My Nominations for the Aurora Awards

I've been putting off my nominations for this year's Aurora Awards (Canada's highest honour for literary speculative fiction) for a while now. Partly because I was still mulling over which works to nominate, and, admittedly, partly because I just didn't make any time for it. But the deadline's looming (February 28th, for those of you who have been procrastinating like me), so it's gotta be done now.

I don't claim to have read everything published by every Canadian author in 2008, but I've read enough that's good, mediocre and down right sloppy to be comfortable nominating the ones I have encountered that I consider to be the best.

The rules allow for three nominations (each given equal value) in each category. Voting for takes place shortly after the nomination period ends and the Awards will be given out at Anticipation/Worldcon in Montreal this August.

And so, my nominations for the Auroras:

Best Long-Form Work in English:
"Very Hard Choices" by Spider Robinson

(This is my only nomination in this category because I haven't read any other novels that were eligible)


Best Long-Form Work in French:

(No nominations because I haven't read any novels published in French)


Best Short-Form Work in English:
"The Devil's in the Details" by Kevin Cockle - in On Spec, Summer 2008 issue
"Ancients of the Earth" by Derryl Murphy - in Tesseracts Twelve
"Wylde's Kingdom" by David Nickle - in Tesseracts Twelve

(This category was a real tough one to make choices - there were a lot of other really good stories this year, but ultimately, you've got to go with the ones that are not only top notch, but stick out in your memory)


Best Short-Form Work in French:

(Again, no nominations here, not having read any French language publications)


Best Work in English (Other):
"Tesseracts Twelve" edited by Claude Lalumiere
"Identity Theft and other stories" by Robert J Sawyer
On Spec magazine


Best Work in French (Other):

(Same as previous - didn't read anything in French, so no nominations)


Best Artistic Achievement:

(As much as I hate to say it, there wasn't any art this year that really blew me away. Admittedly, I don't tend to nominate art at all though.)


Fan Achievement (Fanzine):
Fan Achievement (Organizational):
Fan Achievement (Other):

(No nominations for any of these final categories because nothing I've come across relating to them this year really stands out. I won't be nominating my own blogs, "bloginhood" and "Not A Planet Anymore" in the fanzine category because I kind of think it's in poor taste to nominate yourself for awards, especially ones of this stature.)


Stay tuned for my Hugo Award nominations tomorrow.

Dollhouse Made of Plastic

Warning: Spoilers
(spoilage factor: about the same as an apple that's fallen down a flight of stairs)

Two episodes down and I'm still less than impressed with Whedon's new show "Dollhouse". No interesting dialogue, cliched characters, and this week's story was about as unoriginal as it gets.

How many times have we seen or read about a manhunt where our plucky protagonist is told, "Okay, skippy, you've got --- minutes/seconds/whatever headstart, then I'm comin' after ya!" Chalk one more up to "Dollhouse", and what's really disappointing (especially from a storyteller of Whedon's calibre) is that there's no new angle to it.

With all of the plot possibilities that "Dollhouse" has open to it, why would they retread old ground like this? Granted, the point is that our hero plays a diverse set of roles as she goes from one assignment to another, and not all of them can be new or cool. But at least if there's no way to avoid old hat like this, if no new angles can be found, there should be some sense of tension - and there is none, 'cause it's only episode 2 and we can't kill-off the lead character; or maybe some good banter, but again, none.

Episode 3 of "Dollhouse" hits the air this Friday, and it's going to have to wow me, otherwise it's strike 3. I've got better things to do on a Friday night than waste time on a show that's boring me as much as this one.

Time to Cut the Puppet Strings

"Star Fleet" is back - and I don't mean a revamp of James T. Kirk's employers. A week or two ago, my friend Steve (a fellow fanboy at the office) brought to my attention news that the old marionation series is being re-issued on DVD.

Apparently the show had a big British following. I remember it from when I was a kid back in the early 80's in Ontario... my parents had bought the family's first VCR (wisely: a VHS) and the department store that sold it had its own rental section. After renting "Star Wars" a couple of times and going quickly through the Disney collection, we decided to give "Star Fleet" a try. I mean, it had a blatant SF name - it had to be cool, right? Right? Ugh.

I've never been a fan of marionation to begin with. There's something vaguely creepy about it, especially when it tries to be detailed and real. Amidst the scale furniture and intricate clothing there are these strange big-headed figures that either move in bobbing, syrupy slowness or quick, clumsy jerks. As much as I enjoyed parts of it when I was little, I always found the Christmas classic "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and similar holiday productions to be vaguely unsettling. Worse still was "The New Adventures of Pinochio" on Sunday mornings, followed by some other show that was kind of like the "Addams Family" except in marionation. To this day I don't like that style, which is one of the main reasons why "Team America: World Police" didn't work for me.

"Star Fleet" was worse. It was a science fiction show with lots of scenes of space flight and space battles, but every shot of the cruisers and planets out there in the void felt cramped and clausterphobic. The ship itself looked like a hand-vac with the engine block and foils of an X-Wing fighter lashed on to its aft section. The giant robot didn't do anything for me either. Admittedly, I remember very little of the plot, except that it felt disappointingly like the anime "Battle of the Planets" that had been a staple of my TV watching in the late 70's.

Funny thing though: I hadn't given "Star Fleet" any thought since I'd last seen it as a kid, but as soon as Steve mentioned it, the theme music from the opening title sequence and even the song from the closing credits came back with crystal clarity. I wish they hadn't.

Leave the puppets to biodegrade on the compost heap of the past.

All of This Has Happened Before...

Warning: spoilers
(spoilage factor: about the same as the fruit Tyrol was looking at just as the nukes fell)

Watching the final season of BSG these past couple of weeks has frequently left me with the same kind of feeling of deja vu that the Final Five Cylons seem to experience on a regular basis. No, that doesn't mean that when I go for a walk along the shore at Boundary Bay that I get the impression I'm in a street market on another world - far from it. Rather, it's the case that some moments in recent episodes seem to have been lifted from other SF productions.

Take last Friday's episode for example. Sam's bullet-wound to the head allows him to see the Final Five's past as well as the big picture, and he's just dying to tell the others. Kara eventually has to decide to allow the doctors to perform the operation that will save his life, but could cause him to lose his newly-acquired memories and awareness. This felt an aweful lot like the episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space 9" where Sisko is endowed with prophetic abilities during his search for a lost Bajoran city, but faces death because of the strain on his body. His son decides to allow the operation that saves him, but costs him his visions. Now, BSG co-creator Ron Moore had a solid history working with DS9, and while I don't know if Moore was around during that particular episode, I wonder if he and his writers aren't drawing from it.

Also last week, the episode's final confrontation between Cavil (or "Jonathan" if you prefer) and Ellen felt familiar. She tries to tell him that it's okay to be who and what he is, and Cavil responds by assuring her he'll open her brain. The whole thing felt distinctly Blade Runner-ish to me. Reminded me a lot of Roy coming for a reckoning with Tyrrel and using his thumbs like egg-beaters in the doctor's eyesockets when he's told that it's fine that he's an android who won't get to live any longer.

Lastly, on the episode two weeks ago, there was Gaeta's last second of life in front of the firing squad. Just before the order to fire is given, he remarks that the pain from his amputation has finally stopped. This cease of pain in the moment before death is one that's been used a few times in other stories, but the one that comes most quickly to mind for me is the death of The Master at the end of "Doctor Who" series 3 where he notes that the drums he's been hearing all his life have finally stopped.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about BSG doing a little borrowing or being inspired by other SF. The adaptations to BSG circumstances have certainly been done well. And yes, BSG has on many previous occasions made allusions both to its predecessor and other shows. But these examples seemed different in a way... perhaps more overt because they had something to do with the plot rather than being merely asides? I'm still trying to figure that out.

Dollhouse Needs A Reno

I'm waiting for Joss Whedon's new series "Dollhouse" to prove it's more than just plastic.

Sure there was an action sequence, and yeah it tried to create a couple of dramatic moments with confrontations with dangerous people and painful memories (sort of) and intense debates about morality, but, as odd as it sounds (especially with a Whedon series), there just didn't seem to be any life in it. All of the actors looked like they were trying to act their parts, as opposed to giving engaging performances where they were their characters. And characters that have a life of their own are crucial to a series like this that isn't giving the audience anything especially new in terms of concepts (we've seen artifically-implanted personalities many times over the years, most recently with Christian Slater's Jekyll & Hyde remake "My Own Worst Enemy" - and if you're looking for an example of people having multiple personality reprogramming sessions, think back to that episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" when the Hirogen turned the ship into a hunting preserve). In fact, it's characters and dialogue that make a Whedon series enjoyable, intelligent and memorable, but so far, nothing's at the level it should be.

Now you may argue that "Dollhouse" is a different type of show than Buffy, "Angel" or "Firefly", and that's true, and so the same types of dialect and terms of reference can't be rehashed. But creating a different mood, world and set of problems doesn't negate the need for characters who make the audience want to pay attention. And the characters in the premier didn't feel authentic enough and didn't say anything compelling enough to really make me care.

To be fair though, it was only the pilot. A lot of great SF shows are pretty wobbly for the first few episodes, or even the first season or two (the first season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is absolutely unwatchable, as far as I'm concerned). Maybe "Dollhouse" will get stronger once it gets a few more episodes under its belt. If it lasts that long (and the guessing game about Fox and the awful Friday night slot is a whole different discussion).

