The World's End - review

This is the capstone of the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost films.

It has a very slow start but, just as I was about to give up on it, an enticing and interesting story does develop.

It has a variety of blended commentaries that are each found throughout the genre as a whole but they are mixed together in good form.

If you liked Shawn of the Dead and Hott Fuzz you will probably enjoy this film once the drudgery of the first part of the story passes.

Oblivion - review

This movie is more than is seems on the surface: a post-apocalyptic, sci-fi adventure film.

It has considerable sub text and commentary as well as a twist.

The twist is, while cliched, well executed and would be a surprise to a viewer that did not know it going in to the story.

I enjoyed it and I recommend it for scifi action film fans.

The Last Enemy - review

On its surface this story by H. Beam Piper seems like a simple science fiction action story set in the Paratime construct that Piper developed so well and with the main character used so thoroughly within it.

But this story tackles several ideas that are greater ideas.

This story tackles the ideas of ultimate capitalism versus ultimate socialism. It tackles the idea of hereditary control of wealth and power. It tackles the idea of the soul. It even touches on the idea of race in a passive-aggressive manner that gets your subconscious contemplating it.

It outlines a probably consequence of atomic proliferation and how resulting conflicts might change the way in which humans build their homes.

It even touches on some more abstract concepts such as the level of attrition that will occur if there is a singular guild of people who provide security, offense and defense to private individuals.

This story merely reinforces my lamentation that I had not heard of H. Beam Piper until recently and my desire to acquire everything he has written and consume it voraciously.

Firefly - The Board Game - review

I have now, after many months, had an opportunity to sit down and play my Firefly: The Board Game with a friend.

Prior to this I have had one abandoned game with a friend and a solo adventure.

This game is great!

It has the proper flavor of The 'Verse and the show.
It has enough varying mechanics to be interesting but none of them, even collectively, are terribly complicated.

The initial run through is difficult more because of the many pieces and card decks that have to be set up.

The biggest downside, aside from the setup time, is that this game takes up a LOT of space.

I used two 6' folding tables to play.

I recommend the game and I recommend playing it alone or with friends.

Now I need to try integrating the "Pirates and Bounty Hunters" expansion.

The Time Traders - review

Andre Norton's The Time Traders is an interesting story with an interesting concept.

It starts with a criminal who is given the option of rehabilitation or to join a top secret government project.

The project is the basis for the title of the novel and further discussion will damage the reader's enjoyment of the overarching story.

Given that this is from the early years of pulp science fiction I found it a good story despite the aspects of science that have developed completely differently from the predictions Norton created.
Some additional research is warranted, but won't be undertaken because I am lazy, as to whether some of the plot contrivances used in this novel were already cliched by the time Norton used them or whether they were somewhat novel at that point or, even, whether he invented them.

The disappointing, and yet great, part of this story is that it is the first of a series of novels. This, of course, is a fact I was made aware of at the end of the recording of the first book.

I look forward to finding the rest of the series even though books two and three may not be available in the public domain yet.

Murder in the Gun Room - review

I recently consumed a reading of Murder in the Gunroom by H. Beam Piper.
This was a deviation from the genre of his work that I have already consumed as this is a post WWII crime story.
No time travel, no dimensional shifts, no aliens. Just a straight out murder mystery.

Despite the lack of the aspects of story telling that intrigue me the most I enjoyed this novel and am pleased I encountered it.

The story creates a fascinating character in the main protagonist (one whom I will not be surprised to encounter again as I traverse the works of Piper further) and sets up a solid situation in which there are many suspects each with motive, means and opportunity.

A quick-witted reader is brought along at such a pace that they can take the logical steps of the protagonist at roughly the same pace as the character itself, allowing for the excitement of prediction on the cusp of realization.

All in all, I highly recommend this novel, particularly in the form that I consumed it: as a Librivox recording.

You can find it here.

Librivox Short Science Fiction Collection 018 - review

This collection consists of ten stories.

Belly Laugh by Randall Garret
This story routes us through an alternate reality in which the Cold War between the USSR and the USA exploded into a hot fury. It is a potential future that we could still experience based on a number of current events and the items contained within the story.
The narrative is framed in an interesting and, to me, somewhat novel way. In fact, this short story resembles, in many ways, my writing style and the manner in which I portray small glimpses into the realities that my characters are presented with.

Breakaway by Stanley Gimble
An interesting prediction on the potential for the first space launch.
It is easy to imagine that something similar to this took place with the first astronauts before their launch.

