"It's all about the boobs, man!"

The second question is: why does the (attractive) female lead always end up wearing an inadequate little outfit and a disproportionate amount of content involve close ups of cleavage?

- Laurie Smith

Following the Evil Dr. Smith's comments regarding The Dinosaur Experiment, I took the liberty of reworking the DVD artwork in the interests of gender equality.  Sadly, I don't think mine looks all that much more fake than the original. Seriously, though, could they not at least have given the poor woman a belt?

- Sid

 

Win some, lose some.

(Contributed by Laurie Smith)

Recently I had the mixed pleasure of watching two dinosaur horror flicks:  Poseidon Rex and The Dinosaur Experiment.  The first one was watchable albeit a bit slim on plot, and unintentionally humorous in the moments of carnage and gore.  The latter was abysmal.  No plot and no intelligence in sight other than from the raptors, to the point where each casualty made me feel like cheering ("Hooray!  One less stupid human!").  Both movies ended ambiguously, opening the door to a sequel.  I know which sequel I'd watch and which one I'd avoid.

Two questions: does the presence of a deep underwater sink hole ("from which no diver has ever returned") or posted signs blatantly warning "Raptor Farm – Keep Out!" and "This door MUST be kept locked at all times" not register with these hapless morons who insist on exploring the deep blue sea (BTW, snorkelers would be long dead from the water pressure before they reached the 400 foot depth, just a FYI to the film maker) or opening the sturdy multiple bolted doors from behind which menacing roars are emanating?

The second question is:  why does the (attractive) female lead always end up wearing an inadequate little outfit and a disproportionate amount of content involve close ups of cleavage?  Perhaps to quote one of the expendable supporting actors in The Dinosaur Experiment, "It's all about the boobs, man!"

- Laurie 

Yeah, that always surprises people.

It's time for war, it's time for blood. It's. Time. For. TEA!!!

Emilie Autumn - Time for Tea, Fight Like a Girl

And now for something completely different:

From Kiskaloo, by Chris Sanders

As a dedicated tea drinker* for my entire life, it's these little moments of affirmation that make it all worth while.

 - Sid

* Just for the record, I drink Tetley's™ Tea, which often leads to tea snobs telling me that I drink crap tea.  Well, too bad - I like Tetley's, and it's been a comfort to me in all kinds of situations where I needed either caffeine, a break, a warm drink, or just something familiar in a strange place.  Not to mention control over the undead.

Recommended Reading.

Last night, the Evil Dr. Smith and I went out for dinner with my friend Alan and his new female companion Karli.  Alan is in the process of moving to Vancouver from Toronto, and has shown the foresight to line up an apartment and a girlfriend in a single visit.

Given that Alan is not a great fan of literature himself, I was pleased to discover that Karli is a reader. (She's also extremely good looking and apparently quite smart - I hope Alan's apartment is as nice.) As part of our conversation, we were discussing the trials and tribulations of long-distance moving, and I mentioned that my move to the West Coast was a little more expensive than Laurie's due to factors like my extensive library. When pressed, I confessed to my long term addiction to science fiction and fantasy.

As sometimes happens when people find out that I'm a geek, I was asked what science fiction novel I’d recommend - Karli had already explained that her literary interests are not tagged to a particular genre. 

I initially went with Dune, by Frank Herbert, which is a superb novel in spite of unfortunate adaptations to both movie and miniseries, but settled on Larry Niven’s Ringworld instead.

We finished dinner, we paid the bill, we shook hands and hugged and so forth, and went on our separate ways.  When I finally got home, I made a cup of tea, came into my study, sat down, stared at my books, and brooded for a while. 

Ringworld is not a bad recommendation when put on the spot over dinner. It deals with aliens, space travel, extended life, teleportation booths, and a plethora of other familiar SF tropes.  The massive scale of the Ringworld itself illustrates the sense of wonder and imagination which typifies the best of hard SF, and the adventures that Louis Wu and his motley crew experience there are thought-provoking, exciting, and entertaining.  It’s a clever book, and I think it’s easily accessible for non-fans.

