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Archive for Science Fiction

Untimed Bundle For Sale!

Apr15

StoryBundle has just launched a new collection of indie Fantasy and Science Fiction titles including my time travel novel Untimed and 8 other awesome books!

Is there a common theme to these masterpieces? Why yes, they all survived the ImmerseOrDie Challenge!

The premise of the ImmerseOrDie challenge is simple. Every morning, the host, Jefferson Smith, gets on his treadmill, opens a new indie fantasy or science fiction ebook, and starts his morning walk. Any book that holds his attention for the duration of that forty minute stroll gets labeled a survivor. But getting there isn’t easy. Every time he reads something that breaks his immersion in the story — bad grammar, inconsistent worldbuilding, illogical character behaviors, etc. — the book earns a red flag, called a WTF. If he finds three WTFs before he finishes his walk, the clock stops, the book closes, and he ruminates on what went wrong. Whether it survives or not though, he writes up a report about his reading experience and about what sorts of things he might have learned from it, and then share that with all the folks who follow his stream. (You can read more about the IOD and see all the archived reports here.)

How has that worked out so far? Well, as anyone who has tried to sample the firehose of indie publishing can confirm, few of the titles being released these days meet even basic professional production standards. So it should come as no surprise that by the time he was ready to submit this collection to StoryBundle, he had read 114 titles, of which only 13 had survived that basic probe.

But this StoryBundle is not just about being clean enough to squeak past his forty-minute guard dogs. After surviving the first round, those thirteen survivors were then run through a second gauntlet as well. To survive that round, they had to do more than simply avoid WTF triggers. They had to grab his attention and hold it, and then deliver a complete and satisfying story. Not just clean production, but an entertaining read. And not just for forty minutes either, but for the entire book.

What he had left with at the end of that second round was the collection of books you see here today, snatched right out of the fury of that indie firehose. These were not written by established writers who are diversifying their revenue streams, but by truly unknown writers who happen to have game. In his view, these are the writers waiting in the wings for their big breaks. And he (and I) are hoping this StoryBundle just might be the break they’ve been waiting for.

story-bundle-brand

So after all that, it is now my great pleasure to introduce the champions. But rather than just regurgitate the usual marketing blurbs to describe them, he’ll tell you both about the books and what it was in those first forty minutes that pulled him in.

iodcentury-sm
Century of Sand, by Christopher Ruz (Fantasy)

An old warrior rescues a young girl from the clutches of an evil wizard and then flees with her into exile. It’s a desperate bid to find something—anything—that can put the world right again, and hopefully, undo whatever darkness has been done to the girl. His daughter.

For Century, it was the setting. I was intrigued enough by the premise of an old warrior on the run with an uncooperative girl-mute in tow, but it was the oppressive landscape that captivated me. The heat and sand and dehydration were almost palpable—enough to make the drama of the army that pursued them almost secondary.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

Crimson Son
Crimson Son, by Russ Linton (SF)

In a world where government-manufactured super-heroes have replaced war and terrorism as the world’s greatest threats – and it’s only source of salvation – there’s only one thing that sucks worse than having no powers at all. And that’s being the powerless son of the greatest hero of them all, and a prisoner inside the family fortress of solitude. For his own protection, you understand. Well, Spencer Harrington, son of the Crimson Mask, has had enough. He’s tired of playing by dad’s rules, and this time, he’s going to do things his way.

Here it began with the premise. Lots of people have tackled superhero fiction before, but taking the POV of an un-super child in a dysfunctional super-family had me hooked from the beginning. What’s not to love when you first realize that the teen protagonist is being held prisoner—not by some archvillain, but by his own super-father, who has trapped him in the family fortress of solitude? But it takes more than just premise, and I was ultimately sold by Linton’s empathetic handling of the opening situation. Rather than focusing on heroics, this starts out in a very relatable way, hooking us with hints of the fraying family dynamic before anything super-powered even gets onto the stage.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

improb
The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl, by Bryce Anderson (SF)

A scientist’s life is thrown into chaos when a grad student’s suicide turns out to be more than it seemed, and ends up triggering a singularity breakthrough in AI computing. What follows is a tour-de-force adventure in politics, technology, and human achievement, with some epic smack-down battles to top it all off.

Most AI stories make what I think is a mistake, having scientists set out to create something sentient that later gets away from them. As a computer scientist myself, however, I have never been able to buy that whole “sentience by intentional design” gambit. If we don’t understand how human consciousness works, how can we ever expect to build an artificial one on purpose? But Anderson’s approach seemed at once so brilliant and so obvious that I was immediately hooked. Why hadn’t anybody ever taken this angle before? I don’t want to ruin the story for you, so let me just say that the AI in Singularity Girl doesn’t begin with some hyper-clever act of scientific creation—it begins with a simple suicide.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

journeyman
The Journeyman, by Michael Alan Peck (Fantasy)

To Paul Reid, life as a homeless teen seems pretty bleak. But it turns out that was nothing compared to being dead. After an untimely accident takes him out of the world, Paul finds himself locked in a battle between the forces of light and dark – a battle that dark appears to be winning. And light seems too apathetic to care.

The first appeal for me with Journeyman was the absolute economy of scenes, and how brilliantly they supported each other to introduce a rich and believable cast of characters. As a result, Peck was able to get to the main crisis very quickly, but at no time did I ever feel that he was rushing. The second appeal was the premise. Lots of writers have tackled the “life after death” story, but this was something fresh. Not just a battle between the forces of Good and Evil, which Evil appears to be winning, but one in which Good doesn’t even seem to give a damn? Count me in.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

tinker
Mad Tinker’s Daughter, by JS Morin (Fantasy)

In a dual reality, where people live free on one side, but are enslaved by aliens on the other, a young woman and her crew of renegades have formed a resistance of sorts. Armed with the bits of tech they can either steal or reverse-engineer, these few hope to change the world – both worlds – for the better. Or die trying.

Tinker is built on an unusual twist. I understood right from the outset that something odd was going on. Pairs of characters seemed to be “twinned” in some fashion, but the nature of how that worked was doled out slowly, and that worked as a lure that kept pulling me further and further into the adventure. It’s a delicate balancing act for an author to try keeping something as fundamental as “how reality works” as a mystery from the reader, and still not alienate them from the story, but Morin manages to do just that. And by the time things had slowly unfolded into not one, but two steampunk worlds, each with a rich and well-lived-in feel to it, I was hooked.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

pay
Pay Me, Bug!, by Christopher Wright (SF)

If you miss Firefly, this is the kind of book that’s gonna ease your goram aches and lamentations, for a spell. Join Grif Vindh and the space-faring crew of the Fool’s Errand as they try to pull off the greatest heist in history. Again.

One of the harder things to put into a story is a believable sense of history between the characters, but Wright makes it seem easy. I was immediately drawn to the sense of camaraderie between the captain and his crew in this rollicking space adventure. At once easy and familiar with each other, but also professional and competent at their jobs, I instantly wanted to be a part of the good natured banter that passed among these freelance rogues. Beginning on page one, I felt like I was back on board the Serenity, and that feeling never went away.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

analog-sm
Strictly Analog, by Richard Levesque (SF)

In a decaying world where even your pet ferret has a live-to-net video feed, some problems require a guy who couldn’t leave a bit-trace if he tried. In that case, you go to Lomax. Ex-military, tough as nails… And strictly analog.

The 1st person POV is something that I see over and over again on my treadmill, but it almost always ends up with a bad case of what I call “Galloping ‘I’ disease”—those interminable paragraphs full of “I did this,” “I did that,” “I went here,” and “I went there.” When every fifth word is “I,” it can be hard to hear the story for all the echoing that’s going on in your head. But not so here. Levesque skillfully avoided that “I”-trap. He then sold me completely on the reality of his future LA when it was revealed that he and all his neighbors lived in illegally converted We-Store storage lockers, putting a totally unexpected spin on the notion of the self-storage industry. Details like this are what raise an SF story up out of the usual mire of recycled tropes and convince me that the author has something new to offer. And when I got all that in the first five pages, I couldn’t wait to see what else was in store.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

Untimed-sm
Untimed, by Andy Gavin (SF)

Charlie is a young man who’s been entirely forgettable for as long as he can remember, but on his 16th birthday he suddenly learns the reason why: he and his family are unstuck in time. But before he learns what that means, his father disappears. In a desperate bid to find him and finally get some answers, Charlie follows a strange man into a dark alley. And emerges into 18th century London.

Some rare books can hook you with the very first line. Not just intrigue you, but hook you—convince you not only that the story will be interesting, but that the writer knows what he’s doing and that your precious spare time is in good hands. And that’s what happened for me here.

My mother loves me and all, it’s just that she can’t remember my name.

As soon as I read that one sentence, I knew this was going to be a good story. I didn’t know yet if it would be well edited, but story-wise, this was a writer’s opening, with an entire novella hiding behind it. So when the protagonist went on to reveal that his entire family was somehow “unstuck in time,” I was on board with both feet and my steamer trunk already packed for the journey.

(Read the full IOD Report.)

