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.

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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.

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So I got around to starting the Sprawl Trilogy from William Gibson again. I’m pretty sure it was at least 10-20 years ago when I last read them – and I was likely 10 years late then (I can remember people in high school talking about the books but I was still reading very old-school sci fi at the time, Heinlein, Clarke, some PKD, etc.)

What’s interesting in reading Neuromancer again is of course seeing where the predictions went (yes, no or TBD) as well as how well it holds up generally. On the one hand, there are some things in there that sort of came true – the rise of the Internet and computer networks being completely pervasive in our society is certainly true, even if the execution is less Lawnmower Man and more Amazon.com (sadly). But the widespread use of body modification is still far from as frequent as described here, The Sprawl is still yet to happen (although I’m sure there are plenty of pockets already formed) and the world isn’t run surreptitiously by AI’s – yet. Nor are there ‘orbital nations’ either run by fringe ethnic groups or covert/eccentric large family corporations (again – yet). Certainly between these books, movies like TRON and shows like Max Headroom – there were a number of entertaining, predictive thinkers back then. And to some degree, there’s still fear out there of AI’s taking over (see The Matrix series, The Teriminator series – there are others) – but at present the bigger risk seems to be from our own species, a la Orwell. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out for better or worse in the coming years.

For me, however – back to the second book, Count Zero. Stay tuned!

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So recently I remembered an old X-Files episode written by William Gibson (of cyberpunk fame) and Tom Maddox – Kill Switch. You can watch the whole thing on Vimeo here. Rather than spoil the plot (wikipedia linked earlier will do that if you read it), i will simply say this is an engaging and taut story definitely ahead of its time (originally broadcast on Feb 15, 1998). If you ever worry about Cold War technology, Skynet or the like, you should like this a lot.

Last night, I watched the second, later Gibson episode – First Person Shooter. This one aired on Freb 27, 2000 and did well ratings wise, even winning two Emmys. But while it’s well made, I found it fairly predictable (helps having the vantage point of watching it almost 11 years after broadcast :)) – and overly melodramatic. This episode is very similar in plot to a certain 1993 first-person shooter videogame we’re all familiar with (because it all but started the whole genre) but in some ways, less interesting. I’ve never been a huge fan of shooter videogames to begin with, so that may have biased my take too, not sure. This episode was in the Seventh Season of The X-Files, in case you want to rent it to watch.

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Watched the anime Vexille (note: major spoilers in the Wikipedia link!) tonight, post-skiing. Vexille, named after one of the main characters, tracks the story of a completely isolated (diplomatically, physically and technologically) Japan; a malevolent plot courtesy of the internationally known Daiwa Corporation (makers of all kinds of advanced androids and robot tech); and the US Navy S.W.O.R.D. commando team sent to infiltrate Japan to figure out what’s going on after breaking up a secret meeting in the Colorado mountains. This show is kind of a mixed bag, however, for the following reasons:

1) The animation, done by the same team that did Appleseed, is good. I still think, however, that Appleseed was considerably more dazzling overall in appearance than this movie. Sometimes the visuals are very stunning, and other times they seem like the animated intro’s to a PS2 game or something (the ones you always skip past by hitting ‘X’ repeatedly so you can get to playing the actual game?). Also, in some ways this movie’s look seems to directly mimic Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in a number of scenes also.

2) There are parallels in the plot between Vexille and Appleseed too – I won’t reveal them to avoid spoiling it, but on the bright side, this movie doesn’t have the heroine shouting ‘Briareos!’ over and over again like Appleseed does.

3) The Jags (metal-seeking ‘worm whirlwinds’ in the Japanese wastelands) are obviously a Dune sandworm ripoff, plain and simple.

4) The characters (excepting possibly Maria) aren’t really developed well, if at all – they are pretty flat and one-dimensional.

5) Finally, one of the last battles between Vexille and Kisaragi (Daiwa Corp’s resident mad scientist) is pretty unbelievable.

Wikipedia references other reviews that call out Vexille for going over ground already covered by Ghost in the Shell – I agree with that in some ways, but Vexille put a reverse twist on the whole ‘man vs. machine’ debate (central to many of these similar anime) which had potential but became fairly formulaic in the end, not unlike the recently reviewed Sky Crawlers. The quest for better anime goes on!

