Speculative Fiction

AI War: The Big Boost

Many years ago, when I was a young man, or perhaps a boy in the process of becoming a young man, I walked into a bookstore and bought a book that would change my life. I bought the book on the basis of the cover, because the cover was the coolest thing I had ever seen: a man wearing sunglasses drives a car in a futuristic city.

You understand, I say he drives the car because that is what one does with a car. But the car driven by the man in the sunglasses is a Chandler MetalSmith, and with the autocomp left off (as all autocomps were left off, until the driver requested otherwise, until the law required otherwise) the man may be driving the MetalSmith, but the proper word for what the MetalSmith is doing is flying.

The man in the sunglasses drives the MetalSmith in a spiral around and around the spacescraper, the futuristic city as his backdrop, and the police chase him around and around in their angry red flying cars, because the man in the sunglasses is so cool it's criminal.

Someone once said that good writing is the process of thinking up something cool, and writing it down, and then thinking up something even cooler, and writing it down next, and so on and so on, escalating the cool each time. If you can write that way, you should. Not everyone can.

Daniel Keys Moran can.

And the man in the sunglasses? His name is Trent. People call him the Trent the Uncatchable. But his story does not begin in the flying car on the cover of The Long Run in that bookstore many years ago; his story begins when he was the same age I was when I first looked at that cover, in a book called Emerald Eyes.

Trent's eyes are blue, behind the sunglasses. But his parents both have brilliant emerald green eyes, as do over a hundred of his brothers and sisters. At least insofar as a man whose DNA was gene-engineered from scratch can be said to have a family at all. They were telepaths; Trent was not.

Trent was roughly the same age as I was, standing in that bookstore and examining the cover art of the book I would buy, when the PeaceKeepers detonated a tactical nuclear weapon on his home, because they could not allow genetically-engineered telepaths the right of self-determination.

Trent was not there at the time.

I took that book home, and read it, and was enthralled. But Trent is a hard man to catch. It was years before I located a copy of Emerald Eyes, more years before I managed to find the story of Trent's sister Denice (The Last Dancer) and the small little corner of science fiction fandom that thought Trent was Cool. And kept thinking it, as even more years passed. Through that community I had the chance to exchange emails with the author, a man nearly as cool as his characters, and one of the few liberals I can not only respect as a person, but argue with and still respect in the morning. I was of the right age to be thinking of my future career in those days; I chose to become a computerist, as Trent would call it, and perhaps someday an author -- a dream easier to imagine than to achieve.

I don't credit those decisions to that particular choice of book on that particular day, but I do credit that book with the realization that computerists can be just as cool as anyone else. In theory, of course. Practice is another matter, and much more difficult.

The books I read then, written in the early '90s, have held up remarkably well for books written about computers. Decades before the actual fact, they had smart-phones and ubiquitous wireless internet and computer security problems and genetic engineering. They also have telepaths, and cyborgs, and a moon colony, but that's OK; we have a few decades to catch up yet.

There is something else that they have in Trent's world that we do not:

In 2072, the United Nations Space Force began building the Unity . . . at Halfway. The Unity was seven kilometers long. It was not merely the largest spacecraft that had ever been built, more than ten times as long as the uncrewed mining ferries that had, in calmer times, sent ore from the Belt to Halfway; it was nearly the largest artifact humans had ever built. There are cylindrical Cities in the Belt that are larger, blown up out of asteroids that were melted down with giant mirrors, and then inflated, while still molten metal, to the desired shape . . . but in 2080 there are only a few, and even those few are not much larger than the Unity. She had been designed for one purpose, and though the Unification had never said so publicly, that purpose was the clearest thing in the System: Sixty years after the end of the Unification War, the Unification of Earth intended to become the Unification of Sol.

If you've read this far, you've noticed that I've told you a lot about the world Trent lives in, but I haven't told you much about his story. I can't tell you about that, because you need to read it for yourself. But I can tell you this: it is about love, and loss, and life; it is about power, the kind men struggle to gain and the kind men can only choose for themselves; it is about courage; and, in the end, it is about running away.

The most courageous thing of all.

I have been waiting for this book for over a decade, and the best review I can offer is short and sweet.

It was worth the wait.

