Altogether too rare, but definitely fascinating. As linked by Boing Boing….I will have to read this through a couple more times to truly get the gist but again, fascinating…..

The Paris Review – William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211

I especially like the Blade Runner comment….

candybowl

So in my ongoing, misguided quest to catch up viewing random old sci-fi and similar movies or TV I missed the first time around (the magic of DVD reissues) – I watched 1979’s The Black Hole today. At the time, this movie was Disney’s attempt to glom onto the sci-fi ‘arms race’ in the movies – started by Star Wars in 1977, followed nearly immediately by Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (also in 1977), and the much-anticipated (but fairly disappointing) Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). Of these four movies, The Black Hole is clearly the loser by a **wide** margin. The next-to-last finisher, ST:TMP, had some interesting ideas and the effects started out well, but it rapidly turned very boring and tedious, much like the first few seasons of ST:TNG until Roddenberry kicked off and things got more feisty.

So, The Black Hole. Basically there is a spaceship (The Palomino) on an exploration mission crewed by 5 largely nobody actors save Tony Perkins (in what must be one of the most wooden performances of his career) and Ernest Borgnine. They also have a floating robot on board, named V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (I only heard them mention the acronym’s meaning once, and really, who cares – he was voiced by an uncredited Roddy McDowall). Naturally the robot is aimed at R2D2 and kid appeal, but unlike R2D2, he can talk and is arguably more useful as a real crew member (despite frequently quoting Shakespeare and other poetry when he’s supposed to be doing his job). V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (and the later-seen ‘Old B.O.B.’ – the “72 beater Corolla” version of V.I.N.C.E.N.T.) are more like the otherwise silent(!) Huey, Dewey and Louie from Silent Running than the Star Wars robots. Lucas 1, Disney 0.

So the Palomino crew find a big, apparently abandoned American spaceship – the USS Cygnus – stationed near a black hole. Somehow it avoids getting sucked in, despite its proximity. After a too-long exercise (in fake excitement) at avoiding getting sucked into the nearby black hole themselves, the Palomino docks on the Cygnus, its crew get all but taken prisoner, and meet Dr Reinhardt, the scientist (read: madman) running the Cygnus with his OWN big henchman robot, Maximilian. And I must say, not only does Maximilian *also* know how to float around like all the cool robots, he is apparently mute (despite understanding English), has one big glowing eye on his head (right outta The Outer Limits) and breast-level, apparently sharp, flip-out ‘egg beater’ spinning claws that he uses on several occasions to harass and attack with. Tony Perkins (later) learns about them the hard way, for one. And Dr Reinhardt himself has almost a bigger ‘fro than Huey on The Boondocks. Mad Scientist, indeed.

And thus the Palomino crew now go through the drawn-out motions of figuring out Reinhardt’s diabolical scheme (in a nutshell, he killed/turned his entire crew into robots to ‘save their lives’ and plans to send the Cygnus through the black hole to somehow gain immortality) while they try to repair their own damaged ship to escape.

During this hour or so, we watch Tony Perkins become a traitor (Maximilian whacks him as a reward :)), other sentry robots compete with V.I.N.C.E.N.T. at laser target practice, Old B.O.B. tells them most of the ship’s horrible secrets, and several ridiculous chase sequences ensue as the crew finally wises up and tries to escape. Of course, the last-minute-coward Ernest Borgnine tries to steal the Palomino and leave the rest behind, and gets blasted/blown out of the sky as a result.

Then, if things weren’t bad enough for everyone, meteors (looking not unlike the flying Jello-sticky pad monsters from an old Star Trek episode, but better lit) start pelting the ship. In what must have been a dramatic need to amp up the expensive special effects during these lame chase sequences, a big, round, sun-like burning meteor manages to crash through the roof and ROLL down the center of the ship while the Palomino crew are racing across a catwalk in its way. Yeahhh…..

And of course we have the inevitable faceoff between V.I.N.C.E.N.T. and Maximilian (Old B.O.B. was already winged by a sentry’s laser and dies the soldier’s death he deserved – Slim Pickens-voiced piece of crap!) While Maximilian whips out the ‘breast cuisinarts’ and tries to give V.I.N.C.E.N.T. a chest-level rock-polishing, V.I.N.C.E.N.T. gives him a power drill to the guts in addition to laser-based indigestion. And of course somehow we next see Maximilian spiraling away from the ship INTO the black hole? How did he already get outside?

So since EB got their ship blown up, (and meanwhile, due to all the meteors hitting the ship, Dr. Reinhardt gets crushed at his workstation by a falling flat screen TV from the ceiling – yeah, it was a big one) the “Palominos” head to the probe ship, and in blasting off from Cygnus to escape, find out Reinhardt already programmed the probe to enter the black hole too – Suckahs!

