"Do you remember what you asked for?"

And to be honest, I didn't remember until I opened the wrapping, and as such was a bit nervous.  If memory serves, I said that I'd rather receive a toy robot as a gift than an expensive pen - which is quite correct and still holds true.

Much thanks to the staff at the BCMEA, and specifically to Suki, our company's Employee Engagement Manager, for my 50th birthday gift, which I gather involved a substantial amount of effort to obtain.  And thank god I live alone, that noise is a LOT louder in person.

- Sid

P.S. And a final thank-you to David for his evocative comment:  "Hey look, laser tits!"

Thud and blunder.

Due to my recent European adventure, I didn’t go to see the recent movie reboot of Conan the Barbarian, but then, apparently neither did anyone else.  In fact, it seems to have come and gone in surprisingly short order for an epic big-budget heroic fantasy summer release.

So what went wrong?

Personally, I think that there’s some kind of fundamental barrier which can prevent an author’s work from being successfully adapted. The continued interest in Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero would seem to indicate that there's some merit to the character, but as with Frank Herbert’s Dune and apparently everything by William Gibson, it may not be all that easy to transfer that obvious merit to another medium.

The barrier in all three of these examples is the same: style. Howard’s prose may be a bit extreme, but it paints a detailed tapestry, loaded with visual and sensory clues, placing Conan - and the reader - in a world which is rich, tactile, and real. 

Howard described the genesis of his Cimmerian warrior in similar terms:

It may sound fantastic to link the term "realism" with Conan; but as a matter of fact - his supernatural adventures aside - he is the most realistic character I ever evolved.  He is simply a combination of a number of men I have known, and I think that's why he seemed to step full-grown into my consciousness when I wrote the first yarn of the series.  Some mechanism in my sub-conscious took the dominant characteristics of various prize-fighters, gunmen, bootleggers, oil field bullies, gamblers and honest workmen I have come in contact with, and combining them all, produced the amalgamation I call Conan the Cimmerian.

For a true look at the character of Conan and the manner in which Howard describes him and his world, I strongly recommend reading a couple of the original stories featuring the character. Please note the word “original” – as I’ve already discussed, Conan has travelled quite a long way from home over the years since Robert E. Howard’s creation of the character.

Fortunately, much of Howard's work is now available as free downloads on Project Gutenberg.  Recommended reading would be the short stories Red Nails, Across the Black River, or A Witch Shall Be Born. If you're looking for a longer experience, try The Hour of the Dragon, a book-length work originally published as a five-part serial in the pulp magazine Weird Tales.

The bottom line is that any attempt at adaptation ends up being a second-hand description, someone trying to find a way to evoke through imitation the same degree of creative depth that they see in the original work. I suppose it's like a band doing cover songs: regardless of the quality of the performance, it's always going to be based upon - and compared to - someone else's unique genius.  Let's face it - imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn't make it the best form.

- Sid

Still a standard for tuba players?

When I received this battered postcard from ex-Printing House employee Paul Levesque, who has undertaken a bike trip across North America, I laughed out loud – the subsequent details on the back about playing G, A, F, (octave lower) F,  and C were unnecessary but a nice bit of icing on the cake.

However, the identification may not be as immediate for others. Does everyone remember that the Devil’s Tower, immortalized in mashed potatoes by Richard Dreyfuss, is where the climactic action of Close Encounters of the Third Kind took place?

The funny thing is that I’ve never seen the movie. As per my previous comments, I’m completely sceptical about every sort of cryptid phenomenon, and frankly CE3K had too much of that about it. Sadly, when you come right down to it, it's a geek version of the Rapture, with aliens substituting for angels. And, honestly - mashed potatoes?

- Sid

He drew a deep breath. "Well, I'm back," he said.

 “Then let’s look on the bright side: we’re having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are.”

Inigo Montoya: WIlliam Goldman, The Princess Bride

And so, as with all good things, the 2011 European Tour comes to an end.  Damn, I should have sold t-shirts...

How was it? As with any experience in life, there were pros and cons.  Three weeks is a long haul away from home, I had a period of intense discomfort due to extreme blisters caused by extensive walking in wet shoes, I was nervous about language issues for my entire stay in Paris, and it’s taken me over a week to get back in sync with west coast time.

