Talk about whatever sci-fi book, show, or material you’ve had on your mind and need to share.
Whatever material you want to talk about that doesn’t fit into the specific work-centered discussions can come out here! We may even want to pick it up for the next item on the list. I’ve been doing a bit more reading that I’ll post about here too.
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I recently finished The Expanse, both the TV show (of which there are 3 seasons currently) and the most recent book. Both have continued to be excellent. One of these days I'd love to take like a week off work for the sole purpose of figuring out The Book of the New Sun. But I don't think that's especially realistic, at least not for the moment. I'm currently reading We Are Legion (We Are Bob), which is a good summertime read. It's fun, has some neat ideas, but isn't trying to be dense or brain-hurting. The premise is that a guy signs up for one of those services that freeze you after you die in the hopes that you can be revived with later technology. He is, but is brought back as a purely computerized entity, and then is put on a probe and told to explore space. It's generally grounded, problem-solving focused without too much hand-waiving of technology and the like. The main character is a bit of a Marty Stu, at least for your stereotypical nerd, but he's not so far into cliche that he's obnoxious (and the pop culture references are kept to a minimum, thankfully). I'm definitely enjoying it.
I was working my way through the Expanse as well, but at some point I got distracted somewhere in Cibola Burn and haven't gotten back into it. I can't recall what it was that made me stop but I should really get back into it. My partner and I blew through the TV Show and were itching for more so I picked up the books thus far.
The Expanse both books and series scratched a deep itch I've had since the second I finished The Martian. I really hope those showrunners and the writing team that adapted the series get some good source material for their next production because they captured that setting pretty damn well.
I do too. Thankfully the series isn't over yet: unlike with GoT, the books come out regularly, and are way ahead of the TV show. I think the series has covered maybe the first 3 books at most, while they published book #8 a couple months ago.
Ok, so the other night I finished The Gray Prince by Jack Vance and have to vent my frustrations with it. The premise of the story is you have a planet colonized by humans ages ago, then more sophisticated, advanced humans conquer some of those “native” humans and establish a semi-legal domain over their lands and people. The whole thing is very much a stand in for colonialism and especially the status of Native Americans and whether they should have the right to regain their seized lands. Through most of the novel, the narrative seems to approach this with nuance and faults that affect both sides of the debate. On the onset it seems like you are getting into a situation with many shades of gray nopunintended. However, quite steeply in the later part of the book, Vance goes through great lengths to strip the scenario of any nuance and paint the ruling “land barons” as unequivocally right. Really, looking back the whole book was a fraud. It never intended to handle this topic with any complexity, but sneakily wanted to make a might-is-right wet dream scenario. The land barons only look racist, but actually they’re wholly 110% benevolent and actually understand and respect the native cultures far better than the naive and idealistic liberal urbanites. And the natives unconquered by the barons are savage and unredeemable whereas the same people under the land barons are civilized and happy. ... ugh. The narrative itself was enthralling enough but the substance was grotesque and left me with a betrayed feeling upon finishing it.
Game of Thrones had the most inevitable surprise ending in the history of television. It's been 73 hours of destiny, preordainment and prophecy and the final dispositions of the characters are not only fitting, just and appropriate, they represent the best possible results given the character development and past performance of every player on the board. The people hating on Game of Thrones right now are the ones who thought the ending of The Sopranos was "ambivalent." ‘Game Of Thrones’ Showrunners Disappointed With How Quality Of Fans Has Dropped Off Over Past Couple Seasons A screenwriter I know once said that the nine most powerful words in the history of screenwriting were "He fought with your father in the Clone Wars." In one sentence, Lucas built an entire universe that establishes Luke, Darth and Obi Wan as minor threads on a rich tapestry. Of course then Lucas had to ruin the shit out of it as he always does but there was a moment there, a moment that launched an industry, where the world was real it was so deep. My buddy told me that the idea came from a fan letter that JRR Tolkien answered once - she wanted to know what lay beyond the Mountains of Moria. Tolkien said "if I tell you, you'll want to know what's beyond that and what's beyond that and so on. What's important is that I know what lies beyond." I don't think a culture that's been spoon-fed kneejerk destiny over forty five superhero movies can even see anything beyond their immediate desire to get the girl, kill the baddies and save the entire planet. This kind of entitled tantrum is a symptom of a ComicCon Culture that's gone malignant. It's a "customer is always right" mentality that deserves to starve. It's the kind of dumb shit that gets us a sequel to Blade Runner 30 years later because... we all needed to know what happened next? We didn't. We don't. Science fiction