(Sun, Oct 01, 2006)
John C. Wright *gets* Robert Heinlein, and articulates it well in this little review of A Tramp Royale.
(Tue, Oct 03, 2006)
It's that literary prize time of year again! Swiftly approacheth is first the Booker Prize, which goes to an author resident in the British Commonwealth of Nations (and not the U.K. alone see; the "Commonwealth" of nations mostly consists of countries presently or recently under British colonial rule, including places as diverse as Canada, India, Pakistan, Australia, Nigeria, and South Africa; look here if you care about it).
Meanwhile the lumbering Nobel beast slouches toward Stockholm to be born (aborted) again. This year's list of favorites includes such startling luminaries as Orhan Pamuk, that tour-de-Turk novelist on everybody's todo shelves; perennial short-list favorite Adonis, the Syrian poet all the kids are in love with; Polish novelist Ryszard Kapuscinski, the man copy/paste was invented for; and -- of course -- like the tacky Christmas lights on my neighbor's rain gutters, the ever-nominated Joyce Carol Oates, who always reminds me of a breakfast cereal I refuse to eat. Oats is in at 6/1 according to Ladbrokes, Pamuk at 5/2, and the others at 5/1. Less favored favorites include Philip Roth (10/1), Haruki Murakami (12/1), some people nobody's heard of (12/1, 14/1), Milan Kundera (20/1), and -- recently a gainer from 30/1 -- Thomas Pynchon (20/1). Oh, and Bob Dylan at 50/1.
Meanwhile I continue to rely upon Locus and SF Signal for leads on what to read.
Meanwhile the lumbering Nobel beast slouches toward Stockholm to be born (aborted) again. This year's list of favorites includes such startling luminaries as Orhan Pamuk, that tour-de-Turk novelist on everybody's todo shelves; perennial short-list favorite Adonis, the Syrian poet all the kids are in love with; Polish novelist Ryszard Kapuscinski, the man copy/paste was invented for; and -- of course -- like the tacky Christmas lights on my neighbor's rain gutters, the ever-nominated Joyce Carol Oates, who always reminds me of a breakfast cereal I refuse to eat. Oats is in at 6/1 according to Ladbrokes, Pamuk at 5/2, and the others at 5/1. Less favored favorites include Philip Roth (10/1), Haruki Murakami (12/1), some people nobody's heard of (12/1, 14/1), Milan Kundera (20/1), and -- recently a gainer from 30/1 -- Thomas Pynchon (20/1). Oh, and Bob Dylan at 50/1.
Meanwhile I continue to rely upon Locus and SF Signal for leads on what to read.
(Tue, Oct 03, 2006)
I was a big fan of the Friday Night Lights pilot when I saw it a month or so ago (it premieres tonight on some network); in fact I claimed it was better than anything Hollywood has produced all year. But Herc at Aint It Cool News makes some interesting observations about its verisimilitude:
Is "Lights" how the blue states see the red? There are no stoners under the bleachers. Every Texas high school kid in the TV show is Hollywood skinny and most look like underwear models. There are no morbidly obese teens populating every corner barbeque shed. Not one is depicted rolling his eyes or masturbating the air when the coach tells the local NBC sportscaster, "You gotta feel blessed to spend your first year with a young man who’s got the talent and the moral strength this young man right here has."
Oh well, maybe it's a *stylized* Texas town, a vision of an ideal plucked from the future memories of its author. Eh? Eh? Anyone?
(Tue, Oct 03, 2006)
Battlestar Galactica (the new one of course) has always flirted with being political. It was only on the story's edges though, and those who chose could always rationalize it away; one could imagine Ron Moore and his fellow writers and producers simply found inspiration in current events, simply transformed similar patterns into their fictional world. How could they possibly compare the nightmare of that world with our own after all? The hyperbolic recklessness of it is worthy of dumb-as-bricks Cindy Sheehan or pay-check-first Michael Moore. One's inner state machine must cry Category Error!
But now, based upon what I'm seeing in the "webisodes" -- the Cylon occupation, the human insurgency hiding weapons in their temples, the Cylons trying to convince the humans to work with them, to help them build infrastructure, to help them patrol the streets at night; hell, the whole story-arc kludge that got the humans into their shitty predicament on that shitty planet in the first place -- I'm worried they've gone over that edge. I'm worried that Moore et all (Ron, not Mike) somehow finds some moral equivalency between US forces occupying Iraq and the mega-genocidal Cylons of their television program. That somehow the reasons for disliking Cylons -- for instance their carpet-nuking of a dozen or more planets and reducing the size of the known human race to around 40,000 people -- are just about the same as the reasons for disliking Americans.
