Battlestar Galactica

I don't watch much television, but when I do like a show I follow it religiously. My favorite series of all time was Firefly, a peerless science fiction series that was tragically cancelled after 14 episodes. I plan to elaborate on my love for that particular show someday, but for now let's just say that there's been a hole in my sci-fi loving heart since 2002. My enjoyment of the new Dr. Who is a poor substitute, with its lack of an overarching narrative and generally poorly developed characters.

When my friend's father, Dave, told me that he was enjoying the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, I was sceptical at first. Dave is a big fan of sci-fi television, but he also enjoys series such as Stargate and Babylon Five that I never really got into. I also felt that a show whose cast of characters were primarily military and government officials would be too dry; I prefer characters who are on the gray side of the law, such as Malcolm Reynolds and Han Solo.

However, last week on a whim I broke down and asked to borrow his Season 1 DVD set. It took a while to get going, but I'm now 4/5ths in and completely enthralled. Some of the characters, such as President Roslin, Colonel Tigh and Dr. Baltar, are interesting people with complex motivations. The show also does a good job of keeping enough hidden to allow for a perpetual sense of mystery. I'm already speculating as to which of the crew members are really Cylon sleeper agents.

It's not Firefly, but it'll do for now.

Transmetropolitan

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

H. L. Mencken

For reasons I can't quite fathom (although it might have been more than one person professing their undying love for Watchmen to me in the space of a week), I took the time this week to explore a medium that I had long neglected: comic books. This first foray took the form of the postcyberpunk comic Transmetropolitan.

I was very impressed; Transmetropolitan follows the Hunter S. Thompson-esqe gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem on his mad quest for truth in the politically corrupt world of the future. It deals with themes of dissent, censorship, propaganda and journalistic integrity, and is a profoundly human drama (absent of solipsistic robots and intergalactic space battles.) Furthermore, it's nice to see a hero armed with nothing but a typewriter, a lot of drugs and the truth.

I could say more, but to be honest I'm still letting what I've read swirl around in my head a little. I will however say that if, like myself, you haven't opened up a comic book in over a decade, Transmetropolitan seems like a decent place to start (Follow the link at the bottom of the page for a free PDF download of issue #1.)

Since I enjoyed Transmetropolitan so much, I went ahead and ordered a few graphic novels off Amazon.ca, namely Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Those should be arriving towards the end of January, and I'll be perusing Y: The Last Man until then.

Free Download of Transmetropolitan issue #1 (PDF)

The Screwfly Solution

In keeping with my love of excellent short stories, particularly dystopian science fiction, I highly recommend Raccoona Sheldon's Nebula Award-winning The Screwfly Solution. The title is a reference to the sterile insect technique used to eliminate the Screwfly worm in the USA, Mexico and parts of Centreal America. The story is a shocking one, dealing with themes of sexuality, violence and femicide, and is told in a great disjointed style through a combination of several narratives, letters and newspaper articles.

Read the story first (seriously, do it!), then consider the following: wouldn't it be great to see a video game set in the middle of an end-of-the-world scenario (not after one)? One where you start out in the near future, in a big city living a normal life. You start to hear dangerous rumours, maybe a deadly manmade pandemic, a militant religious organization, or some other Margaret Atwood storyline. From there you could have branching paths: do you petition the government? create a militia? go into hiding out in the country? Perhaps there could even be an element of randomness, where sometimes the rumours really are just rumours and you end up a paranoid conspiracy theorist!

This idea would definitely need some polishing and refinement (and I may have drawn liberal amounts of inspiration from Indigo Prophecy), but properly executed I think it could be really interesting. Leave a comment if you have any ideas on how this game could be implemented (or just call me crazy! That works too).

