Hey, all. Having realized a few months ago that I still wasn't quite as much of a dork as I might be, I've recently begun to dabble in Let's Play videos. Since it's science fiction-related, I thought I'd post a recent ongoing one here, a perilous interstellar journey through Subset Games' unforgiving space combat/strategy/roguelike-like game FTL: Faster Than Light! With the Federation torn by civil war, the fate of the galaxy lies in the hands of me, my loyal first mate/friend from college Dave, and the brave crew of the USS Alderaan. God help us all.
The original recording of this predates some valuable lessons learned about audio quality, and I have a voice that might charitably be described as "G-man from Half-Life after he'd eaten a bag of sugar and been punched in the lip," but if you enjoy this sort of thing I encourage you to check it out anyway. And if you like it, I hope you'll consider subscribing to keep up with future episodes.
Vast and Cool and Unsympathetic
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Let's Play FTL: Faster Than Light
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Richard Biggs, rest in peace
Today is the 10th anniversary of the death of actor Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Stephen Franklin on the classic science fiction TV series Babylon 5. Babylon 5 was one of my favorite shows growing up; had it not existed, this blog might not either, and Biggs' character and performance was one of the many things I loved about it. Sadly, he died at the age of only 44.
This video was made by editor/producer John E. Hudgens, who was responsible for a number of Babylon 5 promotional videos and created this tribute to Richard Biggs when he was unable to attend Biggs' memorial service in person. Many thanks to him for making it available online.
Rest in peace.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Neal Asher's books finally getting published in the US
Some very good news for American science fiction fans: Someone is finally publishing all five books in Neal Asher's Ian Cormac series in the United States of America- Gridlinked, The Line of Polity, Brass Man, Polity Agent, and Line War. Previously, people here who wanted copies of these books have had to resort to importing foreign editions of most of them.
I say “most of them” because Tor Books made the odd decision to release the first book in the series, Gridlinked, in the US and then just skip to the third one, Brass Man, before seemingly giving up on American publication of the series entirely. Anyone reading Brass Man before the The Line of Polity is probably going to be quite confused.
Now, my working assumption- by no means an irrefutable one, but a sound starting point in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary- in most matters is that people who have a significant stake in understanding a subject will know it better than those that don't. Incentives matter. So I'm entirely open to the possibility that publishing the first book in a series as a mass-market paperback, skipping the second book, publishing the third book as a trade paperback, and then skipping the rest of the series somehow makes financial sense. But heck if I can figure out why or how.
Happily, that situation has been rectified by Night Shade Books (now under the auspices of Skyhorse Publishing), who have already done fine work bringing some of Asher's other books to the States. The Line of Polity and Polity Agent are now available in American trade paperback editions, with Line War scheduled for release this October. Two stand-alone novels set in the Polity universe, Hilldiggers and The Technician, and the second book in the Spatterjay series, The Voyage of the Sable Keech, are also scheduled for this or next year. Hopefully there will be even more to come.
I've been a big fan of Neal Asher's work since stumbling on Gridlinked at Barnes and Noble back in 2006- it was one of my very first reviews, in fact. The need to import most of his books has long been irritating, and his lack of a physical presence in bookstores largely prevents people here from finding him the way I did. If you're interested in science fiction featuring interstellar societies, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, insanely hostile planetary ecologies, imaginative and incredibly creepy aliens (“The Engineer,” dear God), lots and lots of action, and- despite being an author best-known for large-scale space opera mayhem- some quite affecting and unusually realistic portrayals of people seldom done justice in fiction (e.g. a recovering victim of extreme psychological trauma in Orbus or a child on the autistic spectrum in Shadow of the Scorpion), check him out.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Book Review: The Judge of Ages by John C. Wright
The Judge of Ages is the third book in the science fiction series by John C. Wright that began with Count to a Trillion and continued with The Hermetic Millennia. (See my review here.) It follows directly from the second book and assumes familiarity with the offense and concepts of its predecessors, so it's definitely a series that should be read in order.
