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And for the Doctor Who fans amongst you....
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...the Nestene invasion of Brookline!
and because I came across it and I love Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor so much:
coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad:
whether from great personal success,
or just an all-night drive,
we are the sole survivors of a world
no one else has ever seen. - john le carre
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Little Toys
And for the Doctor Who fans amongst you....
...the Nestene invasion of Brookline!
and because I came across it and I love Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor so much:
Monday, September 27, 2010
"You're all going to die down here."
This weekend I was reading two books -- not at the same time, obviously, but in shifts.
One was Ira Ratkow's Seeking the Cure which I'm reading in an attempt to get a grip on the subject matter I deal with at one of my jobs. I'll have more to say about Mr. Ratkow later, not much of it good.
The other book was Justin Cronin's The Passage about which I have more pleasant things to say.
The Passage was the big, non-Stephanie Meyer (thank heaven) "vampire" find for the summer. At least, that's what the press for the release said back in...oh, June-ish? Sometime? Here's a review from Tor.com and here's one from Me and My Big Mouth and here's one from the Guardian. All the right bells and whistles were pulled or rung apparently; since I don't hang out in Borders a whole lot, I guess I missed the cardboard stand-ups and huge posters. There is some rather nice cover art, I have to say...
And since I haven't finished the book -- I'm just starting the last third -- I can't honestly critique the full thing. That will be for a later post. But I do have some comments on the first two-thirds.
The first third? Basically no complaints. It's a nice, fast-paced, rather technical thriller. It starts with the birth and abandonment of a young girl in a convent; then we move onto a scientific expedition in South America that's searching for something when, abruptly, the Feds show up. Not the Federales, you understand, the US Feds who have been silent funding partners up to now and are suddenly very interested in what the expedition might find. You discover all this via a series of emails "recovered" from the expedition leader's laptop after...whatever happened happened. The last email is something to the effect of "Now I know why the soldiers are here." Scene and drop curtain.
Nice, huh? A bit workmanlike, perhaps, not a lot of style, but still -- solid thriller material.
The next chunk follows a rather disaffected FBI agent named Wolgast as he moves around the US recruiting men on death row into a secret government research project. His last assignment is to collect the girl we saw being born and growing up in the first few pages of the book. Suffice it to say: this assignment does not delight Agent Wolgast.
We do get to see some bits and bats of the research project although to anyone who read the first fifty pages with their eyes open it will be painfully obvious what's going on. Cronin adds some nice touches: almost all the staff of the research project, other than the security staff and actual scientists, are death row inmates or other convicts, most of them chemically castrated and sedated so they are the ultimate pliable material. The research subjects themselves are a little more nebulous: they are definitely un-human. They probably once were human. What they are now is a bit...fuzzy. They definitely drink blood. They are glow-in-the-dark -- referred to as "glowsticks" by a character you will probably be happy to watch die. They hang upside down a lot, move very quickly, and are decidedly antisocial.
So far, so good. There isn't anything novel here. If you're familiar with genre at all, there isn't anything groundbreaking. For all the hype, this isn't like the first time you watch Terminator 2 and see the T-1000 rise up out of the black-and-white checked floor.
The second third? Painful, man, just...really kind of painful. I lost track of the times I looked at the page and said, "How dumb do you think I am?" The story switches abruptly from the immediate aftermath of the (lets face it, inevitable) security failure at the super secrety uber chocolaty research facility of the research subjects -- lets call them vampires for the sake of argument -- to a posited alternate future which varies from the mostly workable to the wildly unbelievable. At its best, it's reminiscent of The Road and The Gunslinger. At its worst...it sounds like someone who read Lord of the Flies too quickly and just tossed in some vampires and the odd Western theme. There are some interesting characters here -- Peter Jaxon, Alicia Donadio (I think that's the right name), Sara and Michael -- who make it worth slogging through the rest but it is a tough slog from time to time, I warn you.