But I must be wrong, right? How could that be? People never exaggerate anything when it comes to politics. Not in an election year especially.
But now, based upon what I'm seeing in the "webisodes" -- the Cylon occupation, the human insurgency hiding weapons in their temples, the Cylons trying to convince the humans to work with them, to help them build infrastructure, to help them patrol the streets at night; hell, the whole story-arc kludge that got the humans into their shitty predicament on that shitty planet in the first place -- I'm worried they've gone over that edge. I'm worried that Moore et all (Ron, not Mike) somehow finds some moral equivalency between US forces occupying Iraq and the mega-genocidal Cylons of their television program. That somehow the reasons for disliking Cylons -- for instance their carpet-nuking of a dozen or more planets and reducing the size of the known human race to around 40,000 people -- are just about the same as the reasons for disliking Americans.
But I must be wrong, right? How could that be? People never exaggerate anything when it comes to politics. Not in an election year especially.
(Tue, Oct 03, 2006)
I've recently rewatched the first season, and there remain some things I don't understand (warning, this is a geek-rant):
1) Why do some Cylons -- notably Sharon -- not know they are Cylons? There doesn't seem to be any decent explanation for this. I could imagine a reason for the Capricorn Sharon not to know -- the one that seduces the stranded pilot in order to get knocked up -- but that one *does* know. Was the Galactica Sharon supposed to get knocked up too? I notice they dropped this from the season two intro.
2) I still have a problem with all these people acting like their lives and society are the same as before the Cylons attacked. At any moment they could be brought to the very threshold of extinction and yet they still act like they're living in some lofty republic surrounded by Swiss Alps. The military is treated like a necessary evil; there was even one episode where some civilians punched out Apollo and Starbuck instead of eagerly kissing their asses for saving all their lives nineteen times. I love freedom and liberty as much as -- almost certainly more than -- most people, but I'd wager anything that the 40,000 human survivors in the Galactica rag-tag fleet would all happily cower in the hull of a military dictatorship at least until the Cylons stopped trying to exterminate them. I don't think democratic elections would be one of their early impulses.
3) Why would a Space Carrier like Galactica not have a full medical staff? Even a museum that size -- isolated by the vacuum of space from emergency response teams -- would at least have a decent infirmary. I would have expected each of those ships to be similarly equipped. But there's only one doctor to go around?
4) Why do they take Baltar's word for the success of his Cylon-detector technology? Wouldn't somebody want independent verification of this? It's kind of an important tool for them, right? Why do they defer to him entirely, and insist that he alone perform the tests? I would have imagined the show's military consultants to produce wrinkled brows over this sort of thing, but similarly implausible behavior turns up elsewhere too. Of course they may have blown their budget for consultants in the show's planning. Or something....
5) Have they ever explained the artificial gravity? Just saying.
1) Why do some Cylons -- notably Sharon -- not know they are Cylons? There doesn't seem to be any decent explanation for this. I could imagine a reason for the Capricorn Sharon not to know -- the one that seduces the stranded pilot in order to get knocked up -- but that one *does* know. Was the Galactica Sharon supposed to get knocked up too? I notice they dropped this from the season two intro.
2) I still have a problem with all these people acting like their lives and society are the same as before the Cylons attacked. At any moment they could be brought to the very threshold of extinction and yet they still act like they're living in some lofty republic surrounded by Swiss Alps. The military is treated like a necessary evil; there was even one episode where some civilians punched out Apollo and Starbuck instead of eagerly kissing their asses for saving all their lives nineteen times. I love freedom and liberty as much as -- almost certainly more than -- most people, but I'd wager anything that the 40,000 human survivors in the Galactica rag-tag fleet would all happily cower in the hull of a military dictatorship at least until the Cylons stopped trying to exterminate them. I don't think democratic elections would be one of their early impulses.
3) Why would a Space Carrier like Galactica not have a full medical staff? Even a museum that size -- isolated by the vacuum of space from emergency response teams -- would at least have a decent infirmary. I would have expected each of those ships to be similarly equipped. But there's only one doctor to go around?
