes out in anger or has no other choice. We don’t get the feeling that she’s protecting any moral high-ground, just that for all her comments that she’s determined to win, she’s failed to accept the price of success.

Unfortunately for us, unlikeable characters make a habit of attacking the people Katniss cares about, sparing her the need to come to grips with any real moral dilemmas, which would have made this movie a lot darker, and probably a lot better. She nearly faces reality at the end of the game, but the author lets her off easy; you may not get to live, but if you pout hard enough, you’ll get your way.

While the question of who will survive is the engine that drives the movie forward, the real storylines are about who gets to win her affections, the nice (and very strong) young man who periodically offers to die for her, or Gale Hawthorne, the dark haired rebel she left behind in the mining town, played by Liam Hemsworth, and periodically shown looking unhappy while watching the TV coverage of Katniss and Peeta. Beyond the romantic bit, there’s the whole social upheaval plotline that she’s destined to follow.

It’s been 75 or so years since the uprisings of common folk had to be put down hard, and while things seem more or less stable, the economic disparity between the dwellers in the Capitol city and the outlying districts is exaggerated enough that nobody is going to cry for the rich folk when their game get’s called on account of revolution several movies hence.

That the Hunger Games is only the first book in author Suzanne Collins’ trilogy, followed by Catching Fire (2009), and Mockingjay (2010) allows the easy outs that the author provided to be only a temporary condition, as we can expect the characters to grapple with the costs of their choices later on, possibly even growing up in the process.

Though the book’s author wrote her series without intending to draw on prior art, it leaks into the fabric of the story at every turn. Susan Collins may not be aware of the shoulders she stands on, stories like The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, The Prize of Peril, by Robert Scheckly, or Stephen King’s The Running Man which became a film with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a hunted to the death contestant and Richard Dawson as smarmy show host. You can’t escape the culture you are born into, as the players in the Hunger Games will no doubt discover on their own.

So, does The Hunger Games deserve the 200 million it’s likely to earn over its first weekend? Not as an examination of a science fiction utopia or as an especially good example of combat in the woods, but on the basis of emotional hooks into the teen dilemmas faced by Katniss and her friends, quite possibly.