To those in the U.S., happy Thanksgiving! I hope whatever you feast on Thursday is abundant, delicious and entirely to your liking. Even that weird green bean casserole with the funny crunchy stuff on top.
Now I’m off to make some pies.
Author: Karen Sandler
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The Mystery of Where We Come From
My husband and I do genealogy as a hobby. My husband more than me because his relatives are much more organized. He got a head start with a cousin who’d explored that particular branch of the family in great detail. Then there’s the fact that there are so many cousins that make it easy to stumble across a Sandler or other relation in the census or birth records.
My ancestors are much more evasive. There’s my father’s father’s family, the Stiers, who were Austrian (Hungarian?) Jews. They came here sometime in the mid to late 1800s, had a few children, which might have involved more than one marriage. They then conveniently scooted off to Britain for a few years in such a way that they avoided the census, so I have no idea where they were when. My grandfather was born in the UK (supposedly in Greenwich–no idea for sure since I can’t find the records), then the whole family returned to the U.S.
Problem #1 with the Stiers is that this seems to be a common name among German Christians. While I do have another relation of German ancestry (don’t get me started on the Satenburgs), I know my Stiers were not German, nor Christian. But was Samuel married to another wife before Fanny? Is that why his oldest daughter is so much older than her brothers? No clue.
Ida (Chave), Louis & Harry (Aaron) Beckenstein The Beckensteins, my father’s mother’s side, are much more orderly. That’s them to the left. Because of their somewhat unusual names, I found them fairly easily in a ship manifest. The person transcribing the manifest had made a bit of a hash of their names, but still, my Ellis Island search led me to a record with Aaron and Chave Beckenstein. Aaron later changed his name to Harry and Chave to Ida.
What’s kind of cool is that there is a definite family resemblence between Ida and my niece (my niece would be Ida’s great-great-granddaughter). Aaron even looks quite a bit like my niece’s brother.
A few others who are hanging out in my family tree–the great-grandfather who was a stowaway coming over from Italy, the grandfather who changed his name from the unusual (Fratantonio) to the common (Russo), perhaps because he was into some shady dealings and wanted to stay on the down-low. That grandfather, Domenic Russo, died in prison when I was an infant.
Then there’s this mystery man who’s not even related to me. He was apparently the friend of my great-uncle Sam Beckenstein. Uncle Sam saved a ton of pictures from the 40s, mostly photos of his girlfriends of which there were many (he never married). I came across the photo to the left amongst his other pictures, which I’m guessing was taken during WW2. Uncle Sam had written on the back Lew Gill standing in front of our tent.Since I have no idea who Lew Gill is, I posted the photo on Facebook and Twitter in hopes someone would jump out of the blue and e-mail me to say, “That’s my dad/grandfather/uncle!” It would be very cool if that happened, but so far, no luck.
As a writer, I can’t resist wondering. Where exactly was the picture taken? Here in the States, or overseas? Did Lew survive the war? Was he married before he headed off to the army, or did he marry when he got home? What kind of life did he have? Did he raise a family? Could his children/grandchildren be out there somewhere?
It would be lovely to have those questions answered, to solve the mystery. In the meantime, my imagination will just have to fill in the blanks.
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RTW – Required Reading
YA Highway this week wonders what books I might recommend as required reading in a high school English/Literature class. You gotta figure that the first title that springs to mind is Tankborn, because a girl’s gotta promote. But actually, if I say so myself, Tankborn would be an excellent choice for a high school reading program with its themes of class, race, and what it means to be human. Okay, shameless plug over.
The first non-Tankborn book I thought of is Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. This is a mind-blowing book in terms of gender identity, but also a fascinating piece of worldbuilding. I can imagine long discussions about what might be different about earth’s societies if we truly lacked separate genders, if we were only sexual beings a few days a month.Even more intriguing is the main character Ai Genly, a male-gendered person through whose eyes we see the people of Gethen. They consider him “the pervert” because he’s stuck in his male body. The students could imagine themselves as either the single-gendered person or an androgyn. Or that androgyn in his/her monthly “kemmer” when their body chooses a specific gender. One more possible discussion topic is the fact that the Gethens are living in an Ice Age. The students might be asked to consider how a people could survive in that kind of environment.
