A book of verses underneath the bough, a loaf of bread, a jug of wine...

“Because never in my entire childhood did I feel like a child. I felt like a person all along―the same person that I am today.”

Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

And so, at last, a sunny afternoon in Muskoka, a Coke, some hickory sticks, and a comic book.  It's been a very long time, but it's exactly the way it should be, and exactly the way it was. 

I'm ten again.

Thank you so very much, Karli.

- Sid

Ghost Story.

"Where are we staying in Muskoka again?"
"The Inn on the Falls, in Bracebridge."
"Thank you!"
(Is she going to Google it? I hope she doesn’t Google it...)
"Honey?  Why is our hotel listed on Ghostwalks.com?"

It’s a beautiful October afternoon as we pull into the parking lot of the Inn on the Falls, located in Bracebridge, Ontario. Autumn is perhaps the best time to visit Muskoka, and the leaves have just nicely started on their annual display of colour. We’re here for a couple of nights while I give Karli a quick overview of my childhood:  my parent's house, the original family settlement, the high school that I attended, and so on, along with just a general tour of the region. 

I’ve always liked the Inn on the Falls for its classic old-fashioned feel - the main building was built by stonemason John Adair in 1876, and the current owners have elected to maintain its traditional decor with antique furniture and paintings.  It's a bit worn around the edges, but it's a far more interesting location to stay at than one of the more modern hotels in the town.

Perhaps too interesting.  In addition to its other charms, the Inn on the Falls is haunted.

Popular culture has introduced a standardized set of horror tropes that are instantly recognizable, and the concept of the "poisoned hotel" is one of the standard slasher movie memes, as typified by the Bates Motel, the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, or the eponymous Hostel.  (The unfortunate typo on our reservation confirmation  - "The Maim Inn" -  sounds like an acceptable title for a new franchise for this list.)

The Inn on the Falls has been the site of a wide variety of ghostly sightings and mysterious events over its lifetime.  It's home to three ghosts, known as Bob, Sarah and Charlie,* who haunt different parts of the building, and Judge William Mahaffey, who purchased the house from Adair in 1877, has been seen walking six inches in the air over the floor of the pub.**

Radios have been known to play without even being plugged in, guests and staff have experienced cold spots in various locations around the inn, and people sleeping in Room 105 have smelled a wet dog in the night - and claimed to have felt its weight on the bed.

Fortunately, that's not the room that we have booked, but our two-level suite seems to have been designed for paranoia:  the closets extend far too far past their doors, with odd panels in them that seal inexplicable openings, and the stairwell to our bedroom is an ideal venue for glowing spectral manifestations in the middle of the night.

After checking in, we spend the rest of the day walking around town, and then visit my brother Harold and his wife Sue for dinner, returning to the inn at about ten.  It's a small business, and as such there's no front desk staff after 5:00, so we let ourselves in through the locked front door.

The Inn is completely silent. There are other cars in the lot, but the site includes a variety of outbuildings and extensions, so there may well not be anyone else staying in the main building with us. The dining room is dark, and the sitting room is lit by a single lamp in the front window.

After we go to our room, I slip downstairs to take some pictures of the foyer and the sitting room.  To my surprise, I'm a bit apprehensive, and the hair on my neck rises.  I feel as if I'm one of those movie characters who suddenly sees movement in a mirror only to turn around and see nothing behind them, nothing at all. I glance over my shoulder for a moment, then finish shooting and go back upstairs.

Oddly enough, the alarm goes off at 6:30 in the morning - eerie in the context of previous ghostly behaviour, but I'm still more likely to attribute it to previous guests than ghostly fingers.  I turn it off, and the phenomenon is not repeated - apparently ghosts do not choose to act as snooze buttons.

On the second night, Karli wakes up for a few minutes, and hears distant screaming in the night - or is it a dream?

As we pull away from the parking lot after checking out, Karli comments, "I'm looking forward to getting a good night's sleep tonight - I kept thinking about the ghosts..." 

I'm surprised by this (and a bit remorseful.) As I've said before, I'm a complete sceptic when it comes to the paranormal due to the complete lack of solid evidence.  Supernatural visits always seem to be a bit circumstantial - it's one thing to read that an employee has seen the spirit of a judge who's been dead for 104 years floating in the air over the flagstone floor, but it's not the same as showing me a picture of the magistrate on their iPhone. 

Hearing something go bump in the night is all very well and good, but I'd like to see what actually went bump.

- Sid

P.S. for more paranormal information on the Inn at the Falls, visit The Haunting Group website for the details of their investigation.

* One gathers that these are nicknames rather than the results of communication with the spirits via medium, Ouija board, or some similar means of contacting the afterlife.

** It's assumed that the judge is walking at the height of the original wood flooring which was removed during renovations at some point in time.

