"Look at me...look at me...I'm the captain now."

Reproduction of Kirk's command chair at Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds.  As I said, I see my fictional alter ego as being a starship captain...

- Sid

"Star Trek is a language nearly everyone speaks."

 

For 50 years, Star Trek and its themes of optimism, equality and heroism have inspired people worldwide. 

Star Trek presents a positive future - a utopia without poverty or war. In that future, all of humanity has set aside their differences and joined together in an extraordinary task: to explore the stars, meeting every challenge with bravery and thoughtfulness. 

What began as a low-budget science fiction television show with modest ratings expanded into a franchise spanning seven television series, thirteen movies, and thousands of novels, comics and games. Star Trek has made a profound impact on our society.  Star Trek's ideas and memes are now so deeply embedded in the fabric of our popular culture that even people who have never seen it can name key characters and recite its catch phrases. Star Trek inspires art, science, architecture, music and literature. Star Trek is a language nearly everyone speaks.  

Brooks Peck, Curator - Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds

I recently discovered that, in honour of Star Trek’s 50th anniversary, the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle is hosting a retrospective exhibition on the Star Trek phenomenon, and its impact on the world. Accompanied (and chauffeured) by my tolerant* girlfriend Karli, we headed down to Washington state last weekend to take a look.

After checking into our hotel, we made our way to Frank Gehry’s multi-coloured architectural masterpiece, and forked over thirty bucks US each for admission to the museum in general and the Star Trek portion specifically.  Once inside, we passed on the opportunity for a $60 autograph from Brent Spiner** (or a $30 selfie) and made our way directly into the exhibition.

 

To be honest, I feel that if you’ve seen one display of artifacts from a franchise, you’ve pretty much seen all of them – I guess I’ve become jaded in my old age. It’s also a relatively small exhibition, considering the long history of the show and its spinoffs.

 

That being said, the exhibits are comprehensive, well arranged and well explained. There’s a good mix of photo ops and interactivity: a full range of starship filming models, a duplicate of Kirk’s command chair (and the original), an excellent touch-screen starship database, props and costumes from all parts of the franchise, a Borg regeneration alcove, a horizontal duplicate of a Jefferies Tube***, and a transporter set where visitors can act out a scene. (Sadly, we were stumped by the “KHAAAAAAAAN!” simulator - as were a lot of other people, as far as we could tell.)

There are some odd little surprises. The Borg cube, which I always thought was computer generated, turned out to be an astonishingly detailed model, and the signs of forcible disassembly with a blunt object are quite obvious in the seams of the bridge set pieces from the original series. (Although it was interesting to see the navigation console from the captain's perspective.)  

There also is a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek humour to the exhibition. The display booths are set against a background of fake orange rocks, very much in the style of those made famous by the original series, and random solitary tribbles punctuate the displays: perched on top of a divider, or nestled underneath the navigation console. 

Karli was completely taken aback by the unexpected prospect of Data’s severed head looking up at her through a sheet of plexiglass from a pit in the floor – I wonder how Brent Spiner felt about that particular nod to the Next Generation episode Time's Arrow?

The real key to the exhibition lies in the display on the upper level, which examines Star Trek's effect on society in general. The most impressive thing about Star Trek is its legacy - no other piece of popular entertainment has had the same kind of a sustained cultural impact that Star Trek has.

The mezzanine displays focus on that impact: artistic, scientific, architectural, and musical, and includes a multi-screen video presentation that examines the real-life influence that Star Trek had upon the world.  Scientists, astronauts, writers and actors discuss the manner in which the goals and ideals presented by Star Trek made a difference in people's lives.

As with all good science fiction, Star Trek shows us the future but comments on the present. The original series in particular offered the world a future in which many of the problems that plagued the Sixties no longer existed. Sequels and spinoffs have continued to look at contemporary problems to a greater or lesser extent, and Gene Roddenberry's original vision of a better world has show remarkable longevity.

(Although, let's be honest, it's difficult to place the Picardigan on the same level as Martin Luther King's request to Nichelle Nichols that she stay on the show in order to continue as a role model for black people.)