UPDATE: I thought I would address some common questions.

First, there has been a lot of material from the book posted online already if you have been following the author for a while. Don't be scared off if you've read what's already been posted in various places. This is NOT a compilation of previously posted material. There is both stuff you have already seen and a lot of new stuff.

Second, it is a complete story. It has an ending that makes sense for this part of the story arc. There's more to the story, but you aren't getting chopped off in the middle with "to be continued" on the last page.

Daniel Keys Moran's AI War

... There's really not much to say, other than, I've been waiting roughly 15 years for this book. I am going to go read it now.

I will have more to say later.

Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind (Kingkiller Chronicles, Day 1) by Patrick Rothfuss.

A scribe named Chronicler meets an innkeeper, and, discovering the innkeeper is the mythical Kvothe, of a thousand tales, convinces Kvothe to tell his story. Kvothe begins with his childhood with a traveling troupe of entertainers. A precocious child, Kvothe trains with an alchemist and magician, and yearns to go to the university and learn higher magic. Kvothe returns from playing in the woods to discover the troupe killed, and encounters the evil group of Chandrian still at the scene. Now orphan, Kvothe lives for a time in the forest, then on the streets in the city of Tarbean, blocking his memory of his past. A storyteller at an inn piques his interest, and he remembers his family, and the killing. Determined to get to the university and learn what he needs to know to get revenge, Kvothe makes the journey, and with a show of bravado, passes the entrance tests. Thus begins Kvothe's time in the university.

This is a great debut novel. Rothfuss utilizes excellent imagery and emotion, and keeps the story moving well. The world and the magic is believable. It's a well-written novel. The main character is so well written that I quickly got aggravated with him once he got to the university. If you can stay patient with an arrogant, know-it-all, entirely-too-intelligent-for-his-own-good, boy who does phenomenally stupid things without thinking, maybe you won't mind it as much. My desire to reach through the pages and shake Kvothe at times tended to dampen my enthusiasm for the book. Even the mature Kvothe the innkeeper was an arrogant (add favorite pejorative here), but at least the arrogance was tempered with self awareness, humor, and caring. That said, I liked the book, I want to find out what happens, and I'll be reading the rest of the trilogy. If the worst that can be said of a book is that the character is so well written that I dislike him, the book is definitely worth reading.

Gwenhwyfar

Lackey states in the afterword that she based her Arthurian tale on Welsh legends of not one, but three, queens named Gwenhwyfar. This theory does tend to clear up some of the conflicting tales of Arthur's queen. In her novel, Lackey focuses on the third queen.

This is a pleasant read. Which seems to be the norm for Lackey's novels lately. There is none of the emotional depth of her early novels. The heroine is one of those disgustingly well-behaved and self-aware children, who grows up into the same kind of adult. Everything seems to come easy to her. In fact, plot events in general are rather too convenient. The characters are all decently fleshed out, but seem flat, with one exception. The only character that stands out is Gwen's vicious and vindictive younger sister. My main complaint, aside from the lack of three dimensional characters, is that the story isn't exciting. There is no tension here, even in the spots that Lackey is clearly intending there to be tension.

The book has a different feel than most Lackey books, perhaps due to the historical legends the story is based upon, but still has her familiar feel and voice. The writing is clean, and the plot moves along smoothly. All the usual Arthurian characters are present, or at least named. If you like the Arthurian tragedy, it's here, to some extent. Gwenhwyfar is an acceptable book if you just want a light read without having to think or feel too much.

Blindsight

Blindsight is a first contact story that turns out to be more about the humans than the aliens, something that was more than a little disconcerting. The narrator explicitly functions as an "interpreter" between pre-Singularity humans and a variety of post-Singularity humans, the types of which include functional multiple-personalities, cybernetic human-machine interfaces, a vampire, and an AI. None of the post-humans seem particularly incomprehensible in their thoughts and behavior, which makes me question the need for a translator -- or perhaps serves to point out how effective he is at translating. Suffice it to say, none of the post-humans were especially convincing at being post-human, nor were they especially interesting as characters. They existed primarily to personify their post-human type.

The aliens were at least convincingly alien, though the nature of their alienness approached the level of a plot device. This would have bothered me more had more time been spent exploring their nature; as it was, they felt thin. The book resolves almost nothing about the aliens themselves. Indeed, very little actually happens.