4) Why do they take Baltar's word for the success of his Cylon-detector technology? Wouldn't somebody want independent verification of this? It's kind of an important tool for them, right? Why do they defer to him entirely, and insist that he alone perform the tests? I would have imagined the show's military consultants to produce wrinkled brows over this sort of thing, but similarly implausible behavior turns up elsewhere too. Of course they may have blown their budget for consultants in the show's planning. Or something....
5) Have they ever explained the artificial gravity? Just saying.
(Sat, Oct 07, 2006)
I have some problems with the new BSG season. I knew you'd be surprised!
First of all, Moore and his buddies are going to have to work a little harder (no, a lot harder) to convince me of the Cylon's motives with this occupation; it is completely inconsistent with their previous behavior. Were they reprogrammed? Did their god speak to them? What is the point of the occupation; what do the Cylons hope to accomplish? If the Cylons really desire peace with humanity, is this really the way to achieve it? Why not diplomatic relations instead? Treaties, detente, a formal cessation of hostilities. Why do the Cylons want humans to police themselves when there seems to be no shortage of Centurions? They must realize this can only cause divisions between the humans. If Cylons are immune to being killed, and are even prone to shooting one other in order to settle a heated argument, why respond at all to insurgency attacks? The humans are no threat to the Cylons. (Bee-keeper gets stung so he rounds up a dozen drones?) Otherwise -- if there's no set of explanations that works -- then it's a kludge for the simple purpose of either a) changing the setting or b) mirroring current events. The plot certainly implies b. Which is unfortunate because it strains the verisimilitude of the story.
This has been bothering me for the last few days about this dumb show. One might call it... irresponsible? to set up a transitive allegorical linkage between Nazis and Americans occupying Iraq. Shallow minded people will believe in it. They'll be more convinced by fiction, by compelling drama, than by any set of facts; it has always been so. And don't try to sell me that bullshit about Vichy: suicide bombings, weapons in holy places, blowing up police graduations, the very texture of the landscape -- all this aside, the year is 2006 and the front page of every newspaper for the past three years has something about the Iraq occupation. Does Moore actually believe that the average person -- or *any* person -- is going to sit there and go, "Ah-ha, just like Vichy France during the Nazi occupation! Bravo!" Blow me. Even if *not* intended (which I doubt), the corollary exists and must be dealt with.
The purpose of terrorism is political: it seeks to change the foreign policy of the enemy government by horrifying and depleting the will to wage war on the part of the enemy populace. In order for it to work, that enemy populace must have some means of exerting influence upon their leaders; this means a democratic electoral system coupled with a free media. Terrorism (or asymmetrical or unconventional or 4th generation warfare) is therefore not only plausible against an enemy like the US, it is already historically proven. Thus blowing up marketplaces, killing civilians -- while repulsive and reprehensible, is strategically sound for the belligerent willing to engage in it.
It is plausible that Colonel Tigh is such a belligerent (and this new Tigh character actually works very well: his pontificating about demons, his grizzled appearance, etc, is all very compelling and entertaining). Tigh's enemy, however, does not fit the profile of a free, democratic people. The Cylons are immutable, they have no populace to persuade, no media in evidence, and no democratic process. They have already demonstrated themselves a ruthless, genocidal killing machine that makes the Wehrmacht look like a farm collective of Grateful Dead fans. Tigh's strategy is therefore nonsensical. It is irrational. It is impossible to believe in. Its only obvious *textual* purpose is to provide a link between the story and current events in the real world: the occupation of Iraq, and the terrorist tactics employed by portions of the Iraqi insurgency.
So it's tenuous storytelling, but perhaps excusable. Moore wants to explore what might be in the head of a suicide bomber; what might compel someone to collaborate with their enemy; and what might compel another to fight by any means necessary. But the allegorical linkage between the text and the real world rapidly becomes untenable as the Cylon's escalate their fight against the insurgency. (And again there is no reason for it that suits the story.) The rounding up of political prisoners, their detention without due process, the execution of political dissidents. This is the behavior of Stalinist Russia, or of Nazi Germany (indeed, the scene with the prisoners from the truck "stretching their legs" is pulled directly from The Great Escape). It is unequivocally *not* the behavior of the United States military in Iraq. So it is a problem: if the story is at one moment linked to current events, it cannot suddenly *not* be linked. This is a transitive property of allegory over time (xy & yz => xz). Moore has -- accidentally or intentionally -- compared the US military to ruthless, genocidal totalitarians. And the result is no mere political commentary but irresponsible, inflammatory hyperbole. Which is his right if he chooses; I just wish it didn't damage the show for me.
