** Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica Series Finale **

Are you fucking kidding me? Adam & Eve meets There Are Some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know meets Touched By an Angel? The second half of this abomination has got to be the worst hour of television I’ve ever sat through. If I hadn’t been at a party with a bunch of friends I would’ve turned it off forty-five minutes before the end. This was so bad it nuked the whole series. I can never watch Battlestar Galactica ever again. Just the prospect makes me nauseated. What were they thinking? Hey, let’s take the lamest, hoariest, most notorious science fiction cliche, mix in the sort of reflexive anti-science hysteria that makes real science fiction fans despise media sci-fi hacks, toss in a generous helping of patronizing, soft-headed ecumenical hokum, and top it all off with a bunch of crass sermonizing and really shitty dialogue.

I remember I was at a con once where David Brin was on a panel. This was between Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. He said it was possible to watch Reloaded and believe that the filmmakers actually knew what they were doing, but he was extremely apprehensive because, as he explained, it is an ironclad law of the universe that the third movie in every sci-fi film trilogy must suck, and must completely undermine and betray everything that was established and done right in the two preceding films. And, of course, that is exactly what came to pass in the execrable Matrix Revolutions, which resembles the finale of Battlestar Galactica more than a little. Both share the same contempt for the audience, for delivering upon the answers that were promised, and for basically just conforming to some minimal degree of logical coherence. Both also share the appalling tendency, which is lamentably all too common in our culture, of trying to pass off vapid pseudo-mystical gobbledygook as profundity. Why does nothing in the whole Battlestar Galactica series make any goddamn sense? Oh, simple really — the whole plot is part of a divine plan that is sometimes benevolent and sometimes malevolent and which is all beyond human comprehension. Talk about the mother of all deus ex machina endings. What a sad day for science fiction. What a sad day for television. What a sad day for anyone who cares about good writing. This is a fiasco almost beyond comprehension. The whole time I was watching it I was thinking, “I must be dreaming. This must be a nightmare. I’m going to wake up any moment now, and then I’m going to go meet up with my friends and watch the real series finale to Battlestar Galactica. Any moment now I’ll wake up. Any moment now…”

When it was — mercifully — over, my friends were all like, “Why did I ever start watching this stupid show?” “Dave got me into it.” “Yeah, Dave got me into it too.” “Yeah, me too.” “Thanks a lot, Dave. It’s all your fault.”

Mea culpa, all. Mea culpa maxima.

I just watched this lecture by Kenneth Miller. Here’s one part I found surprising and fascinating:

“It’s interesting that you brought up Muslim science. About three or four years ago, I started — because I have a little web page with a lot of evolution stuff up on it — I started to get emails from Turkey, and Lebanon, and even a couple from Iran, believe it or not, from students who wanted me to answer their questions about evolution, and a few of them I asked, ‘Why are you asking me this?’ And they connected me with the writings that go under the pen name of Harun Yahya, who is an Islamic writer based in Turkey, who has written a whole series of anti-evolution books, and one of the students was actually kind enough to buy me an English translation of the book and mail it to me from Turkey so that I could see what all this was about, and it astonished me. Two parts about it were — one was, I suppose, not so astonishing and one was downright hilarious. The not-so-astonishing part is that all of the arguments made in the Islamic world for the scientific insufficiencies of evolution are just recycled versions of the ones that I’ve talked to you about here, so there’s nothing new. But the second part was genuinely amusing, and that is Harun Yahya argued to his young readers that they should appreciate the fact that evolution is a Western Christian plot to subvert the morals of Islamic youth, and as part of his proof of this he pointed out that Charles Darwin studied for the priesthood of the Church of England, and that proves to you that he’s just another crusader, which I thought was a rather interesting take.”

There’s some interesting material on the Wikipedia page for Thomas Paine.

Following the outbreak of the French revolution, Paine traveled to France to take part in the fun, but found himself on the outs with the faction in power and was sentenced to death:

While in prison, Paine narrowly escaped execution. A guard walked through the prison placing a chalk mark on the doors of the prisoners who were due to be sent to the guillotine on the morrow. He placed a 4 on the door of Paine’s cell, but Paine’s door had been left open to let a breeze in, because Paine was seriously ill at the time. That night, his other three cell mates closed the door, thus hiding the mark inside the cell. The next day their cell was overlooked. “The Angel of Death” had passed over Paine. He kept his head and survived the few vital days needed to be spared by the fall of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794).

