Only 21 days left until Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds gets under way over at Not A Planet Anymore!
My faithful sidekick, harrysaxon, and I invite you to be part of this online challenge on October 30th. Just leave your blog address in the comments box and tell us you’re in. We’ll add your name to the roster of participants on the Not A Planet Anymore homepage so visitors to the site can link to your blog. Then, on October 30th, all of the participants will blog like the Martians from H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds” are invading.
Here on bloginhood, I’ll be giving updates throughout the day on how the Wet Coast is going up in smoke (and it’ll probably be the first time a Lower Mainlander isn’t referring to the April 20th 4:20pm haze in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery) as the Martian war machines lope through, blasting away with their heat rays, venting gas and snatching passers-by off the street for a snack.
Then, when it’s done, over at Not A Planet Anymore, we’ll go through the blogs of all the participants and harvest the highlights, posting them to our site so you can get a sampler of how things went down around the world.
Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds is our way of commemorating Orson Welles’ famous October 30, 1938 radio play that had thousands of late-arriving listeners believing the aliens had finally come and had brought a high-tech stick to give mankind a whuppin’.
We’ve take our inspiration for this blogging challenge from the success of the annual zombie apocalypse organized by My Elves Are Different.
But to make it cool, we need as many people as possible to join in the fun. Enlist your blog, let us know you’re in, and on October 30th tell us how the Martians are wreaking havoc in your area. Join us at Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds!
babbling relentlessly about science fiction, fantasy, and all points in between
Thursday, October 09, 2008
A Weakly List If Ever There Was One
Over at Not A Planet Anymore, we’ve started a new weekly list feature (What, geeks who feel the need to quantify something? Unheard of!). And to start off, we’ve scrapped the bottom of the barrel: The Top 5 SF Books We Never Want to Read Again.
Jump in to the discussion and let us know what books you’re going to avoid rereading at all costs.
PS:
While you’re there, remember to sign up to take part in our Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds online challenge, commemorating Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast on October 30th. The more blogoids out there taking part, the more fun it will be!
Jump in to the discussion and let us know what books you’re going to avoid rereading at all costs.
PS:
While you’re there, remember to sign up to take part in our Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds online challenge, commemorating Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast on October 30th. The more blogoids out there taking part, the more fun it will be!
Monday, October 06, 2008
VCon 33, Day 3 - The End
Today was really a tale of two cons. I ended up missing most of the day’s sessions at VCon because I had to go to a fitness conference (yes, go ahead and laugh. I assure you, you’re not laughing harder than me) my employer was hosting in Burnaby. As the resident communications guy, I had to be on-site to escort a TV crew and help them line-up interviews and find good locations. In short, I had to play the con pimp. That was about four hours of my day. Luckily, when it was over, I was able to leave fairly quickly, get a quick bite and hit VCon by 3 for the last couple of hours. I had missed-out on a couple of sessions earlier in the day that looked interesting: “Great First Lines”, “Books We Read As Kids That Influenced Where And Who We Are Now”, Robert J. Sawyer’s reading, the discussion on artificial intelligence, and “Beginnings, Middles and Ends: The Challenges of Longer Forms”. That being said, there were still enough good ones left in the day that it was worth coming.
I started with the “Canadian SF: What distinguishes it?” session. I had toyed with the notion of attending the panel on “Magical Crime Scene Investigation”, but I’m a sucker for a well-organized discussion about the state of Canadian SF. Sure, I attend this session every year, but as someone who reads a lot of SF (Canadian, American, British and international), I see it as my duty (as well as great pleasure) to not only read the home-grown stuff, but to, in some way, be part of discussions about it. MCSI might be a fun topic, but it just doesn’t carry the same importance ultimately as an analysis of our country’s SF output. And it was a good choice. In many respects, the discussion covered some of the same issues as it has in previous years – national identity, what separates our culture from those of our founders and neighbour, the national humility taken to the extent of underestimating our own worth, the hallmarks and flavours of our SF, etc. – but what made it worthwhile was that different points were raised. Certainly we’ve all heard before how much Canadians value consensus. Panelist Mary Choo made the seemingly oxymoronic, yet none-the-less true comment that “Canadians will go to the mat for compromise” to explain just how much value we place on talking things out. If anything, I don’t think the discussion went quite far enough in examining just how much that defines who we are as a people and explains our behaviour and our literature. Fact is, I’ve always believed that at the heart of our cultural identity, regardless of ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation or religion, we are a nation of debators. At every moment in our history, great and small, you can bet that two or more Canucks were arguing, negotiating, complaining and hashing out some mutually-acceptable if somewhat distasteful compromise at every step of the way. And that’s certainly reflected in our SF literature. In fact, if I tried to catalogue all the examples, we’d be here all week, but look at Rob Sawyer and his love of courtroom drama in his novels. Here’s someone who enjoys seeing varying philosophies collide and mix and having characters (and readers) be required to examine them from many points of view and not necessarily resulting in clear-cut resolutions. I’d say the first half of this session was great, but then it took a turn somewhere along the way and became an exchange on the state of publishing which was a bit too far off topic. Not a bad discussion, just not along the lines of the session theme.
After that, it was a choice of entertainment over intellect – or rather intellect-destroying entertainment over intellectual stimulation: I attended the grand VCon cultural tradition of the Turkey Readings, rather than choosing the tempting sessions on “Bringing Order to Chaos” or “Using Myths and Fairy-Tales in Writing”. Before you jump to conclusions, no, the Turkey Readings do not involve arcane rights where the internal organs of some poor fowl are probed for secrets of the future. That’s not the case. The Turkey Readings, in fact, are high comedy manufactured from low writing. Panelists are each given three or four books (usually published in the 70’s for some reason) that are profoundly poorly written. I mean, we’re talking the literary equivalent of “Plan Nine From Outer Space” here. Stuff that’s truly painful to read. And, after finding especially stinky passages, that’s exactly what they do. As a panelist reads his/her selection, members of the audience are chosen to come up to the front to pantomime the action. The catch is that the only way to stop a reading/performance is to pay – someone in the audience puts in a bid (usually 50 cents to a couple of bucks) to put an end to it. Problem is, someone else might pay more money to keep it going. And so on and so on. The money collected goes to the Canadian Unity Fan Fund, designed to help pay to bring fans from one part of the country to cons in another region. As awful as the text is, the exaggerated reads and over-the-top acting are generally pretty funny. Some bits even had us in tears. Bringing con-goers closer together by laughing at the worst the genre has produced is a great way to end the event.
And that brings us to the end. The closing ceremony speeches were mercifully short and for the most part a lot of fun. They were capped by a speech by author Patrick Rothfuss who quoted Charles Dickens and Einstein on the benefits, and, in fact, the necessity of fostering the imagination, most especially in times like these. From there it was on to the annual Elron Awards. The Elrons (which the VCon organizers strenuously stress have nothing to do with a certain science fiction author who founded a, er, religion that’s armed with plenty of money and lawyers) are a VCon tradition where awards are given for disservice to SF. Among this year’s winners (there were 9 or 10, I think): MGM for cancelling “Stargate Atlantis”, anyone who bought-into the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, and, of course, as is tradition, John Norman for writing the “Gor” books.
And that’s it for VCon 33.
Even though it’s only been a couple of hours, I’m now looking ahead to the con scene next year. While I’m not looking forward to another VCon in Surrey, I’ll probably end up going anyway for the content and the people. That being said, the con I’m really looking forward to next year is Anticipation – the 67th WorldCon, set to be hosted by Montreal. I missed out on the Toronto WorldCon a few years ago, so I’m determined to make it to Montreal (armed with my broken highschool French) for this one. More updates as they unfold.
PS
Remember to go to Not A Planet Anymore and sign on for our commemorative online challenge Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds, which is set to take place October 30th!
I started with the “Canadian SF: What distinguishes it?” session. I had toyed with the notion of attending the panel on “Magical Crime Scene Investigation”, but I’m a sucker for a well-organized discussion about the state of Canadian SF. Sure, I attend this session every year, but as someone who reads a lot of SF (Canadian, American, British and international), I see it as my duty (as well as great pleasure) to not only read the home-grown stuff, but to, in some way, be part of discussions about it. MCSI might be a fun topic, but it just doesn’t carry the same importance ultimately as an analysis of our country’s SF output. And it was a good choice. In many respects, the discussion covered some of the same issues as it has in previous years – national identity, what separates our culture from those of our founders and neighbour, the national humility taken to the extent of underestimating our own worth, the hallmarks and flavours of our SF, etc. – but what made it worthwhile was that different points were raised. Certainly we’ve all heard before how much Canadians value consensus. Panelist Mary Choo made the seemingly oxymoronic, yet none-the-less true comment that “Canadians will go to the mat for compromise” to explain just how much value we place on talking things out. If anything, I don’t think the discussion went quite far enough in examining just how much that defines who we are as a people and explains our behaviour and our literature. Fact is, I’ve always believed that at the heart of our cultural identity, regardless of ethnicity, age, sex, sexual orientation or religion, we are a nation of debators. At every moment in our history, great and small, you can bet that two or more Canucks were arguing, negotiating, complaining and hashing out some mutually-acceptable if somewhat distasteful compromise at every step of the way. And that’s certainly reflected in our SF literature. In fact, if I tried to catalogue all the examples, we’d be here all week, but look at Rob Sawyer and his love of courtroom drama in his novels. Here’s someone who enjoys seeing varying philosophies collide and mix and having characters (and readers) be required to examine them from many points of view and not necessarily resulting in clear-cut resolutions. I’d say the first half of this session was great, but then it took a turn somewhere along the way and became an exchange on the state of publishing which was a bit too far off topic. Not a bad discussion, just not along the lines of the session theme.
After that, it was a choice of entertainment over intellect – or rather intellect-destroying entertainment over intellectual stimulation: I attended the grand VCon cultural tradition of the Turkey Readings, rather than choosing the tempting sessions on “Bringing Order to Chaos” or “Using Myths and Fairy-Tales in Writing”. Before you jump to conclusions, no, the Turkey Readings do not involve arcane rights where the internal organs of some poor fowl are probed for secrets of the future. That’s not the case. The Turkey Readings, in fact, are high comedy manufactured from low writing. Panelists are each given three or four books (usually published in the 70’s for some reason) that are profoundly poorly written. I mean, we’re talking the literary equivalent of “Plan Nine From Outer Space” here. Stuff that’s truly painful to read. And, after finding especially stinky passages, that’s exactly what they do. As a panelist reads his/her selection, members of the audience are chosen to come up to the front to pantomime the action. The catch is that the only way to stop a reading/performance is to pay – someone in the audience puts in a bid (usually 50 cents to a couple of bucks) to put an end to it. Problem is, someone else might pay more money to keep it going. And so on and so on. The money collected goes to the Canadian Unity Fan Fund, designed to help pay to bring fans from one part of the country to cons in another region. As awful as the text is, the exaggerated reads and over-the-top acting are generally pretty funny. Some bits even had us in tears. Bringing con-goers closer together by laughing at the worst the genre has produced is a great way to end the event.
And that brings us to the end. The closing ceremony speeches were mercifully short and for the most part a lot of fun. They were capped by a speech by author Patrick Rothfuss who quoted Charles Dickens and Einstein on the benefits, and, in fact, the necessity of fostering the imagination, most especially in times like these. From there it was on to the annual Elron Awards. The Elrons (which the VCon organizers strenuously stress have nothing to do with a certain science fiction author who founded a, er, religion that’s armed with plenty of money and lawyers) are a VCon tradition where awards are given for disservice to SF. Among this year’s winners (there were 9 or 10, I think): MGM for cancelling “Stargate Atlantis”, anyone who bought-into the Georgia Bigfoot hoax, and, of course, as is tradition, John Norman for writing the “Gor” books.
And that’s it for VCon 33.
Even though it’s only been a couple of hours, I’m now looking ahead to the con scene next year. While I’m not looking forward to another VCon in Surrey, I’ll probably end up going anyway for the content and the people. That being said, the con I’m really looking forward to next year is Anticipation – the 67th WorldCon, set to be hosted by Montreal. I missed out on the Toronto WorldCon a few years ago, so I’m determined to make it to Montreal (armed with my broken highschool French) for this one. More updates as they unfold.
PS
Remember to go to Not A Planet Anymore and sign on for our commemorative online challenge Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds, which is set to take place October 30th!
Sunday, October 05, 2008
VCon 33, Day 2: Good Beginning, Weak Ending
Another day, another drive out to Newton. Sigh. I’m saddened to note that the back of the VCon 33 program indicates that next year’s event will be held at the same hotel in north Surrey. Almost enough to keep me from attending. Almost.
Anyway, on to the con…
I started the day up in the tower at the “Where is Everybody? SETI Conundrum” session. The panelists included authors Spider Robinson and Robert J. Sawyer, NeoOpsis editor Karl Johanson, UBC astronomer/Science Guest of Honour Dr. Jaymie Matthews, and local fan and Mr. Science columnist Alan R. Betz. A very interesting discussion. Generally it focused on a lot of the usual hard science reasons why we haven’t heard from anyone yet: our signals haven’t been out there long enough to reach anyone yet, their signals have to travel far to get to us, civilizations might be spread too far, there may not be many –if any- other civilizations coexisting with ours in the galaxy at this time (including the speculation that ours might be the first – that we could be a billion years too early to expect much in the way of interstellar company), whether civilizations could survive dangerous technological and social infancy, other cultures might be using more sophisticated means of communication than radio (some of which we’re only beginning to look into), etc. One interesting possibility that Matthews mentioned is that we might not be hearing anything because a civilization even slightly more advanced than ours could, for technical reasons, have simply stopped using communications technology based on broadcast. Matthews noted that within our lifetimes we’ll likely see the end of broadcast radio and TV, with the old antennas abandoned for the other, more efficient technologies – in effect, after a little over 100 years of inadvertently sending signals out to the cosmos, we’ll have rendered ourselves radio silent through the simple act of upgrading. They also touched on social possibilities for the silence, with Robinson (in one of his few comments of the session) put forward the notion that unlike ours, other civilizations might be smart enough to keep quiet, rather than stick their heads out of the figurative hole and advertise their presence to all the hungry predators in the area. Sawyer suggested that any other civilization that could communicate with us is most likely older than us and so probably doesn’t want to start a dialogue and give away any info that could endanger our species in one way or another, or take away from the necessary struggle to learn those answers for ourselves. For his part, Johanson pointed out that given the limited amount of time the people of the Earth have been making noise in the universe, other civilizations may just be receiving the Beach Boys, and thus from their perspective, we have nothing worth talking about. And speaking of nothing worth talking about, one fan in the audience sidetracked things towards the end of the session by asking the panelists to weigh-in on UFO’s and possible alien cover-ups. Naturally, being reasonable and intelligent people, the panelists trounced on the notion that governments that couldn’t cover up Watergate could hide that kind of going on, or that military that wipe out entire villages would hesitate to execute civilian workers or witnesses leaking secrets, or that hicks in trailer parks would be visited in secret rather than scientists and artists and governments being contacted in the open. It was interesting seeing the panel get fired up by the task of putting this fantasy down, but I would have rather the last 5-10 minutes of the session been spent talking about something of more value.
From there it was down to the pub to hear Spider Robinson give a reading (in that not-quite so low and not nearly so husky as, but still vaguely reminiscent of George Burns voice of his) of his book “Very Hard Choices”. Robinson chose to read a passage where one of his characters, a telepath, reminisces about the shocking and frightening death of someone close to him. It was one of the most emotionally painful bits from a novel I’ve heard in a long time. While it was difficult, it speaks to the quality and depth of Spider’s writing. I haven’t got this one on my shelf yet. Yet. I hope to remedy that soon with a trip to the bookstore. He then took questions from the audience and told a few tales, including getting freaked-out one day when he heard the voice of Heinlein talking to him in his study. Afterwards, several of us stuck around to have books signed and it was great just to chit-chat with Spider for a bit. He was nice enough to autograph my copy of “The Callahan Chronicles”, as well as the first page of his short story “User Friendly” in my copy of the Canadian SF anthology “Northern Stars”. He seemed to get a kick out of it when I mentioned that the emotionally-wrenching “User Friendly”, with its pervading dwelling on feelings of powerlessness, was my “gateway” story for his work (rather than, say, one of the light and fluffy Callahan tales, which is the case for many). Jeanne Robinson, an author in her own right and choreographer, was also on-hand and chatted with a number of the fans. It was funny to see her come in every now and again to manage the autograph line, clucking away with “Come on now, kids, if you let him keep talking and don’t put your books down for him to sign then he won’t stop!” Nice folks. It would have been a treat to talk with them some more.
After that I had a little time on my hands, so I wandered around for a bit. One or two more dealers had arrived today, and Saturday always sees a larger number of people at the con, so the dealers’ room was crammed tight when I ventured back down to the basement. No sign of Walter from White Dwarf Books though – he was in last night for the so-called book launch, but a con without a White Dwarf table in the dealers’ room for the weekend just isn’t VCon. That being said, I did get my book fix, stopping at the Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing table and picking up David Nickle and Karl Schroeder’s “The Claus Effect” (I’ve been eyeing that one for a few years now, but had never bothered to actually buy it until now) and “Gaslight Grimoire”, edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec. GG is a collection of fantasy short stories revolving around Sherlock Holmes. Should be worth reading. It’s brand new too – the publisher just got them in the morning they were leaving for the con - it hasn’t hit the stores yet. I only hope they managed to sneak a steampunk tale or two into this fantasy collection. Too bad Edge didn’t have any copies of “Tesseracts 12” (this is another one that won’t hit the stores for a couple of weeks) – they were supposed to have a bunch on-hand, but the Edge staffer was complaining they’d been lost somewhere in shipping. Whenever it comes in, I hope it’s better than the last installment.
Next it was over to the art room (which shared the same “ballroom” as one of the session areas, the two divided by a row of display easels). It had the usual collection of cute sculptures, weird and kinda disturbing sculptures, somewhat talented but unremarkable sketches, and the rare collection of exceptionally talented stuff. In this case, the true talent was in a small group of paintings by Stephanie Ann Johanson (I think – I’m pretty sure it was one of the Johansons associated with Neo-Opsis). My favourites were a painting of an astronaut looking out over a huge Martian canyon rendered in awe-inspiring detail, and one of a waterfall in a cave with a subtle but sad and vaguely menacing surprise at the bottom.
