World Building.

Although The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been available since the end of 2011, I didn't bother picking up a copy of the game until the end of last year*.  And even then, I didn't start playing it right away - after all, I'd already played Fallout 3, which was also produced by the game developers at Bethesda, and as such I assumed it would just be a fantasy version of the same game.

Which is in many ways correct, but in saying that I do an enormous injustice to Skyrim and the unique, detailed environment that it offers to its players.  Fallout 3's blasted nuclear landscape was impressive, but Skyrim is astonishing in its evocation of the real world.

Driftwood, fallen hollow trees that have started to rot and grow moss, flickering torches, stumps from cutting timber, cloudy days, skiffs of dry snow blowing off the cobbled roads, textured slabs of stone in a city square, the Northern Lights flaring against the night sky, the shadow of a circling hawk rippling over the ground below, ferns at the side of the roadway, that peculiar greyish colour that snow gets when it's been trodden down into a path, the white noise of a waterfall as you pass by, the glint of light on the rippling surface of a lake, tattered banners fluttering against stone columns, grass swaying in the wind, worn grey logs in a makeshift bridge, curtains of rain sweeping across the heather, and on and on and on.

I did over 250 screen grabs for this posting - at which point I told myself to settle down - but that number is indicative of the sheer variety of the world that the game designers have created.  The template I use for this blog doesn't support galleries or tables, so I built something in HTML that would let me post some kind of representative sample of those hundreds of images in an attempt to illustrate just how amazing and varied the environment actually is.

If you take the time to click on any of the thumbnails for the full size image, remember that these views of the Nordic province of Skyrim are all taken from within the game as I played it - this is the actual environment that the player experiences as they battle dragons and complete quests in the process of discovering their destiny as one of the Dovahkiin - the Dragonborn. My character** has walked all these paths, climbed these hills, crossed these rivers, entered these houses.

I have to admit that it's not perfect. Skyrim spans hundreds of virtual miles, and when you're filling that much territory, something has to give or else players would need the sort of computing power that the Enterprise uses for the holodeck just in order to get the game to run. A close look at the trees and stones reveals that they're actually not that detailed, and there's apparently some Nord equivalent of IKEA™ that supplies furniture in bulk to the inhabitants of Skyrim, based on the similarities of beds and tables and chairs and so on. 

But ultimately, none of that matters when you're playing the game - it's a seamless, incredible illusion.

Of course, when you have that much going on in a program, mistakes do happen, as per my discovery of the rear half of a horse sticking out of the battlements of a captured fort.  At least I hope it's a mistake - either that or the game is making a very pointed comment about my gameplay.

Steam™, the online game hosting and management system from Valve which has changed the face of desktop gaming since its introduction in 2002, informs me that so far I've spent 99 hours wandering the varied landscape of Skyrim.  When you think about it, that's an impressive endorsement of the value of the game.  Skyrim cost me $29.99, which is more or less twice the cost of a two-hour 3-D movie, and it's provided me with almost 100 hours of entertainment - and I'm not finished. That's a pretty good return on investment for thirty bucks.

- Sid

*If you want to buy a computer game at half-price, all you have to do is wait about six months.  Not only do you save money, but other people get to test it, deal with the bugs, and let you know whether or not it's actually worth buying.

** My character is named Yendis, which has about the right sound for a fantasy game, and has been a convenient go-to for my fantasy alter egos since I was about ten.

P.S. Oh, and this is Lydia.

Lydia was assigned to me as a housecarl by the Jarl of Whiterun near the start of the game, and although I've had numerous chances to change companions over the course of events, I've developed a certain affections for Lydia, or Lyds, as I call her.

On one hand, Lyds has saved my life on innumerable occasions; on the other hand, if you're looking for someone to jump in front of you at the exact moment that you fire an arrow, charge ahead and attack a giant when you've decided to take the long way round and avoid a fight, or just stand in a doorway and keep you from getting out of a tent for ten minutes while you try to figure out how to get her to move, Lyds is your girl.

Tidbits V.

Notice that I didn't say "childhood".

