The Broken Earth Trilogy

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

In her brilliant short story collection, How Long Til Black Future Month, N.K. Jemisin’s lead-off story “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” riffs on Ursula K. LeGuin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” to devastating effect. I’m not a crier under most circumstances, just ask my wife and she’ll confirm that. But at the end of Jemisin’s story, I cried because her vision for how life could be was so beautiful. LeGuin’s story essentially asks the question: “If a society’s thriving required the exploitation and suffering of a single individual – just one – would that be worth it?” For those who can’t agree to that condition, their “only” choice is to walk away. And I use those quotes because Jemisin’s response is exactly the right one when presented with binary options: look for a third way.

I remember a professor encouraging us to walk that very road. It’s very rare that there are only two options, and typically when given only two options to choose from, neither is adequate. So, find a third way.

Jemisin’s third way is to stay and fight. Fight the system that demands either submission or exploitation. Neither option is good, so let’s fight for a third way. A way in which justice and mercy meet, and everyone has the chance to truly thrive. No one needs to be excluded or exploited. No one.

The Broken Earth trilogy feels like an extended meditation on the same theme. What would we do if an entire group of people is subjugated, oppressed, made into chattel, feared, controlled, and lynched for the benefit of everyone else? Does that sound like any society in the primary world? Mmhmm.

Would we buy into the system and seek our own personal thriving within it? Would we remove ourselves and live isolated from everyone else? Or would we break the intentionally flawed system and build something that works for everyone?

Unsurprisingly, most people in Jemisin’s world make the same choices that white America made throughout its sad history. Buy in wholesale, or pretend the problem doesn’t exist. But we don’t have to choose between maintaining the status quo and burning the whole thing down. We, like Jemisin’s characters, can choose instead to bring justice. That will require burning. It will also require maintaining parts of the status quo. But the end result needs to be a new thing entirely.

You see, Jemisin brilliantly places her readers inside the perspective of people within her world’s exploited group. We see how they feel when they are bred like cattle, threatened with death for simply being who and what they are, when their emotions are manipulated and twisted against them, and a whole host of terrors are inflicted upon them. And she does this by laying the groundwork in book one. She shows how the exploited participate in their own exploitation, and believe the lies that this way is truly what’s best for everyone. We see how they are taught to buy into the system as the way things “have to be.” In book two, she spells out the options and makes the sides clear. And because she recognizes that this is not a binary decision that is stuck in a duality of warring opposites, there are more than two sides. Finally, in book three she advances the story to its beautiful conclusion while narrating the history that brought us to where her story started.

Since I just mentioned the ending, let me digress for just a moment to say that Jemisin’s ending is one of the best I’ve ever read. Wrapping up a series in a satisfying way is hard. I know this, not because I’ve done it, but because I’ve read enough series to see that not every one can do it well. But the ending to The Broken Earth trilogy is so good that I reread it several times, and I teared up each time. (I know! This, from the guy who rarely cries!) Jemisin’s ending is just so fitting, so relevant, so necessary. When it comes to making the world better, “Don’t be patient. Don’t ever be. This is the way a new world begins.” (Man! Even typing those words gets me again.) Channeling Dr. King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, Jemisin emphasizes that we cannot wait for a “more convenient season.” (And yes, I feel the resonance between the imagined convenient season in Dr. King’s quote and the Seasons in Jemisin’s world.)

Because of course there can’t be a more convenient season when the third way – the way of justice – requires a breaking. The old way must be broken for a just way to emerge. Would the city of Castrima be what it is without the magnitude of this Season? No. Would any see the need for roggas and stills (I’m deliberately using the in-world, offensive slang here – and you don’t need to try hard to hear the phonetic resonance between rogga and a different slur in the primary world) to work together if not for the destruction Alabaster brought about? Not a chance. But the destruction opens the door to a new world. No Fulcrums. No Guardians. Just people.

