15 Books That Have Stayed With Me

So my brother posted this on Facebook, but I wanted to respond with a little bit more room to throw in a few words about each one (and add book cover pictures…because they’re cool). Here goes, in no particular order:

1. The Holy Bible Various authors – Be excellent to each other.

Party on, dude…well, maybe not that.

2. The Dragonriders of Pern (original trilogy) Anne McCaffrey – Because who doesn’t want to ride a majestic dragon through the skies of an alien planet?

Mush, mush, you husky!

3. The Honor Harrington series David Weber – Military Sci-Fi 101

And so, it begins…

4. The Mote in God’s Eye Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle – Military Sci-Fi 201 (+ Alien Contact lab class)

What if WE were the ‘superior’ species?

5. Starship Troopers Robert Heinlein – Military Sci-Fi 301 (+ Social Contract thesis)

The book…not that #@$*ing movie!

6. Five Great Ideas Mortimer J. Adler – So, that’s what a bunch of those ‘-isms’ are about.

From my Philosophy class, Senior year, OAHS.

7. A Stranger in a Strange Land Robert Heinlein – Screw your -isms…just grok it.

Read it, learn it, grok it.

8. Ringworld Larry Niven – This is how scale is done.

Build a ring 93 million miles in radius – one Earth orbit – around the sun.

9. The Stand Stephen King – This is how scope is done.

Good vs. Evil…that’s right, with the capitals, so you know it’s ON!

10. The Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling – Heroes, done right.

It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

11. Watchmen Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons – Anti-heroes, done right.

‘In the end’? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.

12. 1984 George Orwell – The horrific triumph of the Left.

Seriously, the best book cover EVER for ‘1984’.

13. V for Vendetta Alan Moore & David Lloyd – The horrific triumph of the Right.

Again, the book…not the @$%*ing movie.

14. Night Shift Stephen King – Scary, short, and scary (yeah, I said it twice).

The Boogeyman. ‘Nuff said *shudder*.

15. Lucifer’s Hammer Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle – Scary, because $%!# falls out of the sky all the *@#-damned time.

Birds aren’t just the remnants of dinosaurs…they’re a WARNING!

Redshirts – A Meta Classic

I just finished Redshirts, by John Scalzi…I listened to the audiobook version, as read by Wil Wheaton (a perfect choice…but I’ll get to that). Ostensibly, the science fiction plot concerns low-ranking officers aboard the Intrepid, the flagship of the ‘Universal Union’ in the 25^th Century. Commensurate with their status on the totem pole, they’re often assigned to the ‘away team’ missions with the cocky and brash Captain, the coldly logical Science Officer, the emotional Chief Medical Officer, the miracle-working Engineer, or the adventurous (and often-injured) Astrogator. All too often, these missions result in the bizarre deaths of such low-ranked personnel…but never those five officers. Our Enterprise-ing young heroes start to suspect that things (like recuperation rates or technobabble solutions or the basic physical laws of the universe) are seriously skewed aboard the Intrepid…and it’s only a matter of WHEN, not IF, they’ll find themselves at the mercy of Borgovian landworms or Longranian ice sharks (Are they sharks that swim in ice? Sharks made of ice? No one knows.).  So they decide to find out what’s going on—and do something about it.

Open fire with all pha…uh, pulse rays! Full spread, pho…er, neutrino missiles! And turn off the damn lens flares!

This book is more than just an homage to the original series of Star Trek, though. It’s obviously a loving but discerning tribute to the show; while you can practically see the cheesy starship sets and the blatantly set-on-a-soundstage “planets,” the author doesn’t shy away from pointing out the horribly bad science that was a hallmark of Star Trek. The book provides an interesting look at the “redshirts”—those members of Star Trek’s away missions who always seemed to die in silly or fanciful ways, all to provide a dramatically apt moment right before a commercial break. But it turns out to be a lot more than that…it digs down deep into the essence of “meta” and flips it on its head.

For those who don’t know, “Meta” is the fancy term used nowadays to describe breaking the fourth wall, that usually-inviolable barrier between the characters in a fiction and the reader/watcher/listener. Meta involves a bit more than that; it involves the characters being more or less self-referential about themselves and their genre; they might or might not break the fourth wall but they’re definitely looking in that direction. Joss Whedon is one of the masters of meta…Cabin in the Woods is pretty meta, as well as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Remember the guys who quote the ‘rules’ of horror movies in Scream, a horror movie in which they’re characters? That’s meta. Zack talking to the camera in Saved by the Bell? Meta.

