We The People Bible: One of the most terrible products I've seen lately

This post is going to honk a lot of people off, probably.  Whether it cuts one way or another.  I know and accept that.

First of all, the older I've gotten the more I have come to understand something.  Mainly, that the republican form of government that the Founders gave us in the Constitution of the United States is ideal only for a people who believe in something higher than man.  Whether you call that something God, or Yahweh, or the Universe, or whatever, the Constitution is best suited for those who hold themselves accountable to that greater entity.  I believe that the past several decades have proven that in the hands of they who believe that man is the be-all/end-all of law and life, that weak attempt at imitating democratically-elected republican government has led to disaster on multiple fronts.

So yes: I do believe that the American government is intended for people who believe in greater authority than their own.  It is where all true law comes from.  It has been ever since Moses came down that mountain with those stone slabs.

I believe in the Constitution.  I also believe that the Declaration of Independence was the work of a magnificent assemblage of some of the greatest minds from throughout the colonies.  I think that the Bill of Rights is not taught about nearly enough in the majority of our schools.  The Pledge of Allegiance... ehhhh, I elaborated on that subject ten years ago, about why I cannot in good conscience say it (but I have absolutely no problem when others choose to recite it).

For saying these things, some are going to declare that I am a "Christian nationalist", a "Christian reconstructionist", that I have a colonial mind, that I'm a "right-wing fanatic" or... good HEAVENS... a "MAGA Republican" (whatever that is supposed to be).

Well, that's one audience that I will have worked up in a frothing frenzy.  Now it's time for the other...

A couple of weeks ago an advertisement began popping up on Facebook.  Usually this sort of thing just breezes past me.  But this particular item severely caught my attention.  Because it's the dire opposite of a lot of things that have shaped and molded my personal theology almost since the beginning of my Christian faith.

It's called the We The People Bible.  You can find it in a Google search easily enough, I'm not posting a link to it here.  As you can see it's got an embossed leather cover.  Said cover, in the words of the website, "was designed with the patriot in mind and features a vertical reversed American flag design that represents a country in distress."  Toward the back of the book there is to be found the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and its amendments, and the Pledge of Allegiance.

Oh bruddah.  How many ways can we talk about how wrong this thing is?

The We The People Bible is the very worst elements of what I've seen from most of a lifetime of exposure to Christian Reconstructionism: a body of tenets orbiting the notion that God has ordained Christians to seize power, so as to remake the United States into a theocracy based solely on the Holy Bible.

The problem with that is, that this theocracy is going to be forced upon people, whether they like it or not.  And when that is the driving influence of such a movement, the entire thing becomes antithetical to the concept that God gave us this country to govern ourselves.  America is supposed to be the land of a people who choose to seek God's guidance, as best he or she might understand that.  It's not meant to be a land controlled by those who believe their interpretation is to be imposed under penalty of punishment.  America is not like places in the Mid-East where "blasphemers" are beheaded and homosexuals are throw from the top of tall buildings.  But, I could spend all day writing about what I've seen over the years regarding this.

The heart-meat of the matter is this: I definitely have no problem with people reading the Constitution, the Bill of Right, the Declaration of Independence, or any other document pertaining to the founding and organizing of our government.  In fact, I want people to read those.  But to include even those hallowed parchments within a volume of scripture along with the fundamentals of Judeo-Christian theology, is tantamount to making them equivalent to those sacred writings.  They are not.  And I can't but think that the Founders and many others, including the scholars who compiled the King James Version (the translation that the We The People Bible uses), would be horrified that documents of this temporal realm are now on the same level as inspired writings.  This is the worst grief that I have with this product.

I said that's the worst grief.  Not necessarily the one that sticks out as being either the most tacky or visibly sacrilegious.  The upside-down flag on the cover of this abomination is ridiculous.  Those who study scripture will absolutely know that the Bible teaches us that those who give God their highest priority are not to be a people living in fear and anxiety.  Isaiah 41:10 tells us "Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you.  I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

So it is that the reversed flag - which is supposed to be reserved only for the most dire emergencies - comes across as a product of the politics of the era of this book's publication.

But consider: the publishers of the We The People Bible have literally wrapped scripture up in the American flag.  In doing so they claim custody of the Bible.  They want it to be known that the Bible is theirs to interpret and to decree from.  Instead of letting holy scripture work in their lives to affect and change their hearts, they seek to change scripture instead, according to the powers and politics of this frail and brittle mortal realm.

I might have just glossed right over the ads I've seen for the We The People Bible, had it not been for an intensive study I participated in college with others about modern religious thinkers.  The most influential person we studied the works of was Stanley Hauerwas.  And one of his books that we read was his 1993 tome Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America.  The cover of which depicts a Bible literally wrapped up in an American flag.  Unleashing the Scripture became one of the most influential books during those early days of my Christian life.  I still feel it resonating whenever I'm tackling the subject of Christianity and its relationship with culture, and especially with politics.  And I got to say, that the We The People Bible comes across as a dark parody of Unleashing the Scripture, or maybe a Bizarro-World incarnation of Hauerwas's work.

It comes down to this: the Bible, I have no doubt about this, was the principle guide for the Founders when they set about liberating America and then crafting her principles into codified law.  I believe that the Bible has influenced history as no other book has.  But the Bible is supposed to define men.  Men are not meant to define the Bible.  If we are to believe that the Bible is perfect and inerrant (regardless of which respectable version one chooses to draw from) then we should be prepared to accept how it will apply to our lives.  To mold us and conform us to its image.  The Bible is not to be shaped and drawn out according to the fashions of the time.