The destruction of this trilogy is not senseless. It is like rebreaking a bone so it can set properly, so real healing can take place without further pain and deformity. It is not wholesale, wanton destruction. It is targeted. Intentional. Hopeful.

The same can be said of the entire trilogy, in fact. It is targeted, intentional, and hopeful.

The exploitation built into the system of Jemisin’s world goes all the way down and all the way back. Society in the present is structured around use castes. It’s incredible. Because the earth is broken by an exploitative system, even the way humans view themselves and each other has been broken. The focus shifts from personhood to utility. And this is narrated powerfully in the story’s main character. In her story, yes, but mostly in her names. You see, she was given the name Damaya by her family, but that family feared her and didn’t know how to love. So, they gave her away to the Fulcrum where she was given the name Syenite. But at the Fulcrum she was exploited and treated like an animal that could be bred and controlled. Finally, there’s Essun, the name she chooses for herself, the name she is called by those who come to know and love her.

Going back in time, Syl Anagist used the lowest caste as literal fuel for their progress, and when they recognized that those resources would eventually be used up they began to adjust the definition of who fits in that lowest caste. Who can be used and who cannot? But they know, too, that even with an ever-adjusting and expanding lowest caste, their resources are finite, and so they need a new option. They have a chance to choose a third way, one that refuses systemic exploitation. But instead, they are unable to see that such a system is evil, even when it no longer exploits people (now, the lowest caste probably wasn’t seen as human, and in the backstory we’re given Houwha, Kelenli, Gaewha, and others like them that certainly aren’t). So, they direct their exploitative system toward the Earth itself – the very source of their life and their magic. Oh yeah, magic! Tons of it.

And it’s at this point, that Jemisin draws a line between social justice and environmental justice. It is the same culture of oppression and exploitation that treats people, plants, animals, water, land – all the things on which our lives depend – as mere things to be used. It is a system that cannot see other living beings as worthy of dignity and respect even though they have lives of their own and we all have creaturehood in common. The environmental drama is the sea in which the drama of social justice swims (forgive the sloppy metaphor). Oh, and by the way, the only people who can avoid the Seasons (unavoidable environmental catastrophes that occur about once a generation) are those who are truly in power. The Guardians alone have the luxury to retreat from the Seasons and are therefore unaffected by them. So too, the rich and powerful in our world continue to exploit and strip-mine our planet while believing they will be insulated against the consequences.

This is one of the reasons I love good fantasy. It takes reality in the primary world and makes it strange. And in so doing, it helps us see the primary world more clearly. In The Broken Earth trilogy, Jemisin repositions the direction of oppression and exploitation to roggas (those who can do magic), while imagining a world where the social construct of race isn’t a thing and everyone accepts people we would place within the LGBTQ+ community. In this world, people are people, unless they can do magic. Then they’re dangerous and in need of exploitation. A narrative must be created that will convince roggas (orogenes, magic-users) that they are dangerous and must be controlled for the safety of the world. By clearly transposing the direction of fear and hatred from race and sexual identity to magic in her secondary world, Jemisin makes the parallel unmistakable. I can’t read the trilogy and miss the tragic parallel with the primary world. We have done and continue to do to people of other “races” and “sexual orientations” what they did to their orogenes. We too are exploiting the planet so that some can experience short-term gains. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

We can make a better world, one that works for everyone. It won’t be easy, and it will be costly. But a world built on cooperation rather than exploitation is worth it.

Chiang, Julian, and the Story of Our Lives

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

​”Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.” Ted Chiang closes The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate with these simple yet profound words, wrapping up a nested set of time travel tales in a radically different – and radically human – way.

​This lesson is at the core of emotional and spiritual health. For the characters, it was gained through heartache and regret, making it a message for all people, in all times, regardless of faith tradition or lack thereof. We cannot move forward into the future as healthy, whole individuals unless we have looked honestly at the past, not seeking to erase it but to integrate it, owning the hurts we’ve caused and facing the hurts inflicted upon us. But we can’t stop there. We must proceed to repent (or turn from a hurtful way and toward a better one), find atonement (reconciliation, restoration, or “at-one-ment” in Richard Rohr’s wording). And both give and receive forgiveness. That is all we can do with our past, but that is enough.