This section is amusing:

Loyalists vigorously attacked Common Sense; one attack, titled Plain Truth (1776), by Marylander James Chalmers, said Paine was a political quack and warned that without monarchy, the government would “degenerate into democracy.” Even some American revolutionaries objected to Common Sense; late in life John Adams called it a “crapulous mass.”

Oh snap.

Paine certainly seems to have made himself a lot of enemies. I guess that’s what happens when you write stuff like this:

“The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.”

Which leads to this last interesting tidbit:

Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, reports that Lincoln wrote a defense of Paine’s deism in 1835, and friend Samuel Hill burned it to save Lincoln’s political career.

Via saycestsay, the inspired opening sequence of Watchmen is now online:

http://www.businessinsider.com/watchmen-opening-credits-are-on-the-internet-forever-now-clip-2009-3

Awesome movie, btw. I didn’t think it could be done, but they totally nailed it.

Breaking news: Warren Lapine has purchased Realms of Fantasy from Sovereign Media and intends to have the magazine up and running again shortly. More at SfScope.

Recent Alpha student Rachel Sobel’s short story “The Loyalty of Birds” is out now in the March issue of Clarkesworld magazine.

Alpha alums once again rocked this year’s Dell Magazines Award. Congrats to Sarah Miller, who placed first runner-up, and to Jeanette Westwood, Elena Gleason, and Lara Donnelly, who all received honorable mentions. By the way, the deadline for this summer’s Alpha workshop is coming up soon, so get those applications in ASAP.

Here are two interesting thought experiments I came across on Wikipedia:

So on a recent Saturday afternoon I was doing my daily walk downtown when I noticed that someone had left their keys sitting on a window ledge. I have enormous sympathy for people who walk off and forget things, as doing so is one of my major pastimes. I sat down on the ledge and examined the keys. The key ring contained a car key, a car locker/unlocker thingy, a miniature purple flip-flop, a miniature wooden manta ray, and various store bar-code cards — Border’s, a vitamin store, a dress store. It occurred to me that maybe I could walk over to Border’s — which was only a block away — and have them scan the card and find out who the keys belonged to. But I didn’t want to move the keys in case their owner came back for them. I waited around for fifteen minutes or so and nobody showed up to claim the keys, so I decided to pop over to Border’s and give it a shot. The girl at the desk seemed kind of annoyed and said they couldn’t get any information off the card. I couldn’t understand why she seemed annoyed. She said, “There’s nothing we can do. You’ll have to turn them in somewhere.” I said, “Like where?” She shrugged and said, “The police?” I said, “Okay.”

I walked back to the ledge where I’d found the keys and sat there, trying to decide what to do. I noticed that the wooden manta ray had an unfamiliar word carved on its underside. Now I can’t remember what the word was. It sounded sort of like “oblivio.” Very mysterious. Key owner Cthulhu cultist? I wondered. I sat around for another fifteen minutes or so. Finally a middle-aged guy and his wife walked by, and the guy said, “So you found those keys too?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I was thinking, we could take them over to Border’s and … ” I shook my head and said, “Nah, I just tried that.” He said, “Oh,” shrugged, and wandered off. I started to wonder if the keys had been sitting here all day, and if all day people had been taking them over to Border’s, getting nowhere, and then putting the keys back where they’d found them, which might explain the annoyed tone of the Border’s girl. I was loathe to just leave the keys there. If I did, how long would the keys just keep going back and forth to Border’s? And might not they fall into the hands of one of the many sketchy characters downtown? And what if their owner had no idea where to look for them?