And that is what the We The People Bible is an attempt to do.  Whether its publishers intended or not, it is become a weapon against those who are in disagreement with them.  Yes, the Bible is as a mighty sword, that divides between truth and false.  It can absolutely be trusted.  But when its publication is intended to be a tangible symbol of political power, well... it has gone too far and become something that is anything but in adherence to scripture.

Let us look not to carnal weaponry for our deliverance and salvation.  There is a greater Kingdom for us to build up and preach a citizenship of.  It is those edifices we are meant for, not the pale shadows of this fallen land.  God will be the judge of our efforts: Were they for His glory, or for our own?

I pray that what we do, will be done and has been done for Him alone.

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New children's book asks: what is an abortion?

Big League Politics posted a story yesterday about a children's book titled - and I am not making this up - What's An Abortion, Anyway?

Does anyone else catch the irony about this?

A book for children.

About abortion.

As if our kids aren't having enough of their childhood taken away from them already.  Now comes this.

(And I can't even find a literary agent for the book I wrote about a little girl and her doggie...)

I remember the first time I learned what an abortion is.  I was nine years old.  I asked one of my parents "what's an abortion?" after seeing it mentioned on the six o'clock news.  I will never forget the answer, it chilled me to the bone so coldly: "It's when a mother kills her child before it's born."

Why?  Why would a mother do that?

Almost forty years later, I still can't understand.  Oh, I know the rationale about it even if it goes unsaid: that some human life is "inconvenient" enough to be deemed disposable.  But I just can't wrap my brain about how someone can carry an unborn child within her, to feel that kind of LIFE growing and being nurtured, only to have it vacuum aspirated out of existence.

If a book really wants to inform small children about what an abortion is, it should show them the photos I have seen of actual aborted fetuses.  They should see the tiny lifeless bodies with faces and fingerprints of their own, chopped up into pieces on cold metal dishes.  They should be told the real cost of an abortion: the regret that many women come to feel after having their babies butchered within their womb.

Books such as this, and too many materials in our (almost always public) schools, are placing an enormous and inappropriate burden on our children.  They are expecting children to have a grasp of adult concepts, at an age when they should be enjoying being innocent of such things.  I asked about what is an abortion because I sincerely wanted to know.  If I was too young at the time, I trust my parents would not have told me.  They would have said "you'll understand someday" if they thought I couldn't handle it.  As it was, I had already learned about human reproduction at age seven.  I was curious so I read about it in the World Book Encyclopedia.  Interestingly, that article never mentioned abortion.

If we are going to teach children about abortion and make it sound safe and sanitary and routine, then we had also better be prepared to teach them about other "adult concepts", like God and theology and the notion that there is absolute good and evil in this world.  Let's do that and let the children decide for themselves about the "sanctity" of abortion, if it's so unassailable an idea.

Would "progressives" be that accommodating?  Somehow, I doubt it.

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Tom Clancy, father of the techno-thriller, has passed away

Tom Clancy was one of the first authors who I would eagerly await the next novel from.  I was a high school sophomore when the film adaptation of The Hunt for Red October came out and I read the novel soon afterward.  I spent the next several months and into the summer devouring everything Clancy that I could find.  The night before Hurricane Katrina hit, I curled up with my newly-bought copy of Executive Orders and by the time the storm's outer bands were hitting I couldn't have cared less: Clancy had engrossed me again.

Tom Clancy was a pure American... I'm not going to just say "writer" but also, just leave it at "pure American".  What do I mean by that?  This is a guy who had dreamed as a kid of being a pilot in the United States Navy.  What kept him from having that dream was an eye condition that instantly disqualified him.  Clancy wound up going into the insurance business... but he never quite gave up on his dream.  What did he do?  He started reading and researching United States military aircraft and naval vessels.  He learned everything he could about the government and military of the Soviet Union.  And then he set out to write what President Reagan would later call "the perfect yarn".  Almost thirty years later and The Hunt for Red October is arguably the definitive novel of modern naval warfare.  As well as being one hell of a gripping story.

He couldn't be in the Navy, so he made a phenomenally successful career out of writing about the Navy.  And along the way became perhaps the most prominent icon of the modern Navy.  How many other places in the world could someone have an opportunity to do a thing like that?

Tom Clancy - who gave us Jack Ryan, Marko Ramius, John Clark, Ding Chavez and many other characters in a genre he made all his own if not created single-handed - passed away Tuesday.  He was 66.  At the time of his passing he had another novel due out later this year.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.  Think I'll watch The Hunt for Red October tonight in his memory.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic played with my Yoda puppet (and signed it too!)

This past Friday evening saw musical parody genius, pop culture icon and now bestselling author "Weird Al" Yankovic come to Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh, North Carolina as part of his seven-city book-signing tour promoting his just-released children's tome My New Teacher and Me!...

My New Teacher and Me! is the follow-up to Weird Al's acclaimed 2011 children's book When I Grow Up (available as a standard book and as a newfangled iOS app for your iPad!).

I arrived at the store about three hours before the signing (incidentally, Quail Ridge Books is a really nice independent bookstore: I'm gonna make it a habit of swinging by there any time I'm in the Raleigh area) and bought a few copies to get signed.  I wound up reading My New Teacher and Me! in the interim and found it to be a delightful and well-crafted (and funny) sequel to the first book.  I hope Al continues with young Billy's story and gives him at least a trilogy!

Well anyhoo, 7 p.m. arrived and Al Yankovic (that's how he's billed in literary circles, not as "Weird Al", so I'm gonna try to respect that for the rest of this post) came out and began signing and posing for photos.  I don't know how many came to Quail Ridge Books on Friday night but there had been over 800 at his previous stop in Cincinnati the day before.  If I had to guess, I would estimate at least 400 people and maybe even 500.

