Forget the Zombies & Aliens, Are You Ready for a Real Disaster?

As science fiction and fantasy fans, we're well-versed in the subject of mind-blowing, world-altering disasters. We watch them and read about them over and over, and discuss them ad-nauseum online and at conventions. But in the wake of the recent tragedies in Japan and New Zealand, I thought I'd take a quick break from SF in this post and ask whether you're prepared for a real emergency.

Put aside the so remotely unlikely that they're for all intents and purposes impossible SF-relegated scenarios like an alien invasion or a zombie apocalypse. Then let's put aside the geologically occasional but in human terms by no means regular catastrophes like large meteorite/asteroid/comet impacts and supervolcano eruptions.

Let's focus on the sadly more common emergencies that you will likely have to deal with (one or more of them) at some point in your life. The house fires, highway pile-ups, train derailments, toxic spills, avalanches, blizzards, tornados, volcanic eruptions, disease quarantines, city-wide power outages, civil unrest, floods, hurricanes, ice storms, droughts, forest fires, and yes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

One thing I've noticed, both as a former news reporter/anchor and as a current volunteer emergency preparedness session presenter for the City of Vancouver, is that most people are aware of the possible disasters that could happen in their regions, but they're not actually prepared for them. They haven't thought through a plan to deal with disaster and they don't have supplies to help themselves or their loved ones and neighbours. Admittedly, in some cases the forces of nature are just too powerful, but generally, taking the time to make a plan and create emergency kits tends to make life a little easier for people dealing with emergencies.

If we, as geeks, are supposed to be the smart ones, the ones who discuss all these eventualities or possibilities that just don't occur to most people, shouldn't we be the ones who are prepared to face an emergency?

Have you made a home/work disaster plan?

Do you have an emergency kit ready if you need it at a moment's notice?

If the answer is "no", here are 10 tips for emergency planning that we teach people in Vancouver's Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program. They're not just for people living on the West Coast of North America - they're helpful for people living anywhere to plan for most types of emergencies that you could face.

1) Identify the hazards in your area.

What's most likely to happen in the region where you live and work? Is it a blizzard, earthquake, train derailment, or something else? The type of emergency you might have to face can affect your planning and definitely what you'll include in your emergency kits.

2) Establish a family meeting place.

If something does happen (whether it's a house fire or a major natural disaster) and your family has to evacuate your house, or can't come back to your house, where will you meet up? This should be somewhere nearby that everyone in your family knows where it is and can reach easily on foot. Maybe the home of a trusted friend or family member? A local community centre or park?

3) Establish an out-of-area contact.

This is someone who does not live in your region who would not be effected by any natural disaster that you might have to deal with. If there is an emergency, your family might be split-up (maybe you're at work when it happens, your spouse/partner is at home, and your kids are at school) and unable to reach each other or communicate with each other. However, it might be possible that social services at a disaster shelter could get word out to a friend or family member outside of the affected area. This person, your out-of-area contact, can act as your family's communications link, letting everyone know as they check in how the rest of the family is doing and where they are waiting. Make sure everyone in your family knows who your out-of-area contact is and what that person's phone number is.

4) Emergency kits.

These are your emergency supplies. In most places, governments will quickly set up disaster shelters to get people out of the weather and offer food and medical care, but sometimes it takes a while for these services to get up and running, and you may have to travel a bit to reach them. It can make your life a lot easier if you have emergency kits ready with the essentials that you will need/want. Here are the different kinds of emergency kits you should have:

• a) Grab-and-go kits. This is exactly what it sounds like - a duffle bag or backpack in your home that you can grab easily on the run and take with you as you get out of your house quickly. It should have essentials that you'll need for at least 3 days. A first-aid kit is a must. You should also include food and water, a flashlight (preferably crank-powered, or with extra batteries stored separately), a radio (crank-powered radio/flashlight combos are widely available), a blanket or plastic rain poncho, a knife, matches, an extra sweater, work gloves, toiletries, any medications you require, anything else you think you might need. Everyone in your home should have their own grab-and-go kit (that includes having a separate bag for each of your pets with items and food/water they will need).
• b) Home kits. These are larger emergency kits with all of the essentials listed above and, again, anything else you think you might need (like candles, a tarp, rope, cooking apparatus, more batteries, more food/water, more first aid supplies, books or games to pass the time with, more clothing & blankets).
• c) First aid kits. This is a no-brainer. Every type of emergency kit you have should include a first aid kit. Make sure all of your first aid kits are fully supplied, and ensure there is a first aid kit for every grab-and-go kit in the family.
• d) School kits. If you've got school-aged children, think about putting a small version of a grab-and-go kit in their schoolbag with a first-aid kit, contact numbers for you and other trusted family and friends, water and food, etc. Ask your child's school what its emergency plan is... Does it have emergency supplies of its own? What is the school's policy about caring for children during a disaster, especially if parents aren't able to reach their children by the end of the school day?
• e) Car kits. Another no-brainer. Keep an emergency kit in the trunk of your car with your jumper cables and other auto necessities. You don't want to be stranded on the highway without emergency supplies if you get stuck in a disaster.
• f) Work kits. Keep a small grab-and-go kit in your desk drawer if you work in an office in case you need it. Ask your employer about their emergency plans. Does the office have emergency supplies ready if employees are stranded there? Ladies: consider keeping an extra pair of running or hiking shoes under your desk - high heels may look great, but it'll be hard if you have to walk in them through a couple of kilometres of rubble, snow or water.

5) Food & water

Store foods that require little to no preparation and will store safely for a long time. Try to get foods that are familiar to your family (less stress during an emergency if you don't have to worry whether your kids will eat that brand of canned soup or dried noodles). Try to get foods that are low in salt/sodium so that they will not increase your thirst. Keep enough food to last everyone in your home for at least 3 days (preferably 7 days, because you don't know how long it will take your government to get help to you). For water, have at least 4 litres per person per day ready.

6) Prepare your home.

You can do a few things that might make your home safer such as checking your hot water tank to make sure it's secure. Something that's very important to us nerds: bookshelves! Make sure they're secured to a stud in your wall to minimize the risk of them falling on you. Look around your home to see if you have heavy items up high on shelves or in your kitchen, consider whether you can move them to lower storage spaces or make them more secure so they don't fall on you. Attach door fasteners to your cupboards to reduce the chances of them opening and dumping items on top of you.

7) Utilities and fire prevention.

Make sure everyone in your home knows how to get out of it in an emergency (and where to meet-up afterwards). Ensure you've got a working smoke detector and fire extinguisher. Know where your gas, electrical and water shut-offs are.

8) Plan for helping vulnerable populations

Do you have children, seniors, or people with disabilities living in your home? What about your neighbours? These people may need your assistance in the event of an emergency. Be sure to plan how you will help get these people to safety. If they require special equipment (like a walker or wheelchair), be sure you know how to help the person get to safety in/with this equipment.

9) Plan to help your pets

Pets are part of the family too! Make sure you plan for their safety. Have a grab-and-go kit specifically for your dog/cat/bird/whatever that you can take with you along with your animals if you have to evacuate. Include food, water, medications, a collar and leash, bowls, vaccination & registration papers, toys, a blanket, kitty litter or newspaper and plastic bags for waste, and a carrying cage/kennel. Anything else they might need.

10) Practice your plan.

Hey, your parents and teachers were right: practice makes perfect! Practice your disaster plan and check your emergency kits at least once (preferably twice) every year. That's a good way to keep your food/water supplies fresh and to consider whether you need to add anything else to your emergency kits or if you need to alter your evacuation plan.

If you've got a disaster plan and emergency kits, you'll be better prepared for an emergency. If you're prepared, you'll be in a better position to help your family and friends and others in your community.

For more tips on emergency preparedness, visit the City of Vancouver's emergency preparedness pages.

Or check the website of your city/regional/provincial/state/prefecture/national government to get information specific to your area.