All that being said, I feel that I’ve slighted any number of equally valid candidates for recommended reading: Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, or perhaps The Lathe of Heaven; The Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny*, (maybe The Dream Master); Downbelow Station, by C. J. Cherryh; Babel-17, or Nova, by Samuel R. Delany, Lord Valentine’s Castle, by Robert Silverberg; Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; The Centauri Device, by M. John Harrison; Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan, Hyperion, by Dan Simmons; Neuromancer, by William Gibson - and I'll stop there with ten authors.

Other science fiction fans (including my sister) will read this list and immediately voice their objections.

"What about Stranger in a Strange Land?"

"There’s no Clarke!"

"There’s no Asimov!"

"Where's Douglas Adams!  Or Piers Anthony!"

"Peter Hamilton's really good!"

"What about Lovecraft?"

"How could you skip Harlan Ellison?"

And they would be completely correct - the books listed above are in no way intended to explore the complete range of science fiction, and I could double those names in two minutes.

Then what does that list represent? 

The authors I’ve listed above are the ones that captured me with their imagination, style and skill, in books that I've returned to again and again over the years.  It's a bit sloped toward the 80s, when I was really hitting my stride as a fan, but includes older and new fiction as well.  Some of them are not as high profile - I suspect that M. John Harrison is a new name to some fans reading this - and the books I've listed aren't always the best known for those authors.  But they are all exceptional examples of writing talent, regardless of their genre, and I would unhesitatingly recommend all of them in a heartbeat.

And, in conclusion, I have to apologize.  I've always said that I didn't want to do lists here, everyone does lists, and now I've done one.  In my defense, I held out for almost eight years, so I don't feel I've betrayed my principles by too much.

- Sid

* Both these authors are equally at home with fantasy or science fiction, but Karli’s original question was for a science fiction recommendation, so I’m restricting myself to SF.  Although, really, with Roger Zelazny it's sometimes hard to tell.

Is there another answer?

I'm obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I'd even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.

- Stephen Hawking, How to Build A Time Machine

I've previously mentioned that my employers have a long and unfortunate history of choosing admin staff with little or no knowledge of Star Trek.  We've recently hired a new employee to fill one of the positions in question - I offered to prepare some basic Star Trek questions for the interview process, simple things like: "What is the name of Data's brother?", but I was quietly reassured that the HR people could take care of that sort of thing themselves.

So far, I haven't really had a chance to test the hiring team's due diligence in this critical area, although I've been reassured that I shouldn't worry. However, a recent encounter with Diana, our new co-worker, has made me a bit concerned about how things will work out in the long run.

Coming back from lunch with my fellow employee Wendy* last week, we bumped into the new hire wandering down the street with what appeared to be a bagged lunch clutched in one hand.  Wendy politely recommended a nearby park with a nice view of the mountains and dock gantry cranes and so on as a pleasant spot to eat.  I added that I had found a time machine there a few months ago as well, which I felt added a certain je ne sais quoi to the park's credentials.

Diana considered this for a moment, and then asked, "What year does it go to?"

Mildly affronted, I replied, "What year does it go to?  All of them! How do you think this works?  'Excuse me, does this time machine go to the Battle of Hastings?'  "Sorry, no, miss, this is the Number 12 Time Machine, I only go to the French Revolution.  You want the Number 8 Time Machine at the stop across the street.' "

At this point Wendy intervened and explained that further explanation of my mania could be found on my ongoing eight-year old science fiction blog**, which concluded with Diana pointing at me and happily exclaiming, "AH, YOU'RE A GREAT BIG NERD!!!!!"

Well, yes...was there a question in there?

But, honestly...what year does my time machine go to?  It's time PORTALS that only go to one date, what do they teach people in school these days?

Seriously though, from Wells' eponymous Time Machine through almost 120 years of time chairs, time ships, time projectors, time highways, time tunnels, police boxes, DeLoreans and phone booths, I am at a loss to think of a single example of a mechanical time travel device which is dedicated to a single temporal destination.  I open this up to my readership - any examples of single-stop time mechanisms come to mind?

- Sid  

* There is some mild irony here in that Wendy, to whom I offered the Star Trek interview questions, is one of the people who experienced Jean-Luc Picard fail at the reception window. She has since been promoted, which would seem to indicate that the company doesn't place the same focus on this that I do.

