This may not end well.

At any given time, Vancouver is standing in for a variety of locations for the purposes of television and movie production.  (As I've pointed out before, only rarely does Vancouver get to be Vancouver.) In fact, not long after I first moved to Vancouver, I was a bit puzzled during a trip downtown to discover that the area around Burrard and Cordova was littered with burned-out cars and destroyed police vehicles.  I was a bit less puzzled when I noticed that there were New York City subway entrances that didn't go anywhere on a few of the corners - when I finally saw The Fantastic Four, I immediately recognized the locations for the climactic battle with Doctor Doom.

Yesterday, I was dropping off some posters to be laminated at my print shop only to find some non-standard police vehicles blocking traffic on Hastings Street near Burrard, along with sidewalk "Volt" charging stations for electric vehicles.  (Coincidentally just around the corner from my initial encounter with leftover movie props from nine years ago.)

A little research revealed that these were probably from location shooting done for the upcoming J.J. Abrams/J.H. Wyman* science fiction police series Almost Human, set in 2048 Los Angeles, with Karl Urban and Michael Ealy.  I gather it's one of those human/robot partners scenarios, which would explain the "To Protect & Serve Man" tag** on the side of the SUV.

Any number of similar movies and TV shows come to mind almost immediately: Holmes & Yo-Yo, Future Cop, Mann & Machine, Total Recall 2070, and Alien Nation, both in movie and television form, with an alien partner rather than a robot just for the sake of variety.  Let's not forget Deputy Andy from Eureka, just to be thorough - and wasn't there an android cop in the 90s Tekwar series?  (I don't know if we want to drag Theodore Rex into this, where someone thought it would be a good idea to have Whoopi Goldberg play a futuristic cop working with a humanoid dinosaur.)

Unfortunately, most of these attempts at pairing carbon-based cops with silicon sidekicks have not been critical successes.  Maybe it's time for another approach to this?  Let's see...Matrix-style cops, where the partner is a virtual bot rather than a real one, and the human has to plug into the net to work with them?  Or have the robot cop actually be controlled by a paralyzed human detective, the next step for the Lincoln Rhyme novels by Jeffery Deaver?  Let's have both the cops be robots - let's have ALL the cops be robots - let's have all the criminals be robots - in other words, LET'S DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT!

Sorry...honest, originally this was just going to be a short post saying that I'd seen futuristic cop cars yesterday.  Anyway - J.J, J.H.?  Good luck with your series, I hope that works out for you.

- Sid

* What, do none of these people have first names?

** Are they aware of the associations with the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man?  Which turned out to be the title of an alien cookbook, for anyone unfamiliar with the script - probably not what they have in mind here.

 

Interdit.

As I've mentioned before, I don't follow the news very closely, but every once in a while something will happen that's significant enough to attract my attention.  This time, it's the unbelievable Charter of Values being proposed by the Parti Québécois.  

I am in no way a religious person, but if you are, and your religion requires you to wear a yarmulke, a turban, a burqa, or a big hammer of Thor on a thong, I think that you should be allowed to, and frankly, I don't care if you do. In fact, as a geek, I have a certain professional respect for people who decide to stand up and show who they are - if that means that they wear something to indicate their religion, fine with me.  My only request to the followers of any particular religion is that they extend the same courtesy, respect the fact that I'm not eager to join their faith, and not attempt to proselytize their value system to me.

Sadly, there will always be people who will make their decision about others based on what they are wearing, especially if it somehow disagrees with their particular narrowminded view of the world about what's right, what's normal.  But the idea of institutionalizing that process, of making it a workplace requirement that you can't express your religious beliefs in the fashion (no pun intended) required by the tenets of your faith, that's wrong - that's the first step on a slippery slope, mes vieux.

I feel that people like me are somewhere on that slope, and the happy folks behind the Charter will eventually want to work their way down to us. The path that I have chosen to follow doesn't require that I wear anything to demonstrate my commitment, but there are still times when I don the vestments required by the tenets - well, the Tennant, actually, at least up to a couple of years ago - of my chosen area of worship.  Sooner or later, the Charter people will realize that geeks may be equally suspect, and then the posters will look like this:

The elder Trudeau once said that there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation - I'd like to think that it doesn't have any business in our closets, either. 

- Sid

"The courtroom is a crucible."

Sometimes it feels like data has free will around here, too.

