Some things defy description.

"...to boldly go where no...man....has gone before."

Sky, Ninja Babes from Space

I make no judgements, I state no opinions: Ninja Babes from Space.

- Sid

Achievable Technology.

"But iron!"
"Hell, we're not savages, Devan, are we? When we came to this place we didn't revert back. We still have our minds. All we need is a blast furnace, some iron ore and a fire, isn't it?"

Jerry Sohl, Costigan's Needle

I've just finished re-reading my battered copy of Jerry Sohl's 1953 novel Costigan's Needle - I own the 1968 edition, so it's not as battered as it might be if I owned one of the original paperbacks.* I suspect I first read my mother's copy in my early teens, but I can't remember if I found the concept as unlikely then as I find it to be now.

For those of you unfamiliar with what Mr. Sohl considered to be his best novel**, the titular Dr. Costigan invents a device which creates an opening into another place, an opening which only allows the transmission of living matter. The device is damaged by angry Christian fundamentalists, and the resulting overload sends every living cell within a two-block radius into another world, sans clothing, shoes, glasses, fillings, pacemakers, and all of the other crutches for everyday life that technology has provided.

Naked and shivering, their first decision is to rebuild the device and return. Ten years later, they turn on the power to the new Needle and prepare to send everyone back through its Eye, only to discover that no one wants to leave.

Impressively, after ten years the inhabitants of Sohl's New Chicago have all the conveniences of life: steel for hammers, nails, and wire; glass for bottles, windows, glasses and light bulbs; plastics for dishes and insulation; tobacco and paper for cigarettes - and phosphorus for matches with which to light them. Their dentist fills teeth with gold and their doctors use ether as an anaesthetic, and their power plant provides the electricity for the new Needle.

I'm sorry, but I'm skeptical. Quick pop quiz: how many people reading this know how to make iron? We all know that glass is made out of sand - but how? It's got to be more complicated than just heating up some sand, or else there would be little glassy pits every time someone lit a fire on a beach. For that matter, if you were dropped naked into the woods, would you even be able to start a fire? How about building a cell phone and calling for help?

Now, I realize that Sohl has loaded the dice, in that the inventor of the Needle and a room full of scientists and technicians get transported, but even then I have to question the ability of 395 people to recreate enough of our civilization to be able to build log cabins that don't leak when it rains, let alone to the point of constructing complicated electronic devices. I strongly suspect that in reality all 395 of them would be involved in a constant struggle to get enough food on the table,with very little time left over to start figuring out the right impedance for a capacitor.

However, I must be the only person who feels this way. The something-from-nothing technological meme is fairly common in science fiction, with Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court getting the ball rolling. All sorts of people seem to get transported or displaced into other dimensions or other times where their knowledge allows them to either revolutionize society or to build a new one from scratch, and a surprising percentage of these people know how to make gunpowder.

One of the more plausible amateur chemists is Calvin Morrison, the protagonist of H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen. However, Calvin - or Kalvan - realizes immediately that he's not going to be able to convert the late-medieval society in which he finds himself into the equivalent of the industrial revolution in order to help them win a war. What he can do is to help them move about a hundred years further ahead: better gunpowder, rifled barrels, trunnions on cannon, and so on, which I find far more believable than having them build Sherman tanks.

Similarly, William R. Forstchen's "Lost Regiment" series presents one of the few "rebuild society from nothing" scenarios that worked for me. His characters are a shipload of Civil War soldiers whose ship gets swept out to sea and ends up going through a dimensional portal in the Bermuda Triangle. Forstchen loads his dice by having the ship loaded with a variety of useful military and engineering supplies, but even without that I'd accept the idea of a group of Civil War soldiers being able to start with almost nothing and recreate their society.

Why is that? I think that there's some kind of break point around the end of the 19th century after which the number of steps between phases of technology grows larger and larger. A miner in 1865 might well have known how to smelt down the ore, after he'd extracted it from the mine with pick and shovel. Or a blacksmith might have similar knowledge of what was involved with the ore before he began hammering the iron into nails. In current technology, the people who make the parts that are used to make the machines that make the parts for the machines that make the nails are unlikely to have ever seen the process of nailmaking, let alone have any idea of what iron looks like in its natural state.