You can also get lots of helpful information from the Red Cross/Red Crescent branch in your country.

Stay safe.

Marking International Women's Day - The Best Female SF Characters

Today is International Women's Day, a time to reflect on the accomplishments of women around the world and the challenges that still lie ahead.

Certainly women have always played an important role in creating and guiding speculative fiction, from Mary Shelley at the dawn of the genre, to Leigh Brackett, Octavia Butler, Alice Sheldon, Phyllis Gotlieb, Ursula K. Le Guin, Judith Merril, Nalo Hopkinson, Kit Reed, Naomi Novik, Cherie Priest and many, many more.

As memorable and influential as the authors (and directors and producers and pencillers and inkers and letterers) are, so are the female characters that we get to know in science fiction, fantasy, and comics. I thought it would be interesting to take a look at who some of the best female characters are in SF, and what makes them so interesting, and most of all, why are they important?

And because it's International Women's Day, I thought it was especially important that I get a woman's perspective on this issue. So I've gathered a group of female friends who are from different walks of life and different parts of the country, but who all share a life-long

love of SF to share their opinions. I'll throw in my to cents as well, but today, it's ladies first.

First up, my oldest friend, Sam McCreath, university student, private school housemother, and the person who tried (and failed) to get me to like

Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels:

"Discovering sci-fi & fantasy at an early age is what really turned me on to

reading. As a young-ish girl I first found Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonrider series, then Mercedes Lackey's books. I was attracted to their female characters, each of whom was strong, independent, and intelligent. They represented an image of being a girl which is often missing in mainstream literature and other media. The stereotype of being female that required being rescued instead of a woman saving herself never appealed to me. In sci-fi and fantasy, strong female characters are the norm, not an interesting plot twist.

"My appreciation continues today. I’ve found shows and movies like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Resident Evil, the Lara Croft character in Tomb Raider, and even some of the Bond Girls portray an image of femininity based on strength rather than being compromised by it."

Another friend, Sarah Corbeil, a financial analyst, and hoarder of books with a collection that may rival (or exceed) my own in size, had this to say:

"For me, the female characters in SF that are the best or most important are the strong characters who are women in stories where the fact that they are women is irrelevant and plays little or no part in the point of the book.

"For example, the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. The books cover the career of a very strong woman, starting from a young age and mov

ing forward/upward through her career to various command positions. The fact that she is a woman isn't even emphasized; in fact, it is her class that causes issues in her society. When the series takes you to a planet where women are considered less than men, it was interesting seeing the two societies clash as Honor's people learn to deal with people who look down on women, believing them incapable of things they take for granted. Over several books you see Honor and her society change the views of this planet as she refuses to be anyone but her

self. Honor is respected as a person, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman."

My cousin, Jenn Eades, is an entrepreneur and mother, and used to watch

Battle of the Planets/G-Force/Gatchaman with me when we were kids, and always had a Stephen King book by her side as a teen, summed up her thoughts in

one word:

"Buffy!"

My friend Nicole Yamanaka, a kinesiologist, personal trainer and fitness studio owner, and truly amazing costume maker, had this take on the question:

"As a woman, my love for comic books has always been kind of a 'Secret' (a badly kept one, at that) because it just wasn't cool, even though I spent hours at comic book stores and religiously make reference to Star Wars Day (May 4th, but I'm preaching to the choir here)! My love for comic characters has been a huge influence on my life, ever since childhood.

"Catwoman, since the campy Batman TV show days, has always captured my heart. Admit it, the majority of you women out there have this strange affinity for felines (sexy!) but the appeal to the tom-boy, bad girl in all of us is also satisfied. I don't know if I love her because I love cats, orif I love cats because I love her. Call me sick and twisted, a martyr, or an angry anti-hero and tormented type, which is probably why the Tim Burton version (okay, I love black vinyl and leather too) resonates with me so much. And finally, I do happen to have two 6+ foot bull whips in my possession, which I love dearly and do play with from time to time. Clients hate that. Which brings me to the second big love in my life, Rogue, of X-men fame.

"When I discovered this character, I wished that I was indestructibe and, yeah, that I could fly too. Being a science major, I knew self-propelled flight was out of the question, so when my boyfriend at the time suggested I start weight training (I think he was sick of my whining), I took it up. And it stuck. So I have Rogue to thank for dropping the seed in me that lead me to my career as a kinesiologist, personal trainer, and attempting feats of flight through climbing, pole dancing and whatever else I can laungh myself off of.

"There are a million fun female characters that have meant a lot to me, for various reasons, but I'll stop there before you all get glassy-eyed and skip away from Robin's blog.

"Many women in my life laugh at these stories and judge me for loving a gal in spandex and critique the negative image of women in comics. But I prefer to see the beauty and good in what they can (and have done) for me. At this stage of my life, I look back at the complexity of the women in fiction and realize that we are drawn to them because of how real they are. Story lines, character development, conflicts... they resonate because we see ourselves. Take away the powers and the costumes and what do you have? Us. Simply, and beautifully, just us. I have learned a lot about myself through fictional characters and watched myself evolve through my attachment to certain strong female 'role models'. We take the good from them, leave the bad (I should hope) and make our lives a little richer, if not a little funner (yes, I know 'funner' isn't a real word, but that's why English is so awesome) sometimes, too."

And my wife, Phoebe Lau, an entrepreneur and administrative professional, who always has the last word in this house, had this to say:

"Zoe from Firefly has to be one of my favourite female characters. She's comfortable with being tender and loving with her husband, but she's also a soldier who doesn't take crap from anyone (even Wash) and fights 'till the end. I've also always like Eowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan, from The Lord of the Rings... another great fighter, responsible for taking down the Nazgul king."

Thank-you, ladies!

For my part, there are a lot of female SF characters that I think are worthy of highlighting:

Martha Jones and Donna Noble from Doctor Who - smart, adult Companions who supported the Doctor but also stood up to him; Admiral Jane Roland from the Temeraire books; Athena and Six from BSG who grew into so much more than replicants; Brawne Lamia from the Hyperion books; Zoe from Firefly; Aeryn Sun from Farscape; Arya Stark and Daenerys Targaryen in the A Song of Ice and Fire series; Galadriel from LOTR, who joined her family's mad rebellion in the elder days of Middle Earth but settled down to rule with wisdom; Ellen Ripley from the Alien movies (except the fourth, which was so bad we shall not name it); Uhura from Star Trek; Chrysalis from the Wild Cards shared universe; Sultana Katima from Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt; Machiko Noguchi from the first Aliens vs Predator comic series; Yu Shu Lien from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon; Briar Wilkes in Boneshaker; Fio Piccolo, whose aeronautical engineering genius keeps the pig in the air in Porco Rosso; and General Susan Ivanova and Delenn (too many titles, so much greatness) in Babylon 5. And I can't forget Wonder Woman, who, when I was just a little guy in the 70's, I first saw incarnated as Linda Carter camping across the TV screen, but over the years has been a character that's revealed herself to be more than a jiggling pin-up girl, rather a strong, intelligent character who holds her own and certainly deserves her status on the front-line, A-list of the Justice League. And last, but never least, Princess Leia, who also formed a lasting impression on me when I was knee-high to an astrodroid; she's smart, tough, tender, and quite capable of cutting down the badguys with either a blaster or her caustic wit. Give me another million pages and I'll name another million women in the pages and on the screens of SF

who I like and respect.

So how about you? Who are your favourite female SF characters? Why? What makes them important? Nominations from ladies and gentlemen are both appreciated.

Top 10 Tear Jerkers of SF

A few days ago I was having coffee with a friend and we got onto the topic of Futurama. Amidst the laughs about the antics of the crew of the Planet Express, we got to talking about how sometimes the show sucker-punches the audience with something really heartbreaking. That got me thinking about some of the sadder moments in SF in general. So grab your kleenexes, this weakly list is devoted to:

The Top 10 Tear Jerkers of SF:

10) Futurama - "The Luck of the Fryish"

Anyone who has a sibling knows that there are times when your brother or sister is your best friend, and others where you could just kill them. This episode features Fry dwelling quite a bit on the

wrongs his brother did to him over the years, but ends with him discovering just how much he meant to his brother. It's a bittersweet moment that's guaranteed to put a lump in your throat.

