Number6's Journal

Let's see, what of note is there to say? Fan Expo's in about a month, and I'm tentatively planning on going right now (to get Jewel Staite's autograph for my Firefly collection). I might even bring baked goods for in-line snacking and (if I work up the nerve) offering to others. I've got a plan to make "Fruity Oaty Bars" from Firefly/Serenity (well, I think they were only in Serenity), and since Blue Sun is the corporation behind the bars, I may try to do a blueberry-starfruity filling (Blue-Star is as close as I can get to Blue Sun). Yay, for obscure geekiness that only I will get. But, it depends on it being in season and in a store that I can get it (in previous years I've seen starfruits in my grocery store but I don't know when they start showing up). Also, I still haven't done a test batch and time's running out. So we'll see.

TV? It's been a long time since I've talked about TV that almost everything I have to say is old news. But let's see... Stranger Things is on Netflix (or you could get it magically another way)... and I quite liked it, it's like 80s Stephen King and 80s Steven Spielberg teamed up to make a movie set in the 80s but using today's effects. Not perfect, and I had an unreasonable amount of nerd rage at them getting D&D wrong (ask me in comments if you're curious), but overall quite well done, even if it is a bit nostalgia-baity.

Killing Joke cartoon came out and, just, ugh. I mean, the original story was iffy enough, but I sort of forgive it because Oracle came out of it (even if it was indirectly). But they added a 30 minute prologue focusing on Batgirl and... I WANTED a prologue focusing on Batgirl, but what they actually gave me was just awful, stupid ideas that if possible made the iffier elements of Killing Joke even WORSE. Why, DC, why?

I've been kind of on a rewatch binge lately, rewatched all of Stargate SG1 and Atlantis, and now moving on to Sliders. The Stargates were more or less as good as I remember it, Sliders... well, I knew it turned to suck eventually, but I'd forgotten how much wasn't that great even in the "good" seasons. Not all-around awful, and I'm still enjoying watching it, but just full of random cringey moments where I viscerally notice bad writing or acting (or the results of executive tampering). It was always a show that I loved more for potential than for what they did with it, and I still want to see a reboot done well. Oh, and it's fun spotting people in it. I was watching an episode and I thought, "Wait, is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan?" (the brother's father in Supernatural, Negan in The Walking Dead, Comedian in Watchmen), and... yup, it was! It took to the opening credits to be sure because he looked so young. He played a tough guy from a "civilization-has-collapsed" world who, chasing after his girlfriend, follows the Sliders to a world where SanFran is a penal colony.

I think that's all I remember for TV, so we'll move onto the bimonthly book roundup. As usual, Goodreads reviews copy-pasted here.

Finished: A World Out of Time by Larry Niven

A man with a terminal illness in the modern day has himself frozen as a last-ditch attempt to survive. He awakens hundreds of years in the future, in a completely new body and told that he must be in service to the State... or else. Soon, though, he gets a chance to escape and flee into Earth's far far future where many things have changed and survival is even more complicated.( Read more... )All in all, I've seen much better "trips into the far far future" tales than this.

About the only thing I took away from this book was the description of a far distant genetically altered version of a cat that looked pretty much just a head and tail with no limbs, which proved to me that I would still "awww" at a kitty even if you made it into something like a snake.

Finished: Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey (Expanse #5)

( Read more... )In a series like this, you're not really advising people who aren't already invested in the books, so really reviews tend to boil down to "How does this compare to the rest of the series? Is it getting better? Is it getting worse? Is it still worth reading?" And so really all I probably needed to say is that this is one of the better books in the series and I'll absolutely be reading the next.

Finished: Packing Fraction and Other Stories of Science and Imagination (short stories)

A short book of even shorter short stories. This one I believe is targetted towards teens, with the goal of getting them into science fiction. The stories are interesting enough and deal with a few real issues alongside cool SF ideas, but both are made somewhat milder... not so much to match the sensibilities of teens, but so that parents might not complain. ( Read more... )I got this for about a buck at an online store. I'm not sure it'd be worth paying much more than that (more because of the short page count than quality reasons). But at that price, I'm not disappointed at least.

Finished: Echopraxia by Peter Watts (reread)

Reread, so I'll just say I think I liked it more the second time around, not as much effort needed to understand what's happening so the subtler charms are easier to enjoy.