**The blog thing really does take all of the guesswork out of it for people, perhaps I should have t-shirts made or get cards printed or something.

All the ladies in the house say, “Awwwww….”

Spider-Man in particular, he loves Spider-Man.

Terry, talking about his son Edward

And now, here's Ed with his favourite umbrella.  Ed is apparently also fond of Los Angeles, but that's less relevant for this blog.

 - Sid

But which seven?

There's a 1949* novelet by Keith Bennett called The Rocketeers Have Shaggy Ears which details the trials of Ground Expeditionary Patrol One, whose ship crashes during an exploratory mission on Venus.** Thirty-two men set off on a five hundred mile trek back to their main base - seven survive the trip.

The story is told partially from the perspective of Clarence Hague, an inexperienced young gunnery officer who, through the process of attrition, ends up in command of the last remnants of the ship's crew. Near the end of the story, he lists the remaining eight men under his command:

There was young Crosse, his face twitching nervously.  There was Blake, the tall, quiet bacteriologist; Lenkranz, the metals man; Hirooka, the Nisei; Balistierri; Whitcomb, the photographer, with a battered Hasselbladt still dangling from its neck cord against his armored chest. Swenson was still there, the big Swede crewman; and imperturbable Sergeant Brian, who was now calmly cleaning the pneumatic gun's loading mechanism.

Following one last battle with the lizardlike natives of the Venusian jungles, they successfully arrive at the base:

Chapman remembered his field glasses and focused them on the seven approaching men.  "Lieutenant Hague is the only officer."

And so the story ends. Obviously Hague survives that final skirmish, but I've always felt a bit cheated by the fact that we are never told which two of those other eight men fail to complete the journey. I wonder why Bennett decided to omit that crucial bit of information - and why the editor let him get away with it?

 - Sid

* In the interests of complete accuracy, copyright is from 1949, but the story wasn't published in Planet Stories until Spring of 1950.

** There was a point in time where Venus was theorized to be Earth-like but much warmer due to its position closer to the Sun.

In search of vintage books: a tragedy in three acts.

Act One:  The Object of Desire
There's a particular subgenre of fantasy, primarily British in origin*, in which teenagers and tweenagers find themselves unexpectedly involved in mystical events of enormous importance while on vacation.  Examples would be the Narnia books, Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series, and The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner. (Not Harry Potter - I think that J. K. Rowling was painting a far more complex canvas than the sort of story that I'm talking about here.)

I own a very early example of the genre:  What Happened At Garry-Eustace, by Dorothea Townshend, with illustrations by Alan Wright, detailing the adventures of the four Eustace children with leprechauns, the Sidhe, Tirna'an Og, enchanted princesses, magical swords, hidden treasures and the like. My copy is undated, but was probably published in 1927.*  Sadly, it is in such horrible condition that it is only by courtesy that I can call it a book - the covers still enclose the pages, but that's about it.  In my defense, I haven't abused it (okay, maybe a little when I was ten or eleven) it's just an old book that wasn't taken care of.

Act Two: Fulfillment
I was flipping through this poor battered book recently, and thought to myself, "Wait a minute, Sid, this has to be available someplace on line - you can't possibly own the only copy in the world."  So, I sat down with Google™, and to my extreme pleasure instantly found a copy for sale by a third-party seller on Amazon.co.uk for a mere £5.99 and an additional £6.94 for shipping and handling. A different edition, admittedly, but under the circumstances, I considered finding a copy at all to be a win.

I was a bit concerned that the British branch of Amazon might not want to sell to someone in Canada, but all of my regular Amazon.ca account information worked - bang, done, and then it was just a question of waiting a couple of weeks for delivery.

Act Three:  Disappointment
Imagine my surprise to then receive an e-mail announcing that the seller had cancelled my order because the item was out of stock.  This was followed by a very polite letter of apology from the seller, explaining that the book had been sold recently and that she had neglected to delete the listing immediately.

As I commented in my reply to the seller, I was of course disappointed, but more than anything else I was surprised that someone else - in fact, ANYONE else - had been looking for the same book at the same time!

