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Recently, I took a look over my list of read classic science fiction and found that it was wanting. Driven with a mad desire to succeed at any cost, I launched forth to overcome this deficiency in my character and consume those works of the genre that were glaringly absent from my I’ve-read-that list.

One such work of classic science fiction is one that is probably missing from many an American’s list, especially those born from the 1970s onward. Until recently, I believe that this particular book was hard to come by in the US. In any event, it was completely under my radar until I chanced to learn of it in the most unlikely of places.

When they’re not grunting like primeval apes, passing out from alcohol consumption, or preoccupied with shopping for the latest leather S&M gear, members of the classic metal band Judas Priest can actually form complete sentences. Unsurprisingly to anyone who listens to their lyrics, lyric-writer and vocalist Rob Halford (who once looked sorta normal, unlike his current incarnation as an Earth-bound Vogon escaped convict) is a fan of science-fiction (you can’t hear it, but as I wrote this I said “science-fiction” with a bad Birmingham accent, just to get in the Priest mood). Happening to watch a documentary recently about the band, I heard Rob Halford mention John Wyndham’s 1951 British sci-fi classic Day of the Triffids as an example of science-fiction he loves. Not having heard of this novel before, I instantly declared that if Mr. Rob Halford liked it, then goddamnit so would I.

And I did. A lot.

I just finished the book a few days ago, a nice slim volume that doesn’t fart around like, oh, Robert Jordan, but just gets right on with it, so committing to reading it takes slightly less time than writing a doctoral thesis, or building a pyramid.

Briefly, the story tells of survivors of an apocalypse brought on by humankind’s stupidity and arrogance, two separate catastrophes which unite to utterly destroy civilization, and nearly everyone on the earth, in the most unsettling and disturbing of ways — when a satellite loaded with nasty bacteriological weapons crashes to the earth in a spectacular worldwide light show, it blinds all who watch it. Our hero Bill, recuperating from an accident to his eyes, has missed the whole thing, and removes the bandages to discover a world that doesn’t work anymore. Chaos ensues, and typical post-apocalyptic violence results, while Bill struggles to survive and eventually to locate the handful of others who through pure luck missed the light show, and saved their sight.

But that’s not the end of humanity’s suffering. From somewhere in the heart of Soviet Russia, a genetic-modification experiment gone wrong has resulted in the Triffid, a plant that gets up and walks, and has a nasty habit of lashing out with a poison whip that instantly kills its victim. After a nice ripening process, the Triffid then proceeds to scoop up the flesh of the festering corpse.

With humanity blinded and incapacitated, the Triffids take over, and things get bad very, very quickly.

Day of the Triffids is a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel before there was a genre called The Post-Apocalyptic Science-Fiction Novel, published years before books like A Canticle for Liebowitz and I Am Legend solidified the stereotypes and established the term. There were obviously grim views of the future (a British specialty), but none so typically post-apocalyptic as this book. From a plot point of view, this story would not have felt at all out of place in the more jaded climate of the 1970s, or even the 1980s. Without artifice, John Wyndham wrote a quintessential survival story in a world irretrievably destroyed.

I’ve been peculiarly interested in the post-apocalyptic novel of late, since I’m knee-deep in my own little composition of the genre. Day of the Triffids proved a particularly enriching read, as Wyndham masterfully exploited the possibilities of the genre to mine immense riches of character and drama. The hero Bill struggles through not just the exigencies and miseries of outer world, but his own internal turmoil, fighting within himself to have a reason to even go on. Post-apocalyptic novels can illuminate the human capacity for hope like no other, and I have yet to read a novel which illustrates it so well as Day of the Triffids.

Tackling the idea of bacteriological warfare and genetic-modification is startlingly prescient for 1951. Indeed, it was so far ahead of its time that it is only now, in the 21st century, that the concepts seem at all timely, particularly the genetic-modification theme. In our current climate, when scientists fiddle with nature by affixing animal genes to plants, suddenly the concept of creating a plant which walks and eats flesh is not so very far-fetched after all.

I grew up on British literature of all types, from When the Tripods Came to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from P.G. Wodehouse to Arthur Conan Doyle, and discovering a classic written in the literary style I love so much which had somehow passed me by, is a wondrous treat indeed. Had this same story been composed by an American, it would have been so different, in texture, in attitude. Anyone who has ever read a novel by a great 20th Century British novelist knows what I’m talking about. The quality is ineffable, but inescapable.

Humorously, author Brian Aldiss dubbed Day of the Triffids a “cosy catastrophe”, without meaning irony, and I’m damned if he didn’t hit the nail on the head with the term. For even among the dreadful misery and horrors that we experience in the book, there is a grounded, solid and imperturbable core of domesticity and warmth in the English character that even man-eating plants and bacteriological catastrophes cannot diminish. And it’s wonderful.

One of the great classics of science-fiction.

