Blackfrost.

Hinterland, the Vancouver-based indie game developers behind the survival masterpiece The Long Dark, recently announced their next game: Blackfrost, a sequel to the original game which takes place a year after the original geomagnetic event that crippled electrical devices and brought a threatening new aurora to the skies.

 

The sequel is set in the northern industrial town of Harmont, and will offer a new set of survival challenges and opportunities.  There are some fascinating hints as to what might take place in the game -  life in an urban environment, the prospect of being able to ride a horse, and most of all the possibility of a functioning nuclear reactor.  The Contamination Zone map in the original Long Dark introduced a variety of dangers related to industrial waste, I can only imagine what a radioactive power source might bring to the table.  There are also some more practical upgrades, such as the scoped rifle in one of the sample screens - that would certainly provide some much needed distance in dealing with predators. (There are also some images featuring a hockey stick, which isn't something that was on my wish list but which will certainly blend in well with the general Canadian feel of the environment.)

The concept artwork and trailer animation show an obvious connection to the look and feel of the original game, but it also shows how much the creative team has learned over the last ten years as they've fine-tuned the game and added onto the gaming experience. 

Although I'm not sure whether it would be a part of survival versus narrative gameplay, the new game will add NPCs to the mix, which, if added to the Survival mode, would certainly give more depth to the story.  There will also be a new co-op feature, an option that would enormously enhance the gaming experience: imagine having allies when being attacked by a pack of timberwolves!  (Hopefully there won't be a PvP option, that would somehow seem to be inappropriate for the survival environment.)  On the other hand, they could add the option of playing as an escaped prisoner from Blackrock Prison - which could well be a feature, it sounds as if there will also be enhanced options in terms of customizing your survival character in terms of skills and traits.

Blackfrost is scheduled to be available in Early Access mode sometime in 2026.  As with the development process for The Long Dark, Hinterland will be involving its gaming community as early as possible - I've already added the Early Access version to my wish list on Steam.

And now we wait.  2026 feels like a long way away, but fortunately, anyone who plays The Long Dark understands patience.

- Sid

Ho ho, ha ha: Geekmas 2024

It's been a couple of years since I've done a Geekmas posting, due to the temporary blog hiatus, but I've received some subtle (and not-so-subtle) suggestions that a little help in the area of holiday seasonal shopping would be in order, now that we're back in production - so here are some hopefully helpful options for Christmas gifts.

Gaming

A Steam™ gift card of whatever denomination seems appropriate would certainly be appreciated - as far as I know, they're now available on those gift card mega-displays that you can find at London Drugs or Best Buy.*  It's certainly something I would use, a reluctance to pay full price is the only thing that's kept me from buying Starfield from Bethesda, or Space Marine II, the popular sequel to Relic Entertainment's Warhammer 40K third-person shooter Space Marine from 2011.

 

Books

 

Initially, I wasn't sure what to suggest for books, but once I started looking, I was surprised how easily I found six options. Sadly, it's all hardcovers or trade paperbacks, both of which seem a bit spendy, but that's the way the market has gone, mass market paperbacks are getting harder to find. (At least on the science fiction and fantasy shelves, I can't speak for the mystery or romance marketplaces). That being said, at the moment they're all under $25 on Amazon.ca, which is fairly standard pricing these days.

The first two options are both posthumous offerings from Terry Pratchett:  A Stroke of the Pen is a collection of short fiction by Pratchett written for newspapers in the 1970s and 80s, and A Slip of the Keyboard is a collection of his non-fiction.  I'm pleased to have the opportunity to read some more of Pratchetts's writing, but it does feel a bit like a record label releasing long-buried demo tapes, it's never too late to make a buck off an artist.** 

Sharps and the first volume of The Two of Swords come to us from the prolific pen of K. J. Parker, aka Tom Holt.  Parker's fantasy never fails to entertain, and either of these two books would be a welcome addition to my little library.  (Although, if I receive the first volume of The Two of Swords and it's enjoyable, that does open the door for two easy additions to next year's list...)

