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Michael Bishop story on StarShip Sofa

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Michael Bishop story on StarShip Sofa

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Michael Bishop story on StarShip Sofa

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Published on April 29, 2009

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In my inbox today, a note from Tony C. Smith, host of StarShip Sofa:

StarShipSofa narrates Vinegar Peace, a SF story wrote by Michael Bishop for his son Jamie Bishop who died two years ago at the Virginia Tech shooting.

Michael Bishop says:

 I wrote “Vinegar Peace”—in August of 2007—because I had to. Our 35-year-old son, Jamie, died on the morning of April 16, 2007, as one of thirty-two victims of a disturbed shooter on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Jamie, an accomplished digital artist who did lovely covers for four or five of my books, was holding forth in Room 2007 of Norris Hall in his German class more than two hours after his eventual murderer had slain two students in a dormitory on another part of campus. The administration failed to issue a warning—a warning that might well have saved many lives—in a timely fashion. However, some of its members secured their own offices and notified their own family members of this initial event; and so the worst school shooting in the history of the United States claimed our son, four other faculty members (including a man, Dr Librescu, who had survived the Holocaust and who held a table against his classroom door until all own students could escape), four of Jamie’s students, and twenty-one other young people in Norris Hall, not to mention the first two victims in West Ambler-Johnston dorm. Another twenty-eight students were wounded by bullets or injured leaping from upper-story windows. Some of these young people will live with their injuries the rest of their lives.

All of the administrators, with the exception of a woman who later died of a stroke or a heart attack (a death that my wife and I can’t help but attribute partially to the stress of living with the mistakes of the President and the other Policy Group members), remain in their positions. So much for accountability, and so much for justice.

In any case, “Vinegar Peace” grew from this disaster and from a grief that I can’t imagine ever laying totally aside. Jeri and I mourn Jamie’s loss every day in some private way, and we think continually of all the other parents and loved ones of the slain and injured who will carry a similar burden with them until they die. We think, too, of the parents and loved ones of the dead and wounded from the United States’s optional war in Iraq, who long for their dead and who pray for their injured with an intensity not a whit different from our own. How ironic that our son died on American soil. How sad the wasted potential and disfigured lives resulting from violence everywhere. And forgive me the inadequacy of these remarks. Clearly, I wrote a story because I could not address either my outrage or my grief in any other way.

Mike Bishop

StarShipSofa is very honoured and humbled to be allowed to bring this story to a wider audience. I know I speak for the SF community when I say our hearts and prayers go out to Mike and Jeri and all the families who have to live with this grief every day.

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10 years ago

Only a 6? With the two brilliant episodes that get mentioned over and over (“Far Beyond the Stars” and “In the Pale Moonlight”), I would bump this to at least a 7 or 8. As long as I never have to watch “Profit and Lace” again.

— Michael A. Burstein

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DougL
10 years ago

The war gets a bit more interesting next season, and I think a 6 is deserved, there were plenty of lowpoints for me in s6.

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10 years ago

A Donnie Darko riff would actually make a pretty good O’Brien Must Suffer episode. I think you mean Donnie Brasco.

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10 years ago

To me, the whole season lost a point due to “Profit and Lace”, and another point due to the silly ideas of the Pah-Wraiths and of Dukat getting all mustache-y Evil-with-a-capital-E. So a 6 is well deserved.

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Rancho Unicorno
10 years ago

@1 – I think that exception is what makes the 6 worth while.

If I were told that I could never watch Season 6 again, unless I watched the whole thing, how likely would I be to endure Profit and Lace and One Little Ship in order to get In the Pale Moonlight and Far Beyond the Stars? I’d say the chance I would say ok is closer to 60% than 80%.

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10 years ago

I will admit that I had stopped watching DS9 regularly during its on-air run around season 5, because the serialized nature meant that if I missed an episode, I was completely lost – lacking today’s ability to program my DVR from my phone, I just sort of quit watching. Now that I have the DVD box set and can call up any episode on Netflix any time I please, I take a very different approach to seasons 5 and beyond. With binge-watching, it becomes a more engrossing story, punctuated by nearly-out-of-timeline episodes like “Far Beyond the Stars” and “Profit and Lace.” As a whole entity, I think season 6 holds up quite well, and it’s only when you try to look at the episodes individually that the weaknesses show through. So a 6 for the whole season works for me, and you just have to hold your nose through the stinky parts.

I’m not sure if offsite linking is frowned upon, but your selection of “In the Pale Moonlight” for Favorite Plain, simple reminded me – reddit’s Daystrom Institute is currently having an interesting, if short, discussion entitled Was Garak playing Sisko? that might be worth a peek for those looking to explore that issue further.

“the world was assuredly not desperately crying out for a return engagement”

Speak for yourself, DeCandido – Philip Anglim is welcome on my TV screen any time. :)

ChristopherLBennett
10 years ago

I’ve been surprised to realize how weak the sixth season was. I did feel the show lost a step in its last two seasons — the veterans seemed to be getting a bit tired, and I never cared for the addition of David Weddle & Bradley Thompson to the staff — but I’d forgotten just how badly it faltered.

I wonder how different it would’ve been if Robert Hewitt Wolfe had stuck around.

ChocolateRob
10 years ago

Well why would anyone want to go to old Bajor in a holosuite, Bajor’s hat was peaceful agrarians followed by conquered resource, Bajor is just boring. They were a standard static peaceful low-tech society until the Cardasians mixed things up a bit. Now those Earthican folks they’ve had an interesting few centuries. They’ve been meticulously recording all their fads as they went and now they’ve got holodecks just brimming with exciting new old things, how exotic can you get.

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10 years ago

The beauty of rewatching a show is you can skip the junk and just watch the best. And while the best of this season is very good, it’s a much shorter season than some others because of all the episodes to leave out. Still, I’d give it a 7 or 8 as well.

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Eduardo Jencarelli
10 years ago

The binge-watching Netflix comment reminds me of how I felt watching House of Cards based on my cousin’s praise. Now that was a disappointment.

Watching season 6 of DS9 feels a lot like Cards’ second season. It starts full of promise, delivering some truly ambitious work, and then it squanders a lot of that on asinine stories that go nowhere. But at least DS9 got to year six before starting to use stupid ideas such as shrinking the Runabout, having a Ferengi undergo sex-change, etc.

I can forgive Ira, Hans and the whole team for these missteps. They spent a lot of time trying to get that opening six-part arc to work. Naturally, there were going to be duds this season. With 26 episodes, in season 6, it was bound to happen. Might as well get them out of the way, so we can focus on the final run.

A 6 feels about right. Not as good as TNG season 6, even though it has the better written episodes (Pale Moonlight, Rocks and Shoals, and Far Beyond, obviously). The worst ones drag it down, sadly.

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