Cronin's reputation as a literary fictionalist seems quite solid; he's won some pretty impressive awards. I'd really hate to be a genre snob at this point and think that he just thought he could spin off a quick supernatural fic, win over the genre crowd, and tick off another box on his list 'cause that's got to be easy, right? I hate to point it out but, no. Wrong. Writing a good vampire -- or zombie or werewolf or witch or whatever -- novel is just as hard as writing anything else good. There. I have now stated the obvious. I haven't read anything else of Cronin's, so perhaps this is just his style: he suffers from wordiness, just for a start. He needs a decent editor who will sit on his chest and explain that we already have one Stephen King; our bookshelves can only take so much weight, so perhaps the odd word cut here and there...?
And I really did feel as though I was being treated as an idiot by the text. Things that Cronin produced as a big surprise -- were patently obvious if you'd been paying attention at all. And given how little I was paying attention at some points during that second 250-page chunk, that's pretty damned obvious. I realise that some of these things -- take for example Peter Jaxon's mother's dying words which can be interpreted two radically different ways depending on the placement of a comma -- are supposed to come as huge shocks for the character, world-beatingly different ways of looking at things. And that's great, I'm a fan of shaking up the character -- but in that case, there should be a little candy for the reader, too. Either the delight of watching a character see the world tumble or...some little bit of realisation in the narrative of something different going on, some new interpretation or thought you hadn't thought of yet. I can't say Cronin ever offers you that.
He does offer a fun time (90% of the time) and some good vamp-killing action, though, and I'm intrigued enough that I'm going to spend the time to finish the last third. So I'll be back with a report that I hope will be something more than "And so the last third was kinda like The Stand meets The Road."
One was Ira Ratkow's Seeking the Cure which I'm reading in an attempt to get a grip on the subject matter I deal with at one of my jobs. I'll have more to say about Mr. Ratkow later, not much of it good.
The other book was Justin Cronin's The Passage about which I have more pleasant things to say.
The Passage was the big, non-Stephanie Meyer (thank heaven) "vampire" find for the summer. At least, that's what the press for the release said back in...oh, June-ish? Sometime? Here's a review from Tor.com and here's one from Me and My Big Mouth and here's one from the Guardian. All the right bells and whistles were pulled or rung apparently; since I don't hang out in Borders a whole lot, I guess I missed the cardboard stand-ups and huge posters. There is some rather nice cover art, I have to say...
And since I haven't finished the book -- I'm just starting the last third -- I can't honestly critique the full thing. That will be for a later post. But I do have some comments on the first two-thirds.
The first third? Basically no complaints. It's a nice, fast-paced, rather technical thriller. It starts with the birth and abandonment of a young girl in a convent; then we move onto a scientific expedition in South America that's searching for something when, abruptly, the Feds show up. Not the Federales, you understand, the US Feds who have been silent funding partners up to now and are suddenly very interested in what the expedition might find. You discover all this via a series of emails "recovered" from the expedition leader's laptop after...whatever happened happened. The last email is something to the effect of "Now I know why the soldiers are here." Scene and drop curtain.
Nice, huh? A bit workmanlike, perhaps, not a lot of style, but still -- solid thriller material.
The next chunk follows a rather disaffected FBI agent named Wolgast as he moves around the US recruiting men on death row into a secret government research project. His last assignment is to collect the girl we saw being born and growing up in the first few pages of the book. Suffice it to say: this assignment does not delight Agent Wolgast.
We do get to see some bits and bats of the research project although to anyone who read the first fifty pages with their eyes open it will be painfully obvious what's going on. Cronin adds some nice touches: almost all the staff of the research project, other than the security staff and actual scientists, are death row inmates or other convicts, most of them chemically castrated and sedated so they are the ultimate pliable material. The research subjects themselves are a little more nebulous: they are definitely un-human. They probably once were human. What they are now is a bit...fuzzy. They definitely drink blood. They are glow-in-the-dark -- referred to as "glowsticks" by a character you will probably be happy to watch die. They hang upside down a lot, move very quickly, and are decidedly antisocial.