used to be about speculation. Now it's about lycra and laser beam eyes. Fans used to interact with authors. Now they demand boons from them. You know what's a pretty good show? The new Star Trek. I don't mean it's a good Star Trek show, I mean it's a pretty good show. Star Trek: The Next Generation had maybe a season and a half of legitimately brilliant writing that put it in the running with shows like Mad Men or West Wing but by and large, it was fair-to-middlin'. The new CBS Star Trek has not hit "brilliant" at any point but by and large, it's a reasonably good show on an objective basis. If it weren't for that season-and-a-half of TNG I would say it's the best Star Trek show ever made and if it weren't for Wrath of Khan and that season-and-a-half I would say it's the best Star Trek ever made. And it pains me to say this because I really don't care for Kurtzman and Orci but maybe I just don't care for Orci. We've also made it through two seasons of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or whatever it's called and it's every bit as mediocre as you'd imagine despite the fact that it's got witchcraft and Archie comics. But you know what's actually pretty good? The Order. And not just because they totally upended the world at the end of Season 1. Apparently it's got a 100% Fresh rating on RT because only 5 people give a shit. I think I liked sci fi better back when nobody gave a shit. I personally have lamented the fact that you can't make sci fi for more than a million dollars or less than a hundred but sweet holy jesus I liked it a lot better when goofy Canadians were failing their way through Primer than when Marvel spent three billion dollars to go back in time to kill Hitler. HOW'S THAT FOR GENERAL
The show is good TV. I will gladly say that Season 5 of the show beats the tar out of Book 5 of the series because you don't have to sit there mired in a completely useless set of characters. Primer would have been an interes... No. It never would have been. Primer is a perfect example of a bad script, bad editing, bad cinematography, bad directing and bad sound that fanbois all gleefully ignore because there's a bunch of fast-talking powerpoint bullshit that makes them feel smart. But I'll gladly go back to a bunch of neckbeards celebrating the wet-fart triumph that is Primer if we can stop at Iron Man II and be done with superheroes forever.
Apt. Worthy of note, however, is that Clerks was shot back whem you had a dollar a second of celluloid ripping through the shutter, audio was on magnetic tape and edits were done with razor blades. It took a lot more effort to make a mediocre film like Clerks than a mediocre film like Primer, which is a FCP extravaganza.
Kevin Smith came up with that whole fuckin' thing at 24. As a paean to being a useless 24-year-old burnout it's a great little piece. The problem is nobody remains a 24-year-old burnout forever. Clerks is a viable first film. Chasing Amy is a reasonably good (if dated and no longer PC) film. The problem with Kevin Smith is he surrounded himself with people who told him he was a genius. M. Night Shamalyan has the same issue - if you think you're brilliant by default you never strive to be better.
I just finished Count Zero, the second book in the Sprawl trilogy by William Gibson that basically invented cyberpunk. Coming after Neuromancer - the defining book of the genre - it couldn't possibly fill those shoes. And he honestly doesn't give a fuck. And that's why I like it. He just powers on through the story, 7-10 years after Neuromancer ends, and does ZERO explanation of anything or anyone. You just have to remember the first book, get the references, and go with the flow when he mentions someone use a "Hodaka deck" and you have no fucking idea whether it is a piece of architecture that you put deck furniture on, or a CD drive, a skateboard, or a cyberspace box of some sort. There is a casual tone to this book. He's writing it for himself, to play with some ideas and suss out some interesting threads he left hanging in the first book. He doesn't care if you get it or not; he's doing this for his own interest and pleasure. So it's fun to ride along with his stream of consciousness and see how he ties all this shit together at the end. Which he doesn't actually do, because, ya know, this is the second book of a trilogy. So now I'm off to read Mona Lisa Overdrive, the final book of the trilogy, and possibly the worst/best scifi cover art ever.
For some reason, Mona Lisa Overdrive suffered a number of terrible covers. The mass-market paperback with the most printings could be a cover for literally anything, which is better than the awful ones like the one you found. The competition for "worst sci fi cover art", by the way, is steep.
Oh man, back when I was reading through the Hugo winner list it was a victory parade of awful covers. There's a particular grossness to the 60s-70s era, but it's hard to say there's a time period where they don't suck. The other day I picked up one which has this exceptionally awful cover: It's bad enough that I had to hide the cover of it when leaving the bookstore, but I also have this terrible non-germane representation of the character corrupting my mental image of what the character was intended to be. Edit: OH almost forgot the worst part: red edge gilding on the book.
I think it was a problem of cheapness. There were lots of books, there were talented illustrators, but there wasn't enough money for every book to have a talented illustrator. I mean, that's peak Frank Franzetta time. Michael Whelan was rolling in. Vincent de Fate was everywhere. But you also got stuff like this: (also a Jack Vance, first book of Planet of Adventure, which your Jack Vance cover has also been used for:)
