If you know, you know.

- Sid

P.S. Actually, if you don't know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfLtAdSgWPQ

"Think of me now and then."

WARNING: THIS POSTING CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS FOR THE JOY TO THE WORLD DOCTOR WHO CHRISTMAS EPISODE.

Anita: I like them.

The Doctor:  They like you too.  I can tell.

Joy to the World, Doctor Who

Dear Steven Moffat:

Oh, Mr. Moffat, you audacious, clever man. Congratulations for pulling off such a spectacular bait and switch, and in such a high profile setting!

We all watched the trailer for the 2024 Christmas episode, and we saw all the bits you wanted us to see to pique our interest: Nicola Coughlin as a much-heralded guest star; a glimpse of Joel Fry; a Silurian; something called the Time Hotel; a dinosaur; and the Doctor yelling at himself. 

When the time came, you started the episode with everything that we would expect. After a solitary Doctor in search of milk forgetfully pops out of the TARDIS with two mugs rather than just one, we (and the Doctor) very quickly discover a mysterious suitcase, the MacGuffin that drives the action.  The Doctor has chosen to have his morning cup of tea at the Time Hotel, which has portals that lead to other eras in lieu of accommodations. 

The suitcase, which casually kills its previous mind-controlled carriers as it moves to more advantageous hosts, is revealed to contain a starseed - part of a plan by the Villengard Arms Corporation to create a limitless source of energy in the form of a star, with the destruction of Earth as an acceptable price in the process.  (Come to think of it, we were first introduced to Villengard in Boom,  an episode that you also wrote.) The carrier must transport the starseed through an appropriate time portal into the past so as to allow the star to gestate over thousands of years, creating an apparently instantaneous result. 

The case ends up manacled to the arm of Joy, a melancholy young woman who is spending her 2024 Christmas alone in a rental room that has a portal to the Time Hotel.  It's the Doctor's task to save Joy from the suitcase without killing her, and to save Earth from the birth of the starseed.

And then, in the middle of it all, you boldly drop everything and have the Doctor work in Joy's hotel for a year with Anita, the concierge.

I actually timed it, Steven.  Surprisingly, it's only eight minutes and fifteen seconds from the moment he books a room in the Sandringham Hotel to wait out a time loop, to the NEW YORK CHRISTMAS EVE 2025 slate.  It feels more like it's half the episode, there's so much crammed into that eight minutes.  It's a sweet, sad, wonderful interlude, all the more wistful because we know it has to end. 

It’s the Doctor's life in miniature, a reverse twist where he stays in one place for a year with a companion, a beloved friend that he finally has to abandon to return to his mission and save Earth. Ncuti Gatwa and Steph De Whalley, who plays Anita, have incredible chemistry, to the point where I felt a bit sorry for Coughlin - in less than ten minutes, that segment steals the entire show, as two lonely people develop a deep and loving relationship.  

The special itself?  Not to worry, the rest of the program is a perfectly acceptable Christmas episode, well performed if a bit dodgy in plot. There's a poignant backstory for Nicola Coughlin's Joy, good foreshadowing of the various time portal destinations that fuel the climax of the show, and a brief but welcome cameo by Ruby Sunday.  I won't lie, I saw the Bethlehem thing coming, but I've got an awful lot of science fiction to draw upon for clues in these situations.

My only complaint is that you attempt to give Anita a happy ending by having the Time Hotel recruit her, and that’s the only place where this episode slips.  I realize that she's not going to be the new companion for the upcoming season of the show, but honestly, Steven, if there was ever a character who deserved to be visited by a blue police box at the end, it's Anita.

- Sid

To everyone on Spaceship Earth.

As per Explore Mars, The Infinite Revolution would like to wish a happy holiday season to all of its crew mates on Spaceship Earth.  Let's hope that no one rocks the boat in 2025.

- Sid

...and nice.

"Stick around a long time, you get a sense of what people want."

