Arts & Letters

Whedon vs. Martin

Arts & Letters, Movies / /

This past Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones ended with a doozy of a surprise (at least, for those of us who haven’t read the books!), and while we all come to grips with what happened, Joss Whedon is sitting back and laughing. Warning: Many spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones, Buffy, Firefly/Serenity, and probably some other stuff.

The Red Wedding, which is the name given to the sequence whereby several of our Game of Thrones heroes are betrayed and murdered in a brutal fashion, was shocking in its brutality. Whedon saw it from a different perspective though:

Basically, Whedon has a reputation for killing off his most beloved characters on TV shows. George R.R. Martin appears to be giving him a run for his money. Or is he?

Whedon’s deaths tend to be emotionally powerful, prompting much in the way of hate mail. He defends these deaths in the name of the story. For instance, when Whedon kills off Wash in Serenity, he claims it was because otherwise, we would all assume the success of our heroes would be a foregone conclusion. The death is absolutely infuriating, not least of which because I’m not particularly sure it achieves its aims. It was a shocking moment in the film, but it was so sudden and so damn pointless, that it didn’t really do anything but make me sad. Furthermore, he was killed by faceless Reavers, so it’s not like you have anyone to blame… except for Whedon himself.

Contrast that with the Red Wedding. Robb Stark (heir to the iron throne), Talisa (his pregnant wife), and Catelyn (his mother) are all betrayed and slaughtered in the cruelest of fashions (their entire army is killed as well). It was sudden, but not nonsensical. And indeed, the sense of dread had been building for a while. For crying out loud, Talisa had just commented that if their unborn child winds up being a boy, they should name him Eddard (after Eddard Stark, who was also betrayed and killed in season 1). Ned friggen Stark!

Again, I was shocked and saddened by this event, but there are a number of things that make this better than Whedon’s brand of murder. First, this is a show with a ton of characters, so there will be plenty of others that will rise up to take Robb’s place. Second, the show has already established the danger of getting too attached to characters. Lots of people died on Sunday, but they’re but the latest in a long line of tragic deaths and betrayals. Third, Martin is an equal opportunity killer. The blood of villains flows as readily as the heroes, which makes for a nice balancing act, and they’re sometimes just a surprising (notable example: Viserys Targaryen, who is “crowned” by Khal Drogo in a fantastic moment). Fourth, while the Red Wedding is the end of characters we like, it’s also the beginning of a villain we’re going to love to hate! The same could be said for the Death of Ned Stark at the hands of Joeffrey (quite possible the most hatable character in television history, who has been built up as such a tremendous douche that his death will have significant cathartic value).

Whedon’s use of deaths seem like cheap shots. As emotionally draining as they are, they’re actually not that frequent… but in a lot of cases, they probably should be. Take Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Whedon killed fan favorite Tara, it was a mere plot convenience for him. A cheap way to up the stakes (and he needed this, as those nerdy villains were kinda lame). So what’s the problem? Well, if that’s what it takes to die in this show, the non-Buffy characters should have all died in, like, season one. It’s a pointless, lazy death.

Whedon certainly has his fans and I actually count myself one of them. Indeed, most of his death scenes are well deserved and well done. Even the ones I hate tend to at least be effective. But I’m not really willing to forgive Wash. Just can’t get past that one. So Whedon is right, we should give George R.R. Martin an equivalent reputation for killing his characters (in fact, I think he’s had that reputation for a while, it’s just that we’re finally seeing it on TV). But this isn’t a zero sum game: there’s plenty of blame to go around, Joss! So congratulations: you both have a reputation for killing beloved characters.

Tangentially, are there any characters on Game of Thrones that you would be devastated to see die? And if not, what does that say about the show? Personally, I think that if Aria was killed, I’d be pretty crestfallen. And maybe Hodor, because I love that guy (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see him go). What say you?

Hodor

(Thanks to Don for the Hodor meme)

The Irony of Copyright Protection

Arts & Letters, Computers & Internet, Culture, Movies, Music / /

In Copyright Protection That Serves to Destroy, Terry Teachout lays out some of the fundamental issues surrounding the preservation of art, in particular focusing on recorded sound:

Nowadays most people understand the historical significance of recorded sound, and libraries around the world are preserving as much of it as possible. But recording technology has evolved much faster than did printing technology—so fast, in fact, that librarians can’t keep up with it. It’s hard enough to preserve a wax cylinder originally cut in 1900, but how do you preserve an MP3 file? Might it fade over time? And will anybody still know how to play it a quarter-century from now? If you’re old enough to remember floppy disks, you’ll get the point at once: A record, unlike a book, is only as durable as our ability to play it back.

