Movie Night.

We have a unique opportunity lined up for next month: the Hollywood Theatre, one of the local entertainment venues, is showing 2001: A Space Odyssey on February 1st. In spite of her long term interest in film, my charming wife Karli has never seen Stanley Kubrick's enigmatic masterpiece, and what better way to do a first viewing than on a big screen?  

Similarly, I've seen 2001 several times, but never in a theatre environment, and whereas I'm looking forward to seeing it in a larger format, the real attraction for me is in the theatre's sound system. As I've commented before, the great shortcoming of watching movies at home is keeping the sound low in consideration of the neighbours, and as such I'm eager to see - and hear - the opening sequence accompanied by Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra at full volume.  

Tickets were a reasonable $16 and change each, and I was amused to see that someone took their best shot at the movie title when creating the ticket page - and missed.  

- Sid

 

 

"Science fiction’s most prestigious award."

I assumed that the Hugos were like the Oscars: Voted on by some sort of body to which one must be invited. I figured that this was an echelon of SFF to which I would never ascend, and was content to follow along with the winners, losers, scandals, controversies, and delights, like any other award situation.

But I was wrong. 

Molly Templeton, Anyone Can Vote in the Hugo Awards — And Here’s How 

This month's copy of the Macmillan Publishing Reactor* newsletter showed up in my In box this morning, and the first link was to an article on Hugo voting by Molly Templeton.  It's a well-written and comprehensive guide to not only the process for registering as a Hugo voter, but also the value that a larger pool of voters brings to the awards.

I gave it a bit of thought, and decided that after attending the Seattle Worldcon last year, I wanted to continue to be a part of the process, and signed up for a non-attending LAcon membership at $50 USD.

It wasn't entirely a casual decision: in the wake of retirement, I've done my best to control spending (with a few exceptions for travel and entertainment), but so far my modest investments have performed quite well**, and as such I'm willing to spend a bit of discretionary budget on this.  And, as pointed out in the Reactor article, the Hugos voter packet probably includes equivalent or greater value. (Last year's was an impressive 43GB download of long and short fiction, series episodes, review links, graphic novels and related content.)

I should also point out that it's not just a voting membership, non-attending members also have the ability to nominate entries for the various categories - Molly Templeton's article includes some useful guidelines for the nomination process. 

Depending on your degree of fandom, interest or financial security, you can register at:

https://www.lacon.org/register/

The deadline is January 31st - why not make your voice be heard?

- Sid

* If you're not already a Reactor subscriber, here's the subscription link:

https://reactormag.com/newsletter/ 

 It's a great source of news, reviews, and every issue includes a free piece of short fiction.

** A little bit of finger crossing accompanies this statement.   

Maybe they prefer Rom-Coms.

Well, that's the first ten minutes of a Doctor Who episode if I've ever seen one - or a Quatermass movie if you're into the classics.  Seriously, has no one at NASA ever read a book, watched TV or gone to a movie?  Let's hope that there will at least be a substantial quarantine involved.*

- Sid

* Especially when you factor this into the equation. 

Upgrade Part 2: "What's a delivery standard?"

When you've actually paid extra for expedited shipping of your new gaming computer, it's a bit disconcerting to see that your parcel is still showing as In Transit the day after it was supposed to arrive.  It's even more disconcerting to see that the Expected delivery date is a full week after the original high end estimate.

Needless to say, I requested  - and, happily, received - a refund for the shipping fee.

- Sid

Upgrade Part 1: Camels and Straws.

Silicon doesn’t wear out; microchips were effectively immortal. The Wig took notice of the fact. Like every other child of his age, however, he knew that silicon became obsolete, which was worse than wearing out; this fact was a grim and accepted constant for the Wig, like death or taxes, and in fact he was usually more worried about his gear falling behind the state of the art than he was about death (he was twenty-two) or taxes (he didn’t file, although he paid a Singapore money laundry a yearly percentage that was roughly equivalent to the income tax he would have been required to pay if he’d declared his gross).

