Tidbits.

Hi ho, Saturday afternoon on the Labour Day long weekend, and time for some quick updates and comments.

A recent New York Times article discusses the issues I expressed in my posting on gaming in regards to real-world overlap.  It would seem that people are up in arms (sorry, bad pun) over the most recent addition to the first-person shooter lineup.  Medal of Honor is set in Afghanistan, and in the online multi-player version, players have the option of playing as American soldiers or as the Taliban. It would seem that various political figures find the inclusion of terrorists as playable characters to be "tasteless", in the words of British defense secretary Liam Fox.And, further to my opening comments in that gaming post regarding Starcraft II, I was surprised to discover that the voice actors for the game include such science fiction big guns as Armin Shimmerman (Quark from Deep Space Nine), Michael Dorn (Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation) and the part of Sarah Kerrigan is voiced by none other than Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica.  Are things perhaps a bit quiet in the TV marketplace?My friend Chris informs me that a 3-D movie version of the Smurfs is in development.  Gosh, there's a clever idea...let's make a 3-D movie featuring blue people.  Boy, I wish James Cameron had thought of that.

I've just finished re-reading Peter Hamilton's Judas Unchained, the epic conclusion to the Commonwealth Saga.  The first book, Pandora's Star, is one and three-eights inches thick.  The second book is two inches thick and features visibly smaller type than its predecessor.

DAMN IT, PETER, THIS SHOULD BE A TRILOGY!!  IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR TOLKIEN, IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!!Local comic book store The Comic Shop has relocated to an address further along 4th Avenue.  In the process of moving, they culled some of their "previously owned" stock and left it in front of the store with a crooked cardboard sign saying FREE.  As a result, when I was coming back from the gym on Tuesday, there were stacks of 70's and 80's Analog and Galaxy SF magazines and a variety of fantasy and science fiction novels just sitting there, looking for a good home.  Sigh...as I scooped up handfuls of books and jammed them into my gym bag, I probably looked like a member of the legion of back-alley scavengers who are constantly trolling for recyclable containers.  ("Oh look, poor fellow, he's probably going to sell those books to get money for booze or crack.")  I was terribly self-conscious about it - thank god it was late enough that the streets were almost empty.

Not so self-conscious that I didn't make two trips, though.  Hope you all have a pleasant weekend!

- Sid

Two thumbs up from Lorena Bobbit, I assume.

"Wet...t-shirt...wet...t-shirt..."

Jerry O'Connell's last words as porn producer Derrick Jones, Piranha 3D

Let me start with a bit of background, setting the scene as it were.  As previously mentioned, I have a very good friend named Laurie: she has a BSc and an MA, speaks four languages, is a knowledgeable fitness professional, an afficionado of Shakespearean theatre, an expert ballroom dancer, and a member of Mensa.  Regardless, she cheerfully decided that Piranha 3D was the must-see movie to start the Labour Day weekend.

For the most part I don't agree with the concept that something can be so bad that it's good, but to my astonishment Piranha 3D manages to go through some kind of black hole/looking glass/time warp and come out the other side as a horrific, disgusting, but entertaining film.  I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it "good", but it more than delivers on everything that it promises.

And what does it promise?

Blood and boobs in 3D.

P3D is only marginally acceptable as a topic for this blog, although there is a vast precedent of 50's and 60's semi-science fiction films based on the same basic premise.  A seismic disturbance opens a chasm between a lake in Arizona and a hidden subterranean lake located immediately below it.  This pocket of water has apparently been sealed since the Pleistocene Epoch, creating an Darwinian pressure cooker for the development of unspeakably savage prehistoric piranha - old school piranha, if you will - that are now free to seek fresh meat.

Nice boat shoes!

Meanwhile, up on the surface, Spring Break has started, and the lake is filling with hordes of drunken bikini-clad babes as a porn producer arrives to shoot his latest magnum opus...do I really need to explain any further?

