newnumber6

Book Foo to start off with:

Finished: The Science Fiction Century, Vol 1(short story collection)
Started: Blindsight, by Peter Watts (reread)

Like all short story collections there's a mix of good and rather dull, and stories I've read before of each. This one had a bit of a focus on much older material of the HG Wells/Jack London eras (though there's plenty of new material too). There was even a non-Lovecraft Lovecraftian story (The Hounds of Tindalos). I read all of them, even the rereads, with the exception of E.M. Forster's "The Machine Stops" which I've read SO MANY times in school alone that I just can't bear it any more.
(minor concept related spoilers behind cut, no biggies).

( Read more... ) Anyway, probably a bit less of the 'good' to 'less interesting' ratio in this collection, but I didn't hate it.

Finished: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (reread)

Can't really comment on this one since I've read it so many times, it's like visiting an old friend. One who kicks you in the gut to say goodbye, but nonetheless!

Started and Finished: Rainbows End, by Vernor Vinge
Started: Eon, by Greg Bear (reread, but long enough ago that I can barely remember anything but the back of the book premise)

Rainbows End was a reread, so no need to get too detailed about the thoughts, but once again I really like the near future technological gadgetry that you can almost believe is just around the corner.

Had some memorable dreams lately, although a few of them have faded from memory, I still wanna record them. So, behind the cut, Zombies (with guest appearance by Zombie Flash), The Avatarverse, and bio-forming. ( Read more... )

Damn, just heard that the local Tori Stafford case was solved and, well, it's the worst case scenario. Man. I was kinda hoping, since it was presumed that a woman led her away, that it was one of those freaky, "I want my own kid" situations, which is good in the sense that the kid may be treated okay or maybe even a ransom. But no. Some messed up people in the world.

Anyway, no comics today, but work was okay. Came on time and not too heavy, so I got out pretty early. A bit warm though, and hungry now.

Oh, and I am amused by small and immature things sometimes. At the local large chain grocery store, I was checking out the flyer to see if they had any good deals. One of the advertised special, was those little dried-soup-in-a-cup, selected varieties. Except, the sample picture of it proudly proclaimed C*CK FLAVOUR (no censoring, and of course, meaning chicken). Now, since there are presumably multiple varieties, somebody had to have said specifically, "Okay, for the sample pick, we're going to use this variety." It gave me a giggle, anyway.

And just a brief rant. Now, I generally don't agree with the Conservative Party (of Canada, which is still usually less conservative than the US one) on issues. But there's one thing that inspires my rage in them like nothing else - their ads. Specifically, their negative campaign ads. THERE'S NOT EVEN A $#!!ING ELECTION SCHEDULED. STOP PLAYING YOUR ADS SLAMMING THE LIBERAL LEADER REPEATEDLY. We get enough of that crap during an election. You might have had a fair point had you played them then, but now all I get when I see the ads is more hatred for you.

And while I'm on a rant, is it just me, or have the standards of Lucky Charms fallen in recent years? Before, the rainbow mushroom actually looked a little like a rainbow, like it does on the box. Now, it's just a rainbow shaped marshmallow with either random splatterings of cover, or with horizontal bands of color rather than arcs, so it doesn't really look like a rainbow at all. Is a little pride and craftsmanship in the field of mass-produced tiny consumer marshmallows too much to ask?

On to TV and other entertainment media. Since it's nearing the end of the season, I've been saving my thoughts on show episodes for my big 'end of year wrapup'. So I'll just talk about Renewals and Cancellations. Old news to most, but I haven't posted about it.
The good news: Dollhouse is renewed. A bit surprising, actually, but good on them. I hope, if nothing else, this will cause the kneejerk FOX-haters to reconsider their "I will never watch anything on FOX because they don't support good genre shows" (they follow the money, and approve more genre shows than most, and in some cases, like this, where the ratings do not support renewal, they STILL give it another shot? What more do you ask? Especially when you won't watch the shows they put out.). It has gotten a lot better since the first ep, although I don't think it'll ever be a favorite.

A couple other renewals of course, but nothing I personally care about all that much that wasn't already pretty well certain.