So, ultimately I was left with my original timeworn tome. I couldn't find another copy for sale at that point in time, but it's not as if I am in desperate need of a copy in better condition, and at least I know that there are other copies out there. Hmmm...perhaps I should do another search now, you never know...

- Sid 

* I'm open to debate on this, but personally I think of it as a British thing.

** The online WorldCat Book Catalogue says that there were only 1927 and 1930 editions of this book, and based on the publisher, mine is from 1927.

Chicago 4: Visitations

I hope it turns out to be nice today in Chicago for book shopping.  Goodness gracious, what additional books will you be looking for?

- Excerpted from an e-mail from Laurie Smith

I realize that for most people, a trip to a foreign city doesn't necessarily involve visiting the local book stores. However, I view it as an opportunity to get a bit off the beaten track left by other tourists, see a part of the area I might not otherwise see, and perhaps make some judicious purchases for my collection.

Now, as per Laurie's e-mail, people are often surprised that I still feel the need to buy books - I've got thousands of the damn things, isn't that enough?  And there's a certain element of truth to that. I've certainly reduced my book buying in the last few years, but I still like to keep my eye open for interesting additions to my little library.

A little research on the Internet aimed me at Bucket O'Blood in Chicago - sadly, The Stars Our Destination, another local science fiction specialty store, is no longer open. In addition, another conference attendee recommended a bookstore called Myopic as being a good spot for used books.

Myopic is certainly a classic old-school used bookstore - in fact, as you can see from this photo of the science fiction and fantasy section in their basement, if it was any more old school it would probably be unsafe to visit. Regardless, they have a large and varied selection, and I walked away with some interesting finds, including the three volumes of the Neustrian Cycle, by Leslie Barringer: Gerfalcon, Joris of the Rock, and Shy Leopardess - 1976 reprints of books which were originally published in 1927, and exactly the sort of thing that I hope to find in these little book shopping trips.

(The funny thing is that I couldn't remember how I'd heard about this trilogy.  I knew that I'd read about it being a classic read somewhere - but where?  As it turns out, I stumbled across the answer purely by accident while shelving books - it was Andre Norton, who recommends Barrington in her excellent 1971 essay On Writing Fantasy, wherein she discusses the influences and sources for her work.)

I was surprised by how small Bucket O'Blood was compared to most of the bookstores I've visited, especially since half of the store is dedicated to vinyl. (Never before in my life have I been in the same room with so many hipsters.)  However, it's obvious that their relatively small selection of second-hand genre literature has been carefully selected - and, to be honest, there is a lot of chaff in most used bookstores, it was actually a bit of a pleasure not to have to wade through shelf after shelf of bad Conan the Barbarian rip-offs in search of something worthwhile.

Most noteworthy of the five books that I purchased there were the 1955 printing of Star Guard, by Andre Norton, and the 1965 version of Second Stage Lensmen, by E. E. "Doc" Smith, both replacement copies for books that I already own - sad how Time has its way with paper, ink and glue. I was particularly pleased to find the E. E. Smith book - my mother owned this edition, but by the time I was old enough to pick it up, both cover and binding were in sad condition. It was a pleasure to see an old favourite again in such good condition: they literally don't make covers like this anymore.

You know, now that I think about it, I've never been to a used book store in England, how have I missed doing that? Obviously that's on the list for my next UK visit. (Oh well, there goes my weight allowance for the flight home from that trip...)

- Sid

What do you mean, "would have"?

It appears to be Travel Month on the Infinite Revolution - here's a card from Laurie, aka the Evil Doctor Smith.

 Is it just me, or is it a bit creepy to end a sentence about the domination of humanity with a little smiley face?

- Sid

Chicago 3: The Bean...

And now I present to you the Chicago Bean - one part neutronium sphere, one part Slaver stasis box, one part time bobble.*

Hmm...okay, actually that's not quite accurate.  All of the above would be perfect spheres, this is more like an alien spacecraft of some sort.  Not to mentioned that a neutronium sphere that size would weigh...lessee, if we pretend it actually is round, call it ten meters high, which is 523,599,000 cubic centimeters.....a cubic centimeter of neutronium would weigh 1,212,541,000 tonnes..so that's about 6.35 x 10¹⁷ tonnes…the earth weighs 6.585 x 10²¹ metric tonnes...okay, so it wouldn't quite weigh as much as the Earth, but certainly well up there.  Probably not the sort of thing that you’d leave lying around in a park, although I'm sure it would pull in the tourists.

