Resolute.

I was doing some seasonal shopping on Main Street last Saturday, and decided to take a bit of a break and pay a visit to Pulp Fiction, an excellent book store that features a wide selection of both new and used books.

I wandered back and forth along the shelves of the science fiction and fantasy section, morosely straightening books as I went*, and after half an hour, I left empty-handed and a bit depressed.  Why?  Because I didn’t know which books I didn’t already own.

So, as an early New Year’s resolution, my plan for 2020 is to catalogue my library.

 

Given that I have thousands of books, this seems like a ridiculous undertaking – how bad is your OCD if you need to record the names of all your books, for heaven’s sake?

However, this isn’t about being compulsive, it’s about management. I’ve crossed some kind of threshold where I am unable to keep track of everything that I own, and as a result, what I want to buy.  I have a pretty good feel for the majority of my collection, but if someone asked me if I wanted a copy of the Ace Double edition of Planetary Agent X by Mack Reynolds, backed by Kenneth Bulmer’s Behold The Stars, I’d be a bit stuck. I own about 60 Ace Doubles, and whereas I can recognize most of them on sight, some of them I just don’t know offhand,** and those are exactly the kind of lesser-known niche purchases that I’m interested in these days.

The other side of this coin is the books that are so well known and familiar that I don’t think I own them:  this is why I ended up with two copies of Fahrenheit 451, and I actually don’t know whether or not I have paper copies of Brave New World and 1984.

I’ll also be creating a secondary list as I go: replacements. My collection has its origins in used bookstore basements, library discard boxes, dollar bins and yard sales, and as such some of my older books were more than a bit battered when I got them, not to mention the cumulative effects of time and handling – although at least I’m past the point of owning any books that are held together with elastic bands. (I think.)

There was a nice copy of Pat Frank’s cautionary post-atomic 1959 novel Alas Babylon at Pulp Fiction, and I know that I’m due to replace my Scholastic Books edition from 1970 (although, really, I’d love to get a matching copy, not just because I like to do that, but because it seems such an unexpected choice for Scholastic’s pre-teen library).

I also took a thoughtful look at some of the options for replacing my early Ace editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the ones with the Roy Krenkel Jr. covers and interior illustrations, with matching copies that are in better shape – but which ones?  Age isn’t the only factor, of course - I can’t imagine getting rid of my autographed copy of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, regardless of wear and tear.  (Fortunately I have a hardcover copy as well.)

And that’s the last reason for my resolution: duplicates.  In some cases, such as the one above, there are actually good reasons for owning two copies, but in others, it’s simply because I didn’t remember that I already owned that book - which takes us back to where we started.

Behind all of this looms the unthinkable possibility of actually getting rid of books that aren’t damaged or duplicates, but rather just ones that I don’t need to keep. Obviously this goes against the grain, but let’s be honest, there has to be a book or two in there that I shrugged indifferently after reading, but shelved regardless.

Oh, and I’d also like to start off 2020 by losing ten pounds, but by comparison, that seems like a much easier undertaking.  Regardless, let’s hope that both of my resolutions come to pass in the coming year.

-  Sid

* Sorry, but if someone has left a book sticking out from its fellows, decades of book ownership compel me to push it back into place.

** I carefully chose this example from an online list of Ace Doubles, and having done so, I had to get up and look to see if I do have it. As it turns out, I don't, but in the process of looking, I found three Ace Doubles that were duplicates - and so it begins...

 

"I find your lack of pivot tables...disturbing."

Another workplace Christmas potluck has come and gone, and once again, my Secret Santa has chosen to go rogue and ignore the suggestions from this year's Geekmas posting.  However, full points for staying within my area of interest, and I always like an unexpected gift - not to mention that I actually now have a collection of head-shaped mugs to which I can add this sterling example of Art Vader.

The down side is that, realistically, head-shaped mugs aren't terribly practical for actual daily use, due to the challenges of keeping their convoluted interiors clean.  (Note to mug manufacturers - I know it would involve more clay, but maybe if the inside was cylindrical?)

Regardless of practicality, let's take a step back and look at the workplace potential for a mug like this.  After all, as graphically demonstrated in A New Hope, Anakin Skywalker sets a high standard for staff etiquette - not that I'm suggested Force choking anyone during the annual budget meeting*, but maybe having Darth Vader glowering at the person across the table would have a salutary effect on their delivery.

