Media on my Mind...
Let's start with the books.
Finished: Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card
This story deals with Ender on his trip away from Earth and his first couple colony worlds. And what can I say about it? It's okay, but nowhere near the best of the Ender books. (slightly more spoilers behind the cut)
I got the feeling while reading this, and it was confirmed in the afterword, that Card started writing this with the idea of writing one story, and then realized that he didn't really have enough for a novel there, and rather than stretch it out, made a couple separate stories. So it almost reads like a couple related short stories rather than a novel.
There are also a number of continuity blips, which, to his credit, Card acknowledges, and although some of them he claims couldn't be helped, at times I felt they could, and when you can, you really should.
Card didn't really sell me on the genius of the genius people in this one, more often it just seemed like the other people were dumb.
Worth reading for Ender completists, probably, but for casual fans (or non fans), it's not really that necessary.
Started and Finished: Disapora, by Greg Egan
Started: Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
Peter Watts finally won a Hugo last weekend, for his story The Island. I started rereading it during Fan Expo, while I was waiting in line, and will want to finish it.
Anyway, Diaspora. It's sort of a post-singularity fiction, dealing with humanity after some segment of it decided to exist only as software, and the efforts to explore the universe/ensure their immortality. There are some cool concepts there, and I enjoyed reading it, but it's not one of my favorites, even in the Singularity-fiction-type genre. While I like science, I think this one focused a bit too much on science at the expense of enjoyable plot. Not bad, though.
Finished: Tatja Grimm's World, by Vernor Vinge
Started: The Dreaming Void, by Peter Hamilton
Another disappointing one. I love Vernor Vinge, but, well, Tatja Grimm's World is one of his earliest novels, and it shows. It focuses on a super genius in a rather primitive, metal-poor world and her allies, who are occasionally her enemies, and really more the viewpoint characters. But most of the characters fall a little flat, and the plot jumps around too much between not-all-that-interesting sub-settings. I only began to be engaged towards the end of the book.
-
What about comics? Well, I'm still down to just New Mutants, and nothing I've seen lately coming up is convincing me to change my mind. I might give "Generation Hope" a chance, but I don't really like their new model of mutant (gaining their powers older, needing to be 'activated'), or even the characters themselves so far, as shown by the first glimpses we've seen of them in Uncanny X-Men.
So, enough about what I've read... what about watched?
Not much, it being summer. Most everything I'm interested in has been in reruns, and nothing new's started. But there are a couple of things.
Kick-Ass, the Movie: Was actually pretty enjoyable. I gave up on the comic after two or three issues, but I liked the movie. (Minor spoilers for both behind the cut)I suspect it's because somebody else interpretting Mark Millar is a welcome buffer.
Mark Millar has some cool ideas, but he tends to go way over the top, and there's a certain... mean-spirited to his writing a lot of times. Like, it's as though he's saying, "Oh, you sympathize with this character? You think it might be cool to fight crime? Well, you're an idiot and I'm going to show you why by making the most humiliating things possible happen to the character I think you'll identify with." Except we don't REALLY think it might be cool to fight crime in a costume, (most of us, anyway), we sort of dream of a simpler world where that would be possible. The movie handles it better.. yeah, we laugh at Kick-Ass's mistakes, and there are plenty of them, but it doesn't feel like it's all piled on.
Although there was one point in the movie that I wish was a little closer to Millar's in the comic... when he reveals to the girl he loves that he's not gay, in the movie, in typical movie fashion, she falls for him. I actually preferred (I only saw scans of it not the whole comic, but I saw it nonetheless) the comic's idea where she tells him off for being a manipulative jackass, pretending he was gay so she'd confide in him. (Now, where the comic continued, with the girl hooking up with some guy and then sending Dave sexually explicit pictures of them together just to rub it in, that he admitted pleasuring himself to, now that's what I'm talking about in terms of over-the-top-humiliation-for-the-sake-of-it.). Other than that though, the movie was fun. And there's sort of a guilty pleasure in seeing Hit-Girl just kill a bunch of people with no trouble.