Now the bad news. In comics, Captain Britain and MI13 is coming to an end, which will bring my monthly list back down to 2 (it went up to three when New Mutants started. Runaways is the other one). That's sad, it was a pretty fun comic. How can you not like a comic with Dracula living on the moon and launching an assault on Britain using ships that shoot vampires?! Bah, people have no taste.
Also cancelled, officially although most of us knew it was coming, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Damnit. I say again, Damnit. Seriously, I would have traded Dollhouse for Sarah Connor in the cancellation stakes in a heartbeat. I also would have traded all those shows I don't watch that were bubbled and saved. Sorry, fans of those shows for my hypothetical callousness. Anyway, Dollhouse would likely have been the only theoretical 'if only one could be saved' situation might have existed. Dollhouse, I enjoyed, and would have liked to see where it went, but I really WANTED to see how SCC would have dealt with their cliffhanger, and of course more Cameron and all the issues there. But at the same time I can't entirely blame Fox, based on the ratings. Frankly, I'm surprised they got the back end of Season 2 pickup, and I'm thankful for that, because at least they ended strongly (albeit on a cliffhanger) than on the weak stretch of eps that made up mid-S2. And of course I won't hold the cancellation against Dollhouse. How could I?

Oh, and speaking (a ways back) of Runaways, I had a Runaways-related dream. All I could remember was a) We were running cross country, I think in something like the Steinbus instead of the much cooler Leapfrog.
b) Chase had a girlfriend who was rather cool but not really connected to the Runaways, and he broke up with her on the way and we left her behind.
c) Klara was running a three-card-monte style game (can't remember the specifics, but it was some sort of gambling-related 'cheat the unsuspecting') to help earn money, but was secretly thinking of leaving the group and not meeting at the rendezvous we'd set up.
d) The only actually Runaways to appear were Chase, Klara, and Molly, with the dream 'set' sometime in the future after the rest had been rotated out, I think. Which is odd because if I was going to rotate out, Klara would be an early choice.

I guess Runaways dreams will happen when you have Runaways plot-bunnies running through your thoughts regularly. Seriously, it's getting out of hand. In my idle times I've been noodling around a sort of 'what I'd do with if I took over the book after Whedon's run/the Secret Invasion crossover' (I ignored Moore's and beyond, not only because I'm not all that happy with it but because I need a specific break or I never get anywhere beyond updating my plans because of whatever happens in the book). I've got decently fleshed out 3 arcs with loose plans for something like 6 or 7 beyond that, creating subplots, new supporting characters/recurring and/or one-shot villains/initiative members, and long term character arcs for everybody. Bah. The world will never know the genius of MONOK (Mental Organism Now Opposed To Killing), an attempt by an AIM offshoot to recreate MODOK, thwarted when he converted to the Mormon faith and joined the Utah initiative! (The Runaways have to pass through Utah on their way back since when we left off they were still in New York). And that's only one of many ideas! Okay, it's silly, but I have fun with such things.

This week I got two books:

Captain Britain and MI13 #11 (quite good, really enjoying the arc)

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

Also picked up at the used bookstore:

Book of the New Sun, the First Half of, by Gene Wolfe (since one half of the first half is a Nebula winner I haven't read)

and

Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds

Wasn't too thrilled with Revelation Space by Reynolds, but this was cheap and I'm running low on new reading material so I figured what the heck, I'll give him another chance.

Work was okay, showed up only a few minutes after I did and decent load. And of course, since I had comics to get and the weather was fairly nice, I got some good reading time in. The weather was fairly nice, as I just said, but very windy. Which did make it a bit challenging to read at times, but I managed, except at a few points (like going under a train bridge that seemed to become like a wind tunnel.

What else? Some quick TV thoughts... BSG's moving slow and with what, only a couple eps left, I really don't have confidence that they're going to end on a satisfactory note. I happened to see a little preview for Caprica that looked good, though, looking forward to that when it comes, even if I'll probably have to treat it as a completely separate entity from BSG. Lost's been enjoyable (but what? Not on tonight?). Terminator _finally_ came through with a pretty good ep after a few weeks of stinkers (I mean seriously, how many times do we need people to be hallucinating/dreaming major parts of the episode, or for there to be fear that that's going on?). Dollhouse continues to, uhm... 'be', I guess.