Finished: Too Like The Lightning by Ada Palmer

Mycroft is a convicted criminal, sentenced to be a Servicer... forbidden to own property, and in exchange for food and shelter must work for whoever requires his services. Because he has a particular set of skills, this often means working for the upper echelon of 25th century society. And in the course of his work, Mycroft has encountered what seems like a miracle, a young boy who can bring art to life... literally.

This is a particularly hard book for me to review. There's so much going on here, and while much of it is good, and some I'd call very good, some of it rubs me the wrong way in terms of personal tastes. ( Read more... )So although I can certainly see talent here, and understand why this book is being highly praised in many circles, it's proving not so much tuned to my personal tastes. I'd probably rate it a 2, albeit a high one, but since it's a first novel where I'm traditionally more forgiving, and because it was on the high end of 2 anyway, I'll make it a three. I might still like to explore more of Ada Palmer's work in the future... but, at this point, I'm not sure I want to continue reading the rest of this story. I might, but it may be the sort of thing where, a few years down the line I may spontaneously decide that I wonder how it turned out, rather than buying it when it comes out. Or, perhaps, if I hear a lot of reviews where they talk about having addressed some of my personal difficulties with the book.

Finished: Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder (reread)

I've already read this several times and talked about it here even before I started doing Goodreads reviews.

Finished: The Passage by Justin Cronin

The US government, after obtaining samples of a virus that resembles classical vampirism, begins an ultra-secret project to refine and weaponize this discovery, by injecting variations on the virus into test subjects recruited from Death Row, and also a little girl who's not in the system. Naturally, everything goes according to plan and nothing goes wrong at all with this totally reasonable idea, but you might want to avoid the planet Earth for the next few centuries as it may be overrun with monsters.

This book's gotten a lot of hype... the author got apparently a huge advance for it, it was on the NYT bestseller list for a while, and there's talk of a movie adaptation, it's one of those books I've heard about for years since it came out.

And I wanted to like it so much. But I really didn't, at least not in total. (Warning, I will be a little bit more spoilery than usual...)( Read more... )So yeah, I ranted a lot about the book, and probably made it seem like I enjoyed it less than I did. I gave it two stars. I enjoyed it mildly, but... too much annoyed me, and I wanted it to be so much better, to even a little bit live up to the hype. Instead, it disappointed me. There are two other books in the series for those who don't have my issues with it... maybe they get better, maybe they even specifically address some of my problems in ways that would make me retract my position on the first book. But I don't think I'm ever going to find out.

Finished: Queen of Candesce by Karl Schroeder (reread)

Another multiple-time reread, nothing more to say.

Finished: Scratch Monkey by Charles Stross

Oshi Adjani works for an inconceivably advanced artificial intelligence, doing various jobs like taking out planetary dictatorships and mass-murderers. She believes what she's doing, even though it may require some despicable actions of her own, is for the good of humanity as a whole. And it may well be, but when Oshi discovers a secret about her boss, she can't let it lie. In punishment for questioning, she's given one last dangerous assignment, one that, if she completes it, she can go free. But it's an assignment so dangerous that the odds of surviving it are slim. The boss needs a scratch monkey, an agent that is fundamentally disposable. And that agent is Oshi.

Charles Stross has written some of my favorite books, books that spew novelty from every page and leave readers reeling with the feeling that they've really seen a potential future, past the Singularity where it's impossible to predict or even understand... and maybe you still don't entirely understand it, but you feel as close as someone's liable to come. Unfortunately, a lot of his recent output has been decidedly more grounded, as he's simply not interested in some of the same themes that he used to be. There's nothing wrong with this, but I am still interested, and I was craving something more like the old Stross. Then I discovered Scratch Monkey, an unpublished (but nearly published) novel that he posted for free on his website.( Read more... )Still, if you're like me and hoping for something to scratch a similar itch as Accelerando, and have read all his published work, this might be the thing for you. If Goodreads allowed finer-grain ratings, I'd probably put it somewhere in the high three stars, but since it doesn't, I'll round it up to four.

Finished: Company Town by Madeline Ashby
Hwa is a bodyguard working for a town built around an oil rig, off the coast of Newfoundland. Unlike virtually everyone else in town, she has no cybernetic attachments. She's hired to be the bodyguard to the son of the billionaire who just bought the whole town, who has been receiving very specific unusual death threats. Meanwhile, Hwa's old clients and friends are being targetted by a serial killer.