Next up: another of Wyndham’s masterpieces, The Midwich Cuckoos (twice adapted to film as Village of the Damned)

photo from Wikipedia

The first few years of the 1980s were massively dramatic for the development of heavy metal as a distinctive genre, as it underwent a startling metamorphosis from a murky indistinct corner of the heavy rock scene into a distinct entity with its own sets of rules, styles, and stereotypes.

Stadium rock ruled the heavy world in the late 70s. Fans of the harder side of things freely moved within a songlist that had nasty rockers like AC/DC and Judas Priest, and larger-than-life mega-rock gods like Queen and The Scorpions. Heavy metal, as such, was really just another term (allegedly American) for what the British liked to call heavy rock. In other words, here was music that was simply a heavier, nastier version of what lots and lots of bands were doing at a variety of levels of nastiness. Blue Oyster Cult, for example (I can’t be bothered to type in the stupid umlauts), often gets lumped in with the heavy metal genre, but I challenge you to find virtually anything in their mid-70s catalague which is remotely heavy in any kind of more modern sense.

Denim-clad scruffs yearning for the hard stuff in the latter half of the 70s had to be content with a much broader definition of the term heavy metal, and if you look at heavy metal listening charts even through to 1980, you tend to find lots of appearances put in by groups rarely included with the genre today, such as Heart, or Rush. Even AC/DC, with their high-voltage trappings, are probably more accurately termed hard rock, though their popularity was so massive at the time, and their aesthetic so perfectly suited to metalheads, that it’s no surprise they were popular with the metal crowd.

Yet by 1982, and even more so in 1983, the whole hard rock world had undergone a startling transformation, and the heavy metal we know today had been born and reached a certain maturity. What had happened in the intervening couple of years to make the genre coalesce so rapidly?

It was, of course, the advent of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and the rapid dissemination of its updated heavy rock notions throughout the world. The link between late 70s heavy rock and mid-80s heavy metal is almost entirely on the shoulders of the NWOBHM, which partly explains how the term continues to evoke bleary-eyed romanticism in metalheads to this day.

Part of this is a generational thing, as successive waves of young hopefuls hit their late teens, inspired by the past but pushing things along to a new level — the groups debuting their first releases in one year all two years younger than the last wave, each directly inspired by the previous wave, like a tidal movement of successive crests breaking against the musical shores of the rock world. But it’s not just age — Ronnie James Dio would debut the first album of his band Dio in 1983, and it represented just that generational advancement of the genre over his two albums with Black Sabbath (themselves a major development over the Ozzy era Sabbath releases). Yet people were evidently catching musical waves which would break in rapid succession. Ultimately, the rapidity of the change would result in metal’s undoing, as the only path to follow eventually became ever more selective and extreme, driving metal back into the underground and into the hands of ever more selective tastes.

Anyway, 1983 was a real watershed year, with many seminal releases representing the forefront of true heavy metal. The day really belonged to the Americans this year, who had finally come up to speed with the Britons, and were bursting at the seams with their own hybridized sound.

Savatage—”I Believe”
from the album Sirens (1983)

Enter one of the big names of the heavy metal world: Savatage. A band soon to build a checkered, storied, and ultimately metamorphosic story, in 1983 Savatage were one of many fresh-faced kids in America bowled over by the NWOBHM, and by the classic 70s monoliths they’d grown up on, and ready to leave their own imprint on the genre.

And leave it they did. The group that grew into Savatage spent their formative years in Northern Florida in the late 70s dabbling in heavy metal nascently, eventually coalescing in 1981 and eventually ending up in a local studio in 1982 to cut a number of tracks (apparently as quickly and as cheaply as possible on their shoestring budget), the first fruits of which would be their debut album Sirens released in 1983 on the small independent label PAR records (the enduring popularity of this and the second album would result in a much more well-distributed reissue on the bigger Combat Records later in 1985).

It takes all of two seconds of listening to Sirens to realize that emphatically Savatage represent the absolute ideal of heavy metal as a genre circa 1983, and the album stands at the quintessential forefront of the rapidly evolving sound, easily galloping alongside the Dio debut and the Metallica debut as an instant and genre-defining classic.

Boisterous, energetic, nasty, crunchy, distinctive, caterwauling and electrifying, Savatage perfected the heavy metal sound with a hugely unique and impressive frontman, the guitar wizardry of a truly precocious 6-string hero, and a well-honed writing style perfectly suited to create the most satisfaction for the audience’s expectations with the minimum fuss.

Sitting at the flagship spot on this album, and representing for me the highest level the band would ever attain, is the mini-epic that is the enigmatically titled “I Believe”.

Underneath this innocuous little title (a strange one for a heavy metal song, something seemingly better suited to pop or folk rock) lies a five minute science fiction epic about a group of space travelers forced to flee from an Earth rendered uninhabitable by nuclear and environmental devastation, embarking on a millennium-long journey to find a new planet that will be home to the vestiges of the human race. During this uncertain journey, the narrator conjectures about the existence of other life in the cosmos, and whether they will ever meet it –

Where do we go? What’ll we find? Is there life … other than mine?