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Oh, if only. 🙂

Finished this book today, very entertaining read and right up my alley. It is a ‘generic superhero’ story (meaning no Marvel, DC, etc. ‘traditional’ superheroes in there) – not *too* far removed from The Incredibles, but not focused on a family or played near as much for laughs as TI was.

The story is told from two first-person points of view; the perspective of Dr. Impossible, the smartest/greatest/most powerful/you get the picture supervillain of them all, and Fatale, a female cyborg and most recent new member of The Champions, the current ‘Superfriends-like’ group who protects the world from villains like him. Both characters are developed far more than the rest of the others – either villain or hero – but the others are pretty interesting too, as their origins and back stories are revealed throughout the book.

While this book has more than a few similarities to the ‘traditional’ superheroes of yore (The Avengers, The X-Men, and even the far more cheesy Saturday-am ’70s cartoon Superfriends) it also invokes the more nerdy tastes of The Watchmen in more ways than one. It also goes further than most traditional hero stories in that these heroes and villains inhabit a world with TONS of heroes and villains, most with superpowers (and several charlatans on both sides to boot) – the only series I’ve seen that implied this were the X-Men movies to my knowledge (world ‘full’ of mutants beyond the X-Men themselves).

I don’t want to spoil anything – of course this book has the usual superhero story touches (supervillain is bent on taking over the world, crazy technology, freak accidents that create superpowers, etc.) – all the right stuff. If you liked The Watchmen (graphic novel, movie or both), or other superhero/comics, you will like this story. In other words, you’ve seen this story before in other forms, but this is yet another page-turning way to tell it, and is pretty darn good. Enjoy!

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Haven’t caught any anime recently, but with the vacation – woo ho! – saw 2008’s The Sky Crawlers this afternoon. This was directed by Mamoru Oshii, the same director as Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

The main characters are ‘Kildren’ – they are permanently young children, used to pilot/fight air battles in planes that look a lot like WWII-era fighters, but at closer range they are an amalgam of various fighters put together – One looks like a P-51 Mustang with Stuka wings, others like a love child from a LIghtning + a British Mosquito, the others are similar amalgams. The battles are apparently a ‘violence outlet’ for an otherwise peaceful society (this theme has been done before, think Rollerball), companies are the employers and stage the battles (which do in fact kill the pilots/etc.). The plot concerns the struggles of the Kildren in and around their lives and ultimate, inevitable fate (likely death in a dogfight).

While this is a beautifully animated movie – i’d put it up there close to Appleseed and others that seamlessly combine CGI (the planes, most of the backdrops and scenery) with animation (the people, some of the dogfighting when people are shown) – the plot is kinda lacking. There are a lot of slow background sequences which again – while very pretty – don’t really add much. Some of it you figure out later is implied and key to the mental state of the main characters – but a lot of it is kinda ‘surplus’ screentime.

It also reminded me of early episodes of Witch Hunter Robin – where the camera plays over the scene, people sit there, atmospheric or trippy music in the background, but some minutes drag by before anything happens. Hm.

If you already watch some/a lot of anime, you may like this movie – if you are looking for a ‘first anime’ to watch – this definitely isn’t it. Either of the Ghost in the Shell movies (or the two TV series) are better, Appleseed, etc. are all better intro’s to anime.

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Just finished reading the newest Steven L. Kent Wayson Harris novel – The Clone Empire. Read it twice cover to cover, actually. Here’s what I think.

1) Good continuation of the main storyline from the earlier 5 books. There were definitely a few surprises (plot and character-wise) I didn’t see coming, which are always nice to see, especially in a fairly long series (sci-fi or otherwise).

2) I’m not sure what to think about Wayson’s state of mind at this point. On the one hand, he definitely seems like a man trying to escape his own past (and genetic heritage of being a programmed killing machine) but on the other hand, he can’t escape the violence when it starts, and because of that same internal programming, really can’t avoid liking it and feeding off of it, either. But unlike the many clones around him who have similar programming – he is given much more capability to ‘decide’ about what he believes in (or doesn’t believe in), which makes his decisionmaking (and ultimate mental anguish) that much tougher to bear in many situations.