9)Pan's Labyrinth

This was a movie that like an oldschool, pre-Disney fairytale didn't pull any punches. The audience is made to sit through the visceral, impotent horror of not being able to do anything but watch while a child is menaced by monsters both supernatural and human, and then ultimately murdered by one of them. The only thing that takes the sting out of this movie (and keeps it from being higher on the list) is that in the end we find out that Ofelia actually is a fairy princess and gets to go and be happy in her "real" life among the fey. Of course, that's kind of cold comfort considering that she had to make the transition in such a painful and frightening way. And, one might even say that she isn't transported to the land of the fairies, but rather passes totally into death, with the magic land really just being her own personal perception of heaven. And if you really want to put a cynical spin on it and leave the movie super depressed, you might say that she doesn't go to the land of the fey or to heaven, and that the final vision in the movie is nothing more than a final hallucination experienced by consciousness as her brain dies. Eeeesh. I think I might just stick with the fairy princess ending so I don't start weeping right now.

8) The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - Appendix B - when Sam goes into the West

There are a lot of sad moments in the Lord of the Rings: when it seems that Shelob has killed Frodo; the story of the loss of the Entwives; when Gandalf and Boromir die; when Elrond takes Arwen aside to say goodbye forever before he leaves for the West; when Sam, Pippin and Merry have to say goodbye as Frodo and the others sail into the West; or later in the Appendices when Aragorn dies and Arwen goes off to live for ages alone in Galadriel's abandoned forest. But for me, the saddest part of the story has always been the note in the Appendix about Sam's fate. About how he grows old, and his wife Rosie eventually dies, and Sam heads off to the Grey Havens to get a little boat and try to sail into the West himself to join Frodo. We're never told in The Silmarillion, The Hobbit or LOTR what happens to hobbits when they die (we know the elves are sent to the halls of the dead in the West, but that they essentially get a reboot and can come out and hang out with everyone else again when they're ready; humans have some sort of afterlife that's hinted at but never revealed; and the dwarves are pretty convinced they'll get their own little piece of heaven serving the earth god Aule, even if the snobbish elves claim the dwarves will just turn back into dirt and stone) or what they believe will happen. Maybe they're atheists, content to be happy in the world for one lifetime. But if that's not the case, then Sam certainly makes a painful choice by going to live forever with Frodo in the West, rather than waiting out the rest of his days and eventually joining Rosie in the afterlife. Even though all hurts are supposed to be healed in the West, you'd think that after their long life together and the love they had that, content as he may be, the now-immortal Sam would still miss his wife (and later his children, who would eventually die), and missing loved ones for eternity doesn't sound entirely like my idea of heaven. In fact, Sam's decision becomes even more strange and painful when you consider that Sam knows that hobbits are allowed to sail into the West (since only humans are specifically banned, and he's seen Frodo and Bilbo go, and, though Sam doesn't know this, we know also from the appendix that dwarves can go into the West) and so one has to wonder why, knowing this, Sam didn't go down to the shores of the sea and get on a boat with Rosie while she was still alive?! He could have had the best of both worlds then. Lastly, this is an immensely sad footnote to LOTR because there's no guarantee that Sam actually survives the voyage and lands on the shores of the West. Certainly it says the tradition of his daughter's family is that he sailed over the sea. But there's really no info beyond the fact that he departed. There's no mention of whether he found a group of straggler elves and hitched a ride with them, or if he found or built a little boat of his own and set off on a solo voyage - which wouldn't bode well considering that hobbits aren't known as mighty mariners and it's a long voyage for an old gaffer to take on his own. In any case, Sam's journey (or attempted journey) into the West after Rosie's death has always been the saddest part of the tale to me.

7) From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury - Chapter 9 "Homecoming"

In this strange, sometimes wonderful, sometimes creepy tale about a family of vampires (and mummies, and ghosts, and assorted other nightmares) living in a huge old house outside a small town in Illinois, and the human child they've adopted, the chapter "Homecoming" with all its raucousness of a family reunited, is, at its heart, terribly sad. The human child, Timothy, can't join in the family's fun, he lacks their abilities, he isn't able to drink their special "wines", he stands out because he has a beating heart. These things together would be enough to make for a painful story about a person who, even in a child, is radically different and thus isolated; someone who doesn't fit in and is reminded of it constantly and can't do anything to change the situation. Add to this the unspoken truth that in being raised by this family, he's apart from normal human society and comfort, and thus will probably always be an outsider from humans as well - really, there's no belonging anywhere for this poor kid. But what makes this chapter especially crushing is the scene at the end where poor Timothy is sitting in the barn with his pets, having just cried about how he's so different, when his mother comes out to check on him. She's tender, she reminds him the family loves him, and tries to comfort him in her own way (from the unnerving perspective of the undead). But in telling him that someday he'll die and the family will make sure his grave is protected, she really only serves to emphasize the fact that he isn't one of them, and will never be, and will someday be parted from them forever. In one blow this poor kid has been confronted with the stark reality of his own mortality and, worst of all, that he will never truly fit in. It's horribly sad, but there's some cold comfort in that because of his status apart, Timothy is able to take on the role of observer/historian/author and keep the family alive in memory in the years ahead as more and more of them fall victim to modern times where supernatural monsters have no place.

6) Babylon 5 In the Beginning - Londo's tale of the war

This movie is one of my favourite parts of the Babylon 5 story for many reasons, one of which is Londo's heartbreaking description of the height of the Earth-Minbari War when humanity was almost destroyed. It's an immensely powerful sequence: a combination of beautiful and frightening visuals as Earthforce ships are blown to pieces, families holding each other and soldiers dying; the sheer moving poetry of Londo's emotional description of heroics, tragedy and inevitability; and underneath it all there's the mournful wail of a pipe and the teardrop-falling notes of a harp. It's a sequence that's designed to illicit an emotional response and it does it perfectly. How many times have I watched it? Doesn't matter. I'm still caught on the verge of tears anytime I see this part.

5) The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury - "There Will Come Soft Rains"

There's no way you could make an SF tear jerker list without including this story. The complete desolation of the city and house (and by obvious extension all of mankind's works) is powerful enough, but then we're confronted with an innocent, uncomprehending victim: a family dog, suffering from radiation (and probably starvation and injuries), dragging itself home to die. Even the animals that have loved us and served us aren't safe from our folly. And then there's the bit that follows that makes my skin crawl where the house's cleaning robots nip out of their holes to cut the carcass up and remove all traces. Bradbury knows how to pluck heartstrings.

4) Babylon 5 - season 4 - "Between the Darkness and the Light" - Ivanova in the Whitestar sickbay

This has always been a tough scene to watch. Forget about 99% of all other Hollywood-made deathbed scenes (especially those made for TV), this one doesn't try to sugarcoat suffering. Where other shows or movies would have some actress made up to look as beautiful as can be (if, perhaps, a tad pale), lying on clean white sheets, alert and making some chirpy speech, hearing about how everything will be okay and then softly sighing her way into heaven, Babylon 5 paints a grim, steely, very real picture of someone whose body has been shattered as the price for a hard-won victory in war. It's a dark, grey room that Sheridan finds Ivanova in, her normally pretty face is pasty and puffy and bruised. There are metal rods jammed into her skull to immobilize her head. She's surrounded by machines. She shudders from the pain and involuntary muscle spasms. Her breathing and speech are laboured and she drifts in and out of consciousness. And she knows she's in trouble and demands to be told the truth, and we have to watch Sheridan's pain as he's forced to bear the awful burden of telling her she's going to die, and probably soon. And he knows he won't be there for her when it happens. What makes it all the more wrenching is that Ivanova got there trying to help Sheridan, and there on the edge of death, she's still trying to help him, telling him not to feel guilty for what happened to her, and thinking about the best place for him to be when he leads the liberation fleet to Earth. Right to the end she's trying to do her job as his right hand. It's a painful scene to watch, but you just can't turn away. Bravo to Straczynski and the rest of the B5 team for not flinching either.