After a thousand years of wandering space for a new home, the colonists alight on a mysterious world, where they find a black box set in a large green plain. A metallic, alien voice comes from the box (reproduced to cool effect in the song itself):

Welcome to Earth, May we ask who you are? Our race is called Man. The planet is done, done, done, done, done, DONE!

As the strange metallic voice repeats the word “done” with more and more unhinged frenzy, the song itself shifts into overdrive, as the guitar work of Criss Oliva explodes into a kind of tornado of notes over a double-time beat. The next verses are abstract and enigmatic, as if the horrific realization that the colonists’ centuries-long search has brought them back to the very place they fled from in the first place has driven them mad. Each brief little irrational verse is cut off by yet another frenzied guitar solo as the little epic disintegrates into a tempest of insanity, before it suddenly and painfully stops dead, robbing us of a drawn-out and dramatic finale.

I often hold “I Believe” up as a quintessential example of a perfect heavy metal song possessing all the ingredients needed to make the best potion the genre can offer. It’s got a semi-epic tale to tell brimming with excitement, wonder, and eventually madness, it tells that tale in a musical structure that grows and evolves to match the evolution of the story, and it undergoes a metamorphosis of pace and intensity midway in. It also does what all good heavy metal should do: it spotlights the individual talents of each band member, at the same time that no one ego ever sabotages the unified teamwork nature of the piece. Heavy metal should always be about a group of musicians working together in perfect sync and harmony without losing their individuality, and “I Believe” represents that balance to a fault.

Criss Oliva is justly famous for his spastic and unique guitar flamboyance, but I think the band’s greatest weapon lies in his brother Jon’s vocals, which are massively dramatic and wonderfully adaptable to so many moods. Like with the legendary Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford, Jon can alter his voice at whim from strident and high to booming and low to rasping to pure to anything in between, and he doesn’t shy away from swinging wildly in any direction that the music demands. And the man knows dementia. I have never heard someone shriek or cackle as effectively (and without inducing irritation) as Jon Oliva.

Savatage would survive through thick and thin in the ensuing years, reestablishing their artistic integrity after a disastrous and unwanted push into commercial waters, and ultimately earn a devoted fanbase by the late 80s when they developed into a more progressive metal outfit, churning out elaborate (and expensive) rock operas and concept albums. Tragically, genuis guitarist Criss Oliva would be killed by a drunk driver in the 90s, but brother Jon kept the band alive, and it exists in one form or another to this day. Astonishingly, Savatage has survived most of these years as one of the few bands to stay with a major record label, Atlantic.

1983 was a watershed year for heavy metal, and all the exuberance and power that it brought to the genre is never more perfectly and fully represented than in “I Believe”, truly one of the classic tracks of this silly, scruffy-haired bastard child genre of rock.

Technorati tags: heavy metal, Savatage.

(this post is spoiler-free)

Okay, actually the first of my summer sci-fi viewing reviews doesn’t exist yet. I’ll get to that coming up, because actually the viewing in question is much more complex and deserving of more varied, considered discussion.

First up (but second), is what I watched last night, the 1988 “science fiction” film Alien Nation, starring James Caan and Mandy Patinkin.

Set just a few years in the future (1991), the plot tells of a race of alien worker drones — dubbed “Newcomers” — who arrive on the planet Earth as immigrants, and are invited take up residence, slowly entering into society. As with any newly arrived race of immigrants, full incorporation into society is slow, and many of the aliens wind up in ethnic ghettos, such as the “slagtown” of Los Angeles. When Detective Sergeant Matthew Sykes (Caan) loses his partner in a Newcomer-related shooting, he gets Sam Francisco (Patinkin) — the first Newcomer to achieve the rank of Detective — as his new partner. Together they investigate the shooting which resulted in the death of his old partner, and unravel a criminal plot that could expose a horrendous secret of the Newcomer race.

The first and most important reaction to this movie is that, despite certain surface dressings, this really isn’t a science fiction movie at all. Most SF authors and critics state that in order for material to qualify as real science fiction, it must explore science or technology in a manner integral to the plot; in other words, that without this science element the story would not exist.

Alien Nation does not meet this criterion. It is, in all respects and in the most traditional of ways, a buddy cop picture. The science fiction elements in the movie are simply a veneer to provide color and a new taste to a very old formula (like putting cherry in Coke). Structurally, the screenplay is a very straightforward connect-the-dots “cops search out a mystery in the underworld while they struggle to work together” story. It’s like 48 Hours, except one of the two leads has a head which looks like a spotted ostrich egg. The race of alien Newcomers could just as easily have been replaced with another race of “exotic” Los Angeles immigrants — Koreans, Japanese, El Salvadorians — without any of the plot being lost. So, right there, and to my disappointment, “summer sci-fi viewing, part the second” has become “summer buddy cop picture with funny-loooking people viewing, part the first”.