3) There were two major plot ‘loose ends’ I believed I had caught as having been overlooked by the author over the past several books. One was answered at the end of this book – kudos. The other I’m still waiting to see if it gets addressed. Rather than spoil either one for people who haven’t read the books (or read them all twice like me) I would welcome a direct chat with the author on the latter – Mr. Kent, are you out there? 🙂 I simply couldn’t find an email address/form on Sad Sams Palace or i’d have pinged you directly…..

4) Stepping back to Wayson – I’m also a bit unsure about his ‘deference to authority’ seen more frequently in this book (especially as concerns Warshaw and Doctorow – Andropov seemed to light the fire just like in previous books, no love lost there) versus before. While there is an actual sentence directly mentioning this attitude mid-book, I just wondered whether Wayson was getting tired of ‘leading the charge’ every time no one else seemed capable or willing to solve major crises – yet gets perpetually dumped on and ostracized by most others the rest of the time. It may be that most other major authority figures see him as a complete threat, one that cannot be contained or stopped by anything or anyone (short of killing him), but that he’s too useful to simply execute (although that’s been tried unsuccessfully too). Hmmm…I wasn’t completely convinced of Warshaw’s motives in trying to ‘replace’ Wayson with Hollingsworth – but I’m not sure I was meant to get inside Warshaw’s head really either. Hmm….

5) One thing that occurred to me – Several books back, we got a brief glimpse (mostly through ancillary conversations) at the Mogat ‘bible’, written by Morgan Atkins about his encounters with and negotiations to hold off the Avatari. Can we see more from that? It may be too late at this stage given the next book may be well near done by now – but it would be very cool, and help understand the aliens a bit more? And why several thousand (million?) people chose to follow Atkins in the first place at that stage in the story? That was always a bit unclear to me too – They seemed to give up a LOT (as described during Harris’ invasion of their homeworld in an earlier book) but it didn’t seem that they were ‘racial isolationists’ (like Shin Nippon) or Freeman’s Baptist family (religious ‘back to basics’ farmer colony). Did I just miss the discussion of their motivations, or?

Looking forward to the next book – as I understand it – possibly the last one? doh! 🙁

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So watched the two recent Narnia movies again on DVD in the past couple weeks, and (again) enjoyed them both. Despite the Christian overtones of the stories (based on well-known and devout Christian professor/author/intellectual C.S. Lewis) – the movies don’t seem to preach in my view. I haven’t read the book(s), so they may be a bit ‘stronger’ in that regard, not sure.

But the stories are strong and in both movies, there is an EXCELLENT villian – Tilda Swinton as The White Witch in the first (VERY brief appearance in the second); and Sergio Castellitto as Miraz in the second. Definitely a great counterpoint to Liam Neeson’s ‘jesus lion’, Aslan, in both movies. Both villians are so definitely, unmistakably evil, that the audience all but HAS to root for Aslan and the children in the end.

But to me what’s also interesting with these CGI extravaganzas now increasingly coming to the movie theater – e.g. the LOTR trilogy, the Harry Potter series, (and I’m sure many more, given Marvel Comics’ seeming intent to commit nearly every comic superhero they’ve ever done to film) is to watch both the quality and quantity of the CGI effects (which arguably make all this possible) evolve over time.

Even between the battle scenes in the 3rd LOTR movie and the Narnia movies, I think there’s been improvement – when they show large fields filled with armies, the level of detail is just subtly more believable every time around. In the 3rd LOTR, there are a couple places where it just looks a bit too ‘cgi’ – when the horses are running in for the attack and a few get munched by flying boulders/arrows, or when Legolas is jumping back and forth as he climbs the Oliphaunt to bring it down with his arrows, etc.

This was one of my major gripes with the second set of Star Wars movies. Notwithstanding the largely lame and predictable plots and some *very* questionable character choices (Jar Jar Binks lowering the bar every time he appears or opens his mouth for example) the battle scenes just looked like a cartoon trying to be live-action. Yes, in the first three movies they had effects to make the armies (good and bad) look bigger, etc. than the amount of extras they had on the set, of course. But especially in Attack of the Clones – it just looked to me like ‘here’s an army of CGI guys that are going to fight this second army of CGI guys’ – and ultimately who cares who wins? At least in the third movie with its convoluted and confusing plot, they had the saving grace/bad guy of Christopher Lee – definitely NOT a CGI guy for the most part (wither Yoda?).

