Episode IV, Now We're Really Screwed [Updated]

If you think about Star Wars episodes 1-3 (which I tried very hard not to do, because they were traumatic enough without me applying my brain) there are some serious inconsistencies between the back story alluded to in the original films and the same story revealed in the new ones.

Via Kottke, Keith Martin finds a way to reconcile the differences. And in his version, R2D2 and Chewbacca are master spies who are ready to assassinate either Luke or Leia without mercy if they show the slightest tendency towards sithiness.

On first seeing R2, Obi-Wan has a twinkle in his eye and calls him "my little friend". Well, he is. However, when Luke wakes up and says that R2 claimed to be owned by an Obi-Wan Kenobi, he blandly says "I don't seem to remember ever owning a droid." Ben has in fact owned several but the remark is aimed at R2 and translates as "You keep quiet. I'm not about to tell him everything just yet." Obi-Wan thinks fast and tells Luke a version of his past that does not involve a father who became a dark lord of the Sith. He wants to examine Luke a lot more closely before he risks telling him the real truth. 

img via


UPDATE: Here's the link

Let's alienate some readers by talking about Doctor Who

Not the show, really, just the theme music. This video stitches together every Doctor Who opening theme since the 60s into one video. Woohoo!

The main takeaway for me is that the current theme music ranks amongst the tackiest of the versions.

How to make time-travel boring

Ah, time travel: It's truly interesting topic that can lead to unique and emotionally devastating stories, but is far more often a mask for lazy writing. An example of the latter:

While the game [the new Star Trek MMO] incorporates elements of the J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie as they affect the "prime" Trek timeline, there is no reference to "nu-Kirk" and the other rebooted characters. As soon as Spock went back in time, he created a divergent timeline. The actions of the reboot characters don't affect events in the long-established Trek canon. Still, the Federation is left to deal with the aftermath of Romulus' destruction, which did happen in the prime timeline.

Multiple timelines. Boo! Boring.

To be fair to everyone involved, the game was in development long before Abrams got ahold of the franchise and decided to use time travel to reboot the franchise. So there wasn't a lot they could do.

But it would be a lot more interesting, in the long run, if all the events in the Trek universe that were revealed before the new Star Trek movie were actually wiped out by Nero and Spock's actions. All of the events of the original show, the Next Generation show, and so on, would only live on in old Spock's memory. That would be somewhat tragic, and evocative of the best Star Trek episode ever.

Instead, it's just another timeline (of perhaps infinite variations), which, to my mind, kind of takes the weight out of any story. And now fans have to keep track of terms like "the prime timeline" or "nu-Kirk." Blech.

"Nobody even said "happy birthday" to me. Someday this tape will be played and then they'll feel sorry."

Depressing Monday posting.

R.I.P, Dan O'Bannon. He was a groovy dude. Collihouse has a nice piece on him.



comic via Curved White.

Frack this list: io9's 20 best sci-fi novels of the decade

Either io9 has such poor taste that I can safely ignore their recommendations OR I am clearly out of touch with what is happening in the world of scifi. Here's their list with my reactions:

Acacia: The War with the Mein, by David Anthony Durham

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Durham.

Air, Or Have Not Have, by Geoff Ryman

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Ryman.

The Alchemy of Stone, by Ekaterina Sedia

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Sedia.

The Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson

I've read the first book, but couldn't finish the second (sorry, Tracy K and Jeff M!). It's definitely baroque, and I really like sections of the books, but there are chapters that just meander into pointlessness. Or maybe I'm not smart enough to get the awesome of those chapters.

Confessions of Max Tivoli, by Andrew Sean

Never read it. I heard of this when that terrible Benjamin Button movie came out, but haven't gotten around to checking it out.

Down And Out In the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow

Never read it.

Of course I have heard of Doctorow (it's boingboing's internet, we're just living in it). I've read exactly one short story of his, which I enjoyed. I actually think his (mostly appealing) blogging makes me hesitant to read his novels. Definitely something weird going on in my brain on this one. I should just pick up the damn book.