​I’ve been thinking a lot about Chiang’s stories, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate and The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling, for the past few months. Both stories revolve around wrongs done in the main characters’ past that have direct and dramatic impact on their present and future, and­ – to my mind at least – they have a clear connection to an idea found in Julian of Norwich, St. Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, and others: that sin – or hurt in the case of these stories – is behovely or coveniens.

​These two words essentially mean that something “‘fits’, it is ‘just so’ and that there is something it fits with.”[1] Theologian Denys Turner writes that:

the understanding of the conveniens within high medieval theology was of what we might call a ‘narratival’ kind, or perhaps equally, of an ‘aesthetic’ kind. Think of it this way: the conveniens, that which is ‘behovely’, possesses not a law-like intelligibility – of that kind which one provides when explaining something against the background of the causal mechanisms and sequences which generate it, but rather that which you provide for a particular event, or kind of event, when you provide a place for it within a particular individual’s story. It is conveniens, therefore, not on account of being explained by a universal and timeless causal hypothesis, but on account of its fitting within a narrative bound by the particularities of time and place. We grasp the convenientia of an event when we grasp how it is ‘just so’ that it should happen that way, that ‘just so’ being something which we see when we have got hold of the plot which makes it just right that it should happen thus.[2]

​So, if one of the people of Tivland from The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling were to explain this concept, they would say that sin – or the hurts in our past – are mimi rather than vough. It is right in the narrative of our lives, it fits just so, and attempting to erase it would be attempting to erase part of the story of our lives (and speaking of Story of Your Life, isn’t this also the key insight about time that Louise gains from the heptapods?). The hurt fits within our narrative so that removing it, even if we could, makes our story senseless. Every piece, every person, every action taken or not taken shapes the person we become. As Turner continues to say, “[E]ven if everything in a narrative could have, logically, been otherwise, when we say of what does happen that it happened convenientius, we say, because we see, that it was just right that it should happen so, and not otherwise. It ‘fits’. There is a plot to it. Its contingency is not that of the arbitrary.”[3]

​In other words, hurt and pain fit in the plot of humanity’s story, but that does not mean things had to be this particular way. There is no element of logical necessity to sin. In this sense, reality is, by definition, conveniens because it is the story we – or the characters in Chiang’s stories – are living in.

​Julian of Norwich asks the question of why things are this way, but calls it folly: “in my folly, I had often wondered . . . why, through the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the beginning of sin was not prevented; for then, it seemed to me, all would have been well.”[4] Julian’s folly exists in believing that only by preventing the beginning of sin could all have been well. The problem in Julian’s thinking was the belief that only in a sin-free world could all things be well instead of seeing “that in whatever world God has created, ‘all manner of thing would be well’; consequently, in a world in which there is sin, in which sin is inevitable, all can be well too, and sin’s inevitability is part of the picture, or if you like, part of that plot, of all manner of thing being well.”[5]

Turner believes that this “is the theological meaning of ‘behovely’ and of conveniens: that sin is ‘behovely’ means that sin is needed as part of the plot – or, if you like, that the plot needs sin.”[6] Clearly, there is no plot to Chiang’s stories without the hurt the characters experienced, and Chiang helps us to see that the same holds true for the story of each individual human life. He narrates stories that help us grasp the reality that our inability to change the past, as he says in the story notes for The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, isn’t necessarily a cause for sadness.

Turner proceeds to explain that in Julian’s thinking “it is only if we know that everything that happens, for good or ill, is part of the plot which God has scripted, that we can know that it is conveniens that it did happen.”[7]Even if, we cannot or do not want to say that life is following a script, that does not change the fact the life has happened in the particular way it did and no other. We will remain forever stuck in regret over the past or trapped in the malleability of our memory if we cannot honestly grapple with the past in the clear light of day.