In 11,000 AD, the Armada of an unimaginably advanced civilization of machine intelligences from the Hyades will complete a journey of nearly 8,000 years and arrive on Earth as conquerors. For almost all of that time, Menelaus Montrose- 22nd-century Texan lawyer/duelist turned space traveler and subject of a more-or-less successful self-administered experiment in intelligence augmentation- has fought against his former friend and shipmate, self-proclaimed Master of the World Ximen del Azarchel, for the future of the human race, each using post-human brilliance and the science of historical prediction gleaned from an alien monolith discovered on humanity's first manned expedition beyond our solar system, in a long struggle to shape the course of cultural and biological evolution.
For almost all of that time, del Azarchel and his allies have worked tirelessly to turn humanity into a servile race that will submit to the invaders and survive, rather than risk extinction trying to defy them. For the Hyades are themselves only the vassals of an even mightier civilization, who are themselves subordinate to the unimaginably advanced civilization that rules our entire galaxy from the globular cluster M3.
While his trusted lieutenants gather people from across the ages who wish to escape their own era in a network of underground cryogenic tombs, Montrose has slept away the centuries and millenia in cryogenic suspension beneath the earth until times when his intervention is needed. He lives for the hope of creating a human civilization that can stand against the Hyades- and of living long enough to someday be reunited with his wife Rania, departed on a desperate 70,000 year voyage to M3 to make an appeal on behalf of the human race.
It is the year 10,515. Montrose and hundreds of his sleeping clients have been awakened by tomb raiders seeking the legendary Judge of Ages- the godlike figure Montrose has become in the myths of cultures spanning thousands of years, said to slumber beneath the earth until he arises to pass terrible judgments on entire eras and civilizations. Accompanied by human and posthuman allies from across eight millennia of radical transformation and turmoil, Montrose must regain control of his tombs and protect his clients so that he can resume his battle for the human race- a human race that appears disturbingly absent on the barren, frozen surface of the Earth he's awakened to. Meanwhile, del Azarchel is still working to turn humanity into a race of perfect slaves for the Hyades, who are just centuries away.
I liked The Judge of Ages quite a bit. The central premise of the entire series is one of the more intriguing ones I've run into in recent years, and Wright continues to do interesting things with it. We learn more about some of the post-human inhabitants of the Earth and just what's happened to reduce the world to its desolate and seemingly uninhabited state, as well as the true nature of Azarchel's machinations and the scope of Montrose's response, both of which turn out to be even vaster than they previously appeared.
And I realize that “vaster than they previously appeared” sounds sort of absurd in the context of an 8000-year conflict between supergeniuses where human evolution itself is the battleground and entire sapient species are casualties, but therein lies one of the great strengths of the book and series. Wright throws out interesting ideas with wild abandon, from little details about future technologies or societies to much larger things with important consequences to the entire story or setting, and yet does so in such a way that even bizarre or outrageously grandiose concepts still seem natural and reasonable within the logic of the story. It combines thoughtfully worked out consequences of technologies and other ideas and the constraints of reasonably hard science fiction (there's no FTL, antigravity, or my personal bugbear, nanotech-as-magic) with the sort of wild exuberance I'd usually associate with old pulp space opera or early Marvel Comics.
(Wright's writing in general often seems to have this quality, whether he's doing science fiction or fantasy, where there's such a proliferation of stuff that the story seems like it ought to either be crushed under its own density or go careening out of control and over the side of a cliff, but doesn't.)
There are some excellent action scenes, and Wright uses the collision of technologies and biologies from across his future history- powered armored and other relatively conventional science fiction weapons like railguns, a monstrous race of posthumans capable of radically modifying their own biology and ruthlessly optimized for conflict, colossal 22nd-century dueling pistols with bullets that have their own engines and countermeasures and accompanying escorts of smaller defensive bullets, a self-replicating computer system that's been gnawing at the iron core of the earth long enough to have significant influence on the planet's magnetic field, among other things- effectively in this regard as well.