"If I could save time in a bottle..."

“Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well.”

George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

And what, you ask, was in the big bag behind my breakfast?  It contained a part of my birthday gift from Karli - and you'd have to know me extremely well to understand why she would give me this odd selection of common items.

For a long time when I was growing up, summers were an idyllic break from school and schedule. My father ran a semi-successful little construction business, and it was a given that we would act as his semi-paid* employees, but as the youngest of five (and quite admittedly the least interested) there was a period of time where I wasn't really expected to help shovel gravel or dig trenches. As such, the sunny Muskoka summers were very much my own time in the years before I started high school.

Because my siblings were off working for my father, I was pretty much on my own with my mother - we'd go for walks, or I'd play on my own. But once every couple of weeks or so I'd put on my worn canvas knapsack, climb onto my rusty fixed-gear bicycle, and head off to the Bent River General Store, located a few miles away on the highway.

The first part of the trip was always a little exciting - there was a long long hill that went from our house down to Lake Rosseau, and it was easy to build up a lot of speed on that hill. (It was a lot less fun coming back - one of the measures of summer for me was making the trip enough times that I built up the stamina to ride all the way up the hill on my return trip without having to walk my bike.)

Once at the store, I had a set shopping list.  I'd buy a Coke, a bag of hickory sticks, and some comic books.  We didn't have allowances or anything like that, but my mother would sometimes give me some money, or we'd collect empty bottles from the side of the road for the deposit.

The comic books that I purchased would probably be worth a reasonable amount of money right now if that youthful version of myself had somehow been able to put them in storage. In the 60s, both Marvel and DC had adopted the practise of selling three or four** comics in a bag for a few cents less than cover price in an effort to both increase sales of less popular comics and to reduce the number of returns from retailers.

The Bent River General Store sold Marvel Comics, and this was at the height of the Silver Age of comics, as the Bronze Age was just beginning. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were busily building on the foundations of the Marvel Universe that they had created in the early 60s, along with disciples like Steve Ditko, Jack Sinnott, John Romita Sr., John Severin, Roy Thomas, Archie Goodwin, and a host of other classic Marvel artists and writers.  As such, even a one-off comic guilty of poor sales at the time could easily have become a valuable collectable 45 years later.

After I'd made my purchase, I'd get back onto my bike, and start the trip home. There was a little isolated hill about half a mile along the road on the way back, where I'd run my bike down into the ditch and  lay it down in the tall grass on the other side.  I'd lie there in the sun, read my comics, drink my pop, and eat my hickory sticks. It's a treasured memory for me, one which has never lost its lustre as the years have gone by.

Tomorrow we're flying to Toronto, and after spending a few days there, we'll head up to Muskoka so that Karli can see where I grew up.  As part of that side trip, we'll be driving along the road that I would have ridden on those long lost summer days.  I've packed everything, and even if it's raining and we have to sit in the car at the side of the road, I have every intention of being a ten year old boy again for just a few minutes, with my comic book, my Coke and my snack.

What a brilliant and thoughtful gift to give to someone who has just turned 55.  Thank you, my love.

- Sid

 * This was a ongoing bone of contention.  My father maintained that after all, he was paying for food and a roof over our heads, whereas we always felt that we were saving him from having to hire workers who would have been considerably more demanding in terms of regular paycheques. Practice fell someplace between the two - we'd get paid now and then, but not really as much as if we weren't members of the family, and my father didn't end up charging us rent.

** I would have sworn that you could get two comics for 19 cents, but I cannot find one bit of documentary evidence that supports this belief.

Breakfast of Champions.

My birthday morning breakfast:  bacon, eggs, toast, and, once again with thanks to my good friend Colin, two Doctor Who bobbleheads* and tea in a Fallout mug.

Colin also sent two unique additions to my Doctor Who t-shirt collection: 

In order to safeguard the Fallout mug in its cross country journey, Colin did some innovative repacking, presumably using the resources that he had at hand. However, he was kind enough to annotate the box that he chose in order to avoid inappropriate expectations.

Thanks again, Colin!

- Sid

 * For the uninitiated, David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, and Matt Smith as the Eleventh.

Or it could say "timey wimey".

Thanks to my good friend Colin for the perfect birthday greeting* for a science fiction fan...

- Sid

* For any non-Doctor Who fans reading this, trust me, this is brilliantly funny.

Is Birthday Eve a thing now?

Unlike the shrewd fisherman of Gont, this old man, for fear and wonder of his wizardry, would have given the boat to Ged. But Ged paid him for it in sorcerers’ kind, healing his eyes of the cataracts that were in the way of blinding him. Then the old man, rejoicing, said to him, “We called the boat Sanderling, but do you call her Lookfar, and paint eyes aside her prow, and my thanks will look out of that blind wood for you and keep you from rock and reef. For I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.”

