I also got an email announcing that the Boxcar Children have been re-released as e-books. Here’s a video about the books and Gertrude Chandler Warner. I loved these books, I think more for how they set up their adorable little house that they got to live in all by themselves than for the mysteries. Impoverished orphanhood: it’s so cozy!

If you somehow missed these books, the premise is that aliens invade, in giant metal Tripod conveyances. They enslave all human adults with mind-control Caps and use people as slaves in their huge Cities. The small human rebellion depends on converting kids before they’ve been Capped. In the first book, Will, Henry, and Beanpole join the rebels; in the second, Will, Beanpole, and a new boy named Fritz infiltrate a Tripod City. Pool of Fire is the last book, the climax of the rebellion.

Apocalypse how? Aliens. Big, green, tentacle-y aliens who breathe green air. ‘Nuff said. The world is pretty rural, and there’s mention of human city ruins. I only re-read the last book so I don’t remember, but I think the implication is that the aliens blasted us back to the Middle Ages.

13 vs. 31: The world sure changed in the 10+ years between this book and most of the ones I’ve reviewed this month. Most immediately obvious to me is that there is not a single woman in this book. No named characters, certainly, but not even a shopkeeper or mother of a future revolutionary. (S theorized awesomely that the Tripods killed all the women, but the men were too depressed by this to deal with or even mention it. This interpretation does add a new dimension, you must admit!)

The casual racism and Eurocentrism is also excellent. The final assault on the three Tripod Cities needs to be done at the same time, by different rebel groups in different parts of the world. When they get word that one attack didn’t succeed, Will immediately jumps (incorrectly, as it happens) to, “The one in the east? The little yellow men failed then…” This is particularly interesting given the conclusion of the book, which has our heroes heading off to bring the world’s people together, now that they have the freedom to choose peace or war. I like to think Christopher meant this juxtaposition to be ironic. (I could say so much more about international relations in the Tripod books, but I want to post this sometime this month.)

Most fascinating to me was the portrayal of Julius, the rebel leader. At the beginning of the book, he’s challenged by another man, Pierre, who wants more democracy in their decision-making. Julius shuts him down:

“There will be a time… for us to discuss among ourselves how we shall be governed…. Until then, we have no room for squabbling or dispute…. Nor do we have room for dissension, or the suspicion of dissension.”

Ok. There’s an argument to be made for despotism in wartime. But it’s a tricky one at best, and in a modern novel, a statement like this would be challenged, by the text if not by the characters. The book would make the risks of this way of thinking a theme.

This book ends with a parallel Council meeting, in which the leaders of the new free world are, in fact, “discuss[ing] among [them]selves how [they] shall be governed.” They’re all set to elect Julius as President, when Pierre starts talking again. He says some stuff that makes a whole lot of sense to me:

“We are expected, out of sentiment, to vote him back into office. We are asked to confirm a despot in power…. There were others who worked and fought for freedom — hundreds, thousands of others. We accepted Julius as our leader then, but that is no reason for accepting him now…. Julius wanted the Conference held here, among the peaks of the White Mountains, as yet another means of reminding us of the debt we are supposed to owe him. Many delegates are from low-lying lands and find conditions here oppressive….”

In a modern book, Pierre might be the hero. In this book, our heroes Will, Beanpole, and Fritz are horrified when the Conference votes against Julius. We could be meant to take this as blind loyalty on Will’s part; his shortcomings are a theme throughout the trilogy. Except that the delegates don’t even suggest any other candidates. Without Julius to lead them, the Conference falls apart and the delegates return to their respective countries. The text comdemns Julius’s ouster just as Will does, which strikes me as distinctly old-fashioned, or British, or probably both.

Ultimately, this book held up. It’s a classic for a reason. I particularly loved how scientific and careful all the planning was — there are no plot holes here. But I couldn’t ignore the datedness. Old-School indeed.

Covers: There’s time for a lot of covers in 30+ years in print! Here’s a selection. None are especially crazy, unfortunately.

So that’s it, folks! I hope you enjoyed Old-School Apocalypse April as much as I did. I now return to my regularly-scheduled diet of YA and middle grade published in the last few years, and I think none of it will be science fiction for a little while. One final plea: it’s easy get stuck on the “I have to read all the new stuff!” treadmill, but take some time to revisit old favorites. It’s definitely never boring.