Morena Baccarin is cast in the V remake. You know, I almost think the only way to approach the series would be to... not even Battlestar Galactica it, because BSG remained pretty close, plotwise, just modernizing it and making one major change (adding secret human cylons). For V, I think the best way to do it would be to also reimagine it, but go one step furthur... just use the title V, and the premise of aliens landing and becoming public to the world, and forget the lame (I'll cut for spoilers just in case you never saw any of the original) ( Read more... ). Reimagine not just the plot but the whole nature of the aliens, make the threat (if there even is one) a new one. Anyway, we'll see, Morena Baccarin in it might make me at least give it a look. Aw, who am I fooling, I'm a sci-fi geek, I'd probably give it a look regardless.

Been having a fair number of 'back in high school' dreams, or 'meet somebody from high school' dreams lately. And they usually involve rather random people, people I wasn't particularly close with (or negative with), just people who's name/face I happen to remember. Shrug.

Depressed of course (tis the season), and not really feeling inspired to do writing (though I've been meeting my quotas, it's been fairly joyless). And I'm still very lightly sick. Can't seem to shake it. So, meh all around.

This week I got one book:

Runaways #6 (bit of a weak end to the arc)

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

Work was okay, though late, however it (and the walk to the comic store) were a bit of a pain because of a snowstorm. It wasn't especially cold, and thankfully, at least most of the time, not especially slushy, but the snow was falling the whole time and meant I couldn't really read while walking. The snowstorm probably also contributed to the lateness at work.

Anyway, some random bits of news and such that may be of interest.

Kim Manners, director of a number of SF shows including X-Files and Supernatural (and in fact, who directed the recent SN episode "Family Remains" has died. RIP.

In TV news, NBC had greenlit a pilot for a new series, called Day One. It's described as a post-apocalyptic series after a global catastrophe destroys the world's infrastructure. Sounds like my kind of show. The writer of the pilot has worked on Heroes, Lost, and Alias. So that might be good or bad. He was one of the co-executive producers let go when NBC realized the Heroes ship was sinking and needed dramatic efforts to rescue it, though. I'll give it a chance, because, well, me-likey post-apocalypse.

ABC's greenlit a pilot for a remake of V, by one of the co-exec producers of The 4400. Also may or may not be worth a look.

Also, like Jane Austen? Like Zombie Apocalypses? Well, I have the book for you! It's a posthumous collaboration with Jane Austen is an upcoming novel, "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". Yes, really. Apparently it combines actual text from the Austen novel with new material making a plot about a zombie uprising, making it a comedy of manners during a zombie apocalypse. I dunno, I kinda dig that kind of thing, at least in theory.

And if you're not sick of zombies yet, apparently there will be an upcoming horror-comedy Zombieland, starring Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslyn.

And there's some more word on casting for the DW Specials this year, over at Gallifrey One's News Page, but I won't be specific because it may be spoilery to some.

Had a Supernatural episode in a dream. Not so much a dream about Supernatural, but actually a plot (albeit, not a complete one). ( Read more... )

First Stargate Universe casting is in... veteran actor Robert Carlyle will be playing... a role that wasn't in the initial manifest released during casting, possibly because they were keeping it secret. In the story that reveals him, they've also released a bit more information on the initial plot (that gets the people in the situation for the series). Anyway, I haven't seen much he's been in personally, but he might be good.

Terminator winter finale was only okay.

Heroes finale was mostly craptastic, with a few decent moments. I think this year I might do a MIDSEASON REVIEW of all the TV I've been watching, in the next few weeks, so I'll expand more on it later.

Personally? I seem to be having another cat day. I had an 8 hour sleep last night, and then two separate naps during the day. I dunno why. Nothing to do and I was sleepy, I guess. Been having a few unsettling dreams lately. You know, the kind where I'm happy, or have a hope of becoming such. Meh. My winter's depression typically isn't supposed to start until after New Years, damnit. Meh I said. An emphatic meh to all the world. Having a lot of 'last survivor of a plague' type fantasies lately, in part triggered by Survivors, in part by general depression and loneliness.

Other than the great mehness, feeling just slightly off healthwise. Like I'm mostly recovered from a cold but still have a risk of slipping back in now and then. Isolated spots of coughing, days apart, or random dizziness. *shrug*

Still have the bad half of my Xmas shopping to do. That is, the half that it's not appropriate to give a gift card. I'll see what I can find tomorrow at the mall on the way to work. Speaking of work, very low-level stressing about whether next week's going to be screwed up schedulewise, but not enough to be worth mentioning. And yet I did. So that should give you an idea of how little is going on in my life right now. :P

And to close off, GIANT UNDERSEA STARFISH FOUND OFF ANTARCTICA. Those aren't starfish... those are Elder Thing pets! (Okay, so it's old, but I was just linked it again).