As a buddy cop feature, then, how does it measure up? It’s acceptable, I suppose. Hardly revolutionary. It has most of the requisite features. There’s a high-society criminal villain, played with steel by Terence Stamp (a character indistinguishable from any corrupt wealthy citizen in any issue of Batman). There’s one car chase scene where most of the Los Angeles basin is traversed (sort of out of sequence) in something like ten minutes. There’s the requisite scene with an inexplicably aroused female who drops awkwardly out of the story as soon as she provides the needed minute or so of feminine pulchritude. There’s the standard bonding scene between the two cops from different walks of life over drinks. Then there’s the gasp shock couple of fisticuff finales at the end which tend to make things a little strung out and exhausting rather than exciting.

I’m being intentionally vague so as to avoid spoilers. But it’s actually not that difficult to avoid spoilers in this case because so many of the plot points are so generic that they are instantly recognizable to anyone who has any kind of familiarity with action movies, especially of the urban cop variety. They are given just a hint of a “science-fiction” flavor here and there, but not enough to free them from being anything but by-the-book formula.

Also, if a variety of visual effects are a necessary element in a science-fiction movie for you, this movie will disappoint. Aside from a kind of still-shot of the alien flying saucer seen on a television screen at the beginning of the movie, there are absolutely no visual effects whatsoever. And the alien makeup and prosthetics, despite coming from the vaunted Stan Winston studio, are nothing to write home about. The aliens, as mentioned, look like toned-down Coneheads with a few spots, their mouths and noses blotted out slightly like silly putty, but in all other respects they look just like any human being. Indeed, more to the detriment of the movie, they act just like native humans — the way they stand, their mannerisms, their idiosyncracies, completely blow any kind of sense of otherworldliness or exoticism. They’re terribly un-alien. This is excused away in the script with some silly reference about how they adapt to new societies remarkably quickly, mimicking the natives with ease, but it nevertheless kills any chance of the movie being perceived as anything but a standard cop movie with a handful of people with silly heads.

If there can be said to be a saving grace to the movie it’s no doubt Patinkin, who is always good, even when others around him are not. He does a commendable job acting like the straight man, in a sense, to Caan; while Caan is sarcastic and broad and wild Patinkin remains very sober and level, humorless, and calm (with one dramatic exception — you’ll understand when you watch it). I’m not sure how the writer originally envisioned Patinkin’s character Sam Francisco being played, but Patinkin played it very straight and very honest, and very seriously. Francisco therefore has a kind of weightiness and substance which makes him really the anchor of the film, far more likable than sarcastic and abstractly sleazy Sykes, and his honesty really sells the movie to the audience. Without him … hoo-boy.

There’s not much more that can be said. The story features very few supporting characters, and the somewhat slim 97 minutes don’t allow for lots of digression and subtle shading. Writer Rockne S. O’Bannon (no relation to Dan O’Bannon of Alien fame to my knowledge) would go on to serve as writer-producer on a number of sci-fi themed tv shows, including Farscape, and the Alien Nation tv series.

Ultimately, what is my emotion walking away from this movie? I think disappointment would sum it up best — disappointment that more wasn’t done with the theme, more wasn’t done to really explore the concept, and indeed, more wasn’t done to actually make this a science-fiction story and not a rather standard buddy cop movie with little more to the aliens than set dressing. As it stands, it’s a rather standard but acceptable enough buddy cop movie with an intriguing concept that is left largely unexplored, saved from mediocrity by Mandy Patinkin’s stalwart and strong performance. Not having seen the follow-up TV series, I can’t say whether or not they managed to explore the premise of a race of alien ex-slaves living amongst us in a more genuine science-fiction way. I hope so.

Up next: V: the mini-series, watched first but written about second, the classic 1983 mini-series chronicling the visitation of a very different group of aliens, and one that I think we can definitely say is unquestionably, and completely, science-fiction.

Tags: science fiction, Alien Nation, DVD.

So, I guess there’s this tradition which people call “summer reading”. I don’t really have a different reading preference in the summer compared to other holidays, but, as it’s summer anyway …

Lately, I’ve been in a science-fiction mood. Now, I don’t consider myself a huge sci-fi reader. A smattering. A smidgeon. A casual foray. But I’m not a diehard SF reader, nor have I read many of the biggies. Nevertheless, lately the mood has been in a sort of space direction, a desire to traipse through interstellar climes.

First up — and first of the summer reading list — was Revelation Space by Welshman Alastair Reynolds. Is it hard science fiction? Or is it space opera? Reviews and descriptions have a hard time making up their mind; it’s both, actually. Reynolds, an astronomer formerly in the employ of the European Space Agency, packs this book with lots of hard science, including tons of speculative technologies of the biological tilt, as well as quite a lot about stellar bodies, but the plot reads and plays out a bit like a space opera — an interstellar scope, lots of unusual planets, epic events, large cast of characters.