For me, the most interesting thing about Exploring New Worlds was not the exhibition itself, but the people attending it. There were fans taking pinup photos in the Jefferies tube, and people snapping pictures of a baby **** in the reproduction of Kirk's command chair - presumably the Next Generation of fan.

There were fans in costumes, fans in uniforms, fans in pointed ears, and one fan wearing a steampunk Star Trek gown. They posed as regenerating Borg, stood in line to stand in as actors in a transporter scene, and I saw one woman literally bounce up and down with joy when she saw the bridge set from the original series.

To quote a certain half-Vulcan science officer: "Fascinating."

- Sid

* And lovely.

** Denise Crosby was also on site for photo ops, but I 'm just more of a Data fan.  It was an interesting combination, though, considering that their characters were “intimate” in The Naked Now, an appropriately titled first season episode of The Next Generation.

*** I honestly had no idea that Jefferies Tubes were a mystery to the population at large, but apparently this is where we cross the line from well-known information - like phasers and transporters - into esoterica. Jefferies Tubes were the little tunnels used by engineering crewmembers to access various bits of the Enterprise’s infrastructure. If you ever saw Scotty lying in a cramped little space working desperately to fix something (usually the transporter) while smoke and sparks filled the foreground, he was in a Jefferies Tube. They’re named after Matt Jefferies, who designed the original U.S.S. Enterprise.

**** And then rushing to save him as he began to slowly topple over to one side.  Did Shatner ever do that?

"This is the action I've been waiting for!"

My friend Deb is a comic book character.

(You know, it says a lot about my life that this probably doesn't come as a surprise to anyone reading this posting.)

I'll let her husband Rob explain:

I wanted to let you know that I have created a comic book inspired by my wonderful wife, Deb. It's called Deborah Daring, The Private Eye With Attitude! Her comic book alter ego is a paralegal by day and an intrepid private investigator by night. 

I used to draw quite a bit and this all started with me drawing Deb as a super hero. The idea took hold of me and I decided to turn the character into a full blown comic book. While I did the initial concept drawings and all the writing, I ended up having to hire a professional comic book artist to help me complete the book. It was a lot of work and a ton of fun creating this comic and now it's time to share it with the world!

I decided to use the crowd funding website Kickstarter to help me raise the funds for printing and distributing the book, and the campaign is now live! So I encourage you to click on the link below and take a look. If you like what you see, or at least want to support my creative effort, please back my campaign by submitting a pledge. There are various pledge levels you can contribute ($3 and up) and every pledge counts! You can also check out a website I created for Deborah Daring, as well as a Facebook page.

Website: http://www.deborahdaring.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deborahdaring/

Thanks in advance for your support! And if you know any comic book fans, forward the link to them and spread the word! Send any feedback or questions to info@deborahdaring.com 

Cheers,

Rob

If you'd like to support Deb's future as a PDF private eye, you have until the end of the month to contribute:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1802652009/deborah-daring-the-private-eye-with-attitude-1st-i

Now personally, I see my comic book character as more science-fictiony, maybe a bridge officer on a mission of interstellar exploration...after all, there's an awful lot of precedent for having a bald starship captain.

- Sid

Math homework.

There have always been people in the fan community whose commitment was so complete that they were compelled to determine the validity of the science portion of science fiction - to do things like calculate whether or not the U.S.S. Enterprise actually could travel the 16.5 light years from Earth to 40 Eridani A in four days* and so on.  

For the most part, I haven't been one of those people. I generally give most scientific questions the benefit of the doubt, or attribute any possible discrepancies to creative license.  However, I recently ran across the following paragraph in the David Weber/Steve White military SF collaboration In Death Ground, and it made me just a little curious - it was just a bit too glib:

"Fifteen light-seconds," Trang reported. "Coming into - missile launch! Multiple hostile launches! One hundred twenty plus inbound. Impact in two-seven seconds from mark!"

Okay, let's do some math.  They're fifteen light seconds away from the ships launching the missiles. Light travels 299,792 kilometers in one second, so that's 4,496,880 kilometers.**  Average speed or velocity (v) is calculated by dividing displacement*** (Δx or x) by time (t) , which gives us a result of 166,551 kilometers/second, which kind of makes sense if you just roughly calculate it - 15 light seconds, 27 seconds travel time, so a little bit faster than half the speed of light.

