Half Mast

PCM2 writes "The Columbine tragedy planted the idea of a certain kind of 'bad kid' into the American consciousness. He isn't social, he doesn't play sports, doesn't dress right. Maybe he spends more time with his computer than with the other kids in his class. It makes sense that he'd be a threat to his classmates, because he's weird. The consequences of this stereotype for the geek culture have already gotten a lot of air time on Slashdot -- most notably Jon Katz's Hellmouth series. So I immediately thought of Slashdot when I read Christopher Null's novel, Half Mast." Read on for the rest of PCM2's review. Half Mast author Christopher Null pages 219 publisher Sutro Press rating 7 reviewer PCM2 ISBN 0972098100 summary An interesting novel of murder among high school outsiders.

Alex, the protagonist of the story, is a geeky kid. He gets picked on. And he kills somebody because of it. But that's pretty much where the similarities between Alex and Dylan Klebold end.

What's refreshing about Half Mast is how the author accurately captures the world of a high-school outsider. Writers can be pretty introverted types themselves, but few of them end up killing anybody. So when they try to imagine the type of character who would, a lot of them tend to fall into the trap of inventing someone even more unfathomably nerdy than themselves. Thankfully, Null avoids this.

Alex isn't a complete, pathetic loner. He has friends. And together, Alex, Travis and James aren't the typical cookie-cutter stereotypes of kids too terminally dorky to get with the program. They're not so trollish that they can't get within booger-flicking distance of a girl, or so chess-club square that they wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol at a party (in fact, they spend much of their summers doing just the opposite). Null gets it: that most geeks aren't necessarily "deprived," and being an outsider isn't always about being excluded. It's about being different -- and that, in and of itself, can have its consequences.

In Alex's case, his nemesis is Steve Williams: hometown hero, star athlete, the pride and joy of Fall Valley High -- if you care about that sort of thing, that is. Alex doesn't, particularly. He fails to kowtow to Steve the way the way Fall Valley's golden boy thinks he deserves -- and here's where his proverbial troubles begin. Steve subjects Alex to a series of humiliating tortures that should have even the most picked-on geek cringing.

When Alex does finally strike back, it isn't with a hail of gunfire, either. He's calculating about it. I must admit, I'm not really convinced that Alex's modus operandi would actually pan out the way it does in Half Mast. But it certainly makes for more interesting reading than your standard shoot-out, and in its way, it's much more sinister. Also, because Alex doesn't have the option of the Columbine killers' quick way out, he's forced to live with his actions and their impact on his own life.

That's the book's focus, and what saves it from being just another wannabe crime thriller. Christopher Null cares about his characters, and he's taken care to depict them in a way that geeks will find sympathetic and (mostly) believable.

While a lot of Null's characters and situations were amusingly familiar, others rang less true. The Steve Williams character was a little too prone to making speeches about the relationship between bullies and their victims, for example, instead of just knocking Alex into the dirt the way the kids at my school would have done. There were also a few too many end-of-chapter "zinger" one-liners for my taste, and the novel uses the awkward device of a present-day journal talking about events that took place several years in the past.

Still, it's an impressive debut novel about an uncommon subject matter, and one I think a lot of Slashdotters would get a kick out of. Half Mast is a fast read, and an enjoyable one. It's also notable because the author chose to self-publish rather than go the traditional route. (Or maybe the topic was too "troublesome" for mainstream publishers in a post-Columbine world?)

You can purchase Half Mast from bn.com as well as from Null's own Web site at sutropress.com, which also has some excerpts from the book. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Who needs sports?

[NeoFunk]

I think it's really sad that a young person is classified as an "outcast" or a "loser" if he doesn't choose to define his life through sports.

Re:Who needs sports?

[saskboy]

Sports are important. They just aren't as important as jocks and soccer moms like to think they are. People who play sports have a lot of fun, and have better opportunities for picking up very attractive members of the opposite sex. I think a loser is someone who wastes their athletic ability by smoking, or refusing to participate.
Coordination can be learned. If someone is too clumbsy to catch or throw properly, someone else didn't teach them properly. Some parts of throwing are instinctual, but not all of them.
Part of the problem is that city life doesn't lend itself naturally to sports. The places to play are crowded, and when you want to use the basketball court, you have to either be bigger than the people currently using it, or wait on the sidelines doing something else. Organized sports are an unnatural event. People should be able to just go outside with their buddies when ever the weather allows, and start playing.

Re:Who needs sports?

[Joe the Lesser]

Sports are not more important than people.