Finally, Arkady Martine's epic Teixcalaan space opera series: A Memory Called Empire, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2020, and its sequel, A Desolation Called Peace,which took the Best Novel Hugo in 2022.  Oddly enough, in a genre overwhelmed by trilogies, Martine explicitly stated in a 2021 Reddit AMA that there will not be a third book in the series, the two books stand alone as a duology.  (Although she also suggested that she has plans for more books set in the Teixcalaan universe, which may well feature some of the same characters, she is adamant that the story told in the two books ends there.)

I have to confess that I've already read both of these books as bootleg digital downloads, and they're brilliant:  creative, astonishingly original and beautifully well-written.  As such, I feel that Martine deserves the support of actually buying the paper editions of the texts - I feel that anyone who exhibits so much originality in a sometimes repetitive genre should get paid for it.

Although I've linked these books to Amazon Canada™, they may very well be available at your local bookstore should you prefer to do a little browsing, something which I can never manage comfortably on the Amazon web site.

 

T-shirts

And to wrap things up, two t-shirts options:  one for Star Wars, one for Star Trek.

I've mentioned the Millennium Falcon t-shirt in a previous Geekmas posting, but it's still in play: conveniently available on Amazon, dark grey and XL, please.

The options for licensed Star Trek merchandise is a little bit less to my taste, they have a tendency to make jokes rather than just represent.  Nonetheless, I was able to find a simple t-shirt for First Contact on Startrekshop.ca - shame that they don't have something similar for Generations.  Again, XL for sizing, for anyone who skipped over the previous suggestion.

If anyone decides to go rogue on the t-shirt front, please PLEASE use the above as guidelines for style.  There are a million science fiction and fantasy t-shirts for sale on the internet - I've got a pretty good collection, but they're all distinguished by being licensed products. I don't want to appear ungrateful, but if you buy me a t-shirt featuring, say, a kawaii interpretation of the crew of Serenity***, I will certainly thank you for your generosity, but sadly, I will be unlikely to wear it unless I'm painting the living room.

And, if this all seems just like too much work, plain old Amazon™ gift cards are the gift that keeps on giving. 

- Sid

Update

We happened to be in the local Indigo on Friday, and I took a quick look in the SF-Fantasy section to see if any of my book suggestions were in fact available.  The bad news is that only two of the books were on the shelves: A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, although it's possible that the Pratchett books could have been elsewhere.

The good news is that I added a couple of things to my shopping list.  Anything from Hugh Howey's Silo series would be a good option - I don't have any of them in my collection, so let's start with Wool (I assume that anyone who is actually buying me a Christmas gift can coordinate with the rest of the group to avoid duplication.)  I'm also long overdue to read Tamysn Muir's critically acclaimed Gideon the Ninth, which, coincidentally, lost out to A Memory Called Empire in the 2020 Hugo Best Novel vote.

- Sid

* Question: does one company handle all the gift card creation and sales, or did someone see a gap in the marketplace and put together a gift card rack that they sold to LD et al? 

** It's fortunate that Pratchett's daughter Rhianna is in charge of her father's intellectual properties, and has no intention of licensing any of his material to other writers, as with And Another Thing..., Eoin Colfer's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel, or the endless imitations of Robert E. Howard's Conan.  

*** Not a suggestion - or a challenge - but, as per my nephew Chris, you can find anything on the internet, it's like New York only bigger.

Iron Heart*.

Obadiah Stane: Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!

William Ginter Riva: Well, I'm sorry. I'm not Tony Stark.

Iron Man

During a recent workplace visit to our IT manager's office, I finally broke under the pressure after several surreptitious glances and said, "I'm sorry, but how is it that you have Tony Stark's original heart on your desk?"

After glancing over at the glowing arc reactor sitting peacefully on his desk extension, he gruffly replied, "Heavy late night drinking and easily accessible internet shopping."  Obviously a dangerous combination, but at least that explains why he also has not one but two Infinity Gauntlets on his credenza. 

- Sid

* Not to be confused with the Riri Williams character.

Reading Week 2024: Warning! Warning!

My wife's family has been vacationing in Palm Springs for basically her entire life, and it's always been an opportunity for them to take life easy: lie by the pool, drink margaritas, and go shopping.  I'm not a pool person, and tequila does not speak to me, but I'm at least able to tag along when my wife wants to tour the various retail opportunities in the Coachella Valley, and even buy something now and then.