Another show for the eyes when you’re wandering around at any con is the variety of people in costume. Saturdays at VCon are always a big day for costuming because the masquerade and dance take place in the evening. This time there were the usual assortment of ladies in corsets and renaissance/medieval-inspired gowns, and guys dressed up like Jedis. The ones that really stuck out in my mind were the members of a local Star Wars fan group - the 501st Legion (“Vader’s Fist”, or so their display claimed) Excellent detail on the costumes from this group. They included a couple of Imperial officers, a stormtrooper, Boba Fett, and a woman who appeared to be dressed as Vader, minus the iconic helmet. There was even a guy dressed as a Rebel ship crewman (good on him for representing the good guys amidst all that Imperial action). I think what impressed me the most was the recruitment poster on their display which said something to the effect of “Do you value duty? Are you loyal? Are you expendable?” Across the hall (and it literally was just about two steps over against the other wall of the corridor) was the Trekie contingent. While the Star Wars fanboys have been pretty diligent in keeping their display table manned this weekend, this was the first appearance by the Trekies that I’d seen this year. In any case, rather than, say, a Vulcan or Klingon, the local Trek fan club was represented by a big, good-natured fellow in Starfleet Marine formal black trying to recruit people into joining – specifically into joining the Federation’s Marines! Funny thing was, he looked and sounded a heck of a lot like some of the RCMP/municipal police/military recruitment officers I’ve met over the years. And there was a dude who was trying to fly his Doctor Who colours – kind of. Buddy was sporting something that looked like it was trying (and failing) to be a Tom Baker scarf. The colours looked approximately correct, problem was that the Fourth Doctor’s scarf was, what, about 900 million metres long (okay, maybe not that long, but it was a long, long scarf, especially since it looked long on a tall guy like Baker) and this guy’s muffler was maybe two-and-a-half feet long. It kinda hung around his neck like a short, skinny towel. Go back to Gallifrey, wannabe, and don’t come back until you’ve regenerated into someone who’s mom can knit a real Fourth Doctor scarf of appropriate length (like the one made by my buddy harrysaxon’s mom)! But the one that took the cake for double-take “what the…?” factor was some dude wearing puffy boots like the ones teenage girls wear these days, a kilt, a home-made red shirt made up to resemble an RCMP red serge formal/traditional jacket, and something trying to be a Mountie’s Stetson. Huh? Is he supposed to look like a member of Her Majesty’s British North American Horseback Constabulary from some weird and cheaply-made alternate universe or something? One of the best costumes of the day though was a guy dressed as The Joker – a take that was sort of between Nicholson and the comic, with Ledgeresque makeup around the mouth.
But back to the programming…
At this point it was on to the “Believable Evil” session, which would have been a lot better if it hadn’t been held in the room sharing space with the art exhibit, and hence been victim to the panelists’ voices being drowned-out by loud groups (and I’m not faulting these groups for being loud) going through the gallery area, and also picking up a fair amount of noise from passers-by out in the hall through the big open doors at the back which presumably couldn’t be closed. Wasn’t made any easier by the fact that some of the panelists had softer voices. The first part of the discussion got bogged-down in the question of what is evil. Eventually it moved on though. Some worth-while points were raised, but ultimately I didn’t think this was one of the stronger sessions.
From there it was time for “Killing Off Characters”. This is one of the sessions I attended last year, and I’m pretty sure at least one of the panelists was a holdover from last year too. I came to this one hoping that while the subject matter was the same, there’d be a new panel with new insights. Sadly, this session was not significantly different at all from last year, and was made worse by the fact that it was held in the pub, which hoovers acoustics, and didn’t have the microphones turned on. At one point someone in the audience asked for the two panelists to speak up. That lasted for about a minute and a half. Then those of us at the back were straining to hear the quiet muttering again. I shoulda bailed on this one.
After that I descended into the basement again to take in the “Physics of Superheroes” session, but it was held in the room sharing space with the art exhibit (doors still open) and two of the panelists were really, really quiet. In fact, one of the audience members near the back asked them to speak up and one of the panelists promptly mumbled something about how if the people at the back stopped talking to each other it would be easier to hear. Someone else in the audience then jumped in and pointed out that the noise was actually coming from the art area and from the hall, and the panelist then retreated to a statement about how she wasn’t a loud speaker and we’d just have to try to hear her. Yup. Way to interact with your audience who might potentially buy your books – well, not anymore anyway, because not being able to hear what you’re saying, we have no idea if you have anything to say that’s worth listening to and thus won’t bother buying and reading your books. In addition, what little I could hear from the one panelist who spoke at any volume was pretty much the same discussion of the realities of physics and how superheroes don’t seem to adhere to them that I’ve heard and read in about a dozen other interviews. No point in sticking around, so I left.
I poked my head into the filk session going on up in the pub, but, despite the impressive vocal talent of the performer, after about a minute I remembered why I don’t like filk: regardless of the singer’s ability, I just don’t give a shit about songs about goblins under your bed or your vampire lover or something. I’m not deriding it as a form of entertainment, especially at a con, it’s just not my bag. I went up to the hospitality suite briefly, but it was pretty full, so I decided to call it a night. I was tempted to stick around for the parties (a group from Seattle was hosting a get-together to garner support for their 2011 Worldcon bid, as was a rival faction representing Reno), but they didn’t get rolling until mid-evening and at that point I was thinking about getting some chow and heading home (I’ve got to get up early tomorrow to wrangle media at the fitness conference hosted by the agency I work for).
Not a bad day at the con, but I wish the late afternoon sessions would have been stronger. Oh well.
Stay tuned for more updates tomorrow.
PS:
Have you registered to take part in the Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds commemorative online challenge yet? Better get your blog listed on the roster so we can see what goes down with the Martian invasion in your community on October 30th!
Anyway, on to the con…
I started the day up in the tower at the “Where is Everybody? SETI Conundrum” session. The panelists included authors Spider Robinson and Robert J. Sawyer, NeoOpsis editor Karl Johanson, UBC astronomer/Science Guest of Honour Dr. Jaymie Matthews, and local fan and Mr. Science columnist Alan R. Betz. A very interesting discussion. Generally it focused on a lot of the usual hard science reasons why we haven’t heard from anyone yet: our signals haven’t been out there long enough to reach anyone yet, their signals have to travel far to get to us, civilizations might be spread too far, there may not be many –if any- other civilizations coexisting with ours in the galaxy at this time (including the speculation that ours might be the first – that we could be a billion years too early to expect much in the way of interstellar company), whether civilizations could survive dangerous technological and social infancy, other cultures might be using more sophisticated means of communication than radio (some of which we’re only beginning to look into), etc. One interesting possibility that Matthews mentioned is that we might not be hearing anything because a civilization even slightly more advanced than ours could, for technical reasons, have simply stopped using communications technology based on broadcast. Matthews noted that within our lifetimes we’ll likely see the end of broadcast radio and TV, with the old antennas abandoned for the other, more efficient technologies – in effect, after a little over 100 years of inadvertently sending signals out to the cosmos, we’ll have rendered ourselves radio silent through the simple act of upgrading. They also touched on social possibilities for the silence, with Robinson (in one of his few comments of the session) put forward the notion that unlike ours, other civilizations might be smart enough to keep quiet, rather than stick their heads out of the figurative hole and advertise their presence to all the hungry predators in the area. Sawyer suggested that any other civilization that could communicate with us is most likely older than us and so probably doesn’t want to start a dialogue and give away any info that could endanger our species in one way or another, or take away from the necessary struggle to learn those answers for ourselves. For his part, Johanson pointed out that given the limited amount of time the people of the Earth have been making noise in the universe, other civilizations may just be receiving the Beach Boys, and thus from their perspective, we have nothing worth talking about. And speaking of nothing worth talking about, one fan in the audience sidetracked things towards the end of the session by asking the panelists to weigh-in on UFO’s and possible alien cover-ups. Naturally, being reasonable and intelligent people, the panelists trounced on the notion that governments that couldn’t cover up Watergate could hide that kind of going on, or that military that wipe out entire villages would hesitate to execute civilian workers or witnesses leaking secrets, or that hicks in trailer parks would be visited in secret rather than scientists and artists and governments being contacted in the open. It was interesting seeing the panel get fired up by the task of putting this fantasy down, but I would have rather the last 5-10 minutes of the session been spent talking about something of more value.
From there it was down to the pub to hear Spider Robinson give a reading (in that not-quite so low and not nearly so husky as, but still vaguely reminiscent of George Burns voice of his) of his book “Very Hard Choices”. Robinson chose to read a passage where one of his characters, a telepath, reminisces about the shocking and frightening death of someone close to him. It was one of the most emotionally painful bits from a novel I’ve heard in a long time. While it was difficult, it speaks to the quality and depth of Spider’s writing. I haven’t got this one on my shelf yet. Yet. I hope to remedy that soon with a trip to the bookstore. He then took questions from the audience and told a few tales, including getting freaked-out one day when he heard the voice of Heinlein talking to him in his study. Afterwards, several of us stuck around to have books signed and it was great just to chit-chat with Spider for a bit. He was nice enough to autograph my copy of “The Callahan Chronicles”, as well as the first page of his short story “User Friendly” in my copy of the Canadian SF anthology “Northern Stars”. He seemed to get a kick out of it when I mentioned that the emotionally-wrenching “User Friendly”, with its pervading dwelling on feelings of powerlessness, was my “gateway” story for his work (rather than, say, one of the light and fluffy Callahan tales, which is the case for many). Jeanne Robinson, an author in her own right and choreographer, was also on-hand and chatted with a number of the fans. It was funny to see her come in every now and again to manage the autograph line, clucking away with “Come on now, kids, if you let him keep talking and don’t put your books down for him to sign then he won’t stop!” Nice folks. It would have been a treat to talk with them some more.
After that I had a little time on my hands, so I wandered around for a bit. One or two more dealers had arrived today, and Saturday always sees a larger number of people at the con, so the dealers’ room was crammed tight when I ventured back down to the basement. No sign of Walter from White Dwarf Books though – he was in last night for the so-called book launch, but a con without a White Dwarf table in the dealers’ room for the weekend just isn’t VCon. That being said, I did get my book fix, stopping at the Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing table and picking up David Nickle and Karl Schroeder’s “The Claus Effect” (I’ve been eyeing that one for a few years now, but had never bothered to actually buy it until now) and “Gaslight Grimoire”, edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec. GG is a collection of fantasy short stories revolving around Sherlock Holmes. Should be worth reading. It’s brand new too – the publisher just got them in the morning they were leaving for the con - it hasn’t hit the stores yet. I only hope they managed to sneak a steampunk tale or two into this fantasy collection. Too bad Edge didn’t have any copies of “Tesseracts 12” (this is another one that won’t hit the stores for a couple of weeks) – they were supposed to have a bunch on-hand, but the Edge staffer was complaining they’d been lost somewhere in shipping. Whenever it comes in, I hope it’s better than the last installment.
Next it was over to the art room (which shared the same “ballroom” as one of the session areas, the two divided by a row of display easels). It had the usual collection of cute sculptures, weird and kinda disturbing sculptures, somewhat talented but unremarkable sketches, and the rare collection of exceptionally talented stuff. In this case, the true talent was in a small group of paintings by Stephanie Ann Johanson (I think – I’m pretty sure it was one of the Johansons associated with Neo-Opsis). My favourites were a painting of an astronaut looking out over a huge Martian canyon rendered in awe-inspiring detail, and one of a waterfall in a cave with a subtle but sad and vaguely menacing surprise at the bottom.
Another show for the eyes when you’re wandering around at any con is the variety of people in costume. Saturdays at VCon are always a big day for costuming because the masquerade and dance take place in the evening. This time there were the usual assortment of ladies in corsets and renaissance/medieval-inspired gowns, and guys dressed up like Jedis. The ones that really stuck out in my mind were the members of a local Star Wars fan group - the 501st Legion (“Vader’s Fist”, or so their display claimed) Excellent detail on the costumes from this group. They included a couple of Imperial officers, a stormtrooper, Boba Fett, and a woman who appeared to be dressed as Vader, minus the iconic helmet. There was even a guy dressed as a Rebel ship crewman (good on him for representing the good guys amidst all that Imperial action). I think what impressed me the most was the recruitment poster on their display which said something to the effect of “Do you value duty? Are you loyal? Are you expendable?” Across the hall (and it literally was just about two steps over against the other wall of the corridor) was the Trekie contingent. While the Star Wars fanboys have been pretty diligent in keeping their display table manned this weekend, this was the first appearance by the Trekies that I’d seen this year. In any case, rather than, say, a Vulcan or Klingon, the local Trek fan club was represented by a big, good-natured fellow in Starfleet Marine formal black trying to recruit people into joining – specifically into joining the Federation’s Marines! Funny thing was, he looked and sounded a heck of a lot like some of the RCMP/municipal police/military recruitment officers I’ve met over the years. And there was a dude who was trying to fly his Doctor Who colours – kind of. Buddy was sporting something that looked like it was trying (and failing) to be a Tom Baker scarf. The colours looked approximately correct, problem was that the Fourth Doctor’s scarf was, what, about 900 million metres long (okay, maybe not that long, but it was a long, long scarf, especially since it looked long on a tall guy like Baker) and this guy’s muffler was maybe two-and-a-half feet long. It kinda hung around his neck like a short, skinny towel. Go back to Gallifrey, wannabe, and don’t come back until you’ve regenerated into someone who’s mom can knit a real Fourth Doctor scarf of appropriate length (like the one made by my buddy harrysaxon’s mom)! But the one that took the cake for double-take “what the…?” factor was some dude wearing puffy boots like the ones teenage girls wear these days, a kilt, a home-made red shirt made up to resemble an RCMP red serge formal/traditional jacket, and something trying to be a Mountie’s Stetson. Huh? Is he supposed to look like a member of Her Majesty’s British North American Horseback Constabulary from some weird and cheaply-made alternate universe or something? One of the best costumes of the day though was a guy dressed as The Joker – a take that was sort of between Nicholson and the comic, with Ledgeresque makeup around the mouth.
But back to the programming…
At this point it was on to the “Believable Evil” session, which would have been a lot better if it hadn’t been held in the room sharing space with the art exhibit, and hence been victim to the panelists’ voices being drowned-out by loud groups (and I’m not faulting these groups for being loud) going through the gallery area, and also picking up a fair amount of noise from passers-by out in the hall through the big open doors at the back which presumably couldn’t be closed. Wasn’t made any easier by the fact that some of the panelists had softer voices. The first part of the discussion got bogged-down in the question of what is evil. Eventually it moved on though. Some worth-while points were raised, but ultimately I didn’t think this was one of the stronger sessions.
From there it was time for “Killing Off Characters”. This is one of the sessions I attended last year, and I’m pretty sure at least one of the panelists was a holdover from last year too. I came to this one hoping that while the subject matter was the same, there’d be a new panel with new insights. Sadly, this session was not significantly different at all from last year, and was made worse by the fact that it was held in the pub, which hoovers acoustics, and didn’t have the microphones turned on. At one point someone in the audience asked for the two panelists to speak up. That lasted for about a minute and a half. Then those of us at the back were straining to hear the quiet muttering again. I shoulda bailed on this one.
After that I descended into the basement again to take in the “Physics of Superheroes” session, but it was held in the room sharing space with the art exhibit (doors still open) and two of the panelists were really, really quiet. In fact, one of the audience members near the back asked them to speak up and one of the panelists promptly mumbled something about how if the people at the back stopped talking to each other it would be easier to hear. Someone else in the audience then jumped in and pointed out that the noise was actually coming from the art area and from the hall, and the panelist then retreated to a statement about how she wasn’t a loud speaker and we’d just have to try to hear her. Yup. Way to interact with your audience who might potentially buy your books – well, not anymore anyway, because not being able to hear what you’re saying, we have no idea if you have anything to say that’s worth listening to and thus won’t bother buying and reading your books. In addition, what little I could hear from the one panelist who spoke at any volume was pretty much the same discussion of the realities of physics and how superheroes don’t seem to adhere to them that I’ve heard and read in about a dozen other interviews. No point in sticking around, so I left.
I poked my head into the filk session going on up in the pub, but, despite the impressive vocal talent of the performer, after about a minute I remembered why I don’t like filk: regardless of the singer’s ability, I just don’t give a shit about songs about goblins under your bed or your vampire lover or something. I’m not deriding it as a form of entertainment, especially at a con, it’s just not my bag. I went up to the hospitality suite briefly, but it was pretty full, so I decided to call it a night. I was tempted to stick around for the parties (a group from Seattle was hosting a get-together to garner support for their 2011 Worldcon bid, as was a rival faction representing Reno), but they didn’t get rolling until mid-evening and at that point I was thinking about getting some chow and heading home (I’ve got to get up early tomorrow to wrangle media at the fitness conference hosted by the agency I work for).
Not a bad day at the con, but I wish the late afternoon sessions would have been stronger. Oh well.
Stay tuned for more updates tomorrow.
PS:
Have you registered to take part in the Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds commemorative online challenge yet? Better get your blog listed on the roster so we can see what goes down with the Martian invasion in your community on October 30th!
Friday, October 03, 2008
VCon 33, Day 1: Back to the Basement - Literally!
It was a surreal first day at VCon this year, and I don’t mean in a “what the hell is he dressed up as?” or “why doesn’t she cover that up?” kinda way either. No. This was all about the venue. When I arrived at the Compass Point Inn in north Surrey (the armpit of the Lower Mainland), I had to laugh, but at the same time I thought tears might have been just as appropriate: the geeks have been put back in the basement.
The hotel apparently has some history for the con. At some point in the past it was a host venue. Why the con organizers have gone back to the place is something I’m not certain of, but I suspect it’s because they got it cheap. Putting aside the obligatory anti-Surrey snobbishness that pretty much every Lower Mainlander (okay, every British Columbian) has as a result of birthright or rapid acquisition, it would be hard to argue that the joint’s in a pleasant part of town: the nearby skytrain station is like a war zone and those that spill out of it across the hotel’s parking lot on the way to the adjacent beer and wine store would, shall we say, make the patrons of the Star Wars bar look like high-brow dinner company. Taking out one’s wallet to buy a parking pass (even though the machine is mounted on the side of the building – because it was moved out of the lot proper, perhaps for some reason related to all the car theft warning signs around the place) is an exercise in caution to say the least.
Then there’s the hotel itself. I wouldn’t call it a dive. That wouldn’t be fair because the staff appear to keep the inside reasonably clean. That being said, the old girl’s certainly seen better days. Those better days, judging from the interior architecture, décor and equipment, were probably back in 1968.
