"Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?"

Tychus Findlay:  I just wish the damn thing came with an instruction manual.  For all we know we could be upsettin' the entire time-space continuum!!

Jim Raynor:  Easy, Tychus, this ain't science fiction...

- Starcraft 2

After what can only be described as an unnecessarily extended gap of 12 years, the good people at Blizzard Entertainment have finally released the sequel to Starcraft, their 1998 science fiction themed real-time strategy game.  Starcraft 2 continues the story of the Terran colonists in the Koprulu Sector after the conclusion of their civil war, their rebellion against Earth, and their struggles with the enigmatic alien Protoss and the hive-mind insectoid Zerg.

In the sequel, ex-marshal Jim Raynor continues his battle against the tyrannical Arcturus Mengsk, self-proclaimed Emperor of the Sector.  However, the situation is complicated by the return of the Zerg, still under the leadership of the vengeful Queen of Blades, who was a human telepath named Sarah Kerrigan until she was betrayed by Mengsk and subsequently captured and infested by the Zerg.  And what of the grim omens of the future as perceived by Zeratul, Protoss warrior and mystic?  Will Kerrigan save or doom the universe...?

Although it may not have a high profile in the eyes of the general public, the Starcraft franchise is one of the most popular games ever developed.  More than 11 million copies of the original version and its expansion modules have been purchased to date, and Starcraft 2 sold over one million copies on its first day.

It's interesting to note how many of the really big game franchises are based on fantasy or science fiction themes.  Admittedly, not all - you Grand Theft Auto fans can sit down now  - but the majority of games that have really made a mark, like the Doom and Half-Life franchises, Halo, Quake, Diablo, Dark Age of Camelot, and of course World of Warcraft, are set in futuristic or mythical worlds.

Obviously there are good reasons for this.  Games are not just exercises in eye-hand coordination and strategy, they present the same escapist opportunities as their relatives in the literary and visual genres.  Science fiction and fantasy gaming offers a rich creative palette in terms of world-building - it's one thing to accurately duplicate the western United States during the time of the cowboy, but an entirely different challenge to believably create the various environments and technologies of the far-flung planets of the Terran Confederacy circa 2504 or the verdant glades and exotic wildlife of Elwynn Forest.

The other appeal of SF and fantasy gaming is in the range of virtual abilities that they allow the player to experience.  If you're seeking an opportunity to wield mystical god-like powers in the struggle between Order and Chaos, guide massive war machines through smoking urban rubble, or just leap tall buildings in a single bound, there are lots of games that can easily indulge your particular daydreams.

The flip side of that coin is that I sometimes play historical games like Battlefield 1942 or Call of Duty simply because they lack the exaggerated powers bestowed upon the player by games like World of Warcraft.  In BF1942, there are no magical spells, no mystical armour, no energy shields, no BFGs - there's just a rifle, three clips, and a couple of grenades, which presents an entirely different gaming challenge.

However, Battlefield 1942 offers an unexpected explanation for the prevalence of science fiction and fantasy gaming.  I sometimes play BF1942 online with my friend Alan in Toronto.  Alan, whose father flew in Mitchells during WWII, steadfastly refuses to play as the Axis forces.  For me, the difference between the Allied and Axis sides is solely one of uniforms and equipment, rather than a moral position, but Alan is unable to ignore the implications of seeking victory for Hitler's forces.  Changing the setting to 2142 in the newest version of the Battlefield franchise certainly removed any stigma associated with a particular historical setting, although that change probably had nothing to do with the reaction of players like Alan.

Even so, that change to a futuristic venue may not have been a bad decision on the part of the game designers.  Imagine what it would be like to discover a hidden level in a game like Battlefield 1942, one in which the player is offered a horrifying opportunity to command the German forces that are operating Dachau... 

- Sid

Okay, I could do without all the doors making that "WHOOSH" sound.

Based on what I've already said about the size of my library, you wouldn't think that I would be going out of my way to add to it.  Nonetheless, when my friend Colin announced that he was going to get rid of some large hardcovers, I eagerly paid for the shipping in order to get a box full of new material.

One of the books was Films of Science Fiction and Fantasy, by Baird Searles.  As you might guess from its uninspired title*, it's an analysis of science fictions and fantasy films, and Searles offers some clever insights in the development of the motion picture aspect of the genre.

I was flipping through the pages this morning, and it occurred to me that there are damn few movie versions of the future in which I'd actually want to live.  Blade Runner is a good film, but would you want to live in that perpetual drizzle?  Mad Max speaks for itself, none of the zombie futures have any interest to me, and Soylent Green?  Thank you, but no.

But if I were offered the option of hopping into a fictional future, I think that I would probably say, "Star Trek - The Next Generation, please". 

Why ST-TNG?  Out of all the fictional futures that you might see on a movie or TV screen, The Next Generation is one of the few that suggests that people might lead real lives in the 25th century.  Far too often the future is just a backdrop, usually drawn in bold but undefined terms, but I think that the Star Trek team did its best to create a world that was both plausible and consistent, and then added everyday life to it.

The crew of the Enterprise has poker nights, plays around on the holodeck, works out, goes on vacation, hangs out in Ten Forward, plays musical instruments, presents amateur plays (sorry, Data, but "amateur" is appropriate), cooks real food when they get tired of that replicator stuff, and has to find someone to feed the cat when they head out on extended away missions.  (Ironically, they never watch TV.)