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Wizard of Earthsea

It's my birthday tomorrow, but Karli surprised me this evening with a pre-birthday card on my pillow. It was actually a thank-you card, which isn't very surprising if you know anything about our relationship, about the gratitude that we feel for finding each other, and Karli also managed to find a card with a quote from one of my favourite authors, science fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. LeGuin.

The quote in question is from the 1968 novel A Wizard of Earthsea, the first in her five-book* Earthsea Cycle.  I strongly recommend the Earthsea Cycle - the books are ostensibly young adult fiction, but they deal with classical themes of darkness and light, the shadows that represent our darker sides, vanity, egotism, selflessness, sacrifice, good, evil, love, sexuality, aging, and the final journey which is death. The books are quite short by the current standards of epic fantasy, but not a word is wasted - LeGuin's writing is simple, elegant, and eloquent.

Thank you for the card, my love - and you're welcome.

- Sid

* There are also a few short stories.

The 50th anniversary of Star Trek - more or less.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the broadcast of the very first episode of Star Trek – the famous NBC showing of The Man Trap on September 8th, 1966, a date etched in the annals of science fiction geekery.

Or not.

The ACTUAL first broadcast was Canadian: September 6th on CTV.  Take that, 'Murica.*

- Sid

* And if we’re going to do a bit of flag waving here, let’s not forget William Shatner, a nice boy from Montreal who got his start doing Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival in Ontario.

Revelation 6:8.

It's Labour Day, and with Labour Day comes the start of the school year.*  Every now and then I look around for courses dealing with my area of interest - I've often thought it might be interesting to study science fiction or fantasy on a scholarly basis.  Over the years I've looked at a wide variety of courses, but it just never seems to work out for me in terms of time and scheduling.

One of the more intriguing options available in the current year comes from the Langara College English Department:  Apocalypse Now: Literary Narratives of Pandemic.  It's an interesting choice for a topic: unlike the more speculative disasters such as global warfare or the destruction of fossil fuels, humanity has actually experienced at least one pandemic event. In the middle of the 14th century, the Black Death swept across Europe like a dark curtain, killing uncounted millions of people - some estimates place the death toll as high as 60% of the population, if not higher.

I'm quite curious as to how this course approaches pandemics in a literary framework, but sadly, the Langara web site provide no more specific information other than the following:

Students in this course will study prose fiction in a variety of forms with the goal of improving their strategies for reading and writing about 20th and 21st century prose. Course themes and content, as determined by the English Department, may vary each semester. Check the Registration Guide for details.

As a result, we have to extrapolate - how does one approach pandemic writing from a literary perspective?

Depending on how you define your terms, there would certainly be plenty of grist for the mill. The earliest fictional (as opposed to Biblical) take on a global apocalypse is Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man, which tells the tale of an end to the world very much like the near miss of the Black Death. The late 20th Century is thick with novels where a disease of some sort wipes out 99% of the population**: The Stand, Oryx and Crake, I Am Legend, Earth Abides, The Last Canadian, and so on. If you broaden your definition of pandemic to include the walking dead (caused by a contagious medical condition transmitted by biting, rather like rabies) the list grows exponentially.

Most of this fiction deals with the immediate aftermath of disaster: finding food and shelter, seeking allies or companions, defending against cannibals and raiders, etc.  It almost goes without saying that this is a pessimistic literature, a literature of life lived in the present. It's rare that these stories look very much further down the road than the immediate crisis.***

A rare longer term view of the challenges - and consequences - of attempting to rebuild a broken world can be found in Some Will Not Die, a 1961 novel by Algis Budrys, which paints a brief multi-generational picture of the years following the fall of civilization in terms of ends and its justification of the means used to achieve them.

The White Plague, by Dune author Frank Herbert, presents a very different view of justification. This 1982 novel is the story of a microbiologist deprived of his family by a bombing in Northern Ireland, and his decision to punish all of the participants in the conflict with a similar loss, now and forever: the eponymous White Plague is fatal only to women. The book concludes with a brilliant description of a journey through the tortured remnants of Ireland by the biologist and the bomber as the plague escapes the bounds of the United Kingdom and begins to infect the entire world.

As it turns out, this display of erudition in the area of apocalypse is fruitless - I don't have the prerequisites which would allow me to take the Langara course.  Although, to be honest, I might find it more interesting to take a shot at teaching a class or two than attending them...

- Sid

* Those of you involved in multi-semester education, just work with me here.

** I'd love to add The Andromeda Strain to this list - I grant you that it's more of a failed pandemic, a pandemic manqué if you will, but the scenes set in the Arizona town which finds the crashed probe so clearly show the horror of an alien disease set loose on Earth.