- Sid

*Respectively, Larry Niven's short story There is a Tide, and Vernor Vinge's novel Peace War.

UPDATE:  First, in answer to a couple of inquiries, no Photoshop is involved in the second picture, just a wide angle lens and careful positioning.  If you click on the picture to open it at full size, and lean forward to the monitor and squint a bit, you can see me in front of the trees, almost in the exact middle of the sphere, taking the picture.  What was involved was a lot of patience while waiting for people to get out of the way.

Second, I have been remiss in not thanking Dan Cooke from my office, who suggested that I visit the Bean during my visit to Chicago.  My apologies, Dan - now stop harassing me about it or I won't help you with your CMS problems anymore.

Chicago 2: "Quick, everyone, back to the Knickerbocker!

Watch her, trail her, pipe her as she goes,
With her high-heeled boots and her patent leather toes.
That she was one of those flash girls I soon found out in time
When her high-heeled boots went clattering down the Knickerbocker Line.

The Flash Girls, The Return of Pansy Smith and Violet Jones

As per my previous posting, I'm writing this in Chicago, where I attended a four day publications conference.  I've booked a couple of days of vacation time in order to do some sightseeing, but because my pockets aren't quite as deep as those of my employers, I've switched hotels.  I'm now staying at the wonderfully named Millennium Knickerbocker, which sounds to me like the perfect name for Han Solo's ship in the steampunk version of Star Wars.

 - Sid
 

Chicago 1: One to beam up.

(First draft written while waiting for a flight to Chicago.)

I greatly enjoy time spent in different locations - all of my best memories involve foreign locales - but I don't enjoy the process of getting there, the actual travel itself.  Our family didn't travel at all when I was younger, so I when I began to travel as an adult, I had no background or experience to draw upon..  As such, even at the age of 52, going to the airport feels like having to take a really important test that I can't study for and which I could fail at any moment, especially when I'm crossing the border to the United States.

So, let's talk about teleportation.

On the face of it, easy access to mechanical teleportation would be fantastic - when I say "easy", I mean something on the level of taking the bus:  not universal, not free, but affordable and accessible. Step into a booth, swipe your card, pick a location, press GO, open the door, and you're at work.  Or in Zimbabwe.*

But, as always with new technology, it would have both a positive and a negative effect.  In the case of teleportation, the effects would probably be massive, changing the world on the same sort of scale as the introduction of the computer. 

Science fiction author Larry Niven has written a lot of good stories and essays on mechanical teleportation, which detail the various issues involving the collapse of all the transportation and shipping industries at once and the subsequent economic issues, the problems involving smuggling and crime (including the end of location as an alibi for murder) and a myriad of other issues. 

Niven also addresses the physics behind the process and the various problems that would need to be overcome.  For example, if you teleported to the other side of the world, you would have to land running at 1670 kilometers per hour to compensate for the simple fact that the other side of the world is rotating in the opposite direction.

But what actually happens when you teleport?  How does it work?

Well, in theory it kills you.

In some way shape or form, you cease to exist.  You are scanned and disintegrated, then rebuilt at the far end, but is it still you?  There are several science fiction stories that look at this question - notably, there's a teleporter in China Miéville's entertaining novel Kraken who goes insane because he's being haunted by the ghosts of all his previous selves who were killed by the process.**  

“This is why I wouldn’t travel that way,” Dane said. “This is my point. For a piece of rock or clothes or something dead, who cares? But take something living and do that? Beam it up? What you done is ripped a man apart then stuck his bits back together and made them walk around. He died. Get me? The man’s dead. And the man at the other end only thinks he’s the same man. He ain’t. He only just got born. He’s got the other’s memories, yeah, but he’s newborn. That Enterprise, they keep killing themselves and replacing themselves with clones of dead people. That is some macabre shit. That ship’s full of Xerox copies of people who died.”

