A long way down in a galaxy far, far away.

 

 

As I've mentioned before, I'm involved in training for longshore workers at British Columbia's cargo terminals. Obviously safety is a large part of that training, and after almost seven years of working on content dealing with hazard recognition and management, I've been left with a heightened awareness of workplace safety.

This awareness sometimes pops up at unexpected moments.  After seeing Rogue One, I was talking with Glen, our Safety Systems Manager, and I asked if he'd seen the movie yet.  He said that he and his wife had seen it the previous week.

"Tell me something, Glen - did it bother you that it was so easy to fall off of things?"

"YES!!!  I told Tina that!  Why are there no railings or safety cages??"

It's an odd thing, but every Star Wars movie offers its characters an opportunity to easily fall a long, long way. It happens twice in A New Hope, once in The Empire Strikes Back, once in The Return of the Jedi, once in The Phantom Menace, I think once or twice in Attack of the Clones, at least twice in Revenge of the Sith, once or twice in The Force Awakens (depending on your standards) - and, of course, three times in Rogue One. How is it that there are no occupational health and safety people demanding proper safety standards in the Star Wars universe?

Forget lack of faith, Vader - personally, I find your lack of guard rails disturbing.

- Sid

P.S.  There are much, much better examples from Rogue One than the shots I started with, but until it hits Blu-ray and iTunes I'm stuck with the trailer and whatever I can find online.

And a very young Yvette Mimieux.

You Know You're a Geek When, Part 5.

To be fair, I assume hard core sports fans get the same sort of questions about legendary forwards or whatever.

- Sid

"Looks like Bo and Abdul have gotten themselves into a mess of trouble with ol' Boss Hogg!"

Pointing to a chair, table, and pile of books, the old man now left the room; and when I sat down to read I saw that the books were hoary and mouldy, and that they included old Morryster’s wild Marvells of Science, the terrible Saducismus Triumphatus of Joseph Glanvill, published in 1681, the shocking Daemonolatreia of Remigius, printed in 1595 at Lyons, and worst of all, the unmentionable Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, in Olaus Wormius’ forbidden Latin translation; a book which I had never seen, but of which I had heard monstrous things whispered.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival

Trust me, this is a funny album title if you're an H.P. Lovecraft fan.

- Sid

P.S. Thanks to TIR music correspondent Christi for the update regarding the new album from The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets, hopefully the only H.P. Lovecraft tribute band in captivity.

Memories of Barb.

As do many people in the digital age, my girlfriend Karli likes to share the minutiae of her life with those near and dear to her - perhaps overshare in some cases. As an example, recently she's been struggling with a serious cold that has involved a substantial amount of coughing:

 

Of course, the first thing that came to my mind was the ambiguous - and somewhat gross - final scene of Stranger Things, Netflix's unexpected success story from last year.

But, let's look at the bright side - if you're having a problem with alien slug babies, better Stranger Things than Alien.

- Sid

War Movie.

 

I think it's safe to say that Disney can consider its test case for standalone Star Wars Anthology movies to be a success: so far Rogue One has stacked up an international box office total of more than $980 million since its debut in December.

And I'm part of that near-billion dollar jackpot - in fact, like several people I know, I've actually seen it twice, although in my case it's because I act as a movie wing man for a couple of friends rather than out of fanboy enthusiasm.  However, having seen it twice, I have to confess that in some ways I found Rogue One to be less than successful as a movie experience.

I'll qualify that statement by saying that Rogue One is COMPLETELY successful as a Star Wars experience - which is not necessarily the same thing.  The franchise demands weird aliens, snarky robots, despicable villains, remote location shoots, epic space battles, heroic acts of bravery and, of course, semi-hidden references to other movies in the series.  Rogue One magnificently delivers on all of these counts in glorious widescreen 3-D Dolby™ action.

For anyone unfamiliar with Rogue One's plotline, it takes place immediately before Episode IV (and I mean immediately, apparently A New Hope starts ten minutes after the end of Rogue One) and deals with the pivotal events leading to the theft of the Death Star plans that contain the vital information regarding the battle station's hidden vulnerability.  It's a darker chapter in the saga - director Gareth Edwards wanted to make a war movie, and, as happens in wars, people die - on both sides.