I would be embarrassed to admit how much of my life has been spent thinking like this.


Because, really, when I think of doing dishes or selfish financial domination...
The people who come up with merchandising tie-ins will apparently do anything for a buck, but honestly, is there no self-awareness in the process?  Apparently not - or else why would it be possible to buy Wonder Woman aprons or Doctor Who Monopoly™?

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!" 

The start of 2014 saw the first intergalactic war: nobody won.  Or maybe everybody lost.

EVE Online is a massively multi-player game of interstellar intrigue and conquest set 21,000 years in the future, and a recent conflict demonstrated just how massively multi-player it really is.  Close to half a million people play EVE, approximately 4,000 of whom were involved in January's epic 14-hour fight for control of the strategic B-R5RB system.  Estimates of the real-world cost of the game vary, with some sources claiming that the battle cost a collective $500,000 loss to the combatants, with estimated costs of between $3,000 and $3,500 for each of the hundreds of Titan-class starships which were destroyed in the encounter, not to mention the countless smaller ships which fell prey to the missiles and energy beams of their opponents.

Can you imagine investing $3,500 into the creation of a virtual starship and then watching it turn into a slowly expanding cloud of pixelated parts in a battle for a star system that doesn't exist?

- Sid

The Curse of the Weregeek.

One of my jobs at work is to lay out the company’s weekly newsletter, which involves a certain amount of back-and-forth with my co-worker Terry, who is more or less the editor (I say “more or less” because he’s also sort of reporter, publisher, and paperboy – it’s complicated.)

This morning we were debating the sequence of two stories for the Bulletin, and although I didn’t agree with his position, I said, “Well, ultimately, this is your decision.  After all, that’s why we put you in charge of the Daily Planet.”

“Absolutely!” he replied, and pounded his fist on the table.  “I want pictures of Spider-Man, and I want them now.”

Sigh.

“Actually, that would be the Daily Bugle.  The Daily Planet is Clark Kent, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olson – you know, Superman?  However, that was an acceptable imitation of J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson Junior.”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“Were you aware that J. Jonah Jameson the Third, J. Jonah Jameson Junior’s son, you know, the astronaut, actually I think his name was John Jameson, became a werewolf after he came back from his trip to the Moon?  There was this alien gem he found on the Moon, lots of alien gems in Marvel Comics for some reason.

"Of course he fought Spider-Man, his father found out and was all embarrassed at having a son with meta-abilities*, but he kept attacking his father when he was a wolf, odd bit of psychology there, and ultimately he went to another dimension where he was a werewolf all the time and it turned out he was actually a god.  He had his own comic for a while**, drawn by George Perez if memory serves, back in the late 70s.”

A brief silence followed.

“Sorry about that, I actually know all this stuff.”

“You know I’m going to have to Google all of that now, or at least the parts I remember.”

Sorry, Terry.  Sometimes I forget that the whole reason I started blogging was to avoid boring people in person.

- Sid

* This is a politically correct euphemism for “super powers”.

** Research revealed this to be incorrect – Man-Wolf did not have his own comic, but he did an extended run in Marvel Premiere, which was a showcase publication that featured a variety of interesting one or two-off pilot projects like Man-Wolf, the 3-D Man, Woodgod, Adam Warlock – Adam Warlock was a great character, although really not at all the standard superhero type, and Jim Starlin did some fabulous work with him when the character had his own comic.  Jim Starlin created Thanos as well, there’s a really brief shot of Thanos at the end of the Avengers movie, with an inside joke about courting Death, because Thanos was in love with Death, the actual personification of Death, who I did not expect to be female, but surprisingly Thanos isn’t in the next Avengers movie, the villain is Ultron, which is odd because there’s been a lot of foreshadowing of the Thanos story line, including a shot of the Infinity Gauntlet in the treasure room in Asgard in the first Thor movie, and a post-credit scene in the second Thor movie featuring the Collector as played by Benecio del Toro, so maybe they’re going to switch that to a Thor sequel, although really, the Infinity Gauntlet sequence was an Avengers storyline, even if it did pull in Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four …

...sorry, doing it again...