The final joke for me is that if you sent 395 science fiction fans into another dimension, they might well do better than the average, just from having read so many variations on the theme. Oh, and the formula for gunpowder is 75% saltpeter, 15% sulphur and 10% charcoal. You might want to memorize that, just in case.

- Sid

*I have the impression that my sister Dorothy owns a copy as well, although I suspect hers may be in worse shape.

**Presumably everyone but Dorothy.

Look on my works, ye mighty...

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works. Ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

I talked to Terry Gilliam in the '80s, and he asked me how I would make Watchmen into a film. I said, ''Well actually, Terry, if anybody asked me, I would have said, 'I wouldn't.'''

Alan Moore

Who watches the Watchmen? Well, last week it was me. Equipped with a bag of dry popcorn (damn you Laurie, for having ruined buttered popcorn for me) I settled in for the almost three hour marathon of Zack Snyder's take on what has arguably been called "the best comic book story of all time". However, it's also been referred to as arguably being unadaptable, and Alan Moore, who wrote the comic book, has refused to allow his name to be associated with the project.

The terrible thing about having read the original series in the late 80's is that when watching the adaptation there was always a hint of checklist in the background. This constant little voice compared the film to the comic: "Right ... yes .... no ... yes ... no ... yes ... yes ... what? ... perfect ... nonono!!". As with The Lord of the Rings movies, I'm going to have to wait for a non-believer to see The Watchmen in order to find out if it makes any sense on its own. *

That being said, I have to admit that the movie completely captured my attention, to the point that, when it ended, my first thought was, "Wait, I thought it was supposed to be almost three hours long?". The odd thing is that I'm not sure it deserved that sort of immersion - as above, I'll have to ask someone who doesn't know the original material.

The Watchmen wavers between moments of complete imitation of the comic book and points of complete departure. Some plot elements are diminished or removed entirely, others are magnified from their original significance. For example, the character of the Comedian holds a larger part of the stage than he did in the comic, whereas Rorschach seems reduced, and a subplot revolving around the original Night Owl has vanished completely. The Ozymandias portrayed in the original series came across as a perfect man, a physical and intellectual paragon who sincerely believes that his actions are in the best interests of humanity and that the end will justify his means, but I found the movie character to be much colder, almost repellent - it's interesting that they made his costume black rather than the comic book character's golden outfit.

There were a number of visual elements of that nature that bothered me on an almost subliminal level, little changes from the comics that weren't vital but which were a bit distracting in combination with the elements that were faithfully duplicated. Rorschach, the Comedian, and Dr. Manhattan are portrayed exactly as in the comic, whereas Ozymandias, Night Owl and Silk Spectre have their costumes changed to a greater or lesser extent.

But I have to say that I was astonished by how much some of the people resembled the characters as drawn by Dave Gibbons. Jackie Earle Haley perfectly evokes Rorschach in the scenes where he appears without his mask, and the Night Owl's alter ego of Dan Dreiburg as portrayed by Patrick Wilson is flawless. There were some minor flaws in the Comedian's progression in age, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan gives the role exactly the right kind of cynical, brutal amusement.

Overall, I found The Watchmen to be a good attempt to adapt something so widely considered to be unadaptable. I say "attempt" because I'm not sure that it succeeds as a whole, but the sum of the parts involved compensates for the places where it fails. Oh, and as per my previous posting on the topic, yes, the ending is radically different in its direction if not in its result. I can understand why they would make the changes they made, and I admit that the ending of the comic book version has been subjected to a certain amount of criticism as having elements of absurdity, but I don't agree with the spin that the new ending forces onto the reactions of the other characters.