There's a lot of good in this book, and a few off-notes that don't entirely dampen my enthusiasm for it, but just keep it from being that much better.( Read more... )I think part of the problem was that it was a fairly short novel, it could have been filled out in ways where some of these swings didn't seem so dramatic. I liked it though, and I'd read more with these characters if the author chose to write more in this universe. I think it's another book that I might only give a 3.5 if I could give half stars, but if I have to choose, I think I'd round upward in this case.

Finished: Battle Royale Slam Book (Essays on the Cult Classic) (essay collection

That's right, I read a book of essays.

The Battle Royale Slam Book is a book of essays on the book, movie, and manga versions of Battle Royale.

Honestly, I'm not really sure why it needs a special book of essays. I mean, I love the book, but it's not the deepest work in the world. I wouldn't have read this at all, except that it happened to be part of a bundle of ebooks I bought, and I happened to already be rereading Battle Royale. So, I figured I'd keep an ereader open on my computer and read an essay now and then when I had some free time, maybe learn some additional context that I'd missed in the original. ( Read more... )I'm glad I got it for free (or rather as part of a bundle which already contained other books that were worth the full price I paid for said bundle), since I wouldn't have bought it alone, but I didn't hate it, I just mostly found it unnecessary. I guess two stars seems appropriate.

Finished: Battle Royale Remastered by Koushun Takami

42 students (average age roughly 15) are gassed on a school field trip and awaken on an island, where they're told they've been chosen for this year's Program. Everyone knows what that means... one class is chosen every year, and they will have to kill each other until only one survives. Some will team up, some will try to escape, and some are willing to kill people they've grown up with.

Battle Royale Remastered is a new translation of Koushun Takami's cult classic Battle Royale. I've already read the previous translation, and even reviewed it. The fact that I'm reading a retranslation should tell you already that I like the story a lot. So, although my rating is going to be the same (because I'm rating the book itself), in this review I will be talking specifically about the translation.( Read more... )

Started (or finished but haven't yet reviewed): Waypoint Kangaroo by Curtis C. Chen (received for free from a giveaway), The Future Is Japanese (short story collection), The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North, The Forbidden Library by Django Wexler (received for free from a giveaway)

Pick your five favourite TV shows (in no particular order) and answer the following questions. Don’t cheat by looking at the questions before you pick!

(Just as a note, I'm not claiming these are my 'top 5'. They're just 5 that I do like and happen to choose for the purpose of this meme, since I've probably done it before with my actual top 5).

1. Survivors (BBC)
2. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
3. Avatar: The Last Airbender
4. Stargate (SG1's probably my favorite of them, but I'll restrict this one to SGU unless one of the question demands another answer)
5. Firefly

( Read more... )

Okay, I've mentioned before how I wondered why the Stargates in SGU, specifically on the Destiny, don't seem to be able to reach every gate in the whole Galaxy, but instead only "close" gates.

Watching a rerun of SG1 ("2001"), I stumbled upon and interesting possibility.

( Read more... )

Let's start with the biggest, most recent (except Heroes which has gone dumb again)...

Doctor Who: The Waters of Mars.

It was... okay. Started out a little lame (the monsters were not terribly entertaining, but then they didn't have to be, they were just a sideline to the main thrust of the plot). Started to get good towards the end. And then, RTD drops the ball again. (Spoilery thoughts ahoy) ( Read more... )

What else? Heroes? Not the greatest, more "out of nowhere" stuff in the last episode, but I've lost interest. Most of the time I half watch while reading on the net, now.

V, I should apologize for: After making my post about how it seemed "too" like the original, I went and looked up a plot outline of the original, and it seemed that my memories were a little muddled, and they have made some substantial changes, probably about the same amount as BSG did. I still wish they'd gone FARTHER, but I can't fault them for not changing it up at all. It's mildly enjoyable, but still falls a little short of where it should be.

Stargate Universe had a little milestone in its last episode (spoilers): ( Read more... )

My other shows I'm still watching, but don't really feel the need to comment on.

Edit: oh, and the "First Lines" meme in one of my last entries is feeling neglected. Of the 10 books who's first line I posted, only one was guessed. Come on, I know some of them are pretty obscure, but I know there are some SF readers on my list and some of them should be pretty easy to guess for them (and one or two, even for non-SF readers)!