(Speaking of, in the comic, Hit-Girl's 9, which is another silly thing - Millar explained the comic as though being an honest take on what would REALLY happen if someone tried to be a superhero, but then right away introduces a little 9 year old girl who's strong enough to sever people's limbs in one blow without trouble, etc)
I also dipped into a new cartoon, Generator Rex, by the same team that made Ben 10. It involves the world after an 'Event' spread nanites all over the place. Sometimes the nanites go crazy and turn people into monsters. The main character, Rex, controls his nanites and can both deactivate monsters by touching them, and create various machines out of his body.
It's mildly enjoyable. It started a little flat, and some of the characters are a little on the silly side (Six, badass secret agent who uses swords for some reason... you know, just running up and doing impossibly acrobatic stunts to slice at a monster with a sword), but it's watchable.
My only real complaints are 1) that I wish they respected science a little more. I know, I know, it's a cartoon, but... Rex's machines, huge turbo-fans or robot gloves, appearing pretty well instantly whenever he wants them, with no time needed to create them and no MASS needed either (and it's clear he's gaining mass, because there are times suddenly creating robot fists drags him down under water). I suppose when one of the other (villainous) Evos can create extradimensional portals you can posit that the nanites are taking mass from an extradimensional source, but I'd rather a show where he actally has to decide what to create and take at least something like 10-15 seconds to produce it, maybe even by cannibalizing local matter.. 2) Sort of touches like one. Generator Rex reminds me a LITTLE of another nanite-themed property that I always thought would make a kickass cartoon, and it would probably now never be possible. Not like it ever was, but still, every time I watch the show I think, "Man, I wish I was watching a Cybergeneration show.". Cybergeneration was a sequel to the RPG Cyberpunk 2020, sort of trying to combined Cyberpunk and teen-mutants. The concept had a virus, the Carbon Plague, released, that was nanite based and spread to everything on Earth. In some people, it would 'activate', and try to change the person. Unfortunately, only people who were under 18 survived the process, and they were changed into one of several Evolved 'types'. Tinmen, who had shapable-metal arms and-legs (and could extrude metal armor over the rest of their body), Bolters who shot electric tazer bolts from their wrists, Alchemists who's nanites altered the physical or molecular structure of stuff by touching it, Wizards who could hack into machines and the net by thought, Scanners who could pick up thoughts of other people, and a few others (much rarer). Even when I was a teenager and loved it, the coolest thing was that it was consistent, you understood the rules of how it worked and so it was believable, unlike Rex where there are no rules other than what the writers want everyone to be able to do.
. I would so LOVE to see a cartoon along these lines, with say a handful of teenagers who've been changed trying to live undercover and also help fight the evil government trying to oppress them (since they set up containment camps for anybody known to have been changed). I envision something like where the kids aren't normally friends or even the type of people who WOULD be friends, but because they're all infected (and maybe one who's not but thinks its cool) they have to associate with each other on a regular basis. You know, like the Snobby Popular Girl (who maybe gets to be a Tinman and look like a freak), Class Clown, the 'Freak' (Alchemist maybe?), the Geek (non-Evolved), the Nearly-Criminal Delinquent (Scanner, definitely). Anyway, I almost want Rex to, in future episodes, assemble a team of other people who have powers, like the Pack, but good, just because those people would seem to be more interesting than the monkey, the secret agent, the best friend, and the Doctor (who are all okay, but, I don't know, none really stand out yet).
Coming up in TV, I'll probably give No Ordinary Family a chance, maybe the first few episodes of The Event, just to see what the titular Event is, Walking Dead of course, but that's not till Halloween and... were there other new SF shows coming? If so, they haven't made much of an impression. Oh, the Cape, I guess, I'll give that a shot, but only because of Summer Glau.
In video games, still playing with zombies. What else?