It follows for Turner’s reading of Julian, and applies to these two stories from Chiang, that “the amount and intensity of sin in the world is exactly right, exactly as it should be, conveniens, ‘behovely’: none of it necessary, all of it freely done, and all of it part of the plot, all of it part of what was intended.”[8]

When we look at the world in this light, look at our lives, we are empowered to see along with The Truth of Fact’s narrator that “The point is not to prove you were right; the point is to admit you were wrong.” We are freed up to say – and honestly mean – “if you think I’ve been less than honest, tell me. I want to know.”

In light of all this, what else can we do with our past but repent, atone, and forgive? That’s all we can do, but it’s enough. 

Story of Your Life is available in Chiang’s collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. You can find The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling in his collection, Exhalation. The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate appears in both collections.

[1] Denys Turner, “‘Sin Is Behovely’ in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love,” Modern Theology 20, no. 3 (2004): 409.

[2] Turner, 415–16.

[3] Turner, 416.

[4]  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Barry Windeatt (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015), 74 (LT 27).

[5] Turner, “Sin Is Behovely,” 418.

[6] Turner, 418.

[7] Turner, 418.

[8] Turner, 419.

Be Welcome Here

~ Adam ~ 1 Comment

Time is a creature too

with energy and motion

of its own,

and though life in time

sometimes stutters,

it never

stands

still.

At times

calm

and slow,

sometimes it screams,

moving so fast it seems more than I can manage to

stop

and breathe,

to welcome you in

and give you space

in the time that is mine

only because it is given.

A gift.

Not a currency.

Not a thing

that can be bought or spent.

So, stuttering,

calm,

or screaming,

at this time

and in this place,

I offer to you

what was freely given

to me:

space

to be

and time

to be heard.

Piranesi

~ Adam ~ 1 Comment

Simply put, I loved this book. It is atmospheric and lovely in ways I have never before experienced. But why? What makes it uniquely beautiful?

This is a book that values the ancient ways of being in the world. It points out the cracks in modernism’s push for the rational and measurable, but not by denying the value of rationality or measurability. No. Instead, Susanna Clarke narrates a proof that the modern agenda is too limited.

Piranesi, though that isn’t truly his name, is supremely rational. He measures the world around him: studying the tides and charting them so that he alone is aware of their comings and goings, risings and fallings. He is meticulous. Yet he lives in a state of childlike wonder (a narrated portrait of what Jesus meant by receiving the kingdom like a child and being born again–Piranesi receives like a child because he has been born anew in his world). The world is enchanted to his eyes, because it is sacramental in his experience. The world speaks, and he hears it because he fits so neatly within it. He knows his place, and lives along the grain, rather than living against it as the Other does. The Other seeks to manipulate the world and mine it for power and “true knowledge,” but Piranesi receives the world as a gift, as infused with meaning that he can receive and understand because he fits so perfectly into its warp and weft.

And this is where the beauty of this work shines through. Whether we’re talking about the Other or the Prophet, both are wrong about this world. The Other because he thinks the true knowledge is something to be taken, contained, and used to dominate; the Prophet because he no longer believes the true knowledge even exists. But Piranesi, simpy by being himself and filling his unique place within the world, proves that the true knowledge does exist and that it cannot be found by seeking it. Instead, it is to be experienced and absorbed by those who truly see the world and fully live within. To find it, transformation is required, and that is something neither the Other nor the Prophet are willing to endure, because the required transformation is permanent. There is no going back. There is real loss involved, but the loss is worth it.

What Piranesi knows is that the world is not a tool to be used. It exists for its own sake.

This flies in the face of what I was once taught. I was told that the world exists to glorify God. What Piranesi knows, in a sense, is that the world glorifies God, but that is not its purpose. It exists because God is the Creator, and all God’s making is gratuitous. God makes because that is what God does and who God is: the Maker, the Creator. And because of that, all things have dignity. All things deserve respect. Because God saw fit to make them.