So, it's November, the National Novel Writing Month. Like in most previous years, I'm not doing it as expected. However, I am doing another Personal Extra Writing Month, with the goal of reaching 50,000 words, just spread about amongst various short story projects. And I've already done 2000 for today, so I'm off to a good start (even if the story I was writing is probably unsalvagable without a complete rewrite).

The truth is, however, this isn't just a Personal Extra Writing Month, it's more of a KickStart month. See, I haven't posted about this, but for the last few months I've slacked off and haven't done any of my forced writing. Which isn't to say I haven't written, it's just either been dribs and drabs when the mood struck me, or on projects I don't count. But still, not as much as I wouldn't. There's many reasons for this, but most boil down to that I've been depressed, discouraged, and lacking new ideas and drive, and for the few months before I quit the metered writing, I was just chugging along without much drive, churning it out without getting any new ideas I wanted to work on. I thought maybe a break to refresh myself might help. And to a certain extent, it has. I've had a few new story ideas in the time off. I've identified a couple of the timesinks that I think hurt me in writing, and tried to cut them out of my routine. So, I'll do PerExWriMo to try to get myself back in gear (although I'll be taking off December as usual because Christmas month is just a pain all around with too much stuff on my mind), and hopefully start fully writing again my normal way in 2010, and also submitting stories again and start the whole rejection cycle. Anyway, crossed fingers.

Anyway, one of the writing things that "doesn't count" but has taken up some of my time and writing urges, are my Runaways alternate Vol 3 outlines. And, anticipating November, I finished up Year 3. I'll be posting it next, I think. I know, most of you don't care, it's basically unformed fanfic, but it does entertain ME (sadly, more than actual comics have in some time).

In other news, well, V starts this week. I don't have high hopes, but I'll watch. I'm still liking Stargate Universe... hasn't found its legs yet, but I like it well enough that it's probably my favorite show currently on (which really says more about the lack of quality shows on now than SGU). Heroes is interesting if you can completely ignore that they're still completely ignoring their own past (a couple weeks ago Peter sought out HRG to see if he knew a Healer. While his daughter was there. You know, the one who's blood healed him from a bullet to the head? But nobody seems to remember that). Enough to keep watching it. Other shows aren't really even worth much of a mention.

I've kept watching Classic Who, actually, instead of cutting it off, just because timing worked out that way, had new eps finish d/l when I had downtime and nothing to watch. Only about 4 or so stories left in Davison's run. I'll give a more complete rundown on my thoughts when I'm finished, but I'm actually enjoying the series more than I have in a while, somewhere around the end of 4 the writing took a big jump up in quality and inventiveness.

Starting as usual with PoG links.

Advice: Advice from SF/Comic Creators to people starting out in the field... (April 16, 1992)
Part One: Nancy Kress (read as much as you can, and persist, and don't write only when you're in the mood), Candas Jane Dorsey (what makes bad SF, the "Rod and Don Dialogue"), Lewis Shiner (don't start, it's a tremendously discouraging business, and if you're going to, get a day job), Kathy Gale (UK Editor, always submit in a professional way),
Part Two: Kim Stanley Robinson (responding on OSC's advice of "Primacy of Event over Character" and Card not following his own advice, kind of rips on Card a bit too), Tanya Huff (on the pros and cons on writer's groups), Ed Bryant (on Writer's Workshops like Clarion), Dan Simmons (on how the Milford Writer's Workshop helped him), Neil Gaiman (on his experience at a Milford and learning nothing about writing but learning about reading), shift in focus to comics. Frank Miller (know what you want)
Part Three: Fabian Nicieza (take writing courses, plan to have another career, work through independents/small press), M.W. Kaluta (on how he got his first full professional gig on The Shadow, and his advice), Gene Colan (you have to love it, don't do it for the fame), Sergio Aragones (practice, and think ahead at how the world may change). Summary from the host, and a closing clip from Dan Piraro (stay away, I don't want the comptetition)

Farewell (Season 1 finale)
Assorted promotions, Dick Tracy (movie and the then-recent comics), TMNT (in advance of the first live action movie), Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, Archie news, Incredible Hulk comic, 1990 Earth Day, interviews with Max Collins, Rob Salem, artist Dale Keown... very disjointed and none of it terribly interesting so I won't do the full clip-by-clip summary. Part One: Part Two: Part Three:

Memory (December 8, 1993)

