My god, it's full of stars

At the ripe old age of 90 Sir Arthur C Clarke has died. It's something I'd been expecting for a while (he was getting on a bit), so doesn't come as much of a shock, but is a pretty big deal to the sci-fi world. My formative science fiction experiences were certainly dominated by Arthur C. My dad had a reasonably extensive collection of his books and as a teenager I read them all, from the really early stuff like Childhoods End (which I actually did an English essay on at school) to the more recent collaborative Rama sequels. They formed my baseline for good science fiction and led to it being the almost exclusive genre that I now read (although I occasionally branch out into more mainstream fiction.) Some of my favourites books include the above mentioned Childhoods End, 2001 (obviously, although I read 2010 first for some unfathomable reason!), Fountains of Paradise and Rendezvous with Rama, although I can't say that there are any that I've read that I've not enjoyed in some way. He was also a master at short stories to and I've not found anyone that can match him in that area. I'll miss the fact that they'll be no more output from Clarke, but I think he's made big enough contribution and I'll be sure to return to some of his work in the future.

The dreaming void

Last week I finished reading a new novel (of the pulp sci-fi space opera kind) called The Dreaming Void by Peter F Hamilton. The book is set in the same universe as Hamilton's last two books that formed the Commonwealth Saga and is the start of a new trilogy. To start with if you are going to read this book then you pretty much need to have read the Commonwealth Saga books beforehand. There are several of the same characters involved (despite being set 1500 years later) and many events that are referred to, so I think you'd be quite confused if you didn't have the background from the previous books. Like Hamilton's other major sagas the story has many threads that are jumped between at quite a pace, which takes a bit of getting used to as you try to absorb all the characters and events. There are a couple of threads which seem to flow better and held my focus far more than other areas, but none of it is high literature. The reason I enjoy reading Hamilton's stuff as that it's generally pure pulp fun. There's enough action and high-technology stuff going on to keep you going through the less absorbing parts of the story. One thing that does start to grate, as in previous books, is Hamilton's sex scenes. He does like his sex scenes and almost all the people in his books are outrageously attractive and randy, but largely they'll just make you cringe. It's not that I'm prudish about literary sex, it's just that he can't write it without it coming across a bit pubescent-teenage-boy-style. There's one particular scene that almost made me stop reading the book completely! If I disregard certain scenes though I did enjoy the book. It's not as good as parts of the Nights Dawn trilogy, which provided some great moments of pure space opera fun, but it seems on a level with the Commonwealth Saga. I'll keep on with it as it has left me wanting to know what happens next.

Returning heroes

What do I make of the first episode of series two of Heroes? (No major spoilers) Well, it carried on pretty much as it left off (albeit 4 Months Later.) We're reintroduced to the majority of the previous characters and what's happened in their life since we last saw them (there's a lot of dialogue devoted to the standard exposition of what's gone on), with a couple of new faces put in there (in what'll probably be the new Nikki Sanders-type story.) Due to the who'll catchup nature of it there's a lot packed into the episode. But, I think the show has kept its style and pace really well. The opening episode has certainly asked a whole heap of new questions, some of which seem glaringly obvious, but others are more intriging. I certainly really enjoyed it and am now eagerly anticipating the second episode.

I've also watched the first episode of series four of House (Spoiler for end of series three if you've not seen it yet). I'm not quite sure why I persist with watching House, as, in classic medical drama style (well even more so in this case), it repeats very similar stories over and over. You'd think I'd be bored of it ny now. I think I just enjoy watching Hugh Laurie play House, while the same predictable things happen around him and his work colleagues seem duller and more annoying. At the end of the last series House's three employees either resigned or were sacked (and don't appear in this episode despite all the actors names being in the opening credits) and here we see him trying to solve a case himself without the help of his team. The whole point of the episode (as Cuddy and Wilson keep telling him in ever more irritating ways) is that he'd do better with I team and he should employ some people, but I didn't really get why as he solves the case perfectly well on his own (the main point of the entire show being that he's really bloody good at what he does.) I'll keep with the series, as I do perversely enjoy it still, until the supporting characters really do drive me insane.