So far, so good. There isn't anything novel here. If you're familiar with genre at all, there isn't anything groundbreaking. For all the hype, this isn't like the first time you watch Terminator 2 and see the T-1000 rise up out of the black-and-white checked floor.
The second third? Painful, man, just...really kind of painful. I lost track of the times I looked at the page and said, "How dumb do you think I am?" The story switches abruptly from the immediate aftermath of the (lets face it, inevitable) security failure at the super secrety uber chocolaty research facility of the research subjects -- lets call them vampires for the sake of argument -- to a posited alternate future which varies from the mostly workable to the wildly unbelievable. At its best, it's reminiscent of The Road and The Gunslinger. At its worst...it sounds like someone who read Lord of the Flies too quickly and just tossed in some vampires and the odd Western theme. There are some interesting characters here -- Peter Jaxon, Alicia Donadio (I think that's the right name), Sara and Michael -- who make it worth slogging through the rest but it is a tough slog from time to time, I warn you.
Cronin's reputation as a literary fictionalist seems quite solid; he's won some pretty impressive awards. I'd really hate to be a genre snob at this point and think that he just thought he could spin off a quick supernatural fic, win over the genre crowd, and tick off another box on his list 'cause that's got to be easy, right? I hate to point it out but, no. Wrong. Writing a good vampire -- or zombie or werewolf or witch or whatever -- novel is just as hard as writing anything else good. There. I have now stated the obvious. I haven't read anything else of Cronin's, so perhaps this is just his style: he suffers from wordiness, just for a start. He needs a decent editor who will sit on his chest and explain that we already have one Stephen King; our bookshelves can only take so much weight, so perhaps the odd word cut here and there...?
And I really did feel as though I was being treated as an idiot by the text. Things that Cronin produced as a big surprise -- were patently obvious if you'd been paying attention at all. And given how little I was paying attention at some points during that second 250-page chunk, that's pretty damned obvious. I realise that some of these things -- take for example Peter Jaxon's mother's dying words which can be interpreted two radically different ways depending on the placement of a comma -- are supposed to come as huge shocks for the character, world-beatingly different ways of looking at things. And that's great, I'm a fan of shaking up the character -- but in that case, there should be a little candy for the reader, too. Either the delight of watching a character see the world tumble or...some little bit of realisation in the narrative of something different going on, some new interpretation or thought you hadn't thought of yet. I can't say Cronin ever offers you that.
He does offer a fun time (90% of the time) and some good vamp-killing action, though, and I'm intrigued enough that I'm going to spend the time to finish the last third. So I'll be back with a report that I hope will be something more than "And so the last third was kinda like The Stand meets The Road."
Friday, September 24, 2010
friday fun times: more bagpuss
'cause how could I not? Seriously.
And you think the one last week was trippy? Check out Part 1 at around...oh, 6:50. And then the rest of it, of course. Happy Friday, guys.
And you think the one last week was trippy? Check out Part 1 at around...oh, 6:50. And then the rest of it, of course. Happy Friday, guys.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
New Shiny Thing
So I have a new toy: a Kodak digital camera. It is very nifty and I have been fiddling about with it since Friday.
I have to say, as someone who almost always wastes about a quarter of a roll of film on images that are either blurry, unsteady, or just plain ol' boring, the "instant review and delete" function is just seriously awesome.
I have to say, as someone who almost always wastes about a quarter of a roll of film on images that are either blurry, unsteady, or just plain ol' boring, the "instant review and delete" function is just seriously awesome.
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| Great Blue Heron in the Fenway, 9-17-2010 |
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| My doorknob, 9-17-2010 (can you tell I was just taking random photos to play with settings?) |
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| Kitty and Candle 9-19-2010 |
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| Charles River from MIT Bridge, 9-19-2010 |
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| Clouds over the Charles, 9-19-2010 (This is what you can see in the long shot above.) |
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| Clouds over the Charles, 9-19-2010 (Ditto.) |
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| Harvard Square Cafe, 9-19-2010 |
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| Ditto, 9-19-2010 |
Monday, September 20, 2010
Who Cast Eric Bana as a Villain?