In addition to being a war movie, Rogue One is also very much a geek movie, aimed at the dedicated fan and filled with references and Easter Eggs from the first Star Wars episode. However, those aspects of the film are not just pandering to the fan base.  Given the close timelines between Rogue One and A New Hope, the filmmakers were faced with the challenge of recreating the look and feel of a movie made with 40-year old technology, and, in some cases, with the need to feature actors who no longer looked the same or who had passed away since 1977.

 

For the most part, they succeed. The design and art direction of the film beautifully replicates the look of A New Hope*, and unused found footage from the climactic battle in Episode IV was digitally de-grained and added in to provide additional plot and character continuity between the two films. The digital recreations of Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia have received mixed reviews - personally, I found the simulated version of Peter Cushing to be quite good, but didn't like the recreation of Carrie Fisher, whereas most people seem to have the opposite reaction.**

However, success as a franchise entry is not the same as success as a movie. The scripting of Rogue One suffers from two main problems:  overly convenient plotting and lack of character development.

Convenience may sound like an odd accusation to levy against a script, but there are just too many places where it's obvious that a plot point was written in order to achieve a specific goal rather than a more organic and natural sequence of events advancing the story.  Rogue One is full of things like dramatically located switches, pointlessly irising hatches, meticulously timed simultaneous arrivals, convenient delays after destruction, and so on.

There are plot points that are never resolved or even mentioned again - as a relatively spoiler-free example, one of the supporting characters is Bodhi Rook, an Imperial cargo pilot who is persuaded to defect by Galen Erso, the reluctant architect of the Death Star. Rook seeks out the rebel forces on the planet Jedha, bearing a message from Erso to his old friend Saw Gerrera regarding the fatal flaw that he has engineered into the battle station.  Rook is captured by a group of Gerrera's guerillas*** and taken to their base.

The leader of the group who captured Rook lies to Gerrera regarding the circumstances of the capture, but we never find out why he's deceiving his leader.  In order to determine the truth, Gerrera subjects Rook to having his mind read by a giant squidlike monster - we are told that the process will render Rook insane, but he seems at worst confused after the process, and we never see any sort of resolution regarding the results of the scan. In fact, it's never mentioned again, nor is Bodhi's possible insanity.

This sort of failure in plotting aside, the great disappointment in Rogue One is the manner in which the characters are portrayed.  In theory, everyone in this movie has a story to tell, a story which would illustrate the nature of the conflict between Empire and Rebellion in much clearer terms than any of the other films. Jyn Erso, the protagonist and abandoned daughter of the Death Star's creator, apparently has a history of rebellion not just against the Empire but against any sort of authority.  Her partner, rebel spy Cassian Andor, has been part of the Rebellion since he was six, and has done "terrible things on behalf of the Rebellion." They are accompanied in their mission to steal the Death Star plans by K-2SO, a reprogrammed Imperial war droid; defector Bodhi Rook; and a pair of failed Jedi temple guardians - blind warrior-monk Chirrut Îmwe and his militant partner Baze Malbus.

There are brief moments when we see a glimpse of the emotional potential created by the characters' back stories, but for the most part we are told about these aspects of the characters rather than shown them, and that's where the film really fails. If Cassian is haunted by his actions on behalf of the Rebellion, let's see it - show us something like Martin Sheen's tortured anguish from the opening scenes of Apocalypse Now, a scene that establishes that he's suffering from remorse and guilt long before he's tasked with callously using a daughter as a tool to find and kill her father.