- Joe Shewfelt 

I currently share my office at work with a fellow named Bill.  It's universally accepted that BIll is one of the nicest people you could ever meet, and as such, he's obviously a great person with whom to share a workspace. 

However, Bill does have one shortcoming:  he is in no way a science fiction or fantasy fan, thereby proving that no one is perfect.*

Bill spends a lot of his time in hearings that deal with injury claims:  they're not exactly legal situations as such, but there are resemblances to the courtroom environment - evidence is presented and refuted, arguments made, and judgements delivered.  We were chatting about the generalities of this process during a recent lunchtime walk, and he mentioned that one of the main issues is to avoid dealing with irrelevant information.

At this point I laughed a bit, which puzzled Bill, so I had to explain why the mention of irrelevancy rings the bell for science fiction fans, particularly fans of Star Trek:  The Next Generation.

The Measure of A Man is one of the best episodes of The Next Generation, one of those scripts which typifies good science fiction in its discussion of universal issues through the abstracted lens of speculative SF. It addresses the question of how artificial intelligences will be treated by humanity when the time comes - what will be their status? Will they be peers, servants - or simply property, considered to be nothing more than bits and bytes, and as such deactivated, erased and rebuilt at our whim?

The plot is quite simple on the surface:  a request has been made to transfer Lieutenant Commander Data, the Enterprise's android bridge officer, to the Daystrom Institute, so that he can be disassembled by the Robotics Department and studied in hopes of building similar androids.  Data himself is the product of Noonian Soong, an independent, reclusive genius, and as such his construction is an enigma - as a result, there is no guarantee that it will be possible to successfully put him back together.

Because of this, Data attempts to resign his commission, but is informed that he cannot:  after all, as an assembly of molybdenum-cobalt alloys and positronic circuitry, he is as much a piece of Starfleet's property as the Enterprise itself, and no more able to protest a command than any other piece of equipment.
  
The case is put forward for adjudication by the Starfleet Judge Advocate General - does Data have rights? Or is he property?  It is easily proved that Data is a machine, and Captain Picard, who is defending Data, is convinced that his case is lost. 

 

He is in conversation with Guinan about Data's value to him when she points out that an multitude of androids would be even more valuable, as a race of disposable beings.  Picard realizes that property is a euphemism for a much more fundamental word:  slavery.

At the climax of the courtroom action, Picard delivers the following brilliantly written speech:

Your honor, the courtroom is a crucible; in it, we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product: the truth, for all time. Now sooner or later, this man - or others like him - will succeed in replicating Commander Data. The decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are; what he is destined to be. It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android. It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom: expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others. Are you prepared to condemn him - and all who will come after him - to servitude and slavery? Your honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life: well, there it sits! Waiting.

Ultimately, it is ruled that Data, although a machine, is not property - and has the freedom to choose.

When we returned to the office after our walk, I took a minute of the company's time to find the appropriate clip from the episode on YouTube™ (I knew it would be there somewhere) and let BIll listen to Jean-Luc's entire speech.  When it finished, he nodded slowly a couple of times and said, "Good, that was good. I liked that - 'a crucible in which we burn away irrelevancies'..."

I immediately warned him that he should be cautious if he planned to borrow this bit of courtroom rhetoric for a hearing.  All he needs is one Star Trek fan in the room, and he would be so completely busted.

- Sid

* When I mentioned this** to Bill, he initially protested, then sort of agreed.

** The fact that he's not a genre fan, that is.  He was willing to admit that he might not be perfect.

 

"I unstintingly bestow the verdant acute."

Every now and then The Infinite Revolution will experience a spike in activity, and I'm always curious as to the cause - although it's not always easy to figure out.

Sometimes it appears to be just a case of a timely, topical posting.  Sometimes it's apparently because of a certain combination of key words in a post.  And sometimes it's because during the weekly departmental meeting "what-did-you-do-on-the-weekend-everyone" segment, I mention doing a blog posting about a co-worker, and people want to see if I said anything funny (or legally actionable) about them online.

However, every once in a while it's because someone has posted a link to my blog on another blog (welcome to Blogception, everyone).  Because of this, every now and then I search for references to The Infinite Revolution, just on the outside chance that I'm on my way to cross-linked fame. 

I did one of these searches recently, and was intrigued to get a hit for an apparent duplicate posting on another blog.  Now, linking to someone's work is fine, but cutting and pasting is just not on, so I immediately clicked on the link to see what was up.