That said, the book isn't badly written. Fans of first contact novels might prefer to look elsewhere; fans of psychological speculation in a science fiction setting will be rewarded for their interest.

HBO orders a pilot episode for A Song of Ice and Fire

This could be huge news. If the pilot episode is good, they might well make the rest of the series. Frankly, this series will be a reason to get HBO if they make it... and I don't even have cable TV right now.

Devices and Desires

Devices and Desires is the first book of the Engineer trilogy, which follows the life of an engineer exiled from his relatively modern and industrial city. The reason for the exile is obvious enough at first glance; the engineer has committed the crime of building a device that does not follow the appropriate Specification, an act which the ruling guilds consider an abomination, punishable by death. Yet even as the engineer struggles to escape from his fate, he conceives of a great engine that he can construct, an Engine which could set the world back on its rightful course... but to do so may require destroying everything he treasured.

The writing is engrossing enough, and the characters who become involved in the story are fascinating and realistic. They are not necessarily sympathetic, however. Everyone has their own interests and acts accordingly.

There were a number of areas where my suspension of disbelief suffering, mostly to do with the setting. Could an industrial city of the type described here actually thrive in a medieval environment? I suspect not; the gap between the industrial city and medieval surroundings is very stark. But these concerns do not overly interfere with the enjoyment of the work.

Overall, it's a good read and capable of holding the attention, but it won't win prizes for deep thought or careful worldbuilding. The strength is in the characters.

The best movie in theaters you've never heard of...

Yesterday, I went to see Fearless, Jet Li's recent martial arts epic. It was pretty good, but also pretty much exactly what I expected. While there, I saw that the theater had allocated one of its screens to a flick called The Illusionist, a movie I had never heard of or seen previews or promos for. Based on the little title strip with showtimes, it looked interesting, and a few minutes wirelessly checking the reviews on Rotten Tomatos suggested it wasn't awful.

So I made it a two-movie night and watched.

I was NOT disappointed. In fact, I was blown away. I highly recommend this movie. I won't spoil any of the plot, but the main characters are a stage magician with peasant roots, the daughter of the local nobility, and the crown prince of the Hungarian (I think) Empire. You can probably see where the plot outline is going, but it doesn't matter; the whole thing is carried off really, really well, and the interesting part is exactly how.

By way of encouragement, a few things that this movie isn't:

It's not a mindless halloween horror movie;
It's not a special effects gee-whiz showpiece;
It's not a sappy love story;
It's not a sword-and-sorcery epic;
It's not a comedy.

I cannot be complementary enough about the acting, the script, the directing... it is a flawless cinematic masterpiece that achieves everything it sets out to do.

A Triumph of Souls

The final installment of the Catechist trilogy isn't much different from the previous volumes, other than a few twists at the end. Etjole, Simna, Hunkapa, and Alitah cross an ocean and a salt plain, do battle with a townful of demons and a forestful of undead, and make an agonizingly easy entrance into Hymneth the Possessed's stronghold. Aside from not having read the Evil Overlord List, Hymneth actually does have some character depth, though this is not really explored.

If you got through the second book and are still interested, read on - the ending is satisfying, though it remains fast and light like the rest of the writing.

Into the Thinking Kingdoms

Having crossed the Sea of Aboqua, Etjole Ehomba and his companions must find passage west across the Semordria Ocean somewhere in the Thinking Kingdoms. Though these kingdoms are supposed to be (and in some ways are) bastions of civilization, they harbor their own unique man-made hazards.

Surmounting obstacle after obstacle, the story remains fresh only in the strangeness of the situations; Etjole's seeming invulnerability lends a faery tale quality to the writing that some might term 'shallow'. Sadly, there is no real character development, despite ample opportunity for such, including the addition of another member to the party.

In the opening chapter we are treated to our first glimpse of the villain, who is frighteningly cliched. Beyond this diversion, there is little to distinguish this volume from the first in the trilogy. One or two of the trouble spots in which the party finds itself gets resolved in some mysterious way other than Etjole pulling something out of his pack.