Untimed-sm
Brotherhood of Delinquents, by Jefferson Smith (Fantasy)

For me as a writer, premise is everything. If I can’t find an interesting situation to explore, I can’t stay interested in the project long enough to write it. But for Brotherhood, I wanted to do more than just tackle an intriguing premise. I also wanted to tackle a challenging audience—one that most authors have given up on as a focus: teenage boys.
When I was really young, I read things like The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, Danny Dunn, and The Three Investigators. But once I’d reached my teens, it seemed that those sorts of buddy-based adventure stories had all dried up. There certainly weren’t any in the fantasy genre. What had happened to the stories full of mystery and sleuthing, secret tunnels, codes, and boys being smarter than the adults around them? Those had been the hallmarks of boyish fascination that had made a die-hard reader of me, but as a teen I couldn’t find them anywhere. Eventually I moved on to more grown-up stories, but in the back of my mind, that vacuum has always stood out as a beacon to me. Fantasy adventure buddy-fiction for teen boys. All I had to do was find a way to take all the stuff I’d loved as a kid, put it all together, and then flip the conventions upside down.
Thus was born the premise for Brotherhood of Delinquents. Take a group of boys who don’t know or like each other, and who are generally perceived as useless wastrels by the adults around them, and put them in the middle of a mystery that the adults aren’t even aware of yet. Add in a dash of secret clubs, hidden passages, and a sense of swash-buckling adventure, and we’re off to the races.
I can’t point you at what other people have said about it yet, because Brotherhood is making its publishing debut in this StoryBundle. But all the fancy punditry in the world means little to me on this one. If there’s a boy in your life who hasn’t been able to find books that hold his interest, show him Brotherhood of Delinquents. I’ll be happy to stand by his judgment. After all, I wrote it for him. – Jefferson Smith

Sounds like a great collection, right? Well it is, and I hope you’ll join us over at StoryBundle.com to show your support for indie writing. And can I ask for a favor? Please consider sharing this announcement. If you or your friends have ever complained about the tide of low-quality books that swamp the indie byways, this is your one-stop opportunity to set the record straight. There really are some great books out there in indie-land.

And here are nine of them to prove it.  Get it before May 10!

Related posts:

  1. Untimed but not Unbundled
  2. Untimed officially for Sale!
  3. Untimed for sale at B&N and iTunes
  4. Untimed – Two Novels, Two Drafts!
  5. Book Review: XVI (read sexteen)
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Untimed
Tagged as: bundle, Fantasy, ImmerseOrDie, Science Fiction, StoryBundle, Untimed

Untimed but not Unbundled

Mar13

I’ve been sitting on this for a long time, but at last I can finally announce that on April 15, StoryBundle will be launching a new collection of indie Fantasy and Science Fiction titles. And what’s going to be in that bundle, you might ask? Only my time travel novel Untimed and 7 other awesome Indie SciFi/Fantasy titles that passed the ImmerseOrDie Treadmill Gauntlet.

What is that?

For those who don’t know about ImmerseOrDie, it’s simple. Every morning, the host, Jefferson Smith, gets on his treadmill, opens a new indie ebook, and starts walking. Any book that holds his attention for the duration of that 40:00 minute stroll gets labeled a survivor. But getting there is not easy. Every time he reads something that breaks his immersion in the story— bad grammar, inconsistent worldbuilding, illlogical character behaviors, etc. — that book earns a red flag, called a WTF. If he finds three WTFs, the clock stops, the book closes, and he goes off to write up the report of what went wrong.

But this upcoming StoryBundle is not just a random grab-bag of some books that managed to squeak past the 40:00-minute guard-dogs. Those survivors were all run through a second gauntlet and these eight champions are the ones that came out of that round unscathed as well. See, unbeknownst to any of the authors, every title that joined the IOD Survivor’s club was then entered into a secret Round 2. To survive that round, Jeff reads the entire book and they would have to do more than simply avoid WTF triggers. They had to grab his attention and hold it, and then deliver a complete and satisfying story. Not just clean, but entertaining, as well.

So that’s exactly what these 8 books have done, and I’ll stack these up against any collection, anywhere—indie or otherwise. So on Apr 15, when the doors open on this collection, you’ll be able to get all 8 of the winners (plus a surprise or two that will be announced later) for the low, low price of “whatever you want to pay.” That’s right. Just decide how much you want to tip the authors, type that number into the box, and then download the entire set. And as an added bonus, every StoryBundle has a designated charity that will receive a portion of the proceeds.

story-bundle-brand

But you probably want to know what books are in the collection. So here they are, your 2015 ImmerseOrDie Double-Champions, in alphabetical order:

iodcentury-sm
Century of Sand, by Christopher Ruz (Fantasy)

An old warrior rescues a young girl from the clutches of an evil wizard and then flees with her into exile. It’s a desperate bid to find something—anything—that can put the world right again, and hopefully, undo whatever darkness has been done to the girl. His daughter. (Read the full IOD Report.)

Crimson Son
Crimson Son, by Russ Linton (SF)

In a world where government-manufactured super-heroes have replaced war and terrorism as the world’s greatest threats – and it’s only source of salvation – there’s only one thing that sucks worse than having no powers at all. And that’s being the powerless son of the greatest hero of them all, and a prisoner inside the family fortress of solitude. For his own protection, you understand. Well, Spencer Harrington, son of the Crimson Mask, has had enough. He’s tired of playing by dad’s rules, and this time, he’s going to do things his way. (Read the full IOD Report.)

improb
The Improbable Rise of Singularity Girl, by Bryce Anderson (SF)

A scientist’s life is thrown into chaos when a grad student’s suicide turns out to be more than it seemed, and ends up triggering a singularity breakthrough in AI computing. What follows is a tour-de-force adventure in politics, technology, and human achievement, with some epic smack-down battles to top it all off. (Read the full IOD Report.)

journeyman
The Journeyman, by Michael Alan Peck (Fantasy)

To Paul Reid, life as a homeless teen seems pretty bleak. But it turns out that was nothing compared to being dead. After an untimely accident takes him out of the world, Paul finds himself locked in a battle between the forces of light and dark – a battle that dark appears to be winning. And light seems too apathetic to care. (Read the full IOD Report.)

tinker
Mad Tinker’s Daughter, by JS Morin (Fantasy)

In a dual reality, where people live free on one side, but are enslaved by aliens on the other, a young woman and her crew of renegades have formed a resistance of sorts. Armed with the bits of tech they can either steal or reverse-engineer, these few hope to change the world – both worlds – for the better. Or die trying. (Read the full IOD Report.)

pay
Pay Me, Bug!, by Christopher Wright (SF)

If you miss Firefly, this is the kind of book that’s gonna ease your goram aches and lamentations, for a spell. Join Grif Vindh and the space-faring crew of the Fool’s Errand as they try to pull off the greatest heist in history. Again. (Read the full IOD Report.)

analog-sm
Strictly Analog, by Richard Levesque (SF)

In a decaying world where even your pet ferret has a live-to-net video feed, some problems require a guy who couldn’t leave a bit-trace if he tried. In that case, you go to Lomax. Ex-military, tough as nails… And strictly analog. (Read the full IOD Report.)

Untimed-sm
Untimed, by Andy Gavin (SF)

Charlie is a young man who’s been entirely forgettable for as long as he can remember, but on his 16th birthday he suddenly learns the reason why: he and his family are unstuck in time. But before he learns what that means, his father disappears. In a desperate bid to find him and finally get some answers, Charlie follows a strange man into a dark alley. And emerges into 18th century London. (Read the full IOD Report.)

Sounds like a great collection, right? Well it is, and I hope you’ll join us over at StoryBundle.com on Apr. 15 to show your support for indie writing. And can I ask for a favor? Please consider sharing this announcement. If you or your friends have ever complained about the tide of low-quality books that swamp the indie byways, this is your one-stop opportunity to set the record straight. There really are some great books out there in indie-land.

And here are eight of them to prove it.

Related posts:

  1. Untimed, Unheard no More
  2. Untimed – Two Novels, Two Drafts!
  3. Untimed officially for Sale!
  4. Untimed nearly here!
  5. Untimed Fourth Draft Finished
By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Untimed
Tagged as: Fantasy, Immerse or Die, Science Fiction, Story Bundle, Untimed

Why Lucy Why?

Feb20

324245Title: Lucy

Cast: Scarlett Johansson (Actor), Morgan Freeman (Actor), Luc Besson (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction

Watched: January 7, 2015

Summary: Dumb ^ 3

_

I loved The Fifth Element and The Professional (flaws and all), so if you add Scarlett Johansson into the mix, you’d hardly think things could go too wrong. But they do, they really do.

Lucy is just a stunningly dumb film trying to “act” like a smart one. Now, it’s not unwatchable (unless there is stock footage, a CGI australopithecine, or Morgan Freeman on screen), but it makes absolutely no sense.

The meta-premise of a woman undergoing a sort of personal Singularity could be decent, but this is combined with a watered down splash of crime thriller. Maybe Besson lost Gary Oldman’s phone number? Even this mundane part is lame with absolutely no character or character development. There is no personality to the  mumbling Chinese gangster heavy. No real threat as we know Lucy could just wave him into a coma.

Back to the premise. One of my biggest problems is the regurgitation of that lame-ass idea that “we only use 10% of our brain.” Ok. Lets even pretend this is true (it really isn’t) and that a bag of leaking untested drugs in your stomach can wake up the remaining 90%. How on earth would this give you magic powers over gravity, other people, the ability to see things around the world, alter matter, defy the laws of conservation of mass and energy and all that? Wouldn’t you just get smarter? Or more neurotic?