Cully by Jack Egan
This is an interesting short that presents the horror of consciousness gone awry from the perspective of the person affected.
As is obvious from the fiction I write this theme is a strong one in my imagination and this story handles it in a way that is intriguing and frightening and presents a plausible scenario in which one might accept the horror until they are not longer able to accept it.

Earthmen Bearing Gifts by Frederick Brown
A fascinating story outlining the plight of the people of another world.
There is not much I can write about it without ruining the story for the reader/listener.


Mex by Laurence M. Janifer
This story is a metaphorical tale of bullying and avenging against bullies.
It's only marginally interesting to me in that vein and also only marginally interesting to me in the fantastical context.

The Putnam Tradition by Sonia Dorman
This story outlines how a fantastic family tradition can be overwhelmed by the encroachment of the modern world. It seems, to me, that this is an allegorical tale about the problems of modern society destroying the traditional family life that existed before electricity and telephones permeated the countryside.
From a metaphorical stance this is an interesting study but I did not care for it.

Some Words with a Mummy by Edgar Allen Poe
I am surprised I have not encountered this before.
The way the story is framed well and the concept behind it is fascinating to contemplate.
The ending is fantastic and harkens to the innovative mind that Poe possessed. His way of thinking was obviously in the same vein as some of the great science fiction and fantasy masters who were his contemporaries and those who followed.

Summit by Dallas McCord Reynolds
The summit refers to a conference rather than the peak of a mountain.
This is another story that portrays a world in which the "cold war" exploded into a heated fury.
It presents a disturbing look at politicians from the inside of their inner sanctum; a picture in which the face they present to the people they lead is completely different from the face that they present to each other in closed doors; a reality which may very well already exist.

The presentation is relatively straight-forward but there is an interesting twist at the end of the story that I found worthwhile.

This is Klon Calling by Walt Sheldon
I think this is now one of my favorite short stories.
The main character appears to be the type of character I would enjoy spending time with and the secondary character appears the type of character that I have spent a lot of time with.
The joke seems plausible and as one that I could see any of one group of friends playing on any from the other group.
The way the joke plays out is what makes this an interesting story.

Two Plus Two Makes Crazy by Walt Sheldon
This story is fascinating to me, as it highlights a prediction that is recurrent in science fiction culture but, since this work is in the public domain, it is likely one of the very first examples of the prediction of computational power becoming dominant and self-serving with a human rebellion against it.
This, in some ways, strikes home as I have an outline for a novel I hope to write that has this as the core theme.

The Colors of Space - Review

Yesterday I finished reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Colors of Space.

While I have trouble with one core facet of the novel (the 8th color) I enjoyed the narrative as a whole.

It was an enjoyable space take with moderate commentary on racism hidden in the subtext.

I did not enjoy this as much as my memory of Hunters of the Red Moon but without rereading that work I cannot generate a proper comparison.

This Crowded Earth - By Robert Bloch - Review

This morning I finished "This Crowded Earth" by Robert Bloch.

For a story written in 1958 it has a lot of commentary that is valuable today.

It does, however, fall into a deadly trap of making firm predictions which went wildly off base.

It predicted that 6 billion people would lead to space quotas and limitations on transport that made 15 miles per hour in a private vehicle seem immensely fast and a luxury.

It predicted contraception through oral means about 50 years later than it actually happened which is incredibly ironic as it was already in clinical trials as Bloch was writing this book and became available as a contraceptive two years later.

If one ignores these nit-picky details one can view this work for the social commentary that it truly is. In this regard this work is a masterwork. It touches on nearly every aspect of social structure that makes civilization a complicated mess -
Birth control, over-population, eugenics, overt genetic manipulation, human testing, mistreatment of prisoners, transportation, housing, etc etc etc... Pretty much all of the topics that are worth discussing make an appearance in one form or another in this book.

Despite the minor aspects that are problems this work should be read by any distopia fan or science fiction fans in general.

It's an important work in shaping the core foundation of science fiction upon which many other authors placed their works.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - review

I have meant to read some Verne since I was a child but never had the time.
I recently finished consuming the Librivox recording of a translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and I was interested in many aspects of the books.

First I found it interesting that the narrative flips in its method of measurements repeatedly, and does so in the same passages. It will use metric and imperial measurements. I found this mildly annoying and contemplated whether or not it was a translation issue or whether the author originally wrote the manuscript in mixed units (and, if so, for what purpose).

Like other works of science fiction this one makes predictions that prove completely untrue.
For example, The Nautilus travels to the South Pole. We now know this to be completely impossible and we also know that what it finds there to be completely unreasonably predicted. I find myself wondering what Verne was thinking in making such an off prediction for what would be at the pole itself.