First of all, Moore and his buddies are going to have to work a little harder (no, a lot harder) to convince me of the Cylon's motives with this occupation; it is completely inconsistent with their previous behavior. Were they reprogrammed? Did their god speak to them? What is the point of the occupation; what do the Cylons hope to accomplish? If the Cylons really desire peace with humanity, is this really the way to achieve it? Why not diplomatic relations instead? Treaties, detente, a formal cessation of hostilities. Why do the Cylons want humans to police themselves when there seems to be no shortage of Centurions? They must realize this can only cause divisions between the humans. If Cylons are immune to being killed, and are even prone to shooting one other in order to settle a heated argument, why respond at all to insurgency attacks? The humans are no threat to the Cylons. (Bee-keeper gets stung so he rounds up a dozen drones?) Otherwise -- if there's no set of explanations that works -- then it's a kludge for the simple purpose of either a) changing the setting or b) mirroring current events. The plot certainly implies b. Which is unfortunate because it strains the verisimilitude of the story.
This has been bothering me for the last few days about this dumb show. One might call it... irresponsible? to set up a transitive allegorical linkage between Nazis and Americans occupying Iraq. Shallow minded people will believe in it. They'll be more convinced by fiction, by compelling drama, than by any set of facts; it has always been so. And don't try to sell me that bullshit about Vichy: suicide bombings, weapons in holy places, blowing up police graduations, the very texture of the landscape -- all this aside, the year is 2006 and the front page of every newspaper for the past three years has something about the Iraq occupation. Does Moore actually believe that the average person -- or *any* person -- is going to sit there and go, "Ah-ha, just like Vichy France during the Nazi occupation! Bravo!" Blow me. Even if *not* intended (which I doubt), the corollary exists and must be dealt with.
The purpose of terrorism is political: it seeks to change the foreign policy of the enemy government by horrifying and depleting the will to wage war on the part of the enemy populace. In order for it to work, that enemy populace must have some means of exerting influence upon their leaders; this means a democratic electoral system coupled with a free media. Terrorism (or asymmetrical or unconventional or 4th generation warfare) is therefore not only plausible against an enemy like the US, it is already historically proven. Thus blowing up marketplaces, killing civilians -- while repulsive and reprehensible, is strategically sound for the belligerent willing to engage in it.
It is plausible that Colonel Tigh is such a belligerent (and this new Tigh character actually works very well: his pontificating about demons, his grizzled appearance, etc, is all very compelling and entertaining). Tigh's enemy, however, does not fit the profile of a free, democratic people. The Cylons are immutable, they have no populace to persuade, no media in evidence, and no democratic process. They have already demonstrated themselves a ruthless, genocidal killing machine that makes the Wehrmacht look like a farm collective of Grateful Dead fans. Tigh's strategy is therefore nonsensical. It is irrational. It is impossible to believe in. Its only obvious *textual* purpose is to provide a link between the story and current events in the real world: the occupation of Iraq, and the terrorist tactics employed by portions of the Iraqi insurgency.
So it's tenuous storytelling, but perhaps excusable. Moore wants to explore what might be in the head of a suicide bomber; what might compel someone to collaborate with their enemy; and what might compel another to fight by any means necessary. But the allegorical linkage between the text and the real world rapidly becomes untenable as the Cylon's escalate their fight against the insurgency. (And again there is no reason for it that suits the story.) The rounding up of political prisoners, their detention without due process, the execution of political dissidents. This is the behavior of Stalinist Russia, or of Nazi Germany (indeed, the scene with the prisoners from the truck "stretching their legs" is pulled directly from The Great Escape). It is unequivocally *not* the behavior of the United States military in Iraq. So it is a problem: if the story is at one moment linked to current events, it cannot suddenly *not* be linked. This is a transitive property of allegory over time (xy & yz => xz). Moore has -- accidentally or intentionally -- compared the US military to ruthless, genocidal totalitarians. And the result is no mere political commentary but irresponsible, inflammatory hyperbole. Which is his right if he chooses; I just wish it didn't damage the show for me.