"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Today we celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Martian rover Opportunity.  Although Curiousity tends to get more press, Opportunity has been steadfastly sending back data from Mars since its landing near Yellowknife Bay on Gale Crater in 2004 - an astonishing record for a probe that was expected to last about 90 days.

Dusty, battered, and starting to suffer a bit from senility due to physical errors in its memory array, it's difficult to avoid anthropomorphizing the little fellow - one pictures a sort of Wall-E fascination with the minutiae of the Martian landscape*, or the kind of wistful dedication shown by the drones in Silent Running, faithful to the wishes of a distant master.  

The ten year landmark offers an interesting opportunity (no pun intended) for NASA's long-term representative on Mars.  According to Canadian law, after ten years the principle of adverse possession - more commonly known as squatter's rights - takes effect, allowing the inhabitant of a piece of property to claim ownership under the right circumstances.  International space law forbids any sovereign nation to make such a claim, but there is no mention of individuals, electronic or otherwise, claiming a planet for themselves.

Personally, I rather like the idea of an American probe declaring independence and claiming Mars on behalf of itself and its fellow cybernetic explorers.  Hopefully the United States government would support the decision - I think it would be mean-spirited of them to deny Opportunity the same chance for self-determination that their ancestors fought for in 1776.

- Sid

* If I was programming the AI for an extraterrestrial probe, I would want to somehow imbue it with the same combination of happiness, excitement, interest and respect that I feel whenever I travel to a foreign country.

"Response: like iPhones, but without the touch screen."

I’ve been casually re-reading ’Salem’s Lot on my iPhone as a fill-in text until I upload some new books, and, as always, it’s a pleasure to watch a professional at work.  In the follow-up to Carrie, his first published novel, Stephen King clearly demonstrates that his great strength is not necessarily his ability to create horror, but the manner with which he evokes the minutiae of day-to-day existence.  Much of his work combines these skills, contrasting sometimes brutally frank depictions of everyday life with the horrors under the bed to make the latter all the more chilling.*

However, as I read through King's gripping story of vampires in small-town Maine, I began to have a sort of subconscious discomfort that had nothing to do with things that go bump in the night.  Finally I realized that, at some undefined point in time, books like ’Salem’s Lot that I had originally read in the 70s had become historical fiction.

The majority of the characters in Salem’s Lot were born in the 1940s and 50s.  The story makes reference to all kinds of anachronistic concepts:  party lines**, peace marches, typewriters, storm windows, and the option of owning a television set without a colour screen. There are no cell phones.  There are no computers.

The joke is that in a less focused narrative, the story wouldn’t seem as outdated – it’s the extreme degree of detail with which King sets his scenes that makes the dated timeline so obvious.

It's interesting to think that contemporary mainstream fiction will eventually suffer a similar fate.  Imagine 50 years from now, when some youthful reader looks up from his virtual holo-text and says, "Weblink, inquiry - what is a 'blackberry'?"

- Sid

* When you think about it, some of Stephen King's most popular work isn't part of the horror genre at all.  Look at the success of his non-horror stories such as The Body or Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (which you may be more familiar with under their titles of their movie adaptations: Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption).  

** For the younger readers in the audience, party lines have nothing to do with queuing up for nightclubs - a party line is a shared phone system where different combinations of long and short rings indicate who should pick up their phone to take a call.

Actually, I do feel a little desolated.

Gandalf looked at him. "My dear Bilbo!" he said. "Something is the matter with you! You are not the hobbit that you were."

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

The Desolation of Smaug, the second installment in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit, offers a good solid hour of entertainment to the moviegoing public – unfortunately, it’s 161 minutes long.  Apparently it was decided mid-production to go from two movies to three, and this film clearly shows the penalty that they had to pay to achieve that goal.

I'm more than willing to accept that for people unfamiliar with the original story, The Desolation of Smaug may be a wonderful movie.  Peter Jackson certainly knows how to frame a story visually, the special effects are impeccable, Smaug the Dragon is very well done, and Martin Freeman continues to perfectly personify Bilbo Baggins, the diffidently brave hobbit hero.  In the original Tolkien story, Thorin Oakenshield is the only dwarf that really stood out to me as a character, but in the movie adaptation each of Thorin's companions has been given a distinctive look and personality.