William Gibson, Count Zero

As usual, Bill Gibson nailed it.  

Here we all are, living in the future, swimming in a sea of technology that, to quote Daft Punk, gets harder, better, faster, stronger.  But, what it doesn't get is cheaper, which means that most of us are riding along someplace not quite on the top of the breaking wave, living just a bit behind the leading edge - 4G instead of 5G, HD but not 4K, 15 instead of 17 Pro.

For me, that's meant living on borrowed time in terms of computing power, or, more accurately, gaming power.  I'm a long time Apple user, which, like any long term habit, is hard to beat - no 12 Step Program for iMac addicts.  Unfortunately, I also love computer games, and although a few of my favourites such as The Long Dark will run on the MacOS, the great majority of games require Windows.

Fortunately, or perhaps surprisingly, I've been able to get by for quite a while using Apple's Bootcamp software to run Windows from a partition on my 27 inch iMac, in spite of its modest 2 GB AMD Radeon graphics card.*  However, my iMac is ten years old, and although it's had a good run, its shortcomings as a gaming platform have become more and more evident as time goes on: distant images appearing one piece at a time as I approach them, weapons visibly rendering as they're equipped, or just unacceptably slow performance.

The inevitable end of the iMac as a gaming platform came in the form of a Christmas gift.  My wish list this year included gift cards for the Steam gaming platform, and my lovely wife Karli obliged with $50 worth.  One of my long term Steam wish list items has been Starfield from Bethesda, the developers of  Fallout and Skyrim.  Starfield was released in 2023 to surprisingly average reviews, in spite of which it's maintained its original price point of $89.99 CAD.  As such, I've been reluctant to purchase Starfield: if your game isn't doing well, why not bring the price down a bit to attract more users?

However, in this case, the stars aligned, and I discovered that Starfield was on sale for $53 CAD, which seemed a sign from the gaming gods that the time to buy had come.  Fifty dollars worth of gift cards and three dollars worth of Visa later, I was the happy owner of Starfield.

By and large, I don’t check game specs before I buy. I'm very aware that no game is ever going to say “Playable on a ten year old iMac running Bootcamp with a weird nonstandard video card”, so I cross my fingers and hope for the best, a philosophy which has been surprisingly successful. 

That being said, I assumed that there would be some combination of settings that would allow me to play Starfield on my system.  After all, Fallout 4 runs fine on the iMac, why would there not be a similar configuration option from the same developer?  So, I patiently downloaded the 124GB setup package, ran the installer, and launched the game.

Or tried to.  In their infinite wisdom, the good people at Bethesda created a list of video cards that they thought would be suitable for the game, which, apparently, does not include my card.  As such, the game would not even start without one of those cards, let alone offer me options that would accommodate my idiosyncratic setup. 

This is more than a little irritating.

As far as I know, Steam offers the option returning a purchase within 24 hours, but damn it, that’s not the solution I want.  All other considerations aside, I’m a bit embarrassed by the failure to launch -  having explained to my spouse just how pleased I was to finally be able to play the game and thanking her for making it possible, I'm reluctant to tell her that it's not going to work.  
 
While all of this is taking place, life goes on in the real world. Karli decides to order some stick-on lights to put in her closet and makes a selection on Amazon.  As the owner of our Prime account, I’m in charge of Amazon orders, so she sends me the link and I add the item to my cart.

I sit for a minute in thought before going to checkout, and then do a search on Amazon for Alienware, which I think of as the premier brand for PC gaming computers.  To my mild surprise, there are slightly older reconditioned Aurora R12** systems available for about $1200.***  A prudent check with Steam confirms that the system in question comes with a video card that will run Starfield, and I have about $600 worth of Amazon gift cards stacked up in my account to put toward a purchase.
 
So I buy one. 