I believe that Piranesi’s way of being in the world is a model for how I might be in my world. It’s a mystic’s way of being. Living as a creature among other creatures in a sacramental world charged with the grandeur of God. It’s the vision of St. Francis, who saw all things as kin to himself. It’s the vision of St. John of the Cross, who saw that God is especially present in the deepest spiritual darkness. It’s Pseudo-Dionysius’s vision of indivisible multiplicity within the Godhead.

Piranesi proves that the modern agenda has lost its footing, not by insisting on measuring the world and studying it, but by forgetting that the world being studied and measured is a gift. We are not outside of this gifted world looking in. No. We are part of it, and we best understand it when we simply fit within it, kin to the world around us. All of Piranesi’s measured data equipped him to discover something beyond the data: the indivisible unity and harmony of his world, and his place within that harmony even in the face of darkness and mystery.

If I could walk through life in this way, I too would hear the world speak. And in its speech, I would hear the voice of God calling me to union.

The Birds

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

They frolic in the sky above
with endless, boundless glee
as sunlight shines on feathered wings:
the birds don’t know we’re quarantined.

Their freedom is not limited
by laws or broad decrees,
and so they fly without constraint:
the birds can’t know we’re quarantined.

They perch on fences with their friends
to chirp and chat so free,
but when I look they fly away:
the birds may know we’re quarantined.

They sing their songs with silver tune
and dance upon the trees
as if they mean to lift my soul:
the birds must know we’re quarantined.

Thoughts before Super Tuesday

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

It seems to me, the major question facing Democrats today is two fold: Is it possible to return to the way things were before Trump, and if it is, do we even want that? It’s a big question. Things didn’t seem all that bad before Trump, so a return to those times would be better than how things are now, right?

I suppose we can’t know the answer to that unless we try, so we really need to consider the second part of the question first. Do we even want to return to pre-Trump days? Sure, Obama was president, but simply because our president was black doesn’t mean our society was somehow less racist than it is today. The racism and bigotry now on display have been there all along, but they were just concealed a bit better. I should clarify that they were only better concealed for “white” folks. I’m sure the black and brown-skinned among us clearly see the ongoing reality of systemic injustice in America, even if many “white” folks can’t see it (or simply choose not to).

Maybe we have no choice but to return to that kind of America. Maybe our problems with racism and sexism need more decades to find healing and a new way forward. But can we find that way forward by trying to return to business as usual? Can we step boldly into a just and equitable future by rewinding the clock? Maybe. America took great strides forward under Obama’s leadership, so perhaps a President Klobuchar or Buttigieg or Biden would help the country take more of those strides, but wouldn’t a President Sanders or Warren force the issue?

We have a chance in this election to press forward into bold new territory, to set a trajectory toward the kind of future we all want to live in: where every person is treated with the dignity, respect, and love they deserve; where the earth that is our only home is honored and protected rather than stripped and exploited; where our differences inspire curiosity and wonder rather than fear and hatred.

I think it’s clear from our previous election that America feels a need for drastic measures. But trying to return to some sort of mythical golden age was never going to work, and it won’t work today (no matter when we imagine that golden age occurred). There’s no going back. And if we hope to heal our country of the wounds that have been festering for more than 200 years, we need to chart a different course from the one we’re on (not a new course, because Dr. King saw this path forward many years ago).

So, who is best equipped to help that healing along?

I wish I knew for sure. But I have my suspicion and have voted accordingly.

Look. Listen. Receive.

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

Hey there everyone. This is just a heads up to let you know that I have a new blog post on C.S. Lewis up on the Logos Academic Blog (LAB). If you feel so inclined, head on over and check it out.

And if you feel further inclined, go ahead and sign up for updates from the LAB while you’re there. They post regularly on all sorts of interesting things connected to the world of biblical studies and academia.

The House of Measures and Great Mystery

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From the House of Measures and Great Mystery
you call me by name and invite me to see
the wonders of atoms, of quarks, and of pi,
of mass and of motion, of trees and the sky.