However, to my critical eye, there were just too many scenes in the movie that felt stretched out longer than they should have been, like the dwarves’ escape from the elves of Mirkwood via barrel. Rather like the escape from the goblins in the first movie, it went on just a little bit too long - in fact, it was strongly reminiscent of that scene in terms of pacing, direction, and improbable physics, and like that scene, could have been cut in half after it had made its point in terms of plot and visual impact.

On top of that, there are a lot of elements in the script that were created out of whole cloth for the film.  Okay, fine, let's add Legolas to the movie - he's not in the original book, but he could have been, he is quite correctly identified as the son of Thranduil, king of the elves of Mirkwood, so it's not out of the question as retroactive continuity goes.

The addition of Tauriel, the female head of the Mirkwood guard?  The forbidden relationship between her and Legolas, and her flirtation with Kili the dwarf?  (And his near-fatal leg wound?)  The whole raft (no pun intended) of confusing subplots involving Bard of Laketown?  The marauding orcs? The lengthy hide-and-seek with Smaug in the halls of Erebor?* There were just too many things that extended the running time of the movie without really doing anything to advance the story.

There may be worse ahead of us. I checked the page count for the section of The Hobbit which makes up the script for The Desolation of Smaug, and although it took care of an acceptable 118 pages of action, it still felt padded out.  The bad news is that it leaves about 52 pages for the final film in the trilogy.  If it felt like the story was spread too thin in this film, that final 52 pages is going to go on for a long, long time in the final segment of The Hobbit.

However, Hollywood has done worse things – after all, Total Recall is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick that’s only 17 pages in length.  Compared to that, 52 pages looks like plenty of raw material for two and a half hours of potential popcorn sales.

- Sid

* I know what you're thinking, Dorothy, but these are NOT spoilers, the revised plot line is common knowledge on the Internet.

  

Time Debt II: Repeat As Necessary.

There's a lot of cheating in science fiction.  Warp drive (or any form of faster-than-light space travel) is cheating, but it's cheating that allows planets in different solar systems to exist in some kind of simultaneous time frame, and as a result to have a Federation of Planets or some similar polity. The alternative would not be a society as we have now, but more like a chess game played by mail - not impossible, but requiring a lot of patience on both sides.

To illustrate the realities of the problem, let us perform an experiment in alternative history.  Let's pretend that the United States government, flushed with hubris thanks to the success of the moon missions, decides to send a mission to Alpha Centauri in 1970.  Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years away, but let's say that state of the art technology will require a full decade to complete the trip.

Exactly what's involved in getting the colonists there in one piece is irrelevant - really good suspended animation, or a big ship loaded with all the Tang™ and TV dinners that anyone could want, along with an awfully efficient recycling system.  Whatever it takes, NASA loads the ship up with a thousand of the best and the brightest of both sexes, along with a full quota of axes and fish hooks - well, chainsaws and drilling rigs, more likely - wishes them Godspeed, and sends them on their way. (Hopefully they'd actually send two or three ships - one ship seems like an awfully isolated basket for all those eggs, let's get a little redundancy going.)

Against all expectations from movies and television, everything goes flawlessly, and a thousand colonists land on Alpha Centauri Prime, cleverly name it New Earth*, and set up camp. They wait a few years to make sure that their beachhead on alien soil is going to thrive, then send the ships back to earth with the good news, along with a few tons of whatever resources seem appropriate for the purposes of trade (or debt reduction, depending on how the paperwork is set up), and a few people who have inevitably changed their minds about the whole colonial thing.

The ships make their triumphant return, and another thousand people jump on board. Well...maybe not right away.  After all, science has had 25 years to march forward, and this is where things get interesting.

Going from 1970 to 1995 represents a huge leap in technology. Just look at the lifestyle of the average consumer: the jump from record albums to CDs, VHS to DVD, the introduction of microwave ovens, cell phones, and so on - not to mention computing technology!