Digital preservation is already a big problem for current librarians, and not just because of the mammoth amounts of digital data being produced. Just from a simple technological perspective, there are many non-trivial challenges. Even if the storage medium/reading mechanisms remain compatible over the next century, there are nontrivial challenges with ensuring these devices will remain usable that far into the future. Take hard drives. A lot of film and audio (and, I suppose books these days too) are being archived on hard drives. But you can’t just take a hard drive and stick it on a shelf somewhere and fire it up in 30 years. Nor should you keep it spinning for 30 years. It requires use, but not constant use. And even then you’ll need to ensure redundancy because hard drives fail.

Just in writing that, you can see the problem. Hard drives clearly aren’t the solution. Too many modes of failure there. We need something more permanent. Which means something completely new… and thus something that will make hard drives (and our ability to read them) obsolete.

And that’s from a purely technological perspective. They’re nontrivial, but I’m confident that technology will rise to the challenge. However, once you start getting into the absolutely bonkers realm of intellectual property law, things get stupid really fast. If technology will rise to the challenge, IP owners and lawmakers seem to be engaged in an ever-escalating race to the bottom of the barrel:

In Europe, sound recordings enter the public domain 50 years after their initial release. Once that happens, anyone can reissue them, which makes it easy for Europeans to purchase classic records of the past. In America, by contrast, sound recordings are “protected” by a prohibitive snarl of federal and state legislation whose effect was summed up in a report issued in 2010 by the National Recording Preservation Board of the Library of Congress: “The effective term of copyright protection for even the oldest U.S. recordings, dating from the late 19th century, will not end until the year 2067 at the earliest.… Thus, a published U.S. sound recording created in 1890 will not enter the public domain until 177 years after its creation, constituting a term of rights protection 82 years longer than that of all other forms of audio visual works made for hire.”

Among countless other undesirable things, this means that American record companies that aren’t interested in reissuing old records can stop anyone else from doing so, and can also stop libraries from making those same records readily accessible to scholars who want to use them for noncommercial purposes. Even worse, it means that American libraries cannot legally copy records made before 1972 to digital formats for the purpose of preservation…

Sheer insanity. The Library of Congress appears to be on the right side of the issue, suggesting common-sense recommendations for copyright reform… that will almost certainly never be enacted by IP owners or lawmakers. Still, their “National Recording Preservation Plan” seems like a pretty good idea. Again, it’s a pity that almost none of their recommendations will be enacted, and while the need for Copyright reform is blindingly obvious to anyone with a brain, I don’t see it happening anytime soon. It’s a sad state of affairs when the only victories we can celebrate in this realm is grassroots opposition to absurd laws like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA.

I don’t know the way forward. When you look at the economics of the movie industry, as recently laid out by Steven Soderberg in a speech that’s been making the rounds of late (definitely worth a watch, if you’ve got a half hour), you start to see why media companies are so protective of their IP. As currently set up, your movie needs to make 120 million dollars, minimum, before you start to actually turn a profit (and that’s just the marketing costs – you’d have to add on the budget to get a better idea). That, too, is absurd. I don’t envy the position of media companies, but on the other hand, their response to such problems isn’t to fix the problem but to stomp their feet petulantly, hold on to copyrighted works for far too long, and to antagonize their best customers.

That’s the irony of protecting copyright. If you protect it too much, no one actually benefits from it, not even the copyright holders…

SF/F/H Book Meme

Arts & Letters, Science Fiction / /

Via SF Signal and Ian Sales, one of them fancy book memes “for a lazy Saturday” which means that here at Kaedrin, we’re doing it on Wednesday, because we’re cool like that. 12 questions about science fiction, fantasy, and horror books:

1. The last sf/f/h book I read and enjoyed was:

The last Fantasy I read that I really enjoyed was The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold. I don’t know that it’s as enjoyable as her Vorkosigan books, but I found it very approachable and unlike a lot of fantasy. It’s not filled with epic battles or action, instead focusing on the kingdom’s court politics and the like. There’s magic, but it’s limited and relatively consistent. This description might make it sound boring, but it’s quite exciting. Will certainly look to read the other two in the series, but Fantasy hasn’t been a big focus of mine, so I’ll also mention the last SF book I read and really enjoyed: Jack Glass, by Adam Roberts, which I found clever and inventive, but still very approachable. I did a full review a couple weeks ago if you want to read more.