I came in the front door and looked around for some kind of signage pointing to whatever convention/ball/board rooms would be housing the con. Didn’t have much room to look around in though, as the lobby was small enough to cross in about five steps. Sure enough, there were signs (sitting on the floor leaning against the wall – I guess easels and tripods and the like weren’t invented yet when the hotel was built and supplied) pointing downstairs. Yes, downstairs. The bulk of this con is in the fucking basement. Sure, we’ve got the hotel’s dark, remodeled in mid-70’s wood paneling restaurant /pub on the main floor for the odd event, and the hospitality suite and one of the alleged board rooms (about the size of a small hotel room) allocated to hold the odd session are both up in the tower, but the alleged ballrooms are all crammed downstairs. So down I went. Into what is literally a basement area that someone probably refurbished a few decades ago as an afterthought. The ceilings are low and the corridors are narrow (it’s damn near impossible to actually pass someone in the hall – which is conducive to encouraging conversations with fellow con-goers, but not the best when two of them are already talking and you’re just trying to squeeze past). The supposed ballrooms themselves are pretty small. Claustrophobic. Very. And I’m not one who usually feels claustrophobic in any building, but here, it felt like the ceilings were pressing down and the walls were crushing in. The dealers’ room felt especially crowded simply because of its lack of size. I also pitied the two con volunteers at the registration desk, stuffed underneath the staircase with barely any room to move. Then there are the elevators, which are also small (they’re only supposed to carry 5 people at a time) and are maddeningly slow – especially if you’re in the basement trying to get them to come down. It’s almost like the elevators are conspiring to keep us down there.
And this is precisely the crux of my bitterness. The stereotypical image of SF fans is of coke-bottle-lensed nerds huddling in their parents’ basements afraid to come up and out and interact with the world, taking cold comfort from the flickering blue light of Trek reruns on 20-year-old barely functional wood consol TV’s while thumbing through moldering old copies of ‘zines from the 50’s with sporting covers with bug-eyed monsters (presumably the basement-dwellers’ non-terrestrial brothers-in-spirit). Sure, we, as geeks even joke about that ourselves. I mean, hey, those basements are mighty handy for extra bookshelves to hold your ever-expanding collection of new and old SF books, or comics, or collectables, or old video game consols or whatever. But it’s one thing to joke around about a stereotype, and quite another to have it foisted on you. Because the fact of the matter is that we, as adults, even geeks, have left the basement behind long ago. Most of us have jobs, many have relationships and families, as well as houses or condos or apartments or fishing shacks or whatever of our own. Despite our reading or tv/movie-watching preferences, we do not actually live the stereotype at all. Many of us have attended other conventions, whether they concern SF or other entertainment, or business-oriented. In all the many kinds of conventions/forums/what-have-you that I’ve attended in all kinds of facilities, the convention rooms, at least the primary ones, have all been above-ground in rooms deliberately designed for gatherings at the time of the building’s construction (no matter how old the building). This is part of the process of a convention and a host facility treating its delegates like adults. Choosing a sagging old hotel that stuffs its geek conventioneers in an antiquated renovated basement is a joke that is only funny for about 5 seconds. Putting us back in the basement devalues us – metaphorically reduces us to 14-year-old status again. I mean, hell’s bells, crammed down in that basement this evening, I could almost hear my mother upstairs making applesauce porkchops for supper – except no-one called us up for supper or brought anything down! (mind you, I never really liked applesauce porkchops anyway) Maybe the hotel has some nostalgia value to older delegates who remember when the con was held there years ago, but personally I think we deserve better. I think we deserve a facility in a better neighbourhood, one that’s been kept up better/looks nicer, and one that can actually accommodate the con’s (and its delegates’) needs. Most of all, I think we deserve a facility that doesn’t reinforce stereotypes.
But it wasn’t all symbolic shock on arrival. Coming into the con was, in fact, very pleasant from a social perspective. Within minutes I was chit-chatting and laughing with other people in the registration line and waiting at the elevators. It’s like I said in a recent post, geeks, by and large, are caring, fun individuals and it’s great to hang-out with brothers and sisters in the SF community.
Now on to the con’s content. Because I was at work all day (some of the day being devoted to helping coworkers set up a completely different kind of con – a conference for fitness professionals from across the province), I missed most of the afternoon’s programming.
I was able to make the “How Stories End” session. Overall the panel was intelligent, interesting and entertaining. Author and panel moderator Patrick Rothfuss was a real hoot, at one point making the observation (while trying to set ground rules for his fellow panelists as to whether they could give away the endings to specific books when they were giving examples) that the divide between people who can’t tolerate spoilers and those who don’t mind them is religious in its degree of separation and fervor, with the two camps being eternally locked in opposing viewpoints and unable to bridge the philosophical chasm between them.
From there it was on to the Opening Ceremonies. The usual predominance of dry humour, but some of the Guests of Honour got some big laughs when introduced. I think the best was Science Guest of Honour Dr. Jaymie Matthews, an astronomer from UBC/self-described astro-paparazzo, Officer of the Order of Canada, and one of the inventors of the tiny MOST space telescope (jokingly referred to as the Humble telescope – which has outperformed the famous, and bulky Hubble). Matthews was asked to speculate on whether the current Canadian federal election campaign was dark fantasy or science fiction. The answer: a little of both. I won’t bother trying to recap his reasoning, though he did refer to the Harper government’s lack of interest in funding the arts and sciences, and got quite a chuckle from the audience.
Afterward I headed up to the pub where a book launch party was being held. I think something like 25 authors were there to promote their recently/newly/soon-to-be released books. It was good to see Walter from White Dwarf Books there with a table (I hadn’t spotted him down in the dealers’ dungeon earlier).
I didn’t hang around too long though – not much available in the way of food or drink and by that time it was after 8, I hadn’t had supper yet and I was pretty hungry. I had been tempted to stay around and maybe check out one or two of the room parties later on (there was a BSG party in one room, and a bring-a-bottle-of-Scotch-to-share-for-admission party that looked quite interesting), but the need for food and being tired and approaching cranky (did my opening rant give that away?) after a long day of work made me think it was time to call it a day.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update.
PS
On a completely different note… Remember to visit Not A Planet Anymore to sign up for our Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds commemorative online challenge!
The hotel apparently has some history for the con. At some point in the past it was a host venue. Why the con organizers have gone back to the place is something I’m not certain of, but I suspect it’s because they got it cheap. Putting aside the obligatory anti-Surrey snobbishness that pretty much every Lower Mainlander (okay, every British Columbian) has as a result of birthright or rapid acquisition, it would be hard to argue that the joint’s in a pleasant part of town: the nearby skytrain station is like a war zone and those that spill out of it across the hotel’s parking lot on the way to the adjacent beer and wine store would, shall we say, make the patrons of the Star Wars bar look like high-brow dinner company. Taking out one’s wallet to buy a parking pass (even though the machine is mounted on the side of the building – because it was moved out of the lot proper, perhaps for some reason related to all the car theft warning signs around the place) is an exercise in caution to say the least.
Then there’s the hotel itself. I wouldn’t call it a dive. That wouldn’t be fair because the staff appear to keep the inside reasonably clean. That being said, the old girl’s certainly seen better days. Those better days, judging from the interior architecture, décor and equipment, were probably back in 1968.
I came in the front door and looked around for some kind of signage pointing to whatever convention/ball/board rooms would be housing the con. Didn’t have much room to look around in though, as the lobby was small enough to cross in about five steps. Sure enough, there were signs (sitting on the floor leaning against the wall – I guess easels and tripods and the like weren’t invented yet when the hotel was built and supplied) pointing downstairs. Yes, downstairs. The bulk of this con is in the fucking basement. Sure, we’ve got the hotel’s dark, remodeled in mid-70’s wood paneling restaurant /pub on the main floor for the odd event, and the hospitality suite and one of the alleged board rooms (about the size of a small hotel room) allocated to hold the odd session are both up in the tower, but the alleged ballrooms are all crammed downstairs. So down I went. Into what is literally a basement area that someone probably refurbished a few decades ago as an afterthought. The ceilings are low and the corridors are narrow (it’s damn near impossible to actually pass someone in the hall – which is conducive to encouraging conversations with fellow con-goers, but not the best when two of them are already talking and you’re just trying to squeeze past). The supposed ballrooms themselves are pretty small. Claustrophobic. Very. And I’m not one who usually feels claustrophobic in any building, but here, it felt like the ceilings were pressing down and the walls were crushing in. The dealers’ room felt especially crowded simply because of its lack of size. I also pitied the two con volunteers at the registration desk, stuffed underneath the staircase with barely any room to move. Then there are the elevators, which are also small (they’re only supposed to carry 5 people at a time) and are maddeningly slow – especially if you’re in the basement trying to get them to come down. It’s almost like the elevators are conspiring to keep us down there.
And this is precisely the crux of my bitterness. The stereotypical image of SF fans is of coke-bottle-lensed nerds huddling in their parents’ basements afraid to come up and out and interact with the world, taking cold comfort from the flickering blue light of Trek reruns on 20-year-old barely functional wood consol TV’s while thumbing through moldering old copies of ‘zines from the 50’s with sporting covers with bug-eyed monsters (presumably the basement-dwellers’ non-terrestrial brothers-in-spirit). Sure, we, as geeks even joke about that ourselves. I mean, hey, those basements are mighty handy for extra bookshelves to hold your ever-expanding collection of new and old SF books, or comics, or collectables, or old video game consols or whatever. But it’s one thing to joke around about a stereotype, and quite another to have it foisted on you. Because the fact of the matter is that we, as adults, even geeks, have left the basement behind long ago. Most of us have jobs, many have relationships and families, as well as houses or condos or apartments or fishing shacks or whatever of our own. Despite our reading or tv/movie-watching preferences, we do not actually live the stereotype at all. Many of us have attended other conventions, whether they concern SF or other entertainment, or business-oriented. In all the many kinds of conventions/forums/what-have-you that I’ve attended in all kinds of facilities, the convention rooms, at least the primary ones, have all been above-ground in rooms deliberately designed for gatherings at the time of the building’s construction (no matter how old the building). This is part of the process of a convention and a host facility treating its delegates like adults. Choosing a sagging old hotel that stuffs its geek conventioneers in an antiquated renovated basement is a joke that is only funny for about 5 seconds. Putting us back in the basement devalues us – metaphorically reduces us to 14-year-old status again. I mean, hell’s bells, crammed down in that basement this evening, I could almost hear my mother upstairs making applesauce porkchops for supper – except no-one called us up for supper or brought anything down! (mind you, I never really liked applesauce porkchops anyway) Maybe the hotel has some nostalgia value to older delegates who remember when the con was held there years ago, but personally I think we deserve better. I think we deserve a facility in a better neighbourhood, one that’s been kept up better/looks nicer, and one that can actually accommodate the con’s (and its delegates’) needs. Most of all, I think we deserve a facility that doesn’t reinforce stereotypes.
But it wasn’t all symbolic shock on arrival. Coming into the con was, in fact, very pleasant from a social perspective. Within minutes I was chit-chatting and laughing with other people in the registration line and waiting at the elevators. It’s like I said in a recent post, geeks, by and large, are caring, fun individuals and it’s great to hang-out with brothers and sisters in the SF community.
Now on to the con’s content. Because I was at work all day (some of the day being devoted to helping coworkers set up a completely different kind of con – a conference for fitness professionals from across the province), I missed most of the afternoon’s programming.
I was able to make the “How Stories End” session. Overall the panel was intelligent, interesting and entertaining. Author and panel moderator Patrick Rothfuss was a real hoot, at one point making the observation (while trying to set ground rules for his fellow panelists as to whether they could give away the endings to specific books when they were giving examples) that the divide between people who can’t tolerate spoilers and those who don’t mind them is religious in its degree of separation and fervor, with the two camps being eternally locked in opposing viewpoints and unable to bridge the philosophical chasm between them.
From there it was on to the Opening Ceremonies. The usual predominance of dry humour, but some of the Guests of Honour got some big laughs when introduced. I think the best was Science Guest of Honour Dr. Jaymie Matthews, an astronomer from UBC/self-described astro-paparazzo, Officer of the Order of Canada, and one of the inventors of the tiny MOST space telescope (jokingly referred to as the Humble telescope – which has outperformed the famous, and bulky Hubble). Matthews was asked to speculate on whether the current Canadian federal election campaign was dark fantasy or science fiction. The answer: a little of both. I won’t bother trying to recap his reasoning, though he did refer to the Harper government’s lack of interest in funding the arts and sciences, and got quite a chuckle from the audience.
Afterward I headed up to the pub where a book launch party was being held. I think something like 25 authors were there to promote their recently/newly/soon-to-be released books. It was good to see Walter from White Dwarf Books there with a table (I hadn’t spotted him down in the dealers’ dungeon earlier).
I didn’t hang around too long though – not much available in the way of food or drink and by that time it was after 8, I hadn’t had supper yet and I was pretty hungry. I had been tempted to stay around and maybe check out one or two of the room parties later on (there was a BSG party in one room, and a bring-a-bottle-of-Scotch-to-share-for-admission party that looked quite interesting), but the need for food and being tired and approaching cranky (did my opening rant give that away?) after a long day of work made me think it was time to call it a day.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s update.
PS
On a completely different note… Remember to visit Not A Planet Anymore to sign up for our Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds commemorative online challenge!
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Gettin' Conned Again - VCon 33
It’s time for VCon 33 – the Vancouver Science Fiction, Fantasy and Gaming Convention. I’ll be heading over to Surrey every day this weekend (No, I will not be making any Surrey jokes. I may complain about the commute, but I will not sink to the level of taking potshots at the good people of Surrey. No need to follow in everyone else’s footsteps.) to take part in the event and will be posting a summary of the day’s silliness right here every evening. VCon’s always enjoyable because of the significant literary thrust of the programming. Certainly there are discussions about science and gaming and there are Whedonite sing-alongs and there are medieval swordplay demonstrations, but most of the sessions revolve around examinations of what makes a good story. Since good storytelling is what’s at the core of SF, that’s fine by me.
Stay tuned for more updates.
And while you’re waiting…
Be sure to go to my other blog, Not A Planet Anymore, to take part in our online challenge:
Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds
Just fill in your blog’s address in the Comments section of that posting and we’ll add you to the roster of bloggers around the world who will be facing the Martian invasion on October 30th – the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles’ grand pre-Hallowe’en prank and tribute to H.G. Wells, the famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
Register now and Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds!
Stay tuned for more updates.
And while you’re waiting…
Be sure to go to my other blog, Not A Planet Anymore, to take part in our online challenge:
Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds
Just fill in your blog’s address in the Comments section of that posting and we’ll add you to the roster of bloggers around the world who will be facing the Martian invasion on October 30th – the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles’ grand pre-Hallowe’en prank and tribute to H.G. Wells, the famous “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
Register now and Blog Like It’s The War Of The Worlds!
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Online challenge: Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds!
To celebrate the launch of our new SF blog, Not A Planet Anymore, my faithful sidekick harrysaxon and I are issuing a special challenge to all of you out there in the blogosphere:Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds!
The blogging challenge takes place on October 30th – the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles' famous War of the Worlds radio play - a production that had thousands of late-arriving listeners believing the Martians were invading.
If you have a blog, on October 30th we want you to blog like the Martians (the kind that Welles borrowed from H.G. Wells) are actually invading. Tell us what things are like in your town (whether you’re in Woking, Grover’s Mill, Edmonton, Courtenay, Etobicoke, Houston, Berlin, Adelaide, Beijing or anywhere else) as the Martian tripod war machines march through with their heat rays and poison gas, snatching human snacks off the streets and leaving a wake of destruction and red weeds. Be sure to pass the word along to all of your blogging friends so we can make this War of the Worlds truly world-wide!
Register beforehand with us at Not A Planet Anymore and we'll add your blog to a list of sites reporting the Martian invasion, so other people can read of your exploits. After it's all over, as a Hallowe'en treat, we'll post some of the highlights from the different blogs on our site.
The inspiration for this online adventure came from the site My Elves Are Different, which has been hosting an annual zombie apocalypse-themed challenge called “Blog Like It’s The End Of The World”. We thought it was such a great idea that it ought to be adapted for an alien invasion – and with the anniversary of Welles’ little pre-Hallowe’en show on the horizon, we just couldn’t resist.
To get all of you in the mood for this challenge, here’s a link to Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast on Youtube (broken into convenient segments that allow for bathroom breaks).
Join the fun at Not A Planet Anymore - take part in "Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds" on October 30th!
The blogging challenge takes place on October 30th – the 70th anniversary of Orson Welles' famous War of the Worlds radio play - a production that had thousands of late-arriving listeners believing the Martians were invading.
If you have a blog, on October 30th we want you to blog like the Martians (the kind that Welles borrowed from H.G. Wells) are actually invading. Tell us what things are like in your town (whether you’re in Woking, Grover’s Mill, Edmonton, Courtenay, Etobicoke, Houston, Berlin, Adelaide, Beijing or anywhere else) as the Martian tripod war machines march through with their heat rays and poison gas, snatching human snacks off the streets and leaving a wake of destruction and red weeds. Be sure to pass the word along to all of your blogging friends so we can make this War of the Worlds truly world-wide!
Register beforehand with us at Not A Planet Anymore and we'll add your blog to a list of sites reporting the Martian invasion, so other people can read of your exploits. After it's all over, as a Hallowe'en treat, we'll post some of the highlights from the different blogs on our site.
The inspiration for this online adventure came from the site My Elves Are Different, which has been hosting an annual zombie apocalypse-themed challenge called “Blog Like It’s The End Of The World”. We thought it was such a great idea that it ought to be adapted for an alien invasion – and with the anniversary of Welles’ little pre-Hallowe’en show on the horizon, we just couldn’t resist.
To get all of you in the mood for this challenge, here’s a link to Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast on Youtube (broken into convenient segments that allow for bathroom breaks).
Join the fun at Not A Planet Anymore - take part in "Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds" on October 30th!
Launching a New Blog: Not A Planet Anymore
As if this old soapbox of SF ranting wasn’t already enough, I’m launching another science fiction and fantasy blog: Not A Planet Anymore.
Not A Planet Anymore is a collaboration between me and my old friend harrysaxon, host of Rassilon’s Arcade. It’s a forum to discuss speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, yadda yadda yadda) in literature, television, movies and other media, and to yak about video games and geek culture in general. Harrysaxon brings a wealth of videogaming experience to the table, while I’ve got the grounding in SF literature.
While Not A Planet Anymore will have reviews, same as here on bloginhood, there will be a number of other features (the addition of video game reviews, first and foremost) that will make the site different enough to be worth checking out. The fact that it’s a team effort means it’ll be a good forum for debate that will hopefully be informative and entertaining.