 However, that's the average velocity - obviously if you start at zero k/s, you need to accelerate to a higher speed to cover that distance in the same rate as if you had hit the ground running, so to speak. Thanks again to Google™, we find that acceleration (a) = 2x/t² - 2v0/t, which gives us a constant acceleration of 12,337,119 m/s² squared  (v0 is starting velocity, which in this case is presumably zero - or perhaps a negative value, the starships in question are retreating from their missile-launching enemy).

Final velocity of 333,102.213 km/s - hang on, that's faster than the speed of light, and the book is clear that the tech base for Mr. Trang's space navy doesn't include FTL travel.  But this sort of makes sense as a number, obviously your speed at some point has to be higher than the average speed in order to compensate for the fact that you started from zero.

I wasn't completely confident in my results, so I sought out our resident numbers guy, Andrew.  (Andrew was hired as a business analyst, but the manipulation of statistics and information is a large part of that, so Andrew is often pulled into discussions regarding math.)

To my astonishment, after I explained the question, he went to the white board in his office and produced the following off the top of his head:

Well, now I know why we hired Andrew.

Ultimately, the moral of the story is that the authors might not have done full due diligence on their math. (Or maybe their drive technology has a very steep acceleration curve.) For me, the real joke is that the missiles are supposed to explode when they hit their target.  I'm reasonably certain that if a multi-tonne projectile hits a starship while travelling at the speed of light, an explosion would be redundant. I'll leave it to the curious reader to calculate the amount of energy that would result from such an impact - just leave your answers as comments.  The actual weight of the missiles doesn't appear in the book anywhere to the best of my knowledge, so feel free to make your own estimate as to an appropriate weight for a weapon of this sort****.  Good luck - and please show your work.

- Sid

* 40 Eridani A is generally considered to be the location of Vulcan. This is one of those things that was never clearly defined in the original series, but when science fiction author James Blish was hired to turn the episodes into short stories for the purposes of novelization, he chose 40 Eridani A as being a likely candidate based on its distance from Earth, and over time this has become accepted as canon.

 ** To give you some perspective on that number, the Moon at its furthest from earth is 405,696 kilometers away, so eleven times as far as the Moon.

***AKA distance if you're not a mathematician.

**** As a guideline, a fully loaded F16 Falcon fighter weighs in at about 21 metric tonnes.

EDIT:  Sadly I've had to close down Comments for this posting, I've had one very enthusiastic but somewhat non-linear commenter who is just getting further and further away from the actual topic at hand.  My apologies, Tonyon.
 

Gnomic Statement XIV.

 We never did have a chance to see what colour coat the driver was wearing.

- Sid

P.S.  We followed this vehicle through the U.S. border crossing, and the driving was quite good - like a leaf on the wind...

DON'T PANIC!

 

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. 

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

May 24th marks the fifteenth anniversary of Towel Day, the annual tribute to the memory of Douglas Adams, author of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.  I've been on and off in my recognition of the day - mostly off this time, I didn't bother to carry the mandatory towel to work with me today, although I did check in at towel.org to see how the rest of the community had celebrated the day.

There was a surprising* (and gratifying)  amount of media attention in addition to the wide array of fan activities, but if there is a prize for the most appropriate event, it would have to go to the Royal Institution of Great Britain** and European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake, currently serving on the International Space Station:

When we had a chance to send something up to @astro_timpeake on the ISS, this is what we sent. Happy #TowelDay! pic.twitter.com/9QOFshn9Sv

— Ri_Science (@Ri_Science) May 25, 2016

I think that Mr. Adams would heartily approve.  Beat that, NASA.

- Sid

P.S.  If someone reading this knows how to center an embedded Twitter™ posting, please let me know.

* For the most part, May the 4th generally gets a lot more action in the press.

** In some ways the British equivalent of The Planetary Society, but with a broader scientific mandate.

Return of the Attack of the Weregeek.