What is not in doubt is the tone. It’s dark. Devilishly dark. Things, in Reynolds’ future, are not nice. Not cheerful. There is very, very little sense of connection with present or past humanity. The civilizations of Reynolds’ setting (if you can call them civilizations) bear very little resemblance to our own; lifestyles can seem inhuman and even bizarre. Many of the characters in the story have incorporated modification technology and bioengineering to such an extreme as to seem more machine than human being. Technology is so advanced in the book as to seem almost alive itself, as if the distinction between human being and machine has blurred, commingled. Indeed, this is a very strong theme of the book, and plot devices and character arcs revolve around this concept very heavily.

Interesting, too, is the concern I had throughout at least the first half of the book that I would not find a character among the cast with whom I could feel any kind of sympathy or strong connection. Reynolds does not spend a great deal of effort making any of the characters very likeable, and often they perform actions motivated by selfishness or greed or pride which makes characters you’re beginning to warm to suddenly difficult to like again (in fact, later in the book he uses apparently selfish or inhuman actions as clever ways to throw you, but I can’t discuss these without spoiling the story terribly).

Here’s a very brief setup of the story: Dan Sylveste, head of the administration on backwater colony Resurgam, diligently excavates the remains of an ancient alien civlization, the Amarantin, in the hopes of finding the answer to why they were so suddenly wiped out of existence on the eve of travelling into interstellar space, and why the human race in their exploration of the galaxy have yet to find any other living alien species. He fears a terrible secret which may mean the end of the human race as well is waiting to be discovered. Ultimately, he is forced into a dangerous bargain with the unfriendly crew of interstellar vessel Nostalgia for Infinity, who have their own dark agenda, to seek out a momentous galaxy-wide horror and discover the truth behind the disappearance of the Amarantin race, while an assassin with complex ties to his past closes in, and the political fabric of the settled planets crumbles behind him.

That sounds a bit like copy, doesn’t it? Sorry. Anyway, it’s a very complicated novel, and the plotlines are many and varied, and cleverly interwoven. Much of the book reads like a thriller; Khouri, blackmailed into hunting down Dan Sylveste for crimes she is intentionally ignorant of, vacillates back and forth about whether she should kill him or defy her blackmailer. Other characters are in similar dilemmas, and most of the scenes in the book are woven through with tremendous tensions, as different characters in tough situations struggle to find the right way to act, respond, and choose.

I think, ultimately, it’s this tremendous layering of tension among characters as the overarching plot thrusts forward, that makes Revelation Space work so well. Without this enormous sense of momentum, I think many readers — myself among them — would become lost in the sheer dark bizarreness of the universe Reynolds has crafted. It’s just really strange, disquietingly so. Reynolds projects this notion that extremely advanced bioengineering technology causes the human race to splinter into extremist groups, some of whom are totally obsessed with modifying their bodies using cybernetics and genetics almost to the point where there is no humanity left.

Then there are the computer viruses, which affect those with these cybernetic implants, causing them to mutate uncontrollably, like a particularly disgusting scene from Akira. Reynolds writing is vivid and brusque, harshly delivering a sensation of feeling and presence without flowery description, perfectly matching the harsh brutality of this world.

If it wasn’t for the fantastic narrative thrust of the thing, I would have drowned in the unpleasant, bizarre future universe, no matter how distressingly plausible or scientifically sound it all is. His absorbing, brisk style kept me moving quite rapidly through the dense plot, and ultimately I was rewarded not just with tremendous humanity and even goodness amid all this alien, disturbing scenery, but a resoundingly satisfying conclusion and collision of seemingly disparate plots and elements. This is not one of those books in which plots meander along and then fizzle out, never brought fruitfully to bear by a lazy author. Reynolds harnesses all his plots and drives them into a focused conclusion that rewards the reader for enduring their intricacy and occasionally baffling variety.

This all seems very assured and mature for a writer’s first book, which Revelation Space is, but Reynolds has actually been developing this fictional world — and his narrative style — for years through short stories published in various British science-fiction magazines. Revelation Space is definitely the work of a confident writer and, even clocking in at just over five-hundred very dense pages, it doesn’t at all seem long-winded or flabby. In fact, despite its tendency I would almost call it a fast read.

Alastair Reynolds is sometimes lumped in with the “new weird” movement, which seeks to advance the art of strange fiction by fusing elements of horror, fantasy, and science-fiction freely. In that respect, I think Reynolds belongs to this class, particularly with regard to hard SF and space opera, but that doesn’t mean that this is a book without concrete definition. If you think that space opera should be like Flash Gordon, you may be disappointed, but if you enjoy the idea of science-fiction with very strong writing skill, an epic plot, and a dizzying array of sights and sounds (and you’re not too scared of taking a walk on the dark side), it’s difficult to go wrong here. I thoroughly enjoyed it; hardly a waste of time.