Here’s an example: Nathan Fillion, ex-star of Firefly, a science fiction show set in the future, is now on Castle, a detective show set in present-day New York. If, say, he dresses up for Halloween as his character from Firefly on Castle and makes a joke about how it was all the rage 10 years ago, that’s meta (and they do that sort of thing at least once a season). If one of his former co-stars from Firefly does an episode of Castle, and they make a Firefly-related joke, AND then look towards the camera sheepishly, that’s even meta-ier. The fourth wall hasn’t been broken per se…but everyone knows it’s there. Note that this can be tough to do without derailing the audience’s suspension of disbelief and enjoyment of the story.

Also known as “Meta-Man”…able to smash fourth walls with his hammer. And, no, the hammer is NOT his [REDACTED].

Without spoiling anything, Redshirts manages to get very VERY meta…but never loses its sense of fun or adventure. The story maintains its own internal logic throughout (not a bad feat, as “internal logic” is itself a plot point). It’s as if the characters broke down the fourth wall…then built a room on the other side of it, and put in new walls, painted them a slightly off-white color, and hung some nice pictures. Then added a throw rug and brought in a tasteful sofa.

That’s one reason Wil Wheaton was a perfect choice for reading the Audible.com version of this book. Not only does he do a good job—as a fan, he manages to convey a perfect sense of Trek style with a pause in the Captain’s bluster or with the haughty tone of the Science Officer—Wil himself is an example of the book’s meta-ness, since he is a former cast member of the Trek franchise. Given the major theme of meta throughout the book, I have to believe this was a conscious choice of the author…and a good one.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you’ll love this book. It manages to do more than just give the ‘redshirts’ backstories (any licensed spin-off book can do that, with varying degrees of success). It also manages to make you look at all of those dead members of away teams in a whole new light. They’re people…not just characters. Joss Whedon gets a lot of crap for killing off beloved characters—Coulson Lives! Wash, nooooo!!—but at least A) they were around enough and involved in the story enough to make you care about them and B) their deaths were usually logical and central to the episode’s plot and to the surrounding characters’ development as a whole.

And if you’re not a fan, but you like a bit of philosophy and “hmmm…interesting concept” in your reading, you’ll enjoy this book too. The subject matter has been dealt with before (c.f. The Purple Rose of Cairo, The Last Action Hero) but this manages to get pretty deep, even given its superficial-on-its-face setting. Especially in the long, long epilogues (called “codas” here). This book should be required reading in ANY creative writing class as an object lesson in the need to create believable characters who seem like actual people. Because they just might be, somewhere…

Try to Imagine Arnold Saying “Yippee-Ki-Yay”

We introduced the kids to the movie Commando this weekend, thanks to Netflix. Since I hadn’t seen it in years (possibly decades), I was pleasantly surprised to see that it holds up well. Of course, “it holds up well” on the 80s-Action-Movie scale…no one is ever going to complain about its lack of Oscars.

One thing I did notice was that this movie, since it was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s follow-up to The Terminator, establishes his catchphrases as catchphrases! There’s the obligatory “I’ll be back” and even a “F*** you, a**hole!” This movie sets these catchphrases in stone as Ahnold’s trademarks; all the rest of his movies would just be taking their cue from Commando. Well done!

I did get a bit of a shock while perusing IMDb’s Trivia section about this movie: its relationship to Die Hard, my all-time favorite 80s action movie and easily in my Top 5 Movies Ever. It seems that, after Commando hit it big, the studio commissioned a sequel by the same writer (Steven E. de Souza) which was revised by Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Walking Dead). It was based on a 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. However, Ahnold didn’t want to reprise the character (maybe he was afraid of getting typecast? *chortle*) so the studio was stuck with an action movie script but no action hero. Their solution? Rework it for this TV actor who was looking to break into movies: Bruce Willis. And so, Commando 2 becomes Die Hard. <mind state=”blown></mind>

Kind of puts The Expendables in a new light.

So, if Ahnold hadn’t passed on the movie, we’d probably have a bunch of Commando sequels (getting progressively worse, I’m sure)…ending with Commando 5: Stop or My Daughter Will Shoot! starring Alyssa Milano. And Bruce Willis would probably be best known for “Moonlighting” and Blind Date. I think we dodged several bullets there.