 

This morning, my co-workers and I were galvanized by a shriek of panic from Kate, the administrative assistant who works at our reception area.  Everyone within earshot - which was actually just everyone, it was pretty loud shriek - rushed to her desk in order to help with whatever issue had caused Kate to start screaming.

As it turned out, Kate had seen an insect on her desk.  She said that it was a centipede, but added that it was huge - "Like Godzilla!"

Unfortunately, as previously established, this sort of comment often gets a reaction from me which may not be exactly what the commenter is expecting.

"Well, no, not Godzilla, Godzilla was a lizard."

"Hmmmm....it wouldn't be Gidrah or Rodan, they could fly, and were also sort of lizards.  Mothra was a giant insect, but obviously more of a giant moth than a centipede.  Gosh, I'm certain that Godzilla must have fought a giant centipede at some point, but I cannot for the life of me bring a picture of it to my mind.  I'm sorry, Kate, I'll have to do some research and get back to you."

Leaving our department head Peter courageously searching the top of Kate's desk, I returned to my workstation, where a rapid* Google search revealed that my memory is either better or worse than I thought.  As I thought, none of the celluloid incarnations of Japan's favourite giant lizard ever fought a centipede monster, but that wasn't the only option when searching for Godzilla's foes.

There was also a short-lived spinoff animated series based on the unfortunate** 1998 Roland Emmerich film which starred Matthew Broderick (and Godzilla). Godzilla: The Series was based on the idea that one of Godzilla's monstrous hatchlings had survived the events of the movie, and imprinted on Broderick's character - perhaps because of residual pheromones from his close encounter with Godzilla's saliva in the movie, I don't completely remember the details. (In my defense, it's been almost 20 years since I last watched the series.)

In Metamorphosis, the ninth episode of Season TWO of G:TS, Godzilla Junior did in fact cross paths with a giant centipede named Megapede.  Using this as a guide, I did a quick image search, and found a few pictures of the many-legged menace.

At this point, Kate, somewhat recovered from her ordeal, approached my desk with a question about digital letterhead.  I showed her the picture that starts this posting and explained that it was a picture of Megapede.

"Yes, that is absolutely what I saw - and Megapede, that's exactly the right name.  Thank you very much!!"

And she returned to her desk, which under the circumstances demonstrated remarkable courage.  If that thing was still lumbering around on my desk and made another appearance, I would probably scream much, much louder than she did.

- Sid

* We're on company time, after all.

** Full confession:  I actually kind of like the 1998 version of Godzilla.  I fully admit that Matthew Broderick really doesn't carry the movie, but the supporting actors cheerfully cast aside any desire to take the film seriously and do everything but chew the scenery in order to help move things forward.  (Jean Reno's Elvis Presley imitation is particularly memorable.)  Not only that, but I thought that the FX team did a good job of envisioning what an actual giant mutant lizard might look like, rather than a rather obvious man in a rubber suit.***

*** When the movie first came out, I commented favourably on the CGI version of Godzilla to my friend Alan, who immediately announced that he preferred a man in a rubber suit.  I gravely promised not to quote him out of context, although I've been tempted more than once over the intervening years.

Bill Nye 3: Planetary.

 Space exploration brings out the best in us. It is inherently optimistic.

- Bill Nye

I think that it's safe to say that an interest in space exploration is common among science fiction fans.  It's not really the same as what we've been reading about, but it's obvious that the global space initiative responsible for things like the International Space Station represents the first steps toward a future where we explore - and perhaps inhabit - more and more of our solar system.*  However, it's more of a spectator sport than anything else, after all, there's not a lot one person can do to move the process forward.

Or at least that's what I would have said until last month, when I found out about the Planetary Society.

The Planetary Society was founded in 1980 by science spokesmen Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman, with the intent of creating an organization that would allow the general public to become more involved in the exploration of space in two ways:  by giving it a voice for advocacy, and by offering opportunities for education and participation.