There are a long list of other shows that I have in the pipeline to watch (some of which wee-n-sarcastic mentioned) including: Reaper, Bionic Woman, Life and of course, in the hopefully not too distance future, BSG. I'll review these as I get round to watching them.

Season finales

The last week has seen the end of seasons for many US TV shows that I've been watching. For some the end of these has come too soon, but other couldn't come soon enough. I'll attempt to review, or at least give my opinion on, these shows whilst keeping spoilers to a minimum (there are a few thought, so read on at your own discretion).

24 - Season 6
The end of the last series saw Jack Bauer being kidnapped and shipped off to China, so it was going to be interesting as to how they got him back to take part in this series. Needless to say he got back and just in time to. This time round the terrorists of choice were militant Islamists (from an unnamed middle-eastern country) and their weapon of choice was the good old nuclear bomb (in the form of suitcase nukes). Of course this was just the tip of a whole conspiratorial iceberg that would involve a familiar face from the past.

The seasons main theme saw Jack Bauer dealing with many family issues - although Kim wasn't involved. It started off with all the usual fast paced action we expect and kept the implausibility scale rising throughout - this is something fans of 24 have come to expect and can't really complain about. 24 will often, towards the end of the series, attempt to wrap up the seemingly main story-line by bringing out some overarching conspiracy, so it shouldn't be a surprise that this series follows the mold. Unfortunately this time round I just couldn't be bothered with this extra bit of story - for which the implausibility scale was really going through the roof. It was just a big anticlimax and pretty dull to boot, however I don't think that they could have sustained the main story for a whole 24 episodes. This leads me to think that 24 has pretty much run its course. They've already had to recycle storylines, so I don't really see where else it can go. Sorry Jack, I think your days are numbered.

Overall opinion: A good effort to start with, but becoming to stale and generally stupid towards the end.

Score: 6 dead terrorists out of 10.

House - Season 3
At the end of last season Dr Greg House had been shot, which would seem a bit of a downer to most people. The start of this one, however, saw him seeming rather happy, but would it last - unlikely. Being a medical drama we're presented with a variety of medical situations, but these can start to become a tad repetitive. In House the diagnosing of the illness is a large part of the show, but obviously to keep people interested we have to delve into the lives, and relationships, of the main protagonists.

Hugh Laurie still does a great job playing House, and provides one of the most likeable complete bastards that TV has ever seen. You still find yourself siding with him in the majority of situations, because for the most part everyone else seems to be a bit wussy. This season sees someone trying to compete with House for the title of chief bastard, but that storyline does drag on for a bit too long. The rest of the relationships within the show provide enough amusement to keep you entertained, but you can tell that there's nothing more to really add within the group. I think that this has been seen by shows writers/producers and it could be all change for the next series.

Overall opinion: An enjoyable series that's provided plenty of amusement, but ready for a change. It's still sustained by Hugh Laurie's performance, but that's no bad thing.

Score: 7 cases of Lupus out of 10

Lost - Season 3
The last season of Lost saw several of the main characters kidnapped by the mysterious Other's. This one left off exactly where the last one ended. The series was split into two halves (in between which there was a two month mid-season break). The first half focussed on those held captive by the Others and in my opinion it dragged. There was a lot going on, and you learnt a reasonable amount about the Others, but it didn't hold my interest.

After a few slow episodes the second half of the series really picked things up again. Lots of things started happening obviously leading up to some kind of head, which brought back a lot of excitement to the series and meant that I was eagerly anticipating the next episode.

I'm not really sure if I can say that any of the general mysteries of the series were explained this season, but many new things did come to light. The level of crazy was certainly ramped up to a high level by the end of the series.

Overall opinion: A slow start, but it pulled it back at the end leaving things very interesting for the next series.