If you enjoyed the lighthearted playfulness of the first book, by all means continue. The writing doesn't get any heavier, but there is always something weird just around the corner, and for some people that's reason enough to keep turning pages.

The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever

The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is composed of Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War, and The Power That Preserves.

Thomas Covenant finds his world turned upside down when he contracts leprosy and his wife divorces him, taking their son with her. Having managed to survive this experience, but never really recover emotionally beyond it, Covenant is universally ostracized by his community. One day he inexplicably finds himself transported to another world, a dream world that is somehow so full of life that his leprosy starts to fade.

But there is a shadow that drains the vitality of this place, and he is called the Despiser, who summoned Covenant to the Land for the purpose of delivering a message of doom to its people. Thinking this to be the cruelist of all dreams, Covenant can hardly wait for it to end. But he finds himself drawn further and further into the Land, and regarded as a hero come again by its inhabitants - for he bears a wedding ring of white gold, a substance containing the power to stay the Despiser's hand that can only be wielded by Covenant himself.

But the Land cannot be real, and Covenant is overwhelmed by the raw need to survive in the face of beauty so profound that he fears he will be carried away and lose himself in it. For accepting the Land as real and believing his leprosy has been healed is to forget his own world, rendering himself powerless in the face of harsh reality where even the smallest injury can kill him. The Land needs him, but to save it Covenant must doom himself.

So he is forced to watch the death of beauty and the destruction of happiness, knowing he could stop it, if he was only free to act. The reader aches for Covenant to reach out and touch the vitality that courses through the Land, for Covenant to allow himself to feel something good, to feel awe and wonder. Donaldson's writing is so rich, so heady... I drink up the words as if I were starved and I am left breathless afterwards.

A note of caution - while some love this story, the Chronicles do not sit well with others. Many of them find Covenant's character to be so offensive that even the vibrant beauty of the Land will not keep them turning pages. I have a theory on why the reactions are so polarized - what Covenant is going through is very similar to a bout of major depression, and if you've never experienced that personally, it could be very difficult to empathize with the character. For those of us who have walked that path, Covenant is an intense combination of cathexis and catharsis. It re-creates the war in head and heart of wanting to embrace something vital and beautiful, something that will destroy us if it is lost again.

Carnivores of Light and Darkness

Etjole Ehomba is just a herder of sheep and cattle among the small tribe of the Naumkib. When strange-looking foreigners wash up mostly dead on the beach near their village, Etjole is suddenly propelled on a journey of unknown (but presumably high) difficulty by the dying charge of one of the light-skinned strangers. Taking up a quest to rescue a woman he has never met from an evil that has already claimed dozens, if not hundreds of lives of those who have already tried, Etjole seems completely outmatched. He is, after all, only a herdsman.

But a person may be one thing and other things besides, and we quickly find out that Etjole is a man of amazing resources. As we follow his long journey north through numerous perils, we are taken on a tour of one of the more bizarre fantasy worlds in the realm of speculative fiction. Carnivores pulls off being whimsical, inventive, and alien without letting that weirdness get in the way of the tale itself; rather, the strangeness is woven deftly together with plot and characters, and rarely fails to delight the reader. The utterly fantastic situations in which Etjole and his new companions find themselves never seem formulaic, and don't quite come across as 'yet another obstacle on the quest' - at least not in the first volume.

Carnivores is the first book in a trilogy, and I would recommend it to anyone with a strong imagination - it is certainly light reading, and doesn't evoke strong emotions, but it is an enjoyable tale if you appreciate the mythical.

Stranger In A Strange Land

Valentine Michael Smith was the first human born on Mars, and shortly thereafter the crew of the first exploration vessel to Mars died, leaving the infant in the hands of Martians. As a young adult, Michael is discovered, 'rescued', and brought back to earth - where he unknowingly causes a storm of political turmoil by being the only living heir of a huge corporation - and the potential 'owner' of Mars itself.

Totally devoid of human culture, Michael narrowly escapes death at the hands of a government faction via the wits of a sympathetic nurse, and then escapes having his fortune stripped from him due to the sympathy of a famous writer and lawyer.