3) Babylon 5 - season 5 - "Sleeping in Light" - the destruction of Babylon 5

Another B5 reference - damn Straczynski & co are good at making me weepy! There are so many painful moments on this list (and many more that didn't make it) involving people, and yet one of the spots in the crucial top 3 is devoted to a thing, a collection of spinning metal, a space station being decommissioned and (violently) dismantled. And yet it's a powerful scene. Certainly it's emotional because the destruction of the station follows right on the heels of Sheridan's death. But the impact of the station's destruction is also so great because of all it has come to mean to us, the audience. For the characters, it's been a home - the one place in the universe many of them could fit in and heal their emotional wounds in; the last, best place for peace; and the last, best place for victory. For the audience however, it's the heart of all of the great tales and characters that we've come to love over five long (but not long enough!) years of storytelling. It's taken a beating but always survived (if not always completely intact). In so doing, it has beaten the odds - those against its chances of success within the context of the story itself, and those against its chances of survival (especially for 5 years) as a non-network science fiction show. And so when the explosions blossom inside B5's hull, blasting it into memory, it feels very much like we've known a person as real as any of the other characters. Perhaps its an unconscious feeling along the lines of Shinto beliefs that everything has a spirit, and so the loss of B5 is legitimately as important as the death of Sheridan. And it's also just a basic, visceral reaction to something so familiar and loved suddenly being destroyed before our eyes. What's especially noteworthy is that this destruction of a vessel has an emotional impact on me in a way that others don't necessarily - certainly as a viewer I spent as much time watching Galactica pull through against the odds in the new BSG, but when when it finally flew into the sun, the sadness just wasn't there; I just shrugged it off. But B5... there's always a catch in my throat when I watch its end.

2) Futurama - "Jurassic Bark"

Remember when I said earlier my friend and I had been talking about the sucker punches that Futurama throws at you sometimes? This was the biggest one of all. If you've ever owned and loved a pet, and been loved by a pet, it's damn near impossible to watch the end of this episode and not have tears rolling down your cheeks. In the space of a minute or two it's a retelling of Greyfriars Bobby. It captures all of the love and loyalty that a pet can feel for its human, and the lengths animals are willing to go, and the sadness they feel if there's an accident and the owner doesn't come home one day. I can say that every person I've spoken with who's an animal lover and a Futurama fan has unfailingly said "Oh, let's not talk about this episode! I don't want to cry!" - and meant it! - whenever "Jurassic Bark" is mentioned. That's a powerful piece of storytelling, not just for a comedic science fiction cartoon, but for any kind of entertainment. Damn. I'm getting kinda choked-up just writing about it.

1) Up - the opening sequence with Carl and Ellie

If you're not weeping into a kleenex by now, this final nomination might clinch things for ya. Whole novels and movies have been written about couples and their relationships over a lifetime, their happy moments and their tragedies, and failed to accomplish what Up does in five-or-so minutes. We see Carl and Ellie come together as children, share their dreams and adventures, grow up together, grow old together, and then get parted by death, with poor old Carl left behind, alone, in a house full of memories that's soon to be taken from him. There are very few words, but it doesn't take much for us to quickly bond with these two, to feel happy for them having each other, and to feel their devastation at not being able to have children (in a scene that looked an awful lot to me like she'd probably miscarried), and finally to cry (or come damn near close to it) when Ellie dies. It's a piece of storytelling that captures in its own way what many couples go through if they're together long enough. If you're in a loving relationship when you're watching this film, you can't help but quickly turn to your wife/husband/partner when there's that shot of Carl sitting alone in the funeral home and feel that lump in your throat as you think "Someday that will be you! Or maybe me! And then what will I do?!" and then you just as quickly look away before they can see you looking at them because they're doing the same thing. Maybe part of the emotional impact comes from the fact that because this is a cartoon, we expect to laugh, not to cry, and so scenes like this tend to ambush us. But when it comes to Up, there's more than simple emotional bushwhacking at work here. It's good writing, plain and simple, effectively and powerfully capturing a truth of the human condition. Though it shows it on an animated face, the movie accurately illustrates the reality of the loss and grief when a spouse dies in a way that few other works ever do. That's why Up is the number one tear jerker in SF in my opinion.

So if that wasn't enough, what other SF short stories, books, TV shows, or movies get you crying?

When Worlds Collide - SF & Food

"This station is now the ultimate power in the universe! I suggest we use it."

-Admiral Motti, Star Wars - Episode IV, A New Hope

"Next time: we eat Kevin bacon."

-Epic Meal Time, the Meatball Deathstar episode

It's a rare thing for two of my passions to converge, and when it does, I'm a pretty happy fellow. This time, it's science fiction and food. For the past few months (since shortly after they began exposing their culinary shenanegans to the world, really) I've been following the exploits of the gang at Epic Meal Time and I've been pleased to see occasional SF references (both overt and subtle) worked into their schtick.

Epic Meal Time is a weekly online show (each episode running about five minutes) featuring a group of young Canadian men who take experimenting with food to whole new extremes of size, flavour, and meat content. Their motto: "We make your dreams come true, and then we eat them."

Each episode starts with the group's tall frontman Harley Morenstein staring slack-jawed and bug-eyed at the camera and putting on a trash talkin' gangsta act as the cooking gets under way and he describes every ingredient (which always includes bacon, "and more bacon, and more bacon, and more bacon...") and each step in their process as they assemble their gigantic creations. Their accomplishments include the Meatball Deathstar (pictured above): a massive sphere of ground meat stuffed with pancetta and tortellini, then covered with meat sauce and cheese and perched on a wheel of garlic bread as wide as an Imperial interrogation droid - oh yeah, and a few vegetables just for decoration. Then there's the Turbaconepic: a "next level" take on the classic turducken, with a cornish hen and a quail stuffed inside the turducken, bacon and a meat stuffing crammed between each layer, and the whole thing then stuffed inside a pig which is then covered in bacon. And the carnivorous feast goes on. Meanwhile, on the side of the screen, a window displays a calorie counter that climbs faster than the US national debt. Seriously, each concoction has a total calorie count that's probably equivalent to the recommended intake for a family of four for a month. The episodes end with a mock promise of what they'll eat next time, a promise that never comes true, given the absurdity of the item to be devoured. My favourite: "Next time: we eat corduroy pants."

And yet, as frightening as the size of their creations are, I've gotta give these guys credit. There's clearly a lot of creativity that's gone into what they're making, and most of the epic meals look pretty damn tasty. I'd certainly join them in tearing off a chunk of the Turbaconepic or a slice of the Giant Protein Bar - though probably not a serving as large as each of these guys is attacking. The show is to be applauded for its unapologetic glorying of delicious, plentiful food in an era when we're constantly nagged about how pretty much every damn thing that tastes good will kill you and have an unforgivable impact on the environment. Nobody lives forever. Eat, drink and be merry. These guys get that.

By now you're probably wondering what this ode to gluttony has to do with science fiction?

There's certainly a fair amount of horror involved in watching one of these episodes as these dudes gorge themselves on their creations like a T-Rex family digging into a triceratops carcass - and in similar quantities. And while most of the meals look good, the occasional experiment, like the Slaughterhouse Christmas Special "gingerbread house", turns out to be simply disgusting.

But there is a sci-fi element that occasionally spices up episodes. One of the more obvious references is the afore-mentioned Meatball Deathstar. Darth Vader may have said of the original Deathstar that "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force" but if he'd taken a gander at EMT's version with it's ability to curbstomp circulatory systems with its cholesterol levels, incapacitate legions with the meat sweats, and induce enough gout to cripple populations of entire star systems, he might have rethought his position on things.