*** It would be interesting to see an episode of The Walking Dead set in a future time when Carl is his father's age or older.

Doctor Why?

While we were lying in bed last night, Karli looked up from her iPhone and said, "Oh look, Doctor Who is going to be filming in Vancouver!"

I glanced at her suspiciously over my glasses and said, "Well now you're just toying with me..."

After recovering from my fanboy reaction to confirmation of this exciting bit of news, my first thought was, "But why?"  The new Doctor Who - okay, it's been eleven years, perhaps we can stop calling it "new" - has a fairly impressive record in terms of location shooting for a TV series:  Arizona, Venice, New York, Croatia, Istanbul and so on.  However, those locations were selected due to their unique nature - there aren't many spots near Cardiff that you can make look like the Sonoran Desert or Venetian canals.

Vancouver is normally used as a stand-in for American locations by production companies looking to take advantage of tax breaks and an advantageous exchange rate. If you're starting in Los Angeles, you can actually drive here in 20 hours if you have a lot of props that you need to bring along.  In the case of Doctor Who and the BBC, what does Vancouver bring to the table that couldn't be matched with a short European flight that didn't involve a seven hour jet lag debt?

Perhaps this will be another one of the rare cases where Vancouver plays itself.  I don't think that the Doctor has ever addressed the mystery of Bigfoot, which would very much require a Pacific Northwest location.  Let's hope it's something like that, and we'll have the opportunity to see the Doctor and his new companion Bill doing the Grouse Grind, running across Lions Gate Bridge, or enjoying the night life in Whistler. (I think it less likely that he'll show up at Number Five Orange, although that would certainly bring a whole new direction to the character.)

The bad news?  I'm going to be out of town for a week at the start of October...you just wait, they'll arrive the day after I leave, have some kind of huge fan event while they're here, and be gone before we're back.  Sigh...and I made all those reservations...

- Sid

P.S.  Astute fans of the Doctor's production history will be aware that this is not the first time that the last Time Lord has visited Vancouver, at least as a shooting location. Vancouver stood in for San Francisco in the 1996 made-for-TV movie that featured Paul McGann as the Doctor, and Eric Roberts as the Master - the second-to-last Time Lord.

Beyond or behind?

 On Saturday afternoon, Karli and I saw Star Trek: Beyond. The new cast continues to do brilliant imitations of the original characters, the special effects were impeccable*, the villain is suitably villainous, and the day, as always, is saved in an epic fashion. It’s got some issues in terms of exposition, there are a lot of holes in the bad guy’s back story, but generally the movie builds very well on the foundations erected by the first two offerings from the rebooted voyages of the starship Enterprise. 

Coincidentally, I’ve also been watching episodes from the original series on Netflix during my stationary bike cardio workouts at the gym.  Here's the thing: why do I find myself preferring the old shows?

It’s an unexpected question.  In spite of the lasting popularity of the original series, no one denies that it had its problems, and I'd like to think that lessons were learned. (Although you'd never know it from the Qpid episode from The Next Generation.)  Star Trek: Beyond would have been a perfectly acceptable original series episode, but that's the problem: acceptable, rather than excellent or challenging or thought-provoking. And there's a very logical explanation for that - no Spock joke intended.

A movie, even one that’s part of a franchise with a 50-year legacy, is unlikely to make the same creative decisions as a series - especially one that’s as episodic as the original Star Trek. Some critics point at the show’s lack of serialization as a flaw, but really, it’s one of the great strengths of the original series.

The stand-alone nature of the episodes allowed for a huge creative variety in stories:  the taut, tense conflict of Balance of Terror versus the cheerful comedy of The Trouble with Tribbles; The Doomsday Machine, with its echoes of Moby Dick and references to the Mutually Assured Destruction standoff of the Cold War, or Ricardo Montalban’s suave villainy as Khan in Space Seed.  Amok Time, The City on the Edge of Forever, Mirror, Mirror, A Taste of Armageddon - there’s a substantial list of episodes that are considered to be excellent stand-alone examples of science fiction storytelling.

I acknowledge that there's also a substantial list of failures – The Omega Glory, Spock's Brain, The Way to Eden – but even the bad episodes of Star Trek were still attempting to do something original and interesting. 

Contemporary movie makers are faced with the challenge of trying to maintain that flavour of creativity and variety without being able to vary too widely from the formula.  It’s hard to imagine a two-hour Star Trek movie that would be as deliberately comedic as The Trouble With Tribbles – instead, the movie scripts have to strike a balance, mixing elements of humour, conflict, suspense and romance in an action movie framework.

It's one thing to roll the dice on an unusual idea when you're doing 26 episodes - it's a completely different thing to take a chance when you're releasing one movie every three or four years.