So we sensibly take a few years to retrofit the spaceships with computers and DVD players, fill the freezers with people or Hungry Man Dinners™, based on whichever approach you picked originally, then send the ships on their way again.  Ten years later the little fleet arrives and drops what is essentially a technology bomb on the nascent colony.

Repeat the process, and the next round trip provides the colony with MP3s**, iPads, LED screens, 64 bit computing, the Internet, and the complete Harry Potter series, both in book and movie form - or more accurately, as e-books and MP4 files. 

This is just a 20 year round trip. In my previous post on this topic, the colonies had a 150 year circuit - what possible continuity of technology or culture could survive that kind of barrier?  The same problem applies to whatever raw resources the colony is dutifully returning to the mother world.

"Hi, here's a spaceship full of crude oil, right on time." 
"Of what?  Gosh, no, ever since we switched to molecular valence fields, we don't use oil anymore."
"But what about gas?"
"About what - oh, GASOLINE! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

However, there is a partial solution to this problem. If you start building more ships until you can launch one every six months or three months, you can create a continuum of communication, and start to get something that looks more like a unified society, with raw supplies going one way, and technology going in the other.  I don't think the two groups ever end up at the same level, but when it comes right down to it, it probably doesn't matter.

And then, if you want to turn this into the plot for a book, one day the ships stop coming...

- Sid

* SF author Larry Niven has one group of interplanetary colonists name their new home We Made It.  I think I prefer that approach over the whole "New Whatever" thing.

** Admittedly, this is based on the assumption that the colony isn't making its own new inventions, but somehow I think that if you were busy carving cities out of an alien wilderness, you probably wouldn't be wondering about how to convert your Beatles albums into some kind of digital format.   

Time Debt I: The Charge of the Light Brigade.

I just finished reading The One-Eyed Man, by L. E. Modessit.  It's a hard SF* concept novel that unfortunately never quite captured my interest.  I've had this problem with some of Modessit's writing before - Modessit writes well, but sometimes his characters seem to be driven by motivations that are never quite clear to me, for whatever reason.

In addition, there was a fundamental aspect of the plot which just didn't make sense to me.  The protagonist is an ecologist who has just undergone a bad divorce, in which both his wife and his daughter have done their best to strip him of all his money and possessions.  As such, he leaps at the opportunity to undertake a lucrative government contract to investigate possible ecological misbehaviour by colonists on another planet.

The contract is even more appealing to the ecologist because the round trip will involve a time debt of 150 years. The flight to the colony will only take a month of ship time, but 75 years will pass in the sidereal universe, and when he finally returns after another 75 years of time warp, both his ex-wife and daughter will be long dead.

Okay, wait - 150 years?  What possible authority could a government exert over a colony whose conduct would take 225 years to punish?  (150 years for someone to find out what the colony is doing and return with the news, and another 75 years to send a message back saying "Bad colonists!  No cookie!").

For that matter, wouldn't 225 years be more than enough time to perpetuate an irreversible ecological catastrophe?  As an example, imagine applying the same timeline to something like the American Revolution of 1776. The message from Great Britain telling everyone to just settle down a bit and not do anything rash would have arrived in 2001.

Or maybe Imperial Britain would have sent an expeditionary force when they received the news in 1926 - not sure that squadrons of post-WWI British cavalry would do well against Abrams Main Battle Tanks and Apache helicopters.

- Sid

* "Hard" science fiction relies heavily on scientific concepts.  It's not called that because it's especially difficult, although some of it isn't all that easy, either.  

 

Okay, we've all thought about it at least once.

And now, a picture of Princess Leia choking Captain Kirk.  Here's hoping that you all enjoyed the last day of 2013 as much as Carrie Fisher did.

- Sid

P.S.  My god, it's like some kind of war between stars...you could call it a "Stars War"...

The Time of the Doctor.

Over the last few years, I've developed a seasonal tradition of watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Thanks to the 50th anniversary episode last month, it's been a bit Who heavy here in terms of postings, so I'll be brief about today's episode, which marked Matt Smith's final appearance as the Doctor.