The site appeared to be hosted on something called Le Blogue du Québec, (just as this blog is hosted on Blogger™) and the posting title was a direct copy from a 2009 post about the Perry Rhodan stories: The Infinite Revolution: « Perry Rhodan: Peacelord of the Universe! ».

And then it got weird - here's the first paragraph:

I be current to chance that anecdote of the things that I in reality like here doing this blog is the mode that it leads me in miscellaneous directions. in comprehensive Right at in olden days I’m in the midriff of researching supplies in proffer three posts dealing with the Dune series, and I’m working on a photocomp facsimile in proffer anecdote of those blog-posts-about-blogging that lemonade up at in olden days and then. in comprehensive Nonetheless, I’m trite to cease the totality and talk here Perry Rhodan. Now, I unstintingly bestow the verdant acute to be a helper to this is my own defect in proffer locale this up in the quondam leg with the dig here Rhodan versus Rodan, but I’m surprised that the mortal physically who broached the debatable wasn’t anecdote of my (six) absolute readers. in comprehensive The series, which started in Germany in 1961, drew heavily on antiquated procedure fiction in proffer gusto, and is written suffocating a rotating reasonable of authors.

"Nonetheless, I’m trite to cease the totality" - what?

There's a couple of links buried in the text, so it's got to be some kind of keyword spam thing, but why in the world would the perpetrators copy an obscure posting on an obscure topic from an obscure blog and run it through a garbage filter before posting it again?  I realize that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but couldn't they have at least made it a good imitation?

By the way, you'll notice there are no links to the page being discussed, because if they're using a warped, mutated version of my content to drive a spam site, well, you know, screw them.

Hey - mutant versions of my content - that sounds like science fiction, doesn't it.

- Sid

P.S.  Dorothy, Donovan, you probably don't need to read this next part:

 

Hi, Laurie.  In case you were puzzled, the fellow making the rude gesture in the picture is a character from a TV series called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  His name is Spike.  The photo is therefore a pun on spikes, albeit not a brilliant one. 

 

Elysium fracasó.

After seeing Elysium, I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed by Neill Blomkamp's sophomore outing. The film's greatest failing is quite simple: the casting of Matt Damon.

I don't mean to suggest that Mr. Damon doesn't do a good job - well, actually, it may not be his best work - but that's not the problem.  It would have been a far more pointed statement to have made the protagonist another one of the legion of disadvantaged Hispanic inhabitants of the future Los Angeles.  As it is, Damon stands out like a sore thumb.  (There's also some kind of unfortunate synergy in having a white guy act as the saviour of the world.) 

There's absolutely no reason that Damon's part couldn't have been played by Javier Bardem, Eduardo Noriega, or even a complete unknown from the Hispanic acting community, and a lot of good reasons why it should have been.  Come on, Neill, did you really not realize what your film was actually about?

- Sid

Booyah, baby!

I was very pleased (and a little relieved) to find out that there is an international group of fourteen space agencies, including the Canadian Space Agency, that has spent the last six years working on a long term cooperative strategy for space exploration which they have recently made public. The International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or ISECG (not a brilliant acronym, but life goes on) has developed a practical 25-year plan for putting astronauts - including Canadians - on Mars and the Moon.

(Well, mostly practical - I'm still not sure about the part where NASA wants to redirect an asteroid into a near-Earth orbit.)

Part of the plan includes the construction of a space station in orbit around the Moon, intended as a staging point for lunar exploration. Ha - I refer you to my post of November 4, 2007 on the crucial role that space stations could play in interplanetary exploration.  Gosh, guys, all you had to do was ask...

- Sid

Or Crispy Crunch, I LOVE Crispy Crunch.

"It is dull, Son of Adam, to drink without eating," said the Queen presently. "What would you like best to eat?"

"Turkish Delight, please, your Majesty," said Edmund.

The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow, and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened, turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very centre and Edmund had never tasted anything more delicious.

C. S. Lewis,  The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

One of my co-workers recently returned from a two-week Eastern Mediterranean cruise.  The first morning he was back, he went around the office offering selections from a souvenir box of Turkish Delight, "Straight from the bazaar!", as he cheerfully announced.   Meh.  No ill will, Edmund, but I'll stick with Mars Bars.