I wanted to see a sharper, edgier, more dangerous Jyn Erso, the rebellious angry girl who was one of Saw Gerrera's best soldiers - show us Jyn slitting Imperial throats and making a reputation, a reputation that eventually makes her a high profile liability for even Gerrera's extremist partisans. I was left wondering about the fall of the Jedi Temple on Sadhu - Chirrut and Baze seemed remarkably carefree for temple guardians who have failed in their duty and are the sole survivors.  Is Chirrut actually a Force adept, or is his battlefield walk to the relay switch a complete act of, well, blind faith?  Bad puns aside, how did Chirrut lose his eyesight?****

What act of brutality or betrayal did Bodhi Rook witness that started him on the road to leaving the Empire?  What happened to Saw Gerrera that destroyed his body and eventually reduced him to a paranoid figurehead?  (There are YouTube™ trailers indicating that a younger Gerrera will be appearing in the upcoming season of the Star Wars: Rebels animated series, presumably filling in some of those gaps, but that doesn't particularly help me with Rogue One.)

Even before Rogue One's box office success, Disney had greenlighted the second film in the Anthology series, which will feature a young Han Solo. Given that this film doesn't even have a title so far, it may not be too late to save it from the failings of Rogue One.  My message to the writer or writers of the film is this: ultimately, starships, robots, aliens and explosions are just set dressing - stories are about people.

- Sid

*  If you're a hard core fan, you'll notice that the little chain that holds the neck of Darth Vader's cloak together is missing - and his gloves don't look right.

** For me, the joke is that I found the woman who acted as the body of  Princess Leia would have been completely acceptable if they had just used her face as-is - something they had no trouble doing with Mon Mothma.

*** Try saying that quickly three times in a row.

**** There's a seven minute YouTube™ video featuring Anna Akana that offers more insight into the character of a blind Jedi than Rogue One manages to provide in two hours and 13 minutes.

Last and First Men

“I'm quite disappointed that I'm still the last man on the moon.”

Eugene Cernan

Although his passing didn't garner the same sort of attention as Neil Armstrong's death, the departure yesterday of ex-astronaut Gene Cernan at the age of 82 provides us with an odd set of bookends: the first and the last man to walk on the Moon are both dead.

Eugene Cernan was part of the third group of astronauts selected by NASA in 1963, and flew on the Gemini 9A, Apollo 10 and Apollo 17 missions, with Apollo 17 marking humanity's last visit to the Moon. Since then, NASA has split its focus between the International Space Station and automated exploration of the Solar System: robotic rovers on Mars and various near-Earth/deep space probes such as Juno, Cassini and New Horizons.

In the background behind these activities has always been the prospect of more manned space exploration - not a return to the Moon, but a larger step, the first manned mission to Mars.

For the last eight years, the White House has strongly supported NASA as part of Obama's focus on science and technology, as well as promoting space initiatives in private industry. This support has enabled NASA to work on refining existing technologies and developing new ones to make the goal of a Mars landing possible, with target dates of early in the next decade for manned exploration of an asteroid*, and sometime in the 2030s for the trip to Mars.

Sadly, nothing lasts forever. In three days, Donald J. Trump will become the 45th president of the United States, and as with many of Mr. Trump's statements, it's difficult to determine exactly what his position on the space program is going to be.

On one hand, he has stated: "NASA has been one of the most important agencies in the United States government for most of my lifetime. It should remain so."  He has also connected space exploration with his desire to return America to greatness: "47 years ago our nation did something that NOBODY thought we could do - we were the first to put a man on the moon. It is time to be number one, again! Believe me, as President, we will once again, Make America First Again!"

Not surprisingly, he also supports the involvement of private industry in space exploration, suggesting that NASA should concentrate on "deep space activities" and allowing the private sector to work on near-Earth projects.

However, Trump has also noted that "A lot of what my administration would recommend depends on our economic state. If we are growing with all of our people employed and our military readiness back to acceptable levels, then we can take a look at the timeline for sending more people into space," and that "In the old days, it [NASA] was great. Right now, we have bigger problems, you understand that. We have to fix our potholes. We don't exactly have a lot of money."

Personally, I can see the coin falling either way.  It's easy to see Trump beginning by putting his house in order as he sees it: bringing jobs back into the US or keeping them there, working on infrastructure, developing the military, and only then turning his attention to space.  But let's be honest. Donald Trump has a more than healthy ego**, and the space program has always been an area of international prestige for the United States. I'm certain that Mr. Trump would be eager to have his name associated with an epic return to space by the USA.