It was a little after 8 when my turn came to approach the table where Al was situated.  And along with the two copies of My New Teacher and Me! I had something else that I was hoping he could sign: my vintage Yoda vinyl hand puppet, bought all the way back in 1981.  I figured that since his big finishing song at the end of every concert is "Yoda" - and since he had the same kind of puppet as a prop in his very first MTV special - that it might have been worth a shot.

Well, as soon as I walked to the table Al saw my puppet standing atop my books and he said "Hey, I used to have one of those!"  I gave it to him and he put it on his hand and started playing with it... yes, "Weird Al" Yankovic himself (I know, I slipped from established protocol there but I couldn't help it) started playing with my Yoda puppet!!  He put it on his right hand and began talking like Yoda and then he said "Or you could play with him like *this*" and started punching Yoda like a boxer.

This has to be among the top five most kewlest moments of my life...

And yes, he signed it...

Don't even think of asking to buy this from me!  You will never, ever, EVER find this listed on eBay.  Not as long as I'm alive... and I'm planning on being alive for a heap long time.  That lil' Yoda puppet had sentimental value before, and it's got even more now.

Thanks to Al for coming to Raleigh, and thanks to Quail Ridge Books for hosting him!  And I heartily recommend My New Teacher and Me!: a fun lil' book for children ages 6 to 600.

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"Winter is coming"... and this iOS app will help guide your way!

Last spring I added a new vice to my list of stuff worth spending valuable time on. I haven't spoken about it on this blog yet but those who know me best will tell you that I have become a huge fan of A Song of Ice and Fire (AKA Game of Thrones), the fantasy novel series by George R.R. Martin. Kristen gave me a Barnes & Noble gift card for my birthday last year and I used it to buy A Game of Thrones. When June rolled around I wound up taking A Feast for Crows along on our trip to Oregon. And just before Christmas I finished the most recent book, A Dance with Dragons.

I am digging the heck out of this series! My three absolutely favorite characters are Jon Snow, Arya Stark and Tyrion Lannister. Especially Tyrion: it's impossible to get enough of that guy! Jon and his direwolf Ghost - with the Wall behind them - are the wallpaper on my desktop and iPad. And if I ever have a daughter someday I hope she's even half as spunky as Arya is.

And all of this was before I had even watched HBO's Game of Thrones, the acclaimed television series based on the books. I just finished the Blu-ray set of Season 1 and am looking forward to getting Season 2 when it comes out. Maybe there'll be a way I can sneak some premium cable by the time Season 3 begins late next month. I can see now why Peter Dinklage earned that Emmy: his portrayal of Tyrion is the most electrifying character on television lately.

"Stick them with the pointy end!"

While we're waiting for the next volume, The Winds of Winter, to get published one of these daysyears, if you're also a fanatic for all things Westeros and have an iPad or other Apple gadget then you should check out A World of Ice and Fire app for iOS devices. It's not as thorough as A Song of Ice and Fire Wiki and it isn't as definitive as it could (and let's hope eventually will) be, but as a basic guide for the Game of Thrones it comes pretty handy. The app is loaded with character biographies, genealogical info (so you can keep track of which is Robert Baratheon and Robert Arryn, who I'd love to see thrown through the Moon Door someday), maps of the various regions, some really nice artwork of many of the characters and locations... all things considered good enough to recommend for downloading from the App Store. It's not "perfect" but it still ample merit for some positive mentioning. There is even an option that will keep "spoilers" hidden until you've completed reading any book in the series. It's a free app but some features you'll have to pay for. Even so, it can be pretty useful while following the machinations, manipulations and myriads of characters fighting to control the Iron Throne!

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The Top Ten Greatest Fictional Statesmen

We deserve better.  We should have demanded better.  We should have had higher expectations from those who asked to be entrusted with crafting laws, with the public treasury, with judicial integrity, with command of the military.

Let's stop the bullcrap and be honest.  I mean, SERIOUSLY honest.  With an election looming in the next few days here in the United States, we have been incrementally conned and conditioned to have practically nobody to cast a vote for other than smooth-talkers and snake-oil salesmen.  Incumbents and challengers ready willing and able to sell their soul for a little scrap of power... and fools that we are, we seem only too willing to give it to them.  Sometimes I wonder if most of us like being treated with such contempt by those who allege to serve we the people.

In short: we have a surplus of politicians and too damned few statesmen.

What is a statesman?  Someone, man or woman, who puts the good of those they serve above his or her own desires and ambitions.  True statesmen are not politicians.  Politicians care only for the trappings of office and don't care how they get it.

For the past several years I have had a rule by which I abide when it comes to casting a ballot.  It is very simple: if a candidate's campaign creates or sanctions even one negative ad aimed at an opponent, I do not vote for that candidate.  To me it indicates that the candidate is a politician, not a statesman.  Statesmen will hold up under scrutiny per their own virtues.  They don't want or even need to attack the virtues of others, even if said virtues are lacking.

Right now, my ballot for next week has some pretty wide open spaces.

How has it come to this?  Could it be that... we as citizens have forgotten what a statesman is supposed to be?  That we can no longer recognize the qualities that make them leaders and not mere "politicians"?

Maybe.  In fact, I would dare say, unfortunately... yes, we have.

So if sincere and selfless and capable leadership cannot be found in our real world, perhaps a look toward movies, books and television is in order.  Assembled here are the top ten men, women, and other beings from fiction who best exemplify the various aspects of statesmanship, along with the qualities for which they are best known.

Who are they?  Find out after the jump!