But back to Narnia. I just think these two movies (presuming there will be several more to track the rest of the books) have a good mix of effects, villainy, and plot, without one overdoing the rest to the detriment of the movie. GOOD STORYTELLING, as always, wins out in the end.

This is ultimately why Pixar has been so consistently successful – even for their only ‘good’ movies (e.g. Cars, possibly A Bug’s Life) there is still a strong character element that really builds a connection between the audience and the action onscreen. And in the GREAT ones (The Incredibles, Ratatouille being at the top of the list of course) the dialogue is sharp, the characters are real and human – even if not actually ‘humans’ – and the plots are complex, complete and diverse. Of course Pixar are also animation masters, but that’s usually just icing on the cake next to the great storytelling.

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So amid other home projects yesterday, took a break to watch the 1956 movie ‘Earth vs. the Flying Saucers‘. For those of you who haven’t seen it (likely everyone at this point) but HAVE seen a old movie clip of a flying saucer hitting the Washington Monument used in various ways on TV/etc. (e.g. Toonces the driving cat is blamed for it at one point on SNL) – that clip is from this movie.

Basically the plot is simple – an american scientist encounters a UFO during his project to launch space rockets (that seem to be going missing – he’s on his eleventh one) – ‘Project Skyhook’. They find out the UFOs are responsible, and want to colonize earth. Some skirmishes ensue, and (in part due to a mistake on the part of the Americans) the aliens attack and completely obliterate Project Skyhook’s launch base and buildings.

Some further discussions happen between the leading researcher and the aliens, but ultimately we decide to try to fight them – through some ‘amazing insights’ apparently obtained on the spot – we come up with a ‘sonic weapon’ to disrupt the aliens’ ability to defy gravity and make their ships crash. The movie ends with a bunch of jeeps jetting around DC trying to zap the alien saucers – several govt. buildings and monuments die a fiery death as we force the alien ships to crash into them. The main two characters are seen relaxing on a beach afterward, staring into the sunset and thankful that we saved ‘our earth’.

So…..there are many plot holes in this movie. And by way of comparison to the great, earlier movies The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953) and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) – this is seems a lot more low-budget and cheesy. The saucers were animated by Ray Harryhausen, and they aren’t bad – but their comparative size/scale seems to shift in every scene! Some shots where they are flying over major cities – they seem to all-but-equal the city in size (not unlike the huge ship in District 9 or even V) – and other times they aren’t any bigger than ET’s spaceship – e.g. when the aliens meet the scientists on the beach.

The aliens are pretty crappy tacticians – on their few manned attacks (where they come out of the ship) they show a forcefield below the ship that protects them (and in one case, they can fire out of it at the attacking jeeps, guns and army men) – but then they LEAVE its protection and promptly get shot up – WTF? And they walk like snails – which may be a product of lame rubber suits for the actors, not sure – easy pickin’s for the gunners (even a scientist picks one off).

Also, at one point they show a saucer battling a B-29 (propeller-powered) bomber – hello? Earlier and later in the movie jets are zipping around – why would a old B-29 be leading the charge (it gets zapped in fiery death – big surprise)?

Also, in the climactic battle – despite having shown repeated scenes (and discussing same between the aliens and scientists) that the saucers are hovering over the world’s major cities, awaiting the order to land and take control) – the battle only happens in DC(?) and with a bunch of lame jeeps tearing around town with big ‘sonic guns’ in them – half of which get zapped by the aliens anyway? What happened to all the other ships? At least in (the equally if not much MORE cheesy) Starship Invasions 20 years later (1977), they at least cover that one!

There were some interesting touches in this movie, however – I liked the stark interior of the spaceship, and the ‘talking rose flower’ they used as a translation device. I liked the weird alien voice distortion and psuedo-science babble they used throughout the film (although – no Theremins in the soundtrack? see The Day The Earth Stood Still for how it’s DONE) The saucers are decent – although many times they seem to fly as if the alien pilots are drunk.

So….. in summary, not a terrible movie, but there are far better from the era (see above, or also the great Forbidden Planet (1956) – which includes an extremely young Leslie Nielsen!) – as to me, the next cheesefest will be the slightly earlier This Island Earth (1955) which I have never actually seen – Scarecrow, here I come! 🙂

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