2. The last sf/f/h book I read and did not enjoy was:

I didn’t hate Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs, but I never really got into it and I wasn’t aware that it was the first in a planned series, nor that it would end without any real closure (it’s also something I probably wouldn’t have read on my own, but it was a book club selection). While I don’t have any particular desire to read the next book when it comes out (which does say something, I guess), I didn’t really hate the book either… For that, I’d probably go with Fool Moon, by Jim Butcher. I actually like the concept and universe of the Dresden Files series (including the first book, which was solid and fun), but I pretty emphatically disliked this one. I may revisit the series again someday, but this one turned me off of it for a while, at least.

3. A sf/f/h book that I would recommend to new sf/f/h readers is:

The two books that immediately come to mind are Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card and Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi. Both focused on military, kinda mirror images of each other, actually, with one focused on training young children to face a threat, and the other focusing on recruiting old people to fight wars. Both have good ideas (the hallmark of good SF), but are also page-turners and relatively short, addictive reads. I know Orson Scott Card has engendered quite a bit of scorn for his unpopular political views, but there’s no diatribes against gay marriage in Ender’s Game, and it’s probably worth catching up with the book before seeing the movie, which will probably be terrible (though who knows, maybe it’ll be ok).

4. A sf/f/h book that I would recommend to seasoned sf/f/h readers is:

This is a tough one for me. I’d say that I read a fair amount, but compared to many, I guess you’d say that I’m more lightly seasoned than fully seasoned. I’m at a bit of a loss here. I’m still working my way through the best-of lists and classics of the genre, so I’ll just throw the first thing that comes to mind out there, which is Diaspora, by Greg Egan. It’s a big, sprawling hard science fiction novel, lots of big, challenging ideas, and Egan’s famous focus on really hard SF. Egan is probably more famous for Permutation City (also a very worthy read that I only recently caught up with), but I’m guessing most seasoned SF readers have already tackled that one (which is somewhat more approachable than Diaspora).

5. The sf/f/h book I most want to read next is:

Well, the next book I’ll probably read is John Scalzi’s just released (well, sorta) The Human Division (which is actually the latest in the aforementioned Old Man’s War series). After that, I have several books in the queue, though I’m not sure what I’d hit up.

6. My favorite sf/f/h book series includes:

This is actually a really easy one, seeing as though I just read through Lois McMaster Bujold’s entire Vorkosigan Saga (16 books in total, with a few short stories thrown in for good measure) and loved most of them, particularly the 4 book stretch starting with Mirror Dance and concluding with A Civil Campaign (check out my post on the series for more).

7. I will read anything by this sf/f/h author:

This is an easy one: Neal Stephenson. I think that I’ve read every single thing he’s ever published at this point, from the lowliest short story or editorial, to his sprawling masterpieces like Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, and Anathem. Definitely my favorite author, though Bujold has come on strong lately, and I do find myself reading most of what Scalzi publishes these days.

8. The first sf/f/h book I read was:

I’m honestly not positive about this, but I’m going to go with A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle or Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series, both of which I think read while I was in the sixth grade. I even remember writing a Prydain-inspired story for school called The Land of Analak (or something like that, I’ll have to see if I can dig up my copy of that sucker sometime).

9. The sf/f/h book I’m most surprised that more people don’t like is:

These questions are getting harder, but one book I find consistently underrepresented in best-of lists is Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, a superb and harrowing entry in the tired first contact subgenre. I don’t know why it doesn’t get more love.

10. The sf/f/h book I’m surprised so many people do like is:

The problem with this question is that I can think of plenty of books that I don’t love that are revered by many, but I can see why they would be so popular too – so it’s not exactly surprising that, say, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin or Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein have big followings. I don’t mean to say that I hate those books or that I found nothing of value there, but I didn’t really enjoy them. However, I can see their influence all over SF, so it’s hard to be surprised that people love them. That being said, I’m going to have to leave them as my answer, because I’m drawing a blank otherwise.