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Shumate revs up the spiritual engine with CARS AND CHRISTIANITY

Awright, disclaimer time ('cuz I believe in that sort of thing): I've known Stephen Shumate for most of my life, though it's been the better part of twenty years since we've corresponded at all. But as is such these days we wound up hooking up again through Facebook. I've always thought Stephen as being one of the wisest and coolest people I've ever met (not to mention adventurous: he used to do crazy dangerous whitewater kayaking and probably still does).

When it caught my eye that Stephen had written a book, well... that certainly piqued my attention. Especially when the title of it is Cars and Christianity.

When I saw that title I was honestly expecting something very different. Like, maybe a book about the physical nuts 'n bolts of automobiles as much as contemplation upon spiritual life. Technical geek though I be, the inner workings of cars and trucks continue to mystify me (though that hasn't stopped me from getting three speeding tickets so far this year, but I digress...) and I was anticipating that Cars and Christianity would provide multi-disciplinary education across two disparate fields of interest. Alas! It did not.

But Cars and Christianity is, however, a very thoughtful lil' tome of reflections upon the grace of God and the seeking after Him for guidance and wisdom. One that will be readily accessible and enjoyable to anyone.

Cars and Christianity presents the walk with Christ as an auto restoration project (much like the one Shumate undertook with his '73 Corvette shown on the cover). The life of the believer is one that begins as a banged-up embarrassment of rusted chrome and Bondo-filled panels: one that MAACO wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Yet the Master Mechanic that is Christ is more than sufficient to repair "every single dent and scratch", as Shumate puts it. So it is that in the beginning, the Christian's car is made better than sparkling new.

And yet, as Shumate notes, far too many Christians are content to leave their cars sitting in the garage: accumulating dust and quietly rotting under the hood. And that's not what our spiritual vehicles are intended to be! Our cars are supposed to be driven hard and fast on God's highway, trusting Him to guide us even amidst smoke, snow and any other adverse condition. No life should be left idly in park. Indeed, that isn't much of life at all. But to hit the road as a believer in Christ is to have a more action-packed adventure than possibly anything depicted in Easy Rider or Thelma and Louise. All we have to do is be willing to put the key into the ignition.

Wonderfully laden with insight and humor, Cars and Christianity invokes everything from NASCAR racing to the quirks of GPS. My only complaint about it is that I was left wanting more. But as a first-time book, it is a terrific work of analogies and applications for long-time Christians and new believers alike. I certainly came away from reading it feeling that it was time well spent... and time leading to deeper reflection upon my own faith.

Cars and Christianity is available as softcover printed book and one of those new-fangled Kindle readers (and it can also be used on an iPad with the free Kindle app). BUT READERS OF THIS BLOG are getting the book for just $5.00! Simply head on over to this page that Stephen has set up for you nice folks and enter B7NY3ZL8 as the discount code. So you're getting a fun and edifying book, putting money into Stephen's pocket AND saving some coin for yourself all at the same time! Is that a great deal or what?!

Anyhoo however you get it, Cars and Christianity gets this blogger's seal of approval. And I hope that this is only the first of many, many books still to come from Stephen Shumate :-)

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Just finished reading THE HUNGER GAMES

I began reading Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games, as it turned out, a few day before Mom passed away. It took me awhile to get back to it but I picked it up again a coupl'a nights ago.

I thought it was a most excellent and enjoyable read. Maybe not as rich in allegory as it could have been but, I'm willing to defer final judgment on this series until I finish the third book.

In case you haven't had the pleasure of discovering it yet, The Hunger Games takes place in a distant future where what was once North America collapsed into ruin and from the ashes arose a cruel dictatorship called Panem. It's a place ruled by The Capitol: a megalopolis populated by a decadent people who do nothing but eating, drinking, getting plastic surgery and probably getting laid. They live at the expense of the peons of twelve districts who provide all the necessities like fuel, food and power. To keep the districts from getting uppity (and also as reminder of who's in charge following an age-old rebellion) the Capitol makes each district send one boy and one girl to the yearly Hunger Games: a combination fashion show, popularity pageant and gladiator battle from which only one can emerge as victor. It's now the seventy-fourth Hunger Games and sixteen-year old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to play for District 12 in place of her younger sister (picked by lottery, in something of a nod to Shirley Jackson).

That's all I'll say for the book, which I decided I wanted to read before the film adaptation comes out next month. For a young adult novel, it's rife with plenty of plot, grisly violence and budding romance that never gets too mushy. Here's hoping the movie is even half as good!

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Review of STAR WARS: DARTH PLAGUEIS: Luceno's latest well worth seven year wait!

"Did you ever hear the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise? It's a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise that he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life. He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even stop the ones he cared about from dying."

-- Supreme Chancellor Palpatine,
talking to Anakin Skywalker
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

If you are a fan of Star Wars to whatsoever degree at all, leave your chair right now and IMMEDIATELY go to your nearest bookstore and buy a copy of James Luceno's Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. Or go to Amazon.com and order a copy from there. However the heck you must, well... you must! Because Star Wars: Darth Plagueis wildly exceeded my ridiculously high expectations for this novel: a tome that many of us have been waiting nigh on seven years for!

There are two massive reasons why I've been stoked about Darth Plagueis. That it's about the eponymous Dark Lord of the Sith who - if you read between the lines - you already know was the mentor of Darth Sidious, AKA Palpatine: the future Emperor and master of Darth Vader. All we've solidly understood about Plagueis until now is from that "ghost story" which Palpatine shares with Anakin in Revenge of the Sith: how Plagueis discovered a path to physical immortality. It becomes the most tantalizing lure that soon brings Anakin to embrace the dark side. But between that and how eventually he was murdered by his disciple, Darth Plagueis has been a massively black question mark: one that legions of fans of the saga have wanted to be addressed for most of the past decade.