Combine this idiocy with an unexplained desire to film Morgan Freeman spouting nonsense about the same subject while intercut with cheesy nature footage and you have a recipe for serious cheese. French cheese I guess, like old Livarot. Stinky, but without the yummy creamy center.

There are so many stupid things about the “plotting” of this film. To get started:

  • Who shoots Richard (in broad daylight)?
  • Why is the bad guy killing some guys for the hell of it in his suite?
  • Why are they going global with this new drug before even testing it locally? (as they apparently have no idea what it does)
  • Why do they have to call someone who speaks English?
  • Why do they put the drug mule in a room for a couple of hours before sending her to the plane and why do they then kick her in the stomach?
  • How the hell is some of that first extra 10% of her brain she regains include martial arts and weapons training?
  • Why does she keep killing strangers and expecting us to think it’s okay?
  • If she can put people to sleep with the wave of an arm, why does she bother fighting them?
  • If she is willing to shoot half a dozen random strangers on her way to the hospital, why doesn’t she kill the bad guy when she has a chance? Reason: Besson wanted him to come back for a gratuitous and useless shootout that served no dramatic function.
  • What the hell was that particle system half-dissolution that happened on the plane and how did she “snap out” of it.
  • What’s up with Scarlett playing these “emotionless” SciFi characters? This is like the same roll as Under the Skin, just with less nudity and more guns.
  • And most importantly, why do we need Morgan Freeman at all? He’s a great actor, sure, but totally annoying as a lecture box.

And that’s only the first 20 minutes off the top of my head. It keeps on going.

Now, if you really wanted to make a movie about someone escalating in intelligence and reaching their own personal Singularity, that would be fine. It would be much better to put that in the context of a self-rewriting AI or someone under the influence/intervention of nano machines designed for that purpose. Possibly Alien nano machines? Combine with Prometheus! Why use this dump brain percentage bit? Why include all the impossible magic powers?

If you’ve got some total nonsense that requires the willing suspension of disbelief, also fine, but don’t rub our faces in it by continually lecturing on the subject!

Plus, when a character almost instantly becomes so powerful, you give up all the drama. Remember, drama is when you care for a character and so empathize with the tension between what they want and what the plot gives them. Emotionless protagonists with infinite powers hardly fit that bill.

Lucy was clearly written to require that shutting off 90% of our brains to watch it.

Find more book reviews here.

2014-08-02-mATHSHOT

Related posts:

  1. Oblivion Obfuscated
  2. The Man with the Iron Fists
  3. Book Review: XVI (read sexteen)
  4. Truly Deeply Sick and Twisted
  5. On Stranger Tides
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Film Review, Luc Besson, Lucy, Morgan Freeman, Scarlett Johansson, Science Fiction

Jupiter Ascending – All in the Script

Feb11

Jupiter_Ascending-267973304-large-2Title: Jupiter Ascending

Cast: Mila Kunis (Actor), Channing Tatum (Actor), Sean Bean (Actor) The Wachowskis (Writer/Directors)

Genre: Science Fiction / Space Opera

Watched: January 10, 2015

Summary: Awesome but flawed

_

While original film works of Science Fiction are not as rare as original High Fantasy, they are still rare indeed. So even after critics panned Jupiter Ascending, I saw it anyway. I’m glad I did, and so should you. First of all, you have to support any filmmaker or studio willing to talk bold risks on new IP. Unless you’re looking forward to Transformers 19, the seventh Spiderman reboot, and Stratego: Aliens vs. Napoleon.

Let’s first discuss the good things. Bear in mind that Jupiter is a SciFi fairytale. It’s not “hard SciFi” at all, but more derived from a sort of amalgam of classic Space Opera, Star Wars, and geek chic. The same stew out of which Avatar and many big budget video games are born, it’s no coincidence that it’s the brainchild of the same creative team as the Matrix.

Jupiter is stunning to look at even by 2015 standards. The vistas are wide, the camera angles bold, the set, creature, ship, and costume design artful and detailed. The film takes good advantage of 3D and its soundscape. Michael Giacchino’s sound track is fabulous. Space Opera classic really. The “feel” of the film, which includes the look, the sound, and the “mythology” is worth the price of admission alone to anyone serious about Speculative Fiction.

Look at the scope!

Look at the visual scope! The detail too is gorgeous.

The acting is solid. Probably even good if you consider some of the writing problems. Kunis is excellent, even if her dialog is at times awful (and sometimes good). Tatum is fine but a little stiff. Sean Bean is… well Boromir and Ned Stark. Many of the side actors are very good. All three Abrasax siblings are excellent. Balem (Eddie Redmayne) borders on the comically melodramatic, but delivers quite a riveting performance (which might have been even better without the forte part of his whole piano/forte routine). Even his sycophant Chicanery Night (love those names) is fabulous.

The action sequences are extended and highly creative. Yeah, they’re a little too long and like all big epics today, the film would have been better served spending more time on character — but the choreography is amazing. These are 3D to the max. I don’t just mean the 3D glasses type of 3D but that the action takes place in three dimensional space in a highly innovative way.

The visuals are amazing, as are little tech details all through the film

The visuals are amazing, as are little tech details all through the film

I loved the mythology. This isn’t hard SciFi, so it’s not “plausible” in any way, shape, or form. We have FTL, warp gates, mass defying transformations, tractor beams, crazy mixtures of nanotech and steampunk. Still, it has a great feel. There is real scope here, a sense of the (space) operatic. The visuals support this with giant vistas of docking ships and planets overgrown with city and surrounded by artificial habitat rings. To the untutored kids those must just look cool. As a reader of decades of SciFi, it’s homage to Asimov, Clarke and Niven. There is an overriding moral theme, not perfectly executed, but one that puts the human race in full jeopardy. Slightly evocative of the Matrix (go figure) this time humans are slated as commodities ground up for rejuv juice (and more) instead of turned into batteries. This version made more sense than in the Matrix. Ultimately the premise is a bit less “new” than the Matrix, more traditional Space Opera, but the sad thing is that despite the incredible number of loosely SciFi films out there, ones that rival the scope of good SciFi novels are exceedingly rare.

The tech wizardry built into the civilization is amazing too. The production team sure hasn’t lost its knack for that. Things like the device that “phases out a circle of solid matter” (who knows what you call that?) or all the little artifacts, huds, and controls are awesome geek stuff.

Now on to the problems.

Mostly, it comes down to script flaws, and they aren’t even in big concept, but in execution. First of all, we have a fish out of water female protagonist experiencing this bigger world. Great! But the script botches it in several ways. 1) We get reveals into the world behind the curtain (the magic world) before she does. Big no no. We should have seen it all from her eyes. 2) Her dialog is mediocre with a mix of great lines and stinkers. (3) While her basic character is good, her arc minimalist, and her decisions poor. She falls for Titus’ BS? Almost falls for Balem’s after that? Come on. She’s also fairly passive / damsel in distress with Caine doing all the heavy lifting (literally and figuratively). He should have done that at the beginning, been her guide, but then she needed to come into her own. There isn’t even a good touch of death or mentor figure (ala Morpheus). The first Matrix follows proper heroic arcing. Jupiter evokes classic style movie, it should have kept the protagonist’s story spine closer to home. She is mostly buffeted by events, and only at the end makes a rather weak Act 2/3 transitional choice. The final ending choice is also lame. Returning to scrubbing toilets is failing to make a proper synthesis of the A and B stories (thesis and antithesis).

Caine too doesn’t have enough character. He needed some kind of edge or complexity. Their romance is far too perfunctory. Sure, he’s a hunk and rescues her. Sure she’s a gorgeous Ukrainian princess. But they just fall for each other completely without much real interaction.

These are symptoms of the broader writing problem. There are so many elements jammed in here: complex world, action, romance, villains, more action, moral theme, a touch of humor, and even more action, that none of them get proper time for development. It’s not even that long a film, around two hours, and it moves at a breakneck pace, packing in the scenes and settings. But there’s too much action and far, far too little character development. Even cheeky Guardians of the Galaxy with its ridiculous wooden villain has more development — and certainly more chemistry going on between the team. I think it’s a rare case where the film would have been better being longer. An extra 30-40 minutes all focused on character (and a lot of structural rewrites) would have gone a long way.

Sigh. I still really really enjoyed this film. More than Guardians actually. I loved the whole atmosphere. And I don’t really understand why the critics maligned it so — or maybe they just don’t understand the grand sense of wonder that is at the core of the genre. Clearly the Wachowskis do, so flaws and all I bless them for it. But as usual, it could have been so much more. Didn’t some producer ask where the arc is?

Find more movie reviews here.

Jupiter-Ascending

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Channing Tatum, Douglas Booth, Eddie Redmayne, Jupiter Ascending, Jupiter Ascending Critique, Jupiter Ascending Review, Mila Kunis, Movie Review, Science Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Script Structure, Sean Bean, The Wachowskis

The Maze Runner

Nov12

The_Maze_Runner_coverTitle: The Maze Runner

Author: James Dashner

Genre: YA Adventure

Length: 386 pages

Read: October 21-30, 2014

Summary: fun but flawed

_

Frankly, I picked up The Maze Runner because it was made into a “major motion picture” — academic interest (visa via Untimed kicked in). It was a fun enough little adventure, an easy read, but boy… flaws.