Sports can lead to people worrying about stuff that's not important whatsoever to their real lives, it can cause frustration, humiliation, and teach vengeance and reward cruelty if taught improperly.

Health and exercise is important, but how one decides to have fun and/or attempt to attract the opposite sex should not have sway in their being a 'loser'.

Finally, many atheletes do worse things than smoking in the form of drugs to improve performance because winning has become their lives.

Re:Who needs sports?

[NeoFunk]

Yes, I agree that sports are important. I think it's good for all children to have some exposure to them - they help build teamworking skills, they teach them healthy competitive skills, and they're good for the mind and body.

I'm just disappointed that the children who choose to define their life through sports are considered "cooler" or "better adjusted" than the kid who takes more interest in, say, science or computers. In my opinion, our society has its prioities was screwed up. Realistically, most of us know that cognitive ability is going to be far more valuable in a person's life than the ability to kick a ball, but still the jocks get all the praise and admiration.

Re:Who needs sports?

[JanneM]

Sports are only as important as you make it to be, no more, no less. You're not interested, well, the whole concept of athletic competition could be outlawed and you couldn't care less.

Note that there is a fundamental difference between "sports" (ie. competitive atcletics) and "exercise". You do emphatically _not_ need to participate in a sport to get exercise. And it is exercise that is important for your health and well-being, not competition. A surprising number of geek friends that loathe the idea of sports (and that cut PE classes) are nevertheless avid exercisers; they just don't wish to compare performance with others.

There are a number of athletic activities available that are not competitive but very beneficial - and that tends to appeal to geeks: Walking rather than riding a bus or car; rock climbing; cycling (as transport of enjoyment, not racing); weight lifting and gymnastics (good for your back); dancing - classical or ballroom; hiking. there are many others of course, all with the common denominator of not having to induce an unhealthy competitive element.

If school gymknastics were to emphasize the joy of exercise rather than just ranking people on their ability to throw a ball then maybe there wouldn't be so much disdain towards it from the less talented.

A wide stereotype

[Joe the Lesser]

It's certainly not just 'computer geeks' that must live as outsider's in mainstream society. Just about any group of behavior, tech related or not, that does not participate in norm behaviors are easy to ostracize. In lieu of a classic 'geek', there will always be someone different enough to take the fall.

At the time it happened

[phorm]

For a short while, I was actually left alone and not harrassed. Due to the previous frequency of harrassment, people kept whispering that I was the most likely to go on a rampage in the school (gee, doesn't that make me feel warm and tingly). Thankfully, I'm not crazy enough to persue that type of behavior (though I did chase somebody with a bat after they crap-kicked me once), and I didn't have access to firearms.

At least for a while though, the events that occurred shocked everybody into realizing that
a) Even geeky people do have a breaking point
b) Bad things happen when you push them past it

I don't sponsor what happened what happened in Columbine: some killings were also based on race and religion, etc, but for awhile its affects gave me a breather. However, now that harrassment in schools is picking up again I wouldn't be surprised to see more students "losing it"

It's also worthy of note that when an event like this happens - all of N. America and possible the world cry "how could it happen," while suicides based on harrassment - which are more frequent often end up as a statistic except for local grief.
Oh, and to this day I find that people tend to bother me less if I wear a nice, dark, long trenchcoat.

Re:At the time it happened

[NorthDude]

If only I had mod points for you...

Where I come from, we have one of the highest (if no longer the highest) suicide rate in Canada (Abitibi, Quebec).
From secondary 3 to Secondary 5, I had 4 direct friends of mine who commited suicide and a hell of a lot other people who I knew commited suicide also.
You know in a 35K peoples city, 10 kids going to the same scool who commit suicide in a year is VERY disturbing.
I tought about it myself but I finally got some help from external sources (my parents tried to help, but could not...) and got over it.
But anyway, as you were saying, suicide can be a very dramatic social problem, but it really seems to always end up in statistics.

Pretty sad state of affair when you realize that the happiness of our young people is so much less important to the population then their own self.
People always start to worry about that after they had lost a relative.

Re:Alex should have just waited

[tmark]

It's interesting how bullying by people who are geeks is funny, when the same sort of activity by jocks is decried. Methinks if you had been a jock, you would have been bullying the geeks yourself. As it is, you just had to wait until you were in a position of strength, possibly if only via your anonymity. I'd lay a bet you wouldn't dare to do it to their face.

Mean behavior is mean behavior. If it really tortured and hurt you then, you ought not to participate in it now.