Admittedly, at this point, Not A Planet Anymore is still a work in progress. Both harrysaxon and I are finding time here and there to cobble it together as we juggle the other aspects of our lives: jobs (because you can’t run a blog if you don’t satisfy that strange addiction to food and shelter), our wives (our wives wholeheartedly approved of the launch of the new site, thinking that if we took our SF debates online we would probably forgo them when we got together for dinner – oh how they were wrong!), and, of course, our own existing blogs (like this one). In some ways, launching this site before all of the bells and whistles are in place makes me feel like Scotty trying to get the Enterprise spaceworthy enough to leave spacedock way before it was scheduled to in “Star Trek I – The Motion Picture”. Then again, that may be giving our little geek arena too much credit – despite having a gimpy warp drive, Enterprise still looked pretty good. No, our site’s probably more like the Thunder Road in “Explorers” – patched together from this and that and rickety as all hell, but it’ll fly (we hope). What’s important is that right from the get-go, we’re posting content we hope you’ll enjoy.
Join us at Not A Planet Anymore.
I’d just like to reiterate though, that bloginhood will continue to be active. I’ll still be grumbling away here on a regular basis (or, as regular as I ever have been, at any rate) and I’m grateful if you choose to hang around here too.
Not A Planet Anymore is a collaboration between me and my old friend harrysaxon, host of Rassilon’s Arcade. It’s a forum to discuss speculative fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, yadda yadda yadda) in literature, television, movies and other media, and to yak about video games and geek culture in general. Harrysaxon brings a wealth of videogaming experience to the table, while I’ve got the grounding in SF literature.
While Not A Planet Anymore will have reviews, same as here on bloginhood, there will be a number of other features (the addition of video game reviews, first and foremost) that will make the site different enough to be worth checking out. The fact that it’s a team effort means it’ll be a good forum for debate that will hopefully be informative and entertaining.
Admittedly, at this point, Not A Planet Anymore is still a work in progress. Both harrysaxon and I are finding time here and there to cobble it together as we juggle the other aspects of our lives: jobs (because you can’t run a blog if you don’t satisfy that strange addiction to food and shelter), our wives (our wives wholeheartedly approved of the launch of the new site, thinking that if we took our SF debates online we would probably forgo them when we got together for dinner – oh how they were wrong!), and, of course, our own existing blogs (like this one). In some ways, launching this site before all of the bells and whistles are in place makes me feel like Scotty trying to get the Enterprise spaceworthy enough to leave spacedock way before it was scheduled to in “Star Trek I – The Motion Picture”. Then again, that may be giving our little geek arena too much credit – despite having a gimpy warp drive, Enterprise still looked pretty good. No, our site’s probably more like the Thunder Road in “Explorers” – patched together from this and that and rickety as all hell, but it’ll fly (we hope). What’s important is that right from the get-go, we’re posting content we hope you’ll enjoy.
Join us at Not A Planet Anymore.
I’d just like to reiterate though, that bloginhood will continue to be active. I’ll still be grumbling away here on a regular basis (or, as regular as I ever have been, at any rate) and I’m grateful if you choose to hang around here too.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Bigfoot vs. the Big Fools of the Political Arena
A new poll here in Canada indicates the myth of a monster in the woods is more believable than the myth of an honest politician.
As this country lurches towards its federal election next month, an article in yesterday’s Vancouver Sun highlighted a new poll done for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that asked whether it was more likely that scientists would prove the existence of Bigfoot (the mythical creature said to inhabit the forests of BC) or that politicians would keep their election promises.
58% of those surveyed believe it’s more likely the Sasquatch will be proven to be real.
Just 27% of respondents bought into the notion of a politician keeping his word.
Not surprising given the state of political affairs right now with our choice between the tyrannical Tories, the lame-duck Liberals, the not-a-clue NDP, the get-a-grip Greens, and the gaggle of independents and fringe parties, never mind the b.s. Bloc in Quebec. The real myth is that any one of them could inspire voter confidence right about now. This isn’t a poll that shows Canadian voters are gullible or stupid – far from it, it shows that we see through to the heart of the matter, and that we see politicians to be insubstantial and thus of less value than an entertaining story to tell around a campfire. Culture over bluster.
But I think the real question with this poll is what did the other 15% of respondents believe? Were they simply undecided? (which still speaks volumes)
Or is that too simple? Maybe they believe that Bigfoot would keep his election promises if he were a politician! Imagine a Monster Party victory in Parliament! They could rename the Prime Minister’s official residence from "24 Sussex Drive" to “24 Sasquatch Drive”!
As this country lurches towards its federal election next month, an article in yesterday’s Vancouver Sun highlighted a new poll done for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that asked whether it was more likely that scientists would prove the existence of Bigfoot (the mythical creature said to inhabit the forests of BC) or that politicians would keep their election promises.
58% of those surveyed believe it’s more likely the Sasquatch will be proven to be real.
Just 27% of respondents bought into the notion of a politician keeping his word.
Not surprising given the state of political affairs right now with our choice between the tyrannical Tories, the lame-duck Liberals, the not-a-clue NDP, the get-a-grip Greens, and the gaggle of independents and fringe parties, never mind the b.s. Bloc in Quebec. The real myth is that any one of them could inspire voter confidence right about now. This isn’t a poll that shows Canadian voters are gullible or stupid – far from it, it shows that we see through to the heart of the matter, and that we see politicians to be insubstantial and thus of less value than an entertaining story to tell around a campfire. Culture over bluster.
But I think the real question with this poll is what did the other 15% of respondents believe? Were they simply undecided? (which still speaks volumes)
Or is that too simple? Maybe they believe that Bigfoot would keep his election promises if he were a politician! Imagine a Monster Party victory in Parliament! They could rename the Prime Minister’s official residence from "24 Sussex Drive" to “24 Sasquatch Drive”!
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Why Geeks Are Great
In my last post, I got to ranting about some of the ways that SF fandom can go terribly wrong – misaligned priorities and unwillingness to deal with life’s realities to name couple. But after getting all of that off my chest, I thought it was just as important to argue, just as passionately, about the greatness of geeks – and not in a “we’re smarter than mainstreamers” petulant, little sort of way either. No, I’m talking about our humanity; our ability to care for and reach out to one another and our communities. For contrary to popular belief, we geeks do rise beyond our SF passions and eccentricities quite frequently and focus our considerable energies on making connections and being there for others. In so doing, we show, if only to ourselves, that geeks are great.
It’s always impressive when the geek community comes out in force to support a cause. Take the San Diego Comicon, for example. For about 30-odd years now, they’re held a big blood drive at the event. 30 years of geeks volunteering to get freshly squeezed like oranges adds up to a helluva lot of lives saved.
And this isn’t an isolated example either. Geeks all over the world do their part to help local and regional charities. One of the first examples I personally encountered was back in the mid 90’s when I was attending the University of Manitoba and working and volunteering with the United Way of Winnipeg. One of the UWW’s big annual fundraisers was an event called “the World’s Biggest Garage Sale” (no, I can’t verify whether it was, in fact, the biggest craphound fest the planet has ever seen, but it was pretty damn big), where, for weeks, people from around the city donated their cast-offs of all types. The UWW secured the city’s convention centre as a venue and filled its cavernous rooms with row upon row of tables covered in, well, pretty much everything you can possibly imagine. On the special Saturday when the event was held, people would come from all over the place to root through this immense trove of white elephants in hopes of finding their personal notion of treasure. The problem is, for a garage sale of this magnitude, you need a hell of a lot of volunteers to man the tables, haggle with the public and manage the sales. All kinds of service clubs, social groups and businesses sent groups to help out, but there was one corps that stood out above all the others, and that was the geeks. A very special group of geeks. Squeezed in between the Shriners and the Kinsmen and the contingent from the local Airforce base and a gaggle of car dealers and a host of who knows how many others, was a brigade of Star Trek fans – specifically, Klingons. Yep, the Klingons were there in full forehead makeup and battle garb, armed with boisterous good nature instead of bat’leths. What a sight to see! The hearty squad of warrior wannabes driving bargains a Ferengi would be proud of and sealing the deal with lusty cries of “Kaplah”, all in the name of charity. Chances are, Joe and Sally Sixpack straggling up and down the aisles with their 3 squalling kids would probably forget most of the faces they saw that day, but no-one forgets a black-maned Klingon warrior nickel-and-diming you over a chipped antique lamp shade. Now that’s geek pride for a good cause!
Then there’s VCon, the Vancouver Science Fiction, Fantasy and Gaming Convention I’ve been attending for the past couple of years. Something that caught my eye last year (which was probably there the year before, just something I failed to notice then) was the art room raffle. A genre artist had donated a painting (of a dragon, I seem to recall), and for a twonie you could enter the draw. The proceeds (if I remember correctly) went to the SHARE Society, out of Coquitlam, which among many worthy programs, operates a food bank and a crisis line. And you know, whether they actually wanted the painting or not, I saw a fair number of fanboys and fangirls dropping in a polar bear coin or two to help out.
And speaking of cons, many of these events collect money dedicated to bringing in fans from other parts of their respective countries, or even from around the world to come and join in the fun. These fan funds are a hugely important part of community-building, not just among geeks, but across regions.
Beyond the charity drives or big causes, geeks are exemplary on a personal level too.
We’ve probably all heard those stories from distant corners of the internet about a bunch of online buddies coming to the rescue of a fellow forum-dweller who suddenly goes offline due to a medical or emotional crisis – how they compare notes from personal conversations and backtrack through IP addresses, etc to figure out where the person lives and then call local emergency services.
And speaking of emergencies (of a different kind, mind you), it wasn’t too long ago that Hurricane Ike beat-up on the Texas coast. When the guys over at SF Signal announced that their site could experience infrequent content updates because all three of them were battening down for the storm, many of the regulars wasted no time in wishing the boys good luck. Watching coverage of the storm on the nightly news took on a whole new meaning when you thought about how a fellow geek might have to deal with that kind of situation.
And then there are the small, personal moments that you catch a hint of every now and again. Another VCon example for ya: A couple of years ago I was standing in line waiting to register at the con, when I overheard a conversation off to the side. A guy who looked like the stereotypical refugee from his mom’s basement (late 20’s/early 30’s, overweight, coke-bottle-lense glasses, unkempt hair and beard, ill-fitting and unwashed clothes, disputable hygiene and voice at a decided mumble) was shooting the breeze with a heavyset transvestite goth. Impressive that members from two seemingly different camps of geekdom would mix, but what was more impressive was what happened when their conversation concluded and the refugee-from-his-mom’s-basement ambled away. At that point, an average-looking woman came up to the transvestite goth and they began to talk about the fellow who’d just left. They enthused about how much he’d come out of his shell in the past couple of years, how he was now looking people in the eye and carrying on conversations. You see, a lot of people would look at this scene and wouldn’t be able to get past the stereotypes. But none of this was funny at all. I personally don’t give a shit about what any of these people look like or what their sub-culture leanings are. This was an important moment illustrating what geeks are really all about beyond the books and comics and TV shows and movies and games and collectables and costumes. It showed how geeks reach out to each other. It was inspiring and touching because it showed how much these people from seemingly diverse backgrounds cared for each other.
This is what makes geeks great.
And I bet you can think of a million other examples too. I’d love to hear about them. We need to be sharing our stories more often.
So after reading this piece from the soapbox today, you may ask, “Bloginhood, isn’t all of this rambling just belabouring the obvious?” Maybe. That’s certainly a fair comment. But I think it’s worth while, and in fact, necessary for geeks every now and again to stand up and remind ourselves what makes us great.
Too often mainstream culture mocks geeks for pursuits that it doesn’t care to give the time to try to understand. It’s too easy dismiss people who like science fiction or fantasy or whatever else you want to cram under the SF banner because they don’t get our shows, have never bothered to read our literature, don’t have the patience for a game, can’t simply enjoy a movie or, horror of horrors, don’t want to be made-fun-of by their mainstream buddies for admitting maybe they do like geeky stuff. It’s too easy for snide observers to point to the fringe elements that maybe do take their passions too far and display a warped sense of reality or distorted priorities (and granted, sometimes things do go horribly wrong, which makes us all the more human). It’s too simple to get distracted by the obvious and corny divides in our community like high fantasy vs. hard science fiction, Golden Age vs New Wave, or Enterprise vs Star Destroyer.
What’s important is that we, as geeks, come together to form communities that, for all our eccentricities, are generally supportive and caring. We must continue to support worthy charities and, most of all, support each other. We need to take pride in who we are. We need to remember why geeks are great.
It’s always impressive when the geek community comes out in force to support a cause. Take the San Diego Comicon, for example. For about 30-odd years now, they’re held a big blood drive at the event. 30 years of geeks volunteering to get freshly squeezed like oranges adds up to a helluva lot of lives saved.
And this isn’t an isolated example either. Geeks all over the world do their part to help local and regional charities. One of the first examples I personally encountered was back in the mid 90’s when I was attending the University of Manitoba and working and volunteering with the United Way of Winnipeg. One of the UWW’s big annual fundraisers was an event called “the World’s Biggest Garage Sale” (no, I can’t verify whether it was, in fact, the biggest craphound fest the planet has ever seen, but it was pretty damn big), where, for weeks, people from around the city donated their cast-offs of all types. The UWW secured the city’s convention centre as a venue and filled its cavernous rooms with row upon row of tables covered in, well, pretty much everything you can possibly imagine. On the special Saturday when the event was held, people would come from all over the place to root through this immense trove of white elephants in hopes of finding their personal notion of treasure. The problem is, for a garage sale of this magnitude, you need a hell of a lot of volunteers to man the tables, haggle with the public and manage the sales. All kinds of service clubs, social groups and businesses sent groups to help out, but there was one corps that stood out above all the others, and that was the geeks. A very special group of geeks. Squeezed in between the Shriners and the Kinsmen and the contingent from the local Airforce base and a gaggle of car dealers and a host of who knows how many others, was a brigade of Star Trek fans – specifically, Klingons. Yep, the Klingons were there in full forehead makeup and battle garb, armed with boisterous good nature instead of bat’leths. What a sight to see! The hearty squad of warrior wannabes driving bargains a Ferengi would be proud of and sealing the deal with lusty cries of “Kaplah”, all in the name of charity. Chances are, Joe and Sally Sixpack straggling up and down the aisles with their 3 squalling kids would probably forget most of the faces they saw that day, but no-one forgets a black-maned Klingon warrior nickel-and-diming you over a chipped antique lamp shade. Now that’s geek pride for a good cause!
Then there’s VCon, the Vancouver Science Fiction, Fantasy and Gaming Convention I’ve been attending for the past couple of years. Something that caught my eye last year (which was probably there the year before, just something I failed to notice then) was the art room raffle. A genre artist had donated a painting (of a dragon, I seem to recall), and for a twonie you could enter the draw. The proceeds (if I remember correctly) went to the SHARE Society, out of Coquitlam, which among many worthy programs, operates a food bank and a crisis line. And you know, whether they actually wanted the painting or not, I saw a fair number of fanboys and fangirls dropping in a polar bear coin or two to help out.
And speaking of cons, many of these events collect money dedicated to bringing in fans from other parts of their respective countries, or even from around the world to come and join in the fun. These fan funds are a hugely important part of community-building, not just among geeks, but across regions.
Beyond the charity drives or big causes, geeks are exemplary on a personal level too.
We’ve probably all heard those stories from distant corners of the internet about a bunch of online buddies coming to the rescue of a fellow forum-dweller who suddenly goes offline due to a medical or emotional crisis – how they compare notes from personal conversations and backtrack through IP addresses, etc to figure out where the person lives and then call local emergency services.
And speaking of emergencies (of a different kind, mind you), it wasn’t too long ago that Hurricane Ike beat-up on the Texas coast. When the guys over at SF Signal announced that their site could experience infrequent content updates because all three of them were battening down for the storm, many of the regulars wasted no time in wishing the boys good luck. Watching coverage of the storm on the nightly news took on a whole new meaning when you thought about how a fellow geek might have to deal with that kind of situation.
And then there are the small, personal moments that you catch a hint of every now and again. Another VCon example for ya: A couple of years ago I was standing in line waiting to register at the con, when I overheard a conversation off to the side. A guy who looked like the stereotypical refugee from his mom’s basement (late 20’s/early 30’s, overweight, coke-bottle-lense glasses, unkempt hair and beard, ill-fitting and unwashed clothes, disputable hygiene and voice at a decided mumble) was shooting the breeze with a heavyset transvestite goth. Impressive that members from two seemingly different camps of geekdom would mix, but what was more impressive was what happened when their conversation concluded and the refugee-from-his-mom’s-basement ambled away. At that point, an average-looking woman came up to the transvestite goth and they began to talk about the fellow who’d just left. They enthused about how much he’d come out of his shell in the past couple of years, how he was now looking people in the eye and carrying on conversations. You see, a lot of people would look at this scene and wouldn’t be able to get past the stereotypes. But none of this was funny at all. I personally don’t give a shit about what any of these people look like or what their sub-culture leanings are. This was an important moment illustrating what geeks are really all about beyond the books and comics and TV shows and movies and games and collectables and costumes. It showed how geeks reach out to each other. It was inspiring and touching because it showed how much these people from seemingly diverse backgrounds cared for each other.
This is what makes geeks great.
And I bet you can think of a million other examples too. I’d love to hear about them. We need to be sharing our stories more often.
So after reading this piece from the soapbox today, you may ask, “Bloginhood, isn’t all of this rambling just belabouring the obvious?” Maybe. That’s certainly a fair comment. But I think it’s worth while, and in fact, necessary for geeks every now and again to stand up and remind ourselves what makes us great.
Too often mainstream culture mocks geeks for pursuits that it doesn’t care to give the time to try to understand. It’s too easy dismiss people who like science fiction or fantasy or whatever else you want to cram under the SF banner because they don’t get our shows, have never bothered to read our literature, don’t have the patience for a game, can’t simply enjoy a movie or, horror of horrors, don’t want to be made-fun-of by their mainstream buddies for admitting maybe they do like geeky stuff. It’s too easy for snide observers to point to the fringe elements that maybe do take their passions too far and display a warped sense of reality or distorted priorities (and granted, sometimes things do go horribly wrong, which makes us all the more human). It’s too simple to get distracted by the obvious and corny divides in our community like high fantasy vs. hard science fiction, Golden Age vs New Wave, or Enterprise vs Star Destroyer.