I really have to give full credit to all the creative parties involved in this production. Piranha 3D is utterly without presumption or ego - they set out to make an over-the-top horror film with less fabric holding the plot together than in most of the bikinis used, a film whose only reason for existence is to show half-naked bodies and hungry aquatic horrors gnawing away at them, and they succeeded beyond any possible dream of success. 

No opportunity for three-dimensional excess is ignored in this film.  3D breasts, full monty 3D softcore lesbian underwater nudity*, 3D vomit - and then the killing starts.  Detached 3D eyeballs drift through the water, flesh is graphically stripped from 3D bones, faces are chewed off (and in one exceptional instance pulled off when a young woman's hair gets caught in a propellor) and endless gallons of blood cloud the waters of the lake**. 

And of course the capper, the top, the capo di tutti capi - the severed penis scene, wherein Jerry O'Connell's character is savaged by the fish and then dragged out of the water, horribly maimed, nothing but bones and sinew from the waist down.

"My penis..." he gasps.  "They took...my penis."

Cut to an underwater view as a severed - I hesitate to say dismembered - 3D penis drifts by on the current, only to be snapped up by a hungry piranha.

And then...burped out again.  What more could you ask of a movie-going experience?

- Sid

* A phrase I never thought I'd be able to use in my entire life, let alone in this blog.

** Let's hear it for the Internet - apparently it's actually about 400 gallons of blood.

Collected.

This week I was introduced to a serious science fiction and fantasy collector by a well-meaning mutual acquaintance.  Like me, he was initially introduced to the genre by his mother, but in his case he inherited a substantial library of classic material from the 30's and 40's in magazine and book form.  And like me, he has several thousand in his collection, but he peaks out at about twice the size of my library.

And how does he store his beloved collection, you ask?  Big plastic tubs.  He fills them up, "squirts in a little bug spray", and there they are.

Sigh...

In many ways, I love my little library.  It's been a source of entertainment and even education over the decades and it's expanded both my imagination and my horizons.  As books have worn out I've done my best to replace them with the same vintage, but in some cases I've ended up with reprints or different editions.

And that's never bothered me.  Books last pretty well, but they're still ephemera in a lot of ways.  Pages tear and yellow, covers fray at the edges, bindings fail, and I accept that as an unfortunate fact of life.  But at least my little collection has been read and enjoyed, rather than hidden away in some sort of miserly fashion.  It's the content which has always been important to me - the fantastic ideas, the startling concepts, the amazing fantasies - rather than the bits of paper that held the ink.

If through some fluke of fate I somehow ended up with the same collection as the one owned by the gentleman I met on Thursday, I think that my first impulse would be to start opening bins and reading - carefully, yes, but still turning pages and touching covers.  Why would anyone want a library that looked like this?

- Sid

Conception.

"You mind telling your subconscious to take it easy?"

- Ariadne, Inception

Although I didn't eat any dinners alone during my trip to Toronto, my afternoons were pretty much my own time. As such, I overcame my long-term aversion to Leonardo DiCaprio and trotted down to the Scotiabank Theatre on Richmond Street to see Inception.

The concept behind the film is simple enough - a professional thief is hired to insert something rather than steal it. The difference in this case is that rather than diamonds or money, the thief in question steals information from people's minds while they're asleep, and he and his team are attempting to place a foreign idea into someone's head, against the active and deadly resistance of the subject's subconscious mind.

It's difficult to avoid comparisons to the Matrix films, there's a similar combination of layered realities and surrealistic environments.  Inception also raises echoes of Memento, writer/director Christopher Nolan's staccato masterpiece from 2000.  But in many ways, Inception is more of a strange science fiction equivalent of Ocean's Eleven or The Italian Job, a sort of fast-talking hit-and-run heist flick set in REM space rather than Las Vegas.

As such, the actors faces some odd acting challenges, such as pretending to be fast asleep in the back of a speeding van while it dodges gunfire, flips over, and crashes through a guardrail backwards.  Regardless, everyone in the ensemble cast does a good job of dealing with the film's odd combination of shootouts and slumber.