What a stupid, stupid episode. 

Let me know if you have any questions.

- Sid

It was either this or the "Beginning To Look A Lot Like Fishmen" video*.

Hey, everyone, merry Christmas!  Having spent some time catching up on overdue blog postings (and thereby unintentionally irritating my sister, who would prefer that I not save them up - sorry, Dorothy) I thought I should post something suited to the holiday season.  It's not exactly a Christmas carol, but it's at least a seasonal song - sort of.

And again, a merry Christmas to one and all.

- Sid

P.S. My god, have you ever looked at Captain Picard's tea?  I like strong tea, but the liquid in his cup is jet black - it looks like he's drinking Guinness, for heaven's sake, not Earl Grey! How long does the replicator brew this stuff for?

* A very lyrically accurate but badly lip-synced musical version of H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth".

Dark rites.

It was the Yuletide, that men call Christmas though they know in their hearts it is older than Bethlehem and Babylon, older than Memphis and mankind. It was the Yuletide, and I had come at last to the ancient sea town where my people had dwelt and kept festival in the elder time when festival was forbidden; where also they had commanded their sons to keep festival once every century, that the memory of primal secrets might not be forgotten.

H.P. Lovecraft, The Festival

I would be remiss were I not to recognize my co-worker Christi, worshipper of dark gods, fan of unhallowed music, and drinker of dead frogs, for her contribution to my holiday good cheer in the form of a handmade Elder Gods bookmark.

Interestingly, she randomly found the pattern online, and was unaware that the images are taken from the French Lovecraft-influenced comic strip, Goomi's Unspeakable Vault (Of Doom) written and drawn by French artist Francois Launet.

I've previously cited M. Launet's strip regarding the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  As per that posting, if you're not familiar with the more esoteric* details of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, perhaps another comic strip would be more to your taste.

Regardless of its origins, the bookmark is a wonderful addition to my Geekmas haul - I hope you have a merry Ph'nglui and a happy Fhtagn, Christi!

- Sid

* Ha ha, trick question, all the details of the Cthulhu Mythos are more esoteric.

Tea As Regularly Determined In Strength.

From:  Chelsey
To:  Sid
I hope you liked the mug. I went on your like of tea and some side commentary about Dr Who. I asked a few people who said “Go with Star Trek” but felt that may be a bit out of my realm of knowledge. =)

Chelsey

With the holiday season upon us, my department at work once again conducted its annual Christmas pot luck luncheon and Secret Santa gift exchange.  Now, previously the anonymous Saint Nicks of my workplace have been thoughtful enough to show a strong sympathy regarding my area of interest - in other words, I've gotten a well-considered selection of geek-appropriate gifts, ranging from science fiction Christmas decorations to technological marvels from Wallace and Gromit.

This year was no exception - I received a marvellous Doctor Who TARDIS mug, complete with a small container of English Afternoon Tea (presumably to distinguish it from English Breakfast Tea.)  The mug is more than adequately large - I like a large tea mug - and the police box imitation is made complete by the addition of a removable lid.

I'm actually a little reluctant to actually use it as a mug, in case something unfortunate happens during the dish washing process.  On the other hand, it would certainly be pleasant to be sipping a mug of TARDIS tea during the Doctor Who Christmas episode this year, as Matt Smith performs his final turn as the Doctor.  I suppose that time will tell (so to speak).

- Sid

P.S. As you might gather from Chelsey's e-mail, my Secret Santa experienced fail on the "secret" part.  Chelsey is temping as an admin assistant with my department right now, and obviously suffers from the ongoing Star Trek curse which has afflicted so many of the people involved with that role. 

Is this really worth risking the life of your hamster?

With the holiday season fast approaching, I was browsing around on Amazon.ca for possible gifts, and decided that I might buy a copy of The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross for a friend of mine.  When I entered "atrocity archives" into the Amazon search engine, I was astonished to find that in addition to two options for the novel I was looking for, there was a short list of what I can only consider to be book spam:   

• 100 Unexpected Statements about the Atrocity Archives: A Laundry Files Novel
• 100 Statements About "The Atrocity Archives: A Laundry Files Novel" that Almost Killed My Hamster 
  
• 100 Provocative Statements About "The Atrocity Archives: A Laundry Files Novel"

and so on.