What’s important is that we, as geeks, come together to form communities that, for all our eccentricities, are generally supportive and caring. We must continue to support worthy charities and, most of all, support each other. We need to take pride in who we are. We need to remember why geeks are great.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Unwilling to Give Up the Ghost - or the Stargate, as the Case May Be
You know you’re truly a hardcore fanboy/fangirl when you stage a protest rally when your favourite SF TV show gets creamed by the network execs. Not sullenly mutter to yourself. Not bitch to your friends. Not piss and moan to your fellow blogoids online (as many geeks, yours truly most especially, are wont to do on occasion). Not even furiously put pen to paper in a retro-Trek campaign or lobbying of network sponsors. No, the ultimate uber-geeks are the ones to whom a cancellation is just so totally unacceptable that they’re willing to hit the streets, glasses pushed resolutely up the bridge of the nose, placard in hand, and, after some initial confusion caused by the sudden exposure to the outside world and the recovery from injuries sustained during the assembly of the afore-mentioned signage, stage a rally in front of the offending studio.
According to an article in today’s Vancouver Sun, that’s just what a group of Stargate Atlantis enthusiasts planned on doing today, with a protest scheduled to take place outside of the Bridge Studios in Burnaby, where the show has been filmed. Apparently, they’re steamed that “Stargate Atlantis” has been sunk and they’re insisting the Sci Fi Channel change its mind. Allegedly there are rumours of other, similar protests planned for LA and New York and possibly overseas.
I’m not sure whether Burnaby protest actually took place, and if so, how many people bothered to show.
Now some of you may be wondering why I wouldn’t know this, especially when my office is within spitting distance of the studio. Why, having read the story this morning about a planned SF-related protest that was going to take place nearby, why, with my background as a reporter, didn’t I nip over at lunch or spin by after work to check it out? Admittedly, my old journalistic spider senses were tingling – an SF-related news story unfolding and me with this geeky blog and all, but I didn’t indulge them. And there were a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, I’m not a fan of the Stargate franchise. I don’t dislike it; it merely doesn’t interest me. Then there’s the fact that the paper didn’t list the time of the planned protest – hard to convince the boss to let me duck out of work every hour just to check. Then there’s the fact that I was just too busy to pull myself away from the office, even at lunch, and after work I had to get home right away so my wife could use the car to get to her personal trainer. In short, there were other, more important things on the go. I have a life.
And therein lies the root of my puzzlement about this whole protest (assuming it went ahead).
How do these people find the time to stage a protest about a cancelled TV show during a weekday? How could they possibly get off work? What kind of boss would allow that? Would the conversation go something like:
Boss: “So you want the afternoon off to take part in a protest?”
Fanboy: “Yessir.”
Boss: “A protest over a TV show getting cancelled?”
Fanboy: “Yessir.”
Boss: “One of those nerdy sci-fi TV shows?”
Fanboy: “Yessir. ‘Stargate Atlantis’, sir. And, respectfully, sir, it’s not nerdy.”
Boss: “So this isn’t a ‘Star Trek’ thing?”
Fanboy: “Nossir. It’s a ‘Stargate Atlantis’ thing.”
Boss: “’Cause if it’s a Star Trek thing, I’d say ‘no’.”
Fanboy: “Nossir. I mean, yessir. I mean, nossir. Uh….”
Boss: “’Cause you remember what happened with the last Star Trek thing?...”
Fanboy: “Yessir. Won’t happen again, sir. Not the same thing at all, sir.”
Boss: “Good. ‘Cause if I hear about you betting any ‘kwatloos on the newcomer’ or anything…”
Fanboy: “Nossir.”
Boss: “Alrighty then. You can have the afternoon off.”
Not gonna happen, is it? Did these people stage a quicky over their lunch break? Did they cash-in some OT or holiday time or call in sick? Are they doing shift-work and just happened to not be on the schedule that day? Are they self-employed? Unemployed? Shouldn’t these people be earning a living? What about families or kids or friends? (okay, well, fine, their friends were probably picketing with them)
More to the point, WHY would you go to the effort (and expense – signs aren’t free and gas ain’t cheap) of staging a protest over a cancelled TV show?!? It’s just a TV show, people!!! I mean, as a fan, I’ve had feelings ranging from disappointment to being mighty pissed from time to time when a favourite show was cancelled – no one who’s passionate about a story is happy when it finally has to end (one way or the other) – but I sure wouldn’t stage a protest over it! A strongly-worded letter/email to the network might be in order, or a scathing online editorial, maybe even an online campaign to convince the network to change its mind – all of these can be cathartic if nothing else, and can let the network know how you feel without taking much of your time or effort. But protesting requires more time, expense and an actual physical effort. Too much effort, I say, when the network probably won’t pay attention - especially when MGM’s already announced it will continue the franchise with a new series. And it’s too much effort to expend fighting the end of a TV show. A TV show! If this was a hospital or a community school for disabled kids or an animal shelter or even a heritage building, I could understand how a protest could be worthwhile. If it was a rally for more money for cancer research or to put an end to bullying, you bet! But a TV show? Sure, everybody’s got their own priorities in life, but waving placards over a cancelled show indicates a fairly significant reality check is needed. I’m a fan of good SF, but there’s a point where you’ve gotta step back and ask what’s really important in life, and there are probably a lot of things in your community that rank a lot higher than some weekly flick on the boob tube. For starters, pick a charity you believe in and use your talents and energy helping it.
In addition to being a massive misalignment of priorities, this behaviour also points to something else wrong – it seems to be an inability to accept and deal with a fundamental part of storytelling and the story listening/reading/watching experience: one way or another, all stories come to an end. We, as readers/listeners/viewers have to accept that. We may not like it, we may not agree with it, but it happens. And when it happens, you do what someone who truly appreciates good SF does, you remember the old series fondly, rewatch it in reruns and on DVD on occasion, but most importantly you move on and find other quality SF shows to watch. To insist that one show continue to go on and on and on just because it’s your favourite is to risk condemning it to degrade in quality from sheer weariness until it becomes a mockery of itself, a shambling zombie of a show… a soap opera that keeps twisting its plot, not to better the story, but merely to keep adding another episode onto the pile. Case in point: “Gundam” What the hell is that show about after all these years? I don’t think the writers even know. The refusal to accept that a show is ending points to a denial of the fact that life is full of endings. It points to a desperate need to seize control of something and keep it going just to prove that one actually has the power to stave-off the inevitable. But that’s an artificial sense, it’s unrealistic, and it doesn’t allow a person to move on to new and possibly better things.
Now, you may argue that I’m a cynic. You may point out that an outcry by fans gave the original “Star Trek” a new lease on life, that it aided “Babylon 5” in reaching the end of its magnificent 5-year story arc, and that it enabled the wonderful “Firefly” to get another shot, this time on the big screen, with the immensely smart and entertaining “Serenity”. You may say that it’s not just fannish delusions of self-empowerment, that taking the networks to task actually works. But let’s face facts: Trek was limping in its last season and was eventually yanked well before it’s famous “5-year mission” could be fully presented; B5, for all of the fact that it did finish its story, saw its successor series Crusade and the various attempted successor series blown away; and Firefly, despite the movie, won’t be coming back to network television. Sooner or later, studios get their way and series end. It may be a crime that “Firefly” was never given a chance, or that B5 wasn’t given the budget or understanding to continue with new stories, but that’s the TV business. Series end. New ones come along. Parading around in front of the studio, especially in small numbers, isn’t going to make much, if any difference.
Let’s not forget either that SGA had a pretty good run. 5 years is very good for an SF show. There’s nothing wrong with it coming to a close after that kind of track record, especially when some of its elements might be preserved in the new addition to the franchise that’s currently in development or in other media formats like books and computer games.
I know some Stargate fans might read this editorial and dismiss me as a jaded son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t appreciate the power of the people and the effectiveness of a passionate and well-organized protest rally. I know there are some who will say I just don’t understand because I don’t follow the show and thus don’t appreciate what, in their view, is genius. That’s their opinion and that’s okay. But as an SF fan, I have seen favourite shows, like B5, Firefly, and soon Battlestar, fall by the wayside. And with each I’ve bought the DVD collection and learned to move on and look for the next worthwhile show to flicker across my screen. I haven’t hit the picket line. I don’t have the time.
According to an article in today’s Vancouver Sun, that’s just what a group of Stargate Atlantis enthusiasts planned on doing today, with a protest scheduled to take place outside of the Bridge Studios in Burnaby, where the show has been filmed. Apparently, they’re steamed that “Stargate Atlantis” has been sunk and they’re insisting the Sci Fi Channel change its mind. Allegedly there are rumours of other, similar protests planned for LA and New York and possibly overseas.
I’m not sure whether Burnaby protest actually took place, and if so, how many people bothered to show.
Now some of you may be wondering why I wouldn’t know this, especially when my office is within spitting distance of the studio. Why, having read the story this morning about a planned SF-related protest that was going to take place nearby, why, with my background as a reporter, didn’t I nip over at lunch or spin by after work to check it out? Admittedly, my old journalistic spider senses were tingling – an SF-related news story unfolding and me with this geeky blog and all, but I didn’t indulge them. And there were a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, I’m not a fan of the Stargate franchise. I don’t dislike it; it merely doesn’t interest me. Then there’s the fact that the paper didn’t list the time of the planned protest – hard to convince the boss to let me duck out of work every hour just to check. Then there’s the fact that I was just too busy to pull myself away from the office, even at lunch, and after work I had to get home right away so my wife could use the car to get to her personal trainer. In short, there were other, more important things on the go. I have a life.
And therein lies the root of my puzzlement about this whole protest (assuming it went ahead).
How do these people find the time to stage a protest about a cancelled TV show during a weekday? How could they possibly get off work? What kind of boss would allow that? Would the conversation go something like:
Boss: “So you want the afternoon off to take part in a protest?”
Fanboy: “Yessir.”
Boss: “A protest over a TV show getting cancelled?”
Fanboy: “Yessir.”
Boss: “One of those nerdy sci-fi TV shows?”
Fanboy: “Yessir. ‘Stargate Atlantis’, sir. And, respectfully, sir, it’s not nerdy.”
Boss: “So this isn’t a ‘Star Trek’ thing?”
Fanboy: “Nossir. It’s a ‘Stargate Atlantis’ thing.”
Boss: “’Cause if it’s a Star Trek thing, I’d say ‘no’.”
Fanboy: “Nossir. I mean, yessir. I mean, nossir. Uh….”
Boss: “’Cause you remember what happened with the last Star Trek thing?...”
Fanboy: “Yessir. Won’t happen again, sir. Not the same thing at all, sir.”
Boss: “Good. ‘Cause if I hear about you betting any ‘kwatloos on the newcomer’ or anything…”
Fanboy: “Nossir.”
Boss: “Alrighty then. You can have the afternoon off.”
Not gonna happen, is it? Did these people stage a quicky over their lunch break? Did they cash-in some OT or holiday time or call in sick? Are they doing shift-work and just happened to not be on the schedule that day? Are they self-employed? Unemployed? Shouldn’t these people be earning a living? What about families or kids or friends? (okay, well, fine, their friends were probably picketing with them)
More to the point, WHY would you go to the effort (and expense – signs aren’t free and gas ain’t cheap) of staging a protest over a cancelled TV show?!? It’s just a TV show, people!!! I mean, as a fan, I’ve had feelings ranging from disappointment to being mighty pissed from time to time when a favourite show was cancelled – no one who’s passionate about a story is happy when it finally has to end (one way or the other) – but I sure wouldn’t stage a protest over it! A strongly-worded letter/email to the network might be in order, or a scathing online editorial, maybe even an online campaign to convince the network to change its mind – all of these can be cathartic if nothing else, and can let the network know how you feel without taking much of your time or effort. But protesting requires more time, expense and an actual physical effort. Too much effort, I say, when the network probably won’t pay attention - especially when MGM’s already announced it will continue the franchise with a new series. And it’s too much effort to expend fighting the end of a TV show. A TV show! If this was a hospital or a community school for disabled kids or an animal shelter or even a heritage building, I could understand how a protest could be worthwhile. If it was a rally for more money for cancer research or to put an end to bullying, you bet! But a TV show? Sure, everybody’s got their own priorities in life, but waving placards over a cancelled show indicates a fairly significant reality check is needed. I’m a fan of good SF, but there’s a point where you’ve gotta step back and ask what’s really important in life, and there are probably a lot of things in your community that rank a lot higher than some weekly flick on the boob tube. For starters, pick a charity you believe in and use your talents and energy helping it.
In addition to being a massive misalignment of priorities, this behaviour also points to something else wrong – it seems to be an inability to accept and deal with a fundamental part of storytelling and the story listening/reading/watching experience: one way or another, all stories come to an end. We, as readers/listeners/viewers have to accept that. We may not like it, we may not agree with it, but it happens. And when it happens, you do what someone who truly appreciates good SF does, you remember the old series fondly, rewatch it in reruns and on DVD on occasion, but most importantly you move on and find other quality SF shows to watch. To insist that one show continue to go on and on and on just because it’s your favourite is to risk condemning it to degrade in quality from sheer weariness until it becomes a mockery of itself, a shambling zombie of a show… a soap opera that keeps twisting its plot, not to better the story, but merely to keep adding another episode onto the pile. Case in point: “Gundam” What the hell is that show about after all these years? I don’t think the writers even know. The refusal to accept that a show is ending points to a denial of the fact that life is full of endings. It points to a desperate need to seize control of something and keep it going just to prove that one actually has the power to stave-off the inevitable. But that’s an artificial sense, it’s unrealistic, and it doesn’t allow a person to move on to new and possibly better things.
Now, you may argue that I’m a cynic. You may point out that an outcry by fans gave the original “Star Trek” a new lease on life, that it aided “Babylon 5” in reaching the end of its magnificent 5-year story arc, and that it enabled the wonderful “Firefly” to get another shot, this time on the big screen, with the immensely smart and entertaining “Serenity”. You may say that it’s not just fannish delusions of self-empowerment, that taking the networks to task actually works. But let’s face facts: Trek was limping in its last season and was eventually yanked well before it’s famous “5-year mission” could be fully presented; B5, for all of the fact that it did finish its story, saw its successor series Crusade and the various attempted successor series blown away; and Firefly, despite the movie, won’t be coming back to network television. Sooner or later, studios get their way and series end. It may be a crime that “Firefly” was never given a chance, or that B5 wasn’t given the budget or understanding to continue with new stories, but that’s the TV business. Series end. New ones come along. Parading around in front of the studio, especially in small numbers, isn’t going to make much, if any difference.
Let’s not forget either that SGA had a pretty good run. 5 years is very good for an SF show. There’s nothing wrong with it coming to a close after that kind of track record, especially when some of its elements might be preserved in the new addition to the franchise that’s currently in development or in other media formats like books and computer games.
I know some Stargate fans might read this editorial and dismiss me as a jaded son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t appreciate the power of the people and the effectiveness of a passionate and well-organized protest rally. I know there are some who will say I just don’t understand because I don’t follow the show and thus don’t appreciate what, in their view, is genius. That’s their opinion and that’s okay. But as an SF fan, I have seen favourite shows, like B5, Firefly, and soon Battlestar, fall by the wayside. And with each I’ve bought the DVD collection and learned to move on and look for the next worthwhile show to flicker across my screen. I haven’t hit the picket line. I don’t have the time.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
A New Season Begins on the Boob Tube
Our track record’s been pretty poor this year in our household at the start of the new TV season. So far we’ve missed the new episodes of the new season of “Eureka” and Monday’s premier of season 2 of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”.
It’s a pity because my wife’s become quite the fan of “Eureka” (I enjoy it myself, from time to time, but not consistently enough to follow it closely).
It’s also too bad we missed the season opener of TSCC because we both enjoy the Terminator show (sounds like the title of a 1950’s TV sketch comedy: “It’s The Terminator Show, starring some former vaudeville guy, brought to you by Big Oil – Big Oil’s always there for you!” But I digress…). Not only is the story half-decent, and not only does it have the raw entertainment value of watching little Summer Glau kick some serious butt, but we’ve also turned it into a game to try to guess whether Lena Headey will end every scene prior to a commercial break by pursing her lips and staring off into the middle distance with a combination of unease and self-conscious attempt to conceal a need to look sexy without trying to look like she’s trying to conceal her need to look sexy. And it’s not just before the commercial breaks either – she’ll bust that move in the middle of any given scene, apparently just ‘cause. I can just hear the director off camera: “Dammit, we need to create more pathos! Hmmmmmm. Okay, Lena, how about you just do that staring thing again while the other guy’s talking. That’ll help. Do you need someone to help purse those lips? No? Okay. Hold that pose for another couple of minutes while we change the lighting. Now somebody go get me a pretzel!” Trying to predict when she’ll roll out that melodramatic reaction/meditation look is almost teetering on the brink of becoming a drinking game around these parts. Except, of course, it happens so often you’d never make it to the end of an episode. Anyway, we’ll probably make a more concerted effort to watch this season.
What I have managed to catch is the premier of “Fringe”. Uh-huh. Is anyone else getting a “Torchwood” kind of a feeling? I mean, really, there aren’t any pterodactyls cruising around in the rafters (yet), so maybe they’ve taken a bit of a cue from the “X-Files” school of subdued conspiracy agency shows, but still, that whole scene in the lab where they found the cure for the dude with the disease? I half expected Captain Jack Harkness to come sauntering in grinning ear to ear and regaling the gang with some tale of his sexual exploits with the Triple-breasted Whore of Eroticon Six (no, wait, that’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” now, but you get my drift). Maybe the bald recruiting guy is supposed to be this show’s Captain Jack – he wears a long coat anyway. Suffice to say, I’m waiting to be impressed. I’ll give it one more episode to prove its worth.
Now if only it was January so the last half-season of Battlestar could finally get under way!
It’s a pity because my wife’s become quite the fan of “Eureka” (I enjoy it myself, from time to time, but not consistently enough to follow it closely).
It’s also too bad we missed the season opener of TSCC because we both enjoy the Terminator show (sounds like the title of a 1950’s TV sketch comedy: “It’s The Terminator Show, starring some former vaudeville guy, brought to you by Big Oil – Big Oil’s always there for you!” But I digress…). Not only is the story half-decent, and not only does it have the raw entertainment value of watching little Summer Glau kick some serious butt, but we’ve also turned it into a game to try to guess whether Lena Headey will end every scene prior to a commercial break by pursing her lips and staring off into the middle distance with a combination of unease and self-conscious attempt to conceal a need to look sexy without trying to look like she’s trying to conceal her need to look sexy. And it’s not just before the commercial breaks either – she’ll bust that move in the middle of any given scene, apparently just ‘cause. I can just hear the director off camera: “Dammit, we need to create more pathos! Hmmmmmm. Okay, Lena, how about you just do that staring thing again while the other guy’s talking. That’ll help. Do you need someone to help purse those lips? No? Okay. Hold that pose for another couple of minutes while we change the lighting. Now somebody go get me a pretzel!” Trying to predict when she’ll roll out that melodramatic reaction/meditation look is almost teetering on the brink of becoming a drinking game around these parts. Except, of course, it happens so often you’d never make it to the end of an episode. Anyway, we’ll probably make a more concerted effort to watch this season.