Finished: Ender in Exile, by Orson Scott Card
This story deals with Ender on his trip away from Earth and his first couple colony worlds. And what can I say about it? It's okay, but nowhere near the best of the Ender books. (slightly more spoilers behind the cut)
I got the feeling while reading this, and it was confirmed in the afterword, that Card started writing this with the idea of writing one story, and then realized that he didn't really have enough for a novel there, and rather than stretch it out, made a couple separate stories. So it almost reads like a couple related short stories rather than a novel.
There are also a number of continuity blips, which, to his credit, Card acknowledges, and although some of them he claims couldn't be helped, at times I felt they could, and when you can, you really should.
Card didn't really sell me on the genius of the genius people in this one, more often it just seemed like the other people were dumb.
Worth reading for Ender completists, probably, but for casual fans (or non fans), it's not really that necessary.
Started and Finished: Disapora, by Greg Egan
Started: Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)
Peter Watts finally won a Hugo last weekend, for his story The Island. I started rereading it during Fan Expo, while I was waiting in line, and will want to finish it.
Anyway, Diaspora. It's sort of a post-singularity fiction, dealing with humanity after some segment of it decided to exist only as software, and the efforts to explore the universe/ensure their immortality. There are some cool concepts there, and I enjoyed reading it, but it's not one of my favorites, even in the Singularity-fiction-type genre. While I like science, I think this one focused a bit too much on science at the expense of enjoyable plot. Not bad, though.
Finished: Tatja Grimm's World, by Vernor Vinge
Started: The Dreaming Void, by Peter Hamilton
Another disappointing one. I love Vernor Vinge, but, well, Tatja Grimm's World is one of his earliest novels, and it shows. It focuses on a super genius in a rather primitive, metal-poor world and her allies, who are occasionally her enemies, and really more the viewpoint characters. But most of the characters fall a little flat, and the plot jumps around too much between not-all-that-interesting sub-settings. I only began to be engaged towards the end of the book.
-
What about comics? Well, I'm still down to just New Mutants, and nothing I've seen lately coming up is convincing me to change my mind. I might give "Generation Hope" a chance, but I don't really like their new model of mutant (gaining their powers older, needing to be 'activated'), or even the characters themselves so far, as shown by the first glimpses we've seen of them in Uncanny X-Men.
So, enough about what I've read... what about watched?
Not much, it being summer. Most everything I'm interested in has been in reruns, and nothing new's started. But there are a couple of things.
Kick-Ass, the Movie: Was actually pretty enjoyable. I gave up on the comic after two or three issues, but I liked the movie. (Minor spoilers for both behind the cut)I suspect it's because somebody else interpretting Mark Millar is a welcome buffer.
Mark Millar has some cool ideas, but he tends to go way over the top, and there's a certain... mean-spirited to his writing a lot of times. Like, it's as though he's saying, "Oh, you sympathize with this character? You think it might be cool to fight crime? Well, you're an idiot and I'm going to show you why by making the most humiliating things possible happen to the character I think you'll identify with." Except we don't REALLY think it might be cool to fight crime in a costume, (most of us, anyway), we sort of dream of a simpler world where that would be possible. The movie handles it better.. yeah, we laugh at Kick-Ass's mistakes, and there are plenty of them, but it doesn't feel like it's all piled on.
Although there was one point in the movie that I wish was a little closer to Millar's in the comic... when he reveals to the girl he loves that he's not gay, in the movie, in typical movie fashion, she falls for him. I actually preferred (I only saw scans of it not the whole comic, but I saw it nonetheless) the comic's idea where she tells him off for being a manipulative jackass, pretending he was gay so she'd confide in him. (Now, where the comic continued, with the girl hooking up with some guy and then sending Dave sexually explicit pictures of them together just to rub it in, that he admitted pleasuring himself to, now that's what I'm talking about in terms of over-the-top-humiliation-for-the-sake-of-it.). Other than that though, the movie was fun. And there's sort of a guilty pleasure in seeing Hit-Girl just kill a bunch of people with no trouble.