Think about it for a minute:  tell me one thing about a character from Star Wars in terms of their social lives.  Other than Luke's youthful interest in shooting womp rats in Beggar's Canyon, what do any of these people do when they're not whirling a lightsaber?

- Sid

*I first discovered Baird Searles when he was the movie/TV columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which was equally "nose on your face" in terms of its name.

Oh ye of little faith.

I was flipping through a movie magazine while doing cardio at the gym recently, and I discovered that Disney had abandoned the Narnia franchise after only two movies due to disappointing box office numbers for Prince Caspian.  The next film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is being released under the aegis of Fox instead - the curious among you may examine the first trailer on the Apple web site.

Narnia is one of the foundations of my childhood.  As I’ve mentioned before, my mother read the Narnia books to my siblings and myself long before we could really understand them as stories, so I learned about Narnia at the more or less the same time I was learning to talk. 

However, that's not the only thing that I (literally) learned at my mother's knee.  I was raised to believe that Walt Disney is an evil empire, a perverter of truths in the interests of marketing, so it was with some degree of trepidation that I originally discovered that Disney was going to be producing the screen version of Narnia.

Whatever your opinion of the House of Mouse, you can't argue that they know their business when it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of children. (And the wallets of their parents.) That being said, it's impressive that they were able to take C. S. Lewis' classic children's fantasy series, a series whose popularity has continued for over 60 years, and fail with it to the point that they dropped it like a hot potato.  It's even more impressive when you consider that the Lord of the Rings films had already taken the risks necessary to prove the existence of a movie marketplace for classic fantasy.

It’s not common knowledge, but Lewis and Tolkien were not only contemporaries but friends, and were in fact writing their respective fantasy masterpieces at about the same time.  C. S. Lewis’ fantasy world has always had a less prominent profile than The Lord of the Rings, perhaps due to its less aggressive content - Narnia has its share of wars and battles, but it lacks the epic sweep of Tolkien’s world.  Lewis was also writing for a younger audience than Tolkien, and it’s undeniable that the Narnia books virtually defined the genre of juvenile fantasy for a long time.

But there’s a much more fundamental difference between the material, and it’s that difference which so strongly affects the respective motion picture adaptations.  The Lord of the Rings portrays an epic struggle between Good and Evil, with the Ring itself acting as an ongoing test, a constant temptation for all the characters who are presented with the opportunity to possess it.  Some pass this test, some fail it – in fact, Frodo himself fails at the final moment in his quest.

On the other hand, it's generally accepted that the story of Narnia is an extended Christian metaphor, but what does that mean in practical terms?  The various journeys to Narnia by people from our world are journeys of belief, explorations of spirituality, of faith. The characters are constantly being required to take - or not take - action based on their belief in Aslan, and the spiritual nature of those decisions help to make them better people, both in Narnia and when they return here.

The temptations faced by the characters in the Narnia books are more subtle than the One Ring, but they are just as constant.  Those who succumb are punished, and those who resist are rewarded - but even those who succumb may achieve redemption.

It’s this aspect of Narnia which is least well realized in the movies, and that may well be the reason that they haven’t done better at the box office.  In the process of trying to turn them into conventional fantasy action adventures, Disney lost touch with the essence of the Narnia books, and in losing touch they cheapened the stories to the point where they lost their attraction.

Movies like The Chronicles of Narnia clearly demonstrate that special effects have advanced to the point where virtually any world of the imagination can be recreated for public consumption. But in that process, I think that filmmakers have to remain true to the underlying foundations of those worlds - you might even say that they need to have faith in them.

- Sid

Do you think that Lynda Carter knew about all this?

They all have impossibly small waists, long legs, breast implants, and.....high heels!  Who wears high heels to perform stunts and acrobatics? That's impractical and insane!

- Fitness expert Laurie Smith

"On Paradise Island where we play many binding games, this is considered the safest method of tying a girl's arms!"

Wonder Woman, Sensation Comics, November 1944

Although in some ways this is a follow up to my last post, which featured Red Sonja braving sub-arctic conditions in a thong, this topic really has its genesis in an exchange of e-mails with Laurie about a month ago.

I was browsing through a fellow blogger's site, one which features comic book scans, and there was a cover image from Lois Lane's comic.  (Yes, Lois had her own comic book for a while.)  I downloaded the JPEG of the cover and e-mailed it to Laurie with the following comment:

Hey look, Lois has acceptable abs. 
- Sid

Little did I realize that I'd immediately be subjected to a quick rant in return:

The helpless heroine....notice the submissive body posture, the wide-eyed "I'm helpless" look.....Such stereotypical gender/role depiction in comics! 
- Laurie

And it's quite true. A quick tour through the Lois Lane comics ("Superman's Girlfriend!") shows Lois repeatedly being saved by Superman, and very often saved from her own poor "feminine" judgement. 

The world of the comic book hero has traditionally been a boy’s club, not only for the heroes and villains, but for the readers as well.  Over the years there have been periods of time when romance comics and female characters have been popular, but the bottom line has always come back to the juvenile male.  On that basis, the treatment suffered by the “weaker sex” is unfortunate but not terribly surprising.

