"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

The Civilization Game.

I'm typing this on my iPad on a flight to Prince Rupert to collect more content for training material (the fact that I'm typing it on a 3/8 inch slab of circuitry is probably a post all of its own) and I'm playing a little mental game that I sometimes play on flights when my book doesn't really interest me: the What-If Game.

The game is very simple. What if aliens* decided to conduct an experiment by scooping our airplane out of the sky, sticking it into a stasis bubble, and dropping it onto the surface of Alpha Centauri A?**  (This game can be played with any form of bulk transportation, but buses generally have too small a gene pool for a viable colony, and cruise ships diminish the challenge by being too big and safe - rather as they do in real life, come to think of it.)

We'll assume that our new home is at least generally liveable - the air doesn't contain deadly microbes, and we can drink the water and digest the alien proteins - or most of them, anyway.***. The wildlife occupies the same range of carnivore/omnivore/herbivore niches as Earth's, and as a result we have to worry about being digested ourselves.

Okay, is everyone playing along? Look around the plane - these are our fellow colonists, what do you think? Is there an adequate male/female mix? Let's see...12 pairs of seats on one side, 13 on the other, the plane is full, so 50 people, plus the flight attendant, pilot and copilot for a total of 53. Ages range from an apparent 12 year old to a possible 65 or 70. And we have ... one, two, three...I think I can see 13 female heads. Hmmm...our colony is off to a rough start with three times as many men as women.

What are our resources? It's a relatively small plane, going to a relatively small community in northern British Columbia, so it's unlikely that anyone has brought a month's worth of clothing and possessions - for example, I've packed for two nights. On the up side, it's a destination for fishing vacations, and although I think that generally the boats would provide the gear, with any luck we have a fishing rod, or at least some hooks - and a couple of fishermen, not a bad asset. Not as many lighters as there would have been 20 or 30 years ago, so eventually firemaking will become more of a struggle - ever try to make a fire bow? Anyone?

I doubt that we have the collected works of Shakespeare on board, although frankly I'd rather have a really good book on building log cabins or delivering babies. In addition to a bunch of tablet readers (like my iPad) that will be useless in three days when the batteries die, there's probably three Dan Brown books, the most recent Stephen King, and maybe a Tom Clancy novel, plus newspapers and magazines - not exactly the library of Alexandria, but you take what you get.

The plane itself is a gold mine, of course. Cables, wires, panels, windows, hinges, gasoline, cushions, industrial carpeting to unravel, and lots and lots of metal in various forms - handy stuff, metal, so that's good.  Down side, the only food is some pretzels and various hot and cold beverages.

Initially the plane is shelter as well, but 53 people cannot live in a Dash 8 for very long. Sooner or later we have to move out of the plane and begin to build shelters, cannibalizing the plane for tools and hardware.

Inevitably we will lose individuals. People will eat things that disagree with them; people will disagree with things that eat them.  People will fall off cliffs or have heart attacks, or, sad to say, get in fights over women or men and kill each other.  But will we survive as a group, would we go on and create a tribe, a society, a civilization?

My instinct is to say no. Normally I play this game on bigger planes, and I have to think that small numbers and the unbalanced male/female ratio would be our undoing. On the other hand, there's historical precedent:  Pitcairn Island was settled by nine mutineers from the HMS Bounty, six Tahitian men, 12 Tahitian women, and a (female) baby in 1790, and by 1856 the island's population had grown to 193.

The astute reader will notice that I've omitted a parameter:  what if there are already aliens on the planet?  We'll level the playing field and assume that they're pre-industrial - and now we've started a whole new version of the game.

I welcome your opinions as to how that version of the What-If Game plays to its conclusion.  Personally, I'd like to hope that it all works out peacefully, but experience says that when humans play that particular game, we play for keeps - and sometimes we cheat.

Sad, that - takes the fun out of the game.

- Sid

* Or time travellers, or highly evolved beings/demigods -feel free to insert your own favourite group of advanced meddlers here.

** Or Earth 50 million years from now, or an alternate dimension. As above, use your favourites.

*** Which, come to think of it, is probably less likely than being kidnapped by little green men. Far more likely that the alien ecosystem would kill us just for breathing its air.  Recommended reading in this area is Bios, by Robert Charles Wilson.