- Sid

* Come on, admit it, you've thought about it.

UPDATE: my wife has cheerfully suggested that as different people speak during the meeting, you just rotate the mug so that Darth is looking directly at them. As previously, this is how you know you've found the right person.

Apparently the answer is 24.

Pulp Fiction, Main Street, Saturday afternoon.  Okay:  no question, Dune is certainly one of the great science fiction novels, but really, how many copies do you need to have in active inventory?

- Sid

"No! Try not!"

My wife Karli and I have a long-standing weekday habit: my alarm goes off half an hour earlier than hers, at which point I get up, make tea, and feed Jaq the Cat. When her alarm does go off, I come back to bed and we cuddle for fifteen minutes, she takes a couple of sips of my morning tea, we talk about how we slept, and she tells me about noteworthy dreams from her night of slumber.  Apparently people find this to be cute and charming - be that as it may, it's what we do.  Sometimes Jaq the Cat joins us to say good morning, or not, up to him.

This morning was no exception - 6:30 arrived, I trotted down the hall to the bedroom, and climbed back into bed.  As a groggy Karli struggled with the covers, she muttered, "There is no try, just varying degrees of 'do' - that's how that line should have been written."

And so, without further ado, I would like to introduce Jedi Master Karli.  When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not.

- Sid

Tubi.

I had some time on my own at home yesterday, and decided to do a bit of research.  Wired had run an article on free streaming services, and I was curious to see if any of them were worth what they were charging.

Sorry to say, Plex didn't impress, Sony Crackle isn't available in Canada, and Vudu had more things for rent or sale than for free.  And then I hit Tubi, a free commercial-driven site.

As you'd expect, when I'm presented with any sort of media library, the first thing I do is to look at the science fiction section. And, as I sort of expected from a free service, there were a lot of movies that I had never heard of: knock-offs, cheap copies, and outright failures.

But as I looked through the content, I realized that there was actually a surprisingly high level of gems amid the dross - well, if not gems, at least things with a bit of sparkle to them.

I first noticed that there was a Marvel animated movie, Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow - it's generally accepted that Disney+ is going to eventually be the only streaming service featuring Marvel content, so I was pleased to see something here, even if it was only a straight-to-DVD production.

As I went on, I found more and more titles that jumped off the screen at me: an HD version of Battle Beyond the Stars, which I just referenced recently in my posting about science fiction Westerns; cult classic Hell Comes to Frogtown, an important part of the late WWF wrestler Rompin' Roddy Piper's acting career (he's better known for They Live!, but you have to start somewhere); Ex Machina, which seemed a long way from home in this odd mix of movies; an HD quality transfer of 1957 stop-motion monster classic 20 Million Miles to Earth - in fact, there were a lot of somewhat camp 50s science fiction films, including Devil Girl From Mars from 1955, I guarantee that Netflix™ doesn't have that one.  And I'm looking forward to Doomed! the Untold Story of Roger Corman's Fantastic Four, a documentary look at the 1994 Fantastic Four movie by the famous B-movie producer which never made it to commercial release.

There were also more serious classics, such as The Day of the Triffids (in an average quality transfer, I'm starting to wonder if they just can't find a 35mm copy anywhere) and The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price, which is the first film adaptation of I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson.

There were game-inspired creations like Dead Space: Downfall, and Dragon Age Redemption from 2011, starring geek goddess Felicia Day as Tallis the elf assassin; legendary bad movies like Star Crash from 1979, and Abraxas Guardian of the Universe (with Jesse Ventura - sorry, Roddy Piper is a better actor); and The Dinosaur Experiment, whose poster art we've already discussed; along with vintage Elvira Movie Macabre and Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes taking a sarcastic look at even more bad movies.
 

The TV section offered the entire collection of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson Supermarionation™ programs, starting with the cartoonish Supercar, Fireball XL5*, Stingray, whose opening line of "Anything can happen in the next 30 minutes!", I still quote now and then, to the bemusement of people around me; Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett and the Mysterons, and Joe-90.  Not surprisingly, it also included Space 1999, another Anderson creation; the 1966-1971 Dark Shadows series, The Dresden Files, Space Precinct, 3rd Rock from the Sun (admittedly just Season 1, as far as I could tell), the award-winning Tin Man miniseries (a 2007 re-imagining of The Wizard of Oz with Zooey Deschanel), the British Robin of Sherwood series from the 80s that I loved, One Step Beyond - my god, Tracker, with Adrian Paul, has anyone else reading this even heard of Tracker? Patrick McGoohan -  The Prisoner!  A wide range of old school anime, including Robotech Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Genesis Climber Mospeada in Japanese - with subtitles, thank heaven. The Black Scorpion series - fine, they can't all be winners...