But let's take this to the next logical step. Mr. Trump is also a businessman who has made a lot of money off the branding associated with his name. Combine that with his statements regarding the private sector being more involved in space, and what do we get?

Hopefully valet parking will be an option.

- Sid

P.S. A comprehensive list of Trump's comments on the space program can be found at:
http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/be-a-space-advocate/election2016/trump.html

* I'm surprised to discover that the mandate for this mission includes redirecting an asteroid to near-Earth orbit. What could possibly go wrong with that?   

**  Yes, I realize that this is probably the understatement of the century.

"Oh the weather outside is frightful..."

Recommended reading for New Year's Eve in Vancouver - be careful out there, everyone.

- Sid

A Star Wars Plot Summary

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story makes its debut this Friday.  As far as I can tell from the previews and hints online, this is more or less the story breakdown:

- Sid

Geekmas 2016: "CEL-E-BRATE! CEL-E-BRATE!!"

Decorating* for the holiday season...

- Sid

* I tried "Dalek-orating" here, but it just didn't work for me.

"As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."

It's been a pretty good twelve months for Star Wars fans. 2015 ended with the release of The Force Awakens, which has largely redeemed the franchise from the excesses and errors of the prequel trilogy, and this year will end in a similar fashion, with the next Star Wars prequel*,  Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, hitting theatres on December 16th.

Hopes are high for Rogue One. Based on the trailers, everyone expects that it will match if not exceed the standard set by The Force Awakens.  However, Rogue One is also the continuation of a process started in Episode VII:  rewriting both the past and the future of Star Wars.

Almost everyone is at least aware of the Star Wars movies, even that small minority who have never seen any of them - like Star Trek, it's become embedded in the Western pop culture matrix.  More dedicated fans (or attentive parents) are familiar with the various computer animated TV incarnations such as The Clone Wars or Rebels. However, the general population is completely unaware of the full epic sweep of the universe in which these stories exist, a universe documented in comic books, video games, cartoons, and hundreds of novels.

Or rather, in which they used to exist. The Force Awakens marked the end of the Star Wars Expanded Universe.

The Expanded Universe is exactly what it sounds like: an extended view of the milieu in which the  Star Wars movies take place. The SWEU chronicles a broad span of time, dealing with everything from the beginnings of the Star Wars universe (literally the beginnings, starting with the formation of the galaxy at 13,000,000,000 BBY**) to hundreds of years after the events of A New Hope. Continuity and canonicity for the SWEU are documented through the aptly named Wookiepedia, Lucasfilms' wiki for all things Star Wars.

The Force Awakens indicated a clear point of divergence from the post-trilogy future established by the Expanded Universe.  In the SWEU continuity, Han and Leia have three children, all of whom become Jedi Knights. One of them, Jacen Solo, helps to defeat the alien Yuuzhan Vong when they invade the New Republic in 25 ABY, although sadly both his brother Anakin Solo and his father's friend Chewbacca perish in the struggle against the invaders.

Jacen later turns to the Dark Side, becoming Darth Caedus and eventually killing Luke Skywalker's wife, ex-Empire assassin and fan favourite Mara Jade.  In 41 ABY Caedus is killed by his twin sister Jaina, who later becomes a Jedi Master and marries Jagged Fel, who is the son of Baron Soontir Fel, Wedge Antilles' brother-in-law.***  Jaina Solo appears in over 20 different SWEU novels - but unless Han and Leia were holding out on us when they talked about their son in The Force Awakens, she's no longer part of the continuity. (Not to mention Chewbacca's conspicuous lack of deadness in the same scene.)

And that's just the tip of the SWEU iceberg. We haven't even started on Mara Jade's story, not to mention the hundreds of other supporting characters involved in the events of the Expanded Universe.

Those characters aren't gone - Disney isn't foolish enough to abandon the income stream being generated by the existing material - but they're no longer canon, which in a lot of ways is the same as a death sentence as far as hard core geek fans are concerned.  The SWEU has been rebranded as Star Wars Legends, and Wookiepedia entries now distinguish between Canon and Legends as necessary. 