I don't get it

[Xenophon Fenderson,]

I mean, who were these evil people that gave you such a hard time that you still care about them tens of years later? To tell the truth, I can barely remember the names of most of the people I went to school with, and the only people I keep in touch from high school are all close personal friends. I'm not saying elementary and high school were easy times for me, but I don't dwell on them. Things are good now! I have the respect and admiration of my peers, I do pretty much anything I want, etc.

I mean, who cares about what some foolish child did years ago? Who cares about what those people are doing today? Personally, I couldn't care less.

Re:I don't get it

[nick_davison]

I mean, who were these evil people that gave you such a hard time that you still care about them tens of years later?

I absolutely remember who they are. Ten years on, they do still affect me and, if honest with ourselves, I think most people will admit the same...

Sure there are negatives: I talk too much and make bad jokes out of the remainder of the social nervousness they instilled; I find it hard to believe that my wife finds me physically attractive. But those are just some of the legacy they left me with.

My desire to work hard, get a good job, do the things I want to do - they all come from them. When I moved from London to California, part of what made the decision easier (and it is scary making a move like that) is the thought that, at reunions, I'll be able to go back and laud my exciting life over them.

They told me, for years, that I wasn't cool, couldn't do anything cool. I play guitar now, can snowboard, fly power kites. Every time I find myself thinking, "Nah, I can't be bothered." a part of me remembers them and gives me that extra push to try something new and cool, to stick with it, to be everything they told me I couldn't be.

They told me I wasn't attractive, that I could never get a girl as hot as the "models" they were dating, from another school, in the year below. Years later, I still smile when I remember, just before we left high school, aged 18, a friend telling them about the 21 year old nurse I was dating. Their telling me I couldn't gave me the impetus to try harder, to work out, change my look, whatever and find people who found me attractive.

They told me I was fat and ugly. While I refuse to go down the overcompensating paths of eating disorders and all the rest of it, remembering their derrision is what pushes me to do that extra thirty two lengths in the pool or get out of bed and go to the gym when I really don't want to.

To pretend that bullies don't have an affect on my life, years later, is to pretend that my personality didn't develop at all in highschool. Maybe a few people were lucky enough to never be bullied but I think most other people, if honest, will agree with me.

The thing is... Sure, they gave me some issues, but they also gave me a lot of strengths. It's that old thing of the former geek tipping the former jock who delivers his pizza. I was lucky and managed to turn the abuse in to a desire to always be more than them. So, in my own, warped, over generous way, perhaps I should just try thanking them, rather than hating them any more.

Beware the viscious circle.

[Niles_Stonne]

If you are the lab admin, and the systems keep "crashing" or losing other people's data - no matter if you like them or not - it will reflect poorly on you.

The more problems that people have on systems that you are supposedly administering, the less they will like you.

Try talking, or being friendly, or helping to try to recover their data. Let the "bully" see that perhaps you can be better allies than enemies.

Re:It's the times

[Otter]

Why do we have things like Columbine nowadays when these things were unheard of 30 years ago?

Notice that there *hasn't* been a major school rampage in a couple of years? For a while, multiple shootings were happening several times a year, with individual alleged bullies being shot by alleged outcasts much more frequently than that.

Once they dropped off the front page of the paper for a while (as the attention of the media turned elsewhere), they stopped happening. The individual shootings may continue unreported for all I know, mass killings have stopped.

Remember all the experts on TV telling us that it's too many guns, not enough guns, religion, atheism, video games, sex education? Well none of those things have changed and the Columbines have disappeared. What's the only thing that has changed?

The stereotype isn't all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense that he'd be a threat to his classmates, because he's weird.

Having someone think that you're a threat isn't all bad. It gets you some respect when you might otherwise get none. Being a non-threat in some circles - on the street, in high-school - is far worse than being a threat.

# of exceptions it takes to disprove a rule?

[SolemnDragon]

Or worse, a socially accepted stereotype? Yes, Asperger's Syndrome is an interesting subset of Autism. And yes, most people live somewhere on the spectrum of 2 + 2 = 4 and call that sanity. But I had a high school teacher who got this right.

He said, two plus two equals four for the mainstream, and that's what we're going to call sanity. We need rules to keep society ordered and we need a common ground to talk from. But everybody has their places where they don't line up to the norm. For some peeople, that's everywhere. For some people, 2 + 2 = 22, or twelve, or bright green. And Some day, they're going to betalking you down from the top of a building (he was addressing the whole class) and they're going to ask you, gee, what the H* were you thinking? And you're going to say, well... i don't know. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time...