The sellers offer a modest $12 Expedited Shipping option through which I can have the box in about three days rather than just over a week, and you know, in for a penny, so I select that.  The order goes through, and now we wait.
 
I’m fully aware of the irony of spending $600 (or $1200, depending on how you look at it) to play a game that I wouldn’t buy until it was on sale for $53, but but it's really more of a camel's back situation, and this was the proverbial straw. As it is, I don't regret my decision, and I'm looking forward to trying out some game purchases that I've been reluctant to install in case of similar performance problems.  

Bootcamp iMac, thank you for your service. 

- Sid

* The joke is that I upgraded to a new Mac Mini when I retired, leaving my iMac to run solely as my primary Windows platform - which it ran faster than the MacOS. Draw what conclusions you will.

** The R12 had an oddly brief lifespan.  It was originally released in March of 2021, but was almost immediately replaced by the R13, apparently due to changes in US energy efficiency regulations.  

*** To provide some perspective, a current entry level Alienware gaming system new from Dell would start at about $2500 CAD.

"And so it begins..."

Happy New Year, Revolutionaries!  January 1st is traditionally a day in which people take a moment to evaluate their lives and consider areas of improvement as they recover from New Year's Eve, and I thought I'd take a moment and look at the last year.

Considering that I'm retired, I have to confess that I had a slow year in terms of fandom.  If anything, it was sub-par in terms of things like catching up on reading, making inroads into my TV viewing backlog, or continuing with book cataloguing.  Instead, my first year of retirement was pleasantly restful: naps, daily walks, leisurely cups of tea, and a lot of time watching YouTube™ - as well as a brief flirtation with Duolingo, which ended after three months when I finally accepted that the free version wasn't teaching me anything I hadn't learned from Mrs. Wood in high school French class. 

That being said, I also attended Worldcon in 2025, which stands out as the peak of my life as a science fiction fan.  I had a great Space Marine VR experience, we paid an enjoyable pre-boycott visit to Disneyland (and by extension Galaxy's Edge, which I love), I saw some good SF movies, like Thunderbolts, Mickey 17, Fantastic Four, Superman*, and Tron: Ares*, and made a casual start on Season Two of Andor and Season One of Pluribus, both of which are excellent.

And now it's 2026, and I feel that it's time to get back in the groove.  As such, my New Year's resolution is to read a book a week, watch an hour of TV a day, and do one blog posting a week, as well as finally finshing up my long-running book catalogue project. which is currently dead in the water at "Rowley".  As with any resolution, I can't promise that I'll stay the course for the entire year, but at least it gives me a place to start.

A happy New Year to anyone reading this, and I wish you good luck with whatever resolutions you may choose to undertake for 2026! 

- Sid

* To be honest, I went against the current on these two.  I didn't really love Superman, and I quite enjoyed Tron: Ares. 

A Spider-Man Christmas.

And now, in a celebration of the spirit of the holidays, we take you to the Spider-Man Christmas Spectacular, and one Peter Parker, enjoying himself at Ben Grimm's annual Hanukkah party at the Fantastic Four's home in the Baxter Building.  

However, Peter's seasonal celebration is interrupted by a call from his Aunt May, who has booked a Christmas cruise, leaving Spider-Man on his own for the holiday season.  (This is sadly on brand, Peter is one of those people who would have no luck at all if it weren't for bad luck.)  

Peter, always gracious, tells May to have a great time and reassures her that he will be fine over the holidays on his own, but immediately tells the attentive Thing that he's leaving early, returning to his empty apartment and looking regretfully at a gift tagged May underneath his lonely Christmas tree.  With a sigh, he goes to bed.

The next morning, he's awakened by a phone call - it's an invitation to a Christmas party at the Impossible City, the Avengers' orbital headquarters, where he is swamped with holiday invitations as he mingles with the guests: Iron Man invites him to go skiing, the Vision suggests that he could spend the holiday break with him, Wanda, their son and his boyfriend, Thor wants him to come to Asgard for the Holy Day*, Hellcat is having a rager, Doctor Strange encourages him to come to the Dream Dimension, and so on. Overwhelmed with invitations, he thanks everyone and makes his exit.