- Sid

"Great Hera!"

Okay, you've got me:  I don't care if Ben Affleck plays Batman.

I don't blame Mr. Affleck for the failings of the Daredevil movie.  I think there's a difference between what you do and what is done to you, and I think that he did the best he could with the role.  Would I have picked him for Batman?  Probably not my first choice*, but I'm willing to let him take a shot at it:  too many other people, like Michael Keaton and Heath Ledger, have been publicly villified for taking on iconic roles and then gone on to set the standard. 

ANYway, once the smoke from the whole Batffleck thing has cleared, hopefully we can get back to the important question that's in front of us:  when are they going to give Wonder Woman a shot at the big screen?

Wonder Woman has been the topic of a couple of postings here:  I've looked at her roots and how it's influenced her portrayal in the DC Universe, and I've also talked about ethnic opportunities in casting her for live action.

However, the issue here is the opposite of the Batman casting question.  I really don't care who they cast as Wonder Woman - there are all sorts of options there, each with its own opportunities and pitfalls.  The big question is how they decide to portray the character.

There are already a couple of independently produced trailer/short film presentations of Wonder Woman available online, which show two very different approaches: one relies on her WWII roots for inspiration, and the other is more of a plain-clothes introduction to Diana Prince.

They’re both well done, and I think they present an interesting challenge to the producers of a Wonder Woman film, but they don’t really show the full magnitude of the character’s abilities.  The comic book version of Wonder Woman has gone up and down the range of abilities over the years, but I think that it’s generally accepted that her strength rivals that of Superman - a difficult impression to create on an independent budget.

Really though, this is all moot:  Wonder Woman has already been perfectly brought to life (so to speak) in five seasons of the animated Justice League/Justice League Unlimited series, as well as in a solo feature-length animated film.**  The Wonder Woman of the animated world is everything that the character should be, and that should provide the guidelines for live action.

So, there you go, Hollywood, there's Wonder Woman. All you have to do is to follow what they did in the animated versions.

Make her strong.

Make her proud.

Make her compassionate, but determined.

Make her fearless.

Make her a warrior.

Make her a goddess.  

Make her wonderful.

- Sid

* I don't actually have a first choice, I'd have to do some research.

** The animated DC Comics television adaptations - Batman, Superman, Justice League, Teen Titans -  have all been excellent.  It's unfortunate that DC has such an uneven record in live action.

In space, no one can hear you ... what was that line again?

I've just finished reading the Expanse Trilogy by James S. A. Corey:  Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, and Abaddon's Gate.  Definitely recommended reading - good well-written high concept science fiction, and it's easy to see why the first book was nominated for both Hugo and Locus awards in 2012.  But I do have one bone to pick with Mr. Corey.*

In Caliban's War, our heroes are on a spaceship that's escaping from a planetoid infested with alien monsters that can run around in vacuum, rip people in half and tear through steel plate like it's wet cardboard. The following conversation takes place:  

“Okay,” Alex replied, then hit something on a panel twice and frowned. “Huh, we have a red on the board. Gettin’ a ‘no seal’ on the cargo airlock. Might’ve caught some flak on the way down, I guess. It was pretty hot up there.”

“Well, we’re not going to stop and fix it now,” Holden said. “We keep the bay in vacuum most of the time anyway. If the inner hatch into the cargo area is showing a good seal, just override the alarm and let’s go.”

“Roger,” Alex said, and tapped the override.

Is anyone - ANYONE - surprised that later they find one of the monsters in the cargo hold? What, have the lessons of Ellen Ripley been completely lost with the passage of time?

- Sid

* Which is actually a cooperative pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, but let's not pick nits while we're picking bones.

Damn it, Space™!

Ahem:  science fiction sharks, Space™!  SCIENCE FICTION SHARKS!!!*

Cartoon from Cartwheel Marathon.

 Yeah, they showed Jaws again...

- Sid

* Okay, maybe fantasy sharks, but still, sharks with jetpacks, you get the idea. By the way, please do look at the full size version of the cartoon, so you don't miss any of the little subtleties of expression.

"Clary, you're a wizard."

Yesterday I went with my friend Chris to see The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones.  City of Bones is based on the first book in a six book (so far) young adult fiction series written by Cassandra Clare.  I gather that Chris found out about these books through Ms. Clare's early Harry Potter fanfic writing, which provided her with a stepping stone to the sale of more original work.