First, there are the good things (and there aren’t many):

  1. The premise is intriguing. Cool “setup.”
  2. The pace is fast.
  3. There is a good amount of sci-fi mystery (even if kinda botched at the end). There are a lot of “rules” to the world building, which I like.
  4. Because this is a male author, he’s not sentimental.
  5. It’s better than Twilight.

Then there is the bad:

  1. The writing is lousy. The prose is clunky. Dashner LOVES to repeat words awkwardly, and despite being short, the book is terribly really definitely overwritten.
  2. Tell city. Not so much show. Even dialogue is often “told.” For an action book, the actual “action” or combat is barely choreographed. Instead it’s told in a hand-wavy way.
  3. Oh, the actual dialogue is often ridiculously stilted. There is the silly (but perhaps clever) way the author has replaced all the swear words with equivalent “slang” like fuck -> shuck.  shit -> clunk.  etc. This way he can have boys swearing left and right and keep his “PG” (MG?) style. The young audience curators can be fussy about profanity.
  4. The characters are marginally developed. For example, the main “girl” is in a coma until about 80% and then has barely any personality or dialogue. Nobody is very interesting or different. The characters don’t really act like real people a good bit of the time. They have no complexity.
  5. There is no action (and marginal chemistry) between Thomas and Theresa (and, who names a cute girl Theresa? That’s a nun name).
  6. The protagonist is too perfect and pretty much great at everything. His POV loves to point out the obvious.
  7. The mystery is all mysterious. But major things like “The Maze” aren’t well explored. Then near the end a whole bunch of answers are just dumped in and everything shifts negating the setup. There are a lot of good and interesting elements, but they aren’t well explored.
  8. The puzzles are lame.
  9. We, the readers, are told how to feel. The emotional situation is there, but the emotion not really warranted.

Reading it, I often felt like rolling my eyes. But I did manage to finish, and toy with the idea of reading the sequel. Probably mostly because the Sci-fi is okay. Considerably better than most dystopian drivel (like this one). I think the author actually read some Sci-fi. And he’s a guy. I’m generalizing, but female authors are usually better at character and male authors at world building. Big generalization. More like a 40/60 kinda thing.

I’m betting the movie is better than the book — which is a rarity.

For more book reviews, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwwbhhjQ9Xk]

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Dystopia, James Dashner, Science Fiction, The Maze Runner

Falling Skies – Don’t Run Away

Nov20

falling_skies_ver19_xlgTitle: Falling Skies

Genre: Family SciFi

Cast: Noah Wyle (Actor), Moon Bloodgood (Actor)

Watched: Late October, 2013

Summary: V meets The Road

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Steven Speilberg produced TV has a checkered history,  most being cheesy and family oriented. But he keeps on trying, and I have to admire him for pushing Science Fiction more into the mainstream (Earth 2, Seaquest, Terra Nova, Falling Skies, Under the Dome, Extant and more).

Falling Skies is without a doubt the best of the above (excepting Extant which isn’t out yet). It has the family feel of Terra Nova, but is far less monster of the week. This is post apocalyptic fiction, and begins six months AFTER an alien invasion pretty much wiped out everyone. The survivors are scraping by, fighting aliens when they can, scavenging, and mostly just surviving. The story concentrates on the Mason family: a dad and three sons who have managed to keep together (barely) in this new world. In overall feel, the show borrows heavily from the zombie survival and alien invasion genres. It even reminds me at times of The Last of Us — only far, far less bleak.

For TV, and given the big scope of a ruined America and several different types of nasty aliens (some flesh, some mechanical), the show looks pretty impressive. The feel is a little cheesier than Continuum and its slick future Canada, but far more ambitious given that every shot features a destroyed and trash-covered Eastern-seaboard. There is that slight unintentional camp and softness that is the hallmark of the family drama. Falling Skies dishes out some punishment to its characters — people die (or worse) — but the atmosphere isn’t one of perpetual fear and dread like The Last of Us or the Road.

The show doesn't skimp on the latex

The show doesn’t skimp on the latex

Ultimately, this show works, and is held together by a solid set of believable characters and likable performances. Noah Wyle works as former history professor turned military man. I’m less of a fan of his superior officer, Captain Weaver, but the teens do a good job: his two sons Hal and Ben, and a complex triangle of blondes Margaret and Karen. Biker badass turned monster-hunter John Pope is quite amusing — even if not entirely consistent — and manages to imbue a role that could be cheesy with considerable charisma.

Blondes abound

Blondes abound

The aliens themselves, their goals and types, are a bit opaque. We have mechs, skitters (at least 2 factions), harnessed humans, fishheads, and in season 3, the Volm. I actually like that things weren’t clear, but as secrets are revealed, I didn’t always buy the writer’s choices. They borrow more heavily from pop-culture aliens than from any deep reading of the literary genre (which features considerably more sophisticated modeling of possible invasion reasons — like Gregory Benford’s incredible Galactic Center series). The show uses the mechanic of alien bio-device infiltration to create what is essentially a zombie mechanic, and at times a “turned” mechanic. This is familiar territory, particularly for Buffy fans like myself. Somehow, it all feels a bit light in Falling Skies. Maybe it’s a tonal thing. Despite the dark happenings, and blue-gray color palette, the show usually maintains a fairly upbeat mood.

Season 1-2 run together seamlessly, but with season 3 there is one of those disconcerting season breaks and then a fairly different balance of power. A new alien race is introduced and the whole feel is slightly different, perhaps more serious. I felt a little less engaged during this third outing even though intellectually I appreciated the effort to mix it up.

Overall, I have to give Falling Skies a B+. It tries hard. It’s more ambitious and even more successful than most Science Fiction television. The writing, acting, and production are all solid. Somehow it falls short of greatness — or even of breathing new life into the genre — still, it’s well worth a watch.

Check out more TV reviews or

my own Time Travel novel, Untimed.

falling_skies_ver18_xlg

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Television
Tagged as: alien, Falling Skies, Moon Bloodgood, Noah Wyle, Science Fiction, Steven Spielberg, Television

Pacific Rim – Robots vs. Monsters

Nov13

pacific-rim-blu-rayTitle: Pacific Rim

Cast: Charlie Hunnam (Actor), Idris Elba (Actor), Guillermo Del Toro (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction / Comic

Watched:  October 15, 2013

Summary: A little underwhelmed

_

I’m a major Guillermo Del Toro fan — Pan’s Labyrinth being one of my favorite films in recent memory. And despite the wonky concept, Hellboy was pretty damn great. So I was fairly excited to check out Pacific Rim, even if giant mechs slugging it out with monsters Godzilla-style is a tad overdone.

Having watched, I’m just not sure what to make of the film. Visually, it’s gorgeous. The fights are good. But the style feels a bit all over the place. The depth of character usually present in Guillermo movies has taken back stage to speeches and impressive cinematography (always in his oeuvre, but not usually so dominant). The whole thing feels like style over substance.

Although the style is pretty satisfying. The film looks and sounds great. There’s a very deliberate red/blue palette and a lot of grand (if implausible) shots. Giant robot heads descend down mile high elevator shafts to land on 70 story bodies. Robots are helicopter lifted only to drop (dramatically) into the ocean. Combatants leap nearly out of the atmosphere. And most importantly, a full sized ship is used as a baseball bat.

The Japanese platonic partner felt very fanboy

The Japanese platonic partner felt very fanboy

Charlie Hunnam, who is generally excellent in Sons of Anarchy, is fine here. He has an inherent like-ability and a manly man style that doesn’t grate. But most of the remaining cast felt like caricatures. The tough black military leader. The obnoxious fellow solider (can we say Top Gun). The geeky science guys. Oh, and we shouldn’t forget Guillermo regular Ron Perlman hamming it up as an alien black market kingpin. This last is actually great fun to watch, but has a camp level in excess of the rest of the film.

3205457-pacific-rim-jaegers-wallpaper[1]

Every 9 year-old boy’s wet dream

I had suspension of disbelief problems with the tech. The whole “need two pilots so we can use half their brains” premise just never made sense. No metal exists strong enough to stand up to the punishment the mechs endure — not to mention the G-forces involved as your giant metal monster falls out of the sky and crashes into the earth (can we say pilot-jelly?). And why do they even have to be INSIDE the mech? Why can’t it be remote control? None of that stuff really matters. After all, it’s a monster vs robot movie, but it bugged me.

Fundamentally, I think the film’s biggest problem is cookie-cutter speech-spouting nature of the dialog. The people didn’t feel real. We know the monsters are fake, that’s not a problem, but the people ought to act like people. It’s an enjoyable film. A decent film even, but it falls considerably short of great.

For more Film reviews, click here.

One of many cool images

One of many cool images

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Charlie Hunnam, Guillermo Del Toro, Idris Elba, Pacific Rim, Science Fiction

Gravity – Puts the Thrill Back in Thriller

Oct16

gravity-movie-posterTitle: Gravity

Cast: George Clooney (Actor), Sandra Bullock (Actor), Alfonso Cuarón (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction Thriller

Watched:  October 14, 2013

Summary: Best movie of the year (so far)

_

I know there is a lot of great buzz about Gravity, but I have to chime in and agree. This is just a wonderful film. It’s not deepest hour and a half of cinema to ever hit the silver screen, but as a Science Fiction film, spectacle, thriller, and all around emotional experience — it’s first rate.