However, Lois Lane doesn't represent the worst representation of womanhood in four-colour web press - sadly, the representation of female heroines is much more distorted and unfortunate than that of the supporting characters.  Now, to be fair, comic books have always been the domain of idealized exaggeration, but when did all the female characters, supporting, heroic and villainous, start to look like exotic dancers?*

If there’s a poster girl for the ridiculous and sexist portrayal of women in comics, it has to be Wonder Woman. Ostensibly intending to offer a positive role model for young women, in actuality William Moulton Marston, who created Wonder Woman in 1941, was a devout fetishist in the area of bondage and domination.  Lest there be any misinterpretation of his views, Marston went on record to his publisher as feeling that:

The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society ... Giving in to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.

Early issues of Wonder Woman repeatedly feature her being tied up, dominated by men and women, and spanked.  What other female hero came equipped with her own wrist cuffs and rope?  And although over the years her initial bondage roots have diminished, illustrations like this still pop up now and then:

Bound figure, phallic missile, open mouth - as George Carlin used to say, you don't have to be Fellini to figure that out. And as per the opening quote from Laurie, would anyone want to wear those boots for more than ten minutes, let alone fight crime in the damn things?  Ah, but if you look at them as bondage footwear...

Or how about this?

Odd how the captured male superheroes get chairs...

But there’s hope, even for Wonder Woman. In honour of the 600th issue of her comic, Wonder Woman received the new costume shown at the top of this post, a costume which might actually be appropriate for strenuous exercise if not actual combat with the forces of evil.  Sadly, the reaction of the fan community has not been positive.  Come on, people, can’t you at least let the poor woman wear something with a low heel - and shoulder straps?

- Sid

* That was intended to be rhetorical, but if I had to guess, I'd say it starts to become embarrassing in the early 90's, when Marvel Comics was doing swimsuit issues à la Sports Illustrated.

Concept over practicality.

Red Sophia:  Enough talk, you short grey celibate!  What do you think of...these!
Cerebus the Aardvark:  They'd probably heal if you stopped wearing that chain mail bikini.

- Cerebus the Aardvark, Issue 10

I realize that comic book characters have to maintain consistent costumes for branding reasons, but honestly, if there's snow on the ground and it's cold enough to see your breath, wouldn't you want to put on some pants? And a sweater?

- Sid

Time to get your geek on.

Once again Jody the Demon Child has sent me a link to something sufficiently interesting and unique that I've broken my rule about not posting links to outside sites.  In this case, it's the Geek Art web site, which is filled with links to great non-traditional artistic takes on a wide range of comic book, video game and genre movie material. There are samples of movie monsters as Marilyn Monroe, Darth Vader on the toilet, ATilla the pet AT-AT, the Wolverine alphabet, and on and on and on.

Of course, the joke is that Geek-Art is just a collection of links to cool stuff - does this mean I've broken my rule twice?

- Sid

Gnomic statements.

Something old;

Something new;

Something borrowed;

...something blue.

- Sid

P.S. Mr. and Mrs. Pond don't sound all that Scottish, do they?

Although it would cause problems with the spinoffs.

I download episodes of Doctor Who as they are broadcast in England, which gives me a two week lead over people here who are watching the 11th Doctor's adventures on the Space channel.  I find this two-week lead amusing - it's a bit like being a time traveller.

This week, the BBC broadcast the penultimate episode of the season.  At the end, the Doctor has been placed in inescapable captivity for all eternity, his companion Amy lies dead amidst the menhirs of Stonehenge, and the TARDIS is about to explode and destroy the fabric of time and space.  In the final shot, we see Earth from space, and all around it the stars are flaring up and then going out like candles in a storm as Time itself ceases to be.

The BBC, in its infinite wisdom, must have felt that the members of its viewing audience needed some reassurance, and as such ended the episode with a polite "TO BE CONTINUED" text slate.  Ah, thank you, BBC.  How good of you to take into account that there might be people watching who would think that you were just going to stop there.  Don't rule that out, though, it certainly would be a comprehensive conclusion to the series - difficult to think of anything more complete than destroying everything and everyone for all time so that nothing had every existed at all.  Take THAT, Lost.

- Sid

With sincere apologies to Matthew Broderick.

We've recently added a new administrative assistant at my workplace, and last week she asked if I'd seen the Sex and the City sequel.  I responded that I had in fact missed that one, and explained for the most part I only see movies that contain aliens or explosions.  (There's a rider on the rule that allows elves to substitute for aliens when necessary.)  There have been some exceptions over time, but for the most part, it's a pretty good guide to my viewing habits, and I more or less took it on faith that SATC2 didn't make the cut.

Then I had a look at the poster for the movie, and you know, it's possible that I've missed the boat on this one.  The longer I look at Sarah Jessica Parker, the more likely it seems that she's not originally from this planet...

- Sid

P.S. For the trivia fans in the crowd, the font used for Ms. Parker's name on the poster is called Aurebesh, it's the typeface used for displays and signage in the Star Wars universe. (And now everyone reading this pauses for a moment and thinks, "Hold on...can I remember any printing in the Star Wars movies...?")

"Fhtagn!!"

As I've previously indicated, I don't generally keep a close watch on currents events - again, if I found real life to be all that interesting, I probably wouldn't read science fiction and fantasy.  However, the larger an event, the more likely that sheer osmosis will bring it to my attention, and the current problem with BP and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is getting the sort of massive coverage that makes it impossible to miss.