The Execution Channel, by Ken MacLeod

Never read it.

MacLeod (which I will continue to pronounce "McCloud" whether or not that is correct) is aces in my esteem for tackling politics in his science fiction, but I don't find his actual writing to be very good. At his best, he evokes Iain M. Banks, but cannot sustain it. The reviews say this is one of his better works, so I guess I should pick it up.

If you are going to read MacLeod, my recommendation would be to start with Cosmonaut Keep, also published in this decade.

Glasshouse, by Charles Stross

Never read it, but it has been sitting on my nightstand for several months.

This paragraph is copied and pasted from McLeod's: Stross is aces in my esteem for tackling politics in his science fiction, but I don't find his actual writing to be very good. At his best, he evokes Iain M. Banks, but cannot sustain it. The reviews say this is one of his better works, so I guess I should pick it up.

If you are going to read Stross, I would start with Singularity Sky, also published in this decade.

Harry Potter Series, by JK Rowling

ALL CAPS WTF.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

I'm reading this right now on the Kindle iPhone application. So far, it's pretty good. I'll update the post when I finish.

Look to Windward, by Iain M. Banks

Okay, it's not bad. None of the Culture books are bad. In fact, the worst Culture book is probably better than most of the books on this list. So I guess I have no complaint with it's inclusion here. But if you haven't read any of these books before now, I would heartily recommend beginning with his short stories, or jumping in to Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, or Excession.

The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Emshwiller.

Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood

Never read it, but I do intend to do so. I am a fan of Atwood's work.

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Gibson (just kidding, but for real I have never been a big fan).

Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

Never read it. I'll probably get around to it. I have read two others of Mieville's.

Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge

This is not a great book, but it is a very, very interesting vision of the near future. If you want to know where things are heading, this is probably a more accurate prediction than most. (Note that the title is a complete sentence, not a phrase with a punctuation error).

Stories of Your Life And Others, by Ted Chiang

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Chiang. This is despite io9's assertion that:

Chiang is one of the legends of the science fiction world, often hailed as the best short story writer of his generation.

Where have I been?

Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

Never read it. Heard of the movie.

Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton

Never read it. Never heard of it. Never heard of Walton.

World War Z, by Max Brooks

Never read it. The Zombie Survival Guide was somewhat amusing, but did not leave me wanting more.

To sum up, that's 15 out of 20 I've never read. So it's completely not fair to react to this list so negatively. However, I will say that any of the follwoing novels could take the place of the Harry Potter book on any list, any list at all, that purports to be a list of great science fiction. All were published in this decade.

Altered Carbon, by Richard K. Morgan

I recommend the whole series, with the caveat that Morgan feels like he must include some truly ridiculous sex scenes every 50 pages or so.

Pandora's Star, by Peter F. Hamilton

Truly mega let's-throw-everything-in-the-blender sci fi.

Santa Olivia, by Jacqueline Carey

If it didn't feature some (really quite innocent compared to a lot of stuff in this list) homosexuality, this would be an outstanding example of young-adult science fiction. Let me rephrase: This is an outstanding example of young-adult science fiction, but you will not likely find it in any young-adult section due to the aforementioned lesbianism.

You left him, you left Chewie!

As you would expect, I spent some time this morning watching a public access rebroadcast of New Tong Dynasty Television's coverage of a comic book convention. Good stuff.



The book, I think, was Vector Prime, which of course I haven't read. I've only read one Star Wars novel ever, when I was about twelve, which I picked up from a younger cousin during a too long summer stretch at my grandmother's house. Nevertheless, I've been told by sci-fi heads at both Borders and Blimpy Burger that the newish novels are pretty good. Vector Prime's R.A. Salvatore, at any rate, is a perfectly competent writer of pulp fantasy. Still don't plan on reading the books.

"Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived at the late twentieth century."

