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Terminator: Salvation directed by McG

In 1984, James Cameron made a time-travel movie, with a scary killer robot with an Austrian accent who had come back from the future to kill a drop-out waitress not for anything she had done, but for what she would do. Its groundbreaking special effects and twisty story blew people’s minds a little and (along with Conan) helped establish the career of one of our times biggest action heroes and most surprising political figures, Arnold Schwarzenegger.  In 1991, he revisited that story and those characters in one of the best sci-fi/action films ever made, establishing the character of John Connor, concieved in the first film and destined to be the heroic leader of humanity’s Resistance against the onslaught of the machines.

Then in 2003, Cameron pissed all over that previous movie with a lame-duck half-assed story where the raison d’etre appeared to be having a hot “female” Terminatrix. Yeah.

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Rollback by Robert J. Sawyer

Sawyer is another one of those authors who’s been around for quite a while, winning the Nebula and the Hugo and the Campbell award, and yet somehow I’ve never read one of his books.  But Rollback is nominated for a Hugo, and thus I have read it, and am pleased to have done so.  It tells the story of Don and Sarah Halifax, one of those rare couples that manages to stay together into their eighties, but have lived lives that were largely unexceptional in other regards.  On their 60th Wedding Anniversary, in the year 2048, the one truly exceptional thing from their life came back to throw them into turmoil.

Sarah, it turns out, is a famed SETI astronomer, a title she earns in the early part of the 21st century when she discovers the key to translating the first (and, thus far, only) alien message SETI had received.  The alien message was clear in its request for a response, but because of the signal’s origin many light years away it would take decades for any dialogue to make the round trip.  Those decades have passed, and on the Halifax’s anniversary, the second message was detected.  Unlike the first, though, it wasn’t just transmitted…this time it was encrypted in a code, a code that one eccentric, mega-rich SETI enthusiast believes can only be decoded by Sarah Halifax.

But even in the mid 21st century, eighty is old, and Sarah surely can’t have much time left.  For the mega-rich, however, there’s a new option: The Rollback procedure.  Through surgeries, cloned organ replacement, and genetic therapy, the aging process can be reversed, and the human clock reset to the mid-twenties.  Sarah agrees to the procedure, but only if her husband, Don, gets one also.  Now, to this point in my review you might have guessed that Sarah was the focus of this book, but it’s really Don’s story, as the Rollback fails…not for Don, but for Sarah.  Don finds himself transformed into a hale young man, married to a very old lady.  What does a retired film and audio editor do with a new youthful life…with his time…with his libido?  And will Sarah have the time and energy to decode the alien message before her health finally fails?

Sawyer does a very good job of addressing these questions, spinning a character drama of the level that is more often seen from mainstream fiction, using a device that only the genre could provide.  The question I kept asking myself, though, was “doesn’t this seem awfully familiar?”  There’s been a lot of excellent fiction addressing age reversal, lately, including last year’s Hugo Winner, Rainbows End, and (of course) Scalzi’s Old Man’s War novels, yet another response to the “graying” of our society (and, perhaps especially, of SF fandom?  It’s on my mind, certainly).  It’s clearly possible to do something special and original with material others have already addressed, but I’m not sure Sawyer managed to do so, here; to the point where I would say this book’s chief weakness is in its predictability.  The prose is compelling, gripping even, which is remarkable in a talky, contemplative book that lacks action sequences of any sort, but certain romanticized elements were underanalyzed, and I felt the light and hopeful ending was a poor match to the gravitas of the story overall.  This is a good book, and I will be looking to add more Sawyer to my shelves on its merits, but it will not be getting my vote for the Hugo this year.

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

After an aborted hope to go last year, I will be attending Worldcon this year for the first time, and as a member of the convention will be voting on who receives this year’s Hugo Awards, something I consider an honor and a privilege.  The Last Colony is the first of the nominated novels that I read, and I will endeavor to keep reviewing them as I read them.

You may remember I was very impressed with Scalzi’s first major book on the scene, Old Man’s War.  I never managed to dig its sequel, The Ghost Brigades, out of my booklog backlog for a proper review, but it was a worthy successor, and I’d be hard pressed to point a finger at which of them I enjoyed more.  The events of The Last Colony pick up a few years down the road from The Ghost Brigades, finding our heroes Perry and Sagan (and their adopted daughter) happily settled into a mostly quiet life as minor officials in a small agrarian colonial community.  Suddenly they receive a visit from the Colonial Union military that they had thought they were done with, but they weren’t looking for more military service from the two former soldiers, they were looking for them to be the leaders of a new world.