Presumably BP is exploring every possible avenue in their attempts to resolve this problem as quickly as possible, but just in case they need some more motivation, perhaps they should consider what you might call the bigger picture...

- Sid

P.S. Today's cartoon is from one of the more unusual webcomics:  Goomi's Unspeakable Vault of Doom.  UVOD, written and illustrated by French artist Francois Launet, draws upon the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft for inspiration.  If you're familiar with the Mythos, it's funny - if you're not...well, as the author suggests, perhaps you should just go to Dilbert.com instead.

"Good news, everybody!"

One of the inevitable problems with writing science fiction is that it's actually quite easy to predict the future and be wrong.  Science fiction is full of errors and anachronisms:  breathable air on Mars, dinosaurs on Venus, space ships crossing the gulf between stars based on calculations made with a slide rule, or as per my posting on a moon ship whose computer is filled with vacuum tubes.

However, every once in a great while the balance falls in the other direction.  I'm currently reading Crashing Suns, a collection of Edmond Hamilton science fiction stories that were originally published in the late 1920s.  My version, published in 1965, contains the following apologetic note from editor Donald A. Wollheim regarding the various references to our solar system being governed by The League of Eight Worlds:

...the astute reader will also note that in those year the Solar System had only eight planets, Pluto not yet having been discovered.

Ha, well, good news. Thanks to the idiosyncratic 2006 decision by the International Astronomical Union to strip Pluto of its planetary qualifications, if they decide to do another edition they can leave that part out.

- Sid

The place you never want to look.

The Doctor: And she left you all alone?
Amelia: I'm not scared.
The Doctor:  Of course you're not scared, you're not scared of anything.  Box falls out of the sky, man falls out of the box, man eats fish custard, and look at you...just sitting there.  So you know what I think?
Amelia: What…
The Doctor:  Must be a hell of a scary crack in your bedroom wall.

Doctor Who, The Eleventh Hour

The awful truth about Doctor Who has finally been revealed, and by no less a personage than the eminence grise of British fantasy, Sir Terry Pratchett.  In his recent stint as guest editor of British science fiction magazine SFX, Pratchett announces in his editorial that, although entertaining, light-hearted, and capable of wonderful moments, Doctor Who is not science fiction.

He goes on to make an acceptable case for his announcement, based on "pixel-thin" science and the Doctor as a deus ex machina figure, but he commits an odd oversight, especially for someone as sharp as Pratchett.  If it's not science fiction, what is it?

Fortunately, chief writer and executive producer Stephen Moffat had already addressed this question for the first post-episode Doctor Who Confidential of the new season, when he commented:

Fairy tales are the way we tell our children that there are people out there who might want to eat them.  They are warnings, in fantasy form, of the reality and the dangers of the world.

When I say Doctor Who is a fairy tale, I don't mean it's like a fairy tale, I mean it literally is -  far more than it's a science fiction show, far more than it's an adventure show, it's a fairy tale.

Due to the unfortunate influence of the Walt Disney Corporation, fairy tales have become light-hearted musical experiences that last about two hours and are available on DVD by the end of the year.  However, the traditional fairy tale is a far darker experience, where Hansel and Gretel kill the witch by pushing her into her own oven, and the queen eats the heart brought to her by the huntsman, thinking that it belongs to Snow White.

Viewed as cautionary tales for children, the new season of Doctor Who has, for the most part, fulfilled its role admirably.  We first meet Amy, the new companion, as a child who has asked in her nightly prayers for help with the frightening crack in her bedroom wall, and later in the episode, the adult Amy experiences that awful moment of wondering (and discovering) what's hiding behind her back, just in the corner of her eye.

The second episode starts with a child failing a test and being cast into a monstrous pit by the frowning robots who run the classes, and in a later episode Amy has to walk through a horde of deadly statues with her eyes closed.  The most recent episodes featured a boy whose father is taken from him, and then he himself is captured by the same monsters. All very simple things, horrifyingly simple - cracks in the wall, the places you don't want to look, the fear of failing adult expectations, walking blindly through nightmares, or the loss of a parent. 

When I was a child, I was terrified of the basement in our house.  It was a dank, dark, moldy hole, an unfinished repository for junk and bit of lumber. Only part of it was full height - the portion underneath the front of the house was an unlit crawlspace, and I did not spend a moment in the cellar without being aware of the horrible potential of the square black entrance to that area.

Some of my childhood chores required me to go down into the cellar, and my mother always seemed to think that I was trying to shirk my duties when I delayed those chores as long as possible.  However, it was fear rather than laziness that was behind my reluctance, something that I could never have explained.

I think that adults too easily lose track of that part of childhood: the fear of dark openings, the certain knowledge that there are monsters under the bed and boogeymen in the closet, and that things going bump in the night is not a cliché but an awful precursor of approaching horror.  And that adult blindness is a huge part of childhood fears, the inexplicable lack of understanding on the part of the grownups who turn out lights, close doors, and dismiss nightmares as "only a dream".

On that basis, Doctor Who doesn't need to be science fiction if it can be a good fairy tale.  I congratulate the scriptwriters for successfully attempting to evoke the basic fears of childhood - the elemental fear of so simple a thing as a crack in a bedroom wall.

- Sid

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale. *

My apologies for going off topic today, but I've just come back from the veterinarian, and I came back alone.  After almost 23 years, Nigel the Cat, a true and faithful companion, has left the stage.

