First thoughts on Sunday morning III.

Let us take a moment to consider Superman. He is a legendary figure, both in the fictional world he inhabits and the real.  Everyone knows that the radiation from our yellow sun gives the last son of Krypton an astonishing catalogue of abilities:  the strength to lift a 747, the power of flight, heat vision, invulnerability, and so on.

But what are the physics of invulnerability?  Superman can crumble concrete between his fingers and bathe in lava if he so chooses. Bullets bounce off his skin, and he is unharmed by vacuum of space - but how does his sensory system interpret these extremes of input?  Is Doomsday's punch just an excessive amount of pressure?  The heat of the earth's core a warm caress, and the chill of the arctic a cool breeze?

We know that in extreme situations Superman can be hurt and feel pain, which suggests that as with homo sapiens*, there's a spectrum of tolerance, albeit a spectrum with a stratospheric top end - but what about the other end of the range? If Superman is indifferent to the impact of steel-jacketed slugs, what does he feel when Lois Lane kisses him?  Logic suggests that the touch of a woman's lips would be so far below the threshold of Superman's sensory apparatus as to be non-existent.  An amourous woman might just as well hit him in the mouth with a sledgehammer if she hoped to get his attention.

This might well explain why DC's 52 reboot has initiated a physical relationship between Wonder Woman and Superman.  Who else could exert sufficient strength to kindle the fires of passion in the Man of Steel - and survive the experience should Superman reciprocate?

However, the romantic in me says that logic has nothing to do with it.  Perhaps Superman only needs to feel a kiss in his heart.

- Sid

* I think it's fair to say that Superman's extraterrestrial origin qualifies him as a separate species - homo kryptonis, or perhaps homo eximius.

And a matching plushie at home.

I was surprised to notice that one of my coworkers has a teeny little Cthulhu idol on her desk at work.  Apparently followers of the dark cult of the Old Ones are everywhere.

Fhtagn!

- Sid

Chris Hadfield, King of Space.

As it turns out, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield wasn't actually proclaimed King of Space in Kazakhstan, in spite of what Reddit would like you to think, but maybe he should have been.

Chris Hadfield has probably done more to raise the profile of space exploration than anyone since Neil Armstrong. (Or perhaps William Shatner.) His Twitter™ feed, loaded with incredible photos from his 146 day tour of duty on the International Space Station, has close to a million followers, and the video for his cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity has been viewed 13,479,763* times in the seven days since it was posted on YouTube™, making it the most popular video of the last week by about 12 million views.

Unfortunately, there's an odd dichotomy regarding space exploration.  On one hand, both NASA and the CSA (Canadian Space Agency, for you international visitors) are facing reduced programs and budget cuts right across the board as governments struggle with widespread economic problems.  Up against that, there's an undeniable interest on the part of the general population:  early videos of the Curiosity Rover on Mars were so popular that the volume of viewers crashed the NASA server, and Chris Hadfield's musical efforts have pulled in more Twitter™ followers than Avril Lavigne's.

The interesting thing about the massive popularity of Hadfield's orbital updates is that there wasn't an engineered publicity process behind them. It wasn't the result of a structured media blitz, or orchestrated by some kind of agency, it was one guy talking it over with his family and taking it from there.**  On that basis, it has to be one of the greatest single-handed viral promotional events of all time.  Hopefully someone in a position of authority will take note of what he's accomplished, and realize what it means as an indicator of interest in outer space.

All hail King Christopher.

- Sid 

*And counting - up to 13,523,098 since I started writing this posting.  It's actually about 14 million - Larrivee, who made the guitar featured in the zero-g performance, has nabbed another 500,000 views of Hadfield's video on their own channel.

** Is it just me or does that sound like a really Canadian approach?


UPDATE: 14,103,113 views, Monday May 20th.

UPDATE: 15,036,588 views, Sunday May 26th. 

 
UPDATE: 50,764,341 views, Saturday January 23, 2022 - gosh, it's been a while since I've visited this post.
 

"For here am I sitting in a tin can..."

I very rarely just post linked content, but really, how cool is this?

- Sid 

(And we all know who Chris Hadfield is? Yes? Please? Everyone?)

A State of Mind, Part II: Tears in Rain.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...huh...attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion...I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those...moments...will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain.

Time... to die...

Roy Batty, Blade Runner

On my way back to the Austin Hilton after my bookstore trip, I passed a little South Congress store call Parts and Labour, specializing in clothing by Texas designers, which incorporated a little shop called Shark Attack, selling posters and prints.  A little voice in my head said: posters... prints... Austin... Alamo Drafthouse... TURN AROUND RIGHT NOW...

As I mentioned in my post about the Alamo Drafthouse, their custom movie posters are legendary.  Austin-based artist Tim Doyle, who both initiated the poster program at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas and contributed poster artwork, has gained international recognition for his silkscreened designs.

As such, it was a pleasant surprise to find Tears in Rain, a marvellous 12 by 24 inch limited edition* Blade Runner inspired print signed by Mr. Doyle, for only thirty dollars.  The rain is wonderfully represented by a fine diagonal texture overprinted in silver.

Roy Batty's final speech from Blade Runner is one of the most evocative and moving pieces of cinema dialogue.  People are surprised to discover that it was partially improvised by Rutger Hauer, who felt that the scripted version was inappropriate, "opera talk" as he described it. He cut out several lines and added in the line about "tears in rain."