What I have managed to catch is the premier of “Fringe”. Uh-huh. Is anyone else getting a “Torchwood” kind of a feeling? I mean, really, there aren’t any pterodactyls cruising around in the rafters (yet), so maybe they’ve taken a bit of a cue from the “X-Files” school of subdued conspiracy agency shows, but still, that whole scene in the lab where they found the cure for the dude with the disease? I half expected Captain Jack Harkness to come sauntering in grinning ear to ear and regaling the gang with some tale of his sexual exploits with the Triple-breasted Whore of Eroticon Six (no, wait, that’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide” now, but you get my drift). Maybe the bald recruiting guy is supposed to be this show’s Captain Jack – he wears a long coat anyway. Suffice to say, I’m waiting to be impressed. I’ll give it one more episode to prove its worth.
Now if only it was January so the last half-season of Battlestar could finally get under way!
Monday, September 01, 2008
Belated Happy Birthday to Bradbury
It’s been a little over a week since Ray Bradbury’s birthday, and since he’s one of my favourite authors (SF or otherwise), I figured I should do a little tip of the hat to the old Grandmaster here on the old soapbox.
I’ve raved many times before (in fact, he was the subject of my first posting on this blog back on a cold November night in 2005) about why I like Bradbury’s stories, so I won’t go into that again. Instead, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on some of my favourites from his body of work.
My absolute favourite is “The Halloween Tree”. It’s not his most profound or most grown-up work, but this tale of a group of kids chasing through Hallowe’ens across time to save the soul of their friend has some truly beautiful descriptions that bring back a lot of memories from All Hallows Eve when I was a kid. That’s not, to say, that my friends and I spent the night in the company of a sinister old fellow named Moundshroud, rather, it’s his descriptions of the feeling of that evening, and what it’s like to be in a small town out in the middle of the woods and fields when the pumpkin carving season rolls around. Check this out:
That could have been the little subdivision I lived in, tucked way out in the woods in North Dumfries Township. And the night itself? This about sums it up:
Next is “There Will Come Soft Rains” – the second last tale in “The Martian Chronicles”. The Chronicles as a whole are a masterwork, Bradbury’s meditation on humanity set against the backdrop of a Mars that never was and an Earth in its last throes. It’s a book that throws many different thoughts and feelings at you as you trek through it. But among its stories, the most emotionally powerful, the one that haunts and scars the memory forever, in my opinion, is “There Will Come Soft Rains”. In and of itself, not much happens in this story: amidst a ruined nuclear wasteland on Earth, a family dog crawls home to die, the automated systems of the house clean up, and the house itself is destroyed by fire. If you’ve ever had a family pet, the death of the dog alone is enough to bring you to tears – it sure did for me. But aside from the scene being one of merely a single cruel, lonely and sad death, it is one that evokes an image of planet-wide suffering of innocent lives – of the price paid by every living thing for the thoughtless violence of mankind. Even the destruction of the house shows that our mighty technology is incapable of withstanding our lack of self control. In fact, the story is most pointed in not telling us directly about the deaths of the Earth’s human population – we don’t get to indulge in even this level of selfish ego. One tends to sympathize more with the innocent bystanders than those who cause an accident, and so humanity is dismissed. In leaving us out of this story, the lesson about the consequences of our actions is more powerful. And yet, having learned this lesson, there is a second chance, for after the devastation of the fires on Earth, we are told in “The Million-Year Picnic” that there is a seed of humanity left on Mars, a story ending with a different element – water - and thus a chance to wash clean and hopefully not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Finally, I’d have to round-out my list of absolute Bradbury favourites with “Last Rites”. Originally appearing in the December ’94 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, I first encountered this story in Bradbury’s collection “Quicker than the Eye”. This is hands-down the most original time travel story ever. Most examples of this sub-genre see heroes traipsing across time to change the past or future, or prevent someone else from doing so. Not so with Bradbury’s character Harrison Cooper. Rather than attempt to rewrite history or explore ancient or far-future mysteries, Cooper launches himself across the sea of years to bring comfort to the giants of literature. As they lie alone facing death, Cooper appears with copies of their novels or poems or plays to reassure them that they will live on because their work had intellectual and emotional worth. He is a kind of polar opposite of Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Future, showing the men before him not visions of doom, but proof that the fruits of their creativity had meaning. For one with the seeming god-like power to travel through time and affect history and lives, Cooper takes a path that is so subdued it can’t be anything but intrinsically human. This is a gentle tale that in taking a totally sideways view of what one could do with this kind of power, asks us to rethink what we ought to do with our abilities and opportunities – it reminds us that human connections are what’s most important.
For me, these are the finest of Bradbury’s works. There are many others that I enjoy immensely, but these are the ones that spring to mind first when someone mentions him.
I’m always interested to hear what Bradbury stories grab other people the most. For my wife, it’s “Tete-a-Tete” from “One More for the Road”.
What’s your favourite Bradbury story?
I’ve raved many times before (in fact, he was the subject of my first posting on this blog back on a cold November night in 2005) about why I like Bradbury’s stories, so I won’t go into that again. Instead, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts on some of my favourites from his body of work.
My absolute favourite is “The Halloween Tree”. It’s not his most profound or most grown-up work, but this tale of a group of kids chasing through Hallowe’ens across time to save the soul of their friend has some truly beautiful descriptions that bring back a lot of memories from All Hallows Eve when I was a kid. That’s not, to say, that my friends and I spent the night in the company of a sinister old fellow named Moundshroud, rather, it’s his descriptions of the feeling of that evening, and what it’s like to be in a small town out in the middle of the woods and fields when the pumpkin carving season rolls around. Check this out:
“There wasn’t so much wilderness around you couldn’t see the town. But on the other hand, there wasn’t so much town you couldn’t see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here.”
That could have been the little subdivision I lived in, tucked way out in the woods in North Dumfries Township. And the night itself? This about sums it up:
“Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked. …Shrieking, wailing, full of banshee mirth they ran, on everything except sidewalks, going up into the air over bushes and down almost upon yipping dogs.”Ah, those were the days! And all I have to do is open “The Halloween Tree” and the sights and smells and tastes in my memory are that much closer.
Next is “There Will Come Soft Rains” – the second last tale in “The Martian Chronicles”. The Chronicles as a whole are a masterwork, Bradbury’s meditation on humanity set against the backdrop of a Mars that never was and an Earth in its last throes. It’s a book that throws many different thoughts and feelings at you as you trek through it. But among its stories, the most emotionally powerful, the one that haunts and scars the memory forever, in my opinion, is “There Will Come Soft Rains”. In and of itself, not much happens in this story: amidst a ruined nuclear wasteland on Earth, a family dog crawls home to die, the automated systems of the house clean up, and the house itself is destroyed by fire. If you’ve ever had a family pet, the death of the dog alone is enough to bring you to tears – it sure did for me. But aside from the scene being one of merely a single cruel, lonely and sad death, it is one that evokes an image of planet-wide suffering of innocent lives – of the price paid by every living thing for the thoughtless violence of mankind. Even the destruction of the house shows that our mighty technology is incapable of withstanding our lack of self control. In fact, the story is most pointed in not telling us directly about the deaths of the Earth’s human population – we don’t get to indulge in even this level of selfish ego. One tends to sympathize more with the innocent bystanders than those who cause an accident, and so humanity is dismissed. In leaving us out of this story, the lesson about the consequences of our actions is more powerful. And yet, having learned this lesson, there is a second chance, for after the devastation of the fires on Earth, we are told in “The Million-Year Picnic” that there is a seed of humanity left on Mars, a story ending with a different element – water - and thus a chance to wash clean and hopefully not repeat the mistakes of the past.
Finally, I’d have to round-out my list of absolute Bradbury favourites with “Last Rites”. Originally appearing in the December ’94 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, I first encountered this story in Bradbury’s collection “Quicker than the Eye”. This is hands-down the most original time travel story ever. Most examples of this sub-genre see heroes traipsing across time to change the past or future, or prevent someone else from doing so. Not so with Bradbury’s character Harrison Cooper. Rather than attempt to rewrite history or explore ancient or far-future mysteries, Cooper launches himself across the sea of years to bring comfort to the giants of literature. As they lie alone facing death, Cooper appears with copies of their novels or poems or plays to reassure them that they will live on because their work had intellectual and emotional worth. He is a kind of polar opposite of Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Future, showing the men before him not visions of doom, but proof that the fruits of their creativity had meaning. For one with the seeming god-like power to travel through time and affect history and lives, Cooper takes a path that is so subdued it can’t be anything but intrinsically human. This is a gentle tale that in taking a totally sideways view of what one could do with this kind of power, asks us to rethink what we ought to do with our abilities and opportunities – it reminds us that human connections are what’s most important.
For me, these are the finest of Bradbury’s works. There are many others that I enjoy immensely, but these are the ones that spring to mind first when someone mentions him.
I’m always interested to hear what Bradbury stories grab other people the most. For my wife, it’s “Tete-a-Tete” from “One More for the Road”.
What’s your favourite Bradbury story?
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Colour Blind Concert
We went to the Weird Al Yankovic concert in Coquitlam this past weekend, and while the show itself was a blast, something was definitely wrong with the audience.
Oh sure, everyone in the house was into Al’s schtick – we all waved our cellphones in the air during the cellphone song, and everyone joined together to help him belt out “Yoda” – but there was something significant missing from the crowd.
That something was colour – colourful Hawaiian shirts, to be precise.
Counting myself and my wife, there were perhaps two dozen – no more – of us in the crowd garbed in Hawaiian shirts of varying degrees of tackiness and loud colour. Traditionally, this attire is a must for any Weird Al concert. But not anymore. 24 of us, in a crowd of a couple of hundred packed into the Red Robinson Show Theatre. What happened?
Time was, the Hawaiian shirt, while not mandatory, made up the bulk of what the audience was wearing at one of Al’s shows. I can remember going to see him at the Orpheum in Winnipeg, back in the 90’s when I was at the University of Manitoba, and nearly everyone there was sporting something with too-loud colours and flower and fish and hula patterns. Heck, there was one guy sitting a couple of rows in front of me who’d gone to the trouble of having his yarmulke made from the same bright fabric as his shirt. Now that’s a fan! No so this time around. Just a small group of us die-hards.
It’s not even like being a fan demanded something truly bizarre like wolfing down a twinkie dog with spray-on cheese-like product (I had a buddy who actually did that after watching “UHF” – not something I’d care to do). If that was the case, I could understand concert-goers, saying “Dude, that’s a little extreme.” But it’s not. No, the wearing of the Hawaiian shirt is just a way of sharing the utterly shameless indulgence in daring to be stupid and have fun in being a Weird Al fan amidst other fans. Part of the fun was trying to pick out the wackiest shirt pattern near you in the crowd.
Sure, Al himself isn’t as heavy into the Hawaiian shirts when he’s on-stage as he used to be, but he still wears a couple in the act. Shouldn’t that make it okay for the audience to keep with its traditions?
And yet, it was by and large a pretty drab audience that assembled Saturday night. When did fandom get so grey?
Oh sure, everyone in the house was into Al’s schtick – we all waved our cellphones in the air during the cellphone song, and everyone joined together to help him belt out “Yoda” – but there was something significant missing from the crowd.
That something was colour – colourful Hawaiian shirts, to be precise.
Counting myself and my wife, there were perhaps two dozen – no more – of us in the crowd garbed in Hawaiian shirts of varying degrees of tackiness and loud colour. Traditionally, this attire is a must for any Weird Al concert. But not anymore. 24 of us, in a crowd of a couple of hundred packed into the Red Robinson Show Theatre. What happened?
Time was, the Hawaiian shirt, while not mandatory, made up the bulk of what the audience was wearing at one of Al’s shows. I can remember going to see him at the Orpheum in Winnipeg, back in the 90’s when I was at the University of Manitoba, and nearly everyone there was sporting something with too-loud colours and flower and fish and hula patterns. Heck, there was one guy sitting a couple of rows in front of me who’d gone to the trouble of having his yarmulke made from the same bright fabric as his shirt. Now that’s a fan! No so this time around. Just a small group of us die-hards.
It’s not even like being a fan demanded something truly bizarre like wolfing down a twinkie dog with spray-on cheese-like product (I had a buddy who actually did that after watching “UHF” – not something I’d care to do). If that was the case, I could understand concert-goers, saying “Dude, that’s a little extreme.” But it’s not. No, the wearing of the Hawaiian shirt is just a way of sharing the utterly shameless indulgence in daring to be stupid and have fun in being a Weird Al fan amidst other fans. Part of the fun was trying to pick out the wackiest shirt pattern near you in the crowd.
Sure, Al himself isn’t as heavy into the Hawaiian shirts when he’s on-stage as he used to be, but he still wears a couple in the act. Shouldn’t that make it okay for the audience to keep with its traditions?
And yet, it was by and large a pretty drab audience that assembled Saturday night. When did fandom get so grey?
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Do NOT see "Star Wars - The Clone Wars"!
Warning: Spoilers
(spoilage factor: pick a dumpster in a back alley. Any dumpster will do.)
I took my wife to see a Star Wars movie tonight and I had to apologize afterwards.
Can you imagine how bad that makes me feel? Beyond my own level of disgust at this steaming pile of celluloid excrescence, that is. I mean, I’m the one that first introduced her to Star Wars when we were dating, and now, well, now it’s come to this. Sigh.
I admit, I’d read a few bad reviews ahead of time, as well as one or two good ones, but I figured that being a true fanboy, being someone who’s had Star Wars in his life for as long as he can remember, I had to at least give this flick a chance. Well, at most I can say I’ve done just that. I gave it a chance. Wasn’t worth it though.
I smelled the first faint whiff of putrification when we first stepped into the local billion-plex. Only one theatre had been allocated to a Star Wars movie on its opening night. “Um…” I said, staring up at the board, “Well, maybe they’re just not sure they’ll get enough of an audience because it’s animated.” I ventured to my wife. The second hint something was amiss came when we bought the tickets – we were running a few minutes late and according to the board, the movie had already started. I asked the kid behind the counter if we’d still be able to make it – if the previews were still running and if there was room. “Oh yeah,” says the other kid beside him at the other till “You’ll be able to get in.” At this point my wife, sensing a disturbance in the Force, shot me a glance. Walking into the cinema itself, the guy in front of me rounded the corner from the entrance corridor, stared up at the audience and muttered “This can’t be good.” – there were a few people in it, but not many. Not more than 50 or 60 in a theatre that could seat more than 200.
I knew for sure we were in trouble when the film finally started to roll. The big “Star Wars” title jumped up onto the screen, but the music was all wrong! They weren’t running the theme under the opening title sequence? What the hell?!?! I knew ahead of time that they’d engaged a different composer to do the score for this installment (my wife wonders if it’s because John Williams got fragged in “Family Guy – Blue Harvest” but wouldn’t that mean they should have replaced him with Danny Elfman?), and that’s all well and good for the body of the film, but not the beginning! Not the opening title sequence!
It got worse. What’s worse? What’s worse is right at the very, very beginning, when they left out the crawl. Yes, the obligatory text crawl at the beginning of every Star Wars film setting up the recent backstory was absent. Nixed. Gone. Vamoosed! They replaced the crawl with, get this, a 1940’s-style newsreel sequence – some cheesy newsreel anchor doing a voiceover atop scenes of battle across the galaxy, narrating the state of the war. I suddenly realized why the cinema smelled like urine when I’d walked in – I think any self-respecting fanboy would have to fight to keep from pissing himself watching this dreck, and some likely failed.
Let’s get something straight: the John Williams Star Wars theme music and the opening crawl are fucking tradition. You don’t mess with tradition when it comes to the Star Wars movies. That music and that crawl set the tone. They are the Pavlovian cues that have been revving-up the salivary glands of fanboys for more than 30 years now. Take away that crucial combination and you automatically lose that very solid feeling that you’re about to be treated, treated, mind you, to a Star Wars film.
Then there’s the fact that the newsreel was awful. And I don’t mean awful merely because it had gruesomely disposed of the crawl like an alien bursting out of John Hurt’s chest, no, I mean this thing was poorly written, lazily performed, and completely out of synch with the Star Wars style of film. Did you see a newsreel re-cap in Empire? No. Did you see highlights at eleven during Jedi? Did the Three Stooges come out and try to sell you a war bond at the opening of A New Hope? I think not. Why? Because a newsreel doesn’t fit with the feel this type of movie is trying to create. Newsreels used in movies or television shows are iffy at the best of times. Many just don’t work (I’m talking about an episode of you, here, “MASH” [TV series]!). It definitely doesn’t work here.
It was at this point I had to start fighting the urge to howl “Turn down the suck!” at the screen, much the way you might try to choke back a fiery little stream of vomit in the back of your throat during Christmas dinner at grandma’s when the beer in your system from the previous night’s partying tries to come out to wish everyone a colourful Yule.
From there it was a blur of unforgiveable tediousness and downright bad film-making. Take your pick: maybe it was the endless fighting for the first hour or so that was so constant, so unremitting, so totally determined to not allow more than 20 seconds of characterization and plot, that I became desensitized to and bored with what I was seeing in the battle sequences. Desensitized and bored used to describe my impressions of a Star Wars battle?!? The hell I say! The hell I do say. The melees ended up playing like nothing so much as test beds for video games – and let’s face it, they probably will be. They didn’t really advance the plot and they were often downright stupid. I mean, come on, Anakin and his padawan Ahsoka crawling through a droid army under a box, bickering like an old married couple and no-one overhears them or stops to wonder “Hey! Why is this box moving? Why does it have feet? And why does it seem to be arguing with itself?!”
Maybe it was the lousy animation. Not only am I not a fan of this particular style of drawing, but the animation itself was crude. Fast, to be sure – very fast movements during the lightsaber duels especially, but at the same time herky-jerky. They lacked fluidity – they (especially the non-droid characters) lacked any sense of organic movement.