One of the elements that made The Watchmen a difficult work for adaptation is the episodic nature of the original story. The logical breaks at the end of each issue allowed for a chapter-based rhythm to the plot structure and for the inclusion of a wide variety of supporting textual material - excerpts from the original Night Owl's biography, Rorschach's psychiatric profile, interviews with Jon Veidt/Ozymandias, and so on - that would be impossible to include in a movie. However, I look forward to seeing if the Watchmen DVD will re-introduce any of those elements once the story has been removed from the exigencies of commercial release. Who knows, if they put some work into that, Alan Moore may even allow them to put his name on it.

- Sid

* Fortunately my friend Alan in Toronto, who hasn't read the comic - and who doesn't read this blog, as far as I know - will likely be able to act as a neutral observer. (He performed a similar role for the Lord of the Rings movies, with which he was also unfamiliar in their written form. Sadly, young Alan is not a big fan of reading.)

The Lake of the Sun, the Bay of the Dawn.

Rather than true channels in a form familiar to us, we must imagine depressions in the soil that are not very deep, extended in a straight direction for thousands of miles, over a width of 100, 200 kilometers and maybe more. I have already pointed out that, in the absence of rain on Mars, these channels are probably the main mechanism by which the water (and with it organic life) can spread on the dry surface of the planet.

Giovanni Schiaparelli, Life on Mars

The Google home page kindly informed me this morning that today was the birth date of Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli (1835-1910). This 19th-century astronomer's name may not be known to everyone, but generations of science fiction fans owe an enormous debt to Signore Schiaparelli - or, to be more accurate, to the mistranslation of his work.

In 1877, Mars was in a particularly favourable position for observation, and Shiaparelli, at that point director of the Brera Observatory near Milan, took advantage of this opportunity to make detailed observations of the planet's surface. Using these observations and additional data from the next decade, he produced maps of Mars which remained the standard until space probes allowed for more accurate images.

But when Schiaparelli's work was translated into English, the Italian phrase "canali", intended to refer to the channels that he had observed, was translated as "canals" - creations of intelligence rather than environment. The debate regarding life on Mars that was started by this minor alteration was to continue for almost one hundred years, until Mariner 4 sent closeup pictures of Mars back to NASA in 1965.

Regardless of the position of the scientific community, the idea of vast canals spanning a desert planet resonated with the science fiction community. That was the Mars that I first read about when I started reading science fiction, a dying planet inhabited by the descendants of a fallen civilization older than our own, desperately fighting a losing battle against the ever advancing sands. This is the Mars of Planet Stories, the Mars of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, the Mars of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, the Mars known as Barsoom to its inhabitants in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter novels.

However, Schiaparelli is more deserving of praise than the common translation error about canals would suggest. As he made his initial observations of the Martian surface, he began to name the various geographic features that he saw, and those names have left Schiaparelli with a lasting heritage.

Just as the broad flat plains of the Moon were commonly referred to as "seas", Schiaparelli used a similar convention for Martian names, giving us The Sea of Sirens, the Bay of the Dawn, and the Lake of the Sun. Other names came from mythology, the Bible, or history. But regardless of its origins, the geography of Mars has a sort of lyrical poetry to it: Tharsis, Chryse, Ophyr, Thyle, Cydonia, Elysium - they almost seem to have been chosen as locations for adventure and fantasy.


Current scientific theory has it that there may be no life at all on Mars, and science fiction authors have sadly and reluctantly moved on from tales of dying civilizations and fallen empires on our sister world. Now science fiction tends to look ahead to life on Mars as it would be lived by colonists from Earth, and, more ambitiously, to the prospect of terraforming Mars. Who knows, if technology can some day match imagination, a future generation of Mars-born humans may be able to stand on the shore of the Bay of the Dawn and see the sun glinting off the waves.

- Sid

P.S. In addition to reminding the world about Schiaparelli's birthday, Google has added a Mars option to Google Earth. (Thereby calling for a new name for the product, if you think about it.)

As if World of Warcraft armour wasn't silly enough.

There I am, stalking through the post-apocalyptic ruins of the Suez Canal in my captured L-5 Bogatyr battlewalker, searching for PAC infantry and other soft targets, when I notice that there's a familiar billboard ahead. Hmmm...given that I'm playing Battlefield 2142, it would appear that things fell apart about 133 years ago. Either that, or some radiation-crazed mutant has a fondness for putting up vintage movie ads.