Score: 7 planes crashes out of 10

Heroes - Season 1
Heroes was a new show so I had no prior expectation except the recommendation of my flatmate. The premise of the show can be seen in my post here. I was hooked on this show fairly early on and this early enthusiasm didn't ebb as the series went on. There were about 5 story threads that came together at various moments in the series. Not all of the threads were as interesting as each other, and certain parts didn't sit as well within the overall story, but they each provided something different and nothing seemed overly strained. One of the outstanding characters in the show was the Japanese nerd Hiro. He was used for different effect throughout the show, not just as comic relief for the whole thing (although when he was used for comic effect it worked well and didn't seem stupid or out of context). Some of the other characters were fairly stereotypical, but that's to be expected from a popular TV series.

The end of the series did wrap up pretty much everything that it brought up, but left a couple of teasers for the next season. The whole premise of the show seems to be made so that new characters can be brought in easily, and old characters got rid of, so hopefully things can stay fresh. I'll be looking forward to seeing how the next series pans out.

Overall opinion: An exciting new series that I enjoyed throughout. Despite seeming to just take the plot of the X-men this managed to make it seem new and is well worth checking out.

Score: 9 mutants out of 10

Spidey (non)sense

The third installment of Sam Raimi's Spider-man franchise became the top grossing opening day film ever when released a couple of weeks back, but it's taken me a bit of time before getting out to the cinema to see it. However, today I decided that having seen, and enjoyed, the first two films I should give this one a go and add my contibution to the pile of money it's made.

The film starts off pretty much where the last one left off (it even gives you a quick "previously on Spider-man" style update in the opening titles.) Peter's/Spidey's mate Harry is still rather pissed with him (for reasons I wont say in case you've not seen number 2), but him and MJ are still very loved up. Thing's aren't all happy in the relationship though as MJ think's Peter/Spidey's getting a bit up himself - and she'd be right to. These things lead to much tension and many problems, with Peter trying to deal with many issues involving love, friendship and revenge.

Now the previous films have always been rather schmaltzy when it came to the emotional scene's between Peter and MJ (or Peter and his Aunt May), but I don't remember them grating on me as much as in this film. The main reason I think they grated was due to Tobey Maguire's face - throughout these sort of scenes he has a dopey confused look about him, like a faithful, but stupid, dog that can't comprehend what his owner wants him to do. These scenes in part make you cringe, and in part make you want someone to give him a slap. Then there are the scenes, done for comedy effect I assume, which see Peter/Tobey becoming a badass (strutting about and playing it smooth with the ladies) - these really do make you sink into your seat and wince. The humour in Spider-man is supposed to come form Spidey's witty one liners, and Peter's interactions with J. J. Jameson, not by making him look like a twat. Now how I've described things may indeed be how Maguire meant to play the whole thing (Peter/Spider-man is supposed to be the architypal geek-cum-superhero after all), but it mainly annoyed me.

Other than Peter/Spidey/Tobey there was one other main thing that didn't quite hold together. There were a couple of moments in the film were it seemed like they'd removed about 15 minutes of it and just left an unexplained gap. They may well be parts that ended up on the editing room floor to make way for more of the special effects filled moments, but it created a couple of disconnects in the plot.

Now I've not been particularly kind, but I did sort of enjoy the film - despite having to cringe through various moments. The effects were of a very high standard and it didn't drag for a 2 hour 20 minute film. I was, however, more disjointed than the last two films, and obviously the effects don't have the same inpact a third time around.

The plans seem to be to carry on the franchise for as many films as possible, but number three might have been Maguire last turn as Spidey. I think it'd probably be good getting someone else in to give a slightly different interpretation of the role.

Sunshine on an overcast day

Posted from Phys. Rev. X:

Sunshine is a new sci-fi film directed by Danny "Trainspotting" Boyle and written by Alex "The Beach" Garland and last night some of us went to see it. The flim follows crew of a second attempted mission to reignite the Sun, which has (for a probably best unexplained reason) stopped working properly. As a bunch of (astro)physicists (including one solar physicist) going to see a film about the Sun dying, naturally we're going to find a few holes to pick in the science, but mainly we were just hoping to see a good film. I could write a very long post with all the factual problems with the science in the film, but being factually correct isn't the main point of most popular sci-fi as the setting is just frame on which you hang the film. The main point of the film was to focus on the psychological effects on the crew as they passed into the zone where the intense solar radiation meant that communication home was no longer possible - wait a minute this zone appeared to start outside the orbit of Mercury, but we can easily recieve signals from there! No, I mustn't start on the nitpicking - and also how they dealt with being humanity's "Last, best hope" (Babylon 5 anyone) for salvation.

