Farscape and fiction
Ugh, Farscape, how can you be so good? Infinite Possibilities: Icarus Abides and Revenging Angel are right next to each other! Two completely different tones, each incredible! Icarus Abides: Look, I’m as big a fan of Jensen Ackles’ one perfect tear as anyone can be. But when John Crichton dies, Aeryn’s nose is running. And when she says “I’m very angry,” I just want to curl up with her. Amazing acting. Plus, of course John would get the timing wrong, because that’s what the Farscape crew does even when it’s on Talyn.
Revenging Angel: On an entirely different note, Cartoon John has a thigh holster. I feel this is important for him as a character. Though possibly not is important as his arms. I love it when Farscape just relaxes and swings for the fences. Of course the one time D’Argo completely loses it and hurts John is the time John did nothing even by D’Argo’s own lights, because This Crew Can’t Do Anything Right.
Stephen King, Doctor Sleep: Danny Torrance, all grown up now, finds himself the protector of another kid with a very strong shine. She’s being hunted by the True Knot, a vampire-ish group that feeds on the suffering of children with strong “steam,” as they call it. For all that it’s comfortable to sink back into King’s detail-rich style, this book felt very low-stakes. I never felt that any of the main characters (the good guys, anyway) were in much danger. King has regularly been willing to kill the kids (from Cujo all the way to Under the Dome), but the visceral fear he can create, the vast unjustness of the indifferent universe and the intransigient human refusal to give in to that unjustness, didn’t really seem to be there this time.
Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History: I read the Zombie Survival Guide first, for reasons not worth remembering, and found it boring. But after this book, I understand why Brad Pitt wanted to make World War Z, even though the book has very little in common with the movie, even down to how fast it takes zombies to reanimate. This spans the globe, though almost everyone talks pretty much like a white American with some local references thrown in. That didn’t stop the story from being compelling to me because so much of what Brooks imagined was just so wild-zombies prowling the oceans because of all the people who tried to get away via boat and drowned, so now they’re just congregated there in pods, for example-but I can see where you might be thrown out. Clever, and clever that Brooks decided to go with multiple voices telling bits of story; having a single POV wouldn’t have made sense.
Mister October, vol. 1 (ed. Christopher Golden): Free LibraryThing Early Review copy. Collection of stories to benefit the family of the recently departed Rick Hautala, most of them reprints from the late 20th century; Michael Marshall Smith’s Hell Hath Enlarged Herself is a good example of his trademark crapsack world mix of sf and fantasy. Neil Gaiman contributes a story about a man who sees an old friend who’s somewhat reduced in circumstance, and it turns out literally reduced. Joe Lansdale has a classic nuclear apocalypse horror story, very typically 80s. Jack Haringa’s Springfield Repeater, about a man who’s killed his brother a number of times as he’s grown up, was my favorite after the Smith.
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Revenging Angel: On an entirely different note, Cartoon John has a thigh holster. I feel this is important for him as a character. Though possibly not is important as his arms. I love it when Farscape just relaxes and swings for the fences. Of course the one time D’Argo completely loses it and hurts John is the time John did nothing even by D’Argo’s own lights, because This Crew Can’t Do Anything Right.
Stephen King, Doctor Sleep: Danny Torrance, all grown up now, finds himself the protector of another kid with a very strong shine. She’s being hunted by the True Knot, a vampire-ish group that feeds on the suffering of children with strong “steam,” as they call it. For all that it’s comfortable to sink back into King’s detail-rich style, this book felt very low-stakes. I never felt that any of the main characters (the good guys, anyway) were in much danger. King has regularly been willing to kill the kids (from Cujo all the way to Under the Dome), but the visceral fear he can create, the vast unjustness of the indifferent universe and the intransigient human refusal to give in to that unjustness, didn’t really seem to be there this time.
Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History: I read the Zombie Survival Guide first, for reasons not worth remembering, and found it boring. But after this book, I understand why Brad Pitt wanted to make World War Z, even though the book has very little in common with the movie, even down to how fast it takes zombies to reanimate. This spans the globe, though almost everyone talks pretty much like a white American with some local references thrown in. That didn’t stop the story from being compelling to me because so much of what Brooks imagined was just so wild-zombies prowling the oceans because of all the people who tried to get away via boat and drowned, so now they’re just congregated there in pods, for example-but I can see where you might be thrown out. Clever, and clever that Brooks decided to go with multiple voices telling bits of story; having a single POV wouldn’t have made sense.
Mister October, vol. 1 (ed. Christopher Golden): Free LibraryThing Early Review copy. Collection of stories to benefit the family of the recently departed Rick Hautala, most of them reprints from the late 20th century; Michael Marshall Smith’s Hell Hath Enlarged Herself is a good example of his trademark crapsack world mix of sf and fantasy. Neil Gaiman contributes a story about a man who sees an old friend who’s somewhat reduced in circumstance, and it turns out literally reduced. Joe Lansdale has a classic nuclear apocalypse horror story, very typically 80s. Jack Haringa’s Springfield Repeater, about a man who’s killed his brother a number of times as he’s grown up, was my favorite after the Smith.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.