So, what's been going on in my life? Not a whole lot. Same job, same thing day after day, in a rut and can't even see any end to it. Meh. No, I haven't seen any of the latest movies because I'm lame and don't really go to them. So, random stuff.

We may be getting a kitten (by we, I mean more the roommates who will be taking care of it mostly, I'll just be giving it occasional scritches). We already have an older cat.

Been writing some, of course, and actually more than I've been before... even on my 'off' weeks I've usually been writing a fair bit. Right now still working on a novel-length work on my on weeks and a comic project on my off.

What else. TV I guess. Since it's summer, I've resumed my watching of Old School Doctor Who. On Terror of the Zygons, which features the Brigadier in a kilt!

Doctor Horrible concluded. Spoilery thoughts behind cut. ( Read more... )

Watched Stargate Atlantis, but it was the kind of forgettable, 'we sort of have to do this set of character beats to get where we need to go next' type episode, and wasn't really memorable at all.

More annoying commercials. Wendy's is the offender again, with more tortured logic. Previously, we examined their analogy about cows coming from Antarctica, which really suggests that they believe they should serve their burgers raw. This time, though, they say "If chicken is good, and salad is good, then doesn't that make our chicken salad... good good?" No. I will demonstrate. "Gravy is good. Ice cream is good. So, logically, ICE CREAM COVERED WITH GRAVY, IS GOOD GOOD!". This all assumes 'good good' is a term at all.

Speaking of commercials, am I the only one disturbed that the Lucky Charms Leprechaun can now apparently CONTROL TIME? KILL IT NOW, BEFORE IT'S UNSTOPPABLE. Anyway, also disturbing, but for a different reason, here's a knife that will freeze your internal organs and make you explode when you get stabbed with it.

I had a dream where I was a time traveller back in the old West (specifically, Deadwood), and somebody said "Cool!" and so I suspected they were another time traveller, so I said something was "awesome" (explaining for the others involved that I merely meant literally inspiring of awe), to get his attention, and we later got together and confirmed that we were both time travellers. He was a historian, trying to find out what happened. *shrugs*.

And finally, the latest LJdickery... they announce "We're bringing back Basic Accounts", and make everybody happy, but you have to go to another community to see the truth - they're 'bringing them back', but they're going back on their word furthur by putting ads on them. Which means they're not actually bringing them back at all, they're removing them, and giving the name to something else. It's like "Due to popular demand, we're bringing back our vegetarian burger!" And then hiding somewhere, "Our vegetarian burgers will now all be made from beef". If you really, absolutely had to do crap like breaking the original promise and adding ads to basic accounts to survive as a business, you could earn a lot more of my respect by doing it honestly instead of constantly pulling bait and switch crap like this.

So, I had a Stargate-heavy dream last night. Atlantis, too, which is odd (although some of SG1 made an appearance)
( Read more... )

So, naturally, once I woke up (both while trying to fall asleep again and after I was on my way to work) my mind tried to refine the idea into something that might actually work in the show. Here's what I came up with (which doesn't match the dream very much except in one of the basic ideas).
( Read more... )
In conclusion, I should totally write for Stargate!

In other news, they're producing a movie of the first two Hyperion Books. On the one hand, this is kind of cool, as they're great books and I'd love to see how they translate to the screen. On the other hand, I think there's way too much in the books to fit in a movie. I always thought it would make an awesome miniseries (with the first book being told in one hour installments, one for each 'story' and the connective tissue around them, and then another couple of hour installments for the second book). Is there anything so worrying as a half-fulfilled wish? Ah well, we'll see how it goes.

I was so annoyed this morning with my subconscious. I was taking a shower and, in the process, thinking of some things that I needed to buy when I could scrape up enough scare cash, and I thought, "Oh well, at least I have another $50 coming to me, that'll be nice." Then I wondered where that $50 was coming from, and then I realized, damnit, it was just a dream I had the night before. I guess I won some kind of contest or something. *shakes fist at subconscious*. Although oddly enough I did get paid some extra money I wasn't expecting later in the day. I'm still mad at you, subconscious. Don't claim you were trying to be prophetic, you just got lucky. If you want to play prophet, do it more often. I think I also dreamed something about Mercury from New X-Men, but I doubt that was prophetic at all.