As far as eye candy went the special effects were great. We were treated to many majestic views of the spaceship, the Icarus 2, backdropped by the tremendous, yet terrifying and mighty, Sun. The film ramped up the level of crazy throughout, and this was generally well acted. There was a fair bit of distorted camera effects and angles, and mildly subliminal images towards the end of the film, which didn't, for me, enhance the film or serve any purpose. You were left more with a feeling of "What!?" than "oooooohh...aaaaaaahh..." at the end.

Overall I enjoyed the film as an entertaining spectacle, but was left rather flat by it. I wasn't really moved by any of the characters to care about any of them. I wasn't even particularly bothered about the success or failure of their mission considering its grand goal was trying to save all of mankind. Sunshine didn't give you the all out action and fun of something like Armageddon, which serves it's purpose as a bit of fluff sci-fi very well, but it also didn't give you the darkness, or real psycho craziness of something like Event Horizon. It sat somewhere inbetween and didn't quite satisfy. A modern film that does the etherial, going a bit mad, aspects of space quite well is Solaris, which just lulls you and kind of washes over you (that said I watched it on a plane, so was fairly spaced out myself) as it doesn't try to give you a big heroic saving mankind theme. But if you want proper sci-fi of the kind that this was trying to be then you can't beat a bit of 2001.

It's here

I've been quick out of the blocks and have already downloaded the last episode of BSG. Too bad I've got to go to work. I'll have to build up that anticipation level some more and watch it later.

[Update: so I watched BSG last night and without giving anything away I can only say "guuh hhuuhhh whhaa baah... what the fuck!" I also now reckon that I'm probably a Cylon (just noticed that you can't write Cylon without the word looking like it should be the name for a washing detergent). It's the only thing that makes sense.]

TV times

To update you on my present location I did finally arrive in Baton Rouge for my meeting on Saturday evening, after having no further flight complications. This meant I only missed a day despite all my travel problems!

There's been one slight advantage to being in the US in that I got to watch BSG live. I got to see it a full, probably, 16 or so hours before I'd have seen it, after downloading, in the UK. That said, I had to put up with the endless bloody adverts - I far prefer watching the torrent, in which people have kindly edited these annoyances out. With last night's episode being the penultimate one of the season it's getting pretty good again and ramping up the action. Can I wait till next week for the final episode? - I just don't know if I can, I'm that excited! The problem with the season ending is that it will be the first time I've had to wait all those months before getting a new series to watch. I think I'll have to find another show to fill the time.

Reading into things

A lot of people seem to use their blogs to review books/films/tv shows/video games/restaurants/foods/drinks/whatever and I've decided to join in by reviewing (or at least briefly commenting on) the book I finished reading last night. It was Cities in Flight by James Blish. This book is actually a collection of four Blish novels following man's expansion from being bound to our solar system to having a galactic civilisation, and it spans an approximately 2000 year period of future history from around the present day to about 4104. The books weren't quite written in their internal chronologies' order, with book two being written first, followed by book one, and then three and four. I may give some spoilers here, but I'll try not to give away anything major.

Firstly I should say that I did enjoy this book, but it's definitely a book of two halves (I know I already said it's made up of four books, so in reality it's a book of four quarters). The first novel follows the development of the technology that allows humans to eventually begin flights to other stars i.e. faster-than-light (FTL in sci-fi speak) drives - called spin-dizzies - and what Blish calls antiagathics, or drugs that prolong human life almost unlimitedly. This book only covers a short time-span of a few years and holds together very well, with enough characterisation for you to appreciate the main characters and a really well developed plot that stays interesting throughout. The second novel jumps forward about a thousand years and we get to hear about the cities in flight of the title. Many worlds have been colonised in a first wave of expansion after the invention of the spin-dizzies, however things on Earth are fairly bleak. The spin-dizzies enable entire cities to lift themselves off Earth and fly about the galaxies to look for work on colony worlds. We hear of one city and a boy press-ganged onto it as it takes flight to find work. This story also takes place over a relatively short period of time and concentrates on this boy as the main character as he experiences first the harsh life aboard the city he was press-ganged onto, and then the completely different experience of being on New York - which had taken flight many years before and was well used to the wandering lifestyle. Again it all hangs together well and is a very compelling story which makes you want to hear more about the characters.