Then there are the more subtle occurrences like the Giant Protein Bar episode which contains a line of dialogue from the Beasties/Beast Wars/Beast Machines (whichever title of choice you prefer from the 1990's animal-oriented Transformers franchise) series. It also gives a nod to the Carl Weathers-Arnold Schwarzenegger handshake/arm wrestle/pose-off at the beginning of Predator. There may be other geeky references in some of the episodes that I haven't caught, but I'm sure these won't be the last.

What I'm waiting for (and admittedly, it probably won't ever happen) is for Epic Meal Time to display the ultimate synthesis of SF and food... I'd love it if they ended an episode with: "Next time: we eat the Ol' Porkchop Express."

Bon appetite.

MindMelding with SF Signal

Check out the latest MindMeld over at SF Signal discussing movie novelizations that were worth reading. Among the other, more interesting members of the group, you'll find me!

Admittedly, once in a while I've picked up some adaptations that made me wish I'd left them on the shelf (I'm looking at you, Predator, Ghostbusters, and Ghostbusters 2!) but overall, a lot of the novelizations I've read over the years are reasonably entertaining. That's why I've never really had a problem with them or the authors who write/adapt them. Sure, they're not original works, but how many times through history have we seen authors rehash the stories told or written by others, and do it well? Plenty. The fact that these books come out on the heels of a story that's just been told on screen, and that they're a part of a studio's overarching marketing plan, doesn't matter much to me and borders on irrelevant. Now, I don't read novelizations all the time, in fact it's become a rare occurrence in the past 20 years, but that's more a statement about the size of the pile of original novels in my "to read" inbox and the amount of time I have available than anything else.

My top 5 picks for novelizations were:

Vonda N. McIntyre's adaptations of Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan and Star Trek III The Search for Spock

Orson Scott Card's novelization of The Abyss

Piers Anthony's take on Total Recall

Alan Dean Foster's (the king of the movie novelization) The Black Hole

Check out SF Signal to find out why these novelizations (and others!) are worth reading.

Top 5 Evil Dragons

As I've mentioned on previous occasions, dragons have always been my favourite creatures in speculative fiction. With these fire-breathing terrors being once again top-of-mind with my recent review of the movie The Flight of Dragons, I thought they'd be a good subject of this edition of the weakly list.

While the fantasy genre (and to a lesser extent, science fiction) does have its share of good dragons, it's the evil ones that tend to be most memorable. Maybe it's because they display more intelligence in hatching their wicked schemes. Maybe it's because they've got bigger hoards (and, let's face it, when you're talking about piles of gold and other assorted treasure, size does matter). Maybe it's because they've got better dialogue (really, isn't it more satisfying to hear one roar "Puny scum!" than something soft like "Yes, I understand, that's a very good decision choosing lilac over key lime to paint your sitting room."). Or maybe it's sheer flashiness: there's nothing as visually stunning as a huge dragon wreaking havoc on its victims with blasts of fire, chomping of teeth, slashing and crushing of claws, and slamming of tail. The bad guys command respect.

For the purposes of this list, it's important to spell-out some disqualifications I've made.

Firstly, by "evil dragons", I mean dragons that are intelligent and have consciously made a decision that doing harm to other creatures is something they will pursue, with enjoyment, as a profession or hobby beyond their life-sustaining requirements. This rules-out dragons (whether they're intelligent or animalistic) like Vermithrax in Disney's Dragonslayer, or the monsters in Reign of Fire, or the hatching that grows out of control in Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's "The Dragon of Tollin" (in Greenberg & Yolen's anthology After the King) who devour and destroy simply as a matter of survival, and beyond that don't care about the affairs of other beings as long as they're left alone. This also includes the dragon in the original Old English poem "Beowulf", who seems indifferent to humans until a man steals a cup from his hoard, and then begins his rampage to get his property back and exact revenge. Eating and protecting one's territory isn't necessarily evil, though it may be unpleasant for those who get in the way of these top predators.

Secondly, I'm disqualifying dragons that aren't really dragons - ones that either started off as some other kind of creature, or ones where it isn't clear whether they're dragons taking the form of humans or humans taking the form of dragons for convenience. That rules out Fafnir of the Norse/Germanic legends (and it pained me to disqualify him, because Fafnir is clearly the inspiration for many of the dragons in the Western tradition, especially in modern fantasy) because originally he's a dwarf who runs off with a pile of treasure and sulks alone in the wilderness until his greed transforms him into a dragon. It also disqualifies the evil queen in Disney's Sleeping Beauty. I'm also leaving out the dragon in the recent animated movie Beowulf because he takes the form both of man and dragon, and being the son of a human and a demon, it's tough to know what his actual form is, or whether form matters to him. Likewise, Beowulf's dragon in Parke Godwin's fabulous novel The Tower of Beowulf starts off as a man transformed into a monster by greed, much like Fafnir.

So having divided our horde of dragons like different coins in a hoard, I give you

The Top 5 Evil Dragons:

5) Bryagh (from Gordon R Dickson's novel The Dragon and the George and the Rankin/Bass movie The Flight of Dragons)

In the original Dickson novel, Bryagh was more of a thug than anything. He began as the big bully in the flight that the good dragons, Gorbash and Smrgol, were members of and only really became evil at the end of the book when he was mustered by unseen dark powers to protect their fortress against the story's protagonists. In the movie, Bryagh (in the picture at the top of the post) is a real power to be reckoned with. True, the red wizard Ommadon is the emperor in the realm of evil, but the dragon Bryagh acts as his Darth Vader (Interesting, since Ommadon was voiced by Vader himself, James Earl Jones. Bryagh was voiced by James Gregory.), enforcing the sorcerer's rule but acting as a significant terror in his own right. Bryagh is dispatched to kidnap a man brought back in time to help save the world from evil, and when it looks like this might fail, the dragon is quite content to drop the man mid-flight in hopes that he'll crash and die. At the climax of the movie, Bryagh kills nearly all of the heroes, taking pleasure in taunting them as he smashes or roasts them, before he's eventually brought down. And if that's not enough, he even takes pleasure in eating the eggs of other dragons. This huge monster is wicked in the extreme.

4) Lien (from Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels)

Once a powerful member of the Chinese imperial court (in Novik's China, dragons are considered full citizens and equal to humans - unlike their Western counterparts, who are treated merely as clever livestock - and members of the rare Celestial breed like Lien are considered part of the royal family), Lien is intelligent, strong and driven. Perhaps her cruelty is partially due to the fact that she was always somewhat ostracized because she is an albino, her whiteness being the colour of death in Chinese superstition. But she also allied herself with a scheming lesser prince who had designs on the throne, and when his plot failed and he died, Lien went into exile and vowed revenge against the English-raised Celestial dragon Temeraire and his human companion Lawrence who had foiled the plan. But it's not enough for Lien simply to want Temeraire and Lawrence to die. She becomes so driven in her desire for revenge that she flies across the world to ally herself with Napoleon to help him conquer the world. By assisting the French emperor in his attempts to crush Britain, Lien hopes to make her nemeses suffer. Lending her own intelligence and Chinese learning to Napoleon's military, as well as own considerable strength, Lien helps the French air corps crush all opposition on the continent and secures a beachhead for an invasion force to land in Britain. She even uses her "divine wind" (an ability of the Celestial breed to generate a powerful sonic blast) to create a tidal wave to destroy many of Admiral Nelson's ships in a battle in the English Channel. That's a huge amount of overkill in pursuit of revenge, and certainly ranks Lien highly among the most evil dragons. What's more, that probably isn't the last from her. While Napoleon's army is forced off of Britain and Lien retreats, I think it's likely that she'll be back to cause more harm in some future novel.