To the House of Measures and Great Mystery
I saunter and ramble, I stagger and flee
to learn from the mystics and scientists too,
to read fact and fiction and find both are true.

By the House of Measures and Great Mystery
a river encircles an ancient fruit tree.
The river’s like crystal, the fruit is in season
in winter and summer, by faith and by reason.

In the House of Measures and Great Mystery
I hear you whisper mercy to me.
Where all is given and all is grace
you hand me a mirror to show me my face.

Past the house filled with people, with bread, and with wine
rich country unfolds and no map marks its line.
Abundant and fertile, it’s wide and it’s free
for it’s rife with both measures and great mystery.

#
For those out there who enjoy my poetry and would like to see me write more of it (and help me to do so), I’m working on setting up a Patreon page. I’ll link to it from the blog when it’s up and running.

Thor: Ragnarok

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Thor: Ragnarok is certainly in my top-two Marvel movies of the past decade, and I’m pretty sure it has displaced Guardians of the Galaxy for the top spot. But why? Beware, spoilers abound . . .

  • This movie is hilarious, and I mean truly laugh out loud funny. Whether it was Thor trying to convince both Bruce Banner and the Hulk that he likes their individual personality better, or Loki celebrating Thor’s butt-whooping at the Hulk’s hands, or Korg – seriously, Taika Waititi is a genius, both as a director and as a comedian – being Korg, this movie has so many hilarious moments.
  • Yet, even in the midst of all the laughs, this movie takes major steps toward Avengers: Infinity War and addresses some serious issues.
    • Asgard’s true history is revealed as one of war-mongering and imperialism in which all the gold gilding the city is a spoil of war. Conquest was Asgard’s agenda, until Odin decided to turn over a new leaf, but even then, the Valkyrie are sacrificed without a second thought. Hela is revealed as the true heir to Odin’s throne, not just as his first-born but also as the one who most closely resembles her father’s desire for conquest and domination. This history was literally buried and forgotten, until Hela comes and tears down the falsified family portraits and rips open the crypt. She reveals the ugly truth at the heart of Asgard’s history, a truth that those in power have covered up and a history Odin has rewritten to recast his role as that of protector of the Nine Realms, rather than as their conqueror.
    • The differences between species and races are clear to the viewer, but it seems that the characters in the movie barely notice them. Korg may be a being composed of rocks, but Thor treats him like a friend from the moment they meet. There is no fear of the other as other here, and that stands in stark contrast to Hela (and previously Odin’s) desire to dominate and destroy all who are other.
    • These two issues resonate today, and they resonate powerfully. We are all living in a time in which we encouraged to fear those who are different from us, to mistrust those who are from a different country or whose skin is a different shade than our own. We live with war on the horizon – always – whether our country appears to be involved or not. There is no escaping it. These wars fuel the fire of nationalism and fear that keep us apart. But Thor: Ragnarok demonstrates, in no uncertain terms, that neither of these need to be our reality. Wars can be ended and fear of the other can be turned into acceptance. Perhaps, if we saw ourselves as Terrans or Earthers rather than as Americans (or for those of us in the Church, if we saw ourselves as the linguistically, culturally, and physically diverse body of Christ before any other affiliations) we might be able to take some positive strides toward peace and reconciliation. And perhaps, we might even be equipped as Thor clearly was – or as Ender was in Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead – to see non-human creatures (whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial) as God’s children and as his good creations.
    • And if that weren’t enough, the movie’s ending sheds an uncomfortable light on the West’s unwillingness to welcome refugees. While none of those seeking asylum in the world today are virtually immortal aliens of tremendous power (would it actually make a difference if they were?), they are people who want a new home where they can put down roots and make a contribution. Perhaps some of them will change the world one day . . .
    • Any movie that can pull off addressing serious issues while making me laugh – which is just what Waititi’s previous movie, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, did with foster care – is a real winner. The way he deepens Asgard’s history, darkens it with a history of imperialism and conquest that can never truly be made right, is brilliant.
  • First Odin, and later Heimdall, assert that Asgard is not a place. It is wherever Asgard’s people are. I think we can and should say the same about the Church, but what is significant here is that even an ugly past need not define the future. If Asgard is its people, then Asgard is not its buildings or its technology or its history. Yes, it is shaped and influenced by all of those things, but it need not be defined by them. Growth and change are possible, and because of how Thor and Loki grow and change in this movie, they seem almost certain.
  • Idris Elba. Is he ever anything less than awesome?
  • And Cate Blanchett? Whether she’s Galadriel or Hela, she plays the powerful, awe-inspiring queen to perfection.