Santa Claus, Silent Knight Returns

Having done naughty, let's take a look at nice. For readers looking for a more positive (if still somewhat strange) comic book for the holiday season, we offer this year's Silent Night Returns, by writer Jeff Parker and artists Lukas Ketner and Michele Bandini.

 

The Silent Knight of the title is a corrupted Arthurian knight, who has returned from the dead to harvest the life force of humanity so that his master the Hollow Castle can claim sovereignty over the world.

Aided by Santa, his warrior wife Ulah of the Huldulfólk*, and a few other guest stars such as Etrigan the Demon, Mary Marvel, and Robotman, the Justice League defeats the Silent Knight and restores life to all the afflicted, just in time for Christmas.  The story ends with Superman and Batman presenting Klaus with a Justice League membership card.

To be honest, the story doesn't really come together, and the axe-wielding superhero version of Klaus is a bit unexpected. I can't think of any version of the myth in which Kris Kringle is a warrior king, and as such, his brief stint filling in for Batman in Gotham felt a bit out of place.** (Not to mention his wife Ulah, who is a LONG way from the Mrs. Claus that we're all familiar with.) Regardless, I acknowledge that if you're writing a comic book, you want to have heroes, and Klaus does manage to balance out combat with compassion, and a happy ending to a Christmas story is all you really need.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

- Sid

* The internet suggests that this should be Huldufólk rather than Huldulfólk.

** Although, full points for the classic Frank Miller Batman-and-Robin homage.

Naughty...

For readers on the Naughty list, we recommend a re-read of the 1992 Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special from DC, featuring intergalactic bounty hunter Lobo - the last Czarnian. (Unlike Superman and Krypton, Lobo was the last of his species because he killed all of his fellow Czarnians when he was 17*.)  

For readers with the good fortune of being unfamiliar with Lobo, he first appeared in Issue 3 of Omega Men as a villain in 1983, but was retconned into a very different character in the early 1990s.  The brutal, violent, crass, over-the-top version of Lobo was originally intended as a parody of anti-hero characters like Wolverine, but as is sometimes the case, the parody became its own new normal, and Lobo ended up as one of DC's most popular characters during the 1990s. 

The Paramilitary Christmas Special, written by Keith Giffen and Alan Grant and illustrated by Simon Bisley, stands as a representative Lobo adventure.  Hired by the Easter Bunny to kill Santa Claus, Lobo carves a bloody path through St. Nick's army of elves, after which he duels an equally brutal Santa with knifes, eventually cutting off his head.  

Now in control of the North Pole, its factories, and its comprehensive Naughty and Nice lists, Lobo converts the toy factories to bomb production, and circles the world dropping explosives rather than presents.

And a merry fraggin' Christmas to all.

- Sid 

* Well, strictly speaking, he killed half of them when he was 16 and the other half after he turned 17.

"Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea..."

I just overheard one of my workplace managers explaining that the recent rash of mystery drone sightings in New Jersey are government aircraft that have been dispatched to conceal and obfuscate the appearance of plasma orbs which have been sent into the skies by aliens who have been living in the oceans for thousands of years. 

Recommended reading would be The Kraken Wakes, John Wyndham's 1953 novel of enigmatic aquatic alien invaders.  Hopefully that's not what's happening right now, because it doesn't end well.*

- Sid

* Well, it sort of ends well, in that after everything falls apart, the military industrial complex finally manages to find a way to successfully fight back, but it's a bit late in terms of the global collapse of civilization.

UPDATE: Casual readers may not be aware that I work in training for cargo terminal workers on the West Coast of Canada.  That being established, the Vice President in charge of our department has reassured me that, should aliens start sinking container cargo ships, we would remain open as long as possible.

FREE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY!! (Now that I have your attention...)