Let me also say that I’ve been an Alfonso Cuarón fan for some time. I loved his version of Great Expectations. Y Tu Mamá También is extremely touching. And Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (a bit of a deviation for him) is the most personal and thoughtful of that octolagy. Cuarón knows how to combine intimacy with visual panache and Gravity is not only directed by him, but co-written, and produced by him as well.

The premise here is simple. Something goes wrong in space. Sandra Bullock tries to survive. The nothingness between worlds is both beautiful and scary. This is the most hostile environment mankind has ventured to. Maybe being pressurized on a really deep dive is about as bad, but at least there, up is up and down is down.

gravity-debris

Not a great time for a little space walk

This is a gorgeous film. Everyone says so, and they’re right. The 3D is subtle and intense. The panning and spinning shots are dizzying on purpose. I didn’t even see it in Imax (just on a normal big Real 3D setup). In Imax it must be really intense. The visuals are generally seamless. The shots have a nice artistry to them, as one expects from Cuarón.

It’s also, for all its big scope, a very intimate and personal film. Bullock carries it, and carry it she must as she’s in every scene and there is only one other actor (George Clooney) — and he’s gone after the 25% mark. This is her film, and that same plucky charisma she displayed in Demolition Man, Speed, and whenever she picked a decent script over the 20 years since is there in  force. I’m not sure I totally believe her as a loner doctor, but she had me at “hello.” You feel for her, for her character, and for the awesome magnificence of the circumstances in which she finds herself. There is just enough backstory  to sell the emotional depth. When she manages to get inside the International Space Station (after nearly being punctured, battered, and suffocated), she curls into a little zero G ball. It works.

video-undefined-1BA51708000005DC-288_636x358

An emotional and intimate moment

The music is also very good, adding to the grandeur and scope . Just as effective is the consistent and utter lack of any sound that wouldn’t be conveyed through vacuum. The shuttle and space station are destroyed silently. Hatches bang open without a sound. Jets release gas soundlessly. Like that moment in Saving Private Ryan where the artillery blast knocks out Tom Hank’s ears, the effect is even more dramatic that the usual cacophony.

Gravity‘s pacing is relentless. As each hopeful goal is neared, some new catastrophe intervenes, keeping possible salvation just out of reach. This is accomplished with a deft mix of understandable mistakes and by the sheer array of force deployed against our heroine. But for all that, this is a movie without any villains. The one secondary character borders on saintly. It’s a classic “man against nature” thriller, and the scope of nature’s ability to kill here is truly frightening. When you depend a thin layer of archaic and marginal 1960s tech for every ounce of survival, things like 300 degree temperature swings and small bits of metal traveling 20,000 miles an hour are formidable foes.

Let’s sidestep for a second and talk about the Science Fiction. Gravity doesn’t assume any future tech. It’s set right now, or perhaps even 2011 as we haven’t launched a space shuttle since then. The events are improbable, and even a few are probably unsurvivable, but the film doesn’t go out of its way to be unrealistic or gratuitous. If I had to choose things to disbelieve, I can: Some of that huge debris storm would likely have hit Sandra (fatally). The sheer amount of physical punishment (being whacked around) would be pretty tough to take. Sandra manages to do a lot of things that are probably very difficult, very quickly. The 3 hours shown would be unimaginably exhausting. Her ISS Soyuz capsule was traveling pretty fast as she passed the Chinese station, and there is no friction in space, so I’m not sure the thrust in a single half-used fire hydrant would be sufficient to match velocity with the station. Or that she had the talent to fly with it. The early reentry of said station would probably be catastrophic as well. But this is all unimportant. Movies require suspension of disbelief, and this film doesn’t demand such unreasonably.

Gravity does everything a film should do. It provides character and drama. Shock and spectacle. Thrills and tears. Enough said.

For more Film reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Alfonso Cuarón, George Clooney, Gravity, International Space Station, Movie, Sandra Bullock, Science Fiction, Science fiction film

Continuum – Corporate Future

Oct14

continuum-season-one-blu-ray-400pxTitle: Continuum

Genre: SciFi Thriller

Cast: Rachel Nichols (Actor), Erik Knudsen (Actor)

Watched: October 5-11, 2013

Summary: Solid sci-fi

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Continuum is the second excellent Canadian SciFi television show I’ve found this year (the other being Orphan Black). The regular American networks just wouldn’t make something like this. In fact, they all passed on it. Their loss, because while it has a couple of flaws,  as television goes, Continuum is first rate science fiction and imminently watchable.

Plot wise, we have a 2077 cop who while supervising the execution of the world’s worst terrorists, is propelled back in time to 2012 as part of their cunning escape plan — maybe.

The pilot does a first rate job of setting up the future and getting us quickly back in time . The details are hinted at rather than beaten over your head, which is good because the events leading to the time travel will be revisited numerous times in future episodes  as we learn more and more about the  players. The first few episodes seem almost procedural, with our heroine rapidly shifting herself into a cop role in 2012 — but this begins to shift right from the beginning to a more extended style of plotting. True, the always amusing fish out of water dynamic is underutilized (Kiera picks up 2012 like a pro), but the show really keeps the high level plot moving forward.

The show’s two biggest strengths are its big but tightly integrated cast and its complex mythology. The characters are interesting, and for the most part, not entirely formulaic. Alliances are always forming and shifting, without feeling forced. The terrorists are a varied bunch, with differing agendas, and the writers have deftly complemented their reprehensible methods with highly sympathetic political goals. In fact, this is a show with a substantial dose of moral ambiguity. The apparent behavior of the character is often at odds with their political agenda. The terrorists might be evil killers, but we agree with their points. Kiera might be our heroine, but at some level, her defense of the status quo can be called into question. Overall, the characters are interesting and not totally predictable.

The future city looks great (for TV)

The future city looks great (for TV)

At a political level, the take on 2077 is intriguing. This is a world where government has gone by the wayside and the corporations have risen to dominate the political and social landscape. Profit über alles. And given how things are now, this isn’t such an unreasonable trajectory. The future tech is for the most part pretty well done. We have a lot of slick touch screens, on nearly every kind of surface. For low budget television it looks pretty darn good, if a bit like modern buildings in Vancouver playing high tech dress up. I have a few specific tech nit picks, but they don’t detract from the watchability of the show.

  1. Alec is way too good about coming to grips with technology he is supposed to invent decades from now and has way too easy a time interfacing his 2012 prototypes with models from 2077. I know why the writers did it, but it’s unrealistic.
  2. Why the hell does Kiera have to use touch screens on her suit sleeve when she can control her CMR (internal cyber hud) just by thinking?
  3. The batteries on her stuff sure last a long time.

The mythology is quite excellent. Each episode is studded with flash forwards (usually from Kiera’s perspective) into 2077 and each time we get a bit more of the picture as to who all the players are and how they intertwine across both timelines. It’s, for the most part, sharply written and quite intriguing. Many of the 2012 folks are a bit at odds with who they become, not in the sense of character believability (which is pretty good) but with where we might expect them to go. This all makes it pretty fun.

Not the execution they were looking for

Not the execution they were looking for

The time travel is well handled. Two seasons in (and a third has been ordered) we’re not totally sure which end of the time travel  spectrum we’re operating on, but the characters are asking the right questions, which makes it interesting. In one episode they try to  eliminate each other by killing their grandparents — only to find it doesn’t work that way. So we know causality doesn’t loop (a.k.a. Back to the Future), but is this a fated timeline? Did original older Alec remember younger Kiera and engineer her return? I don’t think so, meaning we are dealing with two possibly disconnected timelines. As a time travel fan and author thinking about these questions made my day.

All in all, I watched it in a 3-4 episode a night binge and I was depressed when it was over. Good thing another season is on the way!

Check out more TV reviews or

my own Time Travel novel, Untimed.

continuum01

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By: agavin
Comments (12)
Posted in: Television
Tagged as: Continuum, Erik Knudsen, Rachel Nichols, Science Fiction, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Television, Time travel

Clone Wars – Orphan Black

Aug16

orphanblackposterTitle: Orphan Black

Genre: SciFi Thriller

Watched: August 5-6, 2013

Summary: great first season

ANY CHARACTER HERE

Lately, there have been a lot of shows  using the device of twins borrowing identities. Perhaps it’s a trend, perhaps it’s just a fan fave, as Shakespeare himself went for it in Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night. In any case, Orphan Black up the ante. Not twins or triplets, but human clones. And there are at least seven of them. Plus, it’s better than last years duplicate thrillers: Ringer (as much as i’m a SMG fan) and The Lying Game (which is pretty good in a lightweight way).

What is crazy impressive about Orphan is that Canadian actress Titiana Maslany (Shakespeare reference right there in her name!) manages to pull off wildly distinct personalities was incredible aplomb. I mean, seriously, you can just feel the different presence of these girls. You can even see quite effectively when one of them is pretending to be another. Watching uptight suburban mom Allison pretending to be punk Sarah is hilarious — and effective.