His ability to feign sleep aside, Leonardo DiCaprio has matured well and is well en route to overcoming the legacy of his early pretty-boy days.  He gives the role of dreamthief Dom Cobb a sort of brooding, almost depressed desperation which is completely appropriate to the character.  Ellen Page is also growing nicely into her talent, although I have to think that in the long term she may face some issues.* 

Inception isn't perfect, and it doesn't hold up to stringent analysis in some areas, but overall I found it to be an entertaining and clever piece with some interesting concepts.  I was intensely impressed by the carefully ambiguous and beautifully timed final seconds of the movie. It's rare that a five second difference in an ending would completely alter if not ruin a film, but in this case the conclusion is timed to a razor fine line.

The unfortunate part is that since seeing the movie I've heard several people explaining - or trying to explain - the ending to someone. Sigh...it must be disappointing to Mr. Nolan that he took a break from Batman movies to make a smart little science fiction flick, and people don't get it.

My only real objection to the basic concept is that I doubt the ability of even the subconscious mind to populate a world with varied and unique projections of people and places. I think that we're very much creatures of repetition, pattern and cliché, and as such it's difficult for me to accept that anyone would be able to create a world of such detail and complexity that it would be accepted as real. Frankly, I suspect that most of us would end up with something more like those endlessly repeating backgrounds from Fred Flintstone's living room.

- Sid

* With the best will in the world regarding her abilities as an actress, Ellen Page is well below the height limit for success in Hollywood. Good luck with that, Ellen - if Tom Cruise can make it, so can you.

достаточно!

(Contributed by Laurie Smith)

Enough picking on the Russians already!

Sid invited me to do a guest posting on his blog and after expressing initial concern about not being up to the task from the standpoint of eloquence and style, I decided to give it a shot.

I had the pleasure of recently seeing three movies, and they all fit Sid’s criteria for moviegoing: they contained aliens or explosions. In this case, explosions in all three and a sci-fi theme in two of them. On the airplane to/from Toronto I watched Hot Tub Time Machine and Iron Man 2. In Toronto, Sid and I went to see Salt.

The Russians have long been cast as the bad guys when it comes to international political intrigue and espionage, and it seems that this stereotype persists even today. In Hot Tub Time Machine the three friends travel back to 1986 (great for 80’s music lovers!) because a can of Russian “Chernobyl” cola spills on the hot tub controls and causes a meltdown and a black hole. The time travelers are accused at one point of being Commies, with radioactive secret Russian soft drinks. In Iron Man 2 the musclehead techno-scientist villain is Russian and Mickey Rourke even does an acceptable job of speaking the language. In Salt the conflict between Russia and the U.S. results in a gang of highly trained hardcore Russian assassins and a plan to destroy America.

Seriously folks, enough picking on the Russians already! Half my family heritage is Russian so I’m always interested in seeing how Hollywood portrays the nation. One of my favourite movies, The Sum of All Fears, is unfortunately all about a threat of imminent war between Russia and the U.S.  Isn’t it time to pick a new villain? How about vilifying Luxembourg for a change?

- Laurie

"Time keeps on slipping...into the future."

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

- Groucho Marx

Posting from Ontario today - I'm currently sitting on the patio of the Delta Chelsea hotel, located near Yonge and College in downtown Toronto.  It's a beautiful sunny day, and although the hotel wants to charge the ridiculous daily fee of $13.95 for hardwired internet access in the rooms, they have free wireless downstairs.  Unlike the various dullards who are crammed onto every available flat surface in the lobby, I noticed that there was this outdoor section near the food court area....hmmm....so here I sit typing away outdoors in a shady spot with a nice little breeze, pleasantly isolated from the hustle and bustle of Yonge Street, sipping a frigid iced tea between sentences.

It's interesting to visit a familiar city on a semi-regular basis of about twice a year.  It's a bit like slow time travel - changes can be large and noticeable, or small and subtle.  In fact, this is probably the only feasible method of time travel, although it's not exactly what most people have in mind when they discuss the concept.