Up next: Fellow British author Peter F. Hamilton’s enormous — and decidedly less dark — epic book, Pandora’s Star. First of a series, and it’s almost a thousand pages long. Light, fast reading. Perfect.

(An odds and ends post of fragmented thoughts. Apologies if this is hopelessly scattered)

I mentioned I’d been listening to some podcasts lately, so I’ve added a little “podroll” in the sidebar. At the moment most of these (well, all of these) are either gaming or geeky sci-fi type podcasts. Hey, they were there. These links will take you to the homepage of the podcast, rather than to the RSS feed, which I think is a more useful link.

Something has struck me about the gaming podcasts — these guys have way more time to play boardgames than I do. Forget roleplaying games; I haven’t had the opportunity to play one in years. I’m really envious actually. I’m embarrassed to admit how many boardgames I actually own that I haven’t gotten to play yet, let alone those I don’t own. Yeesh.

I’ve grown very fond of Fuller’s ESB beer lately. It’s not my favorite beer of all time, but it’s rock-solid and I find its dependability reassuring. The London Porter is also a fave of mine, but my local Whole Foods has a nasty tendency to run out all the time.

Of late I’ve been sorting through all the junk that’s accumulated over the years. There’s something liberating, freeing, about sorting through what you have, weeding it out, giving bits away, selling other bits; it’s like lightening a load you’ve been lugging around on your back. There can be a bittersweet edge to it, though; sorting through bits from your past, even your recent past, can remind you of things about yourself that you’d forgotten, that you’d laid aside. Being suddenly reconnected with these things can be overwhelming, force you to see all the different divergent paths and decisions you’ve made over the years about when and how you’ve spent your time.

At least, this bittersweet quality always happens to me when I weed through stuff I’ve stored away for any length of time. But working through this bittersweetness, and divesting yourself of bits and pieces representing paths perhaps you chose not to take, can also be liberating and freeing, because it reminds you why you’ve chosen to spend your time the way you have, and why you’ve made the decisions you did. By tossing out all the junk moldering in closets and in boxes in the garage, you’re also cleaning out junk in your head.

Whatever anonymous poster has been putting the archived series of Family Ties up on the Usenet — thanks, mate! One of my very favorite shows as a kid, despite the fact that it was not the most even of sitcoms in terms of quality, and despite its occasional foray into trite “issue” episodes, this show still means a great deal to me. The different characters in the family mirrored personality traits in families in my real life more than any other show of the time, and it’s been a real treat to be able to go back and see them again, many for the first time in well over a decade. I was stupid and lazy when TV Land broadcast them a few years ago, and didn’t tape them for myself. I’m glad that someone who did bother to tape them has had the graciousness to put them up on the newsgroups to share with people like me.

As a kind of exercise, I’ve been writing super-short stories lately, like 2000 words or less. These post an interesting challenge, because you cannot rely on the more conventional narrative structuring of a tale with a beginning, middle, and end as you can with short stories of 6000-7000 words (let alone novels and screenplays). At least, most super-short stories are more experimental in structure. What I’ve been trying to do is devise different tactics to tell more conventional beginning-middle-end stories in very brief lengths, and still make it work; for example, starting the story right in the middle of the action and using clues to key the reader in on what’s happened before, even as we’re racing toward the conclusion.

It’s really been quite fun. And it’s a good exercise, because short stories in general, and super-short stories in particular, have never been a field of great experience with me. I’d much rather be writing longform works with complex plots and strong structures. It’s what I’ve taught myself to do, and it’s what I think I’m best at. So stretching myself into territories where I feel less comfortable would seem to be a healthy exercise. There’s also something satisfying about completing a writing project so damned quickly — sometimes, in just an hour. Compared with the thousands of hours that can often be put into a script, this is like nothing. It’s quite refreshing to work with material which is so compact and easily handled, like working with a novel in microcosm.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll market these to buyers, or just keep them as exercises. Either way, I won’t feel like I’ve wasted my time.

I’m getting back into the swing of blogging after a kinda-mandatory hiatus which wasn’t really my intent (there’s a handful of half-finished posts in my drafts which probably will never see the light of day). To make it simple, I’ll start with one of those lame, hey-I-just-saw-this-so-check-it-out kind of posts.

Of late I’ve found myself doing a variety of jobs on this remodel project of mine which are very quiet and lonely, like painting for hours on end. Usually I stick some music on and listen with headphones, but lately I’ve been really enjoying exploring a variety of podcasts out there in the interocean.

Podcasts are somewhat new for me, at least as a regular experience. It can be tricky to find uninterrupted blocks of time long enough to focus my attention fully on what’s being said. And unlike music, it doesn’t work terribly well as background sound when I’ve got to have my mental focus — such as it is — directed at a task, like web design.