Just out of curiousity, I clicked on a couple of the links for more information.  Sadly, there was no explanation of how literary criticism might kill one's hamster, but the "100 Unexpected Statements" page was a little more forthcoming:

In this book, we have hand-picked the most sophisticated, unanticipated, absorbing (if not at times crackpot!), original and musing book reviews of "The Atrocity Archives: A Laundry Files Novel". Don't say we didn't warn you: these reviews are known to shock with their unconventionality or intimacy. Some may be startled by their biting sincerity; others may be spellbound by their unbridled flights of fantasy. Don't buy this book if: 1. You don't have nerves of steel. 2. You expect to get pregnant in the next five minutes. 3. You've heard it all.

Okay - a 44 page collection of book reviews by other people on sale for $10.28?  Seriously?  Who in their right mind would buy one of these things, and why in the world does Amazon provide these clowns with a venue in which to sell them? 

Regardless, I harbour no ill-will towards our friends of the animal kingdom.  I would like to express my best wishes to the hamster, and I hope that he or she is doing well after their near-death experience.

- Sid

Now that I think about it, I could have gone to Portland.

So... all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will - where do you want to start? 

The Doctor, The Eleventh Hour.

Seattle?  I picked Seattle?  I mean, Seattle is nice and everything, how could I not like a city with something called a Space Needle, but that was the extent of my desires?

- Sid

"Big, weird questions."

 

Science fiction asks big, weird questions.
These questions involve incredible if not impossible things: futuristic technology, aliens, giants monsters, intelligent robots, people with amazing powers, and more. 

This exhibition explores a few of these big “what if” questions. For each, we present a variety of works by writers, filmmakers, artists and other creators who answer them. Their answers can be equally big and weird, also starting, serious, astounding and funny. 

Because anything is possible in science fiction, there are an infinite number of answers to these questions. 

As you encounter the questions, ask yourself what answers you would give. 

And a last question: who cares? What do stories about other worlds have to do with us? The fact is, all the bizarre stuff in science fiction is a metaphor for real stuff. In other words, science fiction warps reality in order to reveal the truth about it. 

Brooks Peck, Curator, Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame.

I recently paid a visit to Seattle - it's been a few years since I've been down, and as such I decided that a quick trip across the border was long overdue.  I quite like Seattle:  I like the general feel of the city, the architecture is interesting, I enjoy the Pike Place Market, and, of course, it's impossible for me to visit Seattle without making a stop at the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and Museum, located at the Seattle Centre in the distinctive EMP building designed by architect Frank Gehrey.

It would have been quite easy for the museum to be nothing more than a catalogue of leftover movie props, but the curators have certainly done their best to offer the public a thoughtful, balanced range of representation that deals with both the literary and visual aspects of the genre.  They've been well supported in this by the wide range of items that have been donated or loaned to the museum by the science fiction and fantasy community over the years.

For example, whereas the current Fantasy exhibition includes costumes and props from films such as The Wizard of Oz, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Snow White and the Huntsman, it also offers the original manuscript for Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, along with her notes for the development of the Earthsea series, and samples from the manuscript for The Lord of the Rings and a handwritten chronology created by Tolkien as a guide when he was working on the trilogy.  It also features original illustrations by Pauline Baynes, whose paintings and drawings perfectly defined the world of C. S. Lewis' Narnia.

The individuals involved in presenting the exhibits are obviously creative and innovative people.  The video narrative that accompanies the Fantasy exhibition is shown on two overhead globular screens - the eyes of a gigantic inverted dragonfly.  Interactivity is provided by a world-building tool that allows users the opportunity to draft maps of their own fantasy worlds and add them to the catalogue of previous creations by other visitors.