It was like browsing through a single fan's slightly eccentric TV and movie collection (which it may well be, it's not hard to imagine putting an individual in charge of a specific section of a site like this.)  

I just kept finding things - A Boy and His Dog, based on the Harlan Ellison story of the same name; 1978 conspiracy classic Capricorn 1, and 2009 conspiracy classic Moon; Russian superhero movie Guardians, Hellboy animated feature Sword of Storms, with Ron Perlman doing the voice work for Hellboy; a Terry Gilliam movie called Tideland that I'd never heard of; the unfortunate 2009 adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's classic A Princess of Mars, with ex-porn star Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris, the titular princess; Cloverfield, that's unexpected; Under the Skin, with Scarlett Johanssen - ha, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, from 1940?  Really?  And good quality, too!

The movie section featured over 450 movies - and the icing on the cake? Plan 9 from Outer Space, which I would hope needs no introduction.  A mediocre digital transfer, but it's the thought that counts for things like this.

To wrap it all up, Tubi would be a fascinating opportunity even if they wanted money for it.  On that basis, a commercial every now and then seems a small price to pay.

- Sid

*  At some point in my childhood, a British relative sent me a toy version of the spaceship from Fireball XL5, complete with jet cycles and crew.  No kidding, there is one for sale on eBay right now for $26,525.36 CAD - it's a shame that I didn't just leave it in the box all those years ago.

“Droids to the world!”

 

Christmas decorations at the Storm Crow Alehouse on Broadway - these ARE the droids you're looking for.

- Sid

Geekmas 2019: Trek The Halls.

Although I've already been in discussion with Karli about holiday shopping, I'm also faced with the looming specter of our departmental Secret Santa gift exchange, not to mention friends and relatives* who might be seeking inspiration.

As much as I want to help all those people out, I have to confess that I'm feeling a bit challenged by the whole "here's what I want" thing this year - I'd actually be a lot happier to get a list of things to buy other people than to write one for myself.  However, it may well be that everyone else is in the same state of mind, so here are a few suggestions in the area of seasonal geek shopping.

Books
A small part of me considered not listing any books, given my current and ongoing state of tsundoku.  Then I had a bit of a laugh - I mean, seriously! - and starting to look at book buying options.

The joke is that most of the things that I'm really looking forward to reading won't be out until next year. The final book in the Expanse series won't hit until sometime in 2020, the next Charles Stross Laundry book is on the same schedule, and William Gibson's long-overdue novel Agency is scheduled for January 21, 2020, which is certainly a step up from previous publishing timelines, but no help for Christmas shopping.

So what IS available for the 25th?

It was missing in action during New York shopping, so the new Joe Abercrombie First Law universe book, A Little Hatred, would be a good choice, and at the moment of this writing, it's on sale in hardcover on Amazon.ca™  - although to be honest, I'd rather have the paperback version.

The only leftover book from last year's suggestions is Luna: Wolf Moon, by Ian McDonald, still a good choice, and the third book in the series, Luna: Moon Rising, is also now available.

Let's see, paperbacks ... Made Things, a book about the importance of making friends, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, or Winter Tide, by Ruthanna Emrys (a unique concept, told from the perspective of a Cthulhu worshipper, for whom the whole thing is just the way she was brought up).  Sharps, by K. J. Parker, who I find to be just such a readable author (even if he is really Tom Holt) - in fact, let's put the first volume of Parker's The Two of Swords on the list as well. I'd love to add a hard SF novel, but right now there's nothing on my radar - I'm open to suggestions.

DVDs
Okay, I'm going to keep this dirt simple:  here's a handful of classic Doctor Who episodes on DVD, all for less than $25 on Amazon.ca™, none of which I already own:

The Ark in Space, The Five Doctors, The Beginning (the first three William Hartnell episodes, $25.95, in the interests of full disclosure - not to be confused with the $85 boxed set) The Sontaran Experiment, The Brain of Morbius, The Android Invasion,The Sea Devils, and Warriors of the Deep.