OB-Trailer2-1024x578

Tough Sarah

This show is Science Fiction, but the SF is confined to the clone thing and it’s low budget too. There aren’t a ton of effects. What there is, however, is very good writing, casting, acting, and pacing. It’s a great show really. We can’t know that the quality will survive into later seasons, but this one is break neck. The characters are sympathetic and interesting, and boy is she(s) put through the ringer (sorry SMG). The tone is simultaneously dark and comic, but always tense and unpredictable. There is one bit in the pilot where Sarah (playing Beth) is caught in an impossible situation. She goes to the bathroom to buy herself some time, then does something completely unexpected that actually works as a clever solution. This is very effective thriller plotting. It doesn’t feel forced or overwrought but merely tense.

16764841001_2372205947001_vs-518d65b8e4b0d749ff6ef2b7-1206954758001

Psycho Helena

Importantly, the complex central mystery is drooled out episode by episode, but it is drooled out. We find out quite a lot — although hardly everything. The amount of reveal is very effective in this season, but could be problematic next year as they will not be able to depend on the same  dynamic. The show might not be able to depend on the clones even playing their normal lives (or each others).

While Maslany steals the show. Many of the secondary actors are very solid as well. Jordan Gavaris as her (very) gay foster brother is a standout. He about says it all when he sits down at a piano and says, “let me show you a bit of Queen.” Kevin Hanchard is solid as cop twin Beth’s partner.

16764841001_2396979261001_vs-519a6b65e4b0878ee9f6ccee-782203288001

Geeky lesbian Cosima

The show feels slightly schizophrenic with regard to its sexuality. At times, in some episodes (like the pilot), it’s pleasantly steamy. Maslany does a good bit of walking around in underwear (always a plus). But this remains uneven, unpredictable. When two characters close we never know if the camera will linger or cut to morning. In a way, this keeps the viewer off balance. Deliberate thriller style or mere inconsistency? Who knows.

Either way, the show is very much worth watching.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Television
Tagged as: BBC America, clone wars, clones, Orphan Black, Sarah, Science Fiction, season 1, Tatiana Maslany, Television, Television Review

Oblivion Obfuscated

May24

OBN_Adv1ShtTitle: Oblivion

Cast: Tom Cruise (Actor), Morgan Freeman (Actor), Joseph Kosinski (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction

Watched:  May 16, 2013

Summary: Tried really hard and mostly worked

_

I try to see most, if not all, Science Fiction and fantasy films. The buzz around Oblivion slanted it as cerebral, more character and less action oriented. All good by me. I crave Science Fiction films that can live up to good science fiction prose. I demand Blade Runner and Aliens. Last year, I had to be satisfied with Prometheus, which tried, and failed.

Oblivion is pretty good. It tries and mostly succeeds  Although not without a serious set of logical flaws, but I enjoyed it far more than I expected. It’s not as good as Minority Report (to make a Cruisian point), but it isn’t far off.

I’m not going to summarize and I’m going to spoil. This is criticism and analysis, not a buying guide. Let’s breakdown a few things:

Visually, this is a lovely film. The combination of haunting Icelandic landscape and a judicious take on post-apocalyptic is haunting and atmospheric. We have vast empty spaces. Slurries of silt and muck have swamped cities. Nothing is left. Then the few bits of new tech like the drones and fusion reactors stand out with awesome clarity and scale.

It’s also worth noting that while this is an expensive CGI heavy film (Box Office Mojo says $120 million) the graphics are slickly and deftly integrated. It feels like a film shot on location and entirely in front of the green screen. The reality? Who knows, probably a lot of green screen, but it feels spacious and open.

The audio scape is first rate. This director likes sound, and it works. Tron Legacy (his previous and only other big screen directorial effort) was one of the best sounding films of the last decade with its brilliant Daft Punk soundtrack (an amazing album as well as score) and Oblivion has a fantastic electronica score as well. The bassy (Inception horn-esque) sound of the drone siren was also awesome.

Tom is fine. I’m not one of his haters. This is a solid role in the Cruise model and he carries it. There aren’t a lot of characters in this movie, but his partner Victoria is well cast. My favorite Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, plays a minor character. He’s good too, but underutilized. I didn’t love Morgan Freeman in his role, even though he’s a fantastic actor. It just felt overdone and a bit too Morgan Freeman. The second woman, the brunette, is forgettable.

The plot is ambitious. We have an entire new world and a fairly tricky psychological  setup. It worked. Pretty well too.

The directorial style is excellent. Moody, bold, and almost always clear.

Now we come to the science fiction. Spoilers abound as I try to make sense of the why of Oblivion!

How do we get from 2013 and a canceled shuttle program to 2017 and a slick Titan moon expedition with suspended animation cells capable of lasting for 60 years? Why didn’t the writers just set the “first encounter” in 2050 or something?

When the Odyssey is being sucked into the TET by tractor beam (can we say Falcon and Deathstar?) why is it that the crew module, when ejected back toward earth by Cruise, can escape said tractor beam?

Why is the TET so often “offline” and out of communication? I know it’s supposed to be blocked by the earth but any tech capable of AI drones, clones, and Cruise’s flying ship could throw up a couple of comm satellites to bounce the signal around.

Why does Cruise land his flying ship and go for a bike ride? Seems kinda dangerous and pointless, unless the point is showing him biking past the  rotting hulks of ruined warships (which was kinda cool).

Why, does a super advanced alien mega-mind with it’s own giant spaceship resort to entirely indirect methods in conquering the earth? Although, again I must admit that the shattered moon looked kinda cool. But would a half exploded moon just hang up there?

Why would it employ an army of human clones? And only two models? Why not drones to begin with?

If you did “grow” a whole army of clones, why would each have a part copy of the original memories? Clones are just genetic twins. Memory is not on the duplication slate. Why have some separate “brain sync” machine/process if you didn’t want the memories anyway?

If it could build those drones, why so few?

Why resort to the whole “drone maintenance guy” thing? It doesn’t really make much sense.

Even if — and this is a tremendously big if — the 2017 Odyssey crew cryo-sleep module was still in orbit, how did the Scavs know how to send it a little jury rigged signal to cause it to return to earth?

How did each Vicky never notice how much time each Jack (Cruise) spent off grid building his man cave?

Why didn’t the Scavs locate their drone in a separate spot away form all the women and children and bring Harper there?

Why do Scavs dress like Sand People in Star Wars? Oh yes, cloaking tech.

Does vinyl really last 70 years? And if so, how come Harper, presumably born in the 70s, is such a classic rock fan? And how did he power his man cave?

Did Harper 52 just dump Vicky 52 in his 3 year search for “the girl”?

If you are a super smart alien “mega-mind” why do you let a guy carrying a nuclear bomb into your brain chamber? And if your sensors can detect an extra body on the way in, why can’t they sniff out a little Plutonium? It is only a RADIOACTIVE HEAVY ELEMENT!

For more Film reviews, click here.

tom-cruise-oblivion-landscape

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By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Joseph Kosinski, Minority Report, Morgan Freeman, Oblivion, Science Fiction, Science fiction film, Tom Cruise, Tron

Ender’s Game

May09

Finally, 30 years later, they get around to making a movie out of my favorite book… at age 15.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SRizeR4MmU]

For decades I’ve sited this as an example of Hollywood’s odd failure to exploit the wealth of great SciFi/Fantasy novels, instead endlessly recycling lifeless high concepts. In that, Ender’s Game was a bestselling fast paced story of approximately movie complexity. Now they just have to adapt Hyperion and I’ll be fulfilled! I used to joke that it would cost a billion dollars. It still might!

375802

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By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card, Science Fiction

Reading in School Made Me Who I Am

Jan02

Reading doesn’t separate the men from the boys, it separates the educated from the ignorant. Seriously. There is no other conduit for absorbing information and broadening oneself that is so accessible and so efficient. Every medium has its advantages, but the book has it all in regards to breadth and depth. There are books on more topics, and more specific topics, than any other format. Probably by several orders of magnitude. And nothing holds as much information in as few bits.

So I read a lot in school.

But this doesn’t mean what you might think. I read in school. Literally.

From fourth grade on I had a novel shoved in my desk, hidden in the pages of my textbook, or propped on the floor. I read on the bus to school. I read in the library before school. I read in class. I read standing in the hall between classes. I read in the playground. I read at lunch. I read all the way home.

While the class slogged through fractions, I flew to different planets. While the teacher lectured on Jamestown, I crossed under Moria with Gandalf and crew. Everyone else had science, I had Science Fiction.

But, again, seriously, this worked. While other students memorized vocabulary, I read it in context. Instead of hearing about history, I lived it through characters. Instead of diagramming sentences, I saw them used: sometimes poorly, often well. Lectures on civil rights? I got to be a girl, an old lady, a slave, black, white, Asian, alien!

And besides, it was exceedingly good practice at multitasking. Try answering a teacher’s question when you’ve been reading a pulp adventure novel for the last hour! Or practice reading at the same time you proof the spelling homework, pencil in hand.

But joking aside, reading broadens the mind. It doesn’t always even matter what you (or your children) read, except that you develop the habit. When you read ten books a week there’s always time to toss War and Peace onto the pile. Actually, the pile is always hundreds deep, but if you keep digging at it, you make progress. Even a few minutes a day — every day — will move you along. If you’re willing to read, you can learn anything (well, once I tried to master breaststroke from a book — not so successful).