One of the standard shopping destinations is the weekend Street Fair at the College of the Desert, a market which features a wide range of shopping options: clothing, fashion, hats, tech, art, food, groceries,  sunglasses and so on. Generally we just wander around and browse, but every now and then we do buy something, and yesterday, the purchase of the moment was socks - Lost In Space socks.

These are a surprisingly retro item, when you think about it. The original Lost In Space series that these socks are referencing ran from 1965 to 1968 - I can't speak to their history in syndication, but regardless, the audience from that era is getting smaller and smaller.  Admittedly, the series has been rebooted twice, one in the 1998 film version, and then as a television series again in 2018 (also for three seasons), but these socks are definitely an homage to the 1965 show: it's the original Robot and his patented catchphrases.

However, let's not forget that we're in Palm Springs, the place where kitsch comes to die - or at least, to retire and play golf.  I may be overthinking the whole thing: maybe I just need to wear them ironically, if that's a thing you can do with socks.

- Sid

November 6th, 2024.

- Sid

 

The Lonesome October.

To—
Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, H. P. Lovecraft, Ray Bradbury,
Robert Bloch, Albert Payson Terhune,
and the makers of a lot of old movies—
Thanks.

 Roger Zelazny, Dedication, A Night in the Lonesome October 

Perhaps it were best to take it day by day.

Snuff the Dog

I spent the month of October reading one book.

Well, I actually finished off four or five books, but I specifically set some time aside to read A Night In the Lonesome October, by science fiction and fantasy author Roger Zelazny. This was Zelazny's last book before his death in 1995, and apparently one of his top five favourite novels from his prolific writing career.

The book's chapters are simply the dates of the days of the month of October (along with an introduction), and as such, fans of the book have adopted the practice of reading the appropriate chapter on each day of the month.

The plot is simple: whenever the full moon falls upon October 31st, the wall between worlds grows thin, and:

 "...a number of the proper people are attracted to the proper place in the proper year on a night in the lonesome October when the moon shines full on Halloween and the way may be opened for the return of the Elder Gods to Earth, and of how some of these people would assist in the opening of the way for them while others would strive to keep the way closed."

The cast of characters (not all of whom are the proper people) is drawn from the standard genre dramatis personae, to the point where some of them go without names: the Count; the Good Doctor and his Experiment Man; the Great Detective, who spends an unexpected amount of time in drag; Morris and MacCab (standing in for Burke and Hare); a druid: a vicar who is very much not Anglican; a mad Russian; Lawrence Talbot, who knows a thing or two about the full moon; and Jack, who apparently has quite a sharp knife and no longer lives in London.  Some of these characters would seek to open the way for the Elder Gods, and some to close it, and so the plot proceeds, day by day.

The story is narrated by Jack's watchdog Snuff - or at least Snuff is a dog at the time of the story, there's a brief comment that Snuff prefers beings a dog to "what I was before he summoned me and gave me this job." Snuff enjoys an unlikely friendship with Graymalk the cat, companion and familiar to Crazy Jill the Witch.

 It's a pleasantly light read, full of little jokes and little references to the history of the genre of horror in text and film, all delivered with Zelazny's usual poetic style and effortless skill - honestly, I can't help but think that it must have been a lot of fun to write, no wonder it was a favourite of Zelazny's.  Suitable illustration is provided by Gahan Wilson, one of the premier weird artists of the 20th century.

And, as you'd expect, at the end of the story, which comes with a cleverly unexpected twist, Jack and Jill run down a hill - and Snuff comes tumbling after.

- Sid

Worldcon: "CONFIRM HUMANITY"

I was a bit surprised to see that the World Science Fiction Society Seattle Worldcon newsletter mailing list demands proof that the subscriber is human - or at least, not a robot.  Personally, I would be delighted to discover that some of my fellow attendees were either robots or aliens.

- Sid

*Come to think of it, I've actually failed this test at least once...

Hugo.

I'm going to the Hugos!