Christmas Eve finds him on a Hell's Kitchen rooftop with Daredevil, preparing to sneak into an refugee center with a bag of gifts for homeless children. 

At this point, Peter has become a bit suspicious of all the attention, and ask Daredevil if he's one of his charity cases, to which Daredevil replies that maybe he's the one who didn't want to be alone on Christmas Eve, and that Spider-Man is the one being merciful.

Surprisingly, Christmas Day starts with Peter arriving at the New Orleans airport.  He's greeted by Wolverine, who drives them to a house in the bayou, where the X-Men are celebrating Christmas together.  They're welcomed by Rogue and Nightcrawler, and when Peter thanks Rogue for the invitation, she says that "...when Logan told us you were going to be all alone on Christmas, you know we couldn't have that." Peter turns to Logan and begins to ask "How did...?" but Logan dodges the question.

Gumbo is eaten, ugly sweaters are judged, gifts are exchanged, pie is eaten, and then the group moves outside for a game of baseball.  Isolated in the outfield, Peter finally pins Logan down as to how he knew that Peter was on his own.

As Peter talks to Logan, one of the younger X-Men interrupts with Peter's ringing cell phone.  It's Aunt May - her cruise has been cancelled due to mechanical problems, and she's back in New York.  Peter immediately drops everything, and begs for someone to fly, teleport or throw him back to Manhattan.

As it turns out, Gambit has a friend with a plane who owes him a favour, and Peter is able to spend the rest of Christmas Day with Aunt May, and then the New Year on her rescheduled cruise a week later. 

It's a charming little story, without a punch being thrown, and it points out the degree to which the superhero community is exactly that - a community, in which there are friendships and feuds, where people date, hang out, spend holidays together**, and which rallies together when one of their own is in need of a little seasonal love and support. 

As should we all.  Merry Christmas, everyone! The very best of the season to all, and to all, a good night.

- Sid

* One feels that there should be some kind of religious conflict of interest here, but Thor simply says that he doesn't pass up any noble holidays, and it's left at that.***  

** I assume that Hollywood works in a similar fashion. 

*** As it turns out, Jesus has a canonical existence in the Marvel Comics Universe - which makes sense, given that the Ghost Rider's origin story is that he made a deal with the Devil, and there's a character named Daimon Hellstrom who is the son of Satan.  Logically, if you include Hell and Satan in your worldview, then Heaven and God must also be part of the picture.

IYKYK.

 
Art by Cliff Chiang

The Red Knight returns.

- Sid

With apologies to James Cameron.

Hello, Mr. Cameron. I hope you don’t mind if I call you James?

Congratulations, it looks like Avatar: Fire and Ash is off to a good start, that’s a nice little Christmas gift - first weekend pulled in $88M USD in the US, and $345M globally. Admittedly, that's against a $400M budget, so a few more people need to head out to the theatres over the holiday before there's a profit, but it's still pretty good.  The film builds on the look of epic grandeur that the first two installments have taught us to expect, and also brings some new perspectives of Pandora to the screen.

All that being said - James, I’m very sorry, but I probably won’t be seeing it.

Again, it looks spectacular, but I don’t know if that’s enough for me these days. I’m enjoying Pluribus right now, but even with things like mocking up Air Force One* and the occasional grenade explosion, I suspect their special effects budget is lower than the bill for their crafts services.  

Which is significant, because it demonstrates that it’s possible to tell a thoughtful and intriguing science fiction story without spending $400M on world building or a 3D IMAX screen.  In saying that, I feel I’m doing Avatar and Pandora an injustice: there's no denying that it's an astonishing feat of creativity, but after seeing the trailer, I somehow felt that it had told me everything I needed to know about the latest entry in the franchise without having to invest three hours and $22 for all the details.