So last weekend when I was having a pretty damn bad day, I thought: "What I need is something bright. And sparkly. That goes boom on a pretty frequent basis."
Therefore: Star Trek. The new Star Trek movie, that is.
Disclaimer: I was never a huge Trek geek. I was into Next Generation briefly in high school 'cause it was on every night and...well, if 'Inner Light' doesn't get you, 'Best of Both Worlds' probably will. If neither of them do -- well...you probably care less for Trek than I do.
I did watch the first couple of seasons of Deep Space Nine until I got tired of the nothing happening. I understand that an awful lot of sex happened almost immediately after I stopped watching which is at least something but I've just never gone back. I understand the attraction of Trek, don't get me wrong -- I think all fans understand the basic draw of a fandom even if it isn't one that draws them particularly -- but it doesn't happen to attract me very strongly.
I've tried going back and watching both the original series and Next Gen relatively recently: TOS is good ol' fashioned campy fun (I love the rubber rocks) and Next Gen still has Patrick Stewart in it, so we're all good there. But...I don't know -- I feel like I'm being lectured about something. And, frankly, Starfleet pisses me right the hell off. They're just an irritating group of people -- like new-school UNIT or the bit of Torchwood that doesn't feature Jack Harkness: they talk a good game, but their real world approach features a lot of guns.
Still despite all that -- the new movie is a lot of fun. It's very silly, even I realised it wasn't particularly close to canon -- which I seem to remember being part of the selling point -- and JJ Abrams is definitely stuck on the idea of stranding people in extreme climatic conditions with inadequate equipment. I can't say I paid a lot of attention the plot -- I'm sure there were holes you could have flung a giant genetically mutated cat through. There was a lot of time travel that seemed to reinvent its rules every time it came up; in the end, I was fairly sure that Spock in the future had done something that some people, also in the future at the time, were seriously narked off about and they had, for reasons that passed understanding, come back to the past to --- dump his books? I'm really not quite sure but it doesn't really matter very much: the focus of the story here is on showing us the roots of the relationships between the chief crew members: primarily Spock, Kirk, and Bones.
There are a fair whack of plot problems with this movie; mostly, it's unimportant because the point is the flash and the bang and Chris Pine's charm which carries a lot before it.
What is important is how much of the movie is about three white guys showing the rest of the universe how it's done.
Yeah, this is basically what Star Trek is a lot of the time but this seemed to me to be particularly egregious. Sulu and Chekov are humiliated by Captain Pike in front of the entire bridge crew for no good reason. Uhura starts out kind of kick-ass and chilly competent -- and quickly degenerates into being a raving Spock fangirl (which has it's own whole level of odd but we won't go there.)
In the original series, which is what this movie is playing with, the whole point of the "multi-cultural" cast was, as I understand it, Gene Roddenberry positing a future where race was, if not unimportant, significantly less important than it was in the early '60s when the show was airing. Skin color or nationality would be less important than skill at a job or ability to perform under pressure.
In the case of the 2009 film, it seemed like the non-Caucasian, non-American characters had to be humiliated by the Caucasian Americans in order to prove who was in charge. Not exactly the most enlightened piece of thinking -- or the most enjoyable to watch, particularly for someone who always liked both Sulu and Chekov and expected better both for and from them!
Overall, it's a good movie but I hope the sequel has more thought put into it. Still, if what you want is a (slightly shiner) trip down memory lane, Star Trek does push all the right buttons. Mostly.
Friday, September 17, 2010
If I could only adopt a pink cat...
...I'd have a name all built in.
And am I totally crazy or does the owl sound like William Hartnell as the first Doctor and the toad much like the apocalyptically stoned Danny from Withnail & I?
and
And am I totally crazy or does the owl sound like William Hartnell as the first Doctor and the toad much like the apocalyptically stoned Danny from Withnail & I?
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