Well, technically speaking I'm attending Worldcon, the annual World Science Fiction Convention, which is taking place in Seattle from August 13th to 17th of 2025 - but in my mind, I'm going to the Hugo Awards.  

In the process of researching a previous posting on the trials and tribulations being suffered by the Hugo Awards, I happened to notice that the 2025 Worldcon host city was Seattle, which is just a hop, step and a jump away from Vancouver.  As such, I decided to do a bit of a feasibility study on attending - given that plane tickets wouldn't be a factor in expenses.  

As it turned out, there's a reduced membership price for new attendees, which brought the price down to something somewhat reasonable, and I decided to go for it.  In addition, Seattle last hosted Worldcon in 1961, the year I was born, so there's a certain symmetry in attending its return to the Emerald City. 

I'm actually a bit giddy about it - it's like being a lifelong fan of the cinema who is not only going to the Oscars, but gets to vote on the winners as well. 

I've talked about the Hugo Awards - and the eponymous Hugo himself, Hugo Gernsback - in previous postings, but I haven't gone into a lot of detail about the process.

Worldcon is the original science fiction convention - the mother of all conventions, if you will.*  The first Worldcon took place in July of 1939, but the Hugos weren't part of the event until 1953, becoming an annual awards event in 1955.  I was surprised to learn that the official title of the awards is the Science Fiction Achievement Awards, I never knew them as anything other than the Hugos** - presumably I wasn't alone in this, as the awards were officially renamed as the Hugos in 1993. 

The Hugo voting process is a little odd. In order to vote, you need to be a member of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS). But the WSFS doesn't really exist, it's just a mechanism for hosting Worldcons, and you become a member of the WSFS by buying a ticket to a Worldcon.

However, you don't have to attend to vote, and you can buy a cheaper non-attending membership which just lets you vote for the Hugo winners and choice of the hosting city two years hence. There's also a reduced price attending membership for new attendees, staff, and "individuals who would otherwise feel cost-constrained to attend the convention." In addition, if you buy your membership before January 31st, you also have the ability to make nominations for the awards. For anyone desiring to see a detailed breakdown of the process, I direct you to the Seattle Worldcon membership page for more information.

Suffice it to say that as a first time attendee who is very aware of the current exchange rate between USD and CAD, I opted for the reduced rate adult membership, which didn't seem to raise any red flags.

As a sign that the gods were smiling upon my trip, I also managed to find a downtown Seattle rental on VRBO that came in under a thousand dollars CAD for my six night stay - provided it's not a scam (it has ZERO reviews, never a good sign, but it's also a new listing) it's a great deal, not right in the back yard of the Seattle Convention Center but close enough to the Space Needle (and monorail) to make for a reasonable commute.

Note to self - pencil in a visit to the Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction at the MOPOP!

But wait - how does the Hugo awards ceremony work?  Is there a dinner?  If so, is it extra?  Do I need to wear a tux? Make a reservation?  Is it a cash bar? Fingers crossed for a robust FAQ...

But, for now, none of that matters - I'm going to the Hugos!

- Sid

* At this point, the shade of Sir Arthur C. Clarke appears to defend the first UK fan meeting, held in Leeds in 1937, in response to which American fans point to the 1936 Philadelphia fan meet-up with members of a New York group.  Regardless, Worldcon undeniably has the title of longest ongoing event, although there was a hiatus during World War II.  (And the 2020 event was done solely online due to COVID.)

**  Hey, trivia fans - apparently a fan named Bob Madle was the genius who suggested calling the new awards the Hugos.  Madle was also a founding member of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society, which hosted the 1939 Worldcon after the dissolution of the International Scientific Association by Donald A. Wollheim in 1937 following the collapse of the Science Fiction League, Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories-based group.  (When you start digging around on the Internet, you can end up doing some very deep dives...)

Flashback Friday.

It's been 15 years since I posted about the Voyage In Time website, which offered subscribers the opportunity to travel in time for a mere $18 investment (which, over time, would presumably grow to incalculable value and pay for the trip in a time machine).  

I happened to randomly revisit that posting today (mostly because I was looking for the Robert E. Howard post that came after it, and I wondered why I was asking people to pull on my leg in the preceding post) and I'm sorry to say that the Voyage In Time website is no longer active, and I was not able to find anything that seemed to be related after a search in Google™.