I Guess “Adamsian Institution” Sounded Too Weird

Besides viewing the Fourth of July fireworks from the base of the Washington Monument, one great thing about spending the day in the nation’s capital is getting to spend some time in the Smithsonian museums. This institution truly is one of the great treasures of America, providing a whole array of museums, collections, and exhibits that encompass just about anything that is great about this country. And all for free!

Although the Institution is named for the British scientist, James Smithson, who left about $500,000 (at the time, a princely sum) to the United States “for the increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men,” the credit should really go to John Quincy Adams. You see, the money that Smithson bequeathed (bequoth?) was all invested in shaky bonds, which defaulted by the time the US received them from the British courts. John Quincy Adams successfully convinced Congress to come up with the amount, plus interest; he also managed to keep the money for its original intent (it seems that Congressmen back in 1836 were very similar to their 2012 counterparts when it comes to “free” money).

Ten years later, in 1846, the Smithsonian Institution was created as part of the federal government…but NOT part of (nor governed by) either the judicial, legislative, or executive branches. Instead, it was established as a trust by the government on behalf of the American people (OK, so maybe Congressmen were a little bit better back then). Its employees are federal employees and official members of its Board include the Vice President and the Chief Justice, as well as six members of Congress (three from the House, three from the Senate).

Since that time, the Smithsonian Institution has collected and exhibited a vast array of artistic, scientific, and cultural objects, with over 137 million items in its care. It oversees two magazines, one zoo, nine research centers, and, of course, 19 museums, all with free admission. That makes them the perfect place to spend an Independence Day…and not just for the air conditioning, although that’s pretty nice, too.

This year, we wandered away from the Mall and ventured north a few blocks to check out the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum. Technically, these are two separate museums but they occupy the opposite halves of the same building; you can wander from one to the other, with only the art to create any dividing line (“hmmm…this is all faces of people now…must be the Portrait Gallery”). Together, they are worth a full day’s wanderjahr through several amazing exhibits.

Some highlights include:

• Various landscapes and paintings of America, right when you walk into the American Art side, first floor. Thomas Moran’s landscape Grand Canyon of Yellowstone fairly glows with its realistic morning light. Georgia O’Keefe’s abstract Manhattan gives you a sense of “city” without any recognizable skyline or building. Two Cape Cod paintings by Edward Hopper (I love his Nighthawks) almost physically transported me back to my childhood summers.
• The gallery of Presidential portraits. A permanent exhibit, this collection includes portraits of all the U.S. Presidents. While the “official” portraits are kept by the White House, these paintings–more so than any photograph–serve to give you a sense of character, real or imagined. Norman Rockwell’s portrait of Nixon seemed to portray him through a very Rockwellian lens of America…and what a President should be, rather than what he is. Carter seemed swallowed up in the 70’s decor of his Oval Office while the lack of background details really set apart a laughing Reagan. George Stuart’s Landsdowne portrait of George Washington seemed almost mythical in its composition, as I’m sure it was meant to be.
• Paul Manship’s sculptures. He was a huge supporter of the Smithsonian while alive, serving on the board; when he died, he left most of his works to the Institution. His work inspired a return to a more realistic style than abstracts and presaged the Art Deco movement. The sculptures on display at the American Art Museum were mostly inspired by Greek mythology. You’ve seen his stuff before…he did the Prometheus statue that stands over the ice rink at Rockefeller Center.
• Mike Wilkins’ Preamble. He created a wall of license plates, one from each state (and the District of Columbia), that spells out the Preamble to the Constitution. Inspired…and inspiring.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable Fourth of July. Of course, not everyone has the Smithsonian in their backyard. But just about every community has some sort of art museum. So go out and go see some art…your brain will thank you for it!

A Different Kind of “Avenger”

Back in 1987, one of my favorite authors, David Brin, wrote an science fiction novella where the Nazis won World War II. Now this is one of my favorite themes in alternate history, my absolute favorite sub-genre of all sci-fi. You’d think this story, “Thor Meets Captain America,” would be my personal trifecta…and you’d be right! It even evokes comic books in the title…win!