Just as an exercise in moviegoing, I deliberately didn't do any advance research on City of Bones - didn't download any of the books, didn't read any reviews, didn't research any of the actors - and as such was able to go to the film with no expectations or background at all. (Which, when you think about it, is a bit of a challenge in this age of trailers, ads, tweets and spoilers.)

As such, I watched the movie entirely on its own merits, and as such I have to give it mixed reviews.  More knowledge of the original material might have changed that, but ultimately I think that a movie has to stand on its own.

Unfortunately, I found that subjecting City of Bones to that test didn't necessarily give it a passing mark.  Ironically, the additional back story that I avoided looking up probably would have helped.  There were a lot of little things that didn't quite add up, things that struck me as clever gimmicks rather than valid plot developments. 

To be fair, the acting wasn't bad, and Phil Collins' daughter Lily does an acceptable if not brilliant job in her role as Clary Fray, the artistic girl who finds out that she's actually part of an ancient magical order of half-angel demon-fighters known as Shadowhunters, as were her mother and father before her. Standing on the sidelines during this conflict are the members of the Downworld:  vampires, werewolves, witches and warlocks. 

I freely admit that I'm not really the target audience for this movie, and as such it may not be fair for me to pass judgement on it.  As a man in his fifties, the trials and tribulations of young love are more amusing than gripping; similarly, I'm not certain that the emo-influenced antics of pouting leather-clad youths who cut new magical runes into their arms after dramatic arguments make the best role models for today's teenagers.  It's very possible that if I was a member of the (presumably) fifteen-year-old-girl target demographic, I might well have been on the edge of my seat for the whole 130 minutes of the movie.

My real problem, though, was that I found the whole basic concept to be a bit clichéd.  It may well be that discovering that you're really a teenage wizard/half-god/angel or that the world is really full of vampires/werewolves/witches/whatevers in hiding has had its day*, and it's time for a new paradigm.

With that on the table, I strongly recommend that interested readers take a look at the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix, most notably Sabriel, the first book of the series.

It is always rewarding to read a well-written fantasy novel which offers an entirely original world to its audience, and in Sabriel, Garth Nix succeeds completely in creating such a world. The Abhorsen series takes place in a sort of alternate Earth where Ancelstierre, a near-Victorian society based in technology, is separated from the magical Old Kingdom by the enchanted Wall. The Wall is not a casual affectation: dark necromantic creatures stalk the Old Kingdom - Dead Servants, Mordicants, Hands, and other creatures that have returned from Death.

Death, in the Old Kingdom, is a very real place, a shifting, watery landscape that drags the souls of the departed from Gate to Gate until they reach the ultimate Gate from which there is no return - but until then, some spirits are able to claw their way back from Death and return to the world of life as creatures of dark magic.

Sabriel is the adopted daughter of the Abhorsen, a necromancer who wields the magic of the Charter against these revenants.  "Adopted" is a euphemism - Sabriel is also a child of Death, brought back from the first gate as a stillborn infant, and raised to be the successor to the current Abhorsen.

Her story begins when the news reaches her at school in Ancelstierre that her father has died - or at least, entered Death and not returned, the two are not synonymous.  She receives his sword and the enchanted bells which are used to control and banish creatures from Death.  She returns to the Old Kingdom to attempt to discover how her father died, and whether or not he can be brought back from Death, only to discover that an older, darker power lies behind his passing.

Sabriel offers a well thought out and completely new world to the reader, then takes them through a impressively plotted adventure in that world.  I suppose that technically it's a young adult novel, but trust me, even if you're an old adult you'll enjoy Sabriel.

- Sid

* I was going to say "is in its twilight" but we're not going there.

I know which one I'd buy.

I was browsing on Amazon.ca the other day, and had one of those "Wait, what?" moments thanks to a sidebar ad.

What the ad actually said was, "MasterChef" - what I THOUGHT it said was "Masterchief". This may not be a big deal to the non-gamers (or cooking show fans) in the reading audience, but it's a substantial difference if you've spent any time with the various iterations of Bungie's Halo™ franchise, and its protagonist, Spartan-II soldier Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, a.k.a. the Master Chief.

Then I thought, "Hey, why not?"A few minutes in Photoshop, and violá.

And you know, I bet they'd actually sell more of these than a book that just told you how to heat up food.  Where's the fun in that?

- Sid