His immediate future no longer of concern, Michael sets about trying to 'grok' humans with the help of his benefactors. Along the way we learn that Mike has some unusual powers, gained not from some sort of biological meddling by his Martian parents, but simply from a different way of thinking. Seeing that the 'discipline' gained by Martian thoughtforms can only help humankind, Mike decides to teach it to the masses, cloaked as a religion.

Stranger didn't blow me away, but it was a solid piece of work, if you can get past Heinlein's tendancy to relentlessly and repeatedly promote his philosophies. He's not as bad as Ann Rand was in Atlas Shrugged, but it's still apparent. Stranger was written before the brain-eater got Heinlein - none of his female characters are bisexual. This actually comes across as a little unrealistic, though, given that the primary suite of characters engage in full-blown polyamory; the exploration and appreciation of sexuality being one of the themes of the book.

This book is highly variable - it changes pacing frequently; whether or not you care about what's happening on any given page tends to shift. The characters can seem at one moment hackneyed; in another, all too real. Many people have said that readers end up either loving or hating this book, but I'll just settle for calling it 'interesting'.

It's becoming a permanent resident on my bookshelf because it's the only speculative fiction work of which I know that directly addresses a particular truth: if you show people that they can save themselves, that the power of change lays within them - or perhaps in them thinking outside of themselves - they'll either hate you or ignore you.

Danse Macabre

I have spoken before in this forum on my declining respect for, and interest in, the Anita Blake series. Nonetheless I have consistently picked up the latest book when it was released, hoping for something of a turnaround or change in direction. So far I have been disappointed, though not enough to make a firm committment to refuse the next installment. Danse Macabre may well be bad enough to break that barrier.

Why do I say that? Simple enough. My major complaint has been that the sexual and romantic liasons of the main character have taken over the series. Recent books have almost no plot that does not revolve around Anita's personal life, and supernatural murders are thrown in almost as an afterthought. Danse Macabre does not even maintain the thin pretext. Every supernatural threat represents little more than an excuse for Anita to have more sex. The supposedly non-threatening parts of the plot revolve around Anita choosing someone to have more sex with. The major plot shocker is whether or not Anita will face the consequences of having unprotected sex with lots of people all the time.

And it's just not interesting anymore.

Count me out of the next one, unless I can pick it up in a bookstore and open it to random pages without finding mostly sex.

Dzur

Dzur is Brust's long-awaited followup to Issola in the Vlad Taltos series. It's an interesting mix of new material and old standbys of the Vlad series. In terms of series revelations and introductions, I counted at least five or six events of a similar stature to the Lesser Revelation of Orca. And it's worth noting that the Greater Revelation of that novel is not directly revealed but gets enough in-jokes that it becomes tiresome.

In terms of actual plot movement, however, the book is a light one. Although the book is somewhat heavy on new characters, they don't advance the plot a great deal, and in many ways the book more closely resembles the early Vlad novels than the more recent ones. Forced by circumstances to confront the Jhereg (both the Right and Left Hand thereof), Vlad finds himself resorting to older methods and haunting his older territories. In that respect the book was more familiar and somewhat more disappointing. I felt it could easily have taken place earlier in the life of the character and the series, and were it not for the Greater Spoiler of Issola, should have. There's a certain episodic quality since little of long-range import was resolved.

It's hard to say whether this piece of the series is disappointing or just surprising. That's going to depend on how the new elements in the series are used in future novels. This is definitely a wait-and-see-before-judging book. It was, however, a fun read for a longstanding fan of the series. The problem is that Dzur both tastes great and is less filling, and only one of those things is a compliment.

A Scanner Darkly (movie)

I have never read the novel by Phillip K. Dick. I will at some point, because the film seemed more a character study of drug addicts than anything else. It was a visual feast of rotoscoped character study, but still a character study. Beyond the lovely plot twist at the end, Scanner doesn't have much to recommend it. This is a movie about how addictive drugs mess up people's lives. It's not preachy about it, and it's funny at times, but the basic subject matter is rather depressing.

Despite what the previews may have lead you to believe, had you not already read the book, Scanner doesn't fit much in the sci-fi genre. Aside from the blur suits the agents wear to protect their identities while in the office, technology takes a back seat in this one. Even the police-espionage aspect of it is very, very muted.

I'd recommend Trainspotting over Scanner on the subject of drugs, but you won't find a review of it here, as it is not speculative fiction.

