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Edit note: Odd. I had the King quote in here before, along with a number of other edits, but somehow they disappeared. Maybe I screwed up and didn't save the edit, or saved an old version over it. Either way, it means there are probably more minor brainographical errors that I failed to correct... there are usually plenty, but this one more than usual. Oh well.
Finished: Song of Susannah (Dark Tower Book VI), by Stephen King (reread)
Started: The Dark Tower (Dark Tower Book VII), by Stephen King (reread)
Don't really have much to say. Song of Susannah's a little less charming the second time around with some of the author tricks and techniques he uses, but I still enjoyed it for the most part. My main concern is the whole 'ka' issue again, and the annoyance where sometimes the writer uses it and spectacular strange coincidences/telepathy/magic messages from the past when actually having the characters solve the problems on their own would have been more entertaining and take up not much more time. But, whatever, almost finished the series, not going to stop now.
Oh, and a quote which doesn't really spoil, but is kinda cool about writing in general, at least for me:
I don't knowm one day you just start having less fun while you're sitting there, tapping the keys. Seeing less clearly. Gettiing less of a buzz from telling yourself the story. And then, to make things worse, you get a new idea, one that's all bright and shiny, fresh off the showroom floor, not a scratch on her. Completely unfucked up by you, at least as of yet.
I've had this feeling a lot with stories, somewhere in the middle. Although, the nice thing is, sometimes, after a long time, the old used ideas begin to look like fun again, and you realize how, with a little polish, you could make them shine.
Finished: Mainspring, by Jay Lake
Mainspring posits a universe where the universe is literally clockwork - The earth runs on a brass track around the sun, and the main character is tasked by an archangel to find the Key Perilous and rewind the mainspring that drives the Earth's rotation.
Okay, so, granted, it's a fantasy concept at the heart (although I can think of some cool ways to go with it that's not especially fantasy). However, the premise was intriguing enough that I was willing to grant them a little fantasy, so long as they didn't go overboard.
And, for the first half of the book, I rather enjoyed it. In fact, so much that I thought that I'd probably pick up the two sequels (or set in the same world-els, since this book seems to tell a fairly stand-alone story). And then what happens?
They go overboard. WAAAAY overboard. More behind the cut, a little more spoilery than usual.
( Read more... )
So, yeah, that second half left such a bad taste in my mouth, not bothering with the sequels, even if I find them used, even if they deal with the northern hemisphere only. A shame such a good premise was wasted on such a lousy book.
Started and Finished: Tesseracts 6) (Short story collection)
Started: Tesseracts 7, (Short story collection)
Tesseracts, well... I have to say, this was the worst of them. Very little SF content, and, perhaps especially after Mainspring, I was looking for SF. But most of the stories were either outright fantasy, or 'trying to explain a fantasy story by giving it a thin layer of science fiction' (or its twin 'we look like a science fiction but actually ancient magic's driving the plot'). The few outright SF seemed to have poor premises, for the most part. It's okay if that's your thing, but the Tesseracts line started as a SCIENCE FICTION line (although this book just calls it an anthology of 'speculative fiction' which includes fantasy), and I was deeply unsatisfied by the science fiction. Damn you fantasy, it's bad enough most of the books Speculative Fiction publishes are fantasy, you have to invade Tesseracts, too?
I blame editor Robert J. Sawyer. Possibly the co-editor (and his wife), Carolyn Clink, but she took credit for all the poetry being there (but at least there all the poetry, put together, only adds up to one lame story), so I'll give the rest of the blame to Sawyer.
There were a few good stories in the bunch though. My favorite was probably "Love-In-Idleness" by James Alan Gardner. "The Sleeper In The Crystal", this year's regular Elisabeth Vonarburg entry was also enjoyable.
-
In movies, I recently, finally, saw Inception. Wow, that actually was a pretty good movie. I mean, it's not without its flaws, but especially for a film focused on dreams, quite well done. Normally anything, book or movie, that has "dreams" as a key hook (them being meaningful to explore the psyche, people sharing them, telling the future) is a bit iffy for me, which is probably why I resisted looking into it for so long. Usually "Dream Movies" either feel like they're trying too hard to be abstract, have a hard time convincing me they have any point, or they include silly things like "if you die in the dream, you die for real" (which was okay in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, which, oddly enough, I ate up as a teenager, but any attempt of using it in a serious story really makes me want to shut the movie off/close the book). In some ways, it's a lot like "virtual reality" for that reason.