3) Smaug (from JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit)

Going by nicknames like "the Golden" and "the Magnificent", Smaug is one of the great winged dragons of Middle Earth. He's also responsible for a huge amount of bloodshed. In taking over the Lonely Mountain, Smaug slaughtered most of an entire nation of dwarves, with the survivors being forced to flee to the homes of their cousins in the Iron Mountains or to live in the wilderness. He's also pillaged and killed in the elven kingdom of Mirkwood and in the human nations of Dale and the Long Lake. The fact that he's fairly old means he's probably guilty of a fair number of other atrocities farther back in history that weren't documented like the genocide described in The Hobbit, and so it's my guess that his crimes probably outweigh those of Lien. The only thing that put a stop to the dragon's depredations, and specifically his last angry rampage when Bilbo stole the Arkenstone from his hoard, was a good shot by Bard the Bowman, who managed to put an arrow through a weak spot in Smaug's armor.

2) Nomote (from Alan Dean Foster's "Lethal Perspective" in Greenberg & Greenberg's anthology Dragon Fantastic)

He may only be the size of a small hummingbird, but Nomote is responsible for causing suffering and death on a scale that most dragons can only dream of. Every so often throughout the ages, the last surviving dragons gather in a secret cavern in the Himalayas and brag about their wicked deeds. The one who has inflicted the most harm is given a golden chalice and named their leader. At the gathering in the current era, as the great wyrms go through the litany of disasters they've recently caused, they're disturbed when this tiny cousin enters and claims victory. At first they scoff. But all bow when he tells them that he's responsible for causing addiction and lighting a person's first cigarette. Sometimes it's the smallest fires that do the most damage to a village.

1) Glaurung (from JRR Tolkien's The Silmarillion)

It's almost not fair to include two of Tolkien's dragons in the top 5 of the entire genre, but he was just so good at creating them. The most evil of all the evil dragons I've encountered in books, TV or movies over the years is, without a doubt, Glaurung. In the history of Middle Earth, Glaurung is the Father of Dragons, the first dragon bred by the evil god Morgoth. In the great battles outside of Morgoth's fortress of Angband in the north in the First Age, Glaurung was an ultimate weapon, turning the tide of battle against the forces of men and elves until he was wounded by a dwarf king (who he managed to kill in his thrashing around, thereby forcing the dwarven army to withdraw to bury their leader, giving the forces of evil a chance to rally). Later he led a whole group of dragons in another battle, again driving the men and elves back. This wingless wyrm then led a goblin army out to destroy the elven city of Nargothrond, killing or enslaving everyone. But that's not enough: Glaurung likes to torment his prey from time to time. He puts a spell on the human warrior Turin, making him see the worst in himself. Glaurung holds Turin enchanted while goblins drag off the man's elvish girlfriend, then taunts him afterwards, telling him that if he tries to save her then he won't be able to save his mother or sister. The dragon then captures Turin's sister and casts a spell making her forget her identity and past; she eventually meets Turin, who doesn't recognize her when she's grown, and they marry. When Turin eventually meets Glaurung again and fatally wounds him, the dying dragon's last act of cruelty is to take the amnesia spell off of Turin's sister, causing her to realize with horror that she's married her brother; this drives the young woman to kill herself. A dragon that would use its dying breath just to mess with someone's mind one last time, to cause one last death that will make others suffer with grief, is truly the most evil of all. On this list of dragons, Glaurung takes the gold.

Flight of Dragons Ages Well

Animated kids' movies are like pizza: the best are the ones that age well. In the case of a 'pie, if it's as good or better when eaten cold the next day, you know you've got a thing of beauty. If a film's enjoyable in a decade or two once you've grown up (or at least aged, if not grown up at heart), then it's a keeper.

The Flight of Dragons falls into this category - as a thing of quality, that is, not something dripping with cheese.

Originally produced by Rankin/Bass in 1982 and aired on TV instead of in movie theatres, the story is based very loosely on Gordon R. Dickson's 1976 novel The Dragon and the George, about a 20th Century man who's magically transported to the past and has to embark with a group of companions on a quest against evil, while also having to deal with the fact that he's accidentally been put into the body of a dragon. The film's title, opening credits, and even some lines of dialogue (not to mention the main character's name) give more status though to Peter Dickenson's non-fiction book The Flight of Dragons, which endeavoured to describe how dragons would have been able to have their extraordinary abilities if they'd actually existed. But really, as far as Dickenson's contribution goes, the inner workings of dragons are summed up in about 5 minutes or so in a scene or two, while the story itself, though significantly altered, owes far more to GRD.

As a kid, all it took was the word "dragon" in the title (dragons were - and still are - my favourite critters) and the promise of adventure and this flick had me. And it didn't disappoint. There were dragons aplenty, knights, wizards, ogres, princesses and a desperate struggle to save the world and find a way for magic to co-exist with the growing reality of logic and science.

But as good as it was, over the years, The Flight of Dragons was shown less frequently. By the 90's, it was as good as gone. Sure, some channels would occasionally run older animated features like The Last Unicorn, but it was as though TFOD had faded into its realm of magic and had been forgotten.

Every now and again it came up in discussions with friends when we reminisced about our childhood favourites. But since there was never any sign of it on the videotape and later DVD shelves in entertainment stores, it was never something I gave much thought. Not too long ago though, I found a few minutes of footage on Youtube, and my interest was rekindled. I was pleased to find it on Amazon and got a copy on DVD last week.

And I have to say, as an adult, I think TFOD is still pretty entertaining.

Admittedly, it's not perfect. Some of the dialogue is a little corny at times (especially what was written for the late John Ritter as the voice of the protagonist, Peter), and there's a bit in the beginning where a gaggle of asshole millers has a whole assortment of different accents. The animation may be primitive by today's standards, but it was pretty good for '82 and is still good enough in my books. And there's the difficulty with the plot around the character of Aragh the wolf. Aragh begins his part of the movie dead, made into some sort of revenant by a good wizard to save the heroes from a hoard of monsters that no living creature can withstand. In exchange for his good deed, the wizard restores life to Aragh. But there are still many lethal challenges facing the heroes, begging the question: wouldn't it have been smarter to leave the wolf undead until all the evil badguys in their path were defeated and victory had been achieved? Isn't an undead wolf a far more powerful weapon against ogres and giant worms and evil wizards than a live one? It's the sort of question people ask about The Lord of the Rings and any other story where the dead rise to fight for good. Aren't they the ultimate weapon, since they're already dead? And if so, why would you stop using them after one engagement? With Aragh, there's no formal explanation, although I always got the feeling it was something of a fair bargain issue: a life for a life. It's also a little unsettling in the beginning when the good "green" wizard Carolinus is extolling magic's ability to inspire man to do better, greater things, and in his example lists dragon's hide as prompting the development of weapons of war like armour and tanks. Not so "good" results of influence by magic.

Regardless, there's a lot about The Flight of Dragons that works. It's a straight-forward quest story that's well put together and is consistently logical (pun intended, given the story's theme of logic versus magic) within the world it creates. There are plenty of good fight sequences like the rollicking aside when Sir Orrin Neville Smythe recounts his previous battle with the evil dragon Bryagh, or when Peter and his dragon mentor, old Smrgol, face off against the ogre of Gormley Keep. Along the way it also serves-up plenty of humour, with scenes where the dragons shake-down dwarves for jewels, or where they get drunk in the vaults beneath an inn.