However, as Disney follows through on its plan to release more films like Rogue One that are set in the Star Wars universe, along with the next two films in the new trilogy, the two will diverge more and more. I expect that the Legends material will be quietly eliminated by Disney in the fullness of time.

Unlike most children, I was raised to think of Disney as a sort of evil empire. My mother, who was quite a hard core science fiction and fantasy fan herself, felt that Disney was a perverter of truth, whose adaptations of classic children's fantasies had very little to do with the original stories, and everything to do with making a quick buck at the expense of the source material.

However, the end of the Expanded Universe puts the House of Mouse into a whole different league of villainy.  In this case, Disney has achieved a massacre beyond anything the Galactic Empire, the Sith, or the New Order could ever dream of accomplishing, wiping out thousands of planets, countless alien species, and generation after generation of sentient beings with a simple corporate memo.

Welcome to the Dark Side, Mickey.

- Sid

* Something about the phrase "next prequel" sounds wrong to me, like military intelligence or government assistance.

** BBY - Before the Battle of Yavin.  For non-fans, the Rebellion base that is being threatened at the end of A New Hope is on the fourth moon of Yavin, so the encounter in which the Death Star is destroyed is commonly known as the Battle of Yavin.  Events following this landmark event are After the Battle of Yavin: ABY.

*** There's a scene in the Star Wars takeoff Spaceballs where Dark Helmet says, " I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate."  In the context of the Expanded Universe, that's no longer a joke.

For readers who may not remember Mr. Antilles, he's the only Red Squadron pilot other than Luke Skywalker who survives the Death Star attack. In a coincidence of names, Wedge becomes a member of Rogue Flight, Luke's squad from the Battle of Hoth. (Which is Canon.)  Rogue Flight goes on to have an extended life in novels, games and comics as Rogue Squadron. (Which is Legends rather than Canon.)  I can only guess as to any possible connection between Rogue Flight and Rogue One - I'll have a better idea once I've seen the movie.

Geekmas 2016: Shouldn't she be holding a candy cane?

There are times when I am amazed (and perhaps a bit saddened) by the extent to which Star Wars marketing has insinuated itself into everyday life.

- Sid

P.S. I may be a bit old fashioned, but you know, somehow this just isn't the same as the traditional gingerbread house of my childhood years.

Geekmas 2016: Hope Springs Eternal

The Christmas season is coming fast upon us, and with it, the inevitable challenge of gift-giving.  Secret Santa names have been drawn at the workplace, and our departmental potluck Christmas luncheon and gift exchange is scheduled for December 16th.

One of the new arrivals in our department expressed her surprise that the Secret Santa process was specific rather than general - that might make it easier, but I sadly suspect that if we were required to buy a completely generic present for the exchange, we'd have a big box with 20 bottles of wine in it. Given that we have one member of our department who is a long-standing member of Alcoholics Anonymous, this is not a perfect solution.

As it is, we rely upon a system of whispered inquiries and occasional name-swapping in order to find appropriate co-worker gifts.  In some cases, people have posted suggestions near their desks - I seem to be the only person with an online wish list.

The funny thing is that I don't ever seem to get any of the things that I list online. Having said that, I certainly don't want to suggest that I've been disappointed by the gifts I've received in the past.  In fact, I've been quite impressed by the degree of thought and imagination that people have put into the selection of geek-appropriate presents for me.  Still, you'd think that some poor desperate person would have taken the easy way out by now.  On which note...

Movies

Sigh - still no classic Doctor Who episodes, and both The Day of the Triffids (any version, but preferably the original 1962 movie) and The Creature from the Black Lagoon are still on the list of unfulfilled requests.  More recent choices would be Captain America: Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse, Batman Versus Superman, and Star Trek: Beyond.   I checked on Amazon.ca and all of the movies come in under $25 in Blu-ray format - old Doctor Who episodes tend to be DVD only, and often a bit more expensive than they really should be.

Actually, come to think of it, I don't have ANY Star Trek movies on Blu-ray...

Books
About two-thirds of last year's list still stands:  Fran Wilde's Updraft, Elizabeth Bear's Karen Memory, Ian McDonald's Luna, Naomi Novik's Uprooted, and Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace.  They should all be affordable paperbacks at this point.