My wife Joy and I purchased Nigel from the Humane Society branch in Bracebridge, Ontario a few months after we'd bought a house there.  For those of you who have never visited the Humane Society, I don't recommend it at all if you're even the slightest bit tender of heart, it's heart-rending to have to chose one cat from all the cages and leave the others behind.

We'd narrowed it down to two choices.  One of the cats was just a charmer, friendly and outgoing, but afflicted with a stomach problem that would have required a special diet.  The other cat had been equally charming and friendly, but surprisingly quiet in a room filled with meowing cats.  I turned to the attendant and, pointing at the quiet cat, said, "You know, this one hasn't meowed at all."  The cat looked me in the eye and pointedly said, "MEOW."

And so Nigel entered my life.

His nickname at the Society was CB, or Cathy's Boyfriend - he apparently had a thing for one of the staff.  During the signout process, he sat on the desk and attempted to play with the pens that we were using to sign the documents, the first indication of an affection for writing implements that would last for almost his entire life.  On the way home, my wife decided to name him Nigel - I have no idea why - and somehow it turned out to be the perfect name for him, and a strong element in his notoriety.

He was a big solid cat, at least up until his last couple of years, tall enough to reach a doorknob and smart enough to know that was how to get out - but his lack of thumbs kept him from ever taking advantage of this arcane knowledge (arcane among cats, anyway).  He had a little nick out of each ear, as if someone had just snipped into them a bit when he was younger, rather than the scars of feline combat, but that was just part of his mysterious history.

When Joy and I split up, I got custody of the cat - she got custody of the car, and I guarantee that car didn't last as long as Nigel did - and Nigel and I moved to Toronto.  (For those of you who have never heard the cat-pissing-on-the-ex-wife-in-the-car story, ask me later.)  This was only the first move for Nigel, but the transfer to Vancouver six years ago was much more of an epic journey for the little fellow.

I thought that everything was going well when I got him to the airport without undue incident, but I hadn't realized that I'd have to take him out of his carrier.  However, Security wanted to x-ray it without a cat inside, so I took him out and held onto him as he tried not to panic, surrounded by the din and unfamiliarity of Pearson International Airport at its summertime busiest.  I could feel his little heart going bangbangbang, and did my best to comfort him until he was able to go back into his carrier.

I don't know what the rest of the trip was like, but when Laurie and I picked Nigel up at the Vancouver Airport he appeared completely calm in his little case.  I used to joke that it was his way of saying that it was now impossible to frighten him, that all of his capacity for fear had been used up someplace around Winnipeg.

The first time I took him out on the lawn in front of the building here, he looked around as if to say, "My god, what have you done?  This was completely different last week!"  But after he got used to things I think that he found the local scenery to be a lot more interesting than the view on Roseheath Avenue in Toronto.

I could write pages of Nigel the Cat anecdotes: the time he apparently vanished from inside the house under curious circumstances, the mole that backed him up across 20 feet of lawn and then escaped, the mouse that didn't escape, the Christmas cards, his unbelievable acrobatic escape to the back yard at 41 Schell in Toronto, the time he attacked my head and bit through my upper lip (ever have a 14 pound cat hang off your face by his teeth and claws?), the fact that he had Facebook friends that I didn't know - the fact that he was on Facebook, for that matter - and on and on.

But Time ticks on, and Nigel wasn't a kitten when I first met him.  Over 20 years after that first meeting, the time finally came, and, as always, he was calm and collected during the entire process.  I left his body with the vet - I know that a lot of people like to take care of that themselves, but I'm pretty sure that Nigel wouldn't hold it against me given the limitations of apartment and city living.

I'm going to miss Nigel more than words could possibly express, and the apartment seems empty and cold without him here.  Farewell, little warrior, best friend.  If there is a place that deserving souls go to after death, I'm sure that's where you are - and I hope that the doors are always open.

- Sid

* One last cat joke, Nige - the title is a quote from a poem by Catullus.

"We're going for a ride!"

An armoured red-and-gold figure stands braced, powerful, ready, as the hatch of a cargo plane opens to reveal the city far below.  Three clanking strides, a leap, and Iron Man is airborne, free falling into the night. 

A burst of energy from boots and gauntlets accelerates the gleaming form into the lights below as explosions set the night on fire.  A gout of flame momentarily hammers back the metallic flyer, who quickly recovers and continues his descent, which climaxes with his impact on a circular platform.

And then - dancing girls, rock and roll, lights, fireworks and cheering crowds of fans who scream in ecstacy as drone arms emerge from the rotating stage and disassemble the cybernetic armour to reveal a grinning Tony Stark.

As the music fades and the dancers leave the stage, he spreads his arms in acceptance of the cheers, and says:

"Oh, it's good to be back!"

Welcome to Iron Man 2.  

Sequels are always difficult. Film makers are faced with the challenge of attempting to repeat their success without repeating it too closely, while realizing that whatever they do it will be compared to their first production.  On that basis, how does Iron Man 2 score?

Personally, I found that it scored very well, although it suffers from a peculiar problem that seems to characterize a lot of comic book adaptations.

The best part about the character of Anthony Stark is that the writers have made him so marvelously erratic and spontaneous in his genius, giving him a humour that I don't recall ever seeing in the comic book character. Full points must be given, once again, to Robert Downey Jr.  If he did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him solely so that he could play the role of Tony Stark.

