Geekmas.

It’s December 1st. American Thanksgiving and Black Friday are now behind us, I received my first Christmas card last week – apparently the holiday season has arrived, and with it, the challenging question of gifts for geeks such as myself.

Between Secret Santa at the workplace and my friends, I felt that there were enough people seeking guidance for holiday gift buying that some hints regarding affordable stocking stuffers would be useful.  I’ve split the options into four convenient categories:  books, movies, mugs, and hats.

To avoid overlap, if you do plan to purchase one or more of these items for me, just leave an anonymous comment with your choice of gift, and I’ll remove it from the list.  (If you’d like me to buy YOU one of these items, leave a comment with your name included.)

Books
I don’t usually recommend books as one of my gift options, but conveniently there are a couple of things unpurchased on my books-to-buy list.  The Peripheral, William Gibson’s new book, is currently out in hardcover, and I was intrigued enough by Sebastien de Castell’s presentation at the Vancouver Writer’s Fest that I'd like to read his book, Traitor’s Blade.  In addition, the fourth James S.A. Corey Expanse book, Cibola Burn, is also available.

Movies
The Evil Doctor Smith has already requested a short list of gift options, and called dibs on my top two blu-ray* choices, Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men: Days of Future Past.  However, there are still some options out there.  For example, I don’t have any of the Star Trek movies on blu-ray.  (Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are covered, thank you.)  My movie collection also lacks many of the classic SF/horror films such as Them**, The Thing (the black and white version, that is), The Creature from the Black Lagoon, and so on, although I did just buy the original Michael Rennie version of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  The Keanu Reeves version?  Perhaps less interested.

Mugs
I have a fairly large collection of souvenir mugs – after all, if you’re careful, a good mug will last for decades, failing unfortunate dishwashing accidents.  However, only a couple of my mugs are SF or fantasy related, which offers a wide open field for gift giving.  To avoid duplication, I already have a classic logo Doctor Who mug and a large TARDIS mug from last year’s Secret Santa.  The TARDIS mug has actually never had tea in it, I view it as more decorative than practical – there’s a reason that there aren’t a lot of square mugs out there.

Hats
Because I’m bald, I’m a dedicated hat wearer, generally in the style that I think of as baseball caps.  I’ve never gone looking, but there must be someplace out there that sells hats with Starfleet logos and the like, they can’t all be sports related.  Bonus points for hats duplicating actual hats worn in movies, such as Con-Am 27 or Nostromo caps. Nota bene: I do NOT want one of those Jayne Cobb Firefly hats, that’s not my style at all. Oh, and fabric all the way around, please, no meshbacks. Too much rain in Vancouver for that.

This list is designed to max out well under the fifty dollar mark per item.  However, if someone has a desperate desire to spend $120,000 USD on a 105 inch Samsung UN105S9W TV set for me, I will not stand in your way.  Happy holidays!

- Sid

* Yes, I realize full well that physical media is dead, thank you, but I still like blu-ray.  The resolution is good, video streaming lag isn’t an issue, and you don’t have to wonder whether or not something is available on Netflix.

** Giant mutant ants, 1954. Scared me to death when I first saw it on TV at the age of ten.  Features a Who's Who of actors who went on to greater fame in other roles:  James Whitmore, Fess Parker, James Arness, and a brief uncredited speaking role as an Army sergeant for one Leonard Nimoy. Coincidentally, James Arness also appear in the titular role of The Thing.

 

Better living through science - or not.

Recently I've found myself doing this whole experimental routine in the men's room - will the toilet flush automatically?  Where's the sweet spot to get the tap to emit water? If I move my hands counter-clockwise will it get hotter?* Let's see, is the soap manual or sensor-based?  How do I get a paper towel? (How do I get the paper towels to stop?)

And every time I go through my robot-influenced dance performance in front of a paper towel dispenser, I think of this prophetic section from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself.  The machine was rather difficult to operate.  For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology  became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme.

Seriously, is the bathroom a place where you want to "wave your hand...and hope"?

- Sid

* Wait, this may be a brilliant idea.  Let's get on that, Science.
 

It's not over 'til it's over.

I'm currently about two-thirds of the way through The Great North Road by Peter F. Hamilton, one of the books that I purchased with a gift certificate from this year's birthday gifts. Hamilton writes a modern version of what I think of as "space opera" - vast, sweeping, dramatic plot lines, epic settings, and a cast of thousands.*

The plot of The Great North Road starts on a more intimate level, with the discovery of a corpse in the river Tyne, which flows through the English city of Newcastle. The victim, a clone of the elite North family, has been killed in a distinctive manner: a five-bladed weapon of some sort (perhaps a knife-taloned hand) has punctured his chest and shredded his heart.

However, this is not the first time the authorities have encountered this particular modus operandi. A similar crime occurred twenty years earlier on the planet St. Libra, where another North clone was killed, along with his entourage. The sole survivor claimed that an alien monster was responsible, but due to the lack of evidence, the police decided that she was the actual murderer and incarcerated her.

The discovery of the corpse gives new credence to her testimony, but the authorities are still uncertain. In Newcastle, the police investigate the crime, while the elite Human Defense Army sends an expedition through the Newcastle gateway to St. Libra in hopes of discovering evidence of a hidden alien presence that may somehow have penetrated gateway security to wreak havoc on Earth.

However, the two streams of investigation seem to be contradictory. In Newcastle, the police discover that a cab was used by local gang members to dispose of the body, and trace it back to the scene of the crime, an apartment owned by an ex-girlfriend of yet another highly placed North clone. Meanwhile, on St. Libra, members of the HDA expedition are being picked off one by one under mysterious circumstances by some unseen menace that lurks in the jungle and leaves five-bladed wounds in its victims.

Logic says that both of these subplots cannot be correct - it's either a power struggle between North clones or an alien menace, a paradox which is puzzling the characters in the book as much as it's puzzling me. I'm looking forward to seeing how Hamilton resolves the situation.

Famed Golden Age science fiction writer/editor John W. Campbell once commented on the fact that it would be impossible to write a valid science fiction murder mystery, because there are too many ways that an author can cheat: time machines, teleportation, and so on.**   Hamilton has a bit of a tendency towards deus ex machina plot resolutions, and I'm hoping that he doesn't disappoint me by pulling some unlikely alien rabbit from his trans-dimensional hat during the final act.

- Sid

* In traditional space opera such as the Lensman series by E. E. Smith, the characters can actually be analyzed in terms of soprano, tenor, etc. Aliens would be the equivalent of dragons or some similar Wagneresque bit of scenery.

** In spite of which, there are several very good science fiction murder mysteries which seamless integrate exactly those sorts of SF memes and use them to create valid plot lines. Examples would be Larry Niven's ARM series, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, or The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov, which was written as a direct response to Campbell's comment.