It's a fairly smart movie as well, with the afore-mentioned explanations (as the man Peter is getting used to being in the body of the young dragon Gorbash) of how dragons breathe fire, why they covet gold, and how a creature that large can fly. And Carolinus' statement about evil being a natural part of the world was a good way of not only introducing the red wizard, Ommadon, but also of explaining why the green wizard and their other brothers had to initially try to include him in their plan to create a magical haven, thus accounting for how the enemy found out about it and why he wanted to stop it. Further, the realizations of Carolinus and the wizards Solarius and Lo Tae Zhao that their magic is failing, and the plot device of having the forces of antiquity "forbidding the four magic brothers from warring on one-another" (introduced after the wizards' failed meeting) neatly explains why the quest of Peter and his friends is necessary in the first place, and why the three good wizards can't just get it over with and gang up on Ommadon to end things quickly. Then there's Peter's battle with Ommadon at the end. It might have been sufficient to take the piss out of the bad guy by having Peter simply state that he was a man of science and that he denied magic. But the writers take things a step further, and while the red wizard mumbles incantations and attempts to summon a roster of foul creatures, Peter counters by rattling-off physics and mathematical equations and a litany of branches of scientific study, thereby making the scene far more powerful and driving home the point that science is just as broad and all-encompassing as magic, but also that it's logical and can be learned by anyone and doesn't require powers other than intelligence and curiosity. And I was impressed by a small, clever addition in the scene where Peter and Sir Orrin try to withstand the insanity-inducing noise of the sandmirks by singing: instead of making something up, the writers draw from real Middle English poetry and have the knight sing "The Cuckoo Song", which subtly reinforces that this adventure is supposed to be taking place sometime around the 10th Century (as Carolinus mentions near the beginning).

There are plenty of enjoyable characters too. They're all the better because the writers ensure that they're consistent with who and what they are. The dragons, even the good ones, still behave like dragons and have no qualms about bullying dwarves into giving up their jewels, steal cattle from innocent farmers, or deciding to burn down mills and potentially kill the millers if they cross the dragons' friends. It adds realism to them that makes them three-dimensional characters. Of all the characters, old Smrgol the dragon has always been my favourite. He's good-natured, if a bit prickly at times and is the mentor who has to teach Peter how to be a dragon and guide him through most of the journey to Ommadon's realm. I'll freely admit that I still get a little choked-up when Smrgol dies along the way. Sir Orrin the knight is another well-rounded character. Sure, he's the knight in shining armor, but he's not as young as he used to be. He's a brave warrior who's a force to be reckoned with in a fight, but he also boasts and when he's drunk he gets alternately maudlin and loud and combative. And, of course, we can't forget the bad guy: Ommadon. James Earl Jones does a terrific job with the voiceover for the red wizard, making him alternately lowly menacing and loudly maniacal in a way that's just close to over-the-top, but not beyond it, to be sometimes more frightening than his performances as Darth Vader and Thulsa Doom. It's also a credit to the film's writers that there's diversity among the characters. Not merely in the simple way of having dragons, elves and animals among the heroes. But more importantly, ensuring that the "good guys" aren't all white men. While Princess Melisande doesn't really play much of an active role in the quest, the band of heroes does include a woman, Danielle of the Woodlands, an unmatched archer who knows how to put a gang of elves in their place and is quite prepared to face-down a raging dragon. As for the three good magic brothers (I'm not sure we can count Ommadon in a diversity poll because he's so obviously not human), while Cornelius is white, Solarius is black, and Lo Tae Zhao is Asian.

What's also very important about The Flight of Dragons is that the writers don't pull any punches. This is a quest to save the world from evil, a serious struggle that means life-and-death, and doesn't just give lip-service to the term. People/characters die in this movie. That wasn't quite so much of a big deal back in '82 because filmmakers, even those producing movies aimed at child audiences (including Disney), recognized that for a story to have weight and meaning, there had to be consequences, and that meant that if there was real danger then not every character (and not just the bad guys, but the good guys too) would survive. Nowadays though, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a children's movie where one of the heroes is killed. Even the death of bystanders is unusual. But death is a very real fact in TFOD. As mentioned before, Aragh the wolf starts the adventure dead. An innocent bystander, the innkeeper, is killed when the ogre of Gormley Keep attacks a tavern in the night. Old Smrgol dies fighting the ogre - and killing it. And when Ommadon unleashes his terrible dragon Bryagh to deal with the heroes, the carnage is near-total: Danielle, the elf, and Aragh are all killed in fairly short order. Sir Orrin is critically injured and manages to kill Bryagh before he also dies. Only Peter survives. Granted, Danielle, the elf, Aragh and Sir Orrin are all revived when Peter defeats Ommadon and the magic realm is created, but that doesn't change the fact that the audience has had to watch them be killed. And, even though everyone else comes back, Smrgol remains dead. As well, there's a price for Peter's victory. In denying magic to beat Ommadon, he has severed himself from the magic realm and must return to the future, never to see his friends again (with the exception of Princess Melisande, who, having fallen in love with Peter, journeys to the future to be with him). And, of course, there's the realization for the audience that even though Ommadon was defeated, much of the destruction he was hoping to accomplish and the terrible inventions that he wanted to inspire happened anyway.

Bearing all of this in mind, one has to ask is The Flight of Dragons a movie for children? Yes, in that it's a good, entertaining story that doesn't talk down to them, but shows them that there are consequences for decisions and actions, and also that there's a high value to bravery, friendship, love and hope, and that even in a world that's necessarily of science, we can create a little magic sometimes. But it's also a movie that has the smarts to work for adults. And so it's my hope that The Flight of Dragons may experience a bit of a revival in the future and regain an audience that will appreciate it as a soaring feat of imagination.

Another Great Nerdy Songstress

Nerdiness is the new chic for up and coming singer-entertainers - at least for young women posting their performances to Youtube. The latest is Victoria, BC's Amy Lee Radigan (way to go, Island girl!) who's hitting it big with her song "Nerdy Girls Need Love Too". A friend and fellow geek sent me the link the other day. It's got a folksy sound to it, but it's funny and full of references to Doctor Who, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Big Bang Theory and other pillars of geekdom and is certainly worth listening to.

Apparently the video came to the attention of author Neil Gaiman (Radigan's holding a copy of Gaiman's The Sandman Preludes and Nocturnes in one shot), who then tweeted about it, included a link, and called it "ridiculously sweet". There's a more flushed-out story on Radigan's sudden appearnce in the spotlight in a recent issue of the Vancouver Sun.

This newest SF chanteuse follows in the footsteps of Rachel Bloom, whose hilariously raunchy "Fuck Me Ray Bradbury" exploded onto the scene last summer (and eventually earned her an audience with the old master himself).

My only question (and this applies to both Radigan and Bloom): does this stuff count as filk, or is it something else?

Top 5 SF Couples Who Are Overdue for a Valentine's Day Kiss

With Valentine's Day having just concluded, I thought it would be appropriate to put a little romance into the Weakly List. But rather than look at SF couples who have set the standard for great romances, like Sheridan and Delenn, Han and Leia, Adama and Roslin, Aragorn and Arwen, or Mr Universe and his lovebot, I thought it would be more interesting to look at the couples that should have a relationship. These are the ones who, for one reason or another, haven't broken the sexual tension yet, or worked up the courage to open their hearts, or realized their true feelings for one-another, or finally understood that the other person isn't a just a complete pain in the ass but really the love of their life. They're the couples who, if they ever did get together, would prompt fans to say "Well, it's about time!"

And so, with hearts and flowers and chocolates aplenty and love-theme music gushing in the background, I give you

The Top 5 SF Couples Who Are Overdue for a Valentine's Day Kiss:

5) Todd & Jenny (from Todd and the Book of Pure Evil)

As burgeoning highschool romances (or non-romances, as the case may be) go, Todd and Jenny's has it's share of obstacles. Not only is Jenny aloof even though Todd is clearly smitten with her, there's the problem of their school being the centre for evil supernatural activity that they're forced to deal with on a regular basis, which takes up a lot of spare time that would normally be devoted to adolescent melodrama and making-out. It doesn't help either that stoner metalhead Todd, as good-hearted as he is, may be the destroyer of worlds. And yet there's hope for these two crazy kids. Todd has demonstrated that he loves Jenny pretty much unconditionally and is willing to accept her for who she is, regardless of whether she's in her usual frame of mind, or whether she's been put under a spell and forced into a romance with an obsessive girl with an evil twin or with a basketball player possessed by the spirit of a 1950's auto wreck victim, or whether she's been cursed to increase her weight by a factor of ten. And, encouragingly, as we saw in the fat episode, Jenny has (grudgingly) taken notice of this and there seems to be a hope, however dim, that she may someday break down and give Todd a chance. So I say "Get it over with! Kiss the poor bastard!" and maybe, if the satanic cult doesn't bring an end to the world, they may live happily ever after - or at least until Jenny gets tired of Todd getting wasted and eating corn chips with his sidekick Curtis every night.