11. The most expensive sf/f/h book I own is:

I have no idea here. I don’t have anything notably collectible, maybe a few first edition Hardcovers purchased in the course of regular reading. I suppose the thing that comes closest is Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday The 13th, by Peter Bracke. It’s a big, full color book filled with imagery, and I bought it when it was out of print. It’s back in print now, but even a new copy is relatively expensive (approx $35). I think I paid somewhere on the order of $50 for a first or second edition copy at some point, so there’s that.

12. The number of sf/f/h books I own and have yet to read is:

Surprisingly few, at this point. I’m pretty good about not building up a pile of shame, but a couple years ago, I probably had 10-15 unread books laying around. I knocked most of them out last year and I’m left with a couple Philip K. Dick books I bought during a sale a few months ago. The Kindle has been a great enabler in this respect, as it allows for instant gratification…

Amazon Pilots

Arts & Letters, Movies / /

I mentioned the other week that Amazon released 14 pilot episodes for original series. They haven’t made a decision about which series will get picked up, but I watched a bunch, so here are some thoughts. High level summary: “Meh.”

  • Zombieland – This was probably the only show I was actually curious about, and it acquitted itself reasonably well. It’s tough to compete with the talent of the movie, but it actually worked well enough, and some of established in the movie actually fits the TV mold (notably the “Zombie kill of the week”). It’s clearly not hitting on all cylinders and it’s not as polished as the movie, but it has potential, and I could see myself watching this.
  • Alpha House – This show about 4 Republican congressmen who are roommates clearly has the best pedigree. Name actors, Doonsbury writer, and so on. That talent does show in the final product, which is probably the most composed of the shows that I watched. But it wasn’t all that funny, and the one-sided politics means that it won’t be surprising or interesting either. Again, the pilot was fine, and there’s potential here, but I could also see this crashing and burning.
  • Onion News Empire – As a fictional show about a ridiculous news channel (i.e. it’s not an actual fake news show, it’s a story about people who put on a real news show that’s, uh, fake), this one was ok, and I chuckled at a few jokes, but it’s ultimately nowhere near the level of brilliance that the Onion is capable of. Again, I suppose it could grow some legs, but I was fairly disappointed by this one.
  • Those Who Can’t – This show about a misanthropic trio of teachers who act outrageous and inappropriately towards their students sounded awful, but was surprisingly engaging. It’s got a sorta It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia lite vibe going on. It seems a little too reliant on the characters’ apathy, which is a joke that could get old pretty quickly, but I could see this working if given room to grow.
  • Browsers – People started singing and I immediately checked out. It’s actually one of the better reviewed shows, but I couldn’t even be bothered with watching it.

That’s what I watched. I wasn’t too enthused by any of the episodes, but I think that’s more of an issue with Amazon’s process here than the shows themselves. Comedy shows are cheap to produce (which is no doubt why Amazon is starting with them), but they usually take a few episodes to establish themselves and grow into their premise. There are very few comedies that launch with a pilot that is representative of what the show will ultimately become. A few of these episodes show promise, but who knows how any of them would play out. I watched them because I was curious, but that’s because this is a sorta novelty thing. Perhaps if I came away from this experience with more than a “meh” feeling, it would be different, but at this point, I’m not particularly inclined to take more chances on these Amazon shows, which has to be a problem for Amazon. I’ll be curious to see which shows get picked up and move forward (though apparently Zombieland won’t, according to the creator’s tweets, which indicate that fans of the movie really killed the show for some reason…)

Weird Book of the Week

1 Comment / Arts & Letters, Weird Movie of the Week / /

At this rate, the Weird Movie of the Week category of this blog will soon contain more non-movies than actual movies. Nevertheless, this one was too good to pass up, and it’s brilliance only really requires a picture of the cover of the book:

The Right to Arm Bears

The Right to Arm Bears. That’s just glorious, is it not? It turns out that it’s really just another in a long line of mildly misleading covers and ridiculous artwork from Baen Books (a publisher I actually really like, but damn their covers are just awful). The book is actually an omnibus of three older, out of print books ( “Spacial Delivery”, “Spacepaw”, and “The Law-Twister Shorty”), none of which approaches the titular splendor of “The Right to Arm Bears” (though “Spacepaw” ain’t half bad). It’s true, these books are about humans interacting with an alien species of giant, intelligent bears, but I’m guessing they don’t dress up in special forces gear, chew a cigar, wear berets, or tote human weaponry around. The synopsis isn’t quite as bonkers as the cover:

Planet Dilbia is in a crucial location for both humans and their adversaries, the Hemnoids. Therefore making friends with the Dilbians and establishing a human presence there is of the utmost importance, which may be a problem, since the bearlike Dilbians stand some nine feet tall, and have a high regard for physical prowess. They’re not impressed by human technology, either. A real man, er, bear doesn’t need machines to do his work for him.

But Dilbians are impressed by sharp thinking, and some have expressed a grudging admiration for the logical (and usually sneaky) mental maneuvers that the human “shorties” have used to get themselves out of desperate jams. Just maybe that old human craftiness will win over the Dilbians to the human side. If not, we lose a nexus, and the Dilbians will learn just how unbearable Hemnoids can be….

Reviews seem middling to poor, actually, though I have to give credit to the guy who titled his review “A bearable read”. Well played, sir. (Hat tip to Justin, who has some more great/horrible covers.)

Star Trek: TNG Tidbits

Movies, Science Fiction / /

The Star Trek: The Next Generation Third Season BD came out recently, replete with bonus materials. Of course, it’s obscenely expensive (Star Trek releases have always been so) and probably only purchased by obsessives. Us normal fans just fire up episodes on Netflix pretty easily, but then we miss out on remastered HD visuals and bonus features. Fortunately for us, Hercules from AICN has done a seemingly comprehensive recap of all those special features, and there’s lots of behind the scenes gems to be had. The general consensus is that season 3 is where TNG turned the corner from a decent show into a great show, and a lot of these features apparently focus on that. Some interesting tidbits:

* A “technobabble generator” created as a joke by a friend of Shankar became a frequently utilized not-joke writers’ room tool.

Always funny to hear about the teching the tech tendencies of the writers…

* Moore and Braga lament that “Star Trek: Generations,” which they labored on for a year, didn’t turn out as well as “All Good Things,” which took two weeks to write.

* Piller argued against the other writers who wanted Wesley to stay true to his fellow cadets in the season-five episode “The First Duty.” Piller prevailed and Wesley did end up throwing his friends under the bus to put Starfleet Academy honor first. The episode, relates Shankar, is now used at the U.S. Air Force Academy to teach cadets about the honor code.

* The writers reveal Brent Spiner grew weary of stories involving Data’s cat Spot. As a practical joke, they inserted into one script a scene in which Data invents a collar that translates Spot’s meows into English.

* One storyline that was much fought for before Piller shot it down was to kill Will Riker and replace him permanently with his transporter-mishap doppleganger Tom Riker. “It was a chance to reinvent the character,” explains Moore.

* Patrick Stewart, perhaps envious of William Shatner, apparently told every TNG writer he met that Picard wasn’t “shooting and screwing” enough.

* Behr had a great episode idea about Picard getting promoted to admiral and Riker given the captaincy of the Enterprise — and how Picard dealt with the promotions. But Roddenberry insisted Picard’s insecurities regarding his new life were out of character, and the script was scrapped. That concept evolved into the episode in which Picard gets boned on the pleasure planet.

* Frakes was always annoyed when the writers made Riker turn down offers of commanding his own ship. He (and many fans) felt his willingness to decline a captaincy was out of character.

Frakes hits the nail on the head with that last one. I mean, I get why it was done (the show must go on, and having Riker off on some other ship would be either contrived or lame), and it made for some good episodes (The Best of Both worlds 2 parter with the Borg being the most obvious), but the character of Riker was such an experience hound, always game for just about anything, that it’s hard to believe he would turn down a captaincy.

* Ironically given the subject matter of his first script, Moore was not a fan of children living aboard the Enterprise. He also never understood why a psychotherapist was always sitting on the bridge next to the captain. Moore was also no fan of the replicator, which he believed an enemy of drama.

* Rick Berman, Brannon Braga and Moore all once lamented that they should have saved “Yesterday’s Enterprise” for the plot of the “Generations” movie, with the Kirk-Spock Enterprise swapped for the Garrett-Castillo one.