(Sat, Oct 07, 2006)
Go check out the trailer for Frank Miller's 300, a movie derived from his graphic novel based (very loosely) on the Spartan 300 at Thermopylae (a perennial favorite for SF retellings). It's as if he's distilled the very essence of badass. Which is appropriate; if ever such a label applied, it's to the 300. Spartaaaaa!
(Thu, Oct 12, 2006)
Orhan Pamuk has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Meanwhile Kiran Desai has won the 2006 Booker Prize. Who are these people, you ask? Shame on you! Shame on this whole stinking place!
(Thu, Oct 12, 2006)
Over the weekend what happens is I loose several of the reasoning parts of my brain, and install the new Windows Vista RC2 onto my MS partition (wiping out several wholly necessary games I had in there). I go and I do this: boot into XP, download the image, burn it onto a dvd, insert it into the other optical drive. It lets me install from within XP. The installation seems slow but isn't tedious; MS has always had this tendency to let you think the process is almost done, only to have the Finishing Up section take as long as the preceding sections combined, but I'm already used to that so I remain unflustered, calm, and approachable by loved ones (had there been any about).
Eventually the thing's all booted up and I'm staring at the much vaunted Aero glass whatever interface. The blurred window borders are kind of cool; just kind of cool, nothing spectacular. Aero's "glass" looks more like plastic, like Tupperware, or what passes for paper in cheesy SciFi programs. But some of the window effects are nice, the way they disappear and so forth. A bit snappier than XP. Again I'm really not thrilled with anything here. Meanwhile there's no sound, so I have to install a beta driver from Creative. Also there's no better multi-monitor support than XP had, sigh. And still no virtual desktops; so it all feels kind of cramped in there, but the wallpaper is nice. And it looks like MS is finally allowing users to create their own themes, so one is not necessarily stuck with Aero.
The new Windows Explorer file manager is kind of cluttered and a bit too cutesy. MS also has this tendency to try to make things easier with lots of shortcuts to special folders I never use. Explorer still hides file extensions by default, but this time there is no obvious way to correct that. Traditional menu bars have been banned in Vista in favor of... well, nothing. It seems you can't really do anything but accept whatever the defaults are. Surely this can't be true, but a cursory search has yielded nothing. What exactly is the reasoning behind getting rid of the menu bar? Can I get it back somehow?
Internet Explorer 7 seems pretty nice, rather like Firefox, nothing much to complain about or praise. It has tabs now thank the machine gods.
So I go ahead and install some essential applications, some of them officially supporting Vista, some of them not. My old version of Winrar seems to work fine. Agent not so much (although I'm told I just need to change the location of its data folder). An RSS reader, etc. And it's here the really annoying new "feature" of Vista starts kicking in -- or should I say popping up, because it's the attack of the killer permission popups. Gods help me! Every time I run an executable Windows doesn't officially know about -- which means any app I've installed myself -- I get a popup; and it's not just a messagebox: there's this whole production where the screen goes blank then everything but the box is greyed out, and I'm in su mode or something and I have to click "Allow...", and then the screen returns. It's fantastically annoying! And it's not just the first time that particular exe is run, it's every blasted time. I assume there must be some place for me to set a given exe as pre-allowed, but it's not obvious how to do that, and it's not clear why I should have to do that; can't Vista remember that I've already authorized it? Apparently this popup thing has been an annoyance since the early betas, and that this release has actually toned them down. Eee-gad! Hasn't MS learned from how annoyed people became with browser popups? They have a popup blocker on IE, why can't Vista have one too?
So that unpleasantness aside -- and I really can't imagine putting up with that on a constant basis -- what surprises me most is how much Windows Vista still resembles Windows XP. All the basic ways of doing things are still there, there's nothing revolutionary or even innovative in Vista; it feels more like a heavily skinned XP, like something Stardock would make, with the addition of the popups. So the summary is suck. I cannot conceive of any reason for any person to migrate to Windows Vista from Windows XP, Mac OSX, or any current collaborative Linux distro (unless twilighting support for XP is a scary thing to them).