However, let's hope for the best.  I see by the screen grab that I did at the time that one Eugen Weingarten had purchased 10 time travel certificates 18 days earlier, suggesting someone who was willing to share his time travel experience with a reasonably wide circle of friends, relatives or both.  Eugen, if you somehow find this posting, please, PLEASE let us know if the site closed down after the successful development of time travel and a trip to the birth of the universe with you and nine other people!

We eagerly await your reply.

- Sid

Shrödinger's Bookstore.

The legacy of the pandemic shutdown has been surprisingly long-lived. More than a few stores that planned to temporarily shut down never re-opened, and more than a few also discovered that online sales and remote shopping were more lucrative options than they expected. 

And then there was Lawrence Books, a local used book store which closed their doors in March of 2020. When the veil began to lift in 2021, Lawrence failed to reopen, but there were no signs that the business had come to an end - signage remained in place, their sunfaded book display continued to decorate their windows, they just weren't open.  Like the cat in Shrödinger's famous mind experiment, the fate of the store was unknown.

As always, patience is its own reward.  Last week my wife Karli informed me that Lawrence Books had finally collapsed the quantum superposition by reopening*, albeit with a short three-day-a-week schedule, and I was finally able to pay them a visit this weekend.

Located at the corner of Dunbar and 41st,  Lawrence Books is very much an old school used book store: a maze of narrow aisles, unexpected nooks and dead ends, front stacked pine shelving**, and the unique smell of old paper in bulk.  It was obvious that the inventory had gone untouched for a while - when I found the Science Fiction section and started browsing, a few of the books were lightly stuck together.

I found a few things that were of interest - a few Ace Doubles in acceptable condition, a couple of replacement texts for my collection - but nothing extraordinary, nothing unique, which is really what every used book shopper hopes to stumble across. 

However, on my way to the till, I took a quick look at the minimal Fantasy selection and spotted a somewhat worn copy of the 1979 fantasy novel Urshurak, which I instantly added to my handful of purchases. It may not qualify as extraordinary, but it's a book that I've been aware of for a long time without ever having a chance to read it. 

Urshurak is one of those books that is famous more because of its back story than the novel itself. The concept was the brainchild of legendary genre artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, better known as the Brothers Hildebrandt.

As visual artists, the Brothers Hildebrandt came to Urshurak with a unique perspective.  Heavily influenced by Tolkien, they wanted to create their own version of Middle Earth, but based their story in art rather than text, creating a diverse and detailed portfolio showcasing the characters and key plot moments from their narrative.

When the project failed to attract any attention (or funding) as a live action film property, it was briefly promoted as an animated option, but ultimately ended up as an illustrated novel written in collaboration with author Jerry Nichols, with both coloured plates and black-and-white sketches of the original concept art integrated into the text.  I'm curious to finally take a look at the result - I don't think of Jerry Nichols as a well-known name in the science fiction and fantasy world, but there are a lot of authors out there, it's not hard to imagine that I could have just missed Mr. Nichols over time.

A final note to potential shoppers: the store's payment terminal was down when I went to pay for my books, which led to a quick game of find the banking machine (my personal pandemic holdover is that I no longer carry cash).  In spite of the sales person's information, there is not actually a cash machine at the nearby Save-On-Foods, and the machine at the Shell station across the street from Lawrence's took two attempts to accept my card - plan accordingly.

- Sid

* Well, actually she just told me that they were open again, I don't think Karli viewed it as a quantum physics situation.

** Why is it that so many used bookstores feature unfinished pine bookshelves? Is it purely a case of economy, or is there something about not having lacquer fumes near pulpwood paper that I don't know about?  

Movin' on up.

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

American sportscaster Vin Scully

In the past twelve years of posting to The Infinite Revolution, I've climbed up almost 8.5 million rungs in the global internet popularity ladder, moving from number 23,702,450 in September of 2012 to 15,213,405.  Yay me.