And there are creepier options.  After all, why should the machine disintegrate you when you're scanned?  Or delete the template?  Or just make one copy at the far end?  The most chilling take on this process comes from Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson, who posit the use of doppleganger copies of people being used for suicide exploratory missions in space in their Cuckoo novels.  After all, if the original person doesn't go anywhere, and they get a lot of money, why would it matter what happens to their copy - or copies.

Even more disturbing is the possibility of error in the process, as demonstrated in a couple of episodes of Star Trek, but nowhere more graphically than in The Fly (either version, although the 1983 remake has better special effects.)  Personally, I think I'd want to see a whole lot of other people try the damn thing out before I set foot into a transportation booth.

You know, suddenly security lineups, immigration scrutiny and airline delays seem a lot more tolerable. 

- Sid

* Should anyone reading this actually live in Chitungwiza and work in downtown Harare, feel free to substitute "Vancouver".

**  Not to mention the controversial question of the soul. The next time you watch something from the Star Trek franchise, imagine that everyone on the Enterprise is actually a soulless zombie - creepy, isn't it?  No wonder Denise Crosby seemed so stiff.

Damn - I had my heart set on X-ray vision...

In an odd coincidence, LinkedIn™ was kind enough to inform me as to the nature of my personal super-power while I was working on my posting about Days of Future Past.  Ha - take THAT, Magneto!

- Sid

A stubby would have been even better.

Speaking of Alpha Flight, I was discussing comic book movies with my long-suffering co-worker Terry, and asked if he has seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Upon discovering that he hadn't, I told him that he would have to get it when it reached the general marketplace, because it would fit in perfectly with his conspiracy-oriented view of the government.* 

He replied, "Absolutely - I'll sit down with my son and we'll give it a good watch."

"Isn't Ed a bit young for that sort of movie?"

"Well, he's only four, but he loves that stuff. Spider-Man in particular, he loves Spider-Man.  I was a bit worried about Wolverine, it's so violent, but it doesn't seem to bother him at all."

"Wolverine is an interesting character all around.  He was introduced by Marvel in order to get some Canadian content - at one point the X-Men was being drawn and co-written by a Canadian, fellow named John Byrne, and he introduced an entire Canadian super-group called Alpha Flight, with members from BC and Alberta and Québec and so on.  Wolverine had been a member at one point, and then left under a cloud, so when they meet up again they do that whole weird hero-fighting-hero thing that seemed to happen so often in Marvel comics.  Wolverine and Nightcrawler, the blue X-Man who can teleport, go to Ottawa so Logan can reconnect with Alpha Flight, and there's a whole bunch of Canadian Easter Eggs**, like conversations with Trudeau and Wolverine drinking Canadian beer - Molson's or something similar."

Ah, well, nobody's perfect - a little research revealed that it was actually Labatt's. Although, when you think about it, a can of Canadian would have been a better joke.

 - Sid

* Well, to be honest, his conspiracy theory view of everything.  I'm not certain that Terry believes that we've actually landed on the Moon.

**  Alpha Flight had its own comic for a few years, and if memory serves it continued to have a distinctive Canadian flavour: for example, Northstar, one of the team's super-powered mutant Québecois twins, turned out to have been associated with the FLQ. 

Past, Present and Future.

As per my previous comments regarding comic book movies, I was already familiar with the basic plotline for Days of Future Past when I walked into the theatre: the X-Men of the future send the consciousness of one of their members back in time* to 1973 in order to change history and prevent the extinction of mutant-kind.  However, after seeing the movie, I felt it necessary to revisit the comic book version in order to determine exactly how much the movie version differed from the print version.

The changes are substantial and dramatic – and you know what?

The movie is better.

The X-Men movies have always been back and forth on comic book canon, but the largest variation comes from the storyline of First Class, which in many ways tears down the origins of Professor X and Magneto and rebuilds them from scratch.  Days of Future Past continues that process, but it adds much more depth to the characters of both men, especially Professor X.

Stan Lee initially created these two characters as mutant parallels to the civil rights struggle of the 60s:  the Professor represented Martin Luther King, and Magneto stood in for the much more militant Malcolm X – hopefully no pun intended.  There are glimpses of that aspect of Charles Xavier in First Class, but in Days of Future Past, we start to see his evolution into a more mature character through his relationship with Mystique and Magneto.