Regardless, if I could send a message to the creative team for the next Star Trek film, I would tell them to do exactly that: to play the long game with the movie franchise and treat it like a really extended version of the series. Take some risks, people! Challenge us, impress us, startle us! Come on - let's boldly go someplace we’ve never gone before.

- Sid

*  Karli might not agree with this statement - she noticed a couple of things that didn’t quite work.

At least the triffid part is off the table.

 

Make plans now to stay up late or set the alarm early next week to see a cosmic display of “shooting stars” light up the night sky. Known for its fast and bright meteors, the annual Perseid meteor shower is anticipated to be one of the best potential meteor viewing opportunities this year.

The Perseids show up every year in August when Earth ventures through trails of debris left behind by an ancient comet. This year, Earth may be in for a closer encounter than usual with the comet trails that result in meteor shower, setting the stage for a spectacular display.

- nasa.gov

The Day of the Triffids is a combination post-apocalyptic/monster menace novel, written in 1951 by British author John Wyndham. The story starts with Bill Masen, who awakes in a London hospital on the day that the bandages will be removed from his eyes following treatment for a workplace accident.* 

However, even without sight Masen can tell that something is wrong.  The usual roar of City traffic is absent, the nurse fails to respond to the buzzer, and the hospital is full of moans and complaints.

Stripping the bandages from his eyes, Masen leaves his room, only to discover that the world has literally changed overnight.  Radiation from a worldwide meteor shower has blinded everyone who watched it, leaving the vast majority of humanity without sight.  The impact of the disaster is worsened by the presence of the triffids, ambulatory carnivorous plants which are cultivated for a variety of purposes.  Without human supervision, the triffids have gotten loose from their pens and are stalking the helpless humans.

Last night was the second night of the annual Perseid meteor shower, which was predicted to be far brighter and more impressive than usual. Through an odd coincidence, I had a bad headache last night, and when I reached home I simply collapsed fully clothed into bed, and slept through until about 5:00 this morning, without any thought at all of watching the fall of the meteors.

It's pretty quiet at five in the morning ... but is it too quiet?

- Sid

* If the idea of someone awakening in a hospital to find out that a mysterious catastrophe has taken place sounds familiar, that's because it is.  Both 28 Days Later and The Walking Dead use exactly the same narrative device.

And the award goes to...

"I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - I want ROOM SERVICE! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."

Johnny, Johnny Mnemonic

We recently had dinner with Karli's friend Tara and her new boyfriend Gary.  As sometimes happens in the ebb and flow of first meetings and the associated who-when-where-what-why process, it came out that I was a science fiction fan. Gary, who works in the film industry, immediately asked, "Ah - what's your favourite science fiction movie?"

I realize that this is a standard conversational gambit, but whenever someone asks me about my favourite anything, I always feels a bit challenged, as if I'm going to be judged on my response* - it's not always a comfortable experience.

I was thinking about it afterwards, and I have an alternative that I'd like to propose to the general population.  Going forward, let's no longer ask people about their favourite book, movie, TV show or YouTube™ channel - science fiction or not. Let's ask people about their least favourite.

It's a thought provoking question, if perhaps a bit negative, and I think that in some odd way people are more likely to commiserate than disagree (as can be the case with favourites). There may well be a story as well, because generally people don't go out of their way to watch or read something that they won't enjoy.

I've done this a couple of times on a trial basis, and it's been quite interesting, perhaps more so than the question of favourites. For example, Karli cited Cool World, a movie I haven't thought about for literally decades.  Her sister Stefanie said, "The Wicker Man!" without a moment's hesitation. (Which she instantly followed with Mad Max - apparently Stefanie has already given this question some thought.)

My least favourite science fiction film?  Hmmmm...a little part of me wants to list classically bad SF movies that I haven't seen, like Battlefield Earth or the Sharknado series** (or any one of a legion of terrible low-budget SF movies from the 70s and 80s), but that's not the purpose of the exercise.

A slightly larger part wonders if Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back*** would count as SF - there's certainly a fanboy element to the film, and that movie represents two incredibly tedious hours of my life that are gone, gone forever.

In terms of bad SF that I have seen, Johnny Mnemonic is the first thing that comes to mind, mostly due to its wasted potential.  The source material was an excellent short story by William Gibson that contained the DNA for his breakout 1984 cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, but the brevity and style that made it so good was completely lost in translation.

There are a few others that required a little more thought.  Prometheus disappointed me: I felt that it was an ambitious failure, but a failure none the less.  Ridley Scott did all the things he's good at, lighting, composition and set design, but the script lets him down.  The Planet of the Apes reboot with Mark Wahlberg - the original was an extraordinary concept for the 1960s, and the re-reboots have cast a whole new light on the concept, but the 2001 version never made sense right from the very start.  I suspect I could come up with more, but as with Karli's sister, I feel that the initial instinctive responses are the ones that really count.