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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

In several of the corners of the internet I habituate, this book is lighting things up right now, and it’s sort of obvious why.  Here we have a book that is technically science fiction, but set close enough to present day that it’s difficult to tell (much the same as Pattern Recognition was) and leveraging that immediacy of setting to maximal effect by having the political climate and conflicts that are of urgent importance right now still relevant to its characters’ viewpoints.  It’s a book that is deeply political, and a book that embraces somewhat complicated ideas about math and computers as necessary elements of its setting and plot, but one that is written to be accessible enough to be shelved with Young Adult fiction (which is where you’ll find it if you want to acquire a copy for purchase).  It’s a book that is very clearly anti-establishment, but it’s also very directly a book about being a patriot; and how combining those two things are not only disturbingly easy right now, but that the former may be a precondition for the latter.  I think it’s safe to say that it would be getting plenty of coverage on Boing Boing even if it wasn’t written by one of that site’s contributors.  It’s targeted directly at the interests of Slashdot readers, and the political leanings of sites like the Nielsen Hayden’s Making Light even if Patrick weren’t the editor.  More importantly, though, I just finished a reread of Cryptonomicon, and this seemed like the perfect chaser to that book’s heady nerd-porn-i-ness.  Very minor spoilers follow below the cut: Read the rest of this entry »

Nerdcore Rising by Negin Farsad

So this is not going to be one of my more usual reviews, although there will be one down-post aways. Be patient. See, late Tuesday night I got an e-mail from the Nerdcore Rising mailing list, telling me that the film was going to be shown at the AFI Film Festival here in Dallas and that mailing list members could possibly be gotten into the afterparty by RSVPing to the film’s “gracious sponsors Reel FX.” Thankfully, I didn’t consider that it might be an April Fool’s joke and immediately sent an e-mail to ask if the party was Thursday or Friday night. Wendy from Reel FX confirmed that it was Thursday…and then a few hours later she e-mails me again asking if I want interview time with Negin and MC Frontalot for my blog. I am not an idiot, dear readers; of course I want interview time! She lets me know that they can probably get me in before the sound check for a few questions, so…wait sound check! MC Frontalot will be performing? I didn’t think this story could get better, but read on for the interview, the review, and the better… Read the rest of this entry »

Stargate SG-1: The Ark of Truth

So I’m reasonably sure this is the first time I’ve reviewed a Direct-to-DVD feature.  I’m also sort of live-blogging it, which is another first, but I really feel like my book backlog is too absurd to tackle right now, and I’d like to get something on this site before too much more time has passed.

This is a continuation of the Stargate SG-1 Ori saga that occupied the show’s last couple of seasons before it ended last year, and there’s a “Prelude” recap that does a decent job summing up the relevant events if you feel like you’ve been away from the show for too long.  The movie opens with a lot of helicopter shots of majestic snow covered mountains, backed by the still stirring strings and chant of the original movie’s main theme.  It then reveals that this is not earth, but a world populated by the Ancients long ago and far away.  They have developed a weapon called the Ark of Truth that could force the Ori to capitulate, but refuse to use it for (not unreasonable) ethical reasons.

Flash to present day on Dakara, a sacred world to the Jaffa, and the capitol of their fledgling government up until the Ori blew it to bits, and apparently the final resting place of the Ark’s shipping crate, which SG-1 has discovered.  Vala is bitchy because she hates the desert…something which I sympathize with, but she’s still obnoxious.  Whoops, here come the Ori!  Oh, and Sam is with SG-1.  So I guess this is set some time ago, seeing as she’s “now” the commander of Atlantis in the Pegasus galaxy. Read the rest of this entry »

Beowulf (IMAX 3-D)

All hail Gaiman and Avary! All hail Zemeckis! All hail these men, these wizards of men, for they have made Magic!

Beowulf is a stunning accomplishment. A computer animated film that pushes past the Uncanny Valley into beauty that often surpasses what reality could produce and film could capture. A story that has captivated for over a millenium, realized in new depth by artists who appreciate both the mythic nature of the tale and the realities of the culture that originally sang it in mead halls and firelit gatherings of all sorts. And what artists! By the end of the film, my mouth was dry from my jaw hanging open and my eyes were watering from the sheer wonder of it!