Short fiction has always been the backbone of science fiction and fantasy, providing both an ongoing entry point for new authors and a sandbox for established writers to play in - not to mention writers such as Harlan Ellison whose careers were almost entirely based around their short story output.* 

As such, I have found that one of my favourite parts of the monthly Reactor newsletter has been their short story offerings, which have been consistently readable and have introduced me to some new authors, such as Lavie Tidhar and A. T. Greenblatt.

As the year comes to an end, Reactor has released an eBook edition of their best stories from 2024:

https://reactormag.com/download-some-of-the-best-from-reactor-2024-edition/ 

You can also download bundles of their fiction by months, or read any of the stories individually online:

https://reactormag.com/all-of-reactors-short-fiction-in-2024/

And it's all free, very hard to beat free.

Enjoy!

- Sid

* Science fiction and fantasy writers tend to be tagged by their best known novel, regardless of their other output - you know, that part in the review where it says, "Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001..."  For Ellison, although he did produce some long form work, his signature piece is probably his 1967 short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, or possibly A Boy and His Dog. (Maybe The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World?)

Deadpool receives Order of Canada?

Of course it's Ryan Reynolds, who is certainly a well-deserving recipient, but look at how the CBC - the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national voice of our country - decided to report it!  

The strangeness of that aside, it would actually be a fun tie-in for Marvel Comics to have Deadpool receive the Order himself, after all, he IS Canadian...

- Sid

Ex Tenebris Ad Astra.

The Long Dark is one of my favourite gaming experiences, and I'm eager to see how Blackfrost, the followup to the original, will build on the strong foundation that it has built.  But, in a way, I'm also  disappointed by the decision by the game's indie developer Hinterland to do a sequel.  

I realize the attraction of telling more stories in a world you've already created, lord knows I've seen enough sequels, series and spin-offs that were created for that very reason, but in this case I was hoping that Hinterland might decide to do something that was a complete departure from their previous work.

I've always been impressed by the combination of thoughtful creativity and hard work that went into The Long Dark - the attention to detail, the quality of the artwork, the fantastic range of lighting conditions, the incredibly accurate sound effects, the constantly evolving and changing weather, the geographic complexity of the various maps, all the bits and pieces that make it such a playable experience. 

I'd love to see the same people apply the same approach to developing something completely different, like an asteroid belt exploration game for example, something that would take advantage of their experience with survival programming but expanding into a whole new area - resource mining, cargo shuttles, trading posts, space stations, claim jumpers, iceteroids, meteor storms, alien artifacts, the whole catalogue of possibility for what life - and possibly death - in the Belt would be like. Let's face it, there must be some people at the studio who would enjoy a change from animating trees, ptarmigan and blizzards at this point.

What do you say, Hinterland - maybe it's time to shoot for the stars?

- Sid

P.S. In the incredibly unlikely event that Raphael van Lierop, the founder and CEO of Hinterland, should happen to read this and thinks that an asteroid belt game is a good idea, please get in touch, I would LOVE to talk about it.  I work just around the corner past Gastown, we could do lunch.  

On the other hand, maybe it's too much like No Man's Sky.*

* Which may just be the survival version of The Outer Worlds, which is perhaps the poor man's Starfield, which could be considered to be Fallout in space. It's such a slippery slope.

Blackfrost.

Hinterland, the Vancouver-based indie game developers behind the survival masterpiece The Long Dark, recently announced their next game: Blackfrost, a sequel to the original game which takes place a year after the original geomagnetic event that crippled electrical devices and brought a threatening new aurora to the skies.

 

The sequel is set in the northern industrial town of Harmont, and will offer a new set of survival challenges and opportunities.  There are some fascinating hints as to what might take place in the game -  life in an urban environment, the prospect of being able to ride a horse, and most of all the possibility of a functioning nuclear reactor.  The Contamination Zone map in the original Long Dark introduced a variety of dangers related to industrial waste, I can only imagine what a radioactive power source might bring to the table.  There are also some more practical upgrades, such as the scoped rifle in one of the sample screens - that would certainly provide some much needed distance in dealing with predators. (There are also some images featuring a hockey stick, which isn't something that was on my wish list but which will certainly blend in well with the general Canadian feel of the environment.)