I didn't hate Friday's premier, but I didn't love it either. I'll give it another week or two to see if it gets stronger.

No Room for Fanboys at the Cinema

It looks like on BC's Lower Mainland at least, the movie theatres want geeks to come and spend money on films and popcorn and the like, just as long as the films aren't about geeks themselves. It's pissed me off to no end that in the entire Metro Vancouver region this weekend, not one cinema is devoting a single screen to "Fanboys". Not one!

Now, to be fair, with the amount of incessant tinkering and revising that's been done to this little flick, and with all the delays, it does, admittedly, have a reasonable potential for suckage. And yes, I've read one review so far (the film seems to be strangely absent from reviews in big media here, as though they've all turned their backs on it because it's openly nerdy and thus not cool enough to warrant their "Bride Wars"-obsessed critiques). But to not have at least one multiplex show it on one screen? Come on!

I mean, there are still theatres showing "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (a couple of months after its embarrassing debut) and anyone (like me) who made the mistake of seeing that one knows the only thing it's standing in is a pile of shit as deep as Keannu Reeves' inability to act. Never mind the other crappy new flicks that are fresh out and getting plenty of screen time. Don't the theatre chains know that while they're getting mediocre turnouts for the low-quality mainstream stuff, they'd probably get good turnouts for "Fanboys" even if it isn't that good (and I'm not saying whether it is or isn't 'cause I haven't seen it yet and likely won't for a while at this rate) because they'd probably get a ton of geeks turning out to watch it out of curiousity at how it portrays geek culture. Never mind the flood they'd get if the film's any good. In an age where movie theatres are kicked hard in the bottom line by video stores, sales of DVD's for home viewing, and internet downloads, they can't afford not to diversify and bring in any flick that might attract paying customers, especially fanboys, who tend to come out to flicks like this in flocks and spend lots of money on junk food and video games in the lobby while they're waiting. Way to cultivate a profitable market, Cineplex!

Seattle Drops Out of Worldcon Race

I was greatly disappointed today when I was reading Rob Sawyer's blog and came across word that Seattle has dropped out of the race to host Worldcon in 2011.

Bid organizers say there were other groups competing for the same facilities in the Emerald City during the same period Worldcon was planned, and these other groups were already able to make financial commitments. Unable to get the top-notch facilities they'd wanted, the bid group decided to pull-out, rather than continue with a second-rate setup.

As a result, Reno wins the Worldcon 2011 bid by default.

Good for the Nevada crowd, certainly. But I think Seattle would have made a good location, especially since it's the home to the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. Personally, I would have gone to a Worldcon in Seattle in a heartbeat, because it's just two hours down the road from Vancouver (once you've spent the prerequesite 9 years waiting in line to cross the border, that is) and I've always enjoyed day trips there. Reno, on the other hand, is a bit more of a trek and has (no offence to Reno residents) never much interested me. With any luck, Seattle will be able to pull something together again for a bid in the future.

In the meantime, I'm very much anticipating a good time at Worldcon this summer in Montreal.

Update on the 365 Short Story Challenge

I admit, I've started to fall behind.

The challenge seemed easy at first, read one short story in the evening before resuming whatever novel was in front of me and I'd be able to keep pace. Problem was I got into a stretch of really, really good novels that I didn't want to put down for even a few minutes to allocate time for something short. I mean, with Gaiman's "American Gods", Dan Simmons' "Muse of Fire" and Moore's "Watchmen" can you blame me?

At any rate, now that I'm done "Watchmen" I'm going to be putting the plan back on track. I'm in the middle of a backissue of On Spec (Winter '99) that I picked up at VCon a couple of years ago, and once that's done I'll crack open one of the anthologies I aquired recently and bring the tally up to where it should be, or even put myself ahead of the game again. I'm thinking either of the Australian collection "Dreaming Again" that wife gave to me for Christmas, or "Gaslight Grimoire" (an anthology of fantasy riffs on Sherlock Holmes) which I got at VCon last fall.

As for thoughts on some of the short stories I read just prior to the recent hiatus, the only one that really sticks out in my mind was Claude Lalumiere's "Njabo" (again from a backissue of On Spec - Fall '03). It's the tale of an artist living in a multi-partner family who struggles to come to grips with dreams where her daughter becomes an elephant and leads other pachyderms on a crusade to rid the world of their human tormentors. The strange situations Lalumiere presents always demand that the reader go hunting for metaphors amongst the brush of the story. Here, the obvious one seems to be of the power of art, or, because of the child, of any creative act, to force us to re-evaluate our perception of the world, and to bring the possibility of radical change. Given the diverse natures of the narrator and her partners, and that dispite their differnces they continue to stay together as a family unit and love one-another, and with their ultimate fate steered by the daughter, I wonder too if Lalumiere is using the family as allegory for a Canada, with its diversity, struggling with changing identity, staying together despite the differences of its components, and perhaps with a large, world-changing destiny (though I would hope for one not nearly as violent as that implied by the child's transformation). Always enjoyable to read his stuff.

Now back to the challenge and making up lost ground.

Happy Chinese New Year

Gung Hei Fat Choy to everyone out there at the beginning of the year of the Ox. My wife's Chinese, so we usually mark the new year with a nice supper centred around a few traditional dishes. But for my part, being an SF fan, the holiday's gotta be celebrated with some good storytelling too.

First and foremost in the tradition, is sitting down to watch John Carpenter's masterpiece: "Big Trouble in Little China". One of my all-time favourite movies. I've enthused about it here before, so I won't got into too many details, but it's a great combination of humour and action as we ride along with John-Wayne-talking (at least when his confidence is up) fish-out-of-water truck driver Jack Burton, perhaps one of the greatest movie sidekicks of all time. Bonus points to Carpenter for being dedicated enough to make sure the insults and threats the Chinese characters fire back and forth at each other in Cantonese actually make sense (I know because my wife often chuckles away when she watches and has translated some of them). And of course, the dialogue in the film is ripe with one-liners that stick in the memory for years. My favourite is from the villain, Lo-Pan: "You were not brought upon this world to 'get it', Mr. Burton!"

The laugh fest was followed-up by Ang Lee's melancholy fantasy "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". This too is movie that never gets stale. It's easy to get swept up in the golden-age tapestry of flying heroes wielding swords against foes to settle epic grudges. Each viewing unveils a new nuance in the acting or the characters' interactions with one-another, and the lush visuals are always a treat.

Of course, this year New Years eve fell on Robbie Burns night, so the turnip cake was followed up with a double-shot of scotch. Not the most obvious culinary combination in the world, but it worked, and as "Big Trouble in Little China" illustrated, more often than not, East and West work very well together.

geekTunes

I've been spending quite a few evenings lately crawling around the Apple iTunes store hunting for music that I don't already have on CD to load into the new iPhone I was given for Christmas. In addition to an assortment of rock, blues, jazz and classical pieces, I've been pleasantly surprised at how much in the way of SF-related stuff I've been able to find.

Tonight's geeky acquisition was a historical piece - Orson Welles Mercury Theatre radio play of "The War of the Worlds". That'll be a great one for a road trip sometime.

And yet, I would have been somewhat surprised if the site hadn't had that gem. The real shocker was some of the soundtracks that turned up, from movies that were either old or not well received by the general audience. I mean, I found the main theme for "Krull"! The movie was shit (mostly) but man did Horner write a big, ballsy piece of classically-inspired music. John Barry's score for "The Black Hole" is also there - another craptacular movie (which, I've admitted openly before is one of my guilty pleasures) that you wouldn't expect to find on a site like this ('cause Disney sure as hell doesn't seem to have any memory of it beyond the anniversary DVD that was released a few years ago). There are a couple of renditions of the "Tron" score available too, although with "Tron 2" (or however they're trying to funk-up the spelling now) in the works, it isn't surprising that this old chestnut would get dusted off for playlists. This led my to Journey's "Only Solutions" from the movie's end credits, which I've enjoyed for years but have had a tough time finding until now. Follow that up with a couple of John Carpenter pieces - Snake's Uniform from "Escape from LA" (a badass blues riff on the old "Escape from New York" theme) and The Porkchop Express from my favourite "Big Trouble in Little China" (and no piece of music could be more appropriate right now, what with me living hin the heart of Richmond - the new Little China - and the whole Lower Mainland being socked-in with fog as thick as wet wool that would make San Francisco envious) - and I'm a happy guy.

And bonus points for stocking comedian Sean Cullen's "Food of Choice" song. Not SF per se, but it's the kind of thing a mad scientist or wannabe Bond villain might hum under his breath while preparing to proceed with his nefarious and science-fictionally-inspired scheme, so it's worth mentioning here.

Say what you will about how loyal geeks are in buying up stuff related to their favourite cult classics, I hadn't expected to find this stuff because, let's face it, the site is about making money and you'd figure they wouldn't be devoting storage space to music that the largest percentage of the population wasn't clamouring for. Makes me wonder what the purchase stats are for some of this stuff - whether, in fact the geeks are logging-on in droves, or whether the site's geeky creators added this music as part of their own little sub-culture corner.

At any rate, good on Apple for picking a nice bushell of geek tunes!

BSG Resumes

Warning: Spoilers!
(spoilage factor: take a trip down to your local dump - any ol' day will do)

Frak me!