It occurred to me that there was a city hall/police station building just a few blocks away. I could walk over there and see what they said. I waited around a few more minutes, then did that. I walked through the main doors of city hall and … there was no one at the front desk. I figured they must’ve just stepped out for a minute. I waited around for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. I located a board that indicated the public desk for the police department was on the ground floor, so I wandered around the ground floor. The place was absolutely deserted. The council chamber was empty, the door to the police station was locked. I wandered upstairs, but encountered only locked doors. I heard no one. What the hell? Had there been a bomb threat? Chemical weapon attack? I was getting frustrated. It was seeming more and more likely that the key owner would return looking for her (I presume) keys while I was wandering around this empty building. I started wishing I’d just left the keys where I’d found them. Then it occurred to me that the public library was adjacent to city hall, and that they might know what to do. I walked back out the front doors and into the plaza. Then I decided that before continuing this wild goose chase I might as well use the public restroom in the lobby. So I turned around and tried the door … and it was locked. Weird. I tried the door next to it. Also locked. And the one next to that. Also locked. Only one of the four doors was unlocked, the one I’d used on the way in. It suddenly struck me that someone had neglected to lock that door, and that I probably really wasn’t supposed to be in City Hall on a Saturday to begin with. I wondered if there was all sorts of security cam footage of me wandering around in the city council chambers, etc. Whoops.

I circled the building and encountered another entrance — for the police department public desk. The door was locked, but there was a phone. I eyed the surveillance camera pointed at me. Oh, what the hell. I’d already spent over an hour on this. I picked up the phone and said, “Hi. I found someone’s keys on a bench near here, and I was wondering if you guys have like a lost and found or some…” The voice on the phone said curtly, “Name?” “Um…” I said. Headlines flashed through my mind: LOCAL DUMBASS ARRESTED FOR KEY THEFT AND CITY HALL TRESPASSING. “Um…” I said. Come on, I thought. They’re not going to arrest you. And even if they do, think of what an awesome blog post it would make. So: “David Kirtley,” I said. “K-I-R-T-L-E-Y.” “Phone number?” said the voice. I supplied it, then proceeded to describe how I’d found the keys. “You’re at the red phone?” said the voice. “Uh … yeah,” I said. The voice said, “We’re sending over a car.” “Um … great,” I said, and hung up.

Some minutes later a car pulled up and a uniformed officer got out. I gave him the keys and explained where I’d found them. He said he’d try walking around the area pushing the unlock door button and see if he could locate the car. If he had the car, he could run its plates and find out who the car belonged to. He thanked me and drove off. So I still don’t know if they keys ever got back to their rightful owner, or why the hell someone had a manta ray keychain ornament with the word “oblivio” (or whatever) carved on it.

Tor.com is sponsoring a zombie photo caption contest. The winner receives a copy of the zombie anthology The Living Dead (which includes my story “The Skull-Faced Boy”) as well as a copy of the zombie-themed team-based shooter Left 4 Dead.

With the sad demise of Realms of Fantasy, I keep thinking about an experience I had several years ago. I was invited to lead a book discussion on The Hobbit down at the local library for one of the those national get-kids-to-read campaigns. (The event was called “Make Reading a Hobbit.” Hey, don’t blame me. I didn’t come up with it.) I figured I’d be pretty well prepared for this event, seeing as I’m a fantasy writer, I’ve read The Hobbit maybe ten times, read The Lord of the Rings, watched all 7,000 hours of special features on the Peter Jackson extended edition Lord of the Rings DVDs, read Tolkien: Author of the Century and The Inklings, etc. Well, there were these two middle school girls in the audience, and I quickly got the sinking feeling that I was in over my head. These girls had read The Silmarillion. They’d read all ten (?) volumes of The History of Middle-Earth. They were writing their own Tolkien fan poetry … in Elvish. I managed to hold my own, and we had a really stellar discussion about free will / good and evil / race and class in Tolkien. Afterward, people wanted to know who I was, so I showed off some copies of Realms of Fantasy in which I appeared (and which I just happened to have brought with me). One of the parents asked, “What kind of magazine is this?” and I said, “It’s a fantasy magazine. You know, they publish fantasy short stories, and they have reviews of fantasy books and movies, and fantasy art, and articles about folklore, and stuff like that.” These two girls perused the pages, their eyes wide, and one of them exclaimed, “Wow! I never knew there were magazines like this! Mom, can we get this? Please?” That was really cool to see, and now I wish that somehow over the past fifteen years more readers like that could have come across copies of Realms of Fantasy, but unfortunately various factors have conspired to make it very difficult for young readers to discover that short fiction magazines even exist, which is really a shame.

There’s now a save Realms of Fantasy Facebook group.

Now that the Realms of Fantasy website is being shut down, the community that formed around the message boards there is reconstituting itself over at Friends of Fantasy. If you were involved with the old boards (or even if you weren’t), think about dropping by and saying hi.