I just picked it up again for $0.99 on my Kindle Fire and read it, whoosh, pretty quickly. It’s only 30-some pages. If you haven’t read it, I highly HIGHLY recommend that you do so. It’s really good…and it’s not just me that says so; it was a Hugo finalist for 1987 (losing out to Robert Silverberg’s “Gilgamesh in the Outback”, which I never read). Also, don’t read any further–spoilers, sweetie, to borrow a phrase.

Two out of three ain’t bad…and no, it’s NOT who you’re expecting…

Brin was asked to write this story for a book collecting stories about the Nazis winning WWII, Hitler Victorious. In his afterword, he complains that the whole concept is preposterous…”they were such schmucks,” as he points out, practically engineering the steps to their own defeat. Attacking Russia in winter, expanding too quickly, basing military strategy on the whims of a madman…any one of these things would be a weakness in any military campaign and they did ’em all. Of course, the one thing they did “well” is kill millions in concentration camps…we might not have known at the start, but thank God, we were well on the way to crushing them out of existence when we did know.

There, I think, lies the allure of the “What if the Nazis won?” sub-genre, to me, at least: not that it was a close call or that it wasn’t pretty much pre-ordained from the opening invasion of Poland…rather that the stakes were so very high. The very soul of humanity was at risk and that wasn’t even the cause of the war. If (a big “if”) they had won, there would be a large chunk of the human population, probably for generations, that would consider mass murder as simply another function of the State, like paving roads or raising taxes. I have to believe that would’ve poisoned us as a species, leading to a dark future I want no part of. The ultimate train wreck you can’t look away from. The Nazis needed eradicating…and thank God we did.

Brin solves his issue with the preposterousness of a victorious Hitler by providing an equally preposterous solution: the death camps weren’t merely institutionalized homicide factories but rather an attempt to raise up the Norse gods using necromancy. A novel approach…although I think it romanticizes the Holocaust a bit, attempting to give an understandable human motive (albeit a fantastical one) to an incomprehensible inhumanity. Bad motives (killing people for sick reasons) doesn’t always stay separate from good qualities (efficiency, competence).

Faced with superpowerful gods, the story’s hero ends up “winning,” not by blasting them away or blowing things up, but doing the only thing he can do: stand and be true. Sure, he has help (thanks, Loki!) but it is his defiance that will, eventually, defeat the death-gods. Very much a triumph of the human spirit…”Captain America”, indeed. Of course, like any good story (even/especially with a dark outcome like this one) you want to hear more…fast forward to the happy ending, please, you know, the one where good triumphs for all time. No such luck in the original story, I’m afraid, but I think it works pretty good this way. Hollywood could never make this a movie…but oh, what a great student film this would make (cheap and easy too, if you do it right)! There is a continuation of sorts…Brin expanded it in a graphic novel, The Life Eaters…but the reviews aren’t good so I think I’ll keep this small gem intact, in my own head, at least.

Parallel Evolution

Bandersnatch Cummerbund. It’s an odd combination of words, two words you wouldn’t expect to see together, EVER. Now imagine asking two people, separated by time and distance, to come up with two (mostly) nonsense words and you might get them to come up with those two words together…but to calculate such a remote probability, you would first have to interrupt your reading of the sequel to Romeo & Juliet as written by a million chimpanzees on a million typewriters.

Yet, that pretty much happened to me this week. Now the term “Bandersnatch Cummerbund” isn’t exactly random; I came up with it months ago as a way to tease my daughters about their mutual crush on the British actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, star of the BBC TV show Sherlock (and next year’s Star Trek sequel, as well as the voice of the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit). It’s the kind of silly joke I like to tease my kids with (they call it “Dad Humor” when they’re being kind), much like referring to “the Facebook” or “teh interwebz” (and no, that’s not a typo, I mean ‘teh’). A little self-deprecating, a little goofball-y…guess that’s just how I was raised (I’m looking at you, Dad!).

Bandersnatch? REALLY? I think you should just call me “Mister Cummerbund”

So imagine my surprise when I was reading the paper yesterday and discovered that Bandersnatch Cummerbund was a thing! And it was going viral! Seems the Washington Post used it in their piece about Sherlock’s Season Two premiere on PBS. The funny name reference was picked up by the Huffington Post and many, many other blog/news sites. The Post writer stated that it wasn’t her idea, some unknown person had used it weeks ago in one of her online chats about pop culture…and she’d just been waiting for the chance to use that little gem.