What a crushing way to open a new - and the last - season! (I've said it before and I'll say it again, as much as they want to call this 4.5, as far as I'm concerned, if it's kicking off a year after the season initially began, then this isn't just a hiatus and this isn't 4.5 - this is season 5, fellow toaster-lovers)

D's suicide was a shocking moment. But only for a moment. I then began to reflect on the fact that Dualla's survived the near total annihilation of her species, lived in a pretty much constant state of siege for several years, has seen her marriage crumble and then, when she finally arrives at Earth, humanity's last hope, it's a somewhat radioactive cemetery. Seen in that light, her depression and feelings of hopelessness are not surprising. Sure, she appeared to pick up at the end, but it's not uncommon for those who are suicidal to display an apparent change in outward attitude once they've made their decision to end their life - her last date with Apollo could be seen as putting her affairs in order and allowing herself to be happy knowing she would not be allowing her self to continue in a bleak tomorrow. A very sad end for a likable, and very human character.

And then there's the Earth issue. Yeah, they're calling it Earth, but is this 13th Colony really Earth? Our Earth? I suspect the answer is no. Bear with me here... At the close of the season last spring, when the Fleet finally arrived in orbit, there was a suspicious little part of my mind that doubted this planet was the real deal. Not just because that would be too fortunate for a group of people beset by every turn of ill luck imaginable short of alien anal-probing (unlike the old series - I mean, come on, what do you think was really going on in that glowing white ship in the "War of the Gods" episode?). No, part of me was doubting because the space scenes showed no shots of the moon, nor was there any sign of it in the ever-cloudy sky. Nor did we see any other pix of recognizable real estate from the home system.

Now, you might point out that the Fleet was in pretty close orbit, and the moon's kinda out there, so it wouldn't necessarily be visible in the space scenes. And you might note that because the jump drives bring the ships instantaneously to where they want to go (usually), of course we wouldn't see any shots of the Tharsis volcanoes rearing up from Mars, or Jupiter's great red spot, or Saturn's rings, because there would be no need for a leisurely tour through the solar system in a long sunward orbit, and no direct flights in, and no aerobraking maneuvers in the Oort Cloud or some gas giant's atmosphere. And you'd be right on both accounts.

And yet, if we don't see any of the other familiar land (er, space) marks of our solar system, how can we really know that this is Earth and not some other little blue wet rock zipping around a cheery little yellow star in any ol' corner of the galaxy? We can't.

Here's my theory, for what little it's worth: During the exodus in the wake of whatever mysterious disaster befell Kobol (now green and quiet and probably a perfect home if anyone thought of doing the unexpected and turning around and deking around Cavil and his cabal and making the long trek back towards where they started, but I digress), the last-cycle Cylons went west and set up the 13th Colony on "Earth". A millenium or two of relative peace and prosperity passes, then there's some trouble and some nukes and history repeats itself. Refugees leave the 13th Colony and head out some unknown distance across the stars where they find another reasonably hospitable little blue planet and set up shop. Fondly remembering the home they left behind, they probably named the new planet Earth or New Earth or something to that effect - just as the homesick colonials named their first attempt to settle down "New Caprica". In short, I don't think the ruined "Earth" we've just been shown is the real deal - the final stop, the actual Earth - our Earth, is probably a little way down the road and will likely be found and fought over in the coming episodes. This would allow for a nod towards the old series (as the writers like to do from time to time) where the real Earth would be ours as it is now - except, in the vein of the new series, we would be the descendants of the 13th Colony Cylons. And my theory can't be that out to lunch, because Adama suggests as much at the end of this first episode where he says the people of the 13th Colony would have set out to find a new home, just as the new-era Colonials have over the past five years. That's my two bits. Make of it what you will.

Of course, the whole issue of mega disasters and refugee migrations across the stars makes me wonder about something... What's happening back on the 12 Colonies? We haven't seen anything of life there since Starbuck rescued Anders and the other survivors. At the time, the Cylons were definitely working hard to restore the Colonial worlds so they could live there themselves. Then we don't hear anything else from them except for the ones aboard the basestars chasing the Fleet across the galaxy and subsequently engaging in civil war. But all of the Cylons didn't just pack up and leave the Colonies to help with the extermination efforts, did they? There's gotta be some still behind on the Colonies continuing the home-renos, right? If so, would they have been embroiled in the civil war, or would that have only been their space-bound brethren? Would they spawn a human-like civilization on the 12 Colonies, now that the Resurrection Hub has been destroyed? (And how stupid would a machine mind have to be to think that it was safe putting all of its reincarnation eggs in one basket? Wouldn't there be other hubs? What about the Cylon homeworld that they used as their base of operations between the end of the last war and the attack on the Colonies? No spare parts or Ikea-style blueprints there?) Is the idea behind this series that there would ultimately be human and Cylon-as-close-to-human-as-makes-no-difference civilizations existing in isolation (but sometimes simultaneously) all over the galaxy - humanity and its children accidentally seeding the cosmos with life one disaster and war at a time? But if so, over time, it might get to be a crowded place if every disaster spawned an exodus as well as stay-at-homes (whether conquerors or survivors who never made it off-world and began to rebuild). Granted though, there's no evidence that the culture lasted on Kobol too long after the Colonials left thousands of years previous (unless they did something really cool and became post-human). But I digress...

The other big question this season-opener presents is who the frak is the final Cylon? For a big chunk of the episode, it sure looked to be Starbuck, especially with the discovery of the downed Viper and the blond-haired pilot's body with a wedding band and Kara Thrace dogtags. And yet, if nothing else, this series has repeatedly slapped audiences around with the hard lesson that appearances can be deceiving. So was it Starbuck, and is she the final Cylon? But things get complicated at the end where Tigh has his regressed vision/repressed memory, where his dead wife Helen is a part of his old life on the 13th Colony. Could she be the final member of the Final Five?

Last year, I was leaning towards Gaeta being most likely to be the last Cylon. But tonight's revelations throw that into question.

I now have a new theory: the final Cylon isn't a person/character per se, it's a artificially-designed, possibly quasi-intelligent piece of deliberately self-replicating genetic code. I'm thinking the final Cylon is an organic program of sorts, created who-knows-how-long-ago to periodically rebuild a group of the original Cylons. They're born, they live their lives, they have children and thus pass the code along, then die, and every so often, possibly every lifetime, somewhere among the population, this genetic program cobbles together a new copy of one of the original Cylons to resume the life cycle and continue to spread the genetic program throughout the gene pool so it can continue to replicate over time. Included in the program might be memories of the original (perhaps several of) former lives/incarnations/models that might be either time-released or dormant (possible for several generations/versions) until triggered by specific circumstances. In a sense, at some point in the deep past, the proto-Cylons/last-cycle Cylons figured out that they didn't need a huge Resurrection Hub ship in space that could be blown to pieces, if they just tricked biology into doing what they wanted they could still have immortality and without putting all their eggs in one basket. Sounds like a wacky idea, I know, but it would certainly explain why Saul Tigh (for example) has always been Saul Tigh, but doesn't remember living for 2,000 years, but suddenly dimly remembers a life with Helen (who might also have been from the Cylon gene pool and thus occasionally reprogrammed and relaunched every few generations) on the 13th Colony.

So what's your take on the big BSG questions? Is this Earth or will they find a true Earth elsewhere? What's your guess for the final Cylon? What's going on with Starbuck (the million dollar question of the entire series)? And are there any other mysteries that are nagging you?

The Best of BSG So Far

Just hours away from the resumption of "Battlestar Galactica" and the beginning of the series' end.

All this anticipation got my faithful sidekick harrysaxon and I in a bit of a reflective mood, so over at Not A Planet Anymore we cooked-up a Top 10 List of the Best BSG Episodes so far.

Must get some sleep now so I'll be able to fully appreciate the new episode tomorrow after a full day of work.

The Countdown to BSG - Boob Tube Groove

Only a few days left until season 4 (let's call a spade a spade: after this humongous delay, it's really season 5!) of Battlestar Galactica resumes.

To get everyone in the mood, here's the recent Fandom Forum from Space (Canada's science fiction specialty channel). Unlike most home-grown programming on Space, this show was actually pretty good. Lots of interesting speculation around how the series will end and who the 5th Cylon is.

Bonus: It was extremely cool to see comic and author Sean Cullen (the dementedly funny genius behind the song "Food of Choice") is a BSG fan and was on the panel.

The 365 Short Stories Challenge - An Update

Warning: Spoilers
(spoilage factor: about the same as a heaping spoonful of stuffing taken out of an undercooked Christmas turkey)

So far, things have been going well with the Challenge. Starting out with the Fall 2008 issue of On Spec as my primary reading material was a good way to rack-up a bunch of short stories quickly.

Fall 2008 (which I received in the mail in December) was On Spec's special Youth theme. The editors focussed entirely on getting stories from young authors in two categories: ages 15-18 and 19-23. For some, the lack of maturity, learning and experience was evident. Others, however displayed some fine talent and will be a treat for fans of good SF to read if they keep up with their writing. Here are the highlights:

"Too Long to Forgive" by Brittany McCartney
This could have been an interesting development on the Merlin legend, if not for the fact that it was far too deliberately vague, to the point where I didn't much care about what happened by the end.

"Lifeshop" by Susannah Ripley
Not a bad little description of the location for a possible turnaround after death, just not much of a story to it.