The Protector's War

Nine years after Dies the Fire, an unsteady truce reigns over western Oregon. Mike Havel's Bearkillers and Juniper Mackenzie's Wiccan clans, along with some other loose federations, are strong enough to have prevented the despot Norman Arminger from overruning them - so far. Occupying the rich farmlands south of Portland, these groups have quickly adapted to life after the Change, and have thriving societies with bustling economies.

Their cultures are starting to take root, too - the younger generations know nothing of gunpowder, electricity, or gasoline beyond stories from the adults. Most members of the Mackenzies have converted to the Wiccan religion, even though tolerance is still upheld as valuable anywhere outside of the Protector's territory. The Bearkillers are finding more and more of J.R.R. Tolkein's fictional traditions woven into their lives, even the elven language itself, thanks to a couple of young die-hard fans.

The Bearkillers and Mackenzies have their share of minor problems, both internal and external, but they're worried about the threat from Portland, because Arminger will never leave them in peace. To spice things up, a ship from Tasmania lands near Portland bearing some new characters. This book is not aptly named, as it covers events that are leading up to the showdown that will be the conclusion of the series, but not the war itself.

Stirling's descriptive writing of the Oregon countryside and the beautific settlements the main characters have created within it are nice, but sometimes painfully slow. I appreciate an author taking the time to describe the setting in detail, but something needs to be happening during those descriptions. I found myself skimming over them to get to the meat of the story. Passages about the technological developments spark interest, and of course the conflicts between the primary forces in the book are always fascinating.

The Wiccansim and Tolkeinism gets laid on a little thickly - it comes across as somewhat cheesy at times (imagine a 25-year-old woman pointing to a hang glider she has just sighted and calling out, "Nazgul!" as a warning). Flaws aside, this is an entertaining read, and the sheer speculation involved in a drastically Changed world will keep you turning pages.

Kiln People

The creative exercise in this book is the cheap and easy creation of human 'dittos', copies of one's mind complete with a body, albiet one that only lasts 24 hours. Once the life of a ditto is nearly over, its creator can inload its memories, effectively allowing people to experience multiple lifespans. Even the poorest people can create at least one ditto a day to earn a wage as an unskilled laborer. Others do more interesting things with their copies, anything from selling them as specialized courteseans, to experiencing thrills much too risky for a real body, to creating a team of hyper-focused detectives.

The latter is the MO of Albert Morris, whose various selves independently stumble onto some disturbing happenings that seem to be unrelated at first - but when the creator of the primary dittoing technology, his chief scientist, and the scientist's daughter are all involved, things get interesting quickly.

Like Brin's other works, Kiln People starts at a reasonably fast pace and maintains it for the entirety of the story. This is especially impressive since his four first-person points of view are of Albert and his three dittos, and the entire book only spans a handful of days. The book is also nice and long, the paperback weighs in at a meaty 567 pages. Brin continually delights with little details of how dittotech has impacted society, though his prose is nothing special and I was not particularly attached to any of the characters. All in all, a good solid speculative work of science fiction.

Vitals

The blurb on the back cover by the San Francisco Chronicle describes this stand-alone novel as "Michael Chrichton meets Robert Ludlum, with a big scoop of The Manchurian Candidate thrown in for good measure.... [it] will keep you guessing." Well, it certainly kept me guessing - among other things, I still can't figure out why Bear switched his first-person point of view midway through the book to a different character, after 196 pages (paperback) of solid writing with the primary character. It may have been the only way to tell that particular part of the story, but it felt incredibly awkward, and the quality of the story went nowhere but downhill after this point. The viewpoint switches a few more times throughout the book.

If Michael Chrichton ever met Robert Ludlum, it would be in a dark alley, and Ludlum would clock Chrichton upside the head for not being able to write decent endings, among other things. Vitals does have some of the weird science aspects of Chrichton, but it also shares Chrichton's annoying tendancy to write himself into a corner towards the end. Vitals does not, in any way, shape, or form, compare even remotely to Ludlum's mastery of espionage. In the first half of the book we are tantalized with the possibility of the main character getting trained to avoid assasination, but it falls through. The rest of the book is like this - possibilities of interesting things just around the corner, but the author never takes us there.