Oh, my favourite SF movie?  As previously discussed and explained, Star Wars, the original one.  Gary's choice was 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I found a bit surprising - sadly, it appears that this judgement thing is a two-way street.

- Sid

* And let's face it, I probably will be.

** Sorry, Laurie.

***  For the trivia fans in the audience, as far as I know this is the only movie other than the Star Wars series that features both Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher - albeit not in shared screen time.

Friendship.

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”

Mark Twain

I consider myself to have been blessed in my friendships. One of the things that I have always been grateful for in those friendships is an appreciation (and tolerance) of my various interests by otherwise sensible people who cannot for a moment understand why I would care about such nonsense.

On that basis, I'd like to thank my good friend Joe for picking up a brilliant TARDIS t-shirt for me while looking for a replacement shirt for himself (following a mishap involving french fries).  Thank you, Joe - it takes a very special person to think of others when they're wearing ketchup.

- Sid

UPDATE:  Upon reading this post, Joe sent me the following e-mail:

Very nice.  Seeing as it’s a bit late to become an internet porn star, this will do nicely!
J

It seems very much in keeping with the spirit of this post to support Joe in HIS interests - should any porn producers be reading this, please leave a comment and I will be more than happy to put you in touch with him.

Pizza run.

Last Friday, I lived the dream:  I took the day off to have pizza.

Okay, let's not rush into this.  First, my sights for "the dream" are actually set a bit higher than pizza in lieu of work; and second,  it was a bit more complicated than dedicating a day off to eating pizza.

Karli and I had recently received our NEXUS cards, and as such we wanted to give them a test at the border under circumstances where we weren't on the clock for anything time-sensitive. Her sister had recommended that we try a Fairhaven restaurant called Fat Pie Pizza the next time we were in Washington state, so we decided to do a day trip down for lunch and shopping.  Work has been pleasantly normal recently, so we were able to combine some time from my lieu bank with one of Karli's regular Friday flex days.

However, it seemed a bit much to cross the border just for pizza, dream or no dream, so we did a little research to see what else we might do while visiting Fairhaven. Fortuitously, there turned out to be an independent book store called Village Books located in the same block as Fat Pie, so we added that to our agenda.

 

I liked Village Books - it's an excellent example of a well done - and well run - indie book store.  It's in a classic vintage building, with a wide selection of books spread over three floors. They follow the popular trend of having an associated coffee shop - the Colophon Cafe, which we did not visit - and share space with Paper Dreams, a home decor/gift shop.

The Village Books science fiction/fantasy section is fairly good, although I don't really approve of mixing new and used books - I've visited a few book stores that do this, and it's always a bit irritating to pick up a book expecting to see a used price and find out that it's full cost.

I bought three books on sale  - two hardcover and one trade paperback - for essentially the same price as standard paperbacks in Canada (even after conversion from USD).  My choices were Three Moments of an Explosion, a collection of China Miéville short stories (which I am long overdue to read); Paolo Bacigalupi's 2015 novel The Water Knife; and another short story collection, My Experiences in the Third World War, by Michael Moorcock. This was an unexpected treasure: Moorcock is a long time favourite of mine, and everything in this collection is new to me, I'm quite looking forward to it.

And just for fun, I also picked up a War of the Worlds* T-shirt from the Miles To Go literary T-shirt collection. 

Photo by KT

 Oh, and in case you were wondering, Fat Pie Pizza completely lived up to their positive reviews - and their name.

Photo also by KT

- Sid

* I wore my new T-shirt to a social gathering the next day, and I was surprised to learn that a lot of people are more aware of the 1938 Orson Welles radio hoax than the 1897 H.G. Wells novel.  Tom Cruise (or Gene Barry) didn't come up at all.

As opposed to, say, "Fairy puke". *

Is it just me, or does this sound like an extremely negative term for fantasy fiction?

- Sid

* Just for the record, "fairy puke" is actually the colloquial name for Icmadophila ericetorus, a variety of crustose lichen.

No, seriously, it's on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icmadophila.

Ghostbusters 2: "Break the barriers".

 

I'd like to thank Karli for an excellent guest posting on the new Ghostbusters, and, based on her input, I wanted to enlarge on my position regarding the remake.

For me, movie remakes are a little bit like cover versions of songs. If you're not going to make it your own, if you're not going to bring something new to the table, why bother? *

For whatever reason, genre films seem to be targeted for remakes and reboots more than the mainstream: Robocop, Planet of the Apes, Spider-Man, Total Recall, The Time Machine, Batman, Superman, and so on, with the Ghostbusters remake as the latest entry on the list.  Some of them refresh and revive the base concept, some don't - how does Ghostbusters score?