When you think about it, all you really need for successful time travel is a reliable method of suspended animation* and a great deal of faith in either automatic timing systems or your fellow man.  Want to move to the year 3010?  Climb in, close the lid, slowly drift off to sleep....when you wake up, presto, 1,000 years in the future.

As with most of the basic science fiction concepts, this one is first introduced by H. G. Wells. In his 1910 novel The Sleeper Awakes**, his character falls into a mysterious trance rather than being put on ice, but the results are the same.  Most of the novel is the sort of thinly veiled socio-political criticism that too often dominates Wells' writing, but it does offer the interesting idea that after sufficient time, a person in suspended animation whose financial life continues to be active would eventually possess all the money in the world. (In the "A Fishful of Dollars" episode of Futurama, Philip J. Fry proves the benefits of compound interest by unintentionally leaving 93 cents in his bank account for 1,000 years at 2.25% and ending up with over four billion dollars.)

The idea was continued by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1956 work The Door Into Summer, which amplifies on the problems faced by Wells' protagonist in terms of adapting to a completely different society in the future.  Obviously all of the scientific knowledge possessed by Heinlein's inventor/hero is obsolete, but the deeper problem is that all of his knowledge is obsolete, in every aspect of life.

They brought me modern clothes right after breakfast the next morning...and I had to have help in dressing. They were not so odd in themselves (although I had never worn cerise trousers with bell bottoms before) but I could not manage the fastenings without coaching. I suppose my grandfather might have had the same trouble with zippers if he had not been led into them gradually. It was the Sticktite closure seams, of course-I thought I was going to have to hire a little boy to help me go to the bathroom before I got it through my head that the pressure-sensitive adhesion was axially polarized. Then I almost lost my pants when I tried to ease the waistband. No one laughed at me.

By the way, the hidden joke is that this particular Sleeper has ended up in the distant future of the year 2000.

When I mentioned that faith in one's fellow man was required for Sleeper time travel, it's not only in the area of having someone wake you up.  Larry Niven's story The Defenseless Dead combines a growing need for transplant donors with a large pool of "corpsicles" - people in cryogenic suspension.  The result?  The Freezer Laws, which decree that anyone without sufficient funds to support them upon awakening is officially dead and as such can be used as a source of spare organs.  In other words, you still wake up, but "one piece at a time", as one of the characters comments.

In my opinion, the best use of the idea of stasis time travel has to be Vernor Vinge's clever Marooned in Realtime, a murder mystery disguised as a science fiction novel, or vice versa.  Vinge's novel is based on the idea of bubbles of suspended time - "bobbles", in the parlance of the novel.  Bobbles are indestructible and with sufficient power can be created to be of almost any size or duration.

The novel takes place after the Singularity, a point in human development where humanity has made a quantum leap to another state of evolution, leaving behind a silent, empty planet.  However, people who are in bobbles suffer the fate of the lame boy in the Pied Piper legend, left behind when the doors to paradise close.  The more technologically advanced survivors decide to use their bobbling technology to travel through however many millenia are necessary to collect all of the remaining humans as they emerge from their bobbles, in hopes of rebooting humanity as a species.

Problems arise when one of the originators of this plan is murdered.  The weapon?  Old age - they're trapped outside the bobbles and left to die while everyone else travels a thousand years.  Needless to say, the clues are not in the best of condition after the crime is discovered.

Of course, interesting though all of these ideas are, there's one problem with this particular approach to time travel.  After all, once I've finished my little faux time travel visits to Toronto, I can go home again...

- Sid

*  Just for the record: regarding my own personal time travel visits to Toronto, I do not consider living in Vancouver to be the equivalent of suspended animation.

** Originally published in 1899 under the title When the Sleeper Wakes, but Wells did some rewriting and re-published it - which may mean that Wells also originated the concept of the director's cut.

"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