A little online investigation reveals the following information from a 2006 Electronic Arts press release:

Today's announcement from Electronic Arts describes an agreement with New York-based in-game advertising firm IGA Worldwide, which will see an unspecified number of EA franchises implement in-game advertising. The first game that will see ads from IGA is Digital Illusions CE's Battlefield 2142, which will be receiving dynamic ads tailored to players' physical locations. Interestingly, the press release also states that ads will be customized by platform, though the game has been announced only for PC, suggesting that the game may eventually be coming to other systems. "Consumers are increasingly gaming in deep, virtual worlds and advertisers need adapted ways to reach these audiences," said European VP for Online and Strategic Relationships Frank Sagnier. "The agreement with IGA is a first step in a detailed strategy to deliver advertising in a seamless format." It was not specified what type of real world brands will be used to seamlessly and realistically integrate modern advertising into the fictional setting of a war-themed game set in 2142.

Sigh...yes, consumers are spending more time in "deep" virtual worlds, but obviously they're not deep enough. I can just see the next step in the process: some desperate, battered human raiders making their stand in World of Warcraft as the Orcs begin their charge: their Nikon spears ready, their Coca-Cola shields braced, heads defiantly held high in their Nike helms...

- Sid

"I have been faithful to thee, o Watchmen! in my fashion."

 Many years ago, there was a Jesus comic book.

Written and drawn by Frank Stack under the pseudonym of Foolbert Sturgeon, the concept for this early 70's underground creation was that Jesus had come back to Earth, as had been long awaited, but unfortunately no one cared. And, sadly, Jesus had the same problems with modern life that any long-haired sandal-wearing peace-loving hippy would have, albeit with the ability to turn abusive police officers into actual pigs.

In one issue of The New Adventures of Jesus, Christ goes to the movies to see a film adaptation of the New Testament. He sits enthralled as a muscular, almost Hulk-like screen Jesus fights an equally buff John the Baptist in the early stages of the movie, in the traditional Marvel Comics style hero-meets-hero combat. And, at the end of the movie, when the celluloid Christ uses his cross as a massive weapon to fight the legions, then rallies the Jews and defeats the Roman invaders, Jesus applauds wildly with the rest of the audience.

As the theatre empties, two people behind Jesus are discussing the film. One of them says, "The end's not like the book..."

And so, to the upcoming screen adaptation of The Watchmen.

For readers unfamiliar with The Watchmen in its original comic book form, it was a 12 issue limited series originally published by DC in 1986. Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, it took place in an alternate universe, one where Batman-like vigilantes have been fighting crime for decades, until they are finally declared to be as illegal as their criminal adversaries. In addition, another hero has appeared on the scene, one whose powers are literally godlike. The plot starts with the death of one of the retired heroes (who may not have been that retired) and follows the various characters of the disbanded Watchmen group as they attempt to solve the mystery behind the death, only to uncover a massive conspiracy.

However, that quick summary does an enormous injustice to the series. The Watchmen is considered to be a seminal work, "a comic about comics". Alan Moore's script was intended to turn the myth of the masked avenger on its head, to "show a reality that was very different to the general public image of the super-hero", as Moore himself explained. Every element of the story was planned and considered, from the creation of the archetypal heroes to the development of the style of colouring through the twelve issues, and down to the 9-panel layout and the type of line used to draw the illustrations.

More interestingly, it was also planned to be a demonstration of the unique nature of the comic medium. In fact, it could be said that The Watchmen was deliberately created in opposition to movies, which might explain why a movie adaptation was considered impossible for many years, in spite of the popularity of the series.

But time marches on, and comic books have now become a gold mine for the movie industry. As such, it was inevitable that someone would take up the challenge of The Watchmen. The question, of course, was how they would undertake that challenge.