Also... coincidence? Or connection? Some time ago I posted this post about Prisoners of Gravity including links to Youtube I found, one of which had a link of Neil Gaiman. This was on Feb 26th, in the afternoon. Today, I followed a link to Neil Gaiman's blog (where he talked about releasing American Gods for free online), and in reading some of the previous posts, realized he posted about the PoG clip that had him on it (There are also furthur comments from a PoG producer here). The time on that was a little after 8pm... on February 26th. Now, understand, 1) I found the youtube link on the spur of the moment on doing a search, not from following any other link. 2) The youtube videos have been up since the summer, so it's not as though they were new. So that seems like a mighty odd coincidence that he would post about it on the exact same day I did, only later.

NEIL GAIMAN IF YOU'RE GOING TO READ MY JOURNAL AT LEAST SAY HELLO! ;) Just kidding, it's fine if you lurk, too. (Or quite possibly the youtube link was just passed through many hands and in less than 6 degrees of separation got to Neil).

Today was a bit of a pain, helping my dad move. I was supposed to be picked up to go at 8:30am. Told to be ready at 8:30 am. I got picked up closer at 10:30 am. You know, I might have slept in a little longer if I knew you were going to be late. And the ride there was about an hour of sitting and listening to two hardcore Christians discuss religion. I have nothing against Christians, but it just gets awkward since I'm not going to bring up my beliefs, so I sit and stare out the window. Then I did a couple trips to a storage room with a guy I barely know, which was at least spent mostly in silence... though it was about an hour of travel for 20 minutes of work. ANyway, all in all we got done at about 9:30pm. My dad and step mom paid me (I tried to refuse it but they were persistent so as usual I gave in), so I did get extra money anyway.

Oh, and I realized that one year ago today (one leap year), I was involved in another move. My own Move From Hell, into the new place. It was all uphill from there living here, though.

This week I got two books:

Avengers: The Initiative #9 (okay but felt a bit pointless at times)
Ultimate X-Men #90 (my Pick of the Week, the major developments here at least felt like they had something of a point)

Full reviews as usual at my comic reviews site for anyone interested.

I also picked up, at the used bookstore, Woken Furies, by Richard Morgan (last book of the Kovacs series), and Otherland, Volume 2: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams.

Work was okay, came fairly early actually and wasn't too heavy, although the usual annoyances due to the renovations.

Since I had comics I did the full walk around, which was even more painful this time around because of the horrid windchill. Now, granted, it wasn't as bad as it's been in some parts of the country (-50, man), but it was pretty annoying for a 2 hour walk,
and particularly since it seemed to follow me around and blow in my face no matter which way I was walking. For a good portion of it I had to don my vigilante identity, the Red Toque again, pull it down entirely over my face, hook it under my chin, and walk around like that. If my book was smaller I would have tried to read while walking while having a toque over my eyes, just to freak people out.

Also on the walk, I did have an interesting idea I'm going to have to play with somehow. Sort of a superhero/team concept, inspired a tiny bit by a novel I read as a young kid and now can't remember anything but the base premise of it. Unfortunately if I mention the premise I'll possibly have given away the idea, so I'm going to keep it to myself a bit until I decide what to do with it.

Things I saw on the walk home: A poster of an Ood, from Doctor Who, just lying there on the ground. I almost picked it up, but it was really frayed around the edges.

And, posted just for the sheer wtfishness of it, some Dream Foo! ( Read more... )

And now, delicious cake.

Dream last night was another 'full fledged story idea'. Well, nearly full fledged, anyway, and there's no ending, but as an idea that could be fleshed out, it's decent. It was in the guise of a plot for a new TV show I heard about, airing in England. It was called Zargate, which amused me in the dream because it was so close to Stargate (but completely unrelated). Immediately following the dream, my mind set to work on analyzing (in the poor way it does at 2am) whether it would be a good idea, which melded nicely into a second dream in which I was telling people the idea and getting thoughts and reactions and developing it. I can't entirely piece together which bits of the plot came from which dream, so I'll just write it as if it's one seamless whole:

( Read more... )