"A Cat Named Wellington" by Seanah Roper
Not a bad story. The Beatles' "Elinor Rigby" kept running through my head as I was reading it.

"Mad Science" by S. R. Kriger
Disturbing yet cute. Kriger has the makings of a good, solid writer.

"'No Entry' Signs and Other Cosmic Mysteries" by Stephanie Gray
Now this was a cracking good yarn. A typical young person in an uninteresting job pushes the boundaries in a banal kind of way and winds up, briefly, in a tunnel (feelings of the old "Zork" text-only computer game here) which she follows into a horrific scene, and upon escaping comes across an old guy at a coffee shop who shares some secrets of the universe. The importance of the "no entry" signs reminded me of the explanation for roadside attractions in Gaiman's "American Gods". Loved the little details in this story - having Odin wearing a Zepplin T-shirt was awesome - from that point on I had Robert Plant wailing "The Immigrant Song" in my head as I read the story. Gray's got some real talent.

"The Finale" by Yuri Fabrikantov
A solid, melancholy story.

"Blank" by Leah MacLean-Evans
Not really an SF story. Not an especially wowing piece of writing either.

"Paddywhackers Come Home" by Don Norum
Another good one. Not great, mind you, but a good story about an encounter with the other side.

"With Love" by Ashlin McCartney
This one read more like an installment from the middle of a novel the author's been working on, rather than a short story. Didn't feel terribly original either.

"Emily's House" by Andrew Campana
This one didn't feel terribly original either - I've come across a few stories over the years about kids in their creepy houses. That being said, this story was well done, especially in giving the sense that the girl in question was more-or-less at home in the place without herself being creepy. I'd look forward to reading more from Campana as he developes his talent.

"Charlotte's Eyes" by Priscilla McGreer
Another good, solid story worthy of this collection. McGreer knows how to write believable characters.

"Burning Feathers" by B. L. Trogen
Not bad. Not good. Kind of meh. The whole robot rights in court thing has been done before - a lot - and this twist on it wasn't especially gripping.

Now that this issue of On Spec out of the way, I've slowed down a bit. I'm currently focussing most of my attention on reading Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", but I'm adding to the short story tally every now and again by keeping a back-issue of On Spec - the Fall 2003 edition - on hand for when I go out for something like a haircut where I know I'll be waiting a little while and can get a short story or two under my belt. I'd missed Fall 2003 when it initially came out (I was buying off the shelf at the bookstore - which stocked the mag pretty irregularly - at the time, whereas now I have a subscription) but I was lucky enough to find it in the back-issues pile at the On Spec table in the Dealers' Room at VCon a couple of years ago. Having this in the back of the car to pick up now and then when I'm out and about will be a good way of making sure I don't fall behind.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Christmas in Who-Ville

Warning: Spoilers
(spoilage factor: the same as the leftover meat sack once the Cybermen have converted someone)

I finally had a chance to watch the new Christmas episode of "Doctor Who" the other day (thanks to a co-worker of mine who's also an SF fan and, being a Brit, can't miss episodes of the new Doctor and was kind enough to pass this one along when he was done with it). A good installment in the series, if not great.

It was appropriate for the Cybermen to be behind the invasion of Victorian London. With that era focussing on bigger and better machines, the advancement of science and the ever-present question of man's place amidst the adaptations (with people frequently being dehumanized into little more than flesh machines in the factories), the Cybermen, with their goal of conversion and mechanized progress, were a good fit.

That being said, I have to admit I'm getting a little bored with the constant apparent extinctions of the Cybermen (and the Daleks too), followed by their reappearances. Yes, yes, they're among the favourite badguys of the series, but it's more than a little contrived to see them brought back time and again after banishments and wipeouts just because the writers need some super bad-asses (or, in the case of the Cybermen, hard-asses) to perpetrate terrifying acts of brutality as part of some larger scheme. As neat as they have been to watch, let's just be done with them, shall we?

And there was something about the plot that didn't make sense... So they snagged kids from the workhouses to use as labour. Fine. Makes sense for the time period. But why wouldn't they convert them into more Cybermen? Even mini-Cybermen? Isn't that the Borg-ish thing that Cybermen are supposed to do?

And what was with thsoe weird, brass-face-plated Cyber-ape things?

However, I did think the TARDIS balloon created by the other trauma-induced-amnesiac "Doctor" was pretty funny.

And the steampunk mech that the Cybermen were driving in the end simply rocked! Ya gotta love a hundred foot tall steam-powered, gear-driven Cyberman/mobile factory. Steampunk + giant robots + Doctor Who = extreme coolness.

And now the waiting begins. Not too many more appearances left for Tennant before he hands the reins over to the 11th Doctor - that really young guy I've never heard of (my coworker says he's apparently a stage actor). I'll miss Tennant's frenetic energy, and part of me thinks they should have swung the pendalum back a bit and cast someone older than Tennant, but I'm willing to give the kid a chance - after all, the producers have been spot-on with their casting so far.

A Blizzard of Book Reviews

For a long time now, I've been meaning to catch up on writing book reviews. The last time I actually sat down and put down some thoughts about a book I'd just finished was probably May, and since then, the "finished pile" beside my desk has been growing larger and larger, increasing the risk of avalanche, and causing no end of clutter. Since most of Canada was hammered by snowstorms this holiday season (yes, yes, I know... we always get hammered by snowstorms during the winter, but this year was worse than most in the last decade or two), I thought it fitting to unleash my own blizzard and get all of these book reviews (some for relatively new books released in 2007 & 2008, others for older fare that I've just gotten around to for the first time) out of the way in one shot. Grab your shovel and Sorrel boots, you're about to be hip-deep in SF goodness.

Warning: spoilers
(spoilage factor: about the same as any given fruit taken off a wild apple tree in the middle of a field or on a farm that's been abandoned for a hundred years - some might have no spoilage at all, others, well, worms are extra protein, aren't they?)


"Valley of Day-Glo" by Nick DiChario
This quirky take on the post-apocalyptic journey follows a young man (the last member of his First Nation) named Broadway Danny Rose across parts of the eastern US that have been turned to wasteland seeking to find the mythical Valley of Day-Glo. Along the way, he has to avoid other hostile natives (bearing equally odd monickers) who fight for legitimate resources as well as absurd relics like marketing textbooks and Igloo water coolers. It's a real page-turner that has the reader constantly asking not only what will happen next, but also what new weirdness will BDR encounter. I didn't enjoy this book as thoroughly as DiChario's debut work of genius "A Small and Remarkable Life", but it's certainly worth a read.

"Identity Theft and other stories" by Robert J. Sawyer
Sawyer always does a solid job of writing entertaining hard SF, so it was a no-brainer when I saw his new collection on the shelf at the book store one day. The title was taken from one of the 17 stories within. "Identity Theft" and its companion piece "Biding Time" are film-noire style detective yarns that had me picturing the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet in some of the character roles (if Bogart and Greenstreet had been doing gumshoe flicks on Mars, that is). The collection also includes "Shed Skin", which Sawyer would later revisit and adapt into his successful novel "Mindscan". My favourites though were "Mikeys" about astronauts finding the remains of an alien observatory on the Martian moon Deimos (which reminded me of an old sci-fi novel that I read in my childhood where a plucky young adventurer discovers Phobos and Deimos are both alien starships - can't remember the title for the life of me) and "On the Surface", where Sawyer picks up the tale of the Morlocks of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" after the human inventor has fled back into the past.

On Spec - Spring 2008 issue
Why they chose cover art reminiscent of a giant testicle is beyond me, but aside from the pictures, this was a reasonably good issue. The highlights were Marissa K. Lingen's "Carter Hall Sweeps a Path" (another entertaining installment in the ice arena misadventures of the title character), Leah Bobet's poem "The Pack Rat's Manifesto". "Trickster", by Steve Stanton, about some really ambitious graffitti, was also worth the read.

"The Difference Engine" by William Gibson & Bruce Sterling
A great piece of steampunk from the early 90's revolving around the machinations to possess stolen computer punch cards. Gibson & Sterling to a top-notch job of creating the look and feel of Victorian England - the descriptions of London could have been from Dickens and they've nailed the Victorian mindset of the characters. The fragmented final section was perhaps a little too jarring for me, but ultimately it's a book I'd read again.

"Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson
It's taken me far too long to get around to reading this. You have to fully concentrate when you're reading Stephenson's masterpiece of cyberpunk (masterpiece may not be a good enough term... along with Gibson's "Neuromancer", "Snow Crash" is one of the twin gods of the cyberpunk sub-genre) to pick up on all the ideas he's firing around. It's worth every minute to explore a world where pizza delivery guys work for the mob when they're not spending time in cyber bars or crossing paths with glass-spear-wielding hitmen or trying to avoid getting their brains hacked by ancient Sumerian memes. It's not the kind of book where you just hang on and enjoy the ride -it's one that you'll be thinking about long after the ride is over.

"Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge
I'm a bit conflicted about this singularity story. On one hand, I think Vinge has done a successful job at creating a story where the primary character is, for the most part, unlikeable, but where we feel for him as he tries to adjust to what is essentially an alien world and re-invent himself. "Rainbow's End" also at times felt like a bit of an eerie techno homage to "The Wizard of Oz" as much as "Alice in Wonderland". And yet, it failed to "wow" me. I'm not sure why, either. I may have to re-read it in a year or two to try to answer the question. It certainly wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't great, in my opinion, either.