(Speaking of, in the comic, Hit-Girl's 9, which is another silly thing - Millar explained the comic as though being an honest take on what would REALLY happen if someone tried to be a superhero, but then right away introduces a little 9 year old girl who's strong enough to sever people's limbs in one blow without trouble, etc)
I also dipped into a new cartoon, Generator Rex, by the same team that made Ben 10. It involves the world after an 'Event' spread nanites all over the place. Sometimes the nanites go crazy and turn people into monsters. The main character, Rex, controls his nanites and can both deactivate monsters by touching them, and create various machines out of his body.
It's mildly enjoyable. It started a little flat, and some of the characters are a little on the silly side (Six, badass secret agent who uses swords for some reason... you know, just running up and doing impossibly acrobatic stunts to slice at a monster with a sword), but it's watchable.
My only real complaints are 1) that I wish they respected science a little more. I know, I know, it's a cartoon, but... Rex's machines, huge turbo-fans or robot gloves, appearing pretty well instantly whenever he wants them, with no time needed to create them and no MASS needed either (and it's clear he's gaining mass, because there are times suddenly creating robot fists drags him down under water). I suppose when one of the other (villainous) Evos can create extradimensional portals you can posit that the nanites are taking mass from an extradimensional source, but I'd rather a show where he actally has to decide what to create and take at least something like 10-15 seconds to produce it, maybe even by cannibalizing local matter.. 2) Sort of touches like one. Generator Rex reminds me a LITTLE of another nanite-themed property that I always thought would make a kickass cartoon, and it would probably now never be possible. Not like it ever was, but still, every time I watch the show I think, "Man, I wish I was watching a Cybergeneration show.". Cybergeneration was a sequel to the RPG Cyberpunk 2020, sort of trying to combined Cyberpunk and teen-mutants. The concept had a virus, the Carbon Plague, released, that was nanite based and spread to everything on Earth. In some people, it would 'activate', and try to change the person. Unfortunately, only people who were under 18 survived the process, and they were changed into one of several Evolved 'types'. Tinmen, who had shapable-metal arms and-legs (and could extrude metal armor over the rest of their body), Bolters who shot electric tazer bolts from their wrists, Alchemists who's nanites altered the physical or molecular structure of stuff by touching it, Wizards who could hack into machines and the net by thought, Scanners who could pick up thoughts of other people, and a few others (much rarer). Even when I was a teenager and loved it, the coolest thing was that it was consistent, you understood the rules of how it worked and so it was believable, unlike Rex where there are no rules other than what the writers want everyone to be able to do.
. I would so LOVE to see a cartoon along these lines, with say a handful of teenagers who've been changed trying to live undercover and also help fight the evil government trying to oppress them (since they set up containment camps for anybody known to have been changed). I envision something like where the kids aren't normally friends or even the type of people who WOULD be friends, but because they're all infected (and maybe one who's not but thinks its cool) they have to associate with each other on a regular basis. You know, like the Snobby Popular Girl (who maybe gets to be a Tinman and look like a freak), Class Clown, the 'Freak' (Alchemist maybe?), the Geek (non-Evolved), the Nearly-Criminal Delinquent (Scanner, definitely). Anyway, I almost want Rex to, in future episodes, assemble a team of other people who have powers, like the Pack, but good, just because those people would seem to be more interesting than the monkey, the secret agent, the best friend, and the Doctor (who are all okay, but, I don't know, none really stand out yet).
Coming up in TV, I'll probably give No Ordinary Family a chance, maybe the first few episodes of The Event, just to see what the titular Event is, Walking Dead of course, but that's not till Halloween and... were there other new SF shows coming? If so, they haven't made much of an impression. Oh, the Cape, I guess, I'll give that a shot, but only because of Summer Glau.
In video games, still playing with zombies. What else?