What now follows is one of the weirdest endings to any movie I have ever seen. While the probe ship spirals through the black hole with the remainder of the crew aboard (and their speech is speeded up/slowed down for effect, which just makes it unintelligible) – we somehow see Dr Reinhardt soaring into the black hole himself – then we see Maximilian soaring near him, THEN we see them embrace (and apparently ‘mate’ with one another) because the next scene is Reinhardt’s eyes peering OUT from inside Maximilian’s head. And then we see the new ‘man-bot’ atop a fiery mountain with the demented crew milling around in the depths below – not unlike Saruman and the Orcs in the Two Towers (but aren’t we still in a black hole – where did the volcano planet come from?

The “Palominos” apparently make it through in the probe ship, but up come the end credits. So we never apparently get to find out which Palomino crew member gets to take V.I.N.C.E.N.T.’s hand in marriage and create a race of floating midget robots that constantly annoy others by quoting bad poetry – sad. Even Johnny Five was more literate (and funny) than any robot in this movie.

So if you have survived thus far, you are a better person than I. I now know why this movie was a distant, distant fourth in the race to make the ‘next Star Wars’ back then, and why it has escaped notice since. The obvious attempt to make ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea‘ in space failed, guys. And the story isn’t over yet – apparently they are plotting a ‘reboot‘ (thankfully not a sequel and likely not the same plot in the reboot) of The Black Hole. But the first movie was no TRON by any stretch, and like the somewhat recent Escape to Witch Mountain redo, I expect it to fade fast – but maybe i’ll be wrong?

candybowl

So in the fall of 2009, a miniseries remake of Patrick McGoohan’s classic 60’s TV series The Prisoner was done by AMC. I finally (lame, I know) finished watching the last episode earlier today on my computer. Like the recent TRON update – I had mixed reactions.

On the positive side – the casting was generally pretty good. I liked Jim Caviezel as #6, and Ian McKellen plays a pretty sinister, mind-f #2 for the entire series. The rest of the supporting cast aren’t really given enough to do – but, I liked pretty much all of them.

The show was also obviously well made, and they didn’t skimp on the budget, which was nice. Given the recent reboot(s) of BSG and Firefly on the big screen (Serenity) – they really couldn’t be taken seriously had they cut corners, however.

I liked the iconic touches here and there – Rover of course (here ‘he’ is much huger than in the original series); the glimpse of the pennyfarthing bike in the (new) Village “nightclub” to name a couple. While set in the desert this time around (instead of a weird, baroque-style cloistered resort – the original onsite location was Portmeirion in Wales) the sense of isolation and fantasy-like disconnect from the rest of the world is still very effective.

On the other hand – I had several gripes, too.

One of the neat things about the original series is the constant back-and-forth between #6 and the continual replacement of #2 – because each time one ‘lost’ the battle of wits with #6 – he/she was replaced in the next episode (there are a couple exceptions to this but it was the general rule). So the dynamics kept on changing (along with the plot and whatever other escape scheme (6) or mind-control attempt (2) was happening in that episode. While 2 and 6 battle it out often here – it’s seemingly more subtle and definitely far less intense. Surely some of the original’s intensity is completely due to Patrick McGoohan himself – starting right at the opening sequence where he resigns and smashes a teacup on his bosses’ desk – but they could have ramped it up a bit more.

Second, I didn’t really like all the side plots (many of which tried to create additional storylines but IMHO failed and ultimately created too much distraction), especially that of 2’s son, 11-12. It could have been interesting – they seemed to hint early on that he’d ultimately become 6’s henchman – but I just think they didn’t have enough time to develop it and shouldn’t have really bothered.

Next – there were too many ‘draggy’ scenes. Scenes where the camera is (I think) trying to draw you into the conspiracy as one of the ‘watchers’ of both 2 and 6, depending on who’s at the center of the action. But while certainly there would be more onscreen ‘setup time’ in earlier episodes – I just felt later episodes, where presumably 6 would keep on trying harder and harder to escape – until he gets whacked by 2 or dies trying – just didn’t go that way and kept trying to be far too subtle. It was almost like they were trying to ‘out-clever’ the original series. IMHO to pull that off, you simply have to go in a fairly different direction than the original story – think Blade Runner or Minority Report vs. their original stories – and here there just wasn’t enough done to reinvent McGoohan’s original concept, in my view. It may have been a bit tougher given that the original was a TV series and not a book – thus I’m sure they felt obligated to play homage to elements of the original (most notably Rover) but that shouldn’t have limited the creativity otherwise? In a remote way, it’s similar to criticizing Star Trek ‘holodeck’ episodes – nearly every time they used that as a plot device, you had to cringe – it was SUCH an obvious ‘out’ for lame plots and lazy writing. Science Fiction can be about nearly ANYTHING – why would you need a holodeck to save your butt in writing an episode? Here, similar – given the advancements in CGI (and world events since – the original Prisoner was making all sorts of veiled and overt commentary on that along the way) there could have been far more of it here.