"Victory of Eagles" by Naomi Novik
Typical of Novik's Temeraire books, VoE is a quick, fun read - a nice summer book. It's always great to see what new spin she's put on the Napoleonic wars and what kind of strategies the military minds of that era would have cooked up for dragon aerial corps. Novik takes us in a darker direction with this installment, as Temeraire and Laurence are seperated for much of it as they deal with different kinds of imprisonment as punishment for bringing Napoleon the cure for the dragons' illness at the end of the previous book. Even when the two are reunited after Temeraire forms his own vigilante dragon militia, it's still not a happy time as Laurence feels his honour slipping further and further away under orders from the Admiralty to wage a guerilla war against the French with no mercy for the enemy's men or dragons. I'm looking forward to the next book where Novik will again be giving us a glimpse of what life is like with dragons in other parts of the world.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury
Normally, I'm a huge Bradbury fan. For some reason though, this classic didn't really do anything for me. Yes, he does do an excellent job of painting the old travelling carnival as a potential source of terror, but overall, I think he's written other stories like "The City" that were more frightening, and done a better job with many others that take us on strange adventures, or portray small town life, or shine a light on the compromises that adults make in life and how they bear up under them, or the explosion of life within youth. It was good to get this book under my belt as part of my familiarity with Bradbury's body of work, but it's not one of my favourites.

On Spec - Summer 2008 issue
A creepy cover on this one - little plastic babies crawling around what looks to be a bee hive. Daniel LeMoal's "Beach Head" was a very tense piece of work and well worth reading, and Kevin Cockle's "The Devil's in the Details" was unsettling too.

"Futures from nature" edited by Henry Gee
In an anthology of about a billion (okay, maybe not a billion, but there are a whole lot of them crammed into this book) really short stories, each no more than 3 pages long, you're bound to get a lot of misses. Quite a few of the stories contained here were way too heavy on the jargon (some authors, I think, putting more weight on speaking the highly-specialized languages of some of the scientific journal's readers than with simply writing good stories) and lacking in story. That being said, when you're dealing with a three-pager, the story itself is going to be fairly simple with little characterization in most cases. That being said, there were some gems that made this book worth reading. Warren Ellis' "At the Zoo" was a real hoot, and, though not the smartest, the one that sticks out in my memory. I also enjoyed "Speak, Geek" by Eileen Gunn and Ken Macleod's vampire-tech tale "Undead Again" and a few others.

"Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami
There's a bildungsroman wrapped in a lot of deeply weird goings-on in this book. A teenager decides to run away from home and ends up finding himself after finding a woman who could be his mother who he takes as his lover, and along the way he steps into another dimension for a while. And did I mention the old codger who talks to cats and goes on an adventure across Japan with a young trucker looking for a stone that will re-align reality? This is a book that has to be experienced rather than encountered in a review.

"Song of Kali" by Dan Simmons
I'm a huge Simmons fan, but it's taken me forever to get around to reading his debut novel. It's highly unsettling, but I'm glad I did. Not a lot in the way of the fantastic in this book - despite the encounter with an undead poet and a scene where the protagonist is chased around a dark room by the Hindu destroyer goddess herself, the real horror in this book is in the evil that people inflict on one another. This is a theme that Simmons seems to have kept with throughout his novels - the exterior stuff really isn't as bad as the monsters that can lurk within the human heart. That being said, redemption and hope also come from within oneself and from other people in Simmons' worlds, and not from magic or super-scientific trinkets. A must read.

"Dreamsongs - volume I" by George R. R. Martin
Seeing Martin's writing style evolve from the boy imitating what he saw in the comics to the man who explores new territory in his own voice is what makes this collection worth while. Martin's essays on various periods in his life and what influenced him are entertaining in and of themselves, but it was good to revisit some of his short stories like "Sandkings". Worth buying for Martin fans.

"The Android's Dream" by John Scalzi
A crisis in interstellar relations, a film-noire style chase story that would have worked well with the cast of "Blade Runner", secret societies founded on the ramblings of a drunk, an AI based on the mind template of the protagonist's dead friend, the hope for humanity being related to a sheep, and fart jokes - this book has it all. Scalzi's cooked up one heck of a read.

"Very Hard Choices" by Spider Robinson
This short but powerful book is memorable for a couple of reasons. First, it’s inhabited by well-rounded characters who stay true to themselves, but who are still capable of change. It also examines the emotional consquences of making very hard choices, and how people deal with them. Robinson has written one of the most deeply unsettling portrayals of what it’s like to die that I’ve ever come across. But amidst the pessimistic backdrop of global threats and the exercise of staggering powers, this is ultimately an optimistic book showing that the connections between human beings are things of the highest and most enduring importance. I'd initially seen this book on the shelves at the bookstore and thought, "I'll get around to it at some point" but then I heard Robinson read an excerpt at VCon in October and thought, "Must read now!" Good thing too. "Very Hard Choices" is easily one of the best novels of 2008 and I'll sure as hell be recommending it for an Aurora this year.

"Tesseracts Twelve" edited by Claude Lalumiere
This installment of the annual anthology of Canadian SF focusses on novellas, which is refreshing. I love the usual collections of short stories, but I'm always left wondering what good stuff was left out because it might have been too long. This time around, it's the long stuff that rules. And, unlike some of the recent editions in the Tesseracts series, Twelve, under Lalumiere's hand, had a good, strong line-up. The two bracketing stories, Derryl Murphy’s gold rush-neanderthal collision “Ancients of the Earth” and David Nickle's “Wylde’s Kingdom” where a washed-up reality show adventurer lives amidst the grim reality that there’s a new species on the extinction list, were the ones that stand out most in my memory. That being said, "Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang" by Gord Sellar was a fun ride too. An anthology that's definitely worth reading.

"The Savage Humanists" edited by Fiona Kelleghan
A collection of stories using SF as a foil for biting social commentary. Gregory Frost’s “Madonna of the Maquiladora” was perhaps the most memorable for its brutal look at the means used to keep people down to make them easy to exploit, and how they accept it. I enjoyed this anthology overall, but could have done without Kelleghan's gigantic and frequently repetitive essay at the beginning. While I don't disagree with what she's saying, I think she could have made her point far more concisely - a full academic essay belongs in a collection of essays, rather than a fiction anthology where the stories can illustrate the point from a variety of perspectives. Still, it's a book worth reading.

"Ten Monkeys, Ten Minutes" by Peter Watts
Watts has assembled a group of violent stories. This is not to say that physical violence takes place within the each of the stories in the form of monster attacks or space battles or other usual SF means, but violence is there in some form, present or past, physical, psychological, sexual or other, in each of these tales to some degree, exerting its influence on characters and events. These stories occupy a Hobbesian state of nature, where things are brutish, nasty and lives, or, at least lives before they're altered forever by some form of violence, are short. A brooding, dark collection, but certainly worth while.

"The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
This is another book I'd noticed at the store but had mentally filed away under "eventually" until I heard Rothfuss speak at a couple of sessions at VCon back in October. Good thing I did too, because "The Name of the Wind" is a smart and refreshing addition to the fantasy genre at a time where a lot of the stuff on the shelves looks stale. A renowned adventurer now living quietly under an alias begins to tell the story of his life in this book, but it's not the usual increasing steps of glory. No, the protagonist sometimes scratches some forward progress for himself, but always at a price and not without a lot of tough, scarring lessons along the way. It's not about a young man's adventures so much as it is about how a boy becomes a man as he tries to survive and what he learns along the way. I'm eagerly looking forward to the next book in this series.


And that catches things up for the book reviews.

What have you been reading lately? What should the rest of us be picking up?

Aurora Award Nominations Now Open

It's time to get all judgemental and make some nominations for the best in Canadian SF - the nomination process is now open for the annual Aurora Awards.

Visit the Aurora website for the online nomination form and elegibility information.

You can find a partial list of elegible novels, short stories, anthologies, etc on the Canadian SF Works Database site (which has lists of works in English and in French). However, the site doesn't list info that would be relevant to the 3 fan awards.

I'll be doing some thinking over the next couple of days and going back over a few items from 2008 on my bookshelves. I'll post a recap of my choices here once I've filled-out the online nomination form.

Good luck to all!

A New Year's Resolution - The 365 Short Stories Challenge

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope all of you had a safe and happy holiday season in 2008, whatever holiday you celebrated. And here's to a fantastic 2009 filled with lots of SF goodness! (I'm already rubbing my hands in anticipation of this summer's Worldcon in Montreal, as well as VCon in the fall, and all the new books, movies and TV shows that'll be released over the course of the year.)

I'm not normally one to make New Year's resolutions. The tradition never had much appeal to me. If I want to do something, or if I want to set a goal for myself, I do it. No need to wait for a specific time of year to highlight and launch it and then proceed to procrastinate. Moreover, the stereotypical resolutions have always been inapplicable or uninteresting to me.

But this year's a little different. This year I've decided to give myself an SF-related challenge. My New Year's resolution is to read 365 SF short stories by December 31st 2009. I'll set up a gadget here on the blog on the bottom left, below the other widgets, to track my progress over the year, and I'll try to do a quick review of each one as I go.

Sure, others have done short story challenges, but then again, how many New Year's resolutions (losing weight, finding a soulmate, etc) are really that original?