This one, though, it got around most of those concerns. (some spoilers, but not the big ones) ( Read more... )
If I'd managed to see it last year, it probably would have made it my pick for best movie of the year (but, of course, I'd only seen a handful last year).
I would love to see Christopher Nolan try a bit more SF, judging by this he might have a knack for it. This is actually a very SF-film, one of the best SF films in a long time.
Anyway, seeing it also reminded me to track down another SFish movie that I'd heard about and wanted to see but never gotten around to... Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am presently using... magic to find it, probably will watch it in the next few weeks.
-
Cartoons. I've been watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes lately. It's... well, it's the best Avengers cartoon ever, as far as I can tell. Of course, that's damning with faint praise because all the other attempts kinda sucked as I remember. I might be biased because I never really was a huge fan of the Avengers stable of characters (give me a new Spidey or X-Men cartoon, stat... or Runaways, Power Pack... even Young Avengers. Hell, I'd be more interested in a Cloak and Dagger series than an Avengers one!) But, for all that I'm not a huge fan of the characters in general, it's still fairly enjoyable on the whole. A huge array of characters, references, and cameos (Wolverine even appears, briefly, before he was Wolverine, in a WWII flashback), a continuing storyline rather than simply standalone eps that go nowhere. Rather like the old Justice League Unlimited series, actually (including in the 'I don't really care about these characters, but there's a big universe and maybe they'll feature somebody I like' department). It did confuse me a bit at first, because after the first two parter, the next 5-6 episodes were all set BEFORE the two parter, and were structured strangely - sometimes the first few minutes would focus on, say, the Hulk, and the rest of the ep would be about Hawkeye after an attempt to take him down, or Iron Man fights Hydra, then Nick Fury talks to somebody about prisons for ten minutes. Then I learned that those 'first few episodes' were compilations of individual 5-6 minute webisodes, and once the regular continuity started again the series became more traditional. Anyway, if you're a Marvel fan it might be worth a look.
Finished: Song of Susannah (Dark Tower Book VI), by Stephen King (reread)
Started: The Dark Tower (Dark Tower Book VII), by Stephen King (reread)
Don't really have much to say. Song of Susannah's a little less charming the second time around with some of the author tricks and techniques he uses, but I still enjoyed it for the most part. My main concern is the whole 'ka' issue again, and the annoyance where sometimes the writer uses it and spectacular strange coincidences/telepathy/magic messages from the past when actually having the characters solve the problems on their own would have been more entertaining and take up not much more time. But, whatever, almost finished the series, not going to stop now.
Oh, and a quote which doesn't really spoil, but is kinda cool about writing in general, at least for me:
I don't knowm one day you just start having less fun while you're sitting there, tapping the keys. Seeing less clearly. Gettiing less of a buzz from telling yourself the story. And then, to make things worse, you get a new idea, one that's all bright and shiny, fresh off the showroom floor, not a scratch on her. Completely unfucked up by you, at least as of yet.
I've had this feeling a lot with stories, somewhere in the middle. Although, the nice thing is, sometimes, after a long time, the old used ideas begin to look like fun again, and you realize how, with a little polish, you could make them shine.
Finished: Mainspring, by Jay Lake
Mainspring posits a universe where the universe is literally clockwork - The earth runs on a brass track around the sun, and the main character is tasked by an archangel to find the Key Perilous and rewind the mainspring that drives the Earth's rotation.
Okay, so, granted, it's a fantasy concept at the heart (although I can think of some cool ways to go with it that's not especially fantasy). However, the premise was intriguing enough that I was willing to grant them a little fantasy, so long as they didn't go overboard.
And, for the first half of the book, I rather enjoyed it. In fact, so much that I thought that I'd probably pick up the two sequels (or set in the same world-els, since this book seems to tell a fairly stand-alone story). And then what happens?
They go overboard. WAAAAY overboard. More behind the cut, a little more spoilery than usual.