Finally, a ‘neutral’ comment – the original never really ‘tied things up’ by its end. Its final two-part episode is a real exercise in complete wackiness and may only have made sense to McGoohan in the end. So in doing a remake – do you take that plunge and build a real ‘ending’, do you leave it open-ended, or do something completely out there (as done before)? Here I think they realized a major flaw in the original and tried to wrap things up, but I can’t say I was completely satisifed with the explanation(s) provided. While there was no ‘james bond villain’ pulling all the strings behind the scenes (something McGoohan was trying his best, possibly too much, to avoid in the original) – here the explanation was more esoteric yet not explained enough (or I simply missed it – entirely possible).

So, glad I watched it – but not sure I have the patience to watch it all over anytime soon to catch nuances or plot stuff I missed? It’s on the computer though, I can watch it again anytime…..

candybowl

PS – no Prisoner-related review of any type would be complete without the Simpsons version…muhhahahah!

Just finished the first Uplift Trilogy by David Brin. This was a re-read, but it’s been many years. These books are very addicting and haven’t aged badly at all (they were all written in the 80s, although I didn’t read them until after the 90s, pretty sure).

The central theme is that species (alien or human) ‘uplift’ one another into sentience – often through the help of genetic manipulation. In the humans’s case, we were already doing this with chimpanzees and dolphins when our first starships ran into the far greater (and far, far older) Galactic society. Besides becoming immediately controversial (after all, who was Man’s ‘patron’ species? – all the books speculate on this but never provide any answers) and at risk for invasion/takeover (most of the larger Galactic species had been around for thousands if not millions of years), we did gain a few friends along the way, who are revealed over the span of the three books (Sundiver, Startide Rising and The Uplift War). The uniting principle amongst an otherwise uncertain and often dangerous Five Galaxies galactic society is the Library, which serves as an essential repository of nearly all galactic knowledge over time. Each member race has Branch Libraries on their homeworld and colony planets, where they can both learn from and contribute to the knowledge therein over time.

While there are a few quibbles i’d have with the stories now (for example, the books make a big deal about how the humans disdain using the Library while other Galactics rely far, far too heavily on it – If these societies were really thousands-plus years old, I find it hard to believe it would be quite that simplistic) – for the most part they are an entertaining read, with interesting characters and solid attempts at seeing things from other species’ perspective (especially in the latter two books in the case of dolphins and chimps).

It’s off to the second Uplift ‘Storm’ Trilogy for me now! If you are looking for a great way to read a David Brin book without having to commit to an entire series – his Kiln People (2002) book is a very entertaining, one-book-only read? Enjoy!

candybowl

candybowl

Just finished Jack McDevitt’s Odyssey last night. Over the time I spent reading it, I just kept getting more and more drawn in until I simply had to keep reading until finish. This is the fifth book in the ‘Academy‘ series – I read a couple of the earlier books in the series, Chindi and Omega, a couple years ago. All these novels also share the central character of Priscilla Hutchins (‘Hutch’), who is a starship captain and pilot, and ends up as an administrator and sometimes politico in this book (in many ways to her dismay).

Basically the story deals with a galaxy largely devoid of alien life excepting ancient artifacts, when a series of mysterious ‘moonrider’ sightings at several of the human outposts rattle Hutch’s world in more ways than one, and she is forced to take them seriously.

Besides the gradual unfolding of a somewhat twisty-turny plot, there are a few additional nice touches in this novel. One is the additional central character of Gregory MacAllister, a journalist not unlike that of the real Christopher Hitchens (with a dose of H.L. Mencken) – eternal skeptic, strangely a friend to Hutch, muckraker, and despite his cynical/gruff/Frasier-Crane like exterior, something of a softy at heart.

There is also a lot of thinly veiled ecological commentary throughout the book – since the book is set at least a few hundred years in the future, the effects of climate change and global warming are already well on their way – and the human race is still (mostly) arguing about what to do about it, sadly.

I also liked the touch of intrigue – better readers than I may spot the foreshadowing but as noted above, I liked the plot twists and didn’t see them coming for the most part.

All in all, an increasingly good read by the end. I guess i’ll have to now read the first two and last books in the series, dadgum it!

candybowl

Finished reading Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card today. This is my second time reading this book – I read the rest of the series more or less as they came out the first time around, but not sure if i’ll get to that this time. But wanted to reread this again as I found a short story ‘prequel’ (Mazer In Prison) recently in the Federations anthology and reminded me what a good book this is.

it’s also kind of funny because if you walk around with this book in your hand (was reading it on the bus yesterday afternoon) people will always speak up and say what a good book it is – even though those speaking don’t usually look like sci-fi fans – last time it was some old women touting it when they saw me in downtown Salt Lake City carrying the book (where I lived then). Kinda weird.