Leonard Nimoy: I’ve met [Obama] twice. The first time was a couple years ago, very early on when he had just announced his candidacy. He was in Los Angeles, speaking at a luncheon we were invited to. There was a very small crowd — minuscule compared to the crowd that he gathered later — at a private home in Los Angeles. And we were standing on the back patio, waiting for him. And he came through the house, saw me and immediately put his hand up in the Vulcan gesture. He said, “They told me you were here.” We had a wonderful brief conversation, and I said, “It would be logical if you would become president.”

| quote via the Times via Ben Smith. title quote via Spock in "The Voyage home." picture via Bad Drawings of Spock. |

These Futurama movies have been disappointing

There, I said it.

And it smells like death

Outlander.

Not since Apollonius of Rhodes have we borne witness to so stirring an epic. We see the kinship of Iron Age sailors and a sailor of the airless, starry void. We see humanity struggle with their shared burden against insurmountable odds, a struggle against the closing darkness. We see the blossoming of impossible love.

Spaceships, Vikings, Dragons, Fair Maidens, Ron Perlman. Yes, all of that, to be sure. All of the archetypes are here. Every story is told through this story. Here is the Odyssey. Here is Beowulf.

Outlander.

Here is King Lear. Here is The Godfather. Here is Predator (the first one).

Outlander.

All of life is here. And all that makes life worth living. And as we learn about CGI carnage, we learn about ourselves.

Here is Outlander. It is not to be missed.

Alec Baldwin can read my mind

Inexplicably, we never got to our fourth big Who want's to be Shatner nominee, Alec freakin' Baldwin. We must return to this topic soon, but here is Alec racking up a few more Shatner points:

Arthur C. Clark, RIP

Holy crap!

This isn't going to go over well at Headquarters...

L Ron Hubbard plagiarized Scientology

Eat this, scum!

The 10,000 previews I was lucky enough to see for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles featured an actress who was too young to be Sarah Connor but who looked vaguely familiar. Now that I've had a chance to see the opening credits I see that the actress is Summer Glau, who you may remember as the crazy genius from Firefly. Glad to see that she's decided to stick with the genre.

My favorite piece of Terminator trivia, by the way, is that O.J. Simpson was originally considered for the role of the Terminator but was rejected because, "People would not have believed a nice guy like O.J. playing the part of a ruthless killer."

Addendum: They just did some time travel sending them to 2007 and I found myself thinking, "ah, so the show will end up being set in the not too distant future."

There and back again

I have to say that I don't share Ross Douthat's skepticism about the upcoming Hobbit movie. It might be that from a sci-fi/fantasy lit perspective The Hobbit is "a tasty appetizer" while The Lord of the Rings is "a rich-beyond-belief main course." But so what? The link between literary merit and suitability for film is anything but direct. From where I sit, The Hobbit's comprehensible and contained narrative is a point in its favor on the book to film tip.

Also, all true geeks of a certain age know that what really needs to be worried over is whether Jackson's Hobbit will stand up to the animated masterpiece.

"Heroes" thread

Sorry for the geek out, but I'm missing my normal opportunities to chat about this while I am traveling, so here goes. As the kids say, SPOILERz ALERT:

ITEM: I totally saw the Kensei = Adam thing coming, the moment he swore eternal vengeance on Hiro. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, my next prediction is that Kensei turns out to be a hero after all. Why? Well, mostly because of bad writing. But also because, who else is going to cut out his own heart, which Kensei did in the story, except for some dude who can live forever?

ITEM: So, Kensei must be a Patrelli family ancestor, right? Cause Claire has the same ability...

ITEM: So, Peter took his new girlfriend to the future, and then traveled back to the present without her. That means, he can't change the future, because if he does, he erases the future in which she, uh, is. Am I right?

To boldly go

To cap it all, and the undisputed chief of everyone's bitch list, were the visits to the disposal utility chamber. It wasn't just politics that hadn't made much progress over three hundred and fifty years. Taking a dump in space still involved a disturbing arrangement of straps and suction pumps. At least having a pee was relatively straightforward--that's if you were a man. The women on board had all undergone a little cellular reprofiling procedure to make suction tube use more convenient and less prone to slippage. It was a supreme test of character to ignore that during sex.