The bar is surprisingly low. When, in the mid 90s, I wanted to learn about wine, I read three hefty tomes. Suddenly, I knew more than people who had been serious for years! When I was building my house, I read a bunch of books on 18th century furniture and found I knew far more than the interior designers we interviewed. We hired the one who could tell Régence from Rococo.

Fiction — even genre fiction — has even more impact. You only get to live once. Perhaps you can try out a few things. But via novels you can almost become someone else. Again and again! Want to know what happens when you spend your whole life blitzed out of your mind? Read a Jim Morison biography! Been there, done that, no need to overdose on heroin. Time travel? Totally possible in literature, both the Science Fiction sort and the more metaphoric variety offered by Historical Fiction.

So, yeah, I learned a lot reading in school!

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By: agavin
Comments (35)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Arts, Book, Gandalf, Moria, reading, School, Science Fiction

Prometheus Rebound

Nov02

Title: Prometheus

Cast: Noomi Rapace (Actor), Michael Fassbender (Actor), Ridley Scott (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction

Watched: October 25, 2012

Summary: Trying to go long! (7/10)

_

In many ways, Prometheus, harkens back to 60s and 70s Science Fiction (novels). Not only is it Ridley Scott’s vague take on a prequel to his own 1979 Alien, but it ambitiously tackles gigantic open ended questions in the manner of Rama, Gateway, and the like. But does it succeed?

Not entirely.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sftuxbvGwiU]

This film is certainly broader and vaster than Alien — which is a contained “monster in a box” sort of story, albeit a brilliant one — and the actors are pretty good, but Prometheus feels a little rushed. Most of the characters seem to be acting on mysterious hidden agendas that don’t make total sense. And they proceed with a crazy sort of recklessness — given the obvious high level of risk even before it devolves into a total cluster f**k. I mean, come on, who sends a team that doesn’t know each other to the other side of the galaxy? Who thinks it’s a good idea to take off your helmet in a giant alien pyramid or stick your fingers in xeno-goo?

Also, despite the pretense of “hard sci-fi”, there are a lot of liberties taken with physics, biology, and the like. Can gigantic alien donut ships really roll and flop across the ground? I don’t think so, big objects don’t have the tensile strength to topple like that, look what happened to the twin towers. Can you outrun one on foot? Or why does an expedition that auto maps every millimeter of their surroundings with glowing holographs need to ask crew members what “coordinates” they’re standing at?

Still, I enjoyed the film. Ridley at least tried to make a great film, even if he only ended up with a good one. This is no mindless action romp with unmemorable talking cardboard cutouts. It’s a real solid effort, starkly gorgeous to boot, and definitely better than Robin Hood!

For more Film reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (19)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: alien, Arts, Film Review, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction

Wool – Life in a Tin Can

Aug20

Title: Wool (Omnibus)

Author: Hugh Howey

Genre: Science Fiction

Length: 550 pages

Read: August 11-12, 2012

Summary: Classic. 5/5

 

While this Omnibus feels like a novel, it was originally published as a series of five novellas — and self-published at that. But don’t let that scare you, it’s better written, better edited, and far more engaging than 95% of New York published SciFi. In some ways a throwback, in some ways very modern, Wool is a contained (in both the literary and literal way) post apocalyptic tale in the mould of Larry Niven or A Canticle for Leibowitz. Technically this is an ARC story, about an isolated world built to survive a destroyed environment. The people in Wool live in a 148 floor Silo in the ground. To leave is to die.

The book is written in first person tight from multiple points of view. Each section has a fairly clear POV character and the narrative voice highlights their perspective. There is no single protagonist. The first novella is basically a short story introducing the world and ending with the usual short story twist. It did very well on Amazon and the author wrote a second (using a minor character from the first as the POV) and then a third which essentially transitions to the larger story’s most important character (Jules). It’s very much to Howey’s credit that this serial construction does not feel artificial. The works holds up both individually as a cohesive and epic novel.

Several things lead to the overall excellence: The characters are well developed and mostly likable (the main villain is a little thin, but interesting enough). The world is intriguing  and detailed with an appropriate pacing of reveals. There is a good amount of death and suffering in this novel and it lends a generally tragic air to the whole situation as well as the specific events. There is also a lot of tension despite what might nominally be plotting that doesn’t showcase a lot of overt external conflict (in the first 2-3 books). Basically it’s just very good.

The silo is well thought out. My  only real beef at a technical level (and this doesn’t distract from the book at all) is the unlikelyhood that such a contained ecosystem (in all senses of the word) could remain so functional over several centuries. On a practical level earthly eco-systems function because of the ENORMOUS quantity of solar energy constantly added. Wool features a pretty big system powered by a single main fossil-fuel generator. Maybe that’s possible, and Howey’s navel background lends copious verisimilitude and gritty detail, but I suspect to really make a big spaceship or ARC last a long time you’d need some really serious juice. Large scale hydroponic farming alone would require a hell of a lot of power. But as fiction, it’s really well worked out.

Additionally, at a realistic level, I’m not a big believer in the predictability of human large scale behavior (aka history), but in the context of Science Fiction like this (taking its queue from Asimov’s Foundation), there’s no problem. In the real world, despite the endlessly repeating basic patterns of history, no human has ever proven to be a great predictor and controller of the long term specifics.

Another minor peeve is that the Kindle version, while well proofread, has a very unusual formatting with a tiny font oversized spacing between paragraphs. I had to jack the Kindle scale feature up several notches to even read the text. There’s (currently) really no reason not to use the default font style for MOBI/EPUB body text in a novel.

But if you like Science Fiction, post apocalyptic worlds, or just plain old good novels. Read this. Seriously, it’s one of the most enjoyable speculative novels I’ve read in years. Bravo.

For more book reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, Book Review, Fiction, Hugh Howey, Larry Niven, Science Fiction, Wool

Maximum Weird – Perdido Street Station

Aug06

Title: Perdido Street Station

Author: China Miéville

Genre: Gothic Steampunk Fantasy Scifi Horror

Length: 710 pages and  lots of words

Read: July 16-24, 2012

Summary: Astonishingly Imaginitive

 

I am in utter awe with regard to the creativity oozing from this novel.

While perhaps not for everyone, and not perfect, this is a  first rate work of fantasy. And I mean that in the broadest sense because the book is set in a unique milieu that is part Dickens, part steampunk, part fantasy, part Blade Runner, part Lovecraft and a whole lot more. As one agent said of my first novel’s early drafts: Perdido Street Station suffers from an extreme case of too-much-ness. It has too many words, too many characters, too many points of view, too much description, too many subplots, too many races, too many kinds of magic, too many villains, too many heroes, too many really really big words, or old words (I had to use the dictionary every couple of pages). Still, it works, even rises to greatness.

Amazing things about this book:

1. The prose: which is highly descriptive, deft, and subtle, building elaborate piles of intricacy out of slashes of words.

2. The main characters: Isaac, Yag, and Lin all have some real depth.

3. The world: is just so creepy, slimy, and cool — although not for the faint of heart. This book is dark. It makes The Darkening Dream seem like vanilla icing.

4. The monsters and the weird: nice and creepy. This is a book where human on bug sex is the sweet part!

5. The clarity: for all its length and bewildering array of everything, the book is easy to follow and read (provided you have a dictionary handy).

6. Imagination: No shortage of amazingly cool ideas, images, races, monsters, technologies, places, etc. in this puppy.

Things that aren’t as strong:

1. Pacing: the masses of description, which while evocative, effective, and downright creepy, are constant and unrelenting. The city itself is a character and this slows things down a bit. It doesn’t drag, but it isn’t lightning fast either.

2. The tangents: there are more than a few here, and not all of them worth it.

3. The minor points of view: A number of characters pop in, have their couple POV pages in the sun, and then vanish (usually into  the deadpool). This isn’t always maximally effective.

4. The baroque plot: The story is easy enough to follow, but it does take A WHILE to get going and is not always full of classic drama created from thwarted desire. In fact, the first third or so is distinctly short on that, but is fast paced mostly because the world is so fascinating.

5. Actions of the government and other non-protagonist forces: There are some big chunks in here where the government is trying to do stuff, and only indirectly involves the regular characters. This stuff is less effective because of the emotional disconnect.

6. Deus ex machina: oh-too-coincidental happenings and escapes occur a number of times.

Overall, in the same way that Vegas transcends cheese by way of pure magnitude, Perdido climbs to greatness on the strength of its positives, rising above any petty flaws. If you appreciate flights of imagination, good writing, and the weird, it’s required reading. No question. Not for the square, the staid, the boring, or the grounded who do not at least dream of flying.

For more book reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (5)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Arts, Bas-Lag, Book Review, China Mieville, Fantasy, Perdido Street Station, Science Fiction, Steampunk

Ship Breaker – desk jockeys beware

Jul25

Title: Ship Breaker

Author: Paolo Baciqalupi

Genre: YA Sci-Fi

Read: July 9-11, 2012

Summary: Great voice, great characters, great world

 

Hugo and Nebula wining author of the Sci-Fi novel, The Windup Girl, brings his unique vision of the future to YA. The conventions of this younger demographic solves my biggest problem with Windup, which featured way too many characters and way too byzantine a plot. Ship Breaker has a single narrator and a straightforward enough story. The setting is the American Gulf coast some hundred years in the future after the collapse of our oil dependent technology. This could be the same world as Windup, or is perhaps merely similar. It doesn’t matter, it’s fascinating.