* The staff, which at the time included future “Battlestar Galactica” mastermind Ronald D. Moore, would often refer to Data as “a toaster.”

Lots of other interesting stuff in Herc’s post…

Kindle Updates

Arts & Letters, Computers & Internet, Science & Technology / /

I have, for the most part, been very pleased with using my Kindle Touch to read over the past couple years. However, while it got the job done, I felt like there were a lot of missed opportunities, especially when it came to metadata and personal metrics.

Well, Amazon just released a new update to their Kindle software, and mixed in with the usual (i.e. boring) updates to features I don’t use (like “Whispersinc” or Parental Controls), there was this little gem:

The Time To Read feature uses your reading speed to let you know how much time is left before you finish your chapter or before you finish your book. Your specific reading speed is stored only on your Kindle Touch; it is not stored on Amazon servers.

Hot damn, that’s exactly what I was asking for! Of course, it’s all locked down and you can’t really see what your reading speed is (or plot it over time, or by book, etc…), but this is the single most useful update to a device like this that I think I’ve ever encountered. Indeed, the fact that it tells you how much time until you finish both your chapter and the entire book is extremely useful, and it addresses my initial curmudgeonly complaints about the Kindle’s hatred of page numbers and love of percentage.

Time to Read in Action

Will finish this book in about 4 hours!

The notion of measuring book length by time mitigates the issues surrounding book length by giving you a personalized measurement that is relevant and intuitive. No more futzing with the wild variability in page numbers or Amazon’s bizarre location system, you can just peek at the remaining time, and it’s all good.

And I love that they give a time to read for both the current chapter and the entire book. One of the frustrating things about reading an ebook is that you never really knew how long it will take to read a chapter. With a physical book, you can easily flip ahead and see where the chapter ends. Now, ebooks have that personalized time, which is perfect.

I haven’t spent a lot of time with this new feature, but so far, I love it. I haven’t done any formal tracking, but it seems accurate, too (it seems like I’m reading faster than it says, but it’s close). It even seems to recognize when you’ve taken a break (though I’m not exactly sure of that). Of course, I would love it if Amazon would allow us access to the actual reading speed data in some way. I mean, I can appreciate their commitment to privacy, and I don’t think that needs to change either; I’d just like to be able to see some reports on my actual reading speed. Plot it over time, see how different books impact speed, and so on. Maybe I’m just a data visualization nerd, but think of the graphs! I love this update, but they’re still only scratching the surface here. There’s a lot more there for the taking. Let’s hope we’re on our way…

Jack Glass

Science Fiction / /

Adam Roberts’ novel Jack Glass presents us with a delicious mashup of pulpy SF and golden-age mystery. I am much more familiar with the former than the latter, but that simple description alone was enough to garner interest, and when this won the British Science Fiction Award for best novel, that just made the choice easier. Having read it, I find it mildy disappointing that this didn’t make the Hugo shortlist, which is amusing to me, since my first exposure to Adam Roberts was his takedown of the 2009 Hugos… But I digress, back to the novel.

Jack Glass Cover Art

The story is broken up into three chunks, each a mystery that draws upon classic tropes like the locked-room mystery or country house murder. We’re informed early on that the titular Jack Glass is the murderer in all instances, so these mysteries don’t really take on the typical whodunit form… it’s perhaps more accurate to see them as a howdunit. Each story contains elements of the other – all have some element of a locked-room mystery, for instance – and each story leads into the next smoothly enough. Again, I’m not particularly familiar with golden-age mystery stories, but these are archetypes we’ve seen many times before. Many have claimed it’s also a pastiche of golden-age SF, and that’s true to a point, though I find it to be towards the end of that hallowed era. I found it reminiscent of stories like The Space Merchants or The Stars My Destination, more like the output of the Futurians than, say, Campbell’s stable.