Dr. Who

I've been rather enjoying the modern interpretation of Dr. Who lately. The show fluctuates between brilliant (The Empty Child) and cheesy (The Lazarus Experiment) as it has done for over 40 years, but always manages to be entertaining. David Tennant and Freema Agyeman are well cast as the quixotic Doctor and his stalwart companion, and the supporting cast is often surprisingly strong. Furthermore, as a fan of science fiction, the modular stories are a nice change of pace from the long drawn-out story arcs featured on other shows. In that sense, Dr. Who could draw favorable comparisons with The Twilight Zone.

You may ask what provoked me to write about this now? Well, the episode that the CBC aired this week, Blink (we're way behind you Brits), was especially excellent. It featured a chilling antagonist, a cohesive plot and only revealed the bigger mysteries towards the end; the majority of Dr. Who episodes pull off two out of three of those at best. What truly sealed the deal was the story-told-backwards narrative, a plot device employed surprisingly rarely considering the time-travelling nature of the show.

The CBC is kindly offering streaming video of the latest episodes on their website, so you now have no excuse for not checking it out. Get to it!

Short Stories

For as long as I can remember, I've had a problem writing essays with an assigned word length. I like to say as much as I can with as few words as possible, because to me good writing is concise and to the point. When I'm required to artificially lengthen my work, the result is always weak and diluted.

I think that this paradigm can be applied to all media. For instance, the film Strange Days had some interesting ideas, but as a two hour long feature film they were lost in a sea of pointless action and terrible drawn-out dialogue. Done right, it could have made a great 20 minute short film. Consider the last 80 hour RPG you played: could it have been an even better 50 hour RPG by removing a tedious dungeon crawl or two?

It's perhaps my inclination towards succinctness that makes me a fan of short stories. A novel based on an idea will usually explore every facet of this idea and all of its implications. While this works well for some concepts, there are certainly others that are perhaps too experimental and strange. These quirky ideas would likely fall apart or become lost in a novel, but they can easily become the central theme of a short story.

I've listed a few of my favorite short stories below. Where applicable, I've linked to sites I've found that host them; otherwise, a little Googling will usually do the trick.

• Eight O'Clock in the Morning - Ray Nelson [link]
  An alien race controls humanity through subliminal messages in television, advertisements and billboards.
• A Sound of Thunder - Ray Bradbudy
  Published in 1952, it was one of the first short stories to deal with what would later be called The Butterfly Effect; the idea that one small change in the past could completely rewrite the present.
• The Lottery - Shirley Jackson [link]
  One of the most chilling short stories I've ever read, it deals with the evils that are permitted in the name of tradition and crowd mentality.
• I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream - Harlan Ellison
  An insane omnipotent computer tortures the last five humans on Earth.
• We Can Remember It For You Wholesale - Philip K. Dick [link]
  The story that inspired the film Total Recall, it deals with the implications of memory replacement.
• Little Lost Robot - Isaac Asimov
  This is my favorite short story from I, Robot. Dr. Susan Calvin must use logic to expose the one robot among an identical hundred that has had its programming altered and is now a threat to humans.
• Harrison Bergeron - Kurt Vonnegut
  To finally achieve societal equality, the government forcefully handicaps those whose beauty, intelligence or athletic abilities give them an "unfair advantage" over everyone else.
• How To Talk To Girls At Parties - Neil Gaiman [link]
  This story is a nominee for the 2007 Hugo Award. An awkward young man is dragged along to a party, but all is not as it seems.

I'm always on the lookout for more great short stories, so please comment with your favorites.

Dune Messiah

I was on vacation earlier this summer at a friend's cottage near Parry Sound, Ontario. While in town one day, we walked over to Bearly Used Books, a terrific used book store where, along with about eight other books, I picked up a copy of Frank Herbert's Dune. I was vaguely familiar with the general plot, having seen parts of the televised miniseries years ago, and knowing that it was considered a classic among sci-fi fans I was eager to read it.

Needless to say I read it ravenously. Frank Herbert crafted the world of Dune with loving detail and a passion akin to Tolkien, with appendices, maps and a glossary at the end of the book. It was not a typical sci-fi world either; I found the idea of mentats, human supercomputers necessary since the ban of thinking machines, especially interesting.