How we're defined by our memories, in SF and Fantasy and comics
Part One: Lynda Barry (on what bring childhood memories for her, a trick for remembering things in a different way that you wouldn't normally, triggering other people's memories in writing), Neil Gaiman (on converting his memories into a comic and being replaced by it), Dave McKean (on using collages to represent memory), Neil Gaiman (on suddenly realizing something about your childhood memories as an adult because as child you don't know what's significant), Michael Moorcock (on his childhood memories of WWII shaping the landscapes of his fiction)
Part Two: Harlan Ellison (on what triggers memories for him, and exorcising hurtful memories with writing, and gives a couple of his favorite quotes about memories), Howard Hendrix (on the memory of his brother shaping one of his stories, and the difference of how memory in fiction compared to real life), Harry Harrison (on how memory works, short term vs long term memory, and the disadvantages to a linear memory of computers)
Part Three: William Gibson (on Agrippa, and Cyberspace as a metaphor for memory), Iain M. Banks (on his fascination with memory and the links between identity and memory), Brian Aldiss (on writing his own autobiography, and a story of a memory he'd written when he was 16), Edward Bryant (on how our memory shapes us and lack of memory also influences us)

Medicine and Nanotechnology (December 1, 1993)
Part One: Frederick Pohl (on people selling off organs to finance their trip to Gateway, and the real black market for organs), Nancy Kress (on writing "The Mountain to Mohammed", and her growing concern about health insurance, and the tough choices involved in controlling medical costs, and worries about gene scanning to mark people as uninsurable), Joel Davis (on the Human Genome Project changing the way medicine is practiced)
Part Two: Joel Davis again (on who owns the rights to the drugs created by using human DNA), Nancy Kress (on relaxing the controls of testing drugs on the dying), John Clute (on nanotechnology as a trend in SF), William Gibson (on including nanotech in Virtual Light, and finding it creepy), Tony Daniel (on Nano as the 'new magic' of SF), Stven Barnes (on linking Nanotech and Dinosaurs in The Barsoom Project, and where he researched it), Ian McDonald (on including nanotech in Necroville and his ideas of what resurrecting the dead might mean)
Part Three: Michael Skeet (on his story Relics, and whether writers get carried away with nanotech), Dave Smeds (on the practical obstacles to reaching nanotech), Greg Bear (on writing Blood Music before nanotechnology really became well-known, and why he use it, and his own sins of treating nanotech as 'magic', and the legacy of the Frankenstein image, and his own feeling that we need to know as much as possible)

Next Week, Writer's Workshops, Games, and Awards, the last set of PoG links until the person posting them posts some more, I guess.

In other TV news, what's been new... Heroes, meh. I think it's the last year anyway, so its not really worth getting worked up about, but the developments in the latest ep do not particularly interest me. Flashforward is still entertaining in terms of its normal plot and it's done a good job of keeping me interested with some of the twists they've introduced, although some sloppiness with how the visions work still annoys me.

Glee's still okay, but I'm finding the main characters less and less likable with each ep, with a few exceptions (I liked the Quinn/Rachel scene in this week's episodes) and they really need to start focusing on the minor characters.

Supernatural had a solid MOTW episode.

The big TV story for me was that Stargate Universe had the third part of its premiere, and again, not bad. There's a couple spoilery elements I want to talk about behind the cut (including a possible "I CALLED IT" moment), and some speculation/wonderings for the future: ( Read more... )


I think that's it for this week. It's Thanksgiving Weekend here in Canada, so to all the Canucks on my list, Happy Thanksgiving. Except, not for me. Apparently most of my immediate family is working this weekend, including tomorrow, so we won't be doing anything until sometime a little later. So no big meal for me, alas. Oh well.

Projects: (October 3, 1991) - Isolated upcoming projects in comics, animation, and SF.
Part One: Mike Carlin (on The Psycho), George Pratt (on a comic project about the Blues), Neil Adams (on Bucky O'Hare the animated series based on a comic)
Part Two: James Morrow (on his upcoming novel Towing Jehovah), Michael Swanwick (on Stations of the Tide), William Gibson (on Virtual Light), Dan Simmons (on doing a movie treatment for Carrion Comfort, and co-writing a SF mystery involving fractals and chaos theory)
Part Three: Simmons continued (a bit specifically on the problems of combining SF and mystery), Michael Dorn (on a storyline he'd like to see in ST:TNG, connecting Worf to Cyrano de Bergerac, and his role in Star Trek 6), fandom rumors about ST6 from Toronto Trek, Walter Koenig (on writing a treatment for a ST movie that got rejected, and a suggestion he made for ST6 involving the death of a main character), a viewer letter about the 'death of Star Trek'.