And that's not the scary part. The scary part is, that it will be true: it really will have made sense at the time. You will have found the place where, for you, two plus two no longer matches the four that everyone else comes up with.

I don't offer this to excuse anything that anyone has done. Murder is murder. But I offer this as thought-fodder against the prediliction that we have, as a society, for nice little categories and nice little diagnoses. There's a wide range of stuff out there in the human mind-spectrum, some of it dangerous and some of it good, and not all of it definable by our current terms.
Yeah, and I hated high school, too. But I think a lot of social fringe elements are actually better prepared for the outside world, and tend to do better in it, than their high school tormentors, because they have been forced to face the world as an individual without backup. It isn't right and it isn't necessarily worth it, but let's not forget that if superman hadn't had those powers, he never would have made it through high school without being stuffed into a locker either- or else he would have been one more football captain.

It Wasn't Columbine! It's Always Been Like This...

[Myriad]

The Columbine tragedy planted the idea of a certain kind of 'bad kid' into the American consciousness. He isn't social, he doesn't play sports, doesn't dress right.

Columbine didn't do this, it's always been the case. Be it geeks & nerds with their computers or not.

For the most part society has always viewed different as being bad.

Look at racism and other ethinc discrimination: they're not my race/colour, so they must be bad!

Sexual orientation: he's gay, so he doesn't get the same rights. He's also open season for a beating.

Same with geeks and nerds: they don't play sports, they like computers, they must be screwed up.

Frankly people I think that as geeks we've had to put up with a hell of a lot less than either one of the two groups I've mentioned! Ya it sucks sometimes, but we still get off easy. I haven't heard of geek-bashing (as in beating to the point of death, or near death), nor have I heard of a geek not being allowed to vote or made to use a back door. It's not right, but it isn't new either.

The problem is societies general intolerance for anything different... not some very disturbed individuals who also happen to be nerdy going postal in a school.

What goes around comes around ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot see the difference between revenge and wanton acts of cruelty?

Re:Alex should have just waited

[D'Arque Bishop]

It's interesting how bullying by people who are geeks is funny, when the same sort of activity by jocks is decried.

I think what he was implying was not that he would torture or bully jocks who he didn't know, but just the particular ones who bullied him in high school.

In this case, it's more karma than anything else... he's just showing the people who bullied him what he went through. You reap what you sow.

Re:Alex should have just waited

[secolactico]

I undertip them, and call the pizza shop to tell them it was cold

Bad, bad, bad idea. You fail to realize that he is the one that handles your food moments before you eat it. If you undertip and report them, you'll probably have a couple of extra "toppings" on your pizza next time, no charge.

Re:It's the times

[argmanah]

There's no single answer to parenting...but hitting a kid doesn't solve problems. If you're lucky, it just may not get in the way in the rest of the parenting process.

I think your first statement is a little contradictory. I agree completely that there's no single answer to parenting. Kids are different, each and every one. Some kids need to be nurtured and taught by positive example, but that doesn't work with all of them.

I'm not saying "hit with stick time" is the first solution or the only solution. But there are kids where it is the only solution that works. In today's society, people like you dismiss it out of hand. That, I believe, is part of the problem.

I have no problem with believing that many kids would respond well to offering them rewards for good grades and good behavior. And, I undestand it's important to set the example for them. But in the end, if you really love your child, you should be willing to go to any lengths to make sure they grow up right, even if it means hitting them.

There's a big difference between "hitting with stick time" and "child abuse". I'm not suggesting you injure your child, but simply to have the option of using pain as negative reinforcement. Recognize the difference.

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Re:Alex should have just waited

[theghost]

It's not Karma. Pretending that a base desire for revenge is cosmically due is just an excuse. Sure, some people treated us like shit when we were young and geeky and powerless, but treating anyone - even those same jerks - like shit now that we're older and geeky and not so powerless just compounds the problem.

Ask yourself if your actions are making the net quality of life on Earth better or worse.

I don't think that columbine make geeks look bad

[the_2nd_coming]

what it and all subsiquet and prior attacks did was open the publics' eyes to just how damaging ostricizing and bullying a child can be if it is done to the wrong person. look at all the zero tolerence policies tehre are to bullying now. when I was a kid, I got beat up and I would tell a teacher...the teacher's responce was "stop whining".

Re:Real need

[TheRaven64]

Hurt them a little the first time and you get some respect.

Very true, and having a slight frame is a huge advantage in this. Anyone who picks on someone half their size and gets hurt loses all respect from their peers very quickly.