The first section is a prison story, and a rather grim one at that. Roberts does an exceptional job establishing the characters and the setting, an impressive feat considering that there are 7 main characters in this story. The science fictional twist on your average prison story is that this prison is an asteroid. 7 prisoners are dropped off on the asteroid and given minimal supplies and a tiny habitable bubble. If they can survive for 11 years under those conditions, they can go free. Of course, in order to survive, they have to excavate the rock, find water, build out a whole tunnel system, etc… Theoretically, whether the prisoners survive the ordeal or not, the company that imprisoned them is left with an asteroid that can be sold as a dwelling to someone. Escape is impossible, as they’re surrounded on all sides by millions of miles of the nothingness of space – like an Alcatraz in space. It’s a clever spin on an old story, and Roberts does a great job setting the stakes. Roberts makes deft work of establishing the 7 main characters – 3 typical alpha males, 2 quasi-alphas, 1 doomed and whiny fat dude, and a cripple (which, actually, isn’t as big a deal in zero-gravity). This isn’t a pleasant story, and the ending is rather far-fetched, but it’s a good way of establishing the world this book is set in…

The second section is the country house murder mystery, and this one is told mostly from the perspective of Diana and her sister Eva. They are the daughters of a clan of information gatherers, rather highly placed in the hierarchy of the solar system. One of their servants winds up dead, and Diana, who is a big mystery buff, seeks to find out who did it. When she is informed that it was, in fact, the notorious murderer Jack Glass, she is mightily confused about how he could possibly have achieved that. When rumors that someone has discovered Faster Than Light (FTL) travel appear, things start to get even more hairy for our protagonists.

I was not quite sure what to make of this section for a while. Diana and Eva aren’t immediately the most likable characters, though they eventually grow on you. They’re both genetically optimized to solve problems. Eva is more into hard sciences and physics, while Diana is more personable. They both seem to have been bred to leverage sleep and dreams to solve their problems, which makes perfect sense, but which I always find a bit annoying because I don’t like the untethered nature of prose that describes dreams. This is more my failing than Roberts, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

The third story is a straight up whodunit murder, except that we know that Jack Glass did it. That being said, we have no idea how he did it, and despite there being multiple witnesses and a confined space (another locked room, it seems), no one saw him do it. Confused? Good!

Along the way we’ve got some interesting speculations on FTL, a clever (if distressing) explanation of the Fermi Paradox, and even some speculation on “Champagne Supernovae” (as Roberts notes in his acknowledgements “‘Champagne Supernovae’ are a real phenomenon, one that puzzles real astrophysicists, and which are, I’m sorry to say, really named after the Oasis song.”) All of this science is covered in plain language and is easily understood while still being clever and intriguing. Roberts clearly gleans the notion that science fiction is a literature of “ideas” and manages to infuse a few surprises into those old hoary tropes like FTL.

All in all, it’s a very enjoyable book. A little grim at times, it’s nonetheless very well constructed, well written, and clever. And if you’re the type to judge a book by its cover, you’ll still be in for a treat, as the cover art is fantastic. If any of this sounds interesting, this is most certainly a worthwhile read…

The State of Streaming

Arts & Letters, Movies, Science & Technology / /

So Netflix has had a good first quarter, exceeding expectations and crossing the $1 Billion revenue threshold. Stock prices have been skyrocketing, going from sub 100 to over 200 in just the past 4-5 months. Their subscriber base continues to grow, and fears that people would use the free trial to stream exclusive content like House of Cards, then bolt from the service seem unfounded. However, we’re starting to see a fundamental shift in the way Netflix is doing business here. For the first time ever, I’m seeing statements like this:

As we continue to focus on exclusive and curated content, our willingness to pay for non-exclusive, bulk content deals declines.

I don’t like the sound of that, but then, the cost of non-exclusive content seems to keep rising at an absurd level, and well, you know, it’s not exclusive. The costs have risen to somewhere on the order of $2 billion per year on content licensing and original shows. So statements like this seem like a natural outgrowth of that cost:

As we’ve gained experience, we’ve realized that the 20th documentary about the financial crisis will mostly just take away viewing from the other 19 such docs, and instead of trying to have everything, we should strive to have the best in each category. As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many titles as we can.

And:

We don’t and can’t compete on breadth with Comcast, Sky, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, or Google. For us to be hugely successful we have to be a focused passion brand. Starbucks, not 7-Eleven. Southwest, not United. HBO, not Dish.