The other big reason why I've been looking forward to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis is that it's author is James Luceno: easily among the top tier of Star Wars writers today. And this is a novel that he's been on record as wanting to write since 2005, just before Revenge of the Sith came out. At the time Luceno wanted to pen a tale about how Darth Plagueis and Qui-Gon Jinn in their own unique ways pursued immortality, but how Jinn found the "right" path to it. And for a time it looked like we were going to get that book, along with the backstory of Darth Plagueis.

Then about five years ago the word came down from on high at Lucasfilm that Luceno's Darth Plagueis book had been cancelled. The official rationale given was that it was "decided that this was not the right time to delve into Palpatine's back story and Plagueis's beginnings..." I figured that Plagueis and Palpatine was a subject that was going to forever be a gray area ripe for fan speculation. But then about a year and a half ago it was announced that Darth Plagueis WOULD be published after all.

So here we are in January 2012. Getting my copy of Darth Plagueis was the first thing that I did when I had time on Tuesday morning. I took my own sweet time reading this book and finished it yesterday afternoon.

So was it worth waiting seven years for? Do we finally get definitive answers about the shadowy history of the future Emperor Palpatine and his own Sith Master?

Ohhhhhhh yeah bay-bee!

Heck, I was authentically shocked at how much previously-hidden lore gets exposed in Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. This might be the most revelation-packed Star Wars novel in the history of anything. Luceno went for broke with this and apparently he had loads of input from George Lucas himself about Plagueis and Palpatine, and in my mind there is no question that this might be the most canonical piece of Star Wars literature in many a great moon. And in the hands of accomplished saga storyteller James Luceno - who previously delved into the history of that galaxy far, far away with Millennium Falcon and Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader - Darth Plagueis is a masterful work of personal drama, political intrigue and philosophical treatise... all at once!

Darth Plagueis begins 67 years before the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and the entire book is essentially a "trilogy", with each third covering a two-year span of time. It's a lot of chronological ground to cover in what amounts to 368 pages of narrative, but Luceno's tactic is extremely effective. When the story begins we find that Plagueis, a Muun, has been apprenticed for many decades to Darth Tenebrous: a Bith Sith (who'da thought a race of jazz artists could produce such a dastardly Dark Lord?). Being of the line of Darth Bane, Plagueis soon dispatches Tenebrous in true Sith fashion. He then makes his way back home to Muunlinst where he enjoys public power and authority as Hego Damask, Magister of the InterGalactic Banking Clan. Among other things, Damask runs his own Bohemian Grove-style yearly retreat for the galaxy's top businessbeings and politicians, complete with drunken debauchery and ultra-violent mayhem. But his real passion is for his secret lab: a place where Plagueis is doing all sorts of nasty experiments on living organisms and the midi-chlorians residing within their cells. You see, Plagueis is hellbent on stopping the Rule of Two for all time... by finding a way to be the very last Sith Master: one who will never die. His quest to accrue and consolidate his power behind the scenes soon brings him to Naboo, where Plagueis intercedes in a planetary political crisis. It is on Naboo that Plageuis comes to notice the son of a nobleman: a young man seething with ambition... and possibly something more.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is Palpatine. And we learn more about the future Emperor in Darth Plagueis than we have ever learned before. We come to find out about Palpatine's family, his formal education and the beginnings of his political career. We discover how Palpatine came to be a Sith Lord under Darth Plagueis (just as Plagueis also reflects upon how he became a Sith under Tenebrous). We are shown Palpatine taking his first Force-ful steps down the path of the dark side, and we are there as he is given a new name by his tutor: "Sidious".

Palpatine's rise to power and secret Sith education comprise much of the second part of Darth Plageuis, as Plagueis continues his dark experiments in midi-chlorian alchemy. One notable event which happens during this period is when Palpatine is given a Zabrak infant: the future Darth Maul (bigtime props to Luceno for tying The Clone Wars series on Cartoon Network in and how it gets reconciled with previous Maul-y material!). And gradually we begin to see other pieces of the larger game come onto the board: Jedi Master Dooku's growing dissatisfaction with the Jedi and the Republic they are sworn to serve, the cloners of Kamino, the corruption in the Senate, and the rise to prominence of gangsters like Jabba the Hutt and factions such as the Trade Federation.

And behind all of these disparate threads are the fingers of Darth Plagueis, who is secretly weaving them into the culmination of a thousand years of the Sith's plan to take control of the galaxy for the greater good. But things begin to go awry just as Plagueis learns that the Jedi have discovered a young boy on Tatooine with the highest midi-chlorian count ever recorded: something that leads Plagueis to wonder...

This is a dense book. I think even the font size might be smaller than normal for a Star Wars novel. And Luceno has packed it with lore gathered from the length and breadth of the Star Wars mythos. Expect lots of pleasurable nuggets to be found if you're a serious Star Wars enthusiast, but even if you aren't this is a rollickin' dark, violent, fun and at times even a funny read. In short: everything that a Star Wars story should be... and with Darth Plagueis, James Luceno has not only raised the bar but also put it on top of the whole heapin' mountain.

Star Wars: Darth Plagueis gets my absolutely highest recommendation. It may not have turned into what James Luceno had originally envisioned, but in my opinion what it has become at last is something far more accessible and enjoyable. And if the Flanneled One is wise, he will now let Luceno be turned loose on that tale about Qui-Gon Jinn and the Whills that we know is also out there somewhere.

In the meantime, go get Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. Do it now. Or, perish in flame. It's your choice, but not really.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic's book WHEN I GROW UP now an awesome app for your iOS gadget!