So, once again, my apologies. As a long time science fiction fan, I do feel a bit guilty that I’m not representing, but I honestly don’t think that my minor defection will stop Fire and Ash from being a success.

However, it’s not over ‘til it’s over.  I wasn’t going to see James Gunn’s Superman** movie and that ended up happening after all, so there’s still a chance - I’ll keep you posted.

All the best for the holidays, 
- Sid 

* I assume that wasn’t the actual Air Force One, but who knows, it’s not difficult to imagine that the current administration would be happy to make a buck by renting it out.

** It’s interesting that DC has done so many reboots of both Superman and Batman without being able to hit the groove that the MCU seemed to find so effortlessly, hopefully Mr. Gunn will be able to establish a firm foundation for the new DCU.

Pluribus: 48.729%.

When I was watching the first episode of Pluribus, the new science fiction series from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, my first reaction was, "This feels familiar." 

I realize that this might not be everyone's reaction, but I've been a science fiction fan for my entire life, and as such I have a substantial database of references to draw upon for things like this.  There's a bit of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain to it; a lot of Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 novel The Puppet Masters*; and a hint of Darwin's Radio, by Greg Bear.  It's not really The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing (From Outer Space), although they're both close cousins, there's maybe just a dab of Blood Music in there someplace, also a Greg Bear novel (based on a short story), and, when you think about it, a suggestion of I Am Legend, Richard Matheson’s three-time movie adapted novel, but with more smiling.

But none of those were the first thing that crossed my mind.  That honour goes to My Little Golden Book About Zogg, an obscure parody by cartoonist Jason Yungbluth, who chose the same method of transmitting the viral code as in Pluribus: encoding it into an interstellar message carried by a modulating wave carrier.

And, as in the page above, you do have to wonder how much of the known Universe has decoded a mysterious message from the stars...

- Sid

* The Puppet Masters details exactly the same kind of extraterrestrial takeover and amalgamation, except the aliens are macroscopic rather than microscopic, about the size and shape of a starfish.

"Jack and Jill went down the hill."

Another October, another Night.

- Sid

775,454 Days Later.

Full points to Vancouver's Trinity Baptist Church for celebrating Hallowe'en by posting a bible verse* that sounds like the elevator pitch for a zombie horror movie.

- Sid

* And it's canon:  

Colossians 1:18 
And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 

By any other name.

I've been casually re-reading Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian stories - the originals from the 1930s, rather than the 1960s Lancer/Ace pastiches or the later efforts by other authors* -  and I'm currently finishing off The Hour of the Dragon, Howard's only full novel-length tale of the grim Cimmerian warrior's adventures.  Howard has a deft hand as an author: he's no Tolkien, but his style is well suited to his chosen material.  However, even the best writers occasionally slip up, and Howard is no exception.

In The Hour of the Dragon, Conan has managed to achieve the throne of Aquilonia, one of the newer nations in Howard's Hyborian Age. However, his enemies have summoned up Xaltotun, a centuries-dead wizard, to aid them in invading Aquilonia, and they succeed in defeating Conan and his army through black sorcery.  Conan is taken prisoner but manages to escape, and then seeks to find the Heart of Ahriman, a magical jewel which can be used to send Xaltotun back to the grave and allow Conan to regain his throne.  

Howard writes the following descriptions of Conan's armour, specifically his helmet, over the course of his search for the gem:

Conan rode a great black stallion, the gift of Trocero. He no longer wore the armor of Aquilonia. His harness proclaimed him a veteran of the Free Companies, who were of all races. His head piece was a plain morion, dented and battered. 

He heard a rush of feet, a bellow of oxlike agony. He was stunned but not wholly senseless, and realized that Beloso had caught up the iron box and crashed it down on his head as he stooped. Only his basinet had saved his skull.

Conan reeled out of the chamber, sword in hand, blood streaming down his face from under his burganet. 