4) Lister & Kochanski (from Red Dwarf)

From the first day Dave Lister came aboard the Red Dwarf and laid eyes on Kristine Kochanski, he was head-over-heels in love with her. Three million years in stasis for Lister and Kochanski's death (along with the rest of the crew) couldn't diminish those feelings either. Lister even incorporated her into his life goal of returning to Earth and setting up a hotdog stand on Fiji. And, courtesy of a run-in with an alternate universe near-duplicate of the "Short Rouge One", Lister did eventually get Kochanski back. Problem was, she was in love with his alternate universe double, and didn't have much use for this universe's good-hearted slob. My memory of the middle seasons is pretty fuzzy, so I'm not entirely certain, but I've got a feeling that Kochanski never really gave Lister a chance, and we're told at the beginning of series 9 that she'd finally got fed up with him and the other "Boys from the 'Dwarf" and left the ship in one of its smaller craft. And yet the early seasons did contain a time-jump episode where Lister ran into a future version of himself, happily shacked-up with Kochanski. So it appears that eventually she does give him a chance. It's just that we, as the audience, haven't seen it yet. Never-the-less, it's gotta be a long, lonely wait for Lister to get to that point in time, so I say it's high time for Kochanski to realize what a great guy Lister really is. I say it's time that Lister got his Valentine's Day kiss from the woman he'd cross time and the universe for.

3) R2D2 & C3P0 (from the Star Wars saga)

They may have been manufactured long ago in a galaxy far, far away, but it's the 21st Century - time for these two droids to come out of the closet and show their true feelings for one-another. Really, R2 and 3P0 may be kidding themselves, but they're not kidding anyone else. Since their initial meet-up on Tatooine, the robots have been pretty much inseparable. When they're in the same room together, they're always close. Very close. It's not uncommon for 3P0 to have a hand near or on R2's dome. They're always fondly bickering like some old couple, and while 3P0 may storm off into the desert after a tiff, they're always ecstatic to be reunited. R2's always there to put old Goldenrod back together after some mishap. And when R2 takes a hit for the hometeam, it's not the human heroes who worry about him (hell, looking at their reactions, none of the Rebel heroes gives a shit about how much damage the little guy has taken and whether he'll recover), it's 3P0, who's quick to offer his own parts to save the astromech. I don't know whether droids would kiss or not on Valentine's Day. Might be a problem seeing as how R2 doesn't appear to have lips, much less a mouth. But maybe they'd interface with R2's data jack or something (now there's a rather risque image!). At any rate, R2 and 3P0 really need to get on with it and express their love for one another, and Valentine's Day is as good a time as any.

2) Mal & Inara (from Firefly/Serenity)

One Firefly's central sources of conflict is that of the captain and the companion aboard the ship as they struggle against the sexual tension between them that's thicker than Jayne's head. Arguments and insults are more frequent than attacks by the Alliance, Mal gets jealous when he sees Inara with clients and she is deeply hurt when he has a brief romance with a friend of hers. All of this eventually prompts Inara to leave the freighter, although she ultimately returns during the events of the movie Serenity and ends up staying-on again, much to Mal's satisfaction. Watching these two spar, the viewer knows it's only a matter of time until their explosive relationship is fully realized as an open romance, and yet because Whedon keeps stringing it along again and again, we're put in the same position as the rest of the crew of Serenity who see the relationship for what it is and sit on the sidelines in exasperation waiting for Mal and Inara to finally get it over with. Really, these two need to have a serious Valentine's Day kiss before they kill each other.

1) Ivanova & Marcus (from Bablyon 5)

The ultimate in tragic romances. All Marcus ever wanted was for Susan to care for him as much as he loved her. But despite the obviousness of his feelings, Ivanova, a victim of her own jadedness after a lifetime of romantic disappointments, doesn't allow herself to feel anything for him and returns his kindness and humour (usually) with disdain. Finally, once the ranger has given his life to save hers, Ivanova is forced to acknowledge the depth of his feelings, to admit she deliberately passed up a chance at happiness, and to come to terms with the fact that deep down she cared for him too, and she is nearly crushed by these realizations. Ivanova lives out the rest of her life successful in her careers in Earth Force and later the Rangers, but carries the constant burden of the lost opportunity with Marcus. It's a tragedy that's written and performed so well that it's almost as hard for the viewer to bear as the characters. If there's any consolation, it's that series creator J Michael Straczynski mentioned on one of the DVD collection commentary tracks that he eventually wrote a short story (haven't read it myself yet) taking place many years after the events of B5 where Marcus is eventually revived and Ivanova (now long dead) is cloned, and the two are finally able to build a life together on a distant world. Because of that, I hope for Marcus and Ivanova that there's something like Valentine's Day on that world where they could eventually enjoy a long overdue kiss.

Okay, before everyone starts with the "Hey, wait a minute! You left out..." I'll admit there's an absence of literary characters on this list. That's because as I looked through my horde of books, I couldn't find any examples of couples who should be together but who hadn't committed yet. Nor did any examples spring to mind when I sat down and thought about all the books I've read that aren't on my shelves. If there are any you can think of, by all means let me know and we'll put them in the "should have included" pile. Any more examples from TV and film that should be on the list? Let me know and we'll throw them in on the comments board too!

New Look, Same Babble

It's been nearly two months since my last post and while it might seem like I'd fallen off the face of the Earth (and some may have hoped so), it was only a bit of a break. Partially spur-of-the-moment, part planned, part victim of circumstance.

I'd decided to take a week or two off during the holidays, what with family and friends visiting and the usual run-around, which is pretty much to be expected (Belated "Happy New Year" to everyone, by the way). Bit of a repeat later for Chinese New Year (Again, "Gung hei fat choi" to all of you). And, of course, I made lots of time for reading.

Then there was a recent, vicious bout of bronchitis that lasted several weeks (Note to anyone who may be sick: it's really, really not a good idea to read Arkham Asylum for the first time when you're burning a high fever and it's midnight after you've just watched a story on the evening news, complete with gory details, about the cruel butchering of sled dogs. Trust me.) which sapped me of all motivation to do anything besides read, watch TV, sleep, and ponder just how much goo a human respiratory system can hold before it explodes. The timing for this was especially annoying because I had to miss a screening of Big Trouble in Little China (timed for Chinese New Year no less! "Indeed!") at one of the big theatres downtown that was part of a national film festival sponsored in part by Space (which also included Alien, Aliens, LOTR, Predator, and The Goonies, among others). Being forced to take a pass on Wang and Jack on the big screen will give you an idea of just how bad this bug was. That being said, I'm mostly better now. Mostly.

And I wanted to take some time to recharge - give a little thought to some of the stuff I wanted to talk about here on bloginhood this year, give myself a bit of a kick in the ass about doing more book reviews (I've been Tweeting about the books I've devoured, but over the past year or so I'll admit I've been remiss about doing in-depth reviews here on the blog), give some time to brainstorm some new list ideas, and to give some thought to a bit of a renovation of the blog.

The old Parchment template I'd started with when I first launched was okay, but I've been growing tired of it for a little while. For the past several evenings I've been on Blogger's design page playing around with template options. While this ensemble certainly isn't the be-all and end-all, I think it looks a bit better, brings some of the side features to the forefront, and better reflects the subject matter of the blog. I hope all of you enjoy it.