But lots of my remodeling work is the perfect opportunity to listen, because jobs like painting and so forth don’t require much mental concentration. It’s kind of like my personal version of the morning commute.

Anyway. Most of the podcasts I’ve been listening to lately have been of the gaming and geeking variety. I’ve always been a fan of games, and it’s been really enjoyable to hear what others have been playing, or seeing, or discovering. And I’m always game for geek. These include:

Kick Ass Mystic Ninjas — this show seems quite popular, and I’ve heard quite a few of them by this point. Each show, Summer, Joe, and David pick a relatively vintage book or movie of the sci-fi/fantasy ilk and basically just blab about it. The show takes on the format of a review and essay, like old Siskel and Ebert. The shows I’ve heard recently cover Logan’s Run, Dune, Flash Gordon, and Ladyhawke. And while generally I’m not a huge fan of having to endure a half-hour of someone else’s critical opinion (I don’t really read reviews or even necessarily condone the whole critics industry), the fact that KAMN takes on more of the tone of a discussion makes it interesting, and generally pretty enjoyable. It doesn’t hurt that I tend to agree with at least one of them most of the time.

Boardgame Speak (aka Geek Speak) — seemingly on hiatus, this show by Derk and Aldie of boardgamegeek.com interviews the really big names in the board game world. And they’re monstrous, both in terms of size and detail. The episode in which they interviewed über-designer Reiner Knizia weighed in at over two hours, and the interview with Fantasy Flight Games founder Christian T. Peterson was so immense that they divided it into three episodes. Derk and Aldie make for odd interviewers, with their very loose, off-the-cuff style; Derk’s laconic, occasionally nasty delivery, and Aldie’s sort of wandering, half-there interjections. For such a strange duo, it comes as something of a surprise that the interviews are so meaty and rewarding, and that — even more bizarrely — the show comes across as a kind of professional leading podcast in its field. If you have any interest in board games, this podcast is almost required listening.

The Vintage Gamer — I like the concept behind this one, in which modern computer game designer Jim Van Verth picks a classic board, computer, or video game from the rosy past to discuss in detail. Obviously pre-scripted, Jim sort of drones on in this monotone that comes across as listless, but it’s fun to be reminded of these oft-forgotten classics from the past.

Slice of Sci-Fi — Michael and Evo seem to be everywhere, with about four hundred thirty three trillion different podcast series to their credit. I would suppose this is their flagship, an attempt at a more full-rounded radio show, with news, interviews, and so on. Summer from KAMN usually joins them as well, and … I don’t know. Something about the format doesn’t really grab me. The interview, for example, with Wil Wheaton back in February felt rushed and thin, like a distracted Jay Leno. There’s some great names who participate, though, including Shawn Piller in the most recent installment.

Radio Free Burrito — maddeningly sporadic, Wil Wheaton has been really just doing RFB as an experiment, feeling his way into a format. He spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about show length, but really, the longer episodes were his best. He probably found his best structure when he lay back and did a straight question-and-answer episode, creating a sort of virtual dialogue with his listeners. Very entertaining. And those episodes (#4 and #5 I believe) in which he took his iRiver out on the road to his auditions, roving reporter style, were also great fun. Regrettably, technical problems killed his most recent attempt at an episode, the one I probably was looking forward to the most: an all-geek q&a. If Wil can get into a routine of regularly producing episodes, and just toss aside all his worry and concern over a format and length and all that nonsense, RFB could really grow into something fun.

Does My Geek Look Big In This — a very silly title for a show I just discovered a couple days ago. Sarah and Nev, from Blighty, discuss three of the most important things in life: beer, gaming, and movies. This one came as a hugely pleasant surprise, and after just one episode has become something of a favourite. Sarah and Nev have a great rapport, their dialogue rolling smoothly together, and they’re terribly relaxed and cheerful (starting the show by cracking open a pub ale can’t hurt). They really seem to enjoy making their podcasts, and that enjoyment rubs off onto the listener. I feel cheerful after listening.

There have been others as well, such as the Official Lost Podcast, Roll 2D6, Have Games Will Travel …. there’s a huge world of stuff out there. Way too many to ever get to. But I’ve found the exploration very rewarding.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite comic books was the short-lived but, to me, fabulous Atari Force, published by DC Comics.

Atari Force first appeared as a series of mini-comics bundled with a number of Atari 2600 cartridges, including Defender, Berzerk, Galaxian, and a few other space-related games, one issue in each of the different titles. In 1983, co-creator Gerry Conway teamed with penciler José Luis García Lopez to release an overhauled new full-length series set a generation after events in the mini-comics.

I don’t recall the mini-comics but I sure as hell remember the full series, which made a huge impact on my impressionable, video game-addled mind, and the few issues I managed to find were read probably near to the point of destruction.