This past winter master musical parody artist "Weird" Al Yankovic published his first-ever book, When I Grow Up. Yankovic's children's book resonated with audiences of all ages and fast found itself on the bestseller lists. If you've read it (and even if you haven't yet, you hooligan!) and you happen to have an iOS gizmo like an iPad or an iPhone, you'll be sure to want to check out the When I Grow Up interactive book on Apple's App Store. The entire book with all its artwork is here, along with at least 27 (quite possibly many more) hidden surprises, all accompanied by Yankovic's voice! There are also a few mini-games that will have you honking with laughter. Not kidding: "Gorilla Masseuse" for a few days recently was the most-played game on my iPad! I think it took me the better part of the week to keep that poor ape from going on a GORILLA RAMPAGE!

The app is $2.99 and is well worth the price, whether you want it for your children or for that kid in each of us :-)

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Review of BIOSHOCK: RAPTURE

2007's BioShock is on my short list of all time greatest video games ever. Okay, scratch that: BioShock is not a "video game" at all. It is an entirely new style of storytelling narrative. BioShock is high-brow literature all its own. And like the very best of books, you come away from it more enlightened and driven to ponder than you were before you encountered it. In the mind of Chris Knight, BioShock stands on the same level as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Seriously.

And like those and other classic novels, BioShock is something that many people finish with many different perspectives to wrestle over. My own personal take is that BioShock... and with a theme that continued into its sequel BioShock 2... is a morality tale about what man invariably becomes in the complete and conscious absence of God. Andrew Ryan's sub-Atlantic metropolis of Rapture was meant to be a Utopia where individual capability would be unfettered from the binds of government, religion and "petty morality". Instead it became a fallen ruin: an ultimate monument to man's corrupted nature.

We already knew about the city of Rapture from playing BioShock and BioShock 2. But we never got the full story of how Andrew Ryan built his underwater society... and how it collapsed.

But now we get to find out, because the tale of Rapture's rise and fall has just been published as a novel. And fitting for BioShock, it stands on a higher plane than most other video game-derivative books!

BioShock: Rapture is written by John Shirley, with plenty of input from BioShock creator Ken Levine. And having read it, I cannot recommend it enough for BioShock fans. BioShock: Rapture is a masterful working of the bits and pieces of Rapture's history that we learned throughout the two games, with a healthy dose of real-life history and politics thrown in. The result is a magnificent epic that in truest BioShock fashion leaves it to the reader to arrive at his or her own conclusions about morality.

The novel begins in 1945. Immediately after the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, billionaire industrialist Andrew Ryan has at last become disillusioned with a modern world hellbent on suicide. Ryan - who fled from the Communist revolution in Russia as a child - has also grown disgusted to the point of pathological hatred with the socialistic programs of Roosevelt's New Deal. With apparently no nation on Earth that he can feel at home, Andrew Ryan resolves to make a nation for himself and others who want to live at the discretion of no government or religion.

No doubt everyone who's played a BioShock game has wondered: "How the heck did Ryan build a city on the floor of the North Atlantic?" We find out how in BioShock: Rapture. Yeah there's some "deus ex mechanics" involved (particularly in regard to how Rapture isn't crushed to bits by the intense water pressure) but I found that such concerns were adequately addressed for what is admittedly a work of retro-historical science-fiction. And we also discover how Rapture was populated, per Ryan's peculiar standards. All the characters from the two games that we've come to know and love and all too often hate are there: from Andrew Ryan himself to master plumber Bill McDonagh (who gets quite a fulfilling backstory), on through to Sofia Lamb and the lunatic artist Sander Cohen, who will soon give entirely whole new meaning to the phrase "flaming homosexual".

But there are two factors in particular that come to play a part in the larger tale of Rapture. The first is the man who is known as Frank Fontaine (which is all I'm going to say if you haven't played the game yet). The second is the discovery of ADAM: the substance that makes the gene-changing plasmids possible. It is the plasmids which will eventually intoxicate with power most of the population of Rapture. A population that is growing increasingly restless and frustrated with utopian promises that fail to deliver. So it is that a series of circumstances come into being that lead up to the explosive events of December 31st, 1958: the day that Rapture erupted into civil war.

BioShock: Rapture not only answered questions stemming from my own curiosity about Rapture, it also cleared up quite a lot of material that I was a bit cloudy about. The part about how Fontaine Futuristics was taken over by Ryan was intriguing and illuminating, and that Andrew Ryan - a self-styled champion of capitalism - would become that which he hates most and nationalize an entire industry is an irony that is not lost upon the reader. We also get a better picture of how the Little Sisters came into being... along with their horrifying wardens, the Big Daddies.

BioShock: Rapture is by far one of the more satisfying novels to have sprung from a video game franchise that I have found. John Shirley has performed an elegant job at taking the enormously rich environment of the BioShock games and not only revealing more of the tapestry of Rapture but also reconciling details where such was needed. And just as much as I hope and pray that there will eventually be a true BioShock 3, I find myself very much desiring that this will be but the first of more novels that delve into that beckoning city deep beneath the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Highly recommended, even if you haven't played BioShock yet!

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Cover for STAR WARS: DARTH PLAGUEIS is dark, evil and BEAUTIFUL!

It was all the way back in 2005, when Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was hitting theaters, that James Luceno first mentioned he was interested in writing a novel about Darth Plagueis. Plagueis, as we know, was the Sith Master of Darth Sidious: AKA Palpatine. And that's darn nearly all that we've ever come to know about the mentor of one of fiction's most infamous villains.

Well the novel has been on-again and off-again, but Star Wars: Darth Plagueis is hitting shelves this coming December 27th. And today we finally get to see what the cover looks like!

Behold the Dark Side in its glory...

That cover is... stunning. Just as much as I have been dying to read this book I have wondered how the cover art would be handled and it wildly exceeded anything that I was expecting. Just look at that: young Palpatine, and he is kneeling before his master Darth Plagueis just as decades later Darth Vader would kneel before Palpatine.