I still like Menelaus Montrose a lot as protagonist and viewpoint character. It helps that his odd backstory allows him to serve as a sort of audience surrogate in a very strange world without being ignorant, ineffectual, or bland in the way such characters often are. He's able to quickly understand and adapt to the bizarre conditions he finds himself in thanks to his augmented intelligence, but his original background is in a society much closer to our own then to its successors. Consequently, he appreciates just how bizarre his world and his own story are (from the perspective of a 21st-centuryish human) in a way most protagonists of far future science fiction do not, without being a bewildered primitive or inept fish out of water. He approaches things with a combination of wry, seemingly detached humor and a very serious sense of purpose, and the mixture works well.
I also enjoyed a lot of the supporting characters, and especially Montrose's archnemesis Ximen del Azarchel. Wright's portrayal of him is extremely charming and likable, so much so that when he appears in a scene it's quite easy to temporarily forget the atrocities he's committed. There's also a certain point in the story where, at a key moment, Azarchel does something that is clearly tactically unwise- but his characterization is strong enough that, rather than seeming like an author writing himself into a corner and turning his villain into an idiot to get out of it, it felt completely natural and appropriate given the situation.
My chief criticism is the pacing in the first part of the book. After the scope and scale of the story thus far, the first chapters of The Judge of Ages felt somewhat claustrophobic. Montrose spends quite a bit of time as a captive down in his tombs as he tries to get in position to begin an uprising against his captors, and while I still enjoyed the section I felt it went on too long and weakened the momentum and tension built up by the end of the second book. Things certainly pick up, and taken as a whole the book is still quite strong, but it would've benefited from spending less time on that part of the story and more on some of the events and revelations later in the book.
That aside, though, I really liked The Judge of Ages and would strongly recommend it, and the entire series, to anyone interested in science fiction. (Though as I said above, be sure to read the series in order.) I'm really looking forward to seeing where Wright goes next with it.
Monday, December 23, 2013
The Star Wars Holiday Special teaches us to hate Christmas, life
Instead, there would be only the taste of ashes.
Now, one thing I share with several of my friends is the ability to enjoy crap. From 1950's skiffy schlock, to watching a near-comatose Richard Burton mumble his way through the uncut version of The Exorcist II, to Sylvester Stallone's arm wrestling epic Over the Top, to the climactic scene of The Satanic Rites of Dracula where Christopher Lee is killed by running into a small shrubbery, to Oscar-winning actor George Kennedy and a bunch of stupid teenagers trapped on a boat where they are picked off one by one by an evil hybrid cat/rat/godawful puppet in The Uninvited, to a seemingly endless horde of Godfrey Ho "ninja" "movies" created by buying the rights to various Asian films, redubbing them, splicing them together with new footage of white guys in brightly colored and sometimes rhinestone-studded pajamas running around and doing flips in what appears to a small municipal park, and feebly attempting to tie them together and pretend that the resulting Frankensteinian abomination was a coherent story, we've seen it all. We take that sort of thing in stride.
The plot, such as it is, is that Chewbacca is returning to his home and family on the Wookie homeworld of Kashyyyk to celebrate "Life Day," one of those vague holidays characters in kids' fantasy shows would celebrate when it was snowing and they wanted to do something festively nonsectarian. But the system is in the grip of an Imperial blockade fleet commanded by recycled movie footage of Darth Vader, and... Well, basically, there's a string of largely unrelated, godawful variety showesque events set in something that resembles the Star Wars universe featuring various C-list celebrities until things finally shudder to a halt what seems like several geological epochs later.
It's got all of the heroes from the movie making their return, plus James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader. The only major actors from Star Wars not present- unless one also counts David Prowse, who appears only in the form of reused movie footage, or Carrie Fisher, whose soul appears to have departed her body and wandered off for most of her screen time- are Alec Guinness as Ben Kenobi and Peter Cushing as Tarkin, whose characters were saved from appearances here by the sweet, merciful embrace of death.(Which makes it suddenly seem very suspicious that Kenobi and Tarkin both met their ends because they conspicuously chose not to protect themselves from imminent danger, and either possessed supernatural powers that included the ability to sense horrible, cataclysmic events or hung out with people who did.) What could possibly have gone wrong?