The concept artwork and trailer animation show an obvious connection to the look and feel of the original game, but it also shows how much the creative team has learned over the last ten years as they've fine-tuned the game and added onto the gaming experience. 

Although I'm not sure whether it would be a part of survival versus narrative gameplay, the new game will add NPCs to the mix, which, if added to the Survival mode, would certainly give more depth to the story.  There will also be a new co-op feature, an option that would enormously enhance the gaming experience: imagine having allies when being attacked by a pack of timberwolves!  (Hopefully there won't be a PvP option, that would somehow seem to be inappropriate for the survival environment.)  On the other hand, they could add the option of playing as an escaped prisoner from Blackrock Prison - which could well be a feature, it sounds as if there will also be enhanced options in terms of customizing your survival character in terms of skills and traits.

Blackfrost is scheduled to be available in Early Access mode sometime in 2026.  As with the development process for The Long Dark, Hinterland will be involving its gaming community as early as possible - I've already added the Early Access version to my wish list on Steam.

And now we wait.  2026 feels like a long way away, but fortunately, anyone who plays The Long Dark understands patience.

- Sid

Ho ho, ha ha: Geekmas 2024

It's been a couple of years since I've done a Geekmas posting, due to the temporary blog hiatus, but I've received some subtle (and not-so-subtle) suggestions that a little help in the area of holiday seasonal shopping would be in order, now that we're back in production - so here are some hopefully helpful options for Christmas gifts.

Gaming

A Steam™ gift card of whatever denomination seems appropriate would certainly be appreciated - as far as I know, they're now available on those gift card mega-displays that you can find at London Drugs or Best Buy.*  It's certainly something I would use, a reluctance to pay full price is the only thing that's kept me from buying Starfield from Bethesda, or Space Marine II, the popular sequel to Relic Entertainment's Warhammer 40K third-person shooter Space Marine from 2011.

 

Books

 

Initially, I wasn't sure what to suggest for books, but once I started looking, I was surprised how easily I found six options. Sadly, it's all hardcovers or trade paperbacks, both of which seem a bit spendy, but that's the way the market has gone, mass market paperbacks are getting harder to find. (At least on the science fiction and fantasy shelves, I can't speak for the mystery or romance marketplaces). That being said, at the moment they're all under $25 on Amazon.ca, which is fairly standard pricing these days.

The first two options are both posthumous offerings from Terry Pratchett:  A Stroke of the Pen is a collection of short fiction by Pratchett written for newspapers in the 1970s and 80s, and A Slip of the Keyboard is a collection of his non-fiction.  I'm pleased to have the opportunity to read some more of Pratchetts's writing, but it does feel a bit like a record label releasing long-buried demo tapes, it's never too late to make a buck off an artist.** 

Sharps and the first volume of The Two of Swords come to us from the prolific pen of K. J. Parker, aka Tom Holt.  Parker's fantasy never fails to entertain, and either of these two books would be a welcome addition to my little library.  (Although, if I receive the first volume of The Two of Swords and it's enjoyable, that does open the door for two easy additions to next year's list...)

Finally, Arkady Martine's epic Teixcalaan space opera series: A Memory Called Empire, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2020, and its sequel, A Desolation Called Peace,which took the Best Novel Hugo in 2022.  Oddly enough, in a genre overwhelmed by trilogies, Martine explicitly stated in a 2021 Reddit AMA that there will not be a third book in the series, the two books stand alone as a duology.  (Although she also suggested that she has plans for more books set in the Teixcalaan universe, which may well feature some of the same characters, she is adamant that the story told in the two books ends there.)

I have to confess that I've already read both of these books as bootleg digital downloads, and they're brilliant:  creative, astonishingly original and beautifully well-written.  As such, I feel that Martine deserves the support of actually buying the paper editions of the texts - I feel that anyone who exhibits so much originality in a sometimes repetitive genre should get paid for it.