Whereas I appreciate Howard's desire to avoid repeating himself in his description of Conan's headgear, in this case he's actually gotten things completely mixed up in the process.  The history of arms is a catalogue of description:  the Roman lorica is distinct in its characteristics as opposed to Viking lamellar armour, and the evolution from 15th century full Gothic plate to 16th century Maximillian armour is quite clear.**  

In this case, Conan begins his trip wearing a morion, a high-combed brimmed helmet from the 16th century, generally associated with Spanish conquistadors.

 However, Howard then refers to Conan's helm as a basinet, which is a medieval open-faced helmet with a conical peak, generally worn with a chain mail aventail or scarf, and often equipped with a visor.  

Conan then staggers out of the chamber in a burganet, a full-headed, high-peaked Renaissance helmet with a brim, and neck and cheek guards.  

Admittedly, it's not like Howard could sit down at his keyboard and Google variations in armour, but it's still a surprising run of contradictory nomenclature - and a slightly ironic one, considering that generally illustrators have decided to equip Conan with some kind of non-functional fantasy helm with little horns on it.  

- Sid

* Even some of the versions of the Conan stories that claim to be "original" suffer from minor changes in the hands of well-meaning editors.  I suppose I could track down the individual stories through The Pulp Project, which has scans of early pulp magazines such as Weird Tales that published many of Howard's stories, but it feels like a lot of work.

** This is all drawn from my OTHER hobby, military history.  As with my science fiction/fantasy/gaming/comics/movies fandom, I haven't focused on a specific area, but have a general historical interest in the field.

Breaking the mould.

In addition to finding a Captain Canuck comic book that was a long way from home while shopping in Cardiff, I also spotted a bit of a curiousity, which, really, is what I most love to find in a used book store.

In this case, it was The Other Sky, a hard cover collection of Keith Laumer stories published by Dobson Science Fiction*, an imprint that was completely new to me - and I have a LOT of books.  

Keith Laumer is a bit of a favourite author of mine, and that, coupled with the unknown provenance of the book's publisher, made it an easy purchasing decision at the modest price of ten pounds sterling - along with a pound and a half for the comic book.

However, the book had more than its share of the distinctive smell of old paper, with a touch of mould in the mix.  As such, I bagged it up tightly for the remaining few days of our trip and kept it out of my luggage for as long as possible.

Once home, I did some research on the topic of old book smell, and the internet advised that I seal up the book with the contents of a box of baking soda in an airtight container for a few days. I was a bit amused to find out that the easy solution was apparently the same as dealing with refrigerator odour, and added baking soda to the shopping list. 

Once equipped wth baking soda, I emptied out an appropriately sized plastic bin, dumped in the contents of the box, and put in a couple of vintage 35mm plastic film canisters as supports. 

I added the innovation of a few toothpicks to spread some of the pages out and provide more surface area for the process, and sealed up the box. 

I removed the lid three days later, and a cautious sniff revealed that there was still some lingering mustiness, but that it was overall much reduced.  I put the lid back on and gave it a full week of adeodorizing, and the result is an almost odourless book - voilà, the system works, as I like to say. 

- Sid

* As it turns out, Dobson Books was essentially a one-man publishing imprint run by one Dennis Dobson from 1944 until his death in 1978.  Based in London and described as "a small but very literary and somewhat idiosyncratic firm", Dobson published a wide range of science fiction in addition to its other offerings.  To my mild amusement, the Wikipedia listing for Dobson concludes with:

After his death the publishing company was wound down and his widow bought and restored Brancepeth Castle.

I love the implication that she was just waiting for Dennis to get out of the way so that she could ditch all of this publishing nonsense and follow her passion by buying a fixer-up fortification. 

Ack ack.

 

Spotted in Kerrisdale after a ramen run - I don't know what one of these would cost, but it would certainly be a damn good start on a Martian Hallowe'en costume.

- Sid