Vitals certainly has its creepy moments, and the first 196 pages are excellent. But overall, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone other than a die-hard sci-fi fan, and even then only if they were stuck in an airport for five hours with nothing else to read. It will pass the time. There is certainly a lot more sci-fi out there that is drastically worse; I can't complain about Bear's prose, though it also has nothing outstanding about it either. But there is certainly a lot more sci-fi out there that is obviously better.

Ultraviolet: The Blood Wars

So there's a new vampire movie out, and I really need a few hours to sit and take in someone else's vision of impossibility with the hope of seeing something cool. These factors combined to put me in a theater seat watching Ultraviolet, despite having nothing more than the posters and the previews to go on.

I'll give you the short version: it's bad. Really bad. So bad I'm surprised I sat through the whole thing (which probably had a lot to do with the fact that if I didn't, I would have to start thinking again -- something that I was trying to avoid in the few hours between work and more work that I had).

For starters, imagine a science fiction world where a disease has separated the world into "hemophages" (pseudo-vampires who have fangs but are never pictured sucking blood) and normal humans. These vampires have become terrorists because the rest of the world is afraid of getting infected and treats them with prejudice and discrimination. Then realize that all the special effects are CGI-based -- really, really, really bad CGI. The actress is a dead ringer for the vampiress in Razor Blade Smile (and in fact her character is very similar as well), and might even be the same person -- it's hard to tell, because Razor Blade Smile is fairly old and one of the CGI effects is applied to blur and whiten the main character's face in closeups. I can only presume that they are too cheap to buy makeup.

That said, and similar again to Razor Blade Smile, the movie has a few moments of coolness; a duel with flaming swords in pitch dark, a high-speed motorcycle chase aided by an antigravity generator, electrostatic costume changes... but they aren't worth it, I promise. Unless you're really bored.

Micah

According to Amazon, there's a new Anita Blake novel due out Febuary 28th, titled simply Micah (named for one of the prominent characters in the last three novels). There's an interesting twist. Amazon is listing it as a paperback. I presume that means that Ms. Hamilton has been downgraded from the hardcover list due to lackluster sales of her last Blake novel, Incubus Dreams, or the intervening Meredith Gentry novels. I actually think that's a good thing; the Gentry novels were unashamed soft-core pornography and the recent Blake novels weren't much better. I'm much more interested in magic, vampires, werewolves, and murder mysteries than I am in reading a thousand pages of nonstop sexual orgy. Perhaps the declining sales will deliver the point to the publishers and the author in a way that online commentary may not necessarily accomplish.

In paperback, I'll buy it, and I'll have a review here soon after.

UPDATE: Careful reading of the Amazon review indicates that the situation is a little more complex. Micah is a shorter novel (288 pages) intended as an entry point for new readers, another indication of potentially flagging sales -- the publisher is trying to get new readers hooked because the existing reader base isn't buying as much as they would like. It will be followed, in June, with a full-length novel: Danse Macabre.

UPDATE: Micah is out in my local Barnes and Noble. Reporting wirelessly from the scene...

UPDATE: Micah didn't really do much for me. About equal parts sex, relationship angst, and supernatural spook. Nothing really to recommend it especially, though the sex didn't grate nearly so badly as in the last full-length novel.

The Protector's War

In Dies the Fire, author SM Stirling explores the consequences of an event that alters the fundamental principles of the universe such that modern technology -- particularly firearms, engines, and electricity -- no longer function. In the time between the onset of the event and the first harvest, the characters must face the physical challenge of survival in a changed world, while devising new social and moral structures better adapted to that world. Unsurprisingly, survival without modern technology demands a basically feudal structure -- and not every would-be king has the best interests of his people at heart.

The Protector's War picks up the thread about 8 years later. The chaos and starvation immediately following the event have subsided, and a variety of stable social structures have been formed. The British Isles have reverted to monarchy; America has a number of independent domains in a loose alliance, and a would-be emperor who believes his knowledge of medieval history amounts to manifest destiny. Conflict is inevitable; but can the remnants of modern America learn fast enough to prevail, without losing their souls in the process?

In some ways, this novel is misnamed. The Protector's War does not cover the war itself. Instead, it provides the prelude to an inevitable war between the feudal armies of the Protector (also a misnomer!) and the loose alliance of the free peoples.