Although I've linked these books to Amazon Canada™, they may very well be available at your local bookstore should you prefer to do a little browsing, something which I can never manage comfortably on the Amazon web site.

 

T-shirts

And to wrap things up, two t-shirts options:  one for Star Wars, one for Star Trek.

I've mentioned the Millennium Falcon t-shirt in a previous Geekmas posting, but it's still in play: conveniently available on Amazon, dark grey and XL, please.

The options for licensed Star Trek merchandise is a little bit less to my taste, they have a tendency to make jokes rather than just represent.  Nonetheless, I was able to find a simple t-shirt for First Contact on Startrekshop.ca - shame that they don't have something similar for Generations.  Again, XL for sizing, for anyone who skipped over the previous suggestion.

If anyone decides to go rogue on the t-shirt front, please PLEASE use the above as guidelines for style.  There are a million science fiction and fantasy t-shirts for sale on the internet - I've got a pretty good collection, but they're all distinguished by being licensed products. I don't want to appear ungrateful, but if you buy me a t-shirt featuring, say, a kawaii interpretation of the crew of Serenity***, I will certainly thank you for your generosity, but sadly, I will be unlikely to wear it unless I'm painting the living room.

And, if this all seems just like too much work, plain old Amazon™ gift cards are the gift that keeps on giving. 

- Sid

Update

We happened to be in the local Indigo on Friday, and I took a quick look in the SF-Fantasy section to see if any of my book suggestions were in fact available.  The bad news is that only two of the books were on the shelves: A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, although it's possible that the Pratchett books could have been elsewhere.

The good news is that I added a couple of things to my shopping list.  Anything from Hugh Howey's Silo series would be a good option - I don't have any of them in my collection, so let's start with Wool (I assume that anyone who is actually buying me a Christmas gift can coordinate with the rest of the group to avoid duplication.)  I'm also long overdue to read Tamysn Muir's critically acclaimed Gideon the Ninth, which, coincidentally, lost out to A Memory Called Empire in the 2020 Hugo Best Novel vote.

- Sid

* Question: does one company handle all the gift card creation and sales, or did someone see a gap in the marketplace and put together a gift card rack that they sold to LD et al? 

** It's fortunate that Pratchett's daughter Rhianna is in charge of her father's intellectual properties, and has no intention of licensing any of his material to other writers, as with And Another Thing..., Eoin Colfer's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel, or the endless imitations of Robert E. Howard's Conan.  

*** Not a suggestion - or a challenge - but, as per my nephew Chris, you can find anything on the internet, it's like New York only bigger.

Iron Heart*.

Obadiah Stane: Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!

William Ginter Riva: Well, I'm sorry. I'm not Tony Stark.

Iron Man

During a recent workplace visit to our IT manager's office, I finally broke under the pressure after several surreptitious glances and said, "I'm sorry, but how is it that you have Tony Stark's original heart on your desk?"

After glancing over at the glowing arc reactor sitting peacefully on his desk extension, he gruffly replied, "Heavy late night drinking and easily accessible internet shopping."  Obviously a dangerous combination, but at least that explains why he also has not one but two Infinity Gauntlets on his credenza. 

- Sid

* Not to be confused with the Riri Williams character.

Reading Week 2024: The Fall of Urshurak.

When I refer to our Palm Springs trips as "reading week" it's not entirely a joke.  Life is full of little interruptions that can make it challenging to do any sustained reading, and as such I look forward to the opportunity to spend some quiet time with a book or two - or three. I'm not a swimmer, so while Karli floats around happily in the pool, I'm able to relax in the shade and do some reading.

This trip I brought along the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O, by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland; The Stone Book Quartet, by Alan Garner; and Urshurak, by Jerry Nichols and the Brothers Hildebrandt, which I had picked up at the newly reopened Lawrence Books in October. Urshurak's reputation had preceded it to a certain extent (not necessarily in a good way), and I was more than a little curious to see how it measured up.  