I had to stop and think: how original was I? Was it possible that I was copying someone else? But I couldn’t think of any conceivable way I might have seen some pop culture reference in the Washington Post, of all things. So could they be copying me, somehow? The only time I could remember using it on ‘teh interwebs’ was the night before, when I’d used in a Facebook post about that win, just to twit my daughters. This reporter had referenced her own page recording the chat reference back in March…so that couldn’t be it.

So I thought about how I’d come up with it…and realized there was actually a method that I’d used. All i did was switch the back halves of his name to get “Bene-batch Cumber-dict,” sort of. From there, its a pretty short leap to “Bandersnatch Cummerbund” when you start thinking of puns. And if there’s a method, well, then, someone else can replicate that method and end up with the same result (sometimes, we call that ‘science’…the science of bad jokes, in this case).

So that unknown person had probably just done the same thing as I did, switched some syllables and thought about the closest puns. Simple when you deconstruct it, really. Still…it’s a bit of a shock to see what you thought of as a pretty specific family in-joke become part of the Internet blogosphere. Or even the Tumblrverse. 😉

The Great Bard of the Galaxy

I’ve always liked Star Trek, though I wouldn’t call myself a Trekkie (and definitely not a Trekker). I enjoyed watching the show, from TOS (The Original Series) to TNG (The Next Generation) right through Enterprise. I liked the optimism and overall humans-will-do-good emphasis of the show, an attitude that carried on through all the various incarnations, thanks to Gene Roddenberry’s vision.

My level of fandom is somewhere above geek-fan but well below attending-conventions-in-costume. I can discuss its future ‘history’ well into the 24th Century but I don’t know a word of Klingon. I subscribe to the Odd-Even Theory about the TOS movies (odd ones are bad movies, even ones are good) and I was apprehensive about the 2009 reboot, not from extreme loyalty to the original cast but because I was afraid they might screw it up so badly that there would simply be no more Star Trek, that the Enterprise and the Federation would simply fade away over time, relegated to the occasional rerun on one basic cable channel or another.

I felt that the reboot did a pretty good job of approximating the Star Trek I liked. Sure, the pseudo-science was pretty bad (A red liquid that makes black holes? And as for the physics of the Enterprise’s escape from one such black hole…you could barely hear the end credit music over the hum caused by Newton AND Einstein spinning in their graves) but let’s face it…science in Star Trek was always just a McGuffin. “Technobabble” was pretty much a staple of any of the series.

Did you just insult my mom? Well, you can live long and SUCK IT!

It was the characters I liked. I never had long conversations about the prevalence of M-class planets or the ubiquitousness of funny-foreheaded humanoids or just what-the-hell is a “gaseous anomaly”…but I could go toe-to-toe for many many minutes on who was the better captain, Kirk or Picard, or why I’d rather have Bones as my physician than any of the others. Scotty always did pull the rabbit out of the hat, Chief O’Brien managed not to strangle the DS9 officers weekly, and Worf could be counted on to growl some Klingon proverb like some low-voiced fortune cookie. I even managed to forgive the invention of the Holodeck–providing the opportunity to recycle cheap standard soundstage sets–although I came close to abandoning Voyager in the Delta Quadrant when it became the “That 7 of 9 Show.”

So yeah, I liked the reboot. The basics of the characters stayed mostly true to their long-established roots. Kirk was brash, even foolhardy…Spock was all hot human emotion channeled through  Vulcan logic….Bones, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov (complete with awful accent!), even Uhura (hot for her alien teacher? OK, I’ll allow it). Updated effects, more exciting scenes, annoying mystery light flashes (seriously, who’d be able to think on that glittery Genius Bar of a bridge!)…all these were secondary to the fact that the characters get a chance to live on, reinterpreted for a different age.

I said, “Shields to maximum,” not “Lens flare to maximum”!!!

That’s the key to truly great stories, I think–that they can live on, no matter the time or the setting. You could put Kirk et al on a 17th Century pirate ship and we’d recognize them. Same with Picard’s crew on, say, a WWII battleship. People have been reinterpreting Shakespeare for centuries and we still respond to the stories. Imagine if we’d stopped after Olivier…no Branagh’s Henry V or McKellan’s Richard III or Gibson’s Hamlet (OK…we could do without that last one, but you get my point).