That passage is from p. 718 of Pandora's Star and should serve as a warning to anyone tempted by the attractive prose decorating the back cover.

She's not bitter

`Michael Chabon has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it.' Ruth Franklin (Slate, 8 May 2007)

Something woke her in the night. Was it steps she heard, coming up the stairs -- somebody in wet training shoes, climbing the stairs very slowly ... but who? And why wet shoes? It hadn't rained. There, again, the heavy, soggy sound. But it hadn't rained for weeks, it was only sultry, the air close, with a cloying hint of mildew or rot, sweet rot, like very old finiocchiona, or perhaps liverwurst gone green. There, again -- the slow, squelching, sucking steps, and the foul smell was stronger. Something was climbing her stairs, coming closer to her door. As she heard the click of heel bones that had broken through rotting flesh, she knew what it was. But it was dead, dead! God damn that Chabon, dragging it out of the grave where she and the other serious writers had buried it to save serious literature from its polluting touch, the horror of its blank, pustular face, the lifeless, meaningless glare of its decaying eyes! What did the fool think he was doing? Had he paid no attention at all to the endless rituals of the serious writers and their serious critics -- the formal expulsion ceremonies, the repeated anathemata, the stakes driven over and over through the heart, the vitriolic sneers, the endless, solemn dances on the grave? Did he not want to preserve the virginity of Yaddo? Had he not even understand the importance of the distinction between sci fi and counterfactual fiction? Could he not see that Cormac McCarthy -- although everything in his book (except the wonderfully blatant use of an egregiously obscure vocabulary) was remarkably similar to a great many earlier works of science fiction about men crossing the country after a holocaust -- could never under any circumstances be said to be a sci fi writer, because Cormac McCarthy was a serious writer and so by definition incapable of lowering himself to commit genre? Could it be that that Chabon, just because some mad fools gave him a Pulitzer, had forgotten the sacred value of the word mainstream? No, she would not look at the thing that had squelched its way into her bedroom and stood over her, reeking of rocket fuel and kryptonite, creaking like an old mansion on the moors in a wuthering wind, its brain rotting like a pear from within, dripping little grey cells through its ears. But its call on her attention was, somehow, imperative, and as it stretched out its hand to her she saw on one of the half-putrefied fingers a fiery golden ring. She moaned. How could they have buried it in such a shallow grave and then just walked away, abandoning it? "Dig it deeper, dig it deeper!" she had screamed, but they hadn't listened to her, and now where were they, all the other serious writers and critics, when she needed them? Where was her copy of Ulysses? All she had on her bedside table was a Philip Roth novel she had been using to prop up the reading lamp. She pulled the slender volume free and raised it up between her and the ghastly golem -- but it was not enough. Not even Roth could save her. The monster laid its squamous hand on her, and the ring branded her like a burning coal. Genre breathed its corpse-breath in her face, and she was lost. She was defiled. She might as well be dead. She would never, ever get invited to write for Granta now.

link, probably via boingboing.

Slow week at The Bellman

Mark promised us some Catholic humor, but I think he overdosed on Jesus last weekend, and is actually sick today. So, in the mean time, let me kill any momentum this blog had by asking.....

David Tennant: Is he a great Doctor, or the greatest Doctor?

Season 3 is halfway over in ol' England, and I've been 'renting it. At the end of Season 2, I woulda said that he's a "good Doctor," but now I've ratcheted my esteem all the way up to "the greatest Doctor." He's really got a bead on the character.


Also, his new chica is the cutest one in, let's say, 900 years of travel through time and space.

In other news, the new Sage Francis album is pretty good. I didn't know he was white, tho. Like da man says:

Can you say distinction without a difference?

From CNN.com's review of the new Tolkien novel:

But they were truncated and contradictory. Outside of Tolkien scholars and Middle-earth fanatics, few read them.

Speaking of the literature, a friend of mine is helping to put together a lefty sci-fi convention in Chicago this summer. I'm thinking about going, and I know that Neal is intrigued. Any other geeks out there?