The Society now has over 40,000 members around the world, making it the largest and most influential public space organization group on Earth - if not the solar system.  Bill Nye is the current CEO, and the Board of Directors and Advisory Council is made up of a Who's Who of space exploration, investigation and advocacy such as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, science fiction author David Brin, Quirks & Quarks host (and fellow Canadian) Bob McDonald, scientist and SETI president Frank Drake, actor Robert Picardo, Hayden Planetarium Director and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and a host of others, united by a shared commitment to expand humanity's horizons.

I'm proud to say that I'm now literally a card-carrying**  member of the Planetary Society.  The annual membership fee is about $60 CAD, which struck me as a reasonable investment to make in helping to promote our future in space.

Let's face it, sooner or later you have to put your money where your mouth is.

http://planetary.org/

- Sid

* We're progressing toward that future either very quickly or ridiculously slowly, depending on whether you start the clock with Yuri Gagarin or Lucy (the 3.2 million year old fossil Australopithecus, that is, not Charlie Brown's nemesis).

** I got a nice T-shirt, too.

Bill Nye 2: Money Money Money.

Bill Nye: "I bet I'm the only person here who carries a Canadian five dollar bill around with them."

Me: (reaching thoughtfully for my wallet)  "Actually, Bill...."

I feel humbled by having to visit Florida to learn from an American that the Canadian contribution to the international space program is featured on the back of our five dollar bill.

Hang on - does anybody know what's on the ten?

- Sid

Bill Nye 1: "Stand back, I'm going to try science!"

Last month I attended an e-learning conference in Florida, where to my mild surprise Bill Nye was featured as the keynote speaker on the first day of the event. To be honest, I wasn't really sure what the Science Guy was going to bring to the table, so I was pleasantly surprised by his intense one-hour presentation on learning, exploration and, of course, science and the importance of scientific thinking and investigation.

Live whiteboard illustration by Kelly Kingman

If asked, I would have said that Bill Nye was an unexpected candidate to be the voice of scientific rationalism in the 21st century. It's as if Mister Rogers had decided to launch a crusade to return America to its religious roots, based on his popularity as a children's program host. (Not as strange an example as you might think - Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister.)

However, Nye's passion for science is undeniable, and his television stint from 1993 to 1998 as Bill Nye The Science Guy makes him as recognizable an icon to the current generation as Fred Rogers was during his own era, giving Nye a visibility factor that instantly raises the profile for his advocacy regarding scientific theory.

He's strategically maintained and developed his pop-culture profile with a pair of best-selling books* on evolution and science, and innumerable TV appearances as an advocate for scientific thought. A prime example is his famous two hour and 45 minute 2014 debate with creationist Ken Ham, which had an audience of over one million broadcast viewers and which has received over 6 million views on YouTube. He's also the current president of The Planetary Society, an international non-profit organization created to allow the general public to contribute toward the advancement of space exploration.

The comparison to a religious crusade is not entirely appropriate, given that Nye's crusade is in some ways against religion - or, to be more accurate, the fundamentalist view of the world around us, I don't think the Science Guy objects to religion per se.

Similarly, I have nothing against people who have chosen to have faith in a higher being, or to take a spiritual view of life, but I have to agree with Bill Nye: the insurmountable problem with creationism is that it doesn't advance our understanding of how the universe works. Ignoring or denying all the scientific evidence regarding the origins of the universe does not move us forward in our desire to explore that universe.

It's obvious that Bill Nye has successfully transcended his origins as a children's show host, and made himself into a passionate, dedicated spokesperson for science and scientific thought. If you ask me, science could do a lot worse.

- Sid

* 2014's Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation and his 2015 follow-up Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World.

Also available in grape and watermelon.

 

As per my previous posting, I met up with my friend Chris yesterday for a beer and a bite at the new Storm Crow location near us. My previous visit with Karli had been for brunch, so this offered a convenient opportunity to check out the evening action. I wore my Doctor Who "Angels have the phone box" t-shirt - after all, peeps got to represent.

Once again, it was extremely busy, which pleased me. It's good to see that a gamer/geek bar can have such a strong appeal.  And the gamer crowd was out in full force, to the point where I almost want to suggest that they should have made the tables a bit bigger - experience tells me that it's a bit challenging to fit a game and a couple of drinks onto a table for two.