( Read more... )
So, yeah, that second half left such a bad taste in my mouth, not bothering with the sequels, even if I find them used, even if they deal with the northern hemisphere only. A shame such a good premise was wasted on such a lousy book.
Started and Finished: Tesseracts 6) (Short story collection)
Started: Tesseracts 7, (Short story collection)
Tesseracts, well... I have to say, this was the worst of them. Very little SF content, and, perhaps especially after Mainspring, I was looking for SF. But most of the stories were either outright fantasy, or 'trying to explain a fantasy story by giving it a thin layer of science fiction' (or its twin 'we look like a science fiction but actually ancient magic's driving the plot'). The few outright SF seemed to have poor premises, for the most part. It's okay if that's your thing, but the Tesseracts line started as a SCIENCE FICTION line (although this book just calls it an anthology of 'speculative fiction' which includes fantasy), and I was deeply unsatisfied by the science fiction. Damn you fantasy, it's bad enough most of the books Speculative Fiction publishes are fantasy, you have to invade Tesseracts, too?
I blame editor Robert J. Sawyer. Possibly the co-editor (and his wife), Carolyn Clink, but she took credit for all the poetry being there (but at least there all the poetry, put together, only adds up to one lame story), so I'll give the rest of the blame to Sawyer.
There were a few good stories in the bunch though. My favorite was probably "Love-In-Idleness" by James Alan Gardner. "The Sleeper In The Crystal", this year's regular Elisabeth Vonarburg entry was also enjoyable.
-
In movies, I recently, finally, saw Inception. Wow, that actually was a pretty good movie. I mean, it's not without its flaws, but especially for a film focused on dreams, quite well done. Normally anything, book or movie, that has "dreams" as a key hook (them being meaningful to explore the psyche, people sharing them, telling the future) is a bit iffy for me, which is probably why I resisted looking into it for so long. Usually "Dream Movies" either feel like they're trying too hard to be abstract, have a hard time convincing me they have any point, or they include silly things like "if you die in the dream, you die for real" (which was okay in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, which, oddly enough, I ate up as a teenager, but any attempt of using it in a serious story really makes me want to shut the movie off/close the book). In some ways, it's a lot like "virtual reality" for that reason.
This one, though, it got around most of those concerns. (some spoilers, but not the big ones) ( Read more... )
If I'd managed to see it last year, it probably would have made it my pick for best movie of the year (but, of course, I'd only seen a handful last year).
I would love to see Christopher Nolan try a bit more SF, judging by this he might have a knack for it. This is actually a very SF-film, one of the best SF films in a long time.
Anyway, seeing it also reminded me to track down another SFish movie that I'd heard about and wanted to see but never gotten around to... Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I am presently using... magic to find it, probably will watch it in the next few weeks.
-
Cartoons. I've been watching Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes lately. It's... well, it's the best Avengers cartoon ever, as far as I can tell. Of course, that's damning with faint praise because all the other attempts kinda sucked as I remember. I might be biased because I never really was a huge fan of the Avengers stable of characters (give me a new Spidey or X-Men cartoon, stat... or Runaways, Power Pack... even Young Avengers. Hell, I'd be more interested in a Cloak and Dagger series than an Avengers one!) But, for all that I'm not a huge fan of the characters in general, it's still fairly enjoyable on the whole. A huge array of characters, references, and cameos (Wolverine even appears, briefly, before he was Wolverine, in a WWII flashback), a continuing storyline rather than simply standalone eps that go nowhere. Rather like the old Justice League Unlimited series, actually (including in the 'I don't really care about these characters, but there's a big universe and maybe they'll feature somebody I like' department). It did confuse me a bit at first, because after the first two parter, the next 5-6 episodes were all set BEFORE the two parter, and were structured strangely - sometimes the first few minutes would focus on, say, the Hulk, and the rest of the ep would be about Hawkeye after an attempt to take him down, or Iron Man fights Hydra, then Nick Fury talks to somebody about prisons for ten minutes. Then I learned that those 'first few episodes' were compilations of individual 5-6 minute webisodes, and once the regular continuity started again the series became more traditional. Anyway, if you're a Marvel fan it might be worth a look.