So now I have to get back to Ubuntu, but -- and I knew this going in, I knew this would happen -- during installation, Vista merrily overwrote the Master Boot Record with its own, rather dimwitted boot loader that only knows about Windows. So I have to break out the Ubuntu Live CD and restore GRUB, and it's a big hassle and I grow sad and weary and resentful, and completely unapproachable by loved ones (had there been any about). Ah Vista, ah humanity!
Eventually the thing's all booted up and I'm staring at the much vaunted Aero glass whatever interface. The blurred window borders are kind of cool; just kind of cool, nothing spectacular. Aero's "glass" looks more like plastic, like Tupperware, or what passes for paper in cheesy SciFi programs. But some of the window effects are nice, the way they disappear and so forth. A bit snappier than XP. Again I'm really not thrilled with anything here. Meanwhile there's no sound, so I have to install a beta driver from Creative. Also there's no better multi-monitor support than XP had, sigh. And still no virtual desktops; so it all feels kind of cramped in there, but the wallpaper is nice. And it looks like MS is finally allowing users to create their own themes, so one is not necessarily stuck with Aero.
The new Windows Explorer file manager is kind of cluttered and a bit too cutesy. MS also has this tendency to try to make things easier with lots of shortcuts to special folders I never use. Explorer still hides file extensions by default, but this time there is no obvious way to correct that. Traditional menu bars have been banned in Vista in favor of... well, nothing. It seems you can't really do anything but accept whatever the defaults are. Surely this can't be true, but a cursory search has yielded nothing. What exactly is the reasoning behind getting rid of the menu bar? Can I get it back somehow?
Internet Explorer 7 seems pretty nice, rather like Firefox, nothing much to complain about or praise. It has tabs now thank the machine gods.
So I go ahead and install some essential applications, some of them officially supporting Vista, some of them not. My old version of Winrar seems to work fine. Agent not so much (although I'm told I just need to change the location of its data folder). An RSS reader, etc. And it's here the really annoying new "feature" of Vista starts kicking in -- or should I say popping up, because it's the attack of the killer permission popups. Gods help me! Every time I run an executable Windows doesn't officially know about -- which means any app I've installed myself -- I get a popup; and it's not just a messagebox: there's this whole production where the screen goes blank then everything but the box is greyed out, and I'm in su mode or something and I have to click "Allow...", and then the screen returns. It's fantastically annoying! And it's not just the first time that particular exe is run, it's every blasted time. I assume there must be some place for me to set a given exe as pre-allowed, but it's not obvious how to do that, and it's not clear why I should have to do that; can't Vista remember that I've already authorized it? Apparently this popup thing has been an annoyance since the early betas, and that this release has actually toned them down. Eee-gad! Hasn't MS learned from how annoyed people became with browser popups? They have a popup blocker on IE, why can't Vista have one too?
So that unpleasantness aside -- and I really can't imagine putting up with that on a constant basis -- what surprises me most is how much Windows Vista still resembles Windows XP. All the basic ways of doing things are still there, there's nothing revolutionary or even innovative in Vista; it feels more like a heavily skinned XP, like something Stardock would make, with the addition of the popups. So the summary is suck. I cannot conceive of any reason for any person to migrate to Windows Vista from Windows XP, Mac OSX, or any current collaborative Linux distro (unless twilighting support for XP is a scary thing to them).
So now I have to get back to Ubuntu, but -- and I knew this going in, I knew this would happen -- during installation, Vista merrily overwrote the Master Boot Record with its own, rather dimwitted boot loader that only knows about Windows. So I have to break out the Ubuntu Live CD and restore GRUB, and it's a big hassle and I grow sad and weary and resentful, and completely unapproachable by loved ones (had there been any about). Ah Vista, ah humanity!
(Thu, Oct 12, 2006)
This somehow seems like it should be better than it is. But it's still pretty good. "The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote."
(Fri, Oct 13, 2006)
I just want to clear this up: I'm not annoyed with Battlestar Iraqtica because of the overt politics; the show has always been political. I'm annoyed with how the obsession to include said politics has now begun to seriously harm the story and setting: characters do things simply because the political allegory requires it, not because of any rational or even fathomable reason of their own; some characters have been altered entirely in order to behave more to the writers' political design; the setting seems created explicitly to stage this behavior (Jonah Goldberg called it "a grim Salusa Secundus", which is an amazing quote not because it's entirely accurate, but because Jonah Goldberg knows what Salusa Secudus is); and references to Nazis and Stalinists threatens to reduce the program to a half-assed left-wing rant about neo-con foreign policy. That's all; I just want the old BSG back please.