Surprisingly, Mickey Rourke almost matches Downey's star turn.  His portrayal of the villainous Ivan Vanko is an impressive creation, one into which Rourke throws himself completely. Long term fans may be a bit confused by Vanko, who is a combination of two characters from the comics: the original Whiplash and the Crimson Dynamo, an armoured Russian equivalent of Iron Man.

On the down side, I still can't get behind Gwyneth Paltrow as the love interest, and although Don Cheadle is an improvement over Terrence Howard from the first film*, I'd like to see someone with a bit more attitude in the role. I still think Gary Dourdan from CSI would be a good choice, let's try him for Iron Man 3, shall we?

 

One of the few things that I didn't like about the plot of the first movie was that the dice in the climactic battle were so loaded against Iron Man that it really wasn't a fight.  What I wanted to see was Iron Man winning against the odds because he's just so much better at this than his opponents.  Iron Man 2 gave me that experience, although in this case Iron Man shares the spotlight with the War Machine armour, the provenance of which has been changed somewhat from the comic book version.

Okay, all this sounds fairly positive - what "peculiar problem" does Iron Man 2 share with other comic adaptations? 

For no good reason that I can imagine, writers have found it necessary to double or triple up on major characters from the comic versions, creating movies that are just a little bit too busy - or perhaps "wasteful" is the word I want.   (Spiderman 3 and most of the Batman movies share this problem.) 

Scarlett Johansson certainly shows well as the Black Widow (although they never refer to her by that name), and rival industrialist mastermind Justin Hammer loses a few decades and most of his dignity in Sam Rockwell's version of the character. However, with the inclusion of Vanko, Hammer and the Widow, Iron Man 2 is loaded up with two major villains from the comic, an ambivalent love interest/major villain/reformed villain, while keeping Nick Fury involved in the plot - oh, and did I mention the War Machine?  I know that the history of Iron Man as a comic book character dates back to 1963, which offers a rich vein of material to mine for movie adaptations, but let's go easy, people. You could have made three movies with this many characters, it's more than a bit crowded for a two-hour story.

Not to mention all the damn hints about the upcoming Thor, Captain America and Avengers movies…

But really, these are minor issues, and for the most part I found Iron Man 2 to be an excellent followup to the first movie.  However, for me the sad part, the unbelievable part, was when Tony Stark boasts that with the Iron Man armour he has successfully privatized world peace.  It seems terribly naive, and somehow terribly American, to suggest that all the tension, all the anger, all the animosity and hatred in the world, could be completely eliminated by one man in a flying red-and-gold tin can.

- Sid

*A store window mannequin would have been an improvement over Terrence Howard, if you ask me.

Strength in Numbers.

Damn it, I missed Towel Day again. I had it marked on the calendar and everything, but somehow it completely slipped through the cracks until Dave, the training supervisor at work who is also a science fiction fan, burst into the office with a loud "Happy Towel Day, everyone!"

At least I can take small comfort in being the only person who knew what in the hell he was talking about - although admittedly, not everyone would find that a reason to be comforted.

- Sid

Housekeeping.

Over the three and a half years that I've been doing this blog, a few things have changed.  Blogger itself has added some features, and, to be honest, I've figured out how to do some things in the editing phase that I didn't realize I could do.  I've also recently added the little atomic swirl that I've been using as a marker at the end of posts.

However, this creates a bit of a dilemma for me.  Traditionally, I feel that when something is finished, it's finished.  As an example, I would like nothing more than for George Lucas to stop messing about with the Star Wars movies - yes George, it's wonderful that you have more money and better special effects capabilities, but I think that in their original form those movies represent a particular vision, a vision that was created using the tools available at that time.  I'm also not impressed by the remastered episodes of the original Star Trek that have started getting into circulation, the ones where the special effects shots of spaceships, planets, and so forth have been recreated to match current state of the art.  (And that stand out like sore thumbs compared to the other footage as a result.)

On the other hand, I am a big fan of consistency in documents, and it niggles at me that everything doesn't match up over time. I've also learned some little tricks that I think just make the postings look a bit nicer (it was surprisingly tricky to convince the HTML editor to put a space between the title and a picture).

So, here's the question: is it acceptable for me to go back and make changes to pictures, post videos, and add my little logo?  Or would I be making the same sort of egotistical mistake that's represented by all those director's cut DVDs?

- Sid

Clumsily written and scientifically incorrect?

A brilliant industrialist named Justin Cord awakes from a 300-year cryonic suspension into a world that has accepted an extreme form of market capitalism. It's a world in which humans themselves have become incorporated and most people no longer own a majority of themselves.

Jacket blurb for The Unincorporated Man 

After enjoying a pleasant brunch downtown at The Two Parrots this morning, I decided to enjoy the sunny weather and wander about for a bit.  Not surprisingly, my travels led me toward Chapters, and in I went for a casual browse.

I'm sure that there must be reams of manuals on shelf placement and book popularity, but suffice it to say that if an aisle is below a minimum width (as tends to be common with Chapters outlets) you're only going to browse the top two rows unless you're looking for something specific.  As a result, it's not a surprise that I noticed a large trade paperback of The Unincorporated Man, by Dani and Eytan Kollin, facing out on on the top shelf.
 
To my mild amusement, the cover contained the following bit of promotional drivel by Canadian SF author Robert J. Sawyer:

"Reminiscent of Heinlein--a good, old-fashioned, enormously appealing SF yarn. Bravo!" 