The first 50-60% of the book is absolutely first rate, fantastic. Baciqalupi has a great voice: third person, yet personal, detailed, yet fast paced. I loved the introduction to the world of the ship-breaking yards (see below for more on their real-life inspiration). The protagonist is very likable and the secondary characters mostly well developed. I loved the introduction of “Lucky Girl” (his love interest) and their time together (approximately 30% – 60%, the second act).

However, the third act involves her near complete disappearance from the book. Nailer, our protag, goes after her, but this section felt weaker and more disconnected. Even at the end, she’s only around for about two lines of dialogue. Additionally, this part of the book features more traditional “big action” and this doesn’t seem to be Baciqalupi’s strong point. The early parts of the novel contained a great deal of physical tension and that was handled flawlessly, but I didn’t totally buy some of the final scenes. And the resolution with the primary villain felt slightly off.

I’ll have to go with perhaps 8 out of 10 on this book. Very very good, with a lot going for it, but not a total stunner. Still,absolutely worth reading.

It’s worth a moment’s discussion on real Ship Breaking, a strange and dangerous global market niche which is almost entirely done in Bangladesh, at the famous ship-breaking yards. In these real life places, old tankers and the like are driven aground on the beach and then swarms of Bangladeshi workers tear them apart for raw materials. Many are children and working conditions make 19th Century Cotton Mills look pleasant. Check out these amazing photos here. Old ships contain a wealth of valuable materials, but there is no environmentally sound or automated way to scrap them. The current practice takes advantage of the extremely poor to do it “cheaply.” The cost, of course, is more human.

For more book reviews, click here.

Child labor, still alive and kicking at the ship-breaking yards of Chittagong

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By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: Arts, Bangladesh, Chittagong, Fiction, Paolo Bacigalupi, Science Fiction, Ship Breaker, Ship breaking, The Windup Girl, Windup Girl, Young-adult fiction

A Princess of Mars

Jun20

Love the 1917 cover

Title: A Princess of Mars

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs

Genre: Science Fiction

Length: 81 pages

Read: June 16-19, 2012

Summary: Pulp fun

_

Watching John Carter got me to reread A Princess of Mars. I barely remembered anything of the book, and it’s only 81 pages, plus the Kindle version was free!

It’s definitely superior to the film, and good campy pulp fun. Plus, when you take into account it’s 1917 publication date, it’s actually pretty impressive!

This was the cover I had as a kid

The writing itself is fast and clean, even if the sentences include copious subordinate clauses, high falutin vocabulary, and the occasional archaic turn of phrase. Like “fetich” which my Kindle dictionary informed me is a dated spelling of “fetish.” The style suffers a little — by modern standards — from an overabundance of “tell.” The book moves rapidly and the narrator tells you in a straightforward first-person past what happened. He doesn’t illustrate the points by action, but calls it as he sees it. Even the action is given to narrative summary rather than blow by blow description. This is compact and functional but feels dated.

The plot is a straightforward adventure. Our protagonist, who is pretty much great at everything, hurls himself from one predicament to the next, all the while extracting maximum drama and showmanship. Things rarely go badly for him, and there is little subtly of choice. I can see how significant an effect Burroughs had on mid century pulp Science Fiction masters like Phillip Jose Farmer or L. Ron Hubbard (I’m ignoring the religion and talking about the writer). Farmer adventures like Dark is the Sun, World of Tiers, or The Cache feel like direct descendants of A Princess of Mars.

For 1917, the world building is fairly extensive. There aren’t too many outer space adventure novels before this, so he must have invented a lot of the tropes. There are flying craft, exploding bullets, terraforming machines, and all sorts of goodies. And all in an era when the biplane was the height of aeronautical tech.

Every decade has it’s variant

The book’s biggest weakness is the utter lack of subtlety. John Carter is able to instantly read into alien situations and ferret out the meaning — even when he can’t understand the language. He is an instant master of the new tech, a perfect navigator, etc. The solution to his problems are usually readily available. Burroughs resorts to certain devices — like convenient eavesdropping — multiple times. The “romance” between Carter and Dejah Thoris is formulaic at best. Still, she is described repeatedly as gorgeous and nearly naked, which sets the standard for pulp heroines.

As a student of media conversions, I continue to wonder at the bungles in the recent film adaptation. Read my thoughts on the John Carter film here, but while they borrowed most of the characters, situations, and feel from the novel, they made many plot changes for the worse. Some of the camp factor does come from the source material, and there would probably be a need to simplify the action, however this doesn’t excuse the addition of multiple prologues, and ridiculous meta-villains. Pulp action is pulp action. Dressing it up with an extra layer of plot complexity doesn’t change that.

For more book reviews, click here.

Or read about my own historical fantasy novel here.

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By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Books
Tagged as: A Princess of Mars, Book Review, Dejah Thoris, Edgar Rice Burrough, Fantasy, John Carter, Princess of Mars, Pulp magazine, Science Fiction

John Carter and Writing Don’ts

Jun15

Title: John Carter

Cast: Taylor Kitsch (Actor), Lynn Collins (Actor), Andrew Stanton (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction (liberally)

Watched:  June 9, 2012

Summary: Dull and overdone (4/10)

_

When I first saw the trailer for John Carter I was intrigued and full of questions.

What is this? How do those late 19th century western images fit in with the “other world” and alien thing? I liked the music. Somehow I felt I was supposed to know who the hell John Carter was. I didn’t. It took me months to find out.

And the irony is that I’ve actually read A Princess of Mars, albeit nearly thirty years ago, but failed to remember the hero’s name. Perhaps a hint that this even was Mars would have helped.

In any case, none of that affects the film itself.

I’m not going to describe the plot, but instead talk about what works and doesn’t. Fundamentally, I think it could have been a great movie — but it’s not. In fact, only the effects make it vaguely watchable.

The writing is a mess. We have about four different beginnings. The opening prologue is set on Mars with the bad guy (sort of) that is totally useless and out of place. This is an “earth man goes to other world” story and by opening with the other world completely pops the mystery bubble. I’ll try to delete that scene from memory. The next is better, a bit of prologue presumably borrowed from the book’s attempt at verisimilitude where we learn that the titular John Carter died and left his estate to his nephew. This includes a journal of his adventures. Then we cut back to said adventures a decade earlier. In a fairly useless bit of Western which attempts to introduce our protagonist (in our third segment!) he illustrates that he is a jerk, belligerent, and manages to get himself teleported to Mars via Arizona. From there there the real story begins.

Several basic rules of straightforward writing are violated: 1. Start with your protagonist. 2. Make him or her likeable.

Plus, the direction is forced and hamhanded. In an early scene on earth, JC is “shows” he is resistant to authority by repeatedly (and foolishly) trying to escape the US army officers who merely wish to talk to him. This is done in a series of cuts. I know what the director was going for, but he fails utterly. The sequence comes off as forced and cheesy. In general, the over bombastic John Williams style score tries to sell a level of drama that the script does not create. The net effect is that you know how you are supposed to feel, but don’t: Melodrama.

This is not helped by the “additions” to the original novel’s plot. For some reason, a bunch of manipulating shape-shifting priests of undetermined origin and purpose are working behind the scenes to manipulate the moderately byzantine political landscape of Barsoom (aka Mars). This does nothing but make the principal villain seem lame and stupid. In short, a tool. Scenes feel rushed and suffer from a level of hamminess reminiscent of 1960s epic films. The actors who played Julius Caesar and Mark Antony in the excellent HBO Rome reprise their roles as campy Martian versions of the same part. In every scene they seem to be winking at the camera, all while wearing diapers and leather straps.

Even the effects and sets, as gigantic as they are, seem recycled. Part of this is a form of reciprocal IP theft between Edgar Rice  Burroughs, George Lucas, and the producers of this film. Lucas lifted all sorts of feel and elements from the original novel for the Star Wars universe, and the John Carter producers felt the need to emulate much of the visual style he created. I don’t blame George, his world is a unique vision build from the parts of pop and pulp Science Fiction. But despite the extraordinary influence of A Princess of Mars, the John Carter film adds nothing to the genre.

That is not to say that it’s bad looking (diapers aside). The effects are well executed and the big open Western-style spaces impressive and moody. It’s just that without any real connection to the cardboard characters, it’s hard to care.

For my review of the original 1917 novel, click here.

For more Film reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (22)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: A Princess of Mars, Andrew Stanton, Arts, Barsoom, Edgar Rice Burrough, Film Review, John Carter, Mars, Science Fiction, Taylor Kitsch

Award Time!

May24

I’m excited to announce that The Darkening Dream recently won some International Book Awards, including:

Winner: Best Cover Design- Fiction

and

Finalist: Fiction- Fantasy

I want to offer a shout out to my collaborators who helped with this: The cover artist Cliff Nielsen and cover designer Pete Garceau as well as my brilliant and hard working editors.

Find out more about the cover or the book.

And you should buy it if you haven't!

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By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Darkening Dream
Tagged as: Andy Gavin, Cliff Nielsen, Cover art, Cover Design, Fantasy, International Book Awards, Literature, Science Fiction, The Darkening Dream
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