There are some things the human mind cannot explain, only try to describe. Some of the thrilling spectacles we're treated to include:
Over ten minutes of Chewbacca's family screaming at each in Wookie, sans subtiitles! This is what the show leads off with. Little-known fact: Lucas actually wanted the first 20 minutes of the original Star Wars to focus on R2-D2 making random beep-bloop noises while doing routine maintenance on the Tantive IV's cafeteria vending machines, but was forced to start the movie with an exciting space battle instead when the studio said that his original cut of the film was too long.
Ever wondered what an elderly Wookie
having an orgasm looks like? Of course not, but now you know anyway.
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Lumpy! I've already mentioned his role in the Special's events, but the very existence of this... this thing appalls me so much that it warrants its own entry. With the possible exception of that loathsome, soulless homunculus wrought in obscene parody of a human child from Son of the Mask (the CGI baby, not Jamie Kennedy), nothing has ever filled with such instinctive horror.
JEFFERSON STARSHIP!
An animated segment featuring the most repellently butt-ugly animation in human history! It does have the first-ever appearance of Boba Fett, which some people may be interested in. Frankly, I've always considered Fett one of the most overrated characters in fiction. It's a damning indictment of how low our society's standards have fallen when possessing some basic tracking abilities, dressing like the Rocketeer, flying around in a big metal shoe, and being killed by a blind man is enough of a résumé to be declared Biggest Badass Ever.
One odd thing is that the cartoon, like a number of other segments, is actually introduced as something being watched by Lumpy. Which implies that this segment depicts events that are fictional not only to us but to the characters, and that the cartoon itself actually exists within the Star Wars universe.
Which, I just realized, means that Jefferson Starship does, too.
A brief appearance by an incredibly bored-looking Harrison Ford, who doesn't even try to conceal his utter contempt for the proceedings!
Mark Hamill wearing more makeup than Queen Amidala, Bozo the Clown, and Dick Clark combined! Usually I'd be reluctant to say something nasty about this, since it's probably to conceal the injuries Hamill had suffered in a car crash the previous year. But The Star Wars Holiday Special exists on a plane where human concepts of morality and decency are not merely absent, but meaningless. If you gaze into the bellowing unsubtitled Wookie abyss, the bellowing unsubtitled Wookie abyss gazes also into you.
She's no Bea Arthur, I'll tell you that much.
I really can't do justice to how teeth-gratingly bad it is. I have no strong personal stake in Star Wars. I liked the original movies and a few of the tie-in books, but I've never had the strong emotional attachment to Star Wars that some people do. I didn't like the prequel trilogy but never had the sort of "I have sworn a Sicilian blood oath of vengeance upon George Lucas' and his entire family line because he murdered my family, burned down my village, and deflowered my house pets" response that is often seen on the Internet. (I reserve that for MechWarrior: Dark Age, MAY ITS NAME AND ITS SEED BE ACCURSED FOREVER.) The idea of crap with the name Star Wars on it is not some sort of personal affront to me. Given that sitting through this made me want to gouge out my own eyes and just run through the streets of Chicago gibbering like a lunatic until my heart and/or lungs burst, I can only imagine how devoted Star Wars fans must feel about it.
Merry Christmas, everybody!
Monday, November 4, 2013
Book Review:Terminal World by Alastair Reynolds
Terminal World is a science fiction novel with steampunk elements by Alastair Reynolds, author the Revelations Space series, House of Suns, and others. It's completely stand-alone and doesn't require knowledge of any of Reynolds' previous work.
In the distant future human civilization is clustered around the great city of Spearpoint, built on the surface of a huge spire extending up into the heavens. The laws of nature are not constant, with Spearpoint divided into different zones where different levels of technology are possible, from the ultraadvanced heights of the Celestial Levels at the top to Horsetown, were even simple mechanical mechanisms break down. Humans can live in any of them, but leaving your native zone without medication or an unusually adaptable constitution is dangerous due to “zone sickness,” a painful and potentially lethal condition that occurs as your body is forced to cope with natural laws subtly different from what it's accustomed to.
The main character is Quillon, a pathologist working in the mid-level Spearpoint community called Neon Heights. The story begins when he is presented with a dying “angel,” a transhuman resident of the Celestial Levels who fell to Neon Heights. Before dying, the angel delivers the message to Quillon that was the real reason for its “fall.” He knows that Quillon is an angel as well, the last survivor of a project to reengineer natives of the Celestial Levels to survive and function in lower zones- and now one faction among them is looking for him.