I am soooo lusting to have a print of that art to hang on my wall. Or at least to have a much more high-res version to use as my desktop wallpaper. Hey LucasFilm: I bet a bunch of fans would plunk down some reasonable coin to have this as a poster for their collection. Get to it! :-)

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BEING BIPOLAR: Video Log 7 - God, Happiness, Yoda, ATLAS SHRUGGED, Weird Al, and Charlie Sheen

And I hope to have Part 6 of Being Bipolar up by the weekend :-)

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RED HARVEST: Star Wars returns to horror genre with mildly good zombie story

Had author Joe Schreiber not written Star Wars: Red Harvest, I would have been completely satisfied with his 2009 novel Death Troopers (see my review here) as a standalone story. Death Troopers was the first time that the Star Wars saga had delved into the territory of classic horror. It succeeded, and hopefully it will prove to be the first of many more endeavors to scare us with the darkness of that galaxy far, far away.

With Red Harvest, Schreiber follows up with a prequel examining the origins of the Blackwing virus: the infectious agent that turned an entire Imperial Star Destroyer into a derelict tomb packed with flesh-hungry zombies that Han Solo and Chewbacca had to blast their way through. However instead of again setting the story within the timeframe of the classic movies, Schreiber takes the readers back to the era of the Old Republic, more than thirty-five hundred years before the time of the Empire.

I thought that Red Harvest is something of a mixed bag, that for the most part works fairly well. But I have to wonder if it might have been more effective at eliciting terror had Schreiber set it (or if he'd been allowed to set it: remember we're talking about Star Wars licensed fiction under the ultimate control of the Lucasfilm bigwigs) during the period of the classic films. The virus, it turns out, was originally created by a Sith Lord named Darth Scabrous (that is either the funniest or the most sicko moniker for a Dark Lord ever), as part of his bid to find a means of living forever. Maybe it's just me, but Scabrous as a character just... didn't have the sense of menace that most Sith Lords have embodied. Although there is one vile act that Darth Scabrous does involving a bounty hunter and his partner (if you've read the book you know what I'm talking about) that is... well, it's pretty harsh. I mean it, it's outright gross to the max! And I can't help but think that somehow it would have been more intense had it been Darth Vader doing that instead to some poor shlub.

Death Troopers worked so well because it involved a setting and characters that most Star Wars fans already understood and appreciated. Red Harvest on the other hand demands that we feel empathy for an entirely new cast and an era of Star Wars lore that for many people, is still an unknown quantity. I'm not saying that you won't get a thrill from Red Harvest (which was originally to be titled Black Orchid until it was decided that sounded too much like a romance novel), just that the "scare factor" in Death Troopers was in most part because it involved elements we'd already invested significant time in coming to know and love. With Red Harvest even die-hard Star Wars fans will have to "work" at arousing the empathy needed to feel something toward the story's good guys.

So yeah, it wasn't quite up to the snuff that Death Troopers is, but I still have to say that I was entertained plenty enough by Red Harvest. It was good to see the concept of midi-chlorians explored further, and Schreiber also demonstrates in Red Harvest that he's not squeamish at all about turning the reader's stomach.

And hey, this novel has Sith ZOMBIES in it! Hard to say "no" to that :-)

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Darth Plagueis novel WILL be published after all!

James Luceno is a happy man: word came out a few days ago that his long-simmering Star Wars novel about Darth Plagueis is going to be published at last! Release date at the moment: February 28th, 2012.

That's a year and a half from now, but given what we've gone through already to see this book happen, it ain't so bad. Around the same time that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was premiering in theaters five years ago, Luceno was talking in interviews about how he wanted to write a novel about Darth Plagueis: the Sith Master of Palpatine AKA Darth Sidious. Specifically, Luceno said at the time that he wanted to explore at length Plagueis' search for the means to immortality (and how what Plagueis wanted differed from the immortality that Qui-Gon Jinn discovered). A year later it was announced that Luceno was writing his Darth Plagueis book with a publishing date in 2008.

Less than a year after that however, the Darth Plagueis book was cancelled by Lucasfilm! The official reason given was that it was "decided that this was not the right time to delve into Palpatine's back story and Plagueis's beginnings..."

Four years later and the time is apparently ripe to at last reveal the history of this enigmatic Sith Lord. I shall certainly be looking forward to it :-)

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Pixar artist puts mean (but fun) spin on Lil' Golden Books!

Pixar animation artist Josh Cooley has been making a series of illustrations inspired by - in addition to parodying - those classic Lil' Golden Books that so many of us grew up with. And now this summer Cooley is coming out with an actual honest-to-goodness book of his work! Lil' Inappropriate Golden Book: MOVIES 'R' FUN! takes scenes from well-known R-rated movies and, ummm... "kiddifies" them.

Ever seen serial killer Buffalo Bill in a children's book? You have now!

GeekTyrant has several more of Cooley's hilarious renditions, including "children's" versions of The Godfather, Se7en and The Big Lebowski.

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Yay! Lent is over!

And y'all know what that means, right? It means that my fast from pleasure reading is finished with also!

Yah, I didn't read any books except my Bible since Ash Wednesday well over a month ago. It was a very fulfilling experience. But I'm compelled to confess that I have missed the occasional novel or comic book. And I must also confess that I have had A Thousand Sons, the latest novel of The Horus Heresy series, still sitting in the bag from when I bought it earlier last month. Factoring in the withdrawal symptoms, I should have it devoured within a couple'a days :-)

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It's Steven Glaspie and three bestselling Star Wars authors!