Utopia: March 18, 1993
Utopias in comics and SF

Part One: Bruce Sterling (on Utopias being Bogus), Clive Barker (on Plato's horrible definition of Utopia), Alan Moore (on exploring Utopia in Miracleman, and Utopia as a verb, and the superhero dream being antihuman), Neil Gaiman (agreeing with Utopia as a verb, but disagreeing with the idea that Miracleman actually dealt with a Utopia, and the problem with Utopia is that once you've got it, you fill it with people), Mark Buckingham (on avoiding dealing with Miracleman himself and looking at the rest of the world), Neil Gaiman again (on pulling focus back away from Miracleman himself), Samuel R. Delany (on Triton as a 'sexual utopia', differences from SF thinking and Utopian thinking)
Part Two: Clive Barker (on why fantastic fiction is the perfect place for Utopias), James Morrow (on a 'Utopia' city based on complete honesty in City of Truth and a pacifist utopia in The Wine of Violence), Geoff Ryman (on the Child Garden being an ambiguous utopia, and why utopias often focus on a particular person against the society), Ian M. Banks (on using a protagonist opposed to the Culture in Consider Phlebas, and writing along the outskirts of a Utopia)
Part Three: Sean Stewart (on Passion Play, which involves a dystopia evolving out of an attempt to create a Christian Utopia, and the need for Faith for a society to work), Kim Stanley Robinson (on his utopia novel, Pacific Edge and the question of "Utopia: Can we get there from here?", and the problem of multinational corporations being the biggest threat to a 'better world', and ending his book on a sad note)

Ecology in comics and SF: April 22, 1993
Part One: Frederick Pohl (on Our Angry Earth, a non-fiction book on ecology with Isaac Asimov, and why he doesn't think Zero Population Growth is the most urgent need), Paul Chadwick (creator of Concrete, on what he sees as the biggest Ecological Problem facing us, OverPopulation, and whether/how politics should play a role), Kim Stanley Robinson (on the importance of population control)
Part Two: Paul Chadwick (discussing the religious "be fruitful and multiply" and reading a speech from Concrete about current population expansion), Kim Stanley Robinson (on the Earth's maximum sustainable population), Jerry Pournelle (on solutions to population growth by producing wealth), Joe Haldeman (on tackling overpopulation in The Forever War, and his personal choice not to contribute to it, compared to people in third world countries who sometimes have no choice)
Part Three: Barry B. Longyear (on why Zero Population Growth became 'uncool' and the problems of enacting it in reality), David Brin (on legislating legal population limits in his novel Earth, and the US "growing up", and protecting your greatgreatgreatgrandchildren as a 'genetic investment', and visiting Easter Island)

Next week I'll do Advice (which I thought I'd do this week but got a bit behind on time), Memory, and maybe Medicine & Nanotechnology.

Continuing on TV, I finally finished Tom Baker's run on Doctor Who. Watched the first Davison episode too. Might watch one more to get a sense of him since he spent most of this one in regeneration madness. Overall, my thoughts on the Fourth Doctor (and a bit that he sheds light on Ten) ( Read more... )
Do like the new team of companions so far. Tegan, Adric, and Nyssa give me a little bit of the old Jamie/Zoe vibe. Nice to have a set of companions with skills that mesh together well, instead of one companion having to either be superman/woman to compete with the Doctor, or be all but useless in the face of his genius except for legwork.

Otherwise, FlashForward's still in the 'not bad, but we'll see' territory. Heroes is still marginally better. I can't help but think that if they ditched almost all of the 2nd or 3rd season entirely, and just attached this season directly to this one with maybe a tiny bit of connective plot, many of the elements would be workable, even interesting (the current status of Sylar with respect to Matt would be an entertaining way of keeping the actor but not having the problems of the uberpowerful character) but I can't completely forget the past.