Umm....old-fashioned science fiction?...sigh...I guess it's too late to step back and take another run at that one, Bob?

- Sid

P.S.  Yes, I know perfectly well what he means, but as with a certain friend and the statement "Once we're on the plane, it will be clear sailing", there's just something a little bit askew in there.

It would look cool on a t-shirt, too.

Mr. Underhill answered the question. "Because the name is the thing," he said in his shy, soft, husky voice,  "And the true name is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing."

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Rule of Names

As I've mentioned previously, one of the great things about doing this blog is that it can lead me off in all sorts of unexpected directions.  As a case in point, right now I should be finishing off a posting on Hugo Gernsback, whose least successful contribution to the genre of science fiction was his attempt to have it called "scientifiction".

With absolutely no malice intended, I'm not all that sorry that Mr. Gernsback lost the coin toss on that one, the term scientifiction doesn't fall trippingly from the tongue.  Hold on, though - Gernsback's failed definition is legendary, but where did we get the winner?  Who first uses the term "science fiction"?

My copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction talks a great deal about the difficulty of defining the genre, to the point of stating:

There is really no good reason to expect that a workable definition of SF will ever be established.  None has been, so far.

However, they don't seem to touch on the words involved, the naming of the thing, as it were.  Well, let's see if the Internet can shed any light on this.

So, off to Google™ - but wait, typing in "science fiction" is just going to give me a million links to Star Trek and Star Wars.  Well, very often the best approach with Google™ is to ask it exactly what you want to find out:  "origin of the term science fiction". To my surprise, in addition to the usual lot of link farm pages offering wholesale definitions, there's a solid reference to an article by H. Bruce Franklin, a professor at Rutgers University, citing a book published in 1851 which uses the phrase "Science-Fiction". 

The book in question is A Little Earnest Book Upon A Great Old Subject, by William Wilson, and it contains the following wonderful statement:

 Campbell* says "Fiction in Poetry is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanting resemblance." This applies especially to Science-Fiction, in which the revealed truths of Science may be given, interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true...

Further research reveals that some scholars attribute the term "science fiction" to editor and author John W. Campbell**, who was responsible for changing the name of the magazine Astounding Stories to Astounding Science Fiction in 1938, but in my opinion the Wilson reference is the obvious winner.  There's also a certain elegance to the part about the revealed truths of science being interwoven with a pleasing story which appeals to me, and, when you think about it, it's not a bad definition for the field.  I also find the following comment by Wilson to be a fabulous addendum to that definition:

We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as we believe such books likely to fulfill a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail.

There you have it:  science fiction, where science alone might fail.  What better justification for the genre could there be?

- Sid

* I sincerely hope that this is not a reference to either one of the infamous time-travelling Campbell Brothers, who have made more disruptive appearances in the past and future than Doctor Who.

**  Boy, these Campbell guys are thick on the ground, aren't they?

"My name is William Shatner...and I am Canadian!"

Bill: You're being considered for Governor General of Canada. Do it!  Finally a chance to do something with your life.

Leonard Nimoy via Twitter

After much consideration, we here at The Infinite Revolution have decided to neither support nor oppose William Shatner as the next Governor General of Canada.

- Sid

P.S. if you're a true nerd, you'll have noticed that they screwed up and used a picture of a blue Andorian instead of a green Orion slave girl.

Anti-Matter

 I like to think that there's an unspoken covenant between writer and reader.  The writer is expected to offer an entertaining, thought-provoking, cathartic*, well-written work for the reader, and the reader is presumably expected to be entertained, provoked to thought, emotionally purged, and appreciative. 

Outside of that, as with anything else in life, it's a matter of preference.  For myself, I tend to be style-driven as well as plot-driven, so I gravitate toward authors who meet my standards for a well-crafted sentence, and will frown in the middle of a reading if I realize that an author has had more than three characters "roaring in delight" during the narrative.**

My original statement about the reader-writer agreement is intended to leave a lot of room for the writer to exercise his craft, which is as it should be.  However, I have to admit to a personal rider to the original agreement: I must be able to identify with the protagonist to a certain extent, and their fate should not be one of futility.

What do I mean by that? As an example, there's a novel that I no longer own called Acts of Conscience, written by William Barton.  The main character was not terribly likeable, but when he started raping little teddy-bear shaped aliens, Barton started to lose me.  He lost me completely when he failed to make those acts of rape something that I could see as a necessary part of the plot.  As a counter-example, in the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen Donaldson, I was able to accept that the titular character commits an act of rape in the first book.  It's a tragic event, partially caused by his reaction to the unexpected remission of his leprosy, and it sets up a sequence of equally tragic events.

In my recent reading of Iain M. Banks' Matter, I had some issues involving the plotline and my view of the author/reader agreement. Broadly speaking (and unfairly simplified), the story deals with events surrounding a royal family located in the depths of a gigantic layered world.  The kingdom is just entering its industrial revolution, and there's a certain irony in this development considering their location in a world constructed by alien technology uncounted millenia ago.  The widowed king has two sons, the eldest a drunken, womanizing wastrel, the other a bookish academic, and a daughter, who has emigrated to the far more technologically advanced outside universe.