Toys

I think that if I was trying to come up with a name for a toy company, it would be hard to beat BOOMCo, which appears to be the licensed manufacturer of firearms from the first-person shooter Halo game franchise.  The weapon of choice is the UNSC Marine Magnum Blaster foam dart gun, which would go on the shelf beside my Star Trek Original Series phaser and my Buck Rogers disintegrator pistol. And I promise - PROMISE - that it will never be used to remind Jaq the Cat that he shouldn't be on the kitchen table.

Art

Here's a bit of a departure from previous years:  art prints.  The Museum of Popular Culture (previously the EMP/SF Museum and Hall of Fame) has original series Star Trek movie posters on sale.  There are twenty sets available, made up of four posters each.  They're designed by illustrator Juan Ortiz, with a fabulous retro feel, and any one of them would make an excellent addition to the geek wall of your choice.  Just visit the euphoniously named MoPopShop to view the selection - they're all equally desirable.

NB:  MoPop prices are in US dollars.  However, carefully timed shopping will help with that.  From November 25th to December 2nd, enter checkout code mopop25 to save 25% off your entire order (which just about makes up for the exchange rate). From December 12th to December 17th, use mopopfast to get 15% off your entire order and an automatic no-cost upgrade to express shipping for standard ground shipping orders - which may or may not apply to Canadian shipping.

And that's this year's wish list.  Please note that these suggestions aren't restricted to co-workers:  friends, relatives and squaddies are equally welcome to take advantage of this list.  All I ask is that an anonymous comment be posted announcing that a particular item is being purchased - I'm fine with not being surprised if it prevents the arrival of two gift-wrapped copies of Batman Versus Superman.

EDIT: Please note that as per the comment below, Karli has stepped in and is using her blog to coordinate purchases so as to maintain secrecy.  Just when I think I can't find another reason to love you, my dear... 

  - Sid

P.S.  For anyone wishing to throw caution to the winds and seek out their own choice of casual geek gifts, HMV has an excellent selection of fandom items: mugs, buttons, coasters, t-shirts, etc.  Shoppers in the lower Mainland can visit the Robson Street or Metrotown outlets.

"You maniacs! "

"Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

George Taylor, The Planet of the Apes

And here we are on the morning after the American presidential election, looking at the news that Donald Trump is the next president of the United States. In some strange way, I'm excited - between this and the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series, it's obvious that at some point in the recent past we've gone through the looking glass, or maybe down the rabbit hole - something like that, some kind of departure from the linear, probability-based, cause-and-effect reality that we used to inhabit.

As a result, I now fully expect Bigfoot and his wife to come strolling out of the forest, space aliens to land on the White House lawn and ask if they can talk to the new guy, cold fusion to become a proven source of cheap safe energy, and the Loch Ness Monster to rise to the surface of her cold, watery home and take a deep, deep breath.

After this, anything's possible.

  - Sid

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November."

"Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V."

V, V for Vendetta

I know of no reason the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot.

  - Sid

Voyages' End.

In my previous post I mentioned buying a replacement copy of Stephen Tall's The Stardust Voyages, a collection of short stories that I originally purchased in 1975.  The stories deal with the travels of an interstellar exploratory vessel - the Stardust - and a variety of alien first-contact plotlines.

Replacement copies are one of the sad inevitabilities of being an avid re-reader: bindings crack, pages are accidentally dogeared, covers become creased and worn, and finally it's time to retire the text in question and buy another copy. 

When I do this, I prefer to purchase the same edition as the novel being replaced - it's an odd quirk, but I feel that it gives my collection a sort of continuity.  I was quite pleased to find a matching copy of The Stardust Voyages, but I'm a bit surprised that anyone could own an 41 year old book in such good condition. The copy on the right must have belonged to a collector. I feel a bit proud that my copy - on the left - is so obviously the property of a reader.

  - Sid

"Science fiction double feature..."

My girlfriend Karli has been visiting a new chiropractor who is located about a thirty minute walk from my workplace, so whenever her appointment schedule permits, I meet her there after work.