With my quarterly subscription to On Spec and the piles of anthologies on my bookshelves, I'll certainly have enough short stories close at hand to fill my quota. The challenge, of course, is finding the time to read 365 of them. Some of you may think it isn't that hard to read one short story a day, or enough short stories in a year to average out to one a day. And maybe that's true if you've got a lot of time to read what you want. For my part, things are a little more complicated... there's the job, of course (gotta earn a few bucks to satisfy my strange addiction to food and shelter), with its obligatory commute (no, I'm not going to get into audio books to fill the quota during the drive), as well as the need to spend quality time with my wife, cat, friends and family. Somewhere in there I'll probably want to squeeze in a little TV time or take in a flick. And there are way too many novels I want to read (not to mention the odd re-read) this year to stick to short stories alone. And then there's blogging here on bloginhood or over on Not A Planet Anymore once in a while. So making time to make the magic 365 may not be quite that easy. Therein lies the challenge.

I hope that by this time next year I'll have read 365 great short stories, or, at least, to have read 365 short stories, the majority of which were great. I hope that in following my bizarre literary odyssey you'll find a few titles and authors worth pursuing, and if you've read some of the stuff that I have, you'll share your opinions.

And so, with that, let's get started! Story number one, from the Fall 2008 issue of On Spec: "Too Long to Forgive" by Brittany McCartney...

To Boldly Go Where No Hairpiece Has Gone Before

I was watching some of the Trek films earlier this evening as Space began its "Trek-mas" holiday Star Trek movie marathon. When these flicks are seen back-to-back, you start to notice how Shatner's hairpieces change through the years. In fact, inadvertantly tracking his toupees becomes one hell of a distraction. How much of the special effects budgets were sunk into those things?

This, of course, got me wondering what happened to the rugs in question when shooting was done? Were they left to gather dust in some Hollywood warehouse? Were they used as dusters in some Hollywood warehouse? Were they donated to some charity for balding trekkies who want to look like their hero (a question which causes me to flash back to a few scenes from the hilarious "Trekkies" documentaries with Denise Crosby)? Or did they suck up enough of Shatner's larger-than-life personality through his scalp to take on lives of their own and participate in wig races like the one from Muppet Sports? Truly, a disturbing thought, and not the kind I want to have on Christmas Eve as I head to bed. I think I'll concentrate on visions of sugar plums or something else pleasant - then again, pretty much anything's more pleasant than the hair of the Shat.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Majel Barrett Roddenberry Dies

Majel Barrett Roddenberry has died on Thursday at the age of 76 after a battle with leukemia.

Barrett was known for her roles in the classic "Star Trek" as Nurse Chapel, and, in the original pilot, as the ship's first officer under Captain Pike. She made appearances in Next Generation and DS9 as Betazed official Lwaxana Troi and was the voice of the various Starfleet computers in the franchise. She married Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in 1969 and continued to carry on his legacy after his death.

While Barrett was probably best known for playing Chapel (and for playing her well as a steady-as-she-goes, intelligent Starfleet officer as capable as any of her male cohorts), in some ways I think it was her short-lived performance as the ship's first officer in the pilot that was more important. I can't say definitively, but I doubt there were many science fiction shows or movies (if any at all) back then that had women as senior officers aboard military/exploration space vessels - and most especially, a woman who was professional and effective in her job as part of the crew, rather than one of the screaming rescue bunnies of the day.

But I think I got the most enjoyment (and I always got the sense that she probably enjoyed) out of her over-the-top, brassy character of Lwaxana Troi in Next Generation and DS9. Most of her appearances were geared towards getting laughs, usually at the expense of one of the other characters like Picard or Worf who writhed in embarassment at her eccentric pronouncements or vulger accusations. And yet I think her best performance as the character was in an episode of DS9 where she's trapped (in a damaged elevator, I think) with Chief Constable Odo the shapeshifter. Here we saw her real dramatic capabilities as she stripped away Lwaxana's bold facade and showed us the fears of a woman feeling her age and feeling alone. We also saw her capacity to care as she made Odo feel comfortable enough to show his true self when he needed to revert to his gelatinous form to rest/regenerate.

Beyond Trek, let's not forget Barrett's role as the Centauri emperor's widow (perhaps an SF/Hollywood inside allusion to her real-life status as Roddenberry's widow and legacy bearer?) in Babylon 5. After seeing so many posturing, scheming, fan-haired courtiers throughout the seasons, at last she gave us a glimpse of what was needed to keep a fading empire together - no-nonsense strength tempered by compassion and loyalty for honest good deeds. Londo seems more of a nuisance to her, while Vir, in showing courage during a riot, wins her respect. And when it comes time to get down to the business of prophecy, she doesn't pull any punches about the fate that awaits the two.

In the end, respect is probably what it boils down to. Majel Barrett Roddenberry wasn't one of those actresses that frequently came to mind as most memorable in SF, but when she did get mentioned, you had to give her respect for a lifetime of solid performances as straight-forward characters.

South Park and Heroes on the Sun's Naughty List

In honour of Santa's famous naughty and nice list, today's issue of the Vancouver Sun included a rundown of which TV shows deserved either presents or a lump of coal.

On the naughty list: South Park for an episode entitled "The China Problem"; and Heroes for, well, just sucking in general.

Mind Melded over on SF Signal

I received a nice surprise the other day, an invitation from the guys over at SF Signal to take part in this week's Mind Meld.

The Mind Meld is a regular feature where they pose a question to various people in the SF community, from writers to critics, editors and commentators, then once the participants have weighed-in, the floor is open to comments.

This week's question was: "What were the best genre-related books, movies and/or shows you consumed in 2008?" Participants were allowed to list not just the new stuff released this past year, but also anything old that they happened to encounter this year that really stuck out in their memories. The subject garnered such a big response from the participants that they had to break it into two seperate posts. Here's the link to Part 1, and here's the link to Part 2.

It was a real honour to participate in this discussion and get to stand in the shadows of giants like Mike Resnick and Kit Reed. But even if I hadn't been involved, this topic still would have been a treat - think about it, a huge list of bests to consider - it's the ultimate holiday gift buying guide for geeks!

But, most importantly, be sure to check out SF Signal for all of their other great content - the Mind Melds are just the tip of the iceberg.

New Show "Testees" Gets an F

A week or two ago I was flipping through the channels one night and stumbled upon "Testees", the newest offering from Showcase. This was indeed a stumble, but unlike a smart man, I didn't get up and walk away. No, figuring I'd support a new Canuck show and one that had the potential for SF overtones through its wacky inventions, I stuck around for about half of it. 15 minutes of my life I won't be getting back, and not a mistake I'm going to make twice.

Created by Kenny Hotz of "Kenny vs Spenny" fame, the story concerns 2 losers who get paid to be lab rats for a facility working with experimental drugs and products. Hilarity is supposed to ensue. Allegedly.

The episode I saw part of had the pair testing out a supercharged pheromone perfume that was supposed to attract members of the opposite sex. The substance backfires, however, in that it fails to attract pretty young women, instead, driving older women (and we're not talking about cougars here, we're talking late 50's and up and not easy on the eyes) mad. Worse, it turns them into mindless zombies (not literally undead, but obviously zombie-like) bent on screwing the protagonists at all costs. The show descends into a mock zombie apocalypse. That's the point where I turned it off.

Now, I'm not going to go off on a tangent about how awful the show is because it's demeaning to older women. I'm sure others have done that, and rightly so.

I don't have a problem with shows that indulge in politically incorrect humour. When it's well done, and when its wit is actually smart and making a point about something the audience is supposed to give some thought to, it can work quite well. "Southpark" is a prime example of how a TV show can revel in politically incorrect humour for years on end and just get better and better - not because of its raunchiness or nastiness, but in spite of it - because it's smart.

There was nothing smart about this episode of "Testees". The show itself was a zombie, shuffling along, mindlessly flailing about in an effort to sink its teeth into an unsuspecting audience and hopefully strike a funny bone. Didn't work though. Its attempts at humour fell flat and crumpled in upon themselves in a rotting, stinking heap best avoided.

The other crime committed by Hotz's abomination is that it's unoriginal (at least this episode was). Perfumes that drive the opposite sex wild, causing a stampede of human flesh forcing the wearer to flee for his/her life? Didn't they do that in "Love Potion #9" with Sandra Bullock? Now that's scraping the bottom of the barrel! And the notion of making a zombie apocalypse funny is nothing new either. "The Simpsons" has done it on at least one of their Hallowe'en episodes, "Sean of the Dead" raked in a lot of praise a few years ago, there are a lot of fans of the "Evil Dead" movies, and the list goes on. The only reason for "Testees" to tread on this already well-worn ground would be to put a new spin on the zombie attack or to pay homage to that form of movie. Neither was the case.

Because it wasn't original or smart, "Testees" ended up failing in its attempt to be funny.

Sure, some of you may argue that I should have stuck it out for the last 15 minutes to see if it redeemed itself, and maybe you're right. But I doubt it. You don't get halfway through a train wreck like that only to have Superman come swooping in to save the day at the last minute. And certainly you could argue that it's unfair to judge a series based on one bad show. But first impressions do count, and it seems to me that even sitting around contemplating my own bellybutton lint would be a better use of time than giving "Testees" a second chance. Or giving it more time on this blog, for that matter.