Quillon has no desire to go back and seeks out aid from Fray, an ally in Neon Heights' criminal underworld who has helped him keep his real identity hidden. Fray introduces him to Meroka, an expert in covertly getting people in and out of Spearpoint. They flee the city, pursued by angels with far cruder versions of Quillon's adaptations, and escape into the world beyond. But there is no safety to be found in the world outside Spearpoint- a cold, hostile place with its own zones on a much larger scale, where bands of bandits and psychopaths prey on the sparse population, cyborg monstrosities harvest living human body parts to replace their own, a militaristic, nomadic society called the Swarm rules the sky from an armada of dirigibles, and zone boundaries can shift unpredictably.
But soon there is no safety to be found in Spearpoint, either, when the world is unexpectedly struck by a zone shift of unprecedented severity, this time affecting Spearpoint itself- as Quillon realizes, watching the great glowing spire of his distant home, as its lights start to go out...
I enjoyed Terminal World. The plot had no trouble keeping my interest, and way it unfolds as the story of Quillon's escape becomes part of much larger events is effective and Quinlan himself is a compelling character.. The story's revelations about its world's history and true nature are interesting and well-paced, and the reasoning eventually given for why things work as they do makes sense and doesn't feel too handwavy or arbitrary.
The central premise of the Zones is intriguing, as is the strange hybrid setting Reynolds creates with it. Travel between zones is extremely difficult and dangerous, so much so that even with sufficient “antizonal” drugs people who do so frequently eventually develop mental problems as the accumulated stress of too many transitions starts to take a neurological toll. There's a painful feeling of division and separation throughout the setting. People in the lower levels of Spearpoint and its surrounding lands look up at the electric lights of of far wealthier societies that are mere miles away but forever denied them, and can spend their life savings for a short once-in-a-lifetime excursion upwards for mundane but life-saving medical procedures.
The fact that it also provides a justification to have “angelic” transhumans, an ancient structure that reaches beyond the atmosphere, and cyborgs that hunt people for their organs in the same setting as aerial battles fought by giant steampunk dirigibles is also pretty cool, naturally.
Speaking of which, the “vorgs,” or carnivorous cyborgs, that live beyond Spearpoint are especially interesting. Vorgs are ancient intelligent machines that have survived by replacing many of their original components with living matter better able to adapt to the lower zones. They're absolutely horrifying- grotesque, predatory, intelligent but seemingly possessed of no desires or drives other than survival, utterly without conscience- and simultaneously the most pitiful figures in the story.
Quillon is an interesting protagonist, and I enjoyed seeing how he developed. He's a cold, isolated, seemingly callous man by necessity rather than nature, after spending years in hiding and exile, and the events of the story affect him in ways I found both compelling and believable.
I'd recommend Terminal World for fans of science fiction, as well as any steampunk fans interested in a story that mixes in science fiction elements or has a setting different from the usual alternate history Victorian trappings of the genre. If you're a fan of Alistair Reynolds' more conventional science fiction works like Revelation Space or House of Suns, I'd encourage you to give this a chance even if you're not interested in steampunk; it's still very much the sort of story and worldbuilding you'll probably like if you enjoy his other work. It's an all-round strong book with plenty to offer lovers of both genres.
Monday, August 12, 2013
Book Review: A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
A Natural History of Dragons is a fantasy novel by Marie Brennan, author of fantasy novels including Doppelganger and the Onyx Court series.
It takes the form of a memoir written by its main character Isabella, Lady Trent, prominent naturalist and the world's foremost scientific authority on dragons. Born into an aristocratic family in Scirland and consumed from an early age by an interest in science thought unbecoming of a Scirland woman, Lady Trent recounts the development of her youthful fascination with dragons, her struggles with the expectations placed on a woman of her class, and her first adventure abroad to the distant land of Vystrana on a scientific expedition with her husband and his companions.