I agree with Karli that Ghostbusters was fun, and that the main cast has fabulous chemistry.  Kate McKinnon is obviously the next Jim Carrey - let's hope that Hollywood has the good sense to find her a script, hand her the ball, and just let her run with it.

It's also a funny movie, and the selection of cameos from the 1984 cast were a nice nod to the first version.**  I completely agree with Karli that Chris Hemsworth's Kevin failed to impress - a little more depth there would have helped to broaden the film.

All that being said, it's not a very different movie than the original version.  Do I think that it was worth remaking this movie just to replace the originals with female leads?  I would say no - in my mind, that doesn't matter.  A movie should be judged on its own merits, regardless of whether the cast is male or female.

However, I think I'm wrong.

Ghostbusters is a noteworthy cultural phenomenon in that there's such a sharp division between the film as such and its position as a feminist milestone. As Karli points out in her posting, it's important that women be shown taking the lead, both as actors and characters - and THAT'S why we needed to see "bitches busting ghosts".

- Sid

* The Alien Ant Farm version of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal is a prime example of this.

** But where was Rick Moranis? I know he retired from acting in order to raise his children, but surely he could have gotten a babysitter and done a quick hit-and-run appearance at the studio.

Ghostbusters 1: "Safety lights are for dudes!"

(Contributed by Karli Thomas)

 

"No one should have to encounter that kind of evil. Except you girls, I think you can handle it."

Theatre Manager, Ghostbusters

Last weekend, on opening night no less, Sid, and I went to see Ghostbusters. I had been looking forward to it since the first teaser trailer had come out. Maybe even before then. I remember seeing the first image released from the set – the four women wearing the jumpsuits, proton packs strapped to their backs. I poured over the photo and anticipated seeing these very funny women take charge of these very iconic roles. That Paul Feig was directing was the icing on the cake.

In broad terms, I liked the movie. The main cast had great chemistry and were very funny. Kate McKinnon owned every scene she was in. Melissa McCarthy was pleasantly un-Tammy-like. Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig did exactly what you`d expect of them and they were fun to watch. Chris Hemsworth’s character was problematic for me*. The big fight sequence in the second half dragged, but I am guilty of thinking that pretty much every big fight scene in the history of movies drags – you could all learn something from Game of Thrones Battle of the Bastards, filmmakers!

As we walked out into the fresh summer air, Sid proposed a question for this new version of Ghostbusters:  “Did it need to be made?” Specifically, is changing the cast to all female enough of a reason to remake this movie? Sid thinks maybe not and I think maybe yes.

At some point in our future a generation of girls will grow up seeing movies starring more women in a wider variety of roles and that is a very good thing. Young girls (and boys for that matter) will get a broader spectrum of female role models and a more expansive view of what women can do and what they look like in those roles.

Ghostbusters was fun to watch and it was a pleasure to see these women take the reins and do such a great job of leading the movie. Did Ghostbusters need to be remade?  Maybe not remade exactly, no, they could have done a sequel rather than a reboot. But since Hollywood is going to reboot movies regardless of whether or not they need to – why not let women finally take the lead and have some fun?

- Karli

* My complaint about Kevin is nearly complete – he was poorly written, poorly acted and poorly directed. He should have been a dumb, good looking klutz, not a complete idiot.

Warped starlight.

 Wash: Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science-fiction.
Zoë: We live in a spaceship, dear.
Wash: So?  

Objects in Space, Firefly

I've just finished reading City at World's End, a 1951 short novel by Edmond Hamilton.  Hamilton is one of the lost treasures of science fiction - a contemporary of the better known E.E. "Doc" Smith, his prolific work from the first half of the 20th century helped to establish the "thundering planets" style that typifies the early science fiction of the pulp era.

Over time his writing developed a more humanistic, insightful approach, as demonstrated in short stories such as What's It Like Out There?, The Pro, and Requiem.  Other strongly recommended reading would be 1966's Doomstar and his Starwolf trilogy from the late 1960s  - The Weapon from Beyond, The Closed Worlds, and World of the Starwolves. These four books beautifully combine Hamilton's epic view of the future with a more personal, character-driven narrative.*

City at the World's End shows glimpses of Hamilton's mature style, although it's still strongly reminiscent of his early work. In this story, the detonation of an experimental superbomb hurls a small American town millions of years into the future, to an uninhabited - and uninhabitable - Earth.  Scientists from a research centre concealed in the town manage to activate a distress beacon in an abandoned city, attracting the attention of a ship from the galaxy-wide Federation**.

Upon their arrival, the Federation's representatives offer the townspeople a double-edged salvation - they can save the inhabitants of the town, but only by removing them from Earth and transferring them to a different world.