This all makes perfect sense from a business perspective, but as a consumer, this sucks. I don’t want to have to subscribe to 8 different services to watch 8 different shows that seem interesting to me. Netflix’s statements and priorities seem to be moving, for the first time, away from a goal of providing a streaming service with a wide, almost comprehensive selection of movies and television. Instead, we’re getting a more curated approach coupled with original content. That wouldn’t be the worst thing ever, but Netflix isn’t the only one playing this game. Amazon just released 14 pilot episodes for their own exclusive content. I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before Hulu joins this roundalay (and for all I know, they’re already there – I’ve just hated every experience I’ve had with Hulu so much that I don’t really care to look into it). HBO is already doing its thing with HBO Go, which exlcusively streams their shows. How many other streaming services will I have to subscribe to if I want to watch TV (or movies) in the future? Like it or not, fragmentation is coming. And no one seems to be working on a comprehensive solution anymore (at least, not in a monthly subscription model – Amazon and iTunes have pretty good a la carte options). This is frustrating, and I feel like there’s a big market for this thing, but at the same time, content owners seem to be overcharging for their content. If Netflix’s crappy selection costs $2 billion a year, imagine what something even remotely comprehensive would cost (easily 5-10 times that amount, which is clearly not feasible).

Incidentally, Netflix’s third exclusive series, Hemlock Grove, premiered this past weekend. I tried to watch the first episode, but I fell asleep. What I remember was pretty shlockey and not particularly inspiring… but I have a soft spot for cheesy stuff like this, so I’ll give it another chance. Still, the response seems a bit mixed on this one. I did really end up enjoying House of Cards, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to stick with Hemlock Grove…

The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself

2 Comments / Science Fiction / /

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that Ian Sales’ novella Adrift on the Sea of Rains won the Short Fiction award at the 2012 British Science Fiction Association Awards. I mentioned that I didn’t particularly love it, though I did find it very well written. And of course Ian Sales stumbled onto my post (and my old review), but he just seemed happy that I cared enough to write a review and even offered to send me a review copy of the next novella in the series (called the Apollo Quartet). I declined, opting to simply buy the book, as I know that every sale counts for self-published authors, and this time around, I found that I enjoyed the story much more.

The Apollo Quartet stories are basically alternate history speculations centering around the Apollo program, with some bigger SF tropes added in for flavor. Adrift on the Sea of Rains featured the brilliant premise of a large moon base witnessing the nuclear destruction of Earth. While I wasn’t ultimately satisfied with the story, that premise (which I’ve only really given half of) is fantastic. The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself takes its time getting to the driving forces behind the story, but I ultimately found it a much more rewarding read.

The story follows Brigadier Colonel Bradley Elliott, USAF, as he is sent to investigate the possible disappearance of a human colony on an exoplanet. Twenty years earlier, Elliott was the first man to land on Mars. Something happened during that first trip to Mars that lead the higher ups to bring Elliott out of retirement and send him to investigate the exoplanet, but I won’t ruin that excitement, and indeed, I may have already said too much.

I found the entire story much more enjoyable this time around. Elliott makes for a good protagonist, and there’s much less angst here than there was in the previous story. Sales certainly knows his stuff, both from a technology standpoint and from a prose style standpoint. Even when he takes a scientific leap, such as the faster-than-light travel system used to travel to the exoplanet (which is 15 light years away), he seems to be able to ground it enough that it doesn’t feel like a ridiculous affectation. I still find Sales lack of quotation marks around dialog to be a bit distracting, but it was also less notable here because there is less dialog (that, or I was just more engaged with the story and didn’t notice as much).

I did get a little worried at one point when it seemed like the story had ended and a short little glossary came up, but when you get to the end of the glossary, there’s an epilogue that contains the real kicker that was a real eye opener. That structure is a bit strange, but then, the glossary contains a lot of interesting info on the alternate history here (for instance, that’s where we learn the details about how the Soviets landed on the moon first, thus inspiring the US to go to Mars), and the kicker in the conclusion does take on an added resonance when you’ve read some of the entries in the glossary. So where Adrift on the Sea of Rains started with a brilliant premise and trailed off (for me, at least), The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself takes a little time to get going, but ends with more satisfaction. I’d certainly recommend The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself if this sounds at all interesting to you (it’s not closely tied to Adrift on the Sea of Rains, so no worries starting with the second installment either). Next up in the reading queue, the BSFA Novel award winner, Jack Glass (which has been in the queue for a while, but only recently became available in the US).