First, the 3D is astonishing, and gave not a hint of the cheap, sloppy-layered appearance that so many 3-d features have. Images have depth in every dimension and texture, not simply depth separating one element from another. I am certain that this movie will blow you away if you see it on a regular screen, but in my opinion you would be doing yourself a disservice if you have any opportunity to see this in 3-D and accompanied by IMAX sound and never make that attempt. Second, the setting…immaculately detailed in both its beauties and its harshnesses. This is a story set in, and told about, a world of men whose culture is not our own. They had different values, different expectations and mores, standards for what is acceptable and what is admirable that might surprise some, but should make the heartstrings of any medievalist swell and thrum (particularly in the portion where the original Anglo-Saxon is sung). Third, the acting and animation, two features that cannot be separated. Never before have digital characters been so expressive of the analog motions and emotions of the human beings they portray. Flawless voice acting is matched to flawless motion capture and layered over and over in amazing art of astonishing detail.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. I feel privileged to have been able to see it, and privileged to live in a time when it could be made.

Tales of the Dying Earth by Jack Vance

Long, long ago I (somewhat glowingly) reviewed Kage Baker’s Anvil of the World, and was recommended, as having a somewhat similar style and tone, to the works of SF luminary Jack Vance. Dutifully, I picked up the omnibus collection of 4 of his novels set in the Dying Earth universe he created, Tales of the Dying Earth, but…well, I can’t write quite so glowing a review this time.

Vance’s setting is interesting enough, in concept. Presumably billions of years in the future, the Sun is dying. Mankind, the environment, and the Earth itself have been through so many traumas and evolutions that it can seem quite alien, especially as humanity’s control of its environment has advanced technologically, or psionically, or spiritually, or some combination of all of these, to the point where Magic in the traditional sense is very much in the world and readily perceived. Vance does a fascinating job presenting a world with billions of years of human history, and his environmental descriptions are almost Tolkien-esque at many points in their vivid paintings of his eerie world. Unfortunately, while I found much to admire in these books, like Tolkien I often thought his characterization and dialogue sometimes lagged far behind his other skills, although I wonder how much of that is simply the choice of stories included in this collection. Read the rest of this entry »

Engines of Light by Ken MacLeod

MacLeod continues to create interesting worlds filled with interesting (if not always entirely believable) characters and wildly variable political and economic systems that always manage to trend towards socialist libertarianism. And I keep reading them, and enjoying them, which may or may not tell you something about my own political leanings and/or tolerances. This trilogy of books starting with Cosmonaut Keep, bridged by Dark Light, and concluded with Engine City, is one of those rare interstellar epics where the speed of light is inviolable. Travel, then is accomplished in ships capable of essentially transforming themselves and their contents into light itself; massless and timeless, the traveler arrives at his destination in the same subjective moment as his departure, while years (or decades, or millennia) pass in the frames of reference of the worlds in between. Turns out that extra-terrestrials and their servant species have been relocating life-forms from Earth to an area on the other side of the galaxy for many millions of years, for their own reasons and without much consultation of those being moved, and the primary thrust of these books is the tale of those displaced colonists, impossibly distant in time and space from their homeworld, trying to establish balance and trade with other worlds and species. Minor spoilers (necessary to describe the setting) await you after the cut… Read the rest of this entry »

Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

This book is sometimes hailed as one of the turning points in the Discworld novels…a pivotal step in the evolutionary process whereby fiction that was humorous but made you think is transformed into thoughtful fiction that makes you laugh. I would certainly offer it up as being so, but Pratchett also accomplishes something in this novel that is more difficult and rare than many genre authors (and fans) might admit: a time travel story done well.

Without over-complicating the story with paradoxes, Pratchett involves a character intimately in his own history in a believable fashion, and still manages to resolve the situation with almost no loose ends.  Not only does he juggle those difficulties with seemingly little effort, he still manages to invoke plot concepts both profound and accessible, addressing themes including the role of impersonal authority in law enforcement as opposed to a role of cops as individuals who are elements of the community, transparency in government, and the effectiveness of populist movements in complex societies.  And he still manages to be damn funny telling this story.

The story, after a brief memorial service, launches into Vimes chasing after one Carcer, the Discworld equivalent of Hannibal Lecter (leaving any questionable dietary choices solely to Dibbler), leading to Vimes and Carcer being involved in a magical accident propelling them back in time to the corrupt and unstable city-state on the verge of revolution that Vimes first began working in as a young, rookie copper.  He must, somehow, make sure his younger self and the rest of the Night Watch does what needs to be done in a world that’s been subtly changed by his and Carcer’s arrival.  It’s this unique device, making sure things occur as they did in his youth with the perspective of time guiding his decisions this time as to why they must occur in that fashion, that lets Pratchett explore his deeper themes so effectively, and speaks (I think) to the potential the Fantasy genre holds to explore difficult to address themes in literature.  Highly recommended, and as always with Pratchett books I recommend newcomers consult the Pratchett Reading Order Guide, although in this case I read this way out of order and still enjoyed it immensely.