Interestingly, the number of active web sites has remained around 190 million, whereas the number of inactive sites has more than doubled, going from about 430 million to over 900 million.  It's easy to imagine digital avatars exploring the rotted remains of a website: cautiously climbing through corrupted JPEGs, scrutinizing the fragmented pieces of a database, shoring up the remnants of the HTML architecture - perhaps a suitable concept for a short story.

The most curious part of this numbers game is that according to the report, my global standing has gone down by over five million (granted, I don't know since when), but apparently I was briefly in the top 10 million.  Ah, sic transit gloria mundi...

- Sid

"It is an acquired taste..."

“More rancid yak butter in that?' 'Please,' said Lu-Tze, holding out his cup. ”

“It's the real stuff you got there, Ronnie,' he said, taking a sip. 'The butter we're getting these days, you wouldn't grease a cart with it.' 'It's the breed,' said Ronnie. 'I go and get this from the highland herds six hundred years ago.' 'Cheers,' said Lu-Tze, raising his cup.”

Terry Pratchett, The Thief of Time

"You can get a lot of things in Toronto, yak butter is not one of them."

Tasty Tours food guide Odile Chatelain

This year we're spending my birthday week in Toronto, and for our last day in the city, we did a tasting tour of Kensington Market's eclectic food scene*.  At one of our stops, we were presented with Tibetan black tea with salted yak butter, a beverage option that I would have been unaware of were it not for its semi-regular appearance in the late Terry Pratchett's Discworld fantasy novels. As such, I was probably more excited by the opportunity to sample yak butter tea than the rest of the tour.

How did it taste? Well, as our guide gently commented after surveying the room, it's an acquired taste. That being said, I found that if I treated it more as a broth than a tea, it wasn't that bad - although I couldn't tell you whether or not it was real yak butter.

- Sid

* As an example, during our tour we passed Hungarian-Thai and Jamaican-Italian fusion restaurants. Sadly, we visited neither.  Perhaps a future trip will allow us to sample the cross-over cuisine at Rasta Pasta.

Rising from the flames?

For several years now, I've been travelling to other cities for my birthday.  This year my lovely wife Karli and I have ended up in Toronto - to our relief, given that the threatened Air Canada pilot strike took us right down to the wire in terms of a possible disruption to our travel plans.

As always when I come to Toronto, we paid a visit to Canada's oldest (and best, in my opinion) science fiction and fantasy book store Bakka-Phoenix, currently located on near the University of Toronto on Harbord Street.

Karli generously purchased me a pair of hardcover novels as early birthday gifts: The Mercy of Gods, the first book in a new series by Expanse author James S. A. Corey*, and The Book of Elsewhere, a collaboration between the unexpected duo of actor/musician Keanu Reeves and fantasy-SF author China Miéville.  The Book of Elsewhere takes its inspiration from the world of BRZRKR,  the critically acclaimed 12-issue limited comic book series co-written by Reeves and Matt Kindt, with art by Ron Garney.

I also made a couple of purchases on my own - an autographed copy of All Systems Red, the first novella from Martha Wells' excellent and well-written Murderbot series, and The Folding Knife, a standalone novel by K. J. Parker*.  I enjoy Parker's writing, but I've found that his protagonists are a little too similar in their philosophies and characters - I'm hoping that The Folding Knife will break the mold a bit.

As I was paying for my selections, I noticed that there are Bakka-Phoenix pins available for five dollars, so I added one to my bill.  Given the legendary nature of the phoenix as a bird which is reborn from its own ashes, I do wonder if there's any significance in its addition to the store's name - I'd hate to think that the store might have needed to be brought back from an apparently final immolation.

- Sid 

* James S. A. Corey is actually a nom de plume for authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, and K. J. Parker is actually British author Tom Holt.  I'm reasonably certain that Keanu Reeves is Keanu Reeves.

"By Grabthar's hammer..."

"Unless you wish to poison Potter — and I assure you, I would have the greatest sympathy if you did — I cannot help you."

Severus Snape, Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

"There were five curtain calls. I was an actor once, damn it. Now look at me. Look at me! I won't go out there and say that stupid line one more time."

Sir Alexander Dane, Galaxy Quest

As part of this year's birthday trip, this time to Toronto, my lovely wife Karli and I were invited to brunch with the family at my brother John's house.