The comic book version, which shows Canadian comic book artist John Byrne doing some of his best work, gets bogged down in the sort of clichéd expository team-versus-team fight scene that is one of less pleasant legacies left to Marvel by Stan Lee.  The movie version keeps things much simpler, and offers a far more emotional - and powerful - interaction between the characters throughout.

A special shout-out to the producers for the casting of Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask, inventor of the anti-mutant Sentinel robots. Initially, when word got out that Mr. Dinklage had been cast for the next X-Men movie, it was widely assumed that the story would involve Alpha Flight, Marvel's Canadian superhero team, because one of the members of Alpha Flight was a dwarf.

In the original version, Bolivar Trask is a man of average height, but there’s not one reason why Peter Dinklage would be unable to play the part.  And, impressively, not once during the entire movie does the question of his height garner any sort of mention.  Full points to the producers for casting based purely on talent.

 - Sid

*  The joke is that the original two-issue sequence in the comics was published in January of 1980, and Kitty Pryde is sent back from about 30 years in the future – now, in other words.  How quickly the future becomes the present…

Cautionary Tales.

"All men must die."
                                   The Game of Thrones

People are often surprised to find out that I haven’t been watching The Game of Thrones.  Initially, I didn’t see the need – I’d already read the books, and I was more than a little sceptical about the adaptability of George R. R. Martin’s epic tale of the struggle for succession in the kingdom of Westeros as mysterious supernatural forces gather in the North and prepare to invade.

The bad news is that I think I was wrong.  All evidence seems to indicate that the adaptation is a complete success, a success which I think can be attributed primarily to the casting.  Peter Dinklage has become the most noteworthy breakout star from TGOT – the role of Tyrion Lannister might almost have been written with him in mind, and I have to wonder how he feels about the opportunity to play a character who opens the book (no pun intended) into the difficulties of life as a dwarf.

The good news is that thanks to Blu-ray and the Internet, it will be fairly easy to catch up with the episodes to date, although I doubt that I’ll be doing a four season marathon.  After all, the adaptation has stayed fairly close to the books, so I won’t have that desperate desire to find out what happens next that a new viewer would usually have.

However, I gather that viewers who had not read the books have been shocked, if not horrified, by the twists and turns of Martin’s plotline.  When the TV series began and people were telling me that they were watching and enjoying it, I gave the same advice to everyone:  “Don’t get really fond of anybody.”

The body count in Game of Thrones is astonishing: Martin sets the stage with an extensive cast of players, but no one – NO ONE – is safe.  The plethora of characters presents a target-rich environment, and Martin ruthlessly removes pieces from the board as he sees fit.

This is a deliberate strategy on his part.  Martin makes it clear that the conflict in Westeros is merciless, and those who do not win will die.  The heroes are not invulnerable, nor are the villains, and simply because a character has been an active participant for four of the novels in no way guarantees that they’ll survive the fifth book.  

On one hand, this is a brilliant approach. The reader (or viewer) can never be complacent.  In the majority of fiction, the hero may be placed in harm’s way, but everyone realizes that ultimately they will triumph over adversity.  In The Game of Thrones, you are constantly on the edge of your seat because there are no guarantees that anyone will survive.

On the other hand, the down side of this approach is that it makes it a bit of a struggle to follow the story.  Generally in fiction, one observes a protagonist experiencing conflict (generally referred to as plot).  I have no idea who the protagonist is in The Game of Thrones, and as such, reading the books feels like reading a sequence of disconnected vignettes.  A character will be dealt with in excruciating detail for two hundred pages and then get their head cut off.  As a reader, you end up feeling sort of lost, and perhaps a little bitter that you had invested so much in a character who turned out to be disposable.*

And ultimately, this may be the downfall of both the books and the adaptation.  Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series is a similar sort of epic fantasy tale, albeit with a higher survival rate on the part of the cast. The series spans a daunting 14 books, but after the sixth or seventh novel, Jordan's treatment of the characters was such that he began to lose my interest, to the extent that I no longer cared as to their ultimate fates.  I stopped buying the books, and put the ones that I did own down in the laundry room of my building in hopes that they would end up in a good home.