There are three major points on the curve of comic book adaptation. At one end, you have complete, slavish obedience to the source material - Sin City, 300 - wherein the movie is as close to a one-to-one reproduction of the comic as possible. The middle position involves some compromise, but does its best to be true to the spirit of the original material - the Spiderman and X-Men movies, Hellboy, Iron Man. And at the far end of the curve? Presumably with the best intentions, liberty after liberty is taken, and you end up with Elektra, V, The Hulk, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and maybe Constantine.


Early evidence is that the Watchmen movie falls between slavishness and compromise, with critical scenes being extracted with complete faithfulness to the look of the comic panels. Initial reactions to trailers have been quite positive because of that, with fans of the comic applauding the accuracy with which they see the comic transferred to the screen. There are some differences - some of the costumes have been altered, some of the faces aren't perfect matches for their four-colour counterparts - but so far, people are seeing what they want to see.

However, I recently learned that director Zack Snyder had changed the ending of the film from the apocalyptic conclusion of the comic. I gather that there's still some form of deus ex machina to pull the scattered threads of the conspiracy plot together, but not the one written by Alan Moore.

Personally, I find it to be an odd decision for Snyder to have made, and, to be honest, learning that the ending has been changed casts the whole project into doubt for me. The Watchmen comics present an intensely detailed and layered story, with a wealth of supporting material. Why be careful in ensuring that all the details are accurate if you're not using those details to reach the same conclusion? It's like doing a completely historically accurate presentation of Romeo and Juliet, at the end of which the lovers elope to Mantua.

However, I have to be fair. It could be argued that the plot of the comic series was almost irrelevant, more an excuse for the interaction and development of the characters than an attempt at brilliance. As Dave Gibbons himself commented regarding the plot, "...it just really isn't the most interesting thing about Watchmen. As we actually came to tell the tale, that's where the real creativity came in."

On that basis, any ending that allows for the same degree of depth and creativity in the telling of the tale and the exploration of the characters might turn out to be just as acceptable. And who knows, it may be an improvement on the original. After all, Jesus seemed quite pleased with the Rambo version of His story.

- Sid

And they're close to an Irish pub, too.

"You do realize," said Zanna, "that you're stroking a milk carton."
"You're just jealous."

China Miéville, Un Lun Dun

I spent part of the weekend on Vancouver Island helping my niece and her boyfriend move, but I also managed to find some free time to do some shopping in Victoria. If you're visiting British Columbia's capital, I strongly recommend Munro's Books on Government Street to anyone whose interests lie in the literary world.

During a previous visit, I had wandered into Munro's without any particular expectations, since very few non-genre bookstores have anything unique to offer to the science fiction and fantasy shopper*. However, to my surprise and pleasure, I found a paperback copy of Terry Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, which I'd never even heard of, let alone seen on a store shelf.

As a result, I went in this time with more of a sense of optimism, and was rewarded by a trade paperback copy of China Miéville's Un Lun Dun for a mere $11.00, which is not all that much more than I would have expected to pay for a regular paperback. Even more surprising, the price was actually $11.00, rather than $10.99 or some similar insult to my mathematical intelligence.

Now if they can only overcome their identity problem - do they really need to have their name in that many places on their storefront?

- Sid

* In fact, there are some genre stores that don't have a lot to offer, either. White Dwarf, Vancouver's science fiction and fantasy specialty store, has done nothing to impress me, between their hard-to-browse shelving and the fact that they never have called me about the book that I ordered three years ago. Their dog is a pleasant sort, though.

As a change from captions on cat photos.

In a Beautiful Mind moment of schizophrenic clarity I saw the book for what it was: not a gentle introduction to life's most profound curiosity, but a primer for the parasitic offspring of an invisible invasion!

Jason Yungbluth, Deep Fried Comics

The Internet has spawned a legion of webcomics, blogs, commentaries and forums, and I'm sure that there are people out there who fill every waking moment by subjecting other people to a barrage of links to their favourite net memes. I've done my best to avoid that here, although now and then a link to something will sneak in.

In this case, however, I couldn't resist. There's just something about the Zogg invasion manual ...

- Sid