The award-winning duo of Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, known professionally as the Brothers Hildebrandt, were perhaps best known for their interpretations of The Lord of the Rings books, particularly their paintings for the 1978 J.R.R. Tolkien Calendar, and their "Style B" Star Wars poster, along with numerous science fiction and fantasy book covers and illustrations, done both as a team and individually. Their work was distinguished by its lush, luminous style - no one paints white like the Brothers Hildebrandt painted white.

After discovering that they would not be part of the creative team for Ralph Bakshi's 1978 Lord of the Rings animated feature film, the disappointed twins were inspired to create their own epic struggle between Good and Evil, and set about building the world that would be the setting for their story. The result was the land of Urshurak, a monumental backdrop delineated in paint and ink, more than suitable for a mythic adventure. 

They originally attempted to have the story of Urshurak made into a live action film, but the project failed to gain any traction in Hollywood.  The Brothers then attempted to package the concept as an animated production, but once again had no success with the studios, and finally decided to present their concept artwork as part of an illustrated novel. 

Sadly, I couldn't bring myself to like the resulting version of Urshurak.  I did my best to read it with an open mind, but neither the plot nor the prose ever manages to rise to the heights of Tolkien, Peake, or Lewis - or Pratchett or Gaiman, for more modern references. Sadly, as cliché would have it, if it was easy, everyone would do it, and taking inspiration from J.R.R. Tolkien is a long step away from being J.R.R. Tolkien: a simple and self-evident truth which hasn't stopped many people from trying over the years - and generally failing. 

I have this odd desire to apologize for my less than positive opinion. After all, Urshurak was originally intended as a movie project, not a novel, and there are probably hundreds of movie scripts that would fail as novels. Even so, with the best will in the world, the writing doesn't match the epic quality of the paintings and illustrations that inspire it. 

The narrative is an uncertain balance between broad comedy and Tolkienesque earnestness, the dialogue is often stilted and unnatural, the characters never quite ring true, and the epic events of the story somehow fail to become epic - it just doesn't work.  Sad to say, it might have been better left as just a coffee table collection of spectacular paintings and drawings united by a simple narrative, like still images taken from a film.

It's hard to read the book without wondering what might have been. All that I know about the novel's co-author Jerry Nichols is that the brothers refer to him as "an old friend" in the preface to the book, and research does not produce very much more information regarding Mr. Nichols or his writing credentials, making him an uncertain choice to anchor the project.  But, imagine: based on their creative reputation, the brothers could conceivably have reached out to any number of authors* to tell their story.  

The book was released in 1979: looking at a contemporary roster of writers, they would have been able to chose from an all-star cast of possible collaborators.  Imagine if they had recruited Roger Zelazny, or Ursula K. Le Guin; or how about Patricia A. McKillip, or Mary Stewart?  Tanith Lee; C.J. Cherryh; Katherine Kurtz; Samuel R. Delany; for a more classic touch, veteran fantasy authors Fritz Leiber and L Sprague de Camp are still active in 1979, along with Michael Moorcock and Poul Anderson. 

Would any of them have said yes?  Impossible to say, but it's an undeniably talented group with a wide range of writing styles, any one of whom would have brought a unique vision to the story, a vision which might well have turned Urshurak into an archetypal masterpiece that would rival its inspirations, rather than weakly evoking them.

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, D.O.D.O was a pleasantly fun read - Nicole Galland is obviously a good influence on Mr. Stephenson - and The Stone Book Quartet, although well written, was not really a fantasy as such, in spite of its author's reputation in the field.  

- Sid

P.S. I refer to the brothers Hildebrandt in the past tense throughout this posting: sadly, Tim passed away on June 11, 2006, followed by his brother Greg on October 31, 2024.

* Terry Brooks might have been a bad choice, given that, as above, they had done the cover painting for The Sword of Shannara, his personal LOTR homage/pastiche - one to a customer, as they say.