However, a dissident crew member offers another option - requesting a dangerous experimental process which might re-ignite the fires at the Earth's core, thereby providing enough warmth for the castaways from the past to continue to live on Earth.  One of the scientists is taken by starship to the Vega star system to plead the town's case before the galactic Board of Governors: 

He would not show fear. They expected him to do so, they were watching him with sidelong glances of interest and amused expectation. But Kenniston clenched his fists inside his jacket pockets, and resolved fiercely to disappoint them.

He was afraid, yes. It was one thing to read and talk and speculate on flying space. It was another and much more frightening thing to do it, to step off the solid Earth, to rush and plunge and fall through the worldless emptiness.

He stood there with Gorr Holl*** and Piers Eglin in the bridge of the Thanis, looking ahead through the curving view windows, and a cold sickness clutched at his vitals.

"It isn't the way I expected it to be," he said unsteadily. "Only those stars ahead--"

He fought against the impulse to clutch for support. He wouldn't do that, while the bronzed star-men behind him were curiously watching him. 

Directly ahead, Kenniston looked at a depthless black in which fierce stars flared like lamps. The blue-hot beacon of Vega centered that vista, and up from it blazed the stars of the time-distorted Lyre and Aquila, crossed on the upper left by the glittering sun-drift of the Milky Way.

Only that section of sky ahead was clear. The rest of the firmament, extending back from it, was an increasingly blurred vista of warped starlight whose rays seemed to twitch, jerk and dance. 

The last 50 years have provided the general population with an extensive education regarding life in the future: androids, starships, energy weapons, warp drives, a plethora of advanced technology.  Anyone who has seen a Star Wars movie, any one of the iterations of the Star Trek franchise, or one of a hundred other visual stories set in space would be completely familiar with the view that fills Kenniston with such dread (although I'm willing to admit that the actual experience might well be more daunting than watching it on a movie screen, even in IMAX 3D).  And at this point, who hasn't seen one of those examples? 

How ironic that, with all the things that science fiction has predicted for the future, it would fail to predict its own success and popularity.

- Sid

* And I have to add that they're fun.  Hamilton knows what he's doing - he paints his interstellar future with a big brush, but he also uses a lot of bright colours on a huge canvas, and the result is dramatic, tense, and entertaining.

** It's not the U.S.S. Enterprise, and it's not that Federation. I don't think Gene Roddenberry was guilty of plagiarizing this idea - let's face it, there are only so many words you can use to describe a democratic political organization.

*** A hint for new readers of vintage science fiction:  if there is a character with a name like Gorr Holl, there's a really good chance that the story you are reading was written before 1960, if not 1950.

Not only that, but it's in Canadian dollars.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) recently launched its fourth astronaut recruitment campaign.

At the end of this recruitment campaign, two new Canadian astronauts will begin their training in the 2017 NASA astronaut class in Houston, Texas.

Do you have a university degree in science, engineering or medicine? Do you have at least three years of relevant professional experience, or are you licenced to practise medicine in Canada? Are you resourceful, determined, and cool, calm and collected? If so, you may be what the CSA is looking for!

- Canadian Space Agency astronaut recruitment site

Given that today is the anniversary of Neil Armstrong's first step onto the surface of the Moon, it seems appropriate to announce that Canada is looking to hire a couple of astronauts.

Be an Astronaut! Apply by 15 Aug or miss your chance to boldly go! https://t.co/0r43aIxv2n@WilliamShatner @csa_aschttps://t.co/spgOYxTn1D

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) July 20, 2016

(My apologies, apparently they've been looking for applicants since June, and I missed Commander Hadfield's first Tweet on the subject.)

The Canadian Space Agency web site contains all the basic information that you might want before deciding to apply: qualifications, duties of an astronaut, selection process (it takes about a year to complete all the stages of recruitment) and, of course, the online application form.

Surprisingly, it's not the highest paying job in the world.  Novice cosmonauts start at $91K, with a potential  boost to $178K* after successfully completing a mission in space.  Considering the list of prerequisites and qualifications - and the fact that there's a certain amount of risk involved -  this doesn't seem like a lot of money.  On the other hand, there are some perks that come with the job:  just look at the view from your office...

I have to give the CSA full points for putting together a clever and well-thought-out promotional campaign.  This is just another reason that I think Canada is such a great country - it's difficult to imagine the United States government doing anything quite as casually smart and funny.

It's also a bit surprising to me that it's such an open invitation.  Admittedly, most people wouldn't match the list of qualifications, but that list isn't ridiculous or undoable. As pointed out in the introductory quotation, this is only the fourth time that the CSA has gone looking for astronauts, but it won't be the last.  If you're reading this in the same year it was posted, you've probably got about ten years to get ready for the next time - good luck!

- Sid

* To be completely accurate, $178,400.  I suspect this is a governmental pay grade thing - if it was up to me I would round it up to at least the nearest six figure digit.