Southpark Becomes Reality

You know you've made the wrong move when you back Eric Cartman. Or, at least you should.

Apparently, a group of little shitheads out in Comox and up in Prince George haven't figured that out though. Inspired by a Southpark episode from I think it was 2 years ago (maybe only last year), they've tried to organize a "National Kick a Ginger Day" today on Facebook. The fact that this thing attracted nearly 5,000 people, many pledging to follow through with violence against redheads, makes it disturbingly like Cartman's Omega Man-esque cult (spawned simply as a means to achieve his dream of eliminating Kyle).

It's one thing to chuckle at the ridiculous lengths Carman goes to in the episode to persecute Kyle - last Christmas at a party a buddy and I were tossing around lines from that episode, and I'm a redhead myself and found it funny (he called me the "Daywalker" because, like Kyle, I'm a redhead who doesn't burn quite as quickly as other, fairer gingers do). But it's quite another for some braindead, sadistic hillbilly punk to figure he oughta start phasing-in Cartman's plan and get others to join in.

Clearly, they were too stupid to pick up on what that episode was really about - that Cartman is a hateful little shit and one way or another that kind of persecution is bound to fail. And then Wendy will eventually kick his ass a year or two down the line, to the approval of everyone else. The question is, why we go easy on little bastards like that, and why wasn't the ass-kicking force of the law brought down on them harder for what, despite the comments of the RCMP spokesperson, really does amount to inciting hatred?

3 Years Already?

It was a foggy, wet Lower Mainland night three years ago when I sat down and wrote this first post on bloginhood, babbling about how Bradbury is kinda like butter. Since then I've mused about other authors and their books, movies, comics, TV, and geek culture in general; reported from 'cons; griped at TV producers; posted Battlestar photos; launched a spinoff blog; and even tried to stage a mock Martian invasion as an homage to two great storytellers with last names that sounded the same.

Three years later, it's a cold, wet, very, very windy Lower Mainland night and I still think Bradbury's kinda like butter, and somehow, despite occasional absences for weeks on end due to other requirements in my life, medical mishaps, or just plain laziness, I'm still here on the old soapbox of SF, still rambling on. It's been a lot of fun having a venue to spout off about SF, the greatest passion in my life - well, okay, that is the second greatest passion after my wife - unless she's nagging me to lose some weight, in which case SF is definitely the greatest passion in my life. And it's been a real pleasure to have all of you come around to share the experience. Thank you for joining me. Thanks especially to those of you who talk back - especially those of you who call me on the occasional mistake! As much fun as it is to sit here and think out loud, it's even more fun to have conversations with you guys. I've enjoyed every moment.

Here's to another year of SF-related rants! Welcome!

What Do You Get for an 80-Year-Old Rodent?

80 years is a long time for a human to be around, never mind a mouse. But one very famous mouse has found the key to longevity, sustaining himself on box office cheese and fronting a corporate empire that pulls in more cash than some small countries. Today is Mickey Mouse's birthday.

Love him or hate him (and his afore-mentioned fiscal fiefdom), you can't deny The Mouse has had a huge impact on Western entertainment and business culture during his time. For many of us, one of the first movies we got to see as children was probably a Disney film ("Pete's Dragon" for me), whether it starred Mickey or not. And we certainly would have encountered him and his cohort on TV on "The Wonderful World of Disney" (for my generation) or "The Mickey Mouse Club" (for an older generation), or in school in the form of books or read-along books & LP's that they used to have, or toys, or comics, or family vacations, or clothes, or... Everywhere you turned, The Mouse was there.

There are many who have criticised Disney, and rightly so, for watering-down/sterilizing/making boring fairy tales, or making the occasional potentially hurtful politically incorrect blunder like "Song of the South", or for churning out formulaic fare, or for mingling story-telling and marketing so closely that it's hard to know what the original intent was. I've also been saddened by the tendency, in its mad dash to crank out new product for the next generation, for Disney to forget its past successes, literally painting them over (as in "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" - you won't find any trace of that ride at Disneyland anymore - it's been conveniently rebranded as "Finding Nemo") or chucking them in a back room and forgetting about them ("Tron" - unheard of in the arcade in Tomorrowland now, just a few years after its 25th anniversary, even though Disney actually had an arcade game developed and widely distributed back when the movie was released).

But the legacy of The Mouse isn't all bad - not by a long shot. As a wee little guy, I got a kick out of "Pete's Dragon", and as a kid I thoroughly enjoyed "The Sword and the Stone" and "Robin Hood" and "The Jungle Book" or some of the studio's shorter fare like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" or "Lonesome Ghosts" (a very, very old short where Mickey, Donald and Goofy try a career as ghostbusters). As an adult, I can re-watch older stuff that I enjoyed as a kid, like "Tron" or even "The Black Hole" (I'm only half ashamed to admit to liking that one) and still get a big kick out of it, and newer productions (nowadays usually with Pixar) like WALL-E can certainly be entertaining. And yeah, the theme parks are fun. Mostly.

Sure, Mickey isn't my favourite character in the Disney stable, but I have enjoyed some of his features like the afore-mentioned "Lonesome Ghosts" or "The Brave Little Tailor" or his bit in "Fantasia". And because of that, and because he was the catalyst for the creation of an entertainment empire that has created some of my favourites as an SF fan, I'll add my voice (off-key though it may be) to the chorus singing "Happy Birthday" to Mickey today.

Lest We Forget

It is Remembrance Day today. For many, I fear as the years go by, this day is increasingly becoming just another day off. More and more kids seem to be growing up not learning about its significance. I see more and more people on the streets this time of year who aren't wearing poppies. I worry that people are forgetting.

Today marks the 90th anniversary of the end of World War One. Over the decades, November 11th has evolved to pay tribute to those who fought not only in WWI, but also in WWII, the Korean War and the many peacekeeping actions and other wars right up to the present. Their sacrifices in long years past bought the freedom and relative peace that most of us enjoy today. Their continuing efforts today are giving others the hope for this same kind of peace. The least we can do is remember them and thank them.

Like any other significant event in our culture, the wars have acted as backdrops to or inspirations for great works of SF. Take some time to read short stories like John Brunner's "In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells" or Dave Whittier's "Coming Back to Kabul". For something strange, try Christopher Priest's "The Separation". For lighter fare, pick up Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar" series. Or, going deep again, far less rooted in the world we know but carrying many of the same shadows, read Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". For terrible foreshadowing, watch the Doctor Who series 3 episodes "Human Nature" and "Family of Blood". "The Empty Child" is another worthwhile episode of the Doctor, this one set against WWII during the Blitz. The Doctor's spinoff, "Torchwood", also did a powerful episode set during WWII: "Captain Jack Harkness".

But in addition to all the fiction, if you couldn't make it to a ceremony today, be sure to watch some of your local news coverage on Remembrance Day ceremonies in your area, or pick up a history book and learn about the wars, or better yet, talk to a veteran - listen to what they have to say, and when they're done, be sure to thank them.

Lest we forget.

Review: "Zack and Miri Make a Porno"

warning: spoilers (spoilage factor: about the same as coffee beans that have been dumped on porno actors during a shoot - oh, that would be a spoiler itself, wouldn't it? Oh well, just see the movie!)

It's a rare occasion that a comedy can get me out to the movie theatre these days. To put up with the lines, the price, the unreliable concession service, post-apocalyptic washrooms, stupid parents bringing small children to grotesquely inapropriate films, ringing cellphones, and inbreds talking throughout the flick, it's gotta have really cool won't-look-the-same-on-the-big-screen-tv-at-home SFX or it's got to be a truly special comedy or drama. "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" was just such a film. But then again, Kevin Smith movies are almost always worth going to the theatre to watch right away.

You've probably all heard/read the plot run-down before: longtime platonic friends and roommates Zack and Miri are short on cash and decide to, well, as the title implies, craft a piece of cinematic adult entertainment. Raunchy hilarity ensues.

It's obviously rooted in best-friends-of-the-opposite-sex-unknowingly-in-love-with-one-another romantic comedy films, but told from a typical Smith perspective of regular people trying to get by in a tough world (rather than the usual chick flick setup of glamourous people in enviable jobs frolicking in upscale settings) who may be deceiving themselves but who see the world in an honest, intelligent, frequently foul-mouthed, no-holds-barred kinda way. It's also likely a nod to Smith's own "Clerks" experience of putting together a film on a shoe-string budget. Initially there's also the looming presence of the momentous mediocrity of the highschool reunion that people allow to scar themselves that we saw in "Grosse Point Blank". And from time to time it has the behind-the-scenes feeling of "Boogie Nights".

The only downsides to the film were the sense in the pacing that it had been edited down a little awkwardly from some earlier, better cut (probably the result of the NC-17 battle with the US ratings authorities), and a shot of Jason Mewes' frontside that I really, really didn't want to see. At this point I'm hoping that when the DVD is released it'll include a version that feels more complete.

So why talk about a modern-day comedy on an SF-oriented site? Because it's a Kevin Smith film, and no Smith flick would be complete without a couple of sci-fi refences. He is a fanboy himself, after all. The most obvious (and frequently mentioned in other reviews) is Zack and Miri's initial vision to create a skinflick called "Star Whores". The costume tests for that segment were great, as was the speculation about sequels. But ultimately I thought their earlier brainstorming session for possible titles was a lot better. The SF reference scene that took the cake, however, had to be the Buck Rogers bit near the beginning. My wife, who loved "Zack and Miri", hadn't seen BR as a kid (any version - much less Universal's Gil Gerrard extravaganza that I grew up with) and couldn't quite figure out why I was laughing so hard at that point. Aside from the snide pop culture reference, the BR bit is even funnier when you remember what Twiki looked like.