They've modified the decor a bit:  they've moved the carbonized Han Solo over to the east wall, made the washroom doors look like the entrance to the TARDIS, and added a large Millennium Falcon model to the ceiling.*

The bar's commitment to geek theme is complete. The dinner menu includes items such as Deep One Salmon Burgers, the BLT-9000, Boba Fettucini (no, really) and the Cenobite Sundae**, along with an obscure Persis Khambatta joke from 1982.  As with their cocktail menu, the adventurous diner can request a 20-sided die from the wait staff and roll for the contents of their burger.

As the final touch for the departing guest, the Storm Crow considerately provides a little extra something - just in case the world outside has changed for the worse since dinner started.

- Sid

* Perhaps some large Star Trek items are in order as well, the place is a bit Star Wars heavy right now.  Just sayin'.

** Which appears on the menu as follows:

Cenobite Sundae:  no tears please, it’s a waste of good suffering. This sensorium-blasting ice cream delight will hook you with sprinkles, caramel, chocolate sauce and whipped cream... before it tears your soul apart.

Quite affordable at five dollars, but seriously, does that description necessarily make you want to order one of these things?

On location.

On my way to meet my friend Chris at the Storm Crow this afternoon, I passed by the following piece of location filming setup at the corner of Arbutus and 6th.  (My apologies for the composition in this hurried photo, I wasn't sure if the burly security guard just around the corner was going to have a problem with photographers.)

 

On one hand, this could easily be a bit of futuristic set dressing.  On the other hand, it's a phone booth - and let's face it, phone booths are becoming increasingly rare other than at airports and similar locations where large numbers of people are trying to avoid roaming charges while travelling, which makes them an unlikely candidate as a prop in a science fiction film script.*  However, that being said, it makes it an equally unlikely prop in a contemporary film - could it be for some kind of 60s setting?

So, here's my request to the motley crew of friends, relatives, casual browsers and Russian spambots** which comprises my readership.  If you should happen to be watching a series or a movie sometime in the next year or so (post-production times will vary) and spot someone sobbing into the mouthpiece of this phone-in-a-dome, please leave me a comment - just so I know whether or not this picture actually belongs on a science fiction blog.

- Sid

* William Gibson has commented that the first thing his more youthful fans will notice about his seminal 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer is the complete lack of cell phones - "which I’m sure young readers assume must be a key plot-point.”

** They rarely comment, but when they do it's quite insightful.

Not with a bang.

Our dried voices, when 

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

So on Monday, my girlfriend and I were out with another friend for drinks, and the waitress ruefully informed us that the restaurant was out of dry ribs and nachos.  Then on Tuesday, we decided to have hot dogs at Costco, and they were out of relish. Our local grocery store has been out of stock on our favourite brand of farmer's sausage for a week, and I'm still waiting for Staples to deliver four whole boxes of paper that were ordered last Friday.

Is it just me or is this the first chapter of a novel about the Apocaplypse? Personally, this is how I always thought it would start, with little cracks in the structure of things: little cracks that would get bigger and bigger and bigger...

Recommended reading on this topic would have to be John Brunner's 1972 novel The Sheep Look Up, with Philip Wylie's posthumous The End of the Dream from 1973 running a close second.* Both books detail the end of the world as the result of a thousand little synergies between environmental damage, viral mutation, lowered immunity, lack of resources, collapse of services, civil unrest, and so on that eventually domino into complete catastrophe.  The Sheep Look Up is particularly grim, and paints a far too plausible picture of a disaster which takes place so gradually that most people don't even realize it's happening.

Somebody hold me - I'm scared....

  - Sid

* Kate Wilhelm's Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang takes the bronze - an excellent book, but the apocalypse is secondary to the theme of individuality.

"CAPTAIN Deadpool..."

Continuing this month's unintentional Canadian theme, a quick shout-out to Number 5 Orange, one of Vancouver's few remaining strip clubs, which appears as itself in the Deadpool movie.

  - Sid

You'd need an awfully large cake for 134 candles.

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday dear Logan,

Happy birthday to you!

  - Sid

"I'm Canadian".