Maybe it was the frequently clunky dialogue. Sounded like it was written by the same gang that translated “Macross” into “Robotech”. If they could state the obvious or indulge in repetition, they would.
Maybe it was the stupid plot devices like Jabba’s infant son (frequently referred to as “Stinky”) getting kidnapped. They couldn’t think of a better way for the Sith to exacerbate the war? Or, if they wanted to draw the Hutts into it, they couldn’t think of a smarter way to do it? I mean, come on, in the original movies, Jabba may have been arrogant, cruel and overconfident, but he never really struck me as flat-out stupid. Here, the big space slug (whose mind is supposed to be powerful enough to withstand Jedi mind tricks) is manipulated like a toddler watching a cookie waved under his nose.
And let’s talk about bad characterizations: who would have expected Jabba to get all snuggly and cutesy like he does at the end when he’s reunited with junior?
And then there are the downright bad characters who were brought in: Jabba’s make-up sporting, dilettante uncle Ziro? There have been some out there on the net speculating and complaining that this particular gangster is the first gay Star Wars character. Personally, I don’t care. A character can be straight or gay as long as they’re a good character, and Ziro was most definitely not. Here’s another Hutt who was lead around by the nose. Granted, the Sith are specialists in manipulation, but if the original Jabba is any indication, again, Hutt crime bosses aren’t stupid or weak-willed, and you’d figure any slug who manages to eke out a living as a don on Coruscant, right under the noses of the Senate, probably has some brains as well as balls. As for the makeup and feathers? Meh. If someone were to explain it off as inner-systems fashions for oversized potato worms, then so be it. What bugged me was the acting associated with Ziro (that and the stupid choice of name). Why would they inflict a poorly done impression of Truman Capote on us? I felt like I was watching some bad outtake of “Murder by Death”. And it was such a bad Capote impression too!
Speaking of bad characters, let’s not forget how they dragged in pouty Padme for all of 10 minutes. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel there.
And the list of flaws goes on.
But don’t think this review is a totally one-sided hatchet job. Not totally anyway. I do have to admit there were two elements in this flick that didn’t annoy me. The jazz played by the band in Ziro’s bar wasn’t half bad. And Ahsoka wasn’t a bad character to watch either. I just wish she was a little less clichéd and had a better plot to live in. It’s nice for the Star Wars film canon to finally have a worth-while female Jedi character for girls in the audience (because I think kids would have more tolerance for this movie than adults – as much as I hate sounding like kids would be fooled by the garbage passing for an installment in the series) to focus on.
But overall though, this stinker ranks down there with the infamous Christmas Special. Oh yeah. It was that bad. When the final credits started to roll, I almost felt like standing up and yelling “Noooooooo!” like Vader in the end of Episode III – but then again, James Earl Jones did such a half-hearted job of that “no”, that it just wouldn’t do. No, you’d need a raw-edged, emotionally torn super “no” like Gary Oldman gave us in the beginning of Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to approximate the necessary no-ness. But that would just be entirely inappropriate for movie-theatre behaviour, so I remained silent and stewed on my anger. What I couldn’t believe though, was the sound of a group of fanboys in the back row clapping.
The Clone Wars made me angry that Lucas would allow this crap to be made an official part of his story.
It made me fearful that the Star Wars universe will be further butchered as time goes on and more spin-offs are excreted in the search for more money.
It made me depressed that such a great series has been brought so low.
“Anger, fear, depression – the Dark Side are they.” Fuckin’ ay, Yoda. Fuckin’ ay.
As one fan of quality SF to another, I urge you to avoid seeing “Star Wars – The Clone Wars”. Save yourself. I wish I could forget tonight’s experience, but in the words of Vader: “It is too late for me”.
(spoilage factor: pick a dumpster in a back alley. Any dumpster will do.)
I took my wife to see a Star Wars movie tonight and I had to apologize afterwards.
Can you imagine how bad that makes me feel? Beyond my own level of disgust at this steaming pile of celluloid excrescence, that is. I mean, I’m the one that first introduced her to Star Wars when we were dating, and now, well, now it’s come to this. Sigh.
I admit, I’d read a few bad reviews ahead of time, as well as one or two good ones, but I figured that being a true fanboy, being someone who’s had Star Wars in his life for as long as he can remember, I had to at least give this flick a chance. Well, at most I can say I’ve done just that. I gave it a chance. Wasn’t worth it though.
I smelled the first faint whiff of putrification when we first stepped into the local billion-plex. Only one theatre had been allocated to a Star Wars movie on its opening night. “Um…” I said, staring up at the board, “Well, maybe they’re just not sure they’ll get enough of an audience because it’s animated.” I ventured to my wife. The second hint something was amiss came when we bought the tickets – we were running a few minutes late and according to the board, the movie had already started. I asked the kid behind the counter if we’d still be able to make it – if the previews were still running and if there was room. “Oh yeah,” says the other kid beside him at the other till “You’ll be able to get in.” At this point my wife, sensing a disturbance in the Force, shot me a glance. Walking into the cinema itself, the guy in front of me rounded the corner from the entrance corridor, stared up at the audience and muttered “This can’t be good.” – there were a few people in it, but not many. Not more than 50 or 60 in a theatre that could seat more than 200.
I knew for sure we were in trouble when the film finally started to roll. The big “Star Wars” title jumped up onto the screen, but the music was all wrong! They weren’t running the theme under the opening title sequence? What the hell?!?! I knew ahead of time that they’d engaged a different composer to do the score for this installment (my wife wonders if it’s because John Williams got fragged in “Family Guy – Blue Harvest” but wouldn’t that mean they should have replaced him with Danny Elfman?), and that’s all well and good for the body of the film, but not the beginning! Not the opening title sequence!
It got worse. What’s worse? What’s worse is right at the very, very beginning, when they left out the crawl. Yes, the obligatory text crawl at the beginning of every Star Wars film setting up the recent backstory was absent. Nixed. Gone. Vamoosed! They replaced the crawl with, get this, a 1940’s-style newsreel sequence – some cheesy newsreel anchor doing a voiceover atop scenes of battle across the galaxy, narrating the state of the war. I suddenly realized why the cinema smelled like urine when I’d walked in – I think any self-respecting fanboy would have to fight to keep from pissing himself watching this dreck, and some likely failed.
Let’s get something straight: the John Williams Star Wars theme music and the opening crawl are fucking tradition. You don’t mess with tradition when it comes to the Star Wars movies. That music and that crawl set the tone. They are the Pavlovian cues that have been revving-up the salivary glands of fanboys for more than 30 years now. Take away that crucial combination and you automatically lose that very solid feeling that you’re about to be treated, treated, mind you, to a Star Wars film.
Then there’s the fact that the newsreel was awful. And I don’t mean awful merely because it had gruesomely disposed of the crawl like an alien bursting out of John Hurt’s chest, no, I mean this thing was poorly written, lazily performed, and completely out of synch with the Star Wars style of film. Did you see a newsreel re-cap in Empire? No. Did you see highlights at eleven during Jedi? Did the Three Stooges come out and try to sell you a war bond at the opening of A New Hope? I think not. Why? Because a newsreel doesn’t fit with the feel this type of movie is trying to create. Newsreels used in movies or television shows are iffy at the best of times. Many just don’t work (I’m talking about an episode of you, here, “MASH” [TV series]!). It definitely doesn’t work here.
It was at this point I had to start fighting the urge to howl “Turn down the suck!” at the screen, much the way you might try to choke back a fiery little stream of vomit in the back of your throat during Christmas dinner at grandma’s when the beer in your system from the previous night’s partying tries to come out to wish everyone a colourful Yule.
From there it was a blur of unforgiveable tediousness and downright bad film-making. Take your pick: maybe it was the endless fighting for the first hour or so that was so constant, so unremitting, so totally determined to not allow more than 20 seconds of characterization and plot, that I became desensitized to and bored with what I was seeing in the battle sequences. Desensitized and bored used to describe my impressions of a Star Wars battle?!? The hell I say! The hell I do say. The melees ended up playing like nothing so much as test beds for video games – and let’s face it, they probably will be. They didn’t really advance the plot and they were often downright stupid. I mean, come on, Anakin and his padawan Ahsoka crawling through a droid army under a box, bickering like an old married couple and no-one overhears them or stops to wonder “Hey! Why is this box moving? Why does it have feet? And why does it seem to be arguing with itself?!”
Maybe it was the lousy animation. Not only am I not a fan of this particular style of drawing, but the animation itself was crude. Fast, to be sure – very fast movements during the lightsaber duels especially, but at the same time herky-jerky. They lacked fluidity – they (especially the non-droid characters) lacked any sense of organic movement.
Maybe it was the frequently clunky dialogue. Sounded like it was written by the same gang that translated “Macross” into “Robotech”. If they could state the obvious or indulge in repetition, they would.
Maybe it was the stupid plot devices like Jabba’s infant son (frequently referred to as “Stinky”) getting kidnapped. They couldn’t think of a better way for the Sith to exacerbate the war? Or, if they wanted to draw the Hutts into it, they couldn’t think of a smarter way to do it? I mean, come on, in the original movies, Jabba may have been arrogant, cruel and overconfident, but he never really struck me as flat-out stupid. Here, the big space slug (whose mind is supposed to be powerful enough to withstand Jedi mind tricks) is manipulated like a toddler watching a cookie waved under his nose.
And let’s talk about bad characterizations: who would have expected Jabba to get all snuggly and cutesy like he does at the end when he’s reunited with junior?
And then there are the downright bad characters who were brought in: Jabba’s make-up sporting, dilettante uncle Ziro? There have been some out there on the net speculating and complaining that this particular gangster is the first gay Star Wars character. Personally, I don’t care. A character can be straight or gay as long as they’re a good character, and Ziro was most definitely not. Here’s another Hutt who was lead around by the nose. Granted, the Sith are specialists in manipulation, but if the original Jabba is any indication, again, Hutt crime bosses aren’t stupid or weak-willed, and you’d figure any slug who manages to eke out a living as a don on Coruscant, right under the noses of the Senate, probably has some brains as well as balls. As for the makeup and feathers? Meh. If someone were to explain it off as inner-systems fashions for oversized potato worms, then so be it. What bugged me was the acting associated with Ziro (that and the stupid choice of name). Why would they inflict a poorly done impression of Truman Capote on us? I felt like I was watching some bad outtake of “Murder by Death”. And it was such a bad Capote impression too!
Speaking of bad characters, let’s not forget how they dragged in pouty Padme for all of 10 minutes. Really scraping the bottom of the barrel there.
And the list of flaws goes on.
But don’t think this review is a totally one-sided hatchet job. Not totally anyway. I do have to admit there were two elements in this flick that didn’t annoy me. The jazz played by the band in Ziro’s bar wasn’t half bad. And Ahsoka wasn’t a bad character to watch either. I just wish she was a little less clichéd and had a better plot to live in. It’s nice for the Star Wars film canon to finally have a worth-while female Jedi character for girls in the audience (because I think kids would have more tolerance for this movie than adults – as much as I hate sounding like kids would be fooled by the garbage passing for an installment in the series) to focus on.
But overall though, this stinker ranks down there with the infamous Christmas Special. Oh yeah. It was that bad. When the final credits started to roll, I almost felt like standing up and yelling “Noooooooo!” like Vader in the end of Episode III – but then again, James Earl Jones did such a half-hearted job of that “no”, that it just wouldn’t do. No, you’d need a raw-edged, emotionally torn super “no” like Gary Oldman gave us in the beginning of Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” to approximate the necessary no-ness. But that would just be entirely inappropriate for movie-theatre behaviour, so I remained silent and stewed on my anger. What I couldn’t believe though, was the sound of a group of fanboys in the back row clapping.
The Clone Wars made me angry that Lucas would allow this crap to be made an official part of his story.
It made me fearful that the Star Wars universe will be further butchered as time goes on and more spin-offs are excreted in the search for more money.
It made me depressed that such a great series has been brought so low.
“Anger, fear, depression – the Dark Side are they.” Fuckin’ ay, Yoda. Fuckin’ ay.
As one fan of quality SF to another, I urge you to avoid seeing “Star Wars – The Clone Wars”. Save yourself. I wish I could forget tonight’s experience, but in the words of Vader: “It is too late for me”.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Score One for Megatron
He may never have been able to achieve a lasting victory over the Autobots, but Decepticon leader Megatron has beaten Canada Border Services.
Check out this story in today’s Province newspaper about how the borderguards tried to block the import of this Transformers toy, but had to back off.
Now, that he’s able to come north, we all know what kind of trouble ol’ Megatron will be up to – he’ll be looking to score some high-grade, organic, BC energon cubes. Oh yeah.
Check out this story in today’s Province newspaper about how the borderguards tried to block the import of this Transformers toy, but had to back off.
Now, that he’s able to come north, we all know what kind of trouble ol’ Megatron will be up to – he’ll be looking to score some high-grade, organic, BC energon cubes. Oh yeah.
"You're very persistent, Tron!"
Not too long ago, there was an explosion of excitement coming out of the San Diego ComicCon like a recognizer being nailed by a tank blast, when Disney surprise released a teaser for the new “Tron 2” – or “Tr2n” – in development.
Luckily, someone in the audience was quick enough on the draw to capture the thing on a cellphone cam and upload it to the net. I was able to catch it over at SF Signal and all I could say at first was “Wow.” It looked great. The clip focused on a lightcycle race across a typically surreal tron-world landscape. This time though, the look of the programs and their bikes was upgraded – sleeker, and the lightcycles themselves were able to make curving turns, rather than the traditional, wrenching 90 degree cuts we’re used to. Then there’s the appearance of Jeff Bridges, staring down on the scene from a white room like some tired old god of electronica. All in all, for three minutes, “Tron 2” (I’m not going to use the formal presentation of the name, because I think the embedded “2” looks dumb) looks very promising.
What annoys me though (aside from the placement of that “2”), is the startling lack of presence of this trailer, now that it’s been released. Initially, it was everywhere. But now, a quick search for it comes up rather lacking. It’s not even on the Disney site! What are the people at the cult-of-the-mouse thinking? They’ve whet the appetites of geeks everywhere, and now they’re keeping the teaser to themselves? Within a day of its release at the ‘Con, Disney should have posted a nice, clean, quality official version on its site and blasted it out across the net, as well as every multiplex movie screen with the rest of the pre-feature trailers and commercials. I’m a communications guy by trade, and while I’m not pretending to be the level of expert that resides in the halls of marketing masters at Disney, I do know enough to be able to say pretty confidently that they’re not doing themselves any favours by keeping this little piece of “Tron 2” close to their chests. Most of the buzz about the clip seems to have been positive, and while some would argue that they won’t lose ticket buyers by holding back on an early teaser, I would say they have a better potential to build a BIGGER audience and create MORE buzz by unleashing the thing, fostering its going viral, and getting it up on every SF site out there. Get people talking! Give them what they want – sneak peaks and inside scoops! Remember when Peter Jackson was developing LOTR? Weta had a site up right from the start that was dispensing photos and casting updates, news from the set and, best of all, trailers. By comparison, Disney’s approach now has been as if Kevin Flynn had sidled up to the hole in the game grid wall, hawked a loogie and spat through the breach, then walked away, rather than tearing through in his lightcycle and bringing Tron and Ram with him. In the modern age of information sharing, the smart media mogul starts building hype as early as possible (which Disney has done here) but feeds it by dropping tidbits on a regular basis. The “Tron 2” trailer from the ‘Con should have been released on a much, much larger scale.
At any rate, seeing the sequel’s teaser online put me in the mood to watch the original again – not that it takes much to do that; “Tron” is one of my favourites. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, I can always pop in the DVD and enjoy this movie.
Part of that comes from nostalgia. I have to admit, “Tron” is one of the greats of cinematic sci-fi that I didn’t get to see in the theatre. In the summer of 1982, I was a kid, and even though my friends and I were all gung-ho to see this flick ‘cause it looked really cool, my parents (and the other parents in the neighbourhood) couldn’t have cared less about it – to them, it looked weird and it was science fiction and it wasn’t about anything they understood or had any involvement with, so they weren’t going to waste any time or money taking us to see it. Sigh.
And yet, we were inundated with “Tron” marketing by-products none-the-less: from trailers on TV and the previews before other movies we saw, to posters and illustrated books, and let’s not forget the “surprises” in cereal boxes. Yes, Disney waged quite a campaign through the breakfast industry to get some hype for this flick. I can remember digging crunchily around in boxes of Shreddies and Rice Krispies, finally wrapping my hand around the tantalizing plasticy goodness of the prize hidden amidst the cardboard-tasting cereal, pulling out the crumply package to rip it open and connect spars and wheels of plastic to make my very own lightcycle! No jetwall of course, but with a pull of the plastic ripcord that little sucker would go dashing off across the kitchen floor to smash into the wall (not through it, like on the game grid)! At least, that was the plan, until our collie pup would come bouncing in to play too, scooping up the toy into his jaws and running off with that quick “come on, chase me!” trot. And then there was the video game – and I’m not talkin’ about that cheesy pixilated waste of time that was available for purchase for Atari home game sets (no, I’m not jealous because I didn’t have an Atari – my Colecovision consol was a much better system, even if it didn’t have as many games) – no, I’m talkin’ about the full-sized arcade game (back when there were such things as arcades) with the screen and the joystick set up just like the game in the arcade in the movie. That was the best! There was a Holiday Inn out on the edge of town that was kind of like a weekend getaway resort for the locals, and it had a small arcade with the “Tron” game. I remember it started off with a character in a maze, and you had to find your way to one of the exits on one of the four sides of the screen before some bad guys would come and de-rez you. Once you were through one of the exits, you’d be plunged into a game – each exit led to a unique game. One put you into a lightcycle match, another exit led to a tank battle in a maze (the joystick controlled the tank’s movement, but there was a spinning knob control as well to let you turn the tank’s turret independently), and the other two exits – well, I can’t remember what kind of games they led to ‘cause I was never very good at those. I was okay in the tank battle (although it was really more of my brother’s forte), but in lightcycles, I kicked ass. Three years ago, my wife and I had our honeymoon at Disneyland in California. When we went to Tomorrowland and hit upon the Starcade, I went in hoping to find an old “Tron” arcade game - I mean, this was Disneyland, the heart of the place that gave life to “Tron” – it was a reasonable expectation. What could be more appropriate than a little corner for this movie in an on-site arcade? No love though. “Just a lot of cold circuits”, like the program said. No sign of “Tron” at all. Not even a blue or red Frisbee in the gift shop. I shouldn’t have been surprised – it was 2005 and “Tron” was 23 years gone, and from all appearances, Disney’s all about keepin’ up with the times and the marketing hooks that’ll draw in new generations of little ones, and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for the classics. Oh sure, there are the rides and attractions that Disneyland just wouldn’t be Disneyland without, like the castle or Space Mountain or It’s a Small World, but forget about the other stuff that helped build its cache, cut new ground, or created memories for those of us who were kids a few decades ago. Anyone remember Disney’s take on Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”? Remember the submarine ride they built around it at the park? When we were there, it was behind a fence getting a facelift into the “Finding Nemo” ride. The only trace of 20,000 leagues was a mural high-up on the second storey of a snack shack – something I suspect they’d forgotten about for the time being but would eventually be wiped-out as part of the rebranding. So much for history. What chance would “Tron” have?