I quickly went out to a used book store back home in Montreal and picked up the first two sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. I just finished the former and, while it was still very good, it didn't feel nearly as polished or as cohesive as the first book. I'd like to address what I felt were weaknesses in the plot, so be warned that there are spoilers ahead, although nothing that would really ruin the book for you.

Dune gave me the impression that Frank Herbert had every aspect of the universe figured out beforehand, and was gradually revealing them to the reader. However, in this book, we are suddenly presented with the Bene Tleilaxu, who are apparently a very important group of gene manipulators and have as much clout as one of the Great Houses. They can revive the dead, give people new eyes, and even apparently made their own Kwisatz Haderach! Yet, they go from unmentioned in the first book to common knowledge among the populace in the second. I can appreciate that the author wanted to introduce a new faction, but it really hurt the feeling of cohesiveness of the Dune universe.

In the first book we were told about how very secretive the Spacing Guild is. Their methods are only hinted at, and they send only low-ranking navigators to meet even Emperor Corrino. In Dune Messiah, however, Edric the Guild Navigator appears in front of the entire royal court and seemed to have no problem discussing prescience and spice. Is it completely unreasonable? Of course not, Paul is the Emperor and it makes sense that the Guild would send a high-ranking Navigator as an ambassador. It is, however, a complete turnaround from how they were presented in the first book.

Finally, I don't know why the Fremen Jihad was allowed to happen. I could be wrong, but wasn't avoiding a Jihad the whole point of the first book? Everything Paul did in Dune was in an effort to stop the bloody rampage that his prescience predicted; that was his greatest motivation. Whether or not he had succeeded was left ambiguous at the end of the first book, but within the first chapter of Dune Messiah we learn that the Jihad had been raging for twelve years.

I don't mean to give the impression that Dune Messiah was a bad book; it was a great read, and it set up the next book very well. The fact that I even care about these nerdy little details is proof of what a great writer Frank Herbert is. Dune presented an entirely cohesive sci-fi universe, but unfortunately that universe is starting to show some seams.

Children of Men

TV Reporter: The world was stunned today by the death of Diego Ricardo, the youngest person on the planet. [...] He was 18 years, 4 months, 20 days, 16 hours, and 8 minutes old.

I've always had a fascination with narratives set in a dystopian future (see 1984, Brazil, Brave New World, Blade Runner, even Half-Life 2). The good ones evoke a convincing world that could conceivably represent our own future. The great ones use this world to explore philosophical and moral issues. What struck me as unique about the film Children of Men, however, was how it presented a world rocked by an extension of our own contemporary Western issues: divisive immigration policies, xenophobia, terrorism, and overzealous homeland security. This picture of the world looks and feels real; it is by far the most convincing vision of the future I have ever seen.

The world of 2027 is on the brink of ruin; two decade of inexplicable human infertility have led to widespread societal collapse. The film is set in Britain, where the anti-immigrant sentiment has been pushed to the extreme. The oppressive government ships thousands of illegal immigrants to sprawling refugee camps, with imagery and brutality that echo the Holocaust.

The plot follows Theo Faron (Clive Owen), an activist turned bureaucrat, who, due to a string of complex events, becomes the guardian of what may be mankind's only hope for survival: a miraculously pregnant woman named Kee. While the plot is excellent, it's the imagery, setting and cinematography that are the real stars of this film. Very little is explicitly stated; it's the visuals, such as a country field filled with the burning corpses of livestock, that tell the story of society's collapse. Many scenes are done with a single unbroken wide shot, which allows the viewer to take in the richness of the landscape.

Children of Men is quite simply a remarkably good movie, and I would recommend it without reserve to anyone. Whether it's the bleak landscape, the tremendous visuals or the touching characters and dialogue, everyone will be able to find a part of this film that affects them in a very profound and meaningful way.