The Goldberg article actually sums all this up rather well.
The Goldberg article actually sums all this up rather well.
(Fri, Oct 13, 2006)
Tonight's Doctor Who airing on the SciFi Channel is my personal favorite from the season. The episode itself is merely okay, but old-time fans of the show will certainly appreciate the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K9. At first I couldn't even place who it was -- she's older of course; the last Sarah Jane episode was made in 1983 -- but then suddenly I realized, and I nearly wept for the joy of it! (I was a BIG Tom Baker era Doctor Who fan back then and since.) And when Sarah begs the Doctor to explain why he abandoned her, why he took himself, the TARDIS, the whole adventure away and left her alone, it's all pathos in there. I nearly wept for the heartache of it! (Elizabeth Sladen does a great job reprising the role.)
"Oh good for you, Sarah Jane Smith! Good for you!"
And of course there's the return of K9. "Bad Dog!" "Affirmative!"
"Oh good for you, Sarah Jane Smith! Good for you!"
And of course there's the return of K9. "Bad Dog!" "Affirmative!"
(Mon, Oct 23, 2006)
Holy crap the future of Science Fiction publishing is at stake again! Well, not really. But in case you're not as firmly enthralled by the vicissitudes of SF fandom as I am (and I'm really only part-time, I swear it), and in case you also care a little, there's been a bit of an argument raging lately concerning Star Wars qua SF publishing and the old genre vs. litruture conundrum that might be of interest. Since I've been reading around this all weekend, I've got the links all historified:
It all started with this article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in Asimovs, in which she more or less insists that SF should be more like Star Wars because Star Wars is entertainment. You can almost hear the heads exploding as you read it.
Lou Anders has been covering this whole thing in his blog like CNN on Iraq.
Charlie Stross probably both over-intellectualizes and over-simplifies it in his response, claiming golden age SF is no longer relevant because it was built upon an outmoded political ideology -- which it really wasn't. (Everything is political to the Brits, I swear.) But he gets a slew of great comments by well-known SF practitioners.
John Scalzi disagrees that Star Wars is entertainment in the first place, insisting: "Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot." Wow!
Paul McAuley gets all Brit-pissed about it, taking issue with someone even mentioning the New Wave. I have to suggest that it seems mainly only Brits are still dragging that disagreement back into the light. See especially the first comment by Ian McDonald (and see his blog remarks here).
Which is another argument entirely. It's pretty evident that the Brits are producing some of the best SF right now (McAuley, McDonald, Banks, Reynolds); but I'm not convinced it's refreshed anything but itself. Where was Brit-SF before Iain M. Banks? Languishing in the long coma induced by the absurd demands of the New Wave. It was never a movement that most American authors ever felt they necessarily had to deal with. Current Brit-SF is as much a back to basics movement as Rusch invites in her Star Wars article.
It all started with this article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch in Asimovs, in which she more or less insists that SF should be more like Star Wars because Star Wars is entertainment. You can almost hear the heads exploding as you read it.
Lou Anders has been covering this whole thing in his blog like CNN on Iraq.
Charlie Stross probably both over-intellectualizes and over-simplifies it in his response, claiming golden age SF is no longer relevant because it was built upon an outmoded political ideology -- which it really wasn't. (Everything is political to the Brits, I swear.) But he gets a slew of great comments by well-known SF practitioners.
John Scalzi disagrees that Star Wars is entertainment in the first place, insisting: "Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot." Wow!
Paul McAuley gets all Brit-pissed about it, taking issue with someone even mentioning the New Wave. I have to suggest that it seems mainly only Brits are still dragging that disagreement back into the light. See especially the first comment by Ian McDonald (and see his blog remarks here).
Which is another argument entirely. It's pretty evident that the Brits are producing some of the best SF right now (McAuley, McDonald, Banks, Reynolds); but I'm not convinced it's refreshed anything but itself. Where was Brit-SF before Iain M. Banks? Languishing in the long coma induced by the absurd demands of the New Wave. It was never a movement that most American authors ever felt they necessarily had to deal with. Current Brit-SF is as much a back to basics movement as Rusch invites in her Star Wars article.