The book holds up well on a second read – despite being a person who likes to reread books, lately I have noticed on re-reads things I didn’t earlier (Heinlein’s Friday being a noteworthy example – far too many descriptions of eating huge meals in far too much detail – last time I checked, this was sci-fi, not Food Network?) that lower the book’s interest for me somewhat. Here, not so. While I still sometimes get annoyed about the ‘kids language’ used from time to time in the book – it is a book about a little kid being turned into a star-fleet commanding killer, after all – otherwise the writing works well at getting inside Ender’s head as well as a few key other players around him (not all, to be sure – but that’s what at least some of the later books try to do). I think his inner struggle between what he knows they are doing to him vs. how he regrets a lot of it by the end of the book could have been made stronger, but again, he’s a little kid and likely couldn’t have completely understood it at that stage anyway.

And while this book is about space opera to a degree – it’s much, much more about the way humans use one another to achieve their own ends (for better or worse, in positive, neutral or negative ways). Peter, Ender’s older brother, certainly represents both ends of the spectrum on this point, depending how you look at him and what part of the book you are reading. And how you look at him through Ender’s perspective.

In a nutshell, Ender is a gifted child who takes many of the qualities of his older (also gifted) brother and is trained to maximize them for the purposes of fighting an interstellar war – essentially commanding the fleet by remote control. The book mostly covers his experiences and development in Battle School and how he is trained ultimately to think he can only rely on himself, while the rest of humanity may have to ultimately rely on him for survival. His sister enters the scene early on, then later, acting somewhat as his conscience as his humanity is in many ways removed by his military training over time.

Highly recommended, if you like military-style sci-fi. Certainly influential in its own way, but harder to duplicate (IMHO) than say, Starship Troopers, which lately seems to have spawned many series of military sci-fi on its own (or taken together with The Forever War). I think it’s fairly certain that any book post-Ender that tries to have children fighting remote-control space battles, coupled with themes of ‘growing up too soon’ or ‘lost/never had a childhood’ – would be deemed derivative and a copy fairly soon after it appeared.

candybowl

Finished Neal Stephenson’s book Zodiac today. What a great book, even if it is circa 1988. Not completely his usual fare – this is not some cyberpunk adventure (Snow Crash) nor some sort of “historical science fiction” story (as Quicksilver is rumoured to be – I read a not-positive review of that book some time ago and still hesitate to read it).

Rather, this is the story of a rather ‘cornholio‘ Zodiac-boat driving environmentalist who goes around and busts companies who dump toxic waste in Boston harbor – or other rivers and similar places. It reads like Edward Abbey prowling the harbor like a toxic ranger. And it’s simply a great book!

For me personally, while I’m not ready to live that lifestyle by any means (nor would I likely ever have been) it’s one of those books that provide a vicarious look into how life aboard the Rainbow Warrior must really be – until you get sunk by the French Navy or rammed with a harpoon while blocking Japanese or Icelandic whaling boats.

And, like Snow Crash, Stephenson provides enough real-world grounding to make the story believable, even if it’s hopelessly biased against the evil corporations (which is my bias too, more reason to love the story that much more :)) Although the way things are now in Orwell’s USA where/when we live, the main character would have gone to jail quite early in the book, sadly. And those same douchey corp’s would probably have largely escaped liability.

it’s a great read, and not a huge book – about 300pgs (paperback). pick it up!

candybowl

The US Space Shuttle program is sadly accelerating to a close. It is hard to believe that it started when I was only 9 years old – in this video, you can see the original flight of Enterprise (never went into orbit, that was left for Columbia’s first mission). Would that we got behind such a mission again, instead of all the BS, lying and corruption that passes for politics in today’s America. It’s still not too late to dream big….

link here

So finally finished watching the Firefly series on DVD, after having owned it for at least a couple years, and having watched the later Serenity movie several times (at home and I think even in the theater when it was out).

For those unfamiliar with this show, this was the short-lived (about 14-15 episodes only) Joss Whedon-conceived ‘western in space’ of several years ago. As has been said many times elsewhere, this series was cancelled WAY before its time. The show was not only well done (and certainly provided more than a bit of inspiration for the later and far more successful Battlestar Galactica remake (just think about the camera moves during special effects shots in either series and you’ll see that influence right away, there are others) but it made you actually care about the characters, had inspired casting choices, and interesting plots.

Some of the actors have since shown up in other series (Nathan Fillion is currently in Castle; Summer Glau was in the recent Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles series, for example).

Ultimately, will they do another movie? As of 2008, Joss Whedon says very unlikely – but one can always dream, no?

If you haven’t seen the series or the movie (or – shame on you – both) – get online and put it in your Netflix queue, stat.

candybowl