However, as far as I'm concerned, those are minor inconveniences.  For me, the perfect vacation is more about having a memorable, interesting adventure than being comfortable.  Those three weeks of travel took me to nine cities in four countries, and let me see landscapes and locations that I'd only ever read about or seen on TV.  Getting lost in the rain in London allowed me to find a fantastic graveyard that I returned to photograph after the Doctor Who Experience.  And I wouldn't have missed the view from the Eiffel Tower even if you'd told me there was going to be a pop quiz on verbs afterward.  (Although I might have done some more studying in advance if that had been the case.)

And it's wasn't all just the standards of the Eiffel Tower, St. Paul's and the Colosseum, I was able to indulge my own unique interests as well, what with graveyards, Doctor Who, medieval armour, castles and towers, men walking through walls, alien architecture, and all the other little grace notes that surrounded my visits to the legends of European sightseeing.

When you think about it, it's not at all surprising that I'd enjoy a trip like this.  Science fiction and fantasy fans are impelled by many of the same factors that motivate people to visit foreign countries when on vacation. There’s a shared desire to see exotic, unfamiliar locations, to experience new things*, to seek out new worlds and new civilizations, TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE….

Oops, sorry about that, got a bit carried away. But, there we go, I’ve just cracked the code on Star Trek – they’re really just tourists.

- Sid

* Sorry, Laurie, this is less applicable for those of you that just want to get on the spaceship, visit the zero-g spa, and spend some time in suspended animation, without any need to take the shuttlecraft down to Mars to see the canals.

It's the little things.

Final night in England, Gatwick Airport Hotel, room service, BBC One, Doctor Who - booyah, baby!

- Sid

"Guell Park. After a fashion. Barcelona, if you like."

 As her fingers closed around the cool brass knob, it seemed to squirm, sliding along a touch spectrum of texture and temperature in the first second of contact.Then it became metal again, green-​painted iron, sweeping out and down, along a line of perspective, an old railing she grasped now in wonder.

A few drops of rain blew into her face.

Smell of rain and wet earth.

A confusion of small details, her own memory of a drunken art school picnic warring with the perfection of Virek's illusion.

Below her lay the unmistakable panorama of Barcelona, smoke hazing the strange spires of the Church of the Sagrada Familia. She caught the railing with her other hand as well, fighting vertigo. She knew this place. She was in the Guell Park, Antonio Gaudi's tatty fairyland, on its barren rise behind the center of the city. To her left, a giant lizard of crazy-​quilt ceramic was frozen in midslide down a ramp of rough stone. Its fountain-​grin watered a bed of tired flowers.

William Gibson, Count Zero

There's a long list of places that I know only as fictional settings, and Barcelona's Parc Güell is one of them, thanks to its appearance in Gibson’s Count Zero. Other than that, I didn’t really have any sort of impression as to the reality that lay behind its use as a virtual setting in the novel, but I was curious enough to add it to my list of places to go when the cruise ship docked in Spain.

I was astonished to discover that behind the ceramic dragon that has become the icon for the park, there's a fantastic array of rough-hewn promenades and viaducts threading the grounds together like the underpinnings of an alien metropolis.

Has no one ever thought of using the Parc Güell as the backdrop for a science fiction or fantasy film? It's easy to imagine some race of giant alien arthropods à la The Dark Crystal making their solemn way through the irregular semi-organic buttresses and past the peculiar colonnades spawned by Gaudi’s imagination, or faery folk duelling in front of the gingerbread curves and swells of his buildings.

A bit of research online reveals that some movies have been shot at the park, but with the best will in the world, Vicky Cristina Barcelona isn't really what I have in mind.

- Sid

Le Passe-Muraille.

Fly to Paris.  Make your way to Montmartre, and go to the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur, high atop its hill, north and west from the infamous Moulin Rouge.  Leave the Basilica and make your way through the narrow, winding streets of the old village, past the café Le Consulat, and down the Rue Norvin to the Place Marcel Aymé.  There you will find a peculiar thing:  a statue of a man, but not a complete statue.  Instead, it shows the man as if he were walking through the wall - and in fact he is.