The companion display for the Icons of Science Fiction is based around an exploration of the what-if questions that have always represented the best of the genre.  What if we could explore the universe?  What if you had super powers?  What if you were going to live the rest of your life in space?

Once again, where it would be easy to simply examine these questions solely based on examples from movies and television, the Icons exhibit cites references from novels and comic books as well, providing a well-rounded and thought-provoking look at the building blocks of science fiction.

Originally the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame was its own little piece of the action, and frankly I miss the original entrance with its cheesy alien spaceship.  They were amalgamated with the Experience Music Project in 2011, and I'm not sure that the SF portion has benefited from the change - I seem to recall the original exhibition as being larger and more elaborate than the current facility, and it definitely featured a more prestigious array of exhibits.

Past glories aside, I still enjoyed my visit to the museum.  As I've already said, it's obvious that the people behind the scenes are making every effort to go past the veneer of dragons and robots to look at the ideas behind fantasy and science fiction, and in my opinion, successfully accomplishing that goal.

The funny thing is that I'm not sure I can recommend the Science Fiction Museum to people who aren't already fans in some way. Think about it:  would you seriously recommend that someone visit the Louvre in Paris if they'd never heard of Leonardo da Vinci or the Mona Lisa?

- Sid

"Attack ships on fire..."

 

I have to admit to one distinct disappointment with the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who - I was underwhelmed by the mundanity of the weapons used by the Time Lords in their final struggle with the Daleks.

During the scenes showing the battle for Arcadia, as the Daleks strafe the ruined city and rumble through its shattered streets, the Gallifreyan soldiers seem to be fighting them with what are admittedly advanced weapons of some sort - lasers, plasma rifles, some form of energy weapon - but, when it comes right down to it, nothing extraordinary, nothing startling.

I've discussed the possibilities of a time war in the past, but let's apply some of those ideas to the milieu of Doctor Who.  Imagine a fleet of TARDISes*, freed from the humble illusion that cloaks the Doctor's home: gigantic constructs, armed and armoured for an ultimate war, powered by the energy of the universe itself and equipped with weapons created by a race that has mastered time and space, flickering in and out of existence as they strike in an instant and then vanish back into the time stream. Imagine a soldier wielding the Gauntlets of Rassilon, annihilating their foes with a gesture, or resurrecting fallen comrades with a touch of the hand.**

Logically, the Time Lords don't even need to restrict themselves to their own inventions - after all, they can choose from an arsenal which encompasses the entire span of history, find a shield against any assault within the blink of an eye, and discover an antithesis to any defense raised by their enemy.  When you consider all of the possibilities open to time travellers, it's surprising that the Daleks appear to be winning.

Which, come to think of it, is a damn good question.  Why are the Daleks winning? 

- Sid

* TARDISI?

** Okay, you got me.  They never definitively said that the Resurrection Gloves from Torchwood were in any way connected to the Gauntlet of Rassilon, but they do look surprisingly similar.

What am I missing here?

 One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn't belong,

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

Sesame Street

Another rainy Saturday afternoon in Vancouver, a good day to stay inside and perhaps watch some television, do a little channel hopping.

Let's see...what do we have?  Channel 32 appears to be in the middle of showing all of the Star Wars prequels, with Attack of the Clones currently up; there's The Mummy Returns, not as good as the first Brenda Fraser/Rachel Weisz teamup, but okay; History is showing the over-the-top apocalyptic extravaganza 2012, TCM has The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, one of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion masterpieces, which also features Doctor Who alumnus Tom Baker; Tomb Raider is on channel 47 for the Angelina Jolie fans in the audience - and what is Space showing?

The A-Team.  Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copley, Quinton Jackson.  Based on the TV series of the same name.

Seriously, people, where does this fit in your programming mandate?  Right beside shark movies?  SHOW SOME SCIENCE FICTION, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE.

Wait a minute, though - for that matter, why in the world is the History Channel showing 2012?

- Sid

Skatethulhu?

My co-worker has unexpectedly accessorized her Cthulhu idol...isn't this a bit hipster for an Elder God?

Or maybe Great Cthulhu picked it up from Bart Simpson...

- Sid