A few months ago, probably with nothing more constructive to do, I poked around and found a complete set of the series in near-mint for less than ten bucks from some dealer selling through ebay. And, like a fine wine, I’ve been savoring them slowly, an issue here, an issue there, letting both the wonderful memories of reading them as a kid — and the intrinsic fun of the stories for their own sake — sink in.

The series really doesn’t have anything specifically to do with Atari, the game company. Instead, what the creators did was invent a science fiction setting that was inspired by the whole sort of science fiction vibe surrounding those classic video games of the early Eighties, one they probably hoped would appeal to the people pumping quarters into, yeah, Berzerk, Galaxian, or Defender (or buying the cartridges). Once the science fiction setting was whipped together, they simply cross-pollinated two big brands in two media companies both owned by the same conglomerate (Warner). Presto.

Regardless of the motives, the result is very classic adventurish sci-fi, like something C.J. Cherryh or David Brin might write, with more than a passing reference to films like Star Wars.

Anyone for whom the name “Atari” conjures up a swooning mystique would probably have as much fun with these funny, forgotten old comics as I have.

Now to trawl through those old 25-cent bins for Rocket Raccoon …

Given my age, it’s little surprise that Star Wars is beyond a movie (or trilogy of movies) to me, but something that’s an inextricable part of my existence. I grew up with it all around me, I expected it all around me, I needed it all around me.

And like so many others who grew up with Star Wars, I’m so intimately familiar with the original versions of the movie that I have a hard time watching the ever-changing Special Editions, the latest iteration of which can be seen in the officially released DVD boxed set. Sure, the films are good enough that I can look past the changes and still have a great time, and man is the transfer good on my HD set, but I would much rather see the Star Wars I remember rather than one which has the fingerprints of an increasingly out-of-touch director who can’t let something go all over it.

Enter the Fan Edits™.

For those of you who don’t know about this wonderful world, basically what’s happened is that there are tons of others out there who love Star Wars but maybe don’t love Lucas’s tinkering and tweaking. So, instead of bitching about it (well, maybe after bitching about it) they went off and found laserdiscs and other archive material and put together their own DVD versions of the original trilogy, the original original trilogy, the original one they originally remember watching originally.

Let’s be honest. Even the best enhanced DVD made off a laserdisc is going to look, well, like an enhanced DVD made off a laserdisc. But one of my favorites of the Fan Edits is ocpmovie’s “Classic Edition” of the original trilogy, where he used a hell of a lot of digital trickery to basically take the 2004 DVD release of the trilogy and then insert, paint, or wrangle in any material off other non-Special Edition source material wherever necessary, in essence brushing out the tamperings done by George and Co. in 1997 and 2004.

The effects are, by and large, fabulous. Because ocpmovie is relying primarily on sleight of hand, most of the time you can’t actually tell that you’re watching anything but the 2004 DVDs, only you never have to wince when Han is so amazingly stupid that he would allow someone sitting opposite him to fire at him before he shoots. At point blank range. Or when computer-generated puppets of stormtroopers clambering up these computer-generated puppets of their mounts (which look like they’ve been sprayed with shiny latex) look so fake and awkward that you have to turn away. Or that embarrassing “expanded” musical number in Return of the Jedi which induces uncontrollable vomiting because you know that the Ewoks weren’t enough, George just hadda go back and put more cutesy funny misery into the thing, so we could watch a reject from Fraggle Rock doing a blues routine like David Coverdale.

You don’t have to wince because all that shit has been flushed down the toilet, where it belongs.

Ocpmovie has gone a step farther with A New Hope and even done all these insanely obscure tweaks to things like the soundtrack, mixing back in the first, first bits from the Summer 1977 mix (like the original Aunt Beru), and other madness.

It’s not perfect, of course. Sometimes the poor source material stands out (though that never bothers me). He did miss one computer-generated 1997 edition shot in the final battle, but it’s quick. And a number of the altered scenes suffer from a stutter that can happen when, say, video is transcoded awkwardly from 25 fps PAL to 29.97 fps NTSC. It’s possible that he had to take the 23.97 fps rate of the 2004 DVD material and knock it up to 29.97 fps to mix in the other material, I don’t know. I haven’t heard others complain about this but it’s certainly noticeable on my system.

And Empire and Jedi, being as they are much less tampered with, are much finer jobs, more professional, more confident. There’s very little of the stuttering issue mentioned above.
It’s funny, I never bought the 2004 official boxset. I guess I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Maybe I was waiting for George to wake up and listen to his own comments about the preservation of films the way we remember them.

But if any of you out there don’t care for the tweaks and changes of recent years, and want the Star Wars trilogy as you remember them, stop by originaltrilogy.com, read up on the discussion, then torrent the Classic Editions or get them off alt.binaries.starwars.

I sure as hell am glad I did.