The statue is of the titular character in Le Passe-Muraille - in English, The Walker-Through-Walls, a 1943 short story by the Marcel Aymé after whom the square is named.  As you might imagine, the story deals with a man who discovers that he has the ability to move through solid matter:

Dutilleul discovered his power shortly after he turned forty-two. One evening, the electricity went out briefly while he was standing in the front hall of his small bachelor apartment. He groped around for a moment in the dark, and when the power came back on, he found himself standing on his fourth floor landing. Since the door to his apartment was locked from the inside, this gave him pause for thought. Despite the objections of his common sense, he decided to return home in the same way he left—by passing through the wall. This strange ability seemed to have no bearing on any of his aspirations, and he could not help feeling rather vexed about it.

Dutilleul visits his doctor, who prescribes:

...two doses a year of tetravalent pirette powder containing a mixture of rice flour and centaur hormone. Dutilleul took one dose, then put the medicine in the back of a drawer and forgot about it.

Astonishingly, Dutilleul does nothing with his ability, even though he retains it after only taking one dose of the medicine rather than the prescribed two.  However, when he has trouble with his workplace supervisor, Dutilleul uses his ability to drive the supervisor crazy.  Pleased by this success, he looks for other outlets, and turns to a life of crime.

His career as a criminal is a phenomenal success, and all Paris stands in awe of this mysterious, miraculous thief, from whom no treasure is safe.  However, when Dutilleul attempts to take credit for his actions and announces to his co-workers that he is in fact the mystery man, he is laughed out of the office.  As a result, he allows the police to capture him, in order to prove to the scoffers at work that he really is the amazing thief that they all admire.

It would seem insane to allow the authorities to arrest him just to gain the respect of his fellow workers (which he does), but then, think - what prison can hold him?  He proceeds to steal the warden's gold watch and hang it in his cell, borrow books from the warden's library, and finally announces the time and date of his departure from prison, at which point he vanishes completely from the public eye, living off his plunder and quietly working on his stamp collection.

Sadly, as you might guess, Dutilleul's downfall comes in the form of a woman.  (This is, after all, a French story.)  Tempted by a blonde beauty whose jealous husband keeps her under lock and key, he walks through the walls of their apartment and repeatedly makes mad passionate love to the captive goddess.  However, one night he feels the pangs of a headache, and rather than disappoint his innamorata, he finds what he thinks to be aspirin tablets in a drawer, takes two and goes to see his beloved.

As he is making his exit, he finds to his horror that he is trapped within the garden wall, unable to come or go through the masonry.  The pills which he thought were pain killers were of course the forgotten medication from his doctor, and his ability has left him at the worst possible moment.

Dutilleul was immobilized inside the wall. He is there to this very day, imprisoned in the stone. When people go walking down the Rue Norvins late at night after the bustle of Paris has died down, they hear a muffled voice which seems to come from beyond the grave; they think it’s the sound of the wind whistling through the streets of Montmartre. It’s Lone Wolf Dutilleul lamenting the end of his glorious career and mourning his all too brief love affair.

So, it is in fact on the Rue Norvin that Dutilleul meets his Waterloo, although perhaps not at the exact location of the statue.  The thing about that statue that most captures my attention is the expression on the Passe-Muraille's face. It reminds me of the ambiguous smile of the Mona Lisa - what is he thinking as he smiles that slight smile?  Is it smug?  Is it satisfied?  Is it contemplative?  Or perhaps is it simply pleasure in his unusual talent - the ability to walk through walls...

- Sid

"I listened!"

My mother .... was a pure woman .... from a noble family. And I, at least, know who my father is, ..... you pig-eating son of a whore!

Antonio Banderas, The Thirteenth Warrior

Remember the sequence in The Thirteenth Warrior where a reluctant Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, played by Antonio Banderas, is making his way north with the Vikings?  Every night he sits by the fire, ignored by his fellow travellers as they speak in their own language.  However, as he sits and listens, night after night, he begins to pick up a word here and there, then another, and is finally able to respond to a chance comment about his mother, to the amazement and suspicion of the Vikings.

I've been in Paris for a few days now, and sadly I'm still in the "word here and there" phase.  However, I think I'm taking the right approach in just trying to get the concept of what I'm hearing, rather than do a word for word translation in my head, and so far this has worked pretty well.  And, to the best of my knowledge, no one has been offended by anything I've said - at least, I'm pretty sure they haven't made any comments about my mother.

- Sid