This morning good friend and fellow Eagle Scout Steven Glaspie (who needs to update his blog sometime: something about being too busy with his sweet lass of a girlfriend lately...) and I went to StellarCon 34 in High Point. 'Twas Steven's very first sci-fi convention. Well, he didn't know as much going in but I'd already heard that three of his favorite Star Wars writers were going to be there. I've met with Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston quite a few times over the years (including an interview I got to with Zahn for TheForce.net years ago) and had some photos with each of them already. But for Steven, it was an entirely new experience! So I got a pic of all of them together...

(left to right: Michael Stackpole, Steven Glaspie, Timothy Zahn, Aaron Allston)

Allston, Stackpole and Zahn did a panel discussion for an hour and a half this morning that we got to attend, and Steven and I both came away very thankful and appreciative of what these three writers shared with everyone.

Okay Steven, feel free to put that pic on your blog. Or do something to update it, bro! :-P

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Trailer for ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER

You know him as Lincoln the Rail-Splitter, Lincoln the Lawyer, and Lincoln the President of the United States.

Now, bestselling historical author Seth Grahame-Smith has uncovered the true story of Lincoln... the Vampire Slayer.

Behold the trailer for the book!

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter should be in bookstores everywhere about now, and will almost certainly become required reading in history classrooms across the country.

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Review of STAR WARS: DARTH BANE: DYNASTY OF EVIL

First, here's something that I had the idea for while reading this book...

It could prolly also be said that Darth Bane is the galactic poster child for anyone who ever chose to read a book instead of going outside and playing football with the rest of the kids. 'Course, Bane still worked out like crazy later on so that he'd have the physique and prowess to match, but anyhoo...

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil by Drew Karpyshyn came out yesterday. This newest Star Wars novel is the final chapter of an impromptu trilogy that began three years ago with Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. The unexpected success of that novel led to Karpyshyn getting tapped to write Darth Bane: Rule of Two, released a year later.

It's good to keep these things in mind while talking about Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil because for a trilogy of books that may not have even been planned to begin with, this wound up being one of the most satisfying and thrilling arcs of storytelling that I've ever read from that great saga of a galaxy far, far away. And I'll reiterate something that I suggested in my review of Darth Bane: Path of Destruction three years ago: that the story of Darth Bane is one that I would absolutely love to see realized in a visual medium someday (and I'm still hearing Clancy Brown's voice coming out of Bane's mouth). For someone who started out as pretty much nothing more than a throwaway reference in the background story of the Star Wars saga, Darth Bane has certainly become one of the most intriguing and popular characters from the mythology.

If this was all planned out, Drew Karpyshyn deserves to be recognized as among the top tier of Star Wars authors today. If it wasn't, then all the more reason why Karpyshyn should be so ensconced. His Darth Bane trilogy should be required study for any future author that might have the chance to write Star Wars.

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil begins ten years after the events of Darth Bane: Rule of Two. Darth Bane and his apprentice Darth Zannah are still continuing the Sith order through the Rule of Two instituted by Bane: that there must always be only two Sith at a time. Master and apprentice. One to have the power and the other to covet it. Bane has been training Zannah since the day he found her on the battlefield of Ruusan.

And Bane has been doing so knowing fully well... accepting it as inevitable even... that the day must come when Zannah must face him and destroy him. Such is the only way that Zannah can earn the title of Sith Master. But as the years slip by, Zannah has not taken the step of challenging her master. And Bane is beginning to feel the ravages of time and age. That he is still recovering from the orbalisks that once covered his body isn't helping him either...

Fearing that Zannah might not be strong enough to carry on the Sith lineage and knowing that he won't live long enough to adequately train another apprentice, Darth Bane begins seeking out hidden and forgotten Sith lore. His search brings him to the story of Darth Andeddu: an ancient Sith who legends speak of discovering the means of immortality. Bane begins seeking out Andeddu's lair, believing that if he can find the means of staving off death for long enough, he can do away with Zannah and replace her with a more fitting apprentice.

Meanwhile, a labor dispute on the world of Doan has spiraled into something darker when a Jedi sent to mediate between miners and the ruling families ends in the death of the envoy. Serra, the newly-widowed wife of the king's son, leaves for Coruscant on a diplomatic mission of reconciliation with the Jedi Order. It is at the Jedi Temple that Serra discovers a very terrible thing: that for all the boasting of the Jedi, the Sith are not extinct. There is still one out there: the Sith Lord that killed Serra's father many years earlier.

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil is a little less than 300 pages in length. The second half flies past with the blur of a lightsaber, and Karpyshyn deftly ties up all of the loose ends that we had known were there, as well as tidying up things that we perhaps didn't realize were still there to begin with. In short: it felt every bit like a classic Star Wars tale.

And when Darth Bane and Darth Zannah meet for their final confrontation, Karpyshyn does not disappoint. We've known for the longest time how the Sith of the Rule of Two (the same Sith order that will a thousand years later produce Darth Sidious and Darth Vader) propagates: with the master intentionally training the apprentice to one day rise up to destroy him. This is the first time that we get to see how that happens. I think that Karpyshyn might have inadvertently created a whole new sub-genre of Star Wars storytelling with how masterfully he pulled off his Darth Bane trilogy and its final installment. We've got Jedi stories up to our armpits. With the arrival of Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil, the Sith have satisfied us yet fittingly tantalize us with the promise of more.

If you've read the first two Darth Bane novels, then plunking down coin for Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil is a foregone conclusion. If you haven't already, then start with Darth Bane: Path of Destruction and prepare for a Dark Side treat from the days of the Old Republic. This is Star Wars tale-tellin' at its finest, and I hope that Lucasfilm will give Drew Karpyshyn plenty more opportunity to play with the saga in years to come!

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