The only big new series premiere of the week is Stargate: Universe. Overall, I enjoyed it, although at present I think it's below both SG1 and Atlantis in quality. The early worries/complaints (usually based solely on casting) of it being "Stargate: 90210" seem to be wholly without merit, but there is a strong taste of the new BSG in terms of style. In fact, it looks almost as though... you know in 200 where they did parodies of other SF shows (and a few non-SF shows)? It looks almost as though somebody said, "Hey, let's copy BSG's style for one of those", except instead of being a parody, they did it completely seriously. Very similar. A bit disorienting, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. (a bit more spoilery stuff behind the cut) ( Read more... )

First, Happy Birthday soleta_nf!

Second, meh. Sleep was not great. I kept semi-waking up convinced that I was moving tomorrow/today and my mind was frantically racing trying to organize everything. Even though part of me was aware and tried to remind myself that uh, no, I'm not moving, the racing-mind part wouldn't listen. On the other hand, then I had a dream that I went to see a taping of the Daily Show, and hung out with Jon Stewart afterwards, which was kinda fun.

Did I mention how on Monday at about 5:30 am I helped a homeless woman steal back her bag of clothes from another homeless person who was using it as a pillow? No? Well, maybe after work.

Finally, Stargate Universe castings! They finally announced the rest of the main cast. And there are some recognizable (to me, at least) names there, although nothing super-exciting, some are at least mildly cool. (cut just in case you don't want to know) ( Read more... )

As I expected, some of the big Stargate announcements have come this week. That is, more of the cast of Stargate Universe.

Gateworld has the full rundown, but here are the bullet points: SG Universe will premiere in the fall of 2009, as opposed to summer. It begins filming in only 20 days.

The cast, in addition to the previously announced Robert Carlylse is... ( Read more... )

That's clearly not all of the cast (since there are several female characters but no actresses revealed so far), but supposedly the full press release will be today. I'll edit in new names when I find them.

My main comment: Don't really know any of these people. So we're back in "we'll see" territory.

Edit: Oh, and SF Author John Scalzi has apparently been tapped as a technical consultant (which basically means they phone him up with questions once in a while). Never read any of his books, but it is encouraging that they get a SF author.

Gateworld has an interview with Ben Browder, mostly general history and a little on the series he's working on developing (as a writer), a bit on Farscape and Stargate and his semi-acting rivalry with Nathan Fillion.

Also of interest, to Stargate Altantis fans, one of the producers gave a breakdown of what episodes the 6th season might have had, if it had gotten one. Apparently they were far enough along that they had ideas, even if many were ideas that couldn't fit in the previous year. Some potential spoilers, in that any of the elements there might be reused, and they say some might be factors in the SG:A DVD movie. Most interesting is, to me, (spoilers just for Atlantis finale, not for the future) ( Read more... )

Also related: Joseph Mallozzi's "Best 4 SG:A Episodes I never got to write". Somewhat more detailed.

A couple of the (collective) episodes sound kinda cool and I'm a little disappointed we'll never get to see them. Also they had some ideas I've had, too, proving once again, I should TOTALLY write for Stargate! ;) Anyway, I wish I could tap into parallel worlds sometimes just so I could see all these 'what might have beens!'. Or Nathan Fillion as John Crichton in Farscape!)

Speaking of Fillion, remember Doctor Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog? Well, Whedon has said that it will continue in some form, but he's not sure what the form is. It may not be an internet series anymore. I dunno, I'm in as long as it's not a "I'll continue it as a comic book!", because it has to stay a musical! ;)

Anyway, talking with locker_monster the other day, I mentioned off-handedly that they should get Summer Glau in the sequel, and make use of her trained ballerina skills. The idea was good for a few seconds of amusement, but it also stuck with me and came to me this morning before I left for work. And I have a longish (45 minute or so) walk to work, in which it's generally too dark to read, so my mind tends to latch on any old thing and work on it. I came up with the idea of having all of Doctor Horrible's major enemies being Firefly actors. Yes, I know it's unlikely and impractical he'd ever do anything like it, but amusing (to me, which is all that counts).

So, the product of my thinking on the way to work (and a little bit after), behind the cut. It's just silly fluff, but might be worth a chuckle. I present to you: the heroic counterparts to the Evil League of Evil!

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Edit: Oh yeah, and Doc Horrible fans in Canada, apparently the glitches with Canadian distribution are over and you should be able to reorder from amazon.ca.

Edit2: Although technically my Doctor Horrible ideas isn't a "What I'd Do With..." entry, I'm adding the tag anyway because it's related and it'll make it easier to find it again when I want to reread it. Yes, I like rereading my own ideas, I'm lame.