“Tron” also has links in memory to my old school back east – C. Cornwell School was waaaaaay out in the middle of the country, a grade 4-8 school where all the kids got bussed in after they’d been through their local village K-3 elementaries and before they were set loose in the local 9-13 (yes, I said 13, this was Ontario in the 80’s) highschool, and consequently, because it was so far out by the highway in the middle of farmers’ fields and forests, the school dances for the older kids around the holidays had to take place in the afternoons. The grade 4 & 5’s were considered too young for the dances, so they had a choice – go to the “activities room”, where the activities invariably sucked, or go to the “movies room”. “Movies” was a misnomer. There was only one movie: “Tron” – which shows a heck of a lot of cool for a middle school in the middle of farm country. Occasionally they’d also run some short Disney series about a cowboy running a stagecoach service in Australia, but usually it was “Tron”. And that was okay by me and most of the other kids, ‘cause “Tron” blew us away. Cool special effects like nothing else we’d seen before (or since), awesome fight scenes (come on, who wouldn’t be impressed by some dude using a Frisbee as an information storage medium one minute, a drinking bowl the next, and then taking it and blowing away bad guys after that!), good guys who were funny, bad guys full of menace, and, a sense that there were deeper elements to the plot that we were still too young and naïve to understand. Good times, good times.
Over the years, this film has aged well. Sure, the realities of the high-tech world have changed, but we can look at their clunky computers and the arcades and say, that’s how things used to be (kind of). As for the look of the special effects, the synthesis of computer graphics and traditional animation, running side-by-side with live action film elements, were seamless. Together they created a unique world that we hadn’t seen before and haven’t seen since. It gave the world of “Tron” its own texture and atmosphere, and a style that doesn’t date itself because it is so utterly different. This early representation of cyberspace essentially showed moviegoers a totally alien environment (something which was itself unheard of – take any other SF movie prior to “Tron” and look at its environment, in most cases it was something easily recognizable, be it cityscape, desert or jungle [with the exception, perhaps, of “2001”] – but no-one had ever seen anything like the world of “Tron”) – but one where recognizable characters were (for the most part) totally at home in, and thus it was an alien environment that we, as viewers, were able to be comfortable enough to visit for a while. Watch “Tron” today, and for all the advances in CG that have been employed to enhance the reality of film backdrops, it’s still pretty rare to see anything that utterly strange (and cool!).
Beyond the pretty pictures, as an adult, the deeper elements are what the story worth coming back to. As writer/director Steven Lisberger has mentioned on the commentary track, the movie explores the issue of freedom of creativity – who owns what gets created, along with the threat of corporations squeezing out individuals – something he notes many programmers were concerned about during the early days of computing. It’s an issue that’s still relevant today. All you have to do is listen to anyone who’s deeply into the software scene discussing the proprietary moves of certain big corporations versus the open-source and collaborative approach, and the impact of each on users. The film is also a series of “religious discussions” (to borrow from Ed Dillenger’s conversation with old Walter). We see programs created in their users’ images, those programs worshipping their users (after a fashion) as gods. In so presenting this macro-micro universe relationship, the film poses the question of whether we, as users/human beings, are merely running systems for larger, higher powers. By showing Flynn’s confusion and vulnerability upon entering the computer world, the film also asks whether theoretical gods thrown into our world would be any more capable (despite having a few bonus powers) or far-seeing than we. I think it also pointedly raises the issue of, as we see from Flynn’s initial surprise upon arrival, whether any creating entities would even be aware of humans as functioning, thinking, feeling minds. Lastly, though I don’t think it’s quite as overt as the other issues, I think “Tron” also brings up the question of a creator’s responsibility to its creations. Initially, Flynn, like any other user, gives no thought to the state of his programs, like Clu – they are things to be used to achieve his ends. The capture and destruction of Clu in the beginning has no meaning to Flynn beyond the personal inconvenience of not being able to hack into the memory he was looking for to find his evidence. He has no concept of Clu’s fear, pain or death. Until he arrives in the computer world, himself, and, most especially because he’s in as much physical danger as the programs around him, learns that what happens to these programs matters – he learns they have feelings too (here the writers tap into a kind of Shinto notion, that anything created by man that serves a purpose for man has a soul of its own). This begins to hit home when he has a hand in the de-rezzing of the slightly portly accounting program Crom (played nicely Peter Jurasik). But the real change comes aboard the salvaged recognizer when Ram dies. Ram asks Flynn to “Help Tron”, which, let’s face it, Flynn probably would have done anyway, having something of an idea that he probably needs Tron to help him get home, but Ram’s dying request puts an added imperative on it. Flynn says yes for Ram’s sake, to put the program at ease as he dies. Flynn is now feeling responsible for what happens to the programs. One wonders if that was an idea of the writers too, to ask the question of whether any supposed gods would feel any kind of responsibility to humanity? The other implied question, of course, is whether creators do have a responsibility to their creations, whether creations can simply be thrown away or if a creator must ask him or herself what the consequences are. A viewer is left wondering whether, back in the real world, Flynn will treat his programs differently (and I guess we’ll find out in “Tron 2”!). But the implication here is that perhaps we, as an audience, also have to start asking ourselves if we, as a society, need to be thinking about this as our science allows us to create more and more complex things – perhaps even artificial intelligences or genetically engineered life forms. I don’t think a viewer has to be religious or not to toss these questions around. The fact that the questions are posed gives the film much greater depth than the simple quest storyline on the surface and makes “Tron” worth re-watching every now and again.
I’m normally pretty cautious about sequels. Even with a great foundation to build upon, it’s too easy to teeter off balance and have a movie come crashing down upon itself (and risk damaging one’s impression of the original). “Tron 2” is no exception – there’s no way of telling whether it will successfully build about the smarts and the wonder of “Tron” until we see it. I am hopeful though. And while I’m being hopeful, I hope that Disney will smarten up and do a better job with releasing its trailers.
End of line.
Luckily, someone in the audience was quick enough on the draw to capture the thing on a cellphone cam and upload it to the net. I was able to catch it over at SF Signal and all I could say at first was “Wow.” It looked great. The clip focused on a lightcycle race across a typically surreal tron-world landscape. This time though, the look of the programs and their bikes was upgraded – sleeker, and the lightcycles themselves were able to make curving turns, rather than the traditional, wrenching 90 degree cuts we’re used to. Then there’s the appearance of Jeff Bridges, staring down on the scene from a white room like some tired old god of electronica. All in all, for three minutes, “Tron 2” (I’m not going to use the formal presentation of the name, because I think the embedded “2” looks dumb) looks very promising.
What annoys me though (aside from the placement of that “2”), is the startling lack of presence of this trailer, now that it’s been released. Initially, it was everywhere. But now, a quick search for it comes up rather lacking. It’s not even on the Disney site! What are the people at the cult-of-the-mouse thinking? They’ve whet the appetites of geeks everywhere, and now they’re keeping the teaser to themselves? Within a day of its release at the ‘Con, Disney should have posted a nice, clean, quality official version on its site and blasted it out across the net, as well as every multiplex movie screen with the rest of the pre-feature trailers and commercials. I’m a communications guy by trade, and while I’m not pretending to be the level of expert that resides in the halls of marketing masters at Disney, I do know enough to be able to say pretty confidently that they’re not doing themselves any favours by keeping this little piece of “Tron 2” close to their chests. Most of the buzz about the clip seems to have been positive, and while some would argue that they won’t lose ticket buyers by holding back on an early teaser, I would say they have a better potential to build a BIGGER audience and create MORE buzz by unleashing the thing, fostering its going viral, and getting it up on every SF site out there. Get people talking! Give them what they want – sneak peaks and inside scoops! Remember when Peter Jackson was developing LOTR? Weta had a site up right from the start that was dispensing photos and casting updates, news from the set and, best of all, trailers. By comparison, Disney’s approach now has been as if Kevin Flynn had sidled up to the hole in the game grid wall, hawked a loogie and spat through the breach, then walked away, rather than tearing through in his lightcycle and bringing Tron and Ram with him. In the modern age of information sharing, the smart media mogul starts building hype as early as possible (which Disney has done here) but feeds it by dropping tidbits on a regular basis. The “Tron 2” trailer from the ‘Con should have been released on a much, much larger scale.
At any rate, seeing the sequel’s teaser online put me in the mood to watch the original again – not that it takes much to do that; “Tron” is one of my favourites. Doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it, I can always pop in the DVD and enjoy this movie.
Part of that comes from nostalgia. I have to admit, “Tron” is one of the greats of cinematic sci-fi that I didn’t get to see in the theatre. In the summer of 1982, I was a kid, and even though my friends and I were all gung-ho to see this flick ‘cause it looked really cool, my parents (and the other parents in the neighbourhood) couldn’t have cared less about it – to them, it looked weird and it was science fiction and it wasn’t about anything they understood or had any involvement with, so they weren’t going to waste any time or money taking us to see it. Sigh.
And yet, we were inundated with “Tron” marketing by-products none-the-less: from trailers on TV and the previews before other movies we saw, to posters and illustrated books, and let’s not forget the “surprises” in cereal boxes. Yes, Disney waged quite a campaign through the breakfast industry to get some hype for this flick. I can remember digging crunchily around in boxes of Shreddies and Rice Krispies, finally wrapping my hand around the tantalizing plasticy goodness of the prize hidden amidst the cardboard-tasting cereal, pulling out the crumply package to rip it open and connect spars and wheels of plastic to make my very own lightcycle! No jetwall of course, but with a pull of the plastic ripcord that little sucker would go dashing off across the kitchen floor to smash into the wall (not through it, like on the game grid)! At least, that was the plan, until our collie pup would come bouncing in to play too, scooping up the toy into his jaws and running off with that quick “come on, chase me!” trot. And then there was the video game – and I’m not talkin’ about that cheesy pixilated waste of time that was available for purchase for Atari home game sets (no, I’m not jealous because I didn’t have an Atari – my Colecovision consol was a much better system, even if it didn’t have as many games) – no, I’m talkin’ about the full-sized arcade game (back when there were such things as arcades) with the screen and the joystick set up just like the game in the arcade in the movie. That was the best! There was a Holiday Inn out on the edge of town that was kind of like a weekend getaway resort for the locals, and it had a small arcade with the “Tron” game. I remember it started off with a character in a maze, and you had to find your way to one of the exits on one of the four sides of the screen before some bad guys would come and de-rez you. Once you were through one of the exits, you’d be plunged into a game – each exit led to a unique game. One put you into a lightcycle match, another exit led to a tank battle in a maze (the joystick controlled the tank’s movement, but there was a spinning knob control as well to let you turn the tank’s turret independently), and the other two exits – well, I can’t remember what kind of games they led to ‘cause I was never very good at those. I was okay in the tank battle (although it was really more of my brother’s forte), but in lightcycles, I kicked ass. Three years ago, my wife and I had our honeymoon at Disneyland in California. When we went to Tomorrowland and hit upon the Starcade, I went in hoping to find an old “Tron” arcade game - I mean, this was Disneyland, the heart of the place that gave life to “Tron” – it was a reasonable expectation. What could be more appropriate than a little corner for this movie in an on-site arcade? No love though. “Just a lot of cold circuits”, like the program said. No sign of “Tron” at all. Not even a blue or red Frisbee in the gift shop. I shouldn’t have been surprised – it was 2005 and “Tron” was 23 years gone, and from all appearances, Disney’s all about keepin’ up with the times and the marketing hooks that’ll draw in new generations of little ones, and that doesn’t leave a lot of room for the classics. Oh sure, there are the rides and attractions that Disneyland just wouldn’t be Disneyland without, like the castle or Space Mountain or It’s a Small World, but forget about the other stuff that helped build its cache, cut new ground, or created memories for those of us who were kids a few decades ago. Anyone remember Disney’s take on Verne’s “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”? Remember the submarine ride they built around it at the park? When we were there, it was behind a fence getting a facelift into the “Finding Nemo” ride. The only trace of 20,000 leagues was a mural high-up on the second storey of a snack shack – something I suspect they’d forgotten about for the time being but would eventually be wiped-out as part of the rebranding. So much for history. What chance would “Tron” have?
“Tron” also has links in memory to my old school back east – C. Cornwell School was waaaaaay out in the middle of the country, a grade 4-8 school where all the kids got bussed in after they’d been through their local village K-3 elementaries and before they were set loose in the local 9-13 (yes, I said 13, this was Ontario in the 80’s) highschool, and consequently, because it was so far out by the highway in the middle of farmers’ fields and forests, the school dances for the older kids around the holidays had to take place in the afternoons. The grade 4 & 5’s were considered too young for the dances, so they had a choice – go to the “activities room”, where the activities invariably sucked, or go to the “movies room”. “Movies” was a misnomer. There was only one movie: “Tron” – which shows a heck of a lot of cool for a middle school in the middle of farm country. Occasionally they’d also run some short Disney series about a cowboy running a stagecoach service in Australia, but usually it was “Tron”. And that was okay by me and most of the other kids, ‘cause “Tron” blew us away. Cool special effects like nothing else we’d seen before (or since), awesome fight scenes (come on, who wouldn’t be impressed by some dude using a Frisbee as an information storage medium one minute, a drinking bowl the next, and then taking it and blowing away bad guys after that!), good guys who were funny, bad guys full of menace, and, a sense that there were deeper elements to the plot that we were still too young and naïve to understand. Good times, good times.
Over the years, this film has aged well. Sure, the realities of the high-tech world have changed, but we can look at their clunky computers and the arcades and say, that’s how things used to be (kind of). As for the look of the special effects, the synthesis of computer graphics and traditional animation, running side-by-side with live action film elements, were seamless. Together they created a unique world that we hadn’t seen before and haven’t seen since. It gave the world of “Tron” its own texture and atmosphere, and a style that doesn’t date itself because it is so utterly different. This early representation of cyberspace essentially showed moviegoers a totally alien environment (something which was itself unheard of – take any other SF movie prior to “Tron” and look at its environment, in most cases it was something easily recognizable, be it cityscape, desert or jungle [with the exception, perhaps, of “2001”] – but no-one had ever seen anything like the world of “Tron”) – but one where recognizable characters were (for the most part) totally at home in, and thus it was an alien environment that we, as viewers, were able to be comfortable enough to visit for a while. Watch “Tron” today, and for all the advances in CG that have been employed to enhance the reality of film backdrops, it’s still pretty rare to see anything that utterly strange (and cool!).
Beyond the pretty pictures, as an adult, the deeper elements are what the story worth coming back to. As writer/director Steven Lisberger has mentioned on the commentary track, the movie explores the issue of freedom of creativity – who owns what gets created, along with the threat of corporations squeezing out individuals – something he notes many programmers were concerned about during the early days of computing. It’s an issue that’s still relevant today. All you have to do is listen to anyone who’s deeply into the software scene discussing the proprietary moves of certain big corporations versus the open-source and collaborative approach, and the impact of each on users. The film is also a series of “religious discussions” (to borrow from Ed Dillenger’s conversation with old Walter). We see programs created in their users’ images, those programs worshipping their users (after a fashion) as gods. In so presenting this macro-micro universe relationship, the film poses the question of whether we, as users/human beings, are merely running systems for larger, higher powers. By showing Flynn’s confusion and vulnerability upon entering the computer world, the film also asks whether theoretical gods thrown into our world would be any more capable (despite having a few bonus powers) or far-seeing than we. I think it also pointedly raises the issue of, as we see from Flynn’s initial surprise upon arrival, whether any creating entities would even be aware of humans as functioning, thinking, feeling minds. Lastly, though I don’t think it’s quite as overt as the other issues, I think “Tron” also brings up the question of a creator’s responsibility to its creations. Initially, Flynn, like any other user, gives no thought to the state of his programs, like Clu – they are things to be used to achieve his ends. The capture and destruction of Clu in the beginning has no meaning to Flynn beyond the personal inconvenience of not being able to hack into the memory he was looking for to find his evidence. He has no concept of Clu’s fear, pain or death. Until he arrives in the computer world, himself, and, most especially because he’s in as much physical danger as the programs around him, learns that what happens to these programs matters – he learns they have feelings too (here the writers tap into a kind of Shinto notion, that anything created by man that serves a purpose for man has a soul of its own). This begins to hit home when he has a hand in the de-rezzing of the slightly portly accounting program Crom (played nicely Peter Jurasik). But the real change comes aboard the salvaged recognizer when Ram dies. Ram asks Flynn to “Help Tron”, which, let’s face it, Flynn probably would have done anyway, having something of an idea that he probably needs Tron to help him get home, but Ram’s dying request puts an added imperative on it. Flynn says yes for Ram’s sake, to put the program at ease as he dies. Flynn is now feeling responsible for what happens to the programs. One wonders if that was an idea of the writers too, to ask the question of whether any supposed gods would feel any kind of responsibility to humanity? The other implied question, of course, is whether creators do have a responsibility to their creations, whether creations can simply be thrown away or if a creator must ask him or herself what the consequences are. A viewer is left wondering whether, back in the real world, Flynn will treat his programs differently (and I guess we’ll find out in “Tron 2”!). But the implication here is that perhaps we, as an audience, also have to start asking ourselves if we, as a society, need to be thinking about this as our science allows us to create more and more complex things – perhaps even artificial intelligences or genetically engineered life forms. I don’t think a viewer has to be religious or not to toss these questions around. The fact that the questions are posed gives the film much greater depth than the simple quest storyline on the surface and makes “Tron” worth re-watching every now and again.
I’m normally pretty cautious about sequels. Even with a great foundation to build upon, it’s too easy to teeter off balance and have a movie come crashing down upon itself (and risk damaging one’s impression of the original). “Tron 2” is no exception – there’s no way of telling whether it will successfully build about the smarts and the wonder of “Tron” until we see it. I am hopeful though. And while I’m being hopeful, I hope that Disney will smarten up and do a better job with releasing its trailers.
End of line.
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