April 1st having come and gone, I have to say that my favourite April Fool's posting comes from the unexpected source of the Government of Canada's Library and Archives web site.  (Although Bruce Campbell's announcement of his starring role in the American version of Doctor Who comes a close second.)

The Library and Archives site was pleased to announce that they had acquired the military records of noted Canadian mutant supersoldier James "Logan" Howlett - better known to the rest of the world as the adamantium-enhanced X-Man Wolverine.

 

Included with Logan's declassified records was his original Canadian Overseas Expeditionary attestation paperwork from 1914, listing his place of residence as Cold Lake, Alberta and his trade as woodsman.

This form also shows his date of birth as April 5th, 1882, which suggests that there should be some kind of celebration on Tuesday to commemorate the 134th birthday of this unsung (and well-preserved) Canadian war veteran - probably followed by a little chat about whether or not it's okay to cut off Canada Pension Plan payouts during periods of extended non-residency.

  - Sid

pReview: Batman Versus Superman (plus Wonder Woman and maybe Aquaman).

Boys! Mm, Bruce Wayne meets Clark Kent. Ah, I love it! I love bringing people together! How are we?  

Lex Luthor, Batman Versus Superman

I haven't seen Batman Versus Superman yet, but I'm quite curious as to how good or bad it actually is.  Reviews have not been kind, but the box office results are more positive - so far BVS has pulled in close to $500 million dollars globally after only four days in theatres.

Personally, I wasn't surprised by the negative reviews I saw in advance of the film's actual release. The trailers I'd seen had left me cold, and let's face it, if a superhero movie doesn't provide the editor with 90 seconds worth of excitement for a trailer, there's something very wrong.

The reviews seemed to match that opinion, and yet there's that impressive box office total.  It's difficult to think of another movie which has been panned to this extent by critics, but has still managed to attract so many viewers.

From the perspective of the long-term comic book fan, Batman Versus Superman appears to be an odd mashup of three or four different comic book storylines.  The base concept comes from The Dark Knight Returns, a brilliant and innovative four-issue 1986 miniseries by Frank Miller.  The story is set many years in a future where the government has outlawed superheroes. Batman has retired, Wonder Woman has returned to her people, Green Lantern has left Earth for the stars, and Superman leads a shadowy existence as a tool of the government, accepting anonymity in exchange for permission to continue saving lives and averting disasters.

An aging Bruce Wayne sees a world in chaos, and can no longer resist the lure of the cape and the cowl in spite of the prohibition against vigilante crimefighting.  In the final issue, the government dispatches Superman to put the Batman out of business, but with the help of a one-armed Green Arrow, a female Robin, and some synthetic Kryptonite, the Batman shows his old friend who’s really in charge.

The second source is the equally classic Death of Superman sequence from 1992, wherein an ancient Kryptonian monster named Doomsday goes head-to-head with the Man of Steel, resulting in the death of both combatants. As is often the case in the wonderful world of comics, both eventually get better.

And then there's the whole Wonder Woman thing...not to mention the Justice League of America tie-in as per the Dawn of Justice subtitle for the film.

On top of all these disconnected storylines, there's the question of how Batman and Superman originally met in the comics.  For that story, we have to go back to Issue 76 of Superman (Volume 1) from 1952, in which Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent are forced to share a stateroom - and a bed - on an overbooked cruise ship.*

 

When a fire breaks out, the two crimefighters catch each other changing into their costumes - marking the start of an ambiguous friendship that would last throughout their careers (not to mention several reboots and a LOT of retconning).

From what I've been able to tell from trailers and online hints, the plot of the movie combines a lot of elements from the source material - okay, probably not the cruise ship thing. Some of it looks interesting, and I'm hoping that there may have been some clever combining of comic book storylines and the events of Man of Steel.  However, I've also seen some things that don't appear to have been well written or well executed.  Oh, well...I guess I'm going to have to see the film in order to find out what the real story is.  Wish me luck...but really, half a billion dollars worth of ticket purchases would seem to indicate that it can't be that bad.

- Sid

* This is actually the most improbable story idea in this entire posting - why in the world would a rich playboy have to share a room with a penniless newspaper reporter?