The BBC is methodically cleaning up the early episodes of Doctor Who and releasing them on Blu-ray, but the individual episode DVDs still make for affordable stocking stuffers.  And, really, there's a certain collectable nostalgia to the classic BBC single-episode releases with the classic logo, they were the face of Doctor Who video for quite a while.

Graphic Novels
I've covered off the big three of my requests from last year, but there are some options left.  If you don't want to shop online due to time issues, recommended brick-and-mortar locations would be the Granville and Broadway Indigo, or at specialty comic outlets like Golden Age Collectibles downtown on Granville.  (Sadly, The Comicshop, my normal Kitsilano recommendation, has closed its doors.)

 

Suggested options are:  Batman: White Knight, Flashpoint, Old Man Logan Vol 0: Warzones, and Joker - the Brian Azzarello/Lee Bermejo version.

Gaming

 

I'm probably going to buy The Outer Worlds, the new Obsidian Entertainment Fallout-style role-playing action game, at some point, although generally I like to let the dust settle before I commit - or, in other words, wait for the price to come down and bugs to be fixed.  It's not currently available on the useful Steam™ distribution platform, but I'm hoping that by the time it gets there, both of the above dust-settling events will have taken place. 

The game's current non-Steam™ list price of $59.99 is a bit more than I generally include on my Geekmas lists - workplace Secret Santa tops out at $25 - but with any luck, the Steam™ price will be lower, and as such, Steam™ gift cards would certainly be welcome. 

Merch
And, last but not least, a couple of t-shirt options: first, I've been looking at getting a Canadian Space Agency T-shirt for a while - I have lots of NASA stuff, but it seems appropriate to represent for Canada.

 

I was originally looking for a Weyland-Yutani t-shirt when I found this USCSS Nostromo t-shirt. It's a little over the $25 Secret Santa price range that I normally aim for, but it would certainly be a fun addition to my science fiction t-shirt collection, and I somehow feel that licensed products are slightly better than random knockoffs.  (It's no surprise that the CSA has better standards regarding wrinkled uniforms than the USC.)

XL by preference, thank you!
 

And there's this year's list. As always, feel free to just take a swing at the ball and surprise me, I have a very open mind regarding random gift selections.

And, if all else fails, I've never met a gift card that I didn't like.

Happy holidays!

- Sid

* I have to be honest here, I'm only referring to relatives by marriage, my own family hasn't had a seasonal get-together for several decades.

Well, apparently someone thought there might actually be try, after all.

 "Do.  Or do not.  There is no try."

Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

I was cleaning up notes on my iPhone, and found an unattributed quote:

Yoda is not the administrator of our lives.  Yoda doesn't know everything.

I wonder what defiant padawan announced that they would try to do something on May 25th of 2018?

- Sid

The Point.

 

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

Carl von Clausewitz, On War

I'm currently re-reading a digital copy of K. J. Parker's fantasy novella Mightier Than The Sword. At 75 pages it's a fun little read, clever, witty, and imaginative, that just sort of sits on my iPhone and gets opened now and then when I'm out of fresh reading material.

However, during this re-read, I began to wonder about the actual numbers involved in the story's climactic battle. (This is a thing that happens now and then when I'm reading, something in the math gets my attention.)

Here's the scenario: the bad guys have 4,000 to 7,000 warriors - we don't know exactly how many, because it's based on reconnaissance, rather than actual knowledge. On the other side, there are 575 archers who are supported by a thousand heavy infantry and 1,500 untrained local militia - not great odds, even if we take the low end count for the enemy, but let's average them out at 5,500 light infantry - more accurately, tribal barbarians, who apparently aren't even wearing shoes.  (Which may actually be a factor in all of this - wait, you'll see.)

Here's how the narrator, who happens to be commanding the defending army, lays things out.  He puts his militia in line, with the Steelnecks - his heavy infantry - on the flank, and hides his archers in a ditch behind the militia.  His opponents sensibly decide to launch their attack on the weaker target of the militia, and begin their charge.

The militia had sworn me a solemn oath to stand their ground, no matter what.  When the enemy were two hundred yards away, they turned and ran like deer; one moment they were there, the next they weren't, and who can blame them?

At this point, his concealed archers stand up and start to shoot.