However, what starts as simply an attempt to study the local wildlife quickly becomes more dangerous than expected. The local dragons have recently become much more violent and aggressive towards humans, for reasons unknown. In the small village
Strange phenomenon begin to terrorize the small village the expedition is using as their base begins to experience strange, frightening phenomena after Lady Trent trespasses on nearby ruins left by a long-dead civilization that worshiped dragons as gods. Bandits and smugglers lurk in the countryside, while the local lord has started keeping strange company and taking an interest in their activities
I liked A Natural History of Dragons. It's very entertainingly written, sufficiently so that it's fun to read even when there's a lull in the story. The plot kept my interest, and the I found the characters engaging and enjoyable to spend time with. The central premise, dragons that are natural rather than supernatural creatures been studied scientifically, is intriguing and carried out very well, and the dragons themselves are interesting and well-realized.
The book is written in the style of a 19th-century memoir, so the narration is much more of a “character” in its own right than is typical of most fantasy books, and this works very much to the story's advantage. Lady Trent's narration is quite entertaining, and hearing the story from her perspective decades after the fact makes the younger Lady Trent the story is about- an extremely sheltered, inexperienced aristocrat- much more interesting. It also helps with exposition, since the memoir format makes it feel much more natural for the narrator to occasionally stop and directly explain some bit of backstory or setting, and Lady Trent's wry authorial voice prevents it from feeling like a dry infodump.
The setting is basically 19th-century Europe with different names and geography (and dragons, obviously), and it's not particularly interesting in itself, but it's well-described and works for the story being told. “Fantasy” elements are fairly minimal (aside, presumably, from a few differences in the way chemistry works), which initially seems odd for a book about dragons but actually fits the premise quite well. Lady Trent and company ares natural historians of the early Industrial era, studying an exotic species using the same methods their colleagues would use to study any animal; it would change the whole atmosphere of the book if dragons didn't obey the same natural laws as any other animal, or “It's magic” was a viable explanation for strange phenomena.
I'd recommend A Natural History of Dragons for anyone interested in unusual takes on classic fantasy tropes, as well as fans of quasi-Victorian settings or narrative styles. People who are (as I am) primarily fans of science fiction rather than fantasy may also enjoy it for its approach to the story. It's a lot of fun.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Iain Banks, 1954-2013
I was sad to hear about the recent death of Iain Banks, published under the name Iain M. Banks when writing science fiction, author of science fiction books such Use of Weapons, Against a Dark Background, Consider Phlebas, and Look to Windward. He passed away on June 9th at the age of only 59. You can find more about him at his official website.
My first experience reading Iain M. Banks was Excession, which is generally agreed to be a a suboptimal entry point for readers unfamiliar with the universe where most of Banks' science fiction is set. Neverthless, I still enjoyed it quite a bit and was struck by the vividness and sheer scale of his imagination. I set about finding more of his books, which was not an easy task- at that time few of his books were in print in the United States, and the scarce used or imported copies were often quite expensive, so it was always exciting to finally hunt down one in my price range.
Banks' imagination produced some of the most striking and memorable images in science fiction, at least for me, such as the Planets of the Dead where the ruins of extinct civilizations are frozen in amber by the godlike but indifferent Dra'Azon in Consider Phlebas and the bewildering patchwork of societies and chilling sense of the vastness of both space and time in Against a Dark Background. The universe of the Culture, the setting of most of his science fiction, is a huge and imaginative place filled with interesting species, cultures, and technologies, where individual human dramas exist side by side with godlike AIs, galaxy-spanning civilizations, and weapons that can destroy the stars themselves, without one aspect weakening or overshadowing the other.
He could also be a writer of great emotional power. I can count the number of novels that have made me cry on one hand; one of them is Look to Windward.
Banks was an unusual figure in that he was both a well-regarded author of mainstream novels (such as his debut The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road) and a science fiction author, and unlike some authors with a connection to both worlds he never seemed at all embarrassed or apologetic about being an SF author. His science fiction is unabashedly science fiction, written by and for someone who respects and understands the genre.
Thank you for everything you gave your readers, Mr. Banks. It meant a lot to me, as it surely did to many people. Rest in peace.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Book Review: The Hermetic Millennia by John C. Wright
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Book Review: The Fractal Prince by Hannu Rajaniemi