Edited by Josef Steiff and
Tristan D. Tamplin
[Open Court Publishing, 2008. 423 pages. $18.95 paperback]

Reviewed by Geoff Hyatt

When Battlestar Galactica was revived in 2004, the campiness and derring-do of the 1978 original were replaced with depth and seriousness, transforming the show from a geek subculture indulgence into a pop culture phenomenon. Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy collects more than 30 essays exploring the issues of technology, identity, gender, and ethics central to the show. Though it was released before the 2009 series finale, the book covers a wealth of concepts and manages to do so with an accessible yet intellectual style.

Coedited by Josef Steiff, associate chair of Columbia’s Film & Video department, the book includes offerings from faculty members Dan Dinello, Sara Livingston, Bryan McHenry, and Columbia alum Bryan Barker. Dinello’s piece, “The Wretched of New Caprica,” examines how the end of season 2 reversed the post-9/11 “clash of civilizations” allegory, casting humans in the role of insurgents fighting the occupying Cylons (as opposed to humans as the stalwart survivors of a Cylon terrorist attack). Livingston compares the techniques used on the ships Galactica and Pegasus to examine differing moral ideologies during wartime. McHenry’s “Weapons of Mass Salvation” looks at how religion is used in both the series and the real word to motivate the masses—often with fearsome results. Barker takes on free will, determinism, and Schopenhauer in the context of the war between humans and Cylons. The essays in this volume challenge and expand on the full story and rich subtext of the series.

Much more than a mere series overview or a compilation of dormroom musings, Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy is a fun and challenging meditation on the classic questions of both science fiction and modern civilization.

Buy Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy.

By Nami Mun
[Riverhead Books, 2009. 286 pages, $21.95 hardcover]

Reviewed by Rea Frey (B.A. ’04)

From the first winding sentence, Columbia fiction writing professor Nami Mun constructs a blunt, gritty tale of teen heroine Joon, a strong but vacuous girl who knows nothing of grief, love, or the ordinariness of childhood. After escaping a tragic home life in favor of the streets, Joon crosses the paths of quirky characters like one would encounter friends in grade school, with each providing stark life lessons.

From drug addiction, rape, teen pregnancy, and homelessness to abuse and even death, Joon bounces between one vile situation and the next over the span of five years. She does it perfunctorily, as if it is her duty to experience tapped veins, dirty shoes, and the sweaty bodies of strange men.

Mun’s ability to attack with distinct images, grimy settings, obtuse characters, and detestable situations sets Miles from Nowhere on a charged pace from page one. She delivers the story in an authentic, almost deadpan narrative. Where other authors might have clumsily fumbled through such grotesque, often clichéd subject matter, Mun paints the story matter-of-factly, allowing readers the chance to form their own interpretations. Do we feel sorry for Joon? Do we loathe her? Do we want to keep reading? The answer, almost inexplicably, is yes.

In one of the most daunting sequences, where Joon and her boyfriend are high on dust, he decides he wants to see Joon’s insides:

He splayed the cuts with his fingers and examined them, making little sounds of discovery. I asked him what he saw now.

He got up, almost tripped while stumbling to our table, and came back with a spoon. He jimmied the handle of the spoon into a cut until he found something he could tap.

Miles from Nowhere is a sharp, gravelly read. We will remember the attempt at an abortion with knitting needles and clothes hangers, Joon punching her own budding womb; the pot-smoking man who shish-kebabbed himself with a tree branch; the irrational fear of dwarfs with short arms; Knowledge, Benny, and the agoraphobic nun; and the gorgeous, almost out-of-place poetic phrasing that pops up: “The asphalt was a lace of sparkling diamonds.”

Mun’s tight, sporadic vignettes about serious subjects—rape, abandonment, death—manage, in just a page or two, to feed us all the information we need. This is a book of surprises, where each chapter is a new adventure, with no specific plot. However, readers will follow this tough but naïve heroine, who floats along through the muck
of life wanting only a warm blanket, a steady paycheck, and perhaps her next hit of heroin. Later, much later, she will come to know the realities of sacrifice and love.

Nami Mun teaches creative writing at Columbia. She has received a Pushcart Prize, as well as scholarships from the Corporation of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony.

Buy Miles from Nowhere

By Sean Chercover
[William Morrow, 2009. 304 pages, $23.95 hardcover, $7.99 paperback]

Reviewed by Kevin Riordan

This well-received, Dilys Award-winning second novel continues the story of Ray Dudgeon, private eye and Columbia College alumnus. What’s not to like? The detective has a slightly used B.A. in journalism, and the author, Sean Chercover, is a former private investigator who also draws on sundry past jobs; he could probably write a hell of a novel about selling encyclopedias. Chercover is an active, thoughtful blogger as well.

Dudgeon established his Chicago bonafides in 2007’s Big City, Bad Blood as he tackled aldermen, the Chicago Police Department, and the Outfit (don’t call it the Mob). The P.I. goes global in this thriller, where a seemingly open-and-shut case expands fractally and engagingly, despite the fact that Trigger City isn’t really a whodunit. An investigation into just how crazy the killer was, and the power structure behind a private military corporation, carries the accidentally quixotic Dudgeon along as he works out a few issues of his own, including a Laura-like empathy for the murdered woman. The handful of characters who recur are smoothly reintroduced, and Dudgeon’s backstory is further explored.

With a deft specificity for locale, technology, character, and angry bands that begin with “the” (the Cure, the Who, the Stooges, the Clash), Chercover has cemented his place in the top ranks of today’s crime writers from any region. He does for Chicago something often attempted but rarely accomplished: making the city itself a major character, in a manner reminiscent of Frederic Brown’s classic midcentury title The Fabulous Clipjoint.

Somewhat less gruesome and blustery than in most current crime fiction, the action in Trigger City seems all the more real. Even surveillance seems interesting. Most of Dudgeon’s pain comes from such banal activities as throwing darts or sleeping on his ruined shoulder. Neither postmodern nor overly nostalgic, the book is pervaded by a mature appreciation for the vanishing charms of the city. It is refreshing, if frustrating, that the last section of the book winds down, not unlike a typical season for the Cubs.

But we live in hope: There’s always next year.

Sean Chercover earned a B.A. from Columbia in 1991. He has worked as a private investigator, scriptwriter, film and video editor, scuba diver, nightclub magician, encyclopedia salesman, car jockey, waiter, and truck driver and in other less glamorous positions.

Buy Trigger City