The king is killed by his closest advisor, an event witnessed by the eldest son.  In fear for his life, the prince flees the planet in search of help, accompanied by a trusted servant.  The younger son manages to evade several subtle (and not so subtle) attempts at assassination, but after being injured in an encounter with an ancient alien weapon, is beaten to death by his father's killer as he lies dying in bed. The killer is then destroyed in the alien weapon's departure for the core of the world.

The eldest son meets his sister, returning home after being informed of her father's death, and they return to the planet.  Upon their arrival, the sister discovers that the alien weapon has the potential to destroy the entire planet, and their quest for justice becomes a fight to save the world.  They confront the weapon, but find themselves enormously outmatched.  One of the other two, servant or prince, must offer themselves as a decoy to allow the sister to make a last-ditch attempt to destroy the weapon.  The prince becomes the decoy and is killed, and the sister, eviscerated, destroyed, left with nothing but her head and a fragment of spine, detonates the small antimatter reactor in her head as she lies in the clutches of the weapon.

The End.

Okay, there's a brief epilogue in which we are shown the prince's servant returning home to his family and somewhat smugly announcing his decision to run for political office in the void left by the death of the royal family, supported by riches provided by agents of the society to which the sister had emigrated.  Thank you for at least letting us know that the world wasn't destroyed, Mr. Banks.

Now, I like Banks as an author, and I realize that part of his strength is his willingness to break with convention.  I'm also sufficiently sophisticated as a reader that I don't demand that the main characters survive the novel.  However, in this case I found myself thinking that whether they'd saved the world or not, I really didn't feel that any of the characters deserved the manner in which they'd been treated.  My description above of the conclusion is not all that much more detailed than the one in the story - we're given no insight into the prince's decision to sacrifice himself, it just happens, and although his sister has had her consciousness backed up before leaving the outside universe, we are not given any opportunity to see her restored backup reflect on the original's fate.

I realize that real life is full of the murder of innocents, unacknowledged and unexplained sacrifices, and solitary, unseen final moments of martyrdom.  But honestly, if I found real life to be all that appealing, would I be reading science fiction?

- Sid

*  I use catharsis here in the technical sense as derived from the ancient Greeks, wherein it refers to an emotional release offered by the arts of theatre, music, literature, and so on.  In modern vernacular it's ended up being more related to closure after a tragic event, but originally it referred to any emotion evoked by "good art" - laughter or pleasure as well as sadness.

** William Forstchen, The Lost Regiment:  Rally Cry.

The Gripping Hand.

We were discussing movies on a Friday night a couple of weeks ago at the Frog, since my friend Chris had finally seen Avatar.  Apparently Chris was initially willing to avoid it all together due to the mixed reviews he'd heard, but he was talked into going by his brother, who felt it heralded the dawning of a new era in filmmaking.

And perhaps it does.  Personally, I think that Avatar is one of a number of movies that demonstrate a variety of techniques and approaches that pave the path for the perfect adaptation of some classic of science fiction.  We have Avatar's flawless 3-D representation of an alien world, the impressionistic visions of 300, Sin City and The Watchmen, and the hard-edged realism demonstrated in District 9.  The only question is which novel to adapt for this breakthrough film?

Chris' instant response was "Ringworld."  After a moment's consideration, I told him that he could take any stuffed toy he wanted from the top shelf.

Larry Niven's 1970 award-winning novel would be a perfect candidate for a big-screen blockbuster.  Futuristic settings, exotic locations, non-humanoid aliens who are major characters, a plotline which is part adventure, part romance, part mystery, and part travelogue, and of course the Ringworld itself, a massive construct on a mega-planetary scale.

I mentioned this idea to Dave, one of my co-workers who is a serious science fiction fan as well, and he agreed.

"Yeah, yeah, I just re-read Ringworld a couple of months ago, that would be great."  Then his eyes went distant for a moment.

"Or you know what would be good?  Frederik Pohl's Heechee series, I'd like to see those books done as movies.  Or the Benford series, the Galactic Center books, I read those not too long ago."

I agree completely - either of those two series would certainly offer a more involved plot line than Ringworld, but they would both present an equally unique vision on film.

But then, there's a long list of books that would offer material of equal excellence for adaptation:  C.J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station, Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye,  Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card,  Neuromancer by William Gibson, the David Brin Uplift series, The Forever War, Snow Crash, Hyperion, Childhood's End, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Fountains of Paradise, the Amber series, The Stars My Destination, The Snow Queen, the Pern books, The Peace War...

*  *  *

One of the books that I listed above is The Mote in God's Eye, which deals with humanity's first encounter with an alien race.  Said aliens - the Moties -  have three arms, two small ones for everyday use, and one massive one that they use for heavy lifting and so on - the gripping hand, as they call it.

This three-way approach to things has affected their speech, as well.  Whereas we would discuss an issue on the basis of "on one hand, or on the other hand", the Moties conclude with "but on the gripping hand" to indicate the real point of a debate.

In this case, on one hand, there is obviously a plethora of brilliant science fiction novels that would be ideal subjects for movie adaptations.  On the other hand, Hollywood's caution in this area may be justified:  adaptations from SF novels are more noted for their failure than their success.

On the gripping hand?  State of the art 20 years ago would have allowed for adaptations from most if not all of the books I've listed.  Aren't we long overdue for someone to do the same thing for science fiction that Peter Jackson did for fantasy with the Lord of the Rings movies?

In other words, what are we waiting for?

- Sid