Okay, time for math.  First, it looks like the general may have made a bit of a mistake.  Historians have determined (lord knows how) that a trained archer in the time of Edward III could shoot an arrow 365 meters.  Accuracy isn't an issue here, the target is an army of over 5,000 people, it would probably be hard to shoot an arrow at that many people and NOT hit someone.  So the good guys have already wasted 182 meters of opportunities to put arrows into the enemy.

The second factor is speed - on both sides.  A sprinting man can run at about 32 kilometers an hour, and a normal running speed is 24 kilometers an hour.  Realistically, in this situation the barbarians will obviously be running as fast as they can, but they're also carrying swords, axes, spears, shields and so forth, which most casual runners don't have to deal with.

So again, let's split the difference and give them a speed of 28 kilometers an hour, which breaks down to about 22 seconds to cover that 182 meters - presumably, like African marathon competitors, they're not handicapped by running in their bare feet because they do it all the time.

The next speed question is how long it takes to fire an arrow.  Again, we're not looking at careful target selection, the archers just need to pull an arrow from a quiver - probably on the ground - nock it to the bow, raise, pull and let go.  The internet suggests that there's some show-off out there who can fire three arrows in .6 seconds, but we're looking at a longer sustained volley, so let's say an arrow a second.

Given the 22 seconds that it's taking the charging infantry to reach the archers, that gives us 22 arrows each from 575 archers for an impressive total of 12,650 arrows.  However, that's in a perfect world.  Let's face it, by the time the barefoot people with axes and swords are three meters away, you've probably stopped shooting and starting running yourself.  If you don't run, you get stabbed or chopped, which is what happens to about half of the archers in the story.*

Even so, that's going to be about two arrows per attacking barbarian, although, again, a lot of this isn't targeted shooting, so a few lucky souls may not get any arrows at all.  (And a few less lucky souls will get four, after all, they have to end up somewhere, and as already discussed, 5,500 people makes for a big target.)

Does that wipe out the attacking horde?  At this point, we enter the realm of supposition, since the only ready sources of information about the results of volleyed arrows are the movie 300, the Battle of the Five Armies from the third Hobbit film, or Ian McShane's character in Hercules, none of which can really be considered as science.

You'd have to think that it would at least put a big dent in the attacking army - even if you've only been hit by one arrow, having three feet of birchwood with an iron tip stuck somewhere into your body is going to make you a less effective fighter when the thousand heavy infantry take you in flank. On the other hand, we don't really know what they're wearing or carrying in terms of protection, although there has to be some kind of inverse relationship between amount of armour and ability to sprint up a hill while archers snipe away at you and your companions.

The author, oddly enough, seems to feel that the archers would only be shooting at the front row of the attacking army, which feels like a mistake - or is it?  Hmmm...575 archers in a line, 5,500 running men, let's call that 10 ranks of 550 each (although probably not that organized) - let's slow things down a bit because our archers are aiming a bit, but even then, the math suggests that ten carefully aimed arrows per archer pretty much wipes out the attacking army.

The narrative suggests otherwise, with half the archers dead and half of them running, as a thousand heavily armed and armoured killing machines hit the barbarians in flank and wipe them out.  And even then, there's a suggestion that it's not a walkover, there are enough remaining barbarians that the first century of Steelnecks that comes into contact with them experiences 83% casualties. 

Ultimately, in that situation, I'm willing to admit that math might not be the only factor that determines the results. As von Clausewitz points out, even the simplest thing is difficult in war.

- Sid

* But why would the archers not have swords as well? Or sharpened poles as a defense to slow down the enemy - something, ANYTHING other than just a bow and arrows.
 
Postscript:

A couple of late-breaking comments on the above.  First, it turns out that the general hasn't wasted that first 182 meters - an earlier note in the book mentions that the maximum range of the bows used by his archers is 200 yards, so he's actually waiting for the enemy to get into range, not wasting time. (His archers must be using some kind of shorter compound bow, rather than the full longbow that made the English archer such a dangerous opponent.)

Second, after writing this all up, I checked in with my archery consultant, Her Ladyship Anika Styfe - aka my co-worker Christi -  and here's her comment:

Hmmm...in a 30 second round, I can comfortably shoot 8 arrows, with the first arrow ready to be loosed when the marshal says go.

For 20 arrows I'd say about 90 seconds, maybe a little faster for the lack of aim. But can't help muscle memory. :-)

So it would appear that an arrow a second would be an unrealistic timeline - but four seconds seems like a LONG time.