I don't think that George R. R. Martin will lose my interest in the same way, but he's only five novels in with apparently another three to go, and quite frankly there were a couple of times in the fifth book where my reaction was, "What, are you kidding me? Him too? And her as well?"  Careful, George.  After all, it's a two-way street.  You're certainly allowed to treat your characters in whatever fashion you choose - and we're allowed to stop reading about it.  Or watching.

- Sid

* To illustrate this for readers unfamiliar with either the books or the adaptation, imagine if by the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker had died in the snowspeeder attack on the Imperial AT-ATs, followed by the execution of Darth Vader by the Emperor.  Han Solo is assassinated by Boba Fett, and Princess Leia gang raped and shot in the head by Imperial troopers who then feed her dismembered corpse to an imprisoned and blinded Chewbacca.  Would you not feel a bit confused as to where the story was going?

The New Fan.

(Contributed by Dorothy Hatto)

 
The other day I was talking to one of my friends who is into science fiction and was amazed to discover that she had never heard of Andre Norton, one of the founders of modern science fiction/fantasy.*

Now, my friend is going to Australia, and she takes books rather than her tablet to read. They weigh less in carry on and it's easier to read half a page or so if you have to wait. She suggested that I lend her one of my books to take along.

My brother Sid might be the only one to really empathize with the decision of which book to choose.  Andre Norton or Alice Mary Norton was writing science/fantasy books before it was popular for women to be in the genre. (Ergo the "Andre" of her name.) She wrote under a few other pseudonyms, all male - I don’t think she ever used her actual name in print, although I may be wrong about that.

She was born in 1912, started writing science fiction in the 1940s, and died in 2005, still collaborating with other writers.

So, which book do you choose out of the 300 or so titles that she wrote and co-wrote?

I took a couple of days to think about it and finally chose the same book that I think I read first. My mother owned Daybreak 2250 A.D. as an Ace double and I believe it was the first Andre Norton story I ever read. My current copy was printed in the 1970s and was 50 cents at the time. I have replaced it twice** and also inherited my mother's Ace Double for my collection.

I will have to wait till my friend gets back to see if she liked it, but she does like Anne McCaffrey books and their styles are similar. 

- Dorothy

* Along with H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, Hugo Gernsbach, Arthur C. Clarke, and a few I have probably forgotten.

** I always like to get the used copies as the story has changed a bit every time it was published.

Postscript
I completely agree with Dorothy: anyone with a serious interest in science fiction or fantasy should be aware of Ms. Norton's contributions to the two genres.  Andre Norton was one of those rare authors whose mastery of tone and vocabulary was complete and flawless.  Her writing style was formal and dignified, and matched itself perfectly to the stories which she crafted with such consummate skill.

Hmmmm...but which one to lend to a first time reader? Daybreak 2250 A.D., with its outcast post-apocalyptic hero (and his cat) is certainly a good choice in terms of a characteristic novel.  I might have gone with The Time Traders, or Witch World, or Year of the Unicorn (which starts a whole series of connected novels).  The Beast Master?  Star Rangers? Sargasso of Space?  The Crossroads of Time? As my sister suggests, a difficult choice due to the uniform excellence of Andre Norton's writing.

Thanks very much for the posting, Dorothy!

- Sid

“There’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse.”

 “What’s the most dangerous thing that you’ve ever done?  And why did you do it?”

Chris Hadfield, TED 2014

If you want to get a really good idea of what’s it’s like to climb into a rocket and leave the planet, I strongly recommend that you watch Chris Hadfield’s TED Talk from TED 2014, held here in Vancouver.

Commander Hadfield evocatively describes watching the Earth “roaring silently with colour and texture as it pours by...” while holding onto the outside of the International Space Station with one hand – and then going blind during his spacewalk. It’s an intimate window into the experience of being in space, and into the relationship between danger, fear and preparation.

For viewers who can’t imagine watching something as long as 18 minutes on the internet, you may prefer to read his book, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth. It’s a readable combination of autobiography, motivation, and insight into the nuts and bolts of space exploration.

- Sid