You can't say much about the quality of the blue movie that Zack and Miri were cobbling together themselves, but Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" is good enough to see in the theatre.

Obit: Michael Crichton

Word's come down that author Michael Crichton died on Tuesday of cancer at the age of 66.

Admittedly, I wasn't much of a fan of Crichton's.

"Sphere" was okay (at least, it was when I read it as a teen), with some frightening squid sequences. Although I didn't like the cheap resolution at the end where the survivors "wished" away their powers. And the theatrical version was down-right terrible - how could they have such a top-notch cast and do such a bad job not only on the script but the performances?

"Jurassic Park" was also a fun read. It's sequel, "The Lost World" was limp, if not terrible. The first JP movie was entertaining enough, with inarguably astounding SFX, but the sequels suffered immensely.

As for his other fare, "Westworld" was fine for the kind of late-night, Sci-Fi Friday programming that local cable TV stations used to host, but I wouldn't go out and buy it. Kudos though for Yul Brenner's role as the murderous cowboy android that I figure (whether it's ever been acknowledged or not) must have provided some inspiration for "The Terminator". And "The 13th Warrior" was an alright flick to spend a couple of hours with (bonus points for being shot up in Campbell River!), although I never read the novel.

I didn't read or watch the much-applauded "The Andromeda Strain", and was never a fan of ER.

Ultimately, Crichton's talents as an author were, in my opinion, middle-of-the-road, but I will give him credit for bringing SF to mass audiences - even if they didn't know it.

America Joins the Future

Today's election of Barack Obama to the presidency has ushered in a new era for the US. They have finally (for the most part) put aside old prejudices and stepped into a time when anyone can do anything. Congratulations, America. Welcome to the future.

The Simpsons Hallowe'en was more Trick than Treat

The only thing "really scarifying" about his year's Simpsons Hallowe'en Treehouse of Horror (XIX) was that it wasn't that funny. Not downright awful like Treehouse of Horror II was way back when. Just bland.

Admittedly, I got one or two chuckles near the end with (vague spoiler ahead - on the order of a jack'o'lantern that's been sitting outside for about 4 days after Hallowe'en) the spoof of the Charlie Brown classic, but overall, the three vignettes left me feeling as though I'd seen them before in previous years' Hallowe'en offerings. They were also lacking in the energy and spirit that the Simpsons has traditionally shown with their spooky specials.

Maybe the ghost that's haunting the Treehouse of Horror is the same one that's overshadowed "The Simpsons" in general for the past several years - the sense that its best years are behind it, that it's feeling its age, and it's starting to stare into the television grave. Already (and this would have been blasphemy a few years ago), I miss the regular Simpsons episodes on a fairly regular basis. The ones I do catch don't seem to impress me much anymore. In 20 years the family's lost the edge off its wit.

The one holdout for a few years now has been the Hallowe'en episode. But not this year. Now it's slumping into mediocrity with the rest of the show. Sadly, if this is to be the calibre of Hallowe'en specials in the coming years, I wouldn't be surprised if I started taking a miss on the annual additions to the Treehouse of Horror franchise.

What have things come to? D'oh!

Jack'o'lanterns that want to ex-ter-min-ate!

A belated Happy Hallowe'en to all of you. I hope you enjoyed the festivities as much as we did this year.


Things got off to a start Friday morning at the office for me - staff were encouraged to wear costumes and we had a potluck lunch later on. While I'd wanted to dress up as the ultimate super hero of all time - Captain Chaos, I didn't have time to make the cowl properly, so I settled on my second (but none-the-less very cool) choice: Silent Bob. Didn't manage to find a wig for the long hair under the cap, but my coworkers thought the likeness was good enough that I came in third for best costume.


I found a great Hallowe'en treat when I came home later in the day: my wife had the day off from work and had finished carving jack'o'lanterns (I'd done a couple on Thursday evening but didn't have time to do all of them because I'd been rushing upstairs every hour to update my entries in Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds) and had done one very, very special pumpkin for me: a Dalek! We'd seen some video on SF Signal not too long ago of a robotic Dalek jack'o'lantern that some guy had made and were inspired by it. While my wife's version didn't roll around the floor, it was an excellent likeness of Doctor Who's nemesis, done in a gourd medium, and looked great when it was lit up as well. It was so good, I just had to share it with all of you:

The Bookstore's Gone to the Dogs - Again

We dropped by White Dwarf Books (Vancouver's SF bookstore) today for my last binge buying of books before Christmas (have to cut off my purchasing as of November so I'll leave something for the gift list) - hadn't been there for about a month or so - and saw that the store has gone to the dogs - again. And that's a very good thing. This summer, Roland, the store's resident basset hound, passed away. The place just wasn't the same without him. Today, we found a new basset hound, Judd, keeping an eye on the door. Great dog, and his presence makes White Dwarf feel the way it should again.

Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds Officially Over

Midnight has passed and we're now into October 31st. Blog Like It's The War Of The Worlds is now over.

It was my first time trying something like this, and I was fortunate enough to have a great partner in crime, harrysaxon, over at our shared site Not A Planet Anymore. What made it even better was the fact that others came to participate in our little online adventure. You can see their contributions on the posts over there, and we'll be publishing highlights later today, and a full account of the 2008 Martian invasion sometime in the next couple of days. Thank-you to everyone who came here to bloginhood to read about my misadventures, and to all of you who slipped over to Not A Planet Anymore to get a bigger picture.

Our plan at this point, after we get some sleep, go for a celebratory beer and spend some time with our wives, is to evaluate how things went. That being said, harrysaxon and I are both pleased with how BLITWOTW played out, and I have a feeling this will become an annual event. I hope all of you will be able to join us for it next year.

In the meantime, I'll be returning to your regularly-scheduled (if not always regularly posted) bloginhood ramblings from the SF soapbox.

Good night all. And Happy Hallowe'en.

BLITWOTW - I think this is it

Not a lot of time - one of them's just outside - I mean justoutfuckingsideofmywindow!!!

The raft grab was a failure. Couldn't get down to the store very fast cause of all the crap on the roads and lawns and I really need to lose about 30 goddamn pounds. Some tripods were still lurching around and I had to stop and hide. Got down to Steveston Highway and was heading to the store - saw 5 of the fuckers in a field at the corner of #4 Road - no way to get past them. Got cut off - another was coming in from behind me, back Steveston way. Had to ditch the bike and crawl back through a ditch - managed to wait till the Martian passed, then crawled a little farther before getting up and across the road and deking up through the burbs back home.

Heard from my wife on Not A Planet Anymore when I got back - looks like she's been posting her situation - conveniently when I'm not in front of the computer! She seems to be fine for now. Now it's just me and the cat.

Goddamn tripod came stumbling - yes! stumbling! down my street about 10 minutes ago. Funny thing - for a giant milking stool they always had a weird kind of grace. Not now. Thing looks drunk. Staggered into my cul-de-sac and is standing right in the middle of the driveway.

I should grab the cat and the emergency pack and book it out the back door, but the thing's got a clear view/clear shot right through the window here. My fingers may be hammering this keyboard, but the rest of my body hasn't moved a centimetre for 10 minutes now. Hardly breathing. Don't want to get shot. Have to admit, part of me wants to stay and watch - it's wobbling and I want to see if it falls over. No apparent damage on it, it's just swaying. I saw a couple in the distance, in the centre of town, against the glare of some of the fires doing the same thing. Coming home I saw one about 5 blocks away that was actually DOWN! They came all this way just to kick our asses and crash inside of a day? Did they break into a grow-op and start rocking the ganja or something? Did our government somehow manage to slip them something toxic? Did they eat something that ain't sitting well?

The swaying's getting more erratic now. I'm gonna switch over to Not A Planet Anymore. The folks over there have gotta see this. This could be the end - maybe for me if toasted Mr Martian here falls into my house.

Good luck, everyone!

BLITWOTW - a little good news for once

Seems like the Martians don't have it as easy as they'd like... Lugosi's advised us over at Not A Planet Anymore that some of the tripods are down in the eastern US and the aliens aren't looking so hot.

Wish we had it that good here - still a lot of searchlights and the sound of heat rays in the distance.

I'm still making a run for that raft. Wish me luck!

BLITWOTW - have boat will travel - need a boat though

I don't know how much longer I can afford to wait around the house here. Sooner or later the Martians will probably start going through the neighbourhoods looking for snacks or something, and when they find me, they'll probably be thinking the same way I would with a nice, fat pig and a barbeque. Going to bike down to the Canadian Tire store (the roads are clogged with cars wrecked in accidents - and from the looks of it, some that have been tossed around by the tripods) to see if I can't scrounge an inflatable raft and some other supplies. I'll lay low tomorrow and then on Hallowe'en night, the trick's on the Martians - if my wife isn't back, I'll take the cat, hit the waves and get as far up the coast as I can. Maybe they'll ignore Bella Bella for a while. I just know that staying around here is just asking for trouble. Wish me luck.