An anticipated third volume will presumably complete the saga. That said, there's little room for disappointment. The hints of how the rest of the world has handled the situation are welcome, and provide an interesting perspective to the experiences of the familiar characters. With the immediate threat of starvation averted, and years of time elapsed, there is an opportunity to explore a more mature social response to the changed world, and Stirling takes full advantage of it, depicting how his chosen characters mold the original loose associations they founded into mature and lasting societies capable of responding to external threats.

I highly recommend this series as a thoughtful exploration of the interaction between technology and society. Although there is more than enough material for the traditional fantasy epic, Stirling has consistently avoided the direct appeals to emotion and individual heroism that are the hallmark of such tales. Instead, he keeps his distance and allows the characters to find their own ways to survive and thrive in a relatively non-judgemental fashion. The reader is invited to make judgements, of course, as do the characters themselves; but the author's perspective remains fairly neutral. The focus is clearly on the evolution (or de-evolution) of social structures, including their response to a threatening neighbor, rather than a simple adventure story. And that, ultimately, is what keeps it interesting.

Firefly: Season 2

It seems that there's an effort underway to build support for season 2 of Firefly. If you'd be interested in such a thing, sign up, because the networks have already demonstrated that they won't support anything as libertarian as this.

Underworld: Evolution

The original Underworld could best be described as a movie made according to the rules of the World of Darkness roleplaying universe from White Wolf, postulating a supernatural underside to our familiar world where vampires and werewolves battle endlessly, with a plot based on cliches filtered through the rules of Hollywood scriptwriting. Despite that, it actually worked pretty well. The key, as with many such movies, is to ignore the plot holes, physics errors, and lack of characterization, instead focusing on shiny things that go bang, fanged cool factor, and Kate Beckinsale in a shiny skintight corset-enabled piece of tactical eveningwear.

The sequel, Evolution, has all the advantages of its predecessor, and fewer disadvantages. The script is better, though still definitely an action movie script; the action scenes lack the awkward moments that occasionally showed up in the first. The romantic interest of the two main characters is inevitable, but having been established in the first movie now takes up much less exposition time -- which is instead spent on mild plot twists. The special effects are similar in feel, but improved significantly. Fight choreography is smoother, and more realistic, although not always cinematic due to realistic fighting being less flashy. Bonus points for ammunition management; characters actually reloaded multiple times and ran out of ammunition eventually.

Definitely no deep meaning to this one, but I enjoyed it.

Dies the Fire

A couple years ago, I started to have an idea for a novel. It wasn't the first such idea; I have several kicking their way around my head. I don't have time to write more than a chapter or two in brief spurts, but I let the ideas percolate and refine. Eventually, I will have that time, and hopefully the ideas will be timeless by then. Or something.

But at least one of those ideas is now out of the running, thanks to S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire; he has simply done it, and done it well enough that I doubt I will follow down that particular path.

What was the idea? Simple: take the modern world as it is today, or close to it, and postulate some Event that prevents much of modern technology from functioning. It doesn't matter exactly how it works; what matters is how humanity copes with the results, which will effectively revert the world to the middle ages. The important things that make up modern civilization, for this purpose, are: electricity (computers, power delivery), explosives (including gunpowder and gasoline), and steam engines.

My idea was primarily concerned with firearms, and the effects of their removal: without them, the human race is back in direct competition with animals and each other by strength and speed. By removing firearms from the equation, which act as a remarkable equilizer in allowing smaller, weaker, and relatively untrained human beings to defend themselves on an equal footing with large trained soldiers, the world is forced to revert to feudalism. This has the obvious consequences on the civil rights of women, racial minorities, and those who simply aren't good at personal violence.

Stirling explores the idea very well, with a number of distinct and interesting characters he follows from the first moments after the Change through the formation of new social structures and the first season's harvest. Psychologists, anthropologists, fantasy readers, survivalists, SCA members, even wiccans will all find something interesting in this book.

Kudo's to the author for telling it first, and possibly better.

There's a sequel out, The Protector's War. It's sitting on my to-read shelf right now.

UPDATE: The Smallest Minority also reviews this book briefly.