Things start to go a bit wrong in the third book. This is set a few hundred years after the previous novel and now concentrates on the travels of New York in its searches for work, with the major player being its Mayor Amalfi. The main problem with this book is that it spans several hundred years, which leads to the reader feeling that there are quite large inconsistencies in the time frame. This is because the characters don't seem to evolve as you'd expect that they would over such a period of time - this is on purpose, I expect, because the characters have such long lifespans (due to the antiagathics) that it's natural that things take such a long time to unfold. Unfortunately Blish a) doesn't really give the reader a consistent grasp of the time frame, so things seem to happen at very weird rates and b) the characters start to grate on you a bit. You just feel that you're missing something. This feeling caries on into the fourth and final novel, which mainly however grates because of the very weird physics it invokes (I know that FTL travel is weird physics, but it's a mainstay of much sci-fi)!

So basically I'd say that the first two novels are very good reads. The second two are ok, but just seem poor after what's preceded them. You basically end up wishing that Blish had carried on in the same vein, with maybe some of the characters, as the first two novels. If you've read the book and think that I'm completely wrong (or right) then let me know.

You can now look forward to my next review. I'll be reading Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson which is pretty thick, so it may take a while to get through. I hope it's on a par with Cryptonomicon which was very good.

One to watch

After a bit of pushing from my flatmate I've started watching the new (well newish as it started last September) NBC sci-fi show Heroes. I'm three episodes in and I'm hooked - this adds to the list of House, 24, Lost and of course BSG that I (or my flatmate) have to download each week. The basic premise of the programme is that there are a disparate group of people who have special powers, because they're the next step in human evolution! They're only just beginning to know about these powers, or start to feel that there's something special about themselves, and they're each coming to terms with it in different ways. This is all building up to some climactic event (which is pretty much spelled out early on in the series) during which I expect all the protagonists will be forced together and the full extent of there powers revealed. It's kind of a mix of the X-men (maybe a rather large part of the mix) and Darwin's Radio by Greg Bear. As I said I've been sucked in now, so will be eagerly anticipating each new episode.

End of the season

Tonight I finished the first series of Battlestar Galactica. I've really enjoyed it so far and will be starting watching series two asap, mainly because I really need a resolution to the cliffhanger the first series has ended on.

My Sci-fi life

The BBC are trying to get a compilation of everyones science fiction experiences (in all it's forms) at their website here. It's fairly new - I think - so there's a lot of stuff that needs to be added. I'll have to have a think about my seminal sci-fi experiences and see if I have anything to add. Hmmmm... I do like a whole lot of sci-fi so this could take some time. There are, however, some quite large gaps in my knowledge which many would consider scandalous - for example I've never seen an episode of Blakes 7 and most Gerry Anderson stuff slipped me by (I think puppets slightly disturbed me!) I'm registered on the site as cosmiczoo, so look out for any additions I might make.

Space battles galore!

After recommendations from several people (and due to my flatmate downloading it) I've started watching the re-make/re-interpretation of Battlestar Galactica (also see here). I've only watched the pilot mini-series so far, but that's been enough for me to catch the sci-fi show bug again. I think I'll be watching the rest in fairly quick succession over the next few weeks, until I've caught up with the middle of series three which is currently showing. What more could a sci-fi fan want than huge space battles, evil cybernetic robots, and attractive women - it's got them all. I now just have to get used to Starbuck being a woman rather than Dirk Benedict, although this shouldn't be too hard as she's far more attractive than I ever thought Dirk was.