My route takes me past the Main Street location of Pulp Fiction, one of Vancouver's better used book stores, and it occurred to me recently that I've been doing most (if not all) of my book shopping in foreign cities.  I had some time to spare, so I decided to go in for a browse.

After a pleasant half hour perusal of the shelves, I walked away with five books: Fragile Things, a collection of Neil Gaiman short stories - hard to go wrong with Neil Gaiman - a long overdue copy of William Gibson's Distrust That Particular Flavour in trade paperback*, a replacement copy of The Stardust Voyages, by Stephen Tall, and a pair of near mint-condition Ace Doubles to add to my collection:  a replacement copy of The Beasts of Kohl backed with A Planet of Their Own, and Crisis on Cheiron backed with The Winds of Gath.

What, you ask, is an Ace Double?

Ace Doubles are one of the great unique aspects of science fiction book collecting. Very simply, an Ace Double is made up of two short novels rotated 180 degrees and bound back to back so that each one has its own cover.  Although Ace Books did publish material from other genres in this distinctive tête-bêche** binding, it was the science fiction content that really made its mark for the publishers.

Ace published the Doubles format from 1952 until 1974. They continued to print double-novel editions until 1978, but they were no longer in the back-to-back format, and as such really aren't the same thing. Online sources state that Ace released 221 science fiction Ace Doubles in the classic format, which to be honest sounds like a lot less than I thought there were - I own 57 Doubles myself, without ever having made a serious commitment to collecting them. (My sister Dorothy owns 48, with a couple of duplications - no pun intended.)

In spite of their landmark position in the history of the genre, the story of the Ace Double was not always a happy one. SF editor and author Donald A. Wollheim*** was in charge of the Doubles line, and was infamous for chopping down novels to fit the Double page count - apparently the tagline "Complete and Unabridged" which appeared on the copyright page was not always truthful.

However, the Ace Double format helped to launch the careers of a long list of well-known authors including Gordon R. Dickson, Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delany, and Philip K. Dick. The books combined writing by established authors such as A. E. van Vogt, Ray Cummings or Leigh Brackett with that of newcomers in the same way that television networks tentpole new or less popular programs around a successful show. 

Perhaps because I was in my teens and just starting my independent book-buying career at around the time that Ace Doubles went out of production, I have no memory of ever seeing a new Ace Double for sale.  In my world, Ace Doubles have always been a slightly battered but beloved artifact of the used book store science fiction section, which provided my first introduction to talents such as Jack Vance, Avram Davidson, John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer, John Jakes, Brian M. Stableford and A. Bertram Chandler.

For science fiction fans looking for a comprehensive and entertaining overview of classic SF, the 22 year publication span of the Ace Double provides a fascinating resource that combines a wide range of authors and styles in a unique format that's affordable for collectors.  However, if you're even slightly obsessive compulsive, Ace Doubles will present you with an unexpected challenge: which author's name do you use to shelf them?

  - Sid

* I always feel bad when I see used William Gibson books for sale, I can't help but wonder if the previous owner has made other bad life decisions.

** This style of binding is often referred to mistakenly as dos-à-dos. Having passed along that bit of print industry trivia, let me reassure nervous readers that this will never ever come up in conversation, and as such there's no need to retain the information.

*** Wollheim, who passed away in 1990, is probably worth a posting all of his own as one of the more notable polarizing figures in the history of science fiction. Wollheim was responsible for the bootleg 1965 American publication of The Lord of the Rings - he seemed to have a bit of a predilection toward taking liberties with the work of other authors. On the other hand, DAW Books, which he started in 1971 after leaving Ace, remains a well respected and prolific publishing house.

Gnomic Statement XV.

 

Wait - Chiwetel is Mordo? Damn - I thought Mads was Mordo.

At least Wong is Wong. And it goes without saying that Cumberbatch is Strange.

  - Sid

Happy to swap recipes!

DEDICATED TO THE EVIL DR. SMITH.

One of my co-workers announced that he expects as many as 140 children to visit his home tonight for Hallowe'en. 

I replied, "Really? Wow. We find that the freezer's full after just five or six - what do you do with the others?"

- Sid