Insert Android OS joke here.

It's December 17th and tomorrow marks the North American release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  (To describe this event as "eagerly awaited" would be redundant.)

A fortunate few have attended press screenings and midnight showings, whereas the rest of us have had to remain content with the trailers.  Fortunately, the trailers have struck a good balance between revelation and suggestion - there have been broad hints, but very little in the way of specifics.

However, the visuals themselves are wonderful:  crashed Imperial cruisers, battles with the next generation of stormtroopers, the Millennium Falcon in flight, epic aerial dogfights between the iconic ships from the original trilogy...wait, what?

Okay, let's assume that the time lapse in the Star Wars universe is congruent to the years gone by in the real world - in other words, Han Solo is about 40 years older* than he was during the events of the first film.

Compare the technology of 1914 with that of 1945, or 1945 to 1985: Sopwith Camels to Spitfires, Spitfires to F18s.  War is one of the great drivers of technological development, and yet the previews show what appears to be X-Wings locked in aerial combat with TIE fighters.**

How odd that in four decades, nothing has changed!   Even the despised prequels acknowledge that there was different technology in the days when Obi-Wan Kenobi was a young man, and yet, under the relentless lash of armed conflict, neither the Rebellion or the Empire (if that's still what the duelling polities call themselves, the trailers aren't explicit) has improved on their hardware? Other than through the introduction of plasma quillons for lightsabers?

For that matter, I gather that C-3PO is in the new movie.  My god, C-3PO was built by the young Anakin Skywalker - by the contemporary standards of The Force Awakens, he might as well be steam powered.  Let's see, it's generally assumed that Darth Vader was 45 when he died...he built C-3PO when he was nine... Computers from 25 years ago are useless antiques in our world, how would they be able to maintain a homemade 76 year old android?

- Sid

* And he certainly looks it in the previews.  Nothing personal, Harrison.

** This is odd all on its own.  Generally civil wars are fought with more or less the same weapons on both sides, although not always - interestingly, the American Civil War supports both sides of this argument.  How is it that the Rebellion has such completely different spaceships?

Also for wearing those outfits.

 

Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

I'd like to pay tribute to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, two women of such incredible confidence and courage that, given all of time itself from which to make their selection, chose to release their latest movie in head-to-head competition with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Ladies, you have my respect.

- Sid

Stuff for Noobs: 13-25.

This is the second half of a list created as an alternative response to a WIRED article entitled The 23 Best Sci-Fi Books and Movies to Give to a Noob - here are numbers 13-25 on my version of the starter list. (Numbers 1-12 here.)

13. Farscape
The WIRED list suggested Firefly, but I'm going to go with Farscape.  Farscape has great aliens (courtesy of Henson Associates - these are not your father's Muppets, as the Oldsmobile commercials used to say) the scripts are just as clever and good (okay, all you Joss Whedon fans, just SIT DOWN) and the main characters are interesting and intriguing. Four seasons - and a pretty good follow-up movie, The Peacekeeper Wars* - to choose from.

14. Downbelow Station, by C.J. Cherryh
This 1982 Hugo Award-winning novel** is a taut dramatic political story of conflict and resolution. Orbital stations, giant warships, alien primitives, dueling empires, betrayal, tragedy, redemption, love. Questions?

15. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
This award-winning novel*** describes the training of Andrew Wiggin, known as Ender, to be a strategist and a commanding officer in an almost hopeless war against an alien menace which has only been defeated once in battle. The training is psychologically brutal and designed to break Ender if he show any sign of weakness or inadequacy - he may well be humanity's last chance to avoid extinction.

Ender is six. 

16. The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. LeGuin
I really wanted to have a LeGuin novel in here.  The WIRED list suggests The Left Hand of Darkness, but I thought I'd go with a less challenging read. The Lathe of Heaven is the tale of one George Orr, who has a very simple problem:  his dreams can change reality.

17. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
The Forever War describes the realities of fighting across interstellar distances.  Published in 1974, just as America's intervention in Southeast Asia was coming to an end, this book is an intense condemnation of the ultimate futility of waging war.   Haldeman served as a combat engineer in Vietnam and received a Purple Heart, which gives his work a strong basis in experience and reality.  Students looking for a bonus mark can compare this novel with Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers, written in 1959, which glorifies exactly the same sort of situations that Haldeman disdains in The Forever War.

18. The Expanse series, by James S. A. Corey
The original three books: Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate.  Good solid writing, strong characters, well thought out plot.  Also a Syfy series, but don't let that score against the books. The Syfy promo describes it as Game of Thrones in outer space - which it isn't. If anything on this list was going to have that title, it's number 14, Downbelow Station.

19. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
Another tough call  - book or movie?

The novel was written in conjunction with the production of the movie version, and there's a certain chicken-and-egg aspect to the development of both, but the story as told in the book is certainly more approachable.  Clarke is one of the pillars of classic science fiction, and there were a lot of representative choices - but let's face it, 2001 has to be the best known.  Although, I don't know if the same can be said about the plot: enigmatic alien powers mold the development of humanity at its origin - and then they wait.****

20. Daybreak: 2250 AD, by Andre Norton
Andre Norton was one of the mainstays of my early introduction to science fiction.  My mother was a large fan of Norton's work, and both my sister and I have followed in her footsteps. (My sister more than me, to be honest.)  Norton's writing is quietly brilliant, her style understated but eloquent, and there's never an ill-chosen word.  I could recommend a dozen of her books without having to think, but let's go with Daybreak 2250 AD, written in 1952 - a good standalone example of her work.

21. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein was one of the Big Three of science fiction when I was growing up - the other two being Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov. Written in 1966, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is not Heinlein's best known novel - that prize would have to go to his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land.  However, Stranger in a Strange Land is, well...a bit strange, and it's not the novel that I'd suggest to a noob as their first Heinlein read.

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress tells the story of Luna's fight for independence.  Established as a penal colony, the Moon has become a major supplier of grain to Earth, but the convicts and their descendants labour under an increasingly onerous yoke. I've always considered this book to be Heinlein's best, and a good introduction to his writing that would allow a curious reader to proceed in either chronological direction for his other work.

22. Blade Runner
Another keeper from the original WIRED listing, but a bit of an unusual one. Blade Runner is the story of Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, who is tasked with hunting down a group of rogue androids. It's an oddly beautiful movie  - you'd expect anything directed by Ridley Scott to look good, but Blade Runner is full of almost surreal images and sequences.  Rutger Hauer, who plays android Roy Batty, delivers what may well be the best adlibbed speech in cinema history.

Blade Runner is based on a science fiction novel titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, but the movie is only loose connected to Dick's slightly paranoid 1968 novel.  Regardless, the film went on to develop a life of its own, and the relative quality of the various cuts has been a hotly debated topic over the years since the 1982 commercial release of the original version.  The different cuts result in widely varying conclusions to the movie, so the curious viewer can actual pick and choose the ending they prefer. I have the feeling that there are seven or eight extant versions of this film.

23. In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling
One of the most fun periods in science fiction is what I think of as the Planet Stories days, taken from the magazine of the same name that was published between 1939 and 1955. In the Planet Stories era, all the inner planets are habitable (for a given value of habitable) - Mercury is a searing rocky wasteland, Venus a primordial Jurassic jungle, and Mars is a dying planet, inhabited by the equally moribund remnants of an advanced society.

In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, written in 2008, is a cheerful homage to those innocent days. It's actually the second book set in an alternate reality where there is life on those other worlds, but it stands perfectly well all on its own, and it's a superb balancing act that combines an original view of a dying Mars with a wonderful evocation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books, the Mars of Ray Bradbury, and the swashbuckling Martian stories of Leigh Brackett.

24. Captain America: The First Avenger
I'd like our noob to see a comic book movie.  Something like Guardians of the Galaxy is far more obviously science fiction than Steve Roger's transformation from 98 pound weakling to supersoldier, but the first Captain America movie is a more accessible entrée into the genre - and probably a better film. I'll admit that Iron Man was a very close alternative choice, but all that sort of second-guessing will appear in the Runners Up posting.

25. The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells
To conclude the list, let's go with the man who originates the genre of science fiction as we know it today: Herbert George Wells.  I wavered a bit on this one, The Time Traveller was a near second, but time has given The War of the Worlds a sort of charming Victorian steampunk aura. It's also a telling reversal of the manner in which British Imperialism dealt with less technologically advanced societies, and, usefully, a quick read - at this point my noob is going to be a bit worn out. 

And that's my 25 items. I've spread it out over almost the entire history of the genre,and tried to mix in film, television and the written word.  If any noobs do end up reading this posting and its predecessor, good luck!  I hope you enjoy at least some of the suggestions I've made.

And now, on to my next list, Teen Stars from the 80s: How Do They Look Today?

- Sid

* A GREAT title, in my opinion.

**  To be completely accurate, published in 1981, won the award in 1982.

*** Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1985, Hugo for Best Novel in 1986.  Why are the Hugos a year out of sync?

**** This may be a little too mysterious, but I'm going to let the existing reputation of the story carry the weight of this one.