John is the family genealogist, and I had some questions regarding our maternal grandmother that I had been unable to answer when they had come up in conversation with my wife.  As part of the discussion, he explained that although our maternal grandfather Harold Coulson had been born a Rickman, he was raised by his grandparents and as a result had taken their name.  

He then casually mentioned that while researching our grandfather, he had discovered that we were actually related to the late British actor Alan Rickman, arguably best known for his portrayal of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies, as well as his epic performance as frustrated ex-Shakespearean actor Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest.

Now, this is certainly cool, but honestly, even if I had known this twenty years ago earlier, I don't think it would have changed my life - even then it would have ridiculously presumptuous to reach out to him.  However, it's fun to imagine an alternate reality in which I could have sent Alan Rickman a text that said, "Hey, cousin Alan, how's it going?  Sorry to bother you, but any chance of a couple of tickets to the premiere of The Prisoner of Azkaban? If not, no big deal - good luck with the movie!" 

- Sid

"O my precious!"

First editions, original dust jackets, mint condition...and $63,000 USD, before Buyer's Premium. Sigh...  Although, just in case Bill Gates is still reading the blog - hello, Bill, I do have a birthday coming up this month... 

- Sid

Update: final sale price $95,000 USD. It's okay, Bill, that does feel like a lot of money to spend on someone you've never met, even for their birthday.

Comfort Food.

I've been working on a large and somewhat stressful deadline-intensive project for the last month or so, and as such I've found myself gravitating toward lighter reading selections - the literary equivalent of comfort food, if you will.   

Right now I'm just finishing up S. M. Stirling's General series from the early 1990s, which perfectly suits my definition of science fiction comfort reading.  This five-book military SF series is a collaboration between Stirling and fellow SF author David Drake, who created detailed story outlines for the books which Stirling then completed.

The series takes place a thousand years after the collapse of intergalactic civilization, commonly referred to as the Fall.  In the wake of this apocalyptic event, civilization on the planet Bellevue has fallen to a steam-driven level of technology, as per Europe circa the mid to late 1800s, and any remnants of the old world are worshipped as religious objects.

Raj Whitehall, an officer in the Civil Government army, is chosen by Center, a sophisticated pre-Fall quantum AI, to act as its agent in unifying the planet and beginning humanity's climb back to the stars.

Center forges a telepathic link with Whitehall and, with its guidance, he ascends through the military until he is the grand general of the Civil Government forces, which he commands as they conquer Bellevue's various splinter colonies, descended from a variety of Terran cultural backgrounds.

Outside of their well-written military trappings*, the books are just fun little reads. Set on an alien planet where the imported Terran ecology and the more primitive Cretaceous-era native biosphere have intermingled, and cavalry rides gigantic dogs rather than horses**, the dialogue is full of topical references, like talking about the sheep at the carnosauroid's congress, or referring to cavalry as dogboys, rather than cowboys. 

The various polities come from a wide range of Terran antecedents:  the Civil Government culture and language is Hispanic, its Military Government opponents, the Brigade and the Squadron, are North American (Namerique), the first-landing Colony is Islamic, and the barbarian Bekwa Skinners obviously owe a debt to Stirling's French-Canadian Québécois background, up to and including a character named Pai-har Tradaw, fils d'Duhplesi.

The overall storyline is simple but dramatic, and painted with an epic brush - heroes and villains, battles and escapades, feats of daring, court intrigues, honourable enemies, evil allies, and a cast of thousands, as they used to say in Hollywood. And there are dinosaurs - how can you not love a science fiction series with dinosaurs?

- Sid

* David Drake's knowledge of military history and service background combined to provide a solid foundation for the battles that form the backbone of the books, as well as the weapons used in those battles.  As an example, the Civil Government arms its soldiers with something very close to the Martini Henry breechloader rifle used by the British army in the colonial wars of the late 19th century. whereas the opposing army of the Colony uses repeating lever action rifles similar to any number of examples from the late 1800s. 

** Oddly, dogs are the only Terran animals that seem to have grown in stature, which strikes me as a missed opportunity.  Imagine if, say, the chickens had evolved to a similar scale...