An enormously friendly and helpful employee offered to let me pick out a print of Tears in Rain that I liked, and as it turned out there was an version as low as number ten out of 190 available.  Traditionally, limited editions with lower numbers are more desirable than higher numbers, although for a run as low as 190 I doubt that there would be any sort of serious degradation to the screens.

The same helpful woman (who I would acknowledge by name if I'd had the foresight to check for a nametag) carefully placed the print in a sturdy tube after wrapping it in brown paper with an overly generous margin to (successfully) act as a shock absorber during the trip back to Vancouver.  Since then, I've had the print matted and framed by the good people at Kimprints in Gastown, and I picked up the excellent results this afternoon after work.

So there's the first step in adding some genre accents to my living space. Now I just have to figure out where to hang the damn thing...

- Sid

* It's a second edition, which does puzzle me a little.  New screens?  New artwork?  

  

"Crimson. Eleven. Delight. Petrichor."

Idris: It means "the smell of dust after rain."
Rory: What does?
Idris: Petrichor.
Rory: But I didn't ask.
Idris: Not yet. But you will.

Doctor Who, The Doctor's Wife

Thanks to Doctor Who, and by extension Neil Gaiman, I knew that the smell in the air following the brief shower this afternoon was petrichor. 

***

Initially, that's where I was going to stop - this was going to be another "you know you're a geek when..." postings.  But really, I think I owe my adopted homeland a little bit more credit than just that.

You want to increase your word power?  Forget Reader's Digest*.  Spend forty years reading science fiction and fantasy, and trust me, you will end up with a vocabulary that will result in bafflement, envy, and awe - perhaps all three at the same time, depending on the audience. 

But every once in a great while, you'll enjoy the distinct pleasure of finding someone who can reply in kind.

- Sid

*  Reader's Digest Magazine used to run a feature called Increase Your Word Power! - for all I know they may still have it, I haven't picked up a Reader's Digest for decades.

A State of Mind, Part I: Ellison Wonderland

"Would you like a bag for that?" 

"Yes, thank you, I'd rather not sweat all over this on the way back to the hotel."

Conversation with the counter staff at South Congress Books.

As per my Alamo Drafthouse posting in February, I spent most of last week attending PePCon, a publishing/epublishing conference that was held in Austin, Texas. The event itself was excellent, a marvellous professional development opportunity, but sadly it didn't leave me a lot of time for sightseeing.

However, I did manage to briefly get away from the hotel in order to see a bit of the city and perhaps do some shopping.  As you might imagine, when I say "shopping" I'm not talking about looking at shoes or picking out a cute outfit - for me, shopping involves only one thing:  books.  So I took a quick look at Google™, picked out what appeared to be the closest used book store, and headed out into the searing heat of the afternoon.

My initial thought when I entered South Congress Books was that I had made a bad decision - nothing at all against the book store itself, a compact, well organized space, but I generally feel that if I'm in a book store that doesn't have a dedicated science fiction/fantasy section, I'm in the wrong book store. Nonetheless, having exposed my pale Canadian skin to 35 minutes of blazing Texas sunlight to get there, I felt that I should at least look about a bit before leaving.

I was somewhat mollified to find an interesting selection of vintage hard cover science fiction in the rare books section, but unfortunately all priced a bit rich for my blood.  However, encouraged by this display of genre presence, I switched my attention to the FICTION section and began working my way through the alphabet.

I was pleased to discover a diamond mixed in with the dross almost immediately.  There on the shelf was what turned out to be a first edition hardcover copy of Mefisto in Onyx, by Harlan Ellison, with cover artwork and introduction by comic book artist/author Frank Miller.  Quite reasonably priced (in my opinion) at thirty-five dollars - condition not quite mint, but certainly near-mint*. 

(By the way, this is the back cover, that's the front cover leading off the posting.)

Mefisto in Onyx is an expanded version of a short story which originally appeared in the October 1993 edition of Omni magazine.  Interestingly, in a genre where authors' careers are very much defined by their novels**, Ellison's success and reputation is almost entirely based upon his award-winning short story and television script work.  Ellison has written a couple of full length novels, but they have failed to have the impact of short works such as I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, A Boy and His Dog, or "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman.

It is sobering to think that Ellison, the enfant terrible of science fiction during the 60s, will be 79 at the end of this month.  Reading his writing from that period now, it's astonishing to see how far ahead of his time he was - many of his stories read like a false dawn of cyberpunk over twenty years before William Gibson started work on Neuromancer. 

That being said, in the unlikely event that the infamously litigious Mr. Ellison should read this, I feel that some sort of disclaimer is appropriate.  Mr. Ellison, I mean absolutely no disrespect to your work in any other decades, and agree wholeheartedly that The Starlost was a horrible travesty of what it should have been.

- Sid
  

* Whenever I hear this term used, I have this terrible urge to ask if they have any other flavours.

** Isaac Asimov - the Foundation Trilogy;  Frank Herbert - Dune;  Robert A. Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land;  Larry Niven - Ringworld;   Arthur C. Clarke - 2001; and so on and so on.  Not their only novels, but the ones that are most associated with their writing careers.

Gnomic statements VI

Does that make tomorrow the Revenge of the Fifth?

- Sid