So let’s give a cheer for the reboot, whether it’s Star Trek or Spiderman or Batman (let’s not forget that the recent Nolan-Bale Dark Knight is a reboot of the Clooney nippled-Batman franchise). Done right, they can be good, even awesome, and keep alive beloved characters and stories. I just hope I live to see the rebooted Star Wars prequels where they spend more time on Anakin’s descent into the Dark Side than on badly-stereotyped aliens and galactic economic politics. Of course, Lucas probably has a team of lawyers armed with real turboblasters and TIE fighters to prevent that for a hundred years after he’s frozen in carbonite or something.

I have altered Appendix A, Section 2, Paragraph 8 of the Lucas copyright application…pray I don’t alter it further.

I Fixed ‘Avatar’

Don’t get me wrong…I like James Cameron’s Avatar. I mean, I didn’t get depressed when I found out Pandora wasn’t a real place. Nor do I think it’s the Best Movie of All Time…heck, it’s not even in my Top Ten, or even my favorite Cameron flick (that honor goes to Aliens…with Terminators 1 & 2 comfortably back leading the pack). But it’s a mostly decent film; from a technical standpoint, it’s amazing, what with all the gorgeous CGI, flying dragons, deadly jungles, floating mountains, etc.

One thing, though, has always bugged the crap out of me, a great big gaping hole in the plot that you could run a Pandoran rhinobeast through. Something I just cannot get past. WARNING: If you like Avatar the way it is, don’t read any further. Seriously. There are things you can’t un-see once seen, can’t un-know once known.

So pretty...but sooooo wrong.

OK, given that you are Giovanni Ribisi, acting for a ruthless corporation, eager to mine the magic rocks (call it ‘unobtainium’ if you must…it’s still just ‘magic rocks’) no matter what, since you came all the way from Earth at a significant cost. Standing in your way is a low-tech native population who are sitting on top of the magic rocks in their magic tree (I’m not being perjorative…for all intents and purposes, just call the “science-we-don’t-yet-understand” by its old name, “magic”). You have access to Stephen Lang’s strong military force…but they’re handicapped because their high-tech gizmos tend to get a bit wonky around the magic rocks. I guess the best way to get what you want is a frontal assault, using the doctor Sigourney Weaver and your (useless) spy Sam Worthington among the natives as a distraction, trusting in superior (you believe, anyway) military might to win the day, right?

WRONG. You have spacecraft, idiot…you send one of those into the local system, find a good-sized rock (one about the size of a VW van oughta do it), and nudge it just the right way. It falls out of the sky WHAMMO! right on top of the magic tree. The resulting kinetic blast blows up a huge chunk of the surrounding landscape. Benefits:

• No tech required. Once you gave it the properly calculated push out in space, it’s just a falling boulder. No magic-rock wonky-ness to worry about.
• No troops in harm’s way. Just the spacecraft crew on a routine mission, nothing difficult like crossing light-years of open space. Non-nuclear too…miners move right in, no fallout to protect against.
• The tree is GONE. Plus all the native opposing force. Plus several miles of jungle and very dangerous wildlife (think: instant landing field). Oh, and you managed to get a good start on your magic rock mining operation, too…it’s a big hole.
• Plausible deniability. Swear the spacecraft crew to secrecy and hey, it was an act of God. Rocks fall out of the sky all the time, look at the Moon. Shrug your shoulders, roll up your sleeves, and get to work digging.

See what I mean? Why wouldn’t Giovanni do it this way? It’s literally all pros, zero cons…you were gonna kill the blue folks anyway. All the Marines have to do is go in, take out any survivors (probability: slim), and make sure there aren’t any big sinkholes in the new Rhode-Island-sized crater. Easy peezy, lemon squeezy.

I never could get past that huge plot hole. But I like all the set pieces of Avatar: big blue people; jacking into dragons & flying around floating mountains; a living, thinking ecosystem, digitally connected; even the part where Marines in cool tech fight it out with the natives. I could even forgive the impossible (under current theory) divergent evolution, with four-limbed bipeds and horse-things existing alongside six-limbed jungle beasts and dragons. But I couldn’t forgive missing out on the drop-a-rock solution; just seemed too obvious. So how to reconcile all this?

Simple…drop the rock!