For these reasons, and others as well, I absolutely love this movie. It will be tough to knock this one out of my top spot.

Stranger Things, Season 1

~ Adam ~ Leave a comment

When a friend asked me to pitch Stranger Things a couple days ago, the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “It’s awesome,” but since I hadn’t sat down to think about the why behind that sentiment beforehand, I couldn’t offer anything more compelling. I will try to be a little more articulate now…

So, Stranger Things season 1 is awesome (and the first episode and a half of season two have basically followed suit). It reminds me of several very different pieces of entertainment/art without being exactly like anything else I’ve ever seen.

First, it reminds me of Community at its best. My favorite Community episodes are heavy on the sci-fi and fantasy allusions (or are explicitly riffing off stories and movies I love). It also works at a metafictional level that ST pulls off to wonderful effect. For example, there’s a moment when Will’s mom (played wonderfully by Winona Ryder) suggests they go see a scary movie together, so long as it won’t give him nightmares. He says he doesn’t get scared like that anymore, and she asks him, “Not even of clowns?” Now, this seems like an explicit reference to Stephen King’s It, which only makes sense at a metafictional level because the first season of ST is set in 1983-4 and It wasn’t published until 1986. To take it a step further, ST’s Mike Wheeler is played by Finn Wolfhard who also plays a starring role in . . . you guessed it, the 2017 remake of It.

Speaking of It, one of the things the 2017 movie did exceptionally well was reinterpret King’s classic and transpose the kids’ scenes from the late 50’s to the late 80’s. The portrait of the 80’s offered in the film reminds me of ST’s delightful and nostalgic setting. The film’s focus on a group of outcast kids who love, support, encourage, fight with, and are willing to sacrifice for each other also hearkens back to King’s narrative, emphasizing the hardships of growing up and its simple pleasures.

This same focus on outcast kids who have taken on a dangerous task to save what they love also points back to the 1985 classic, The Goonies. The echoes seem to be intentional, with ST’s Barb bearing a more than passing resemblance to Stef and Sean Astin (who played Mikey) entering the ST cast for season 2.

The final film ST reminds me of is a little indie-film from 2009 called Ink. It’s not the plot or the setting that is reminiscent, it’s the upside-down. The visuals and cinematography in the upside-down, with their bluish tint, heavy darkness, and eerie contrasts are familiar and more than a little disturbing.

If all that wasn’t enough to make me love this show, this next point does the trick all on its own.

One of the unifying plot elements throughout season one (and it doesn’t let up in season 2) is the frame of Dungeons and Dragons that helps the kids make sense of what is going on around them. The first episode begins with their D&D game, the last episode ends with one – heck, one of the episode titles from season 2 references the Mind Flayer of AD&D fame! All this takes me back to the early 90’s when I encountered D&D and the related novels (without which I certainly would not have done a PhD!), which included the Dragonlance Chronicles – first published in 1984 and 85 (I might just do a little happy dance if season 2 refers to the first in this series). Had these kids been around at my schools growing up, there’s a good chance we would have hung out.

I could go on, but I won’t. If any of these film references grab your interest or if you remember D&D with fondness, then I wager you’ll love this show – in much the same way that those who grew up playing arcade games are likely to love Wreck-It Ralph. It is nostalgic, intriguing, and full of sci-fi goodness apart from the features I mentioned above, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.