I had big plans for some new additions in honor of the anniversary — which was, um, actually 2 weeks ago, on Valentine’s Day — but February turned out to be a more complicated month than anticipated.

Anyway, expect some shiny new stuff ’round about the end of March, when I’ve had two whole weeks of spring break to party, procrastinate, and give my blog some love.

In the meantime, some nostalgia. Back in the late 90s, when the web was young, we were so excited about “web journals” and other ways to use the internet for real personal connection. Now, of course, the word “blog” isn’t just some silliness Peter came up with on his website. Oversharing is standard. The lines between private, public, and professional are blurring more and more. The internet is for crass commercialism and research and blah blah blah, but even more than it was in 1999, it’s about people sharing their thoughts for free. (For good and for ill.)

No one will care about this except me (and Jesse), but… what’s my circa-1999 “blog roll” (er, list of bookmarks) up to now?
Fray: True Stories and Original Art
Jesse Chan-Norris
Adam Rakunas
Peter Merholz
Derek Powazek
Molly Steenson
Lance Arthur
Magdalena Donea

And some snapshots from the Wayback Machine of things I loved back in the day:
Maxi
Water
Colors

What were you doing on the web 10 years ago?

Behold, fabulously 80s library poster!

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The first student’s answer? “It’s like a USB drive, except older.”

(The friend continued to be baffled by such questions as, “But how do you read it?” I showed them both the disk, and they agreed they’d never seen one before.)

Consign another one to the Museum of Useless Junk, I guess!

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Hey, everybody, it’s post-apocalyptic YA from the ’80s! Home, sweet home. It even has a watercolory cover and a fresh-faced, all-American heroine named “Janie Johnson”! This book was brought to my attention recently [and by "recently," I mean about six months ago, when I actually read it -- Ed.] by an old friend, who presented me with this name-that-book challenge over the phone: “It’s a book I read when I was a kid. Some kids are hiding underground when aliens attack and destroy the whole world.”

At first I was shamed, because how is it possible that there’s a book I haven’t read fitting that description? But when my friend figured out the title and emailed it to me, I realized that it’s set in the same universe as The Turning Place, one of my favorite childhood books! The Turning Place tells the story of humanity after the Clordian Sweep (the aforementioned alien apocalypse) in a series of short stories, skipping hundreds of years or more between each tale. I’m a sucker for sci-fi that leaps centuries in a single bound; it’s comforting somehow. If things suck now, shall we try 300 years in the future?

Strange Tomorrow is only two stories, but it uses the same trick. The first half is about the first Janie, who is alone with her military father and younger brother in the President’s Cold War bunker when the Sweep destroys (almost) every living thing on earth. Janie is able to convince her family to want to survive and make the best of their worst possible situation.

The second half follows Janie #2, named for that first Janie a couple of generations later. It turns out that some life survived in valleys and caves, so the handful of survivors were able to grow food and live outside the bunker. Janie is part of a small group ordered to start a new village in a different valley a few days’ walk away. She fears the isolation, and is convinced that it must be better to stay in contact, but that is not The Way Things Are Done.

If you need more 80s post-apocalyptic YA in your life (and who doesn’t?), give this a go. I can’t imagine a much more complete devastation than the Clordian Sweep, but the charmingly resilient heroines will make you feel hopeful, even though the only animals left in the world are the bees, rabbits, and chickens whose eggs were frozen in the bunker. And probably some cockroaches.

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So I had my friends M and J over tonight to take it for a spin. Among other things, we watched an episode of Beauty and the Beast. Yes, that show, with the romantic lead who was burdened with that terribly common and tragic birth defect of looking like a lion.

I hadn’t seen it since it originally aired, 20 (!) years ago. I was prepared for hilarity, but it turns out that the show (or at least the first episode) holds up. (Unlike the hairstyles and gigantic shoulder pads, which “hold up” in only the most literal sense of the term.) I will totally be watching more of this over winter break.

In other television history from 1987, that is the year that Iceland introduced television on Thursdays.