A second book that comes to mind is Sheri S. Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country. This is a post-apocalyptic story, set on earth a few hundred years after a catastrophic war. In the particular community of Women’s Country, the women live a largely agrarian life within a walled city with a few male servants. The remaining men are warriors who live outside the city.The men who live with the women are gentle beta types, while the warriors, as you might imagine, are fierce alphas. The women only interact with the warrior men once a year, when they are brought in to father the next generation. However there’s more to the relationship between the warrior men and dominant women than it seems on the surface.
There’s plenty to discuss here–the impact of a feminist-dominant society, the usefulness of aggressiveness in this world, what it truly means to be a man. The roles we play in the world, and which of those we choose ourselves and which we let society place upon us. On top of this, it’s a beautifully written book.
You might see a common element in these two books. They’re both written by women. So many (nearly all) of what are considered the classics were written by men. Yes, there are the Bronte sisters’ books and Austen’s. But while those offer an intriguing look into the society of the time, they don’t give as much meaty food for thought as the two SF books that I mention.
So that would be my final recommendation: Add more women-authored books to the required reading list. There are many out there besides Ursula K. Le Guin and Sheri S. Tepper. Octavia Butler, Julian May, Nancy Kress to name a few. It’s time for school districts to seek them out.
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What’s Science Got to Do With It?
Last Thursday, #MGlitchat’s topic of the week was science fiction in middle grade books. I write YA rather than MG, but I was kind of jonesing for a writerly discussion (and science fiction is a subject dear to my heart), so I joined in. It proved to be a lively topic.In the course of the hour or so I was participating, a few of us got into a side discussion of what constituted science fiction. Since I’m of, ahem, a certain age, and have been reading SF for a few decades (no, I won’t tell you how many), I ascribe to the classical definition of the genre. That is, it’s science fiction if, were you to remove the science element, there would be no story.
One of the other folks on the chat wondered if that definition is no longer valid. I think it’s a fine question to ask, but I just can’t think of another definition that would serve the same purpose. It is, after all, science fiction, so there has to be science. I guess the only question would be, can you call it SF if there’s no actual science? Or if the only “science” aspect are space ships, or laser guns, or people use unfamiliar slang?
Are there books that one might want to call science fiction, but have no science integral to the story? For instance, is Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games science fiction? It certainly has a science fiction feel to it. But what’s the science?
How about the Games themselves? There’s a great deal of science not only in the creation of the horrific arenas, but also in the tracking of the participants every moment. There’s a certain scientific aspect to the projection of the future as well (although that element of the series could also be labeled “speculative fiction,” which is a more generic term).
What about my own book, Tankborn? Is it truly science fiction? I believe it is. Yes, I could have created a straight fiction novel based on the Indian caste system but it would have been an entirely different book. Instead I used caste in a futuristic novel in which a bastardization of that system re-constitutes itself in a society that has left earth and colonized another planet. There is science in the creation of the genetically engineered GENs, science in the circuitry wired in their bodies that is used to control them, science in the devices that are used to interface with the GENs’ annexed brains. Some of the “science” in the book, e.g., my lev-cars and illusory holographic projections might not be strictly necessary to the story, but they do flesh out the setting. However if the science of the GENs were pulled out of Tankborn, many crucial aspects of the story would fall apart.So are dystopian books, in and of themselves, automatically science fiction? I can’t speak for every dystopian out there since I haven’t read them all (yet :-)). But in addition to the Hunger Games trilogy, there are other dystopians that would certainly qualify in my mind as SF. Neal Shusterman’s Unwind is an excellent example, as is Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox. In both books, certain scientific advances (in addition to social changes) led to the dystopian world depicted in the story. In fact, without the science and social aspects in tandem, there would not be a story.
I’d love to hear others’ opinions of what science fiction means to them. I’d like to hear what books you think are science fiction and why you think they are. For instance, I believe Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a fantastic SF book, but some might call it literary. So what are you reading in science fiction? And what’s science got to do with it?