Follow me on this one:

1. Giovanni & Stephen tell Sigourney & Sam to convince the natives to leave, while setting up the whole drop-a-rock plan.
2. Sigourney finds out & runs to tell Sam, only to be mortally wounded in the process.
3. Sam uploads her to the magic tree, with the rock already on its deadly path out in space.
4. Pandora, the self-aware world, ‘hears’ Sigourney and does something to stop the rock. Doesn’t matter what…sends up bio-laser blast, moves mountain overhead, generates bio-forcefield…since the tree/Pandora is “magic” (i.e. Clarke’s “sufficiently advanced technology”), it can do whatever is necessary plot-wise to stop the rock from destroying everything.
5. Stephen & Giovanni get to chew up the scenery blaming each other…and then go with Plan B, aka ‘Send in the Marines’.
6. Sam organizes the natives (and Pandora sends in the beasties)…battle ensues, just nearer the human base than right outside the magic tree.
7. Blue folks still win…all is well with Pandora (not so much for the Marines).

This should preserve all the bits of the movie worth keeping, including the Big Battle between Pandorans & Terrans. Maybe Sam even shoots Giovanni for war crimes when they take the base over. Maybe it’s just me (probably just me…note that James Cameron can fund going to the very bottom of the whole ocean with his equivalent of the change found in the couch cushions, after Avatar & Titanic) but I feel better having ‘fixed’ the plot now.

This Just in From PanEm

On Monday, I went to see The Hunger Games with the kids. If you’ve read (and liked) the books, you should go see it; I can’t think of a better movie as a companion to a book. Oh, and if you haven’t read the books, you should…sure, it says “young adult” on the cover and it’s kind of cheesy in parts, but it’s a decent read, with some very well-defined characters.

I don’t think there’s any spoilers below but read at your own risk.

This man is the debbil...the DEBBIL!!!

Note that I said “companion” to the book. I think you can get enough of an idea of the story just from the movie. But to really appreciate what they did in the movie, you have to read the books first. I’m not talking about little Easter egg shout-outs or stuff you’d only understand from the books (though there is a little bit of that). I mean, you are able to understand exactly what’s going on in Katniss’ head (the main character) because A) you remember that part of the book, a book that happens in her head, from her point of view; and B) you can see it written all over Jennifer Lawrence’s face (glance…frown…resolve…glance back…you know what decision she’s just made).

The same goes for most of the actors in this movie. Everyone does a great job conveying their character’s thoughts just using their faces, or their body language. The standouts: Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland (that man conveys the pure menace and evil of a deadly cobra simply by glancing with hooded eyes), Liam Hemsworth. Honorable mention: Woody Harrelson, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks, knife-girl. If there’s an Oscar for casting, this movie should get it.

This movie could serve as a textbook example of Book-to-Movie Adaptation 101: where the book spends paragraphs describing, say, the contrast of haves & have-nots in the Capitol and District 12, the movie does the sane with cleverly intercut picture-only scenes…no lengthy voiceovers exist. Some things explained in the book (the three-fingered kiss to the dead) are left as simple, powerful images; no character bothers to explain what, in that future culture, is an accepted practice (imagine someone in a movie set in today’s world expending useless dialogue to explain air-quotes or a thumbs-up).

Probably the best part of the adaptation are the scenes added into the movie. These are not done simply to give a prominent actor some more screen time; they are only added in to fill out what happened outside of Katniss’ perspective in the book. She may have been told later what happened, or see the effect, but where it works, they’ve put it in (see: every scene with Donald Sutherland, especially his final “message” to the hapless Gamesmaster…OK, technically, his President Snow wasn’t actually in the scene, but you could feel his evil presence).

Yes, kids die in this movie…the whole point is that the Capitol culture is degenerate and greedy, to the extreme. But the deaths manage to occur just off-camera…and still manage to affect the viewer. In today’s TV culture, seeing violent death is no big thing (but God forbid someone see a nipple!!!) so it was good to see the director walk the fine line between PG-13 and R without losing the necessary punch of kids killing kids (or the psychotic ‘professional’ tributes, either).

So, in short, read (or re-read, if its been a while) the books…and go see this movie. If you don’t, you’ll be kicking yourself when the Oscars roll around and this “young adult” movie picks up a few golden statuettes.

BONUS: Suitable for Framing

Turns out some of the Geek Maxims from last week really DO look good as motivational posters. Enjoy!

Maxim 1

 

Maxim 3

 

Maxim 8

 

These are currently hanging in my cubicle with pride.