This work is also greatly disjointed when it is littered with great listings of sea life. It is as though Verne were doing a masturbatory exercise in outlining his own aquatic life knowledge.

I also found that the character of Consile was completely and totally superfluous. He added nothing to the narrative and the entire story could have been written with the minor contributions of this character having been pushed to the main speaker or Ned Land. However; I did find it interesting that Consile meets many of the characteristics of a savant autistic in many ways. This makes me wonder if there are other examples of characters within older fiction who would meet such a diagnosis.

I also found it fascinating that the phrase "tricked out" was used to describe the way some particular fish were colored. This vernacular is a phrase I thought was relatively recent in its usage but I was obviously mistaken.

Critiques aside, this is a valuable piece of work for literature and science fiction fans to consume as it lays a foundation for all of the works that have come since.

Space Viking - review

Despite the terrible title Space Viking, by H. Beam Piper is actually a fantastic novel.

It's a solid space adventure story through the eyes of a singular character who is also on a personal journey through the path of vengeance for destruction brought into his life.

What makes it even better is the metaphorical analysis of government styles and the collapse of civilization that Piper has wrought into this story in a tapestry that makes perfect sense for the context.

This novel has made me decide that, like Heinlein, I need to find everything Piper wrote and consume it.

Deathworld - review

I read Harry Harrison's Deathworld for the first time a decade ago.
At that time I read both of the sequels.

Now that I am consuming audiobooks I decided to reread this book because I remember enjoying the entire series immensely; despite the terrible title.

At first view this is a straight-forward and simple adventure story but it has a great deal of depth beyond that.
The main character is an interesting study in psychology and his views are a thinly-veiled commentary on religion as a whole (the veil is pushed aside at the end of the book).

This book is a morality tale about unending war and the psychology of what perpetuates it as well as a commentary on the way humanity impacts the environment.

But, it is also the adventure story.

And it makes me wish I was a Pyran.

Divergent - review

Over the weekend I saw the movie Divergent.

The short version of this review is that I feel I need to acquire and read the books now.

The longer version is that the world created for this story is an interesting post-apocalyptic future. Humanity has become divergent in itself such that five major personality traits have become accentuated and everyone needs to force themselves into the molds that those traits create. Anyone not "making the cut" ends up problematic and homeless.

Over generations this system hones people into the five characteristic "factions" such that the core traits are reinforced. Anyone who is not clearly one trait of another is "divergent" from the society and is a terrible risk to the stability of the society.

The movie generates a lot of questions to be asked about the reality and the setup and a variety of other pieces of the world. The movie leaves a lot of holes to be filled. Allegedly, the book fills many of these holes in.

I enjoyed the film. It was paced well and many people won't notice the subtle things that I, and the group of people I went to see it with, nitpicked (or, if they see them they won't care).

Graveyard of Dreams - review

This H. Beam Piper story was a bit of a surprise. No time travel; no alternate quantum realities.
Just a basic people story that happens to take place in a reality in which interstellar travel is fact.

The story uses the setting, and hints of the history, to an effective manner in outlining the means by which one individual can affect a change on a planetary scale.

One person can make a difference if they have the right vision and the right knowledge so long as they also have the right backing.

That's the uplifting take-away from this story; even though the story itself highlights the depressing reality of economic stagnation and the self-perpetuating system that economic depression is when it depends on actual cash.

The many allegorical aspects of this story make it a worthwhile read.

Police Operation - review

This is another story by H. Beam Piper.

This one handles the ParaTime concept (e.g. multiple quantum realities) in a single narrative that takes place in our world.

The raw story is a simple one and would have minimal repercussions had the story worked out differently but it does a great job of setting the stage for many aspects of how ParaTime works and how the people from the 1sr Level handle their incursions.

The science is a bit off in this one, especially in how extra-terrestrail life is touched upon but that, again, could be due to divergent forks in reality which our reality is not a part of.

This was the longest of the stories included in the set of stories I read, but it was well worth the read.

In fact, I think the main character, and the ParaTime Police, would be a good mine for Hollywood to adapt into film.

Of course, I have no faith that they would do it correctly - so the result would likely be garbage,

Flight from the Future - review

H. Beam Piper seems fascinated with time and multiple realities.

This particular story cleanly handles the Grandfather Paradox in a way that wasn't particularly obvious to me while reading the story.
This, like the other works of Piper, is worth the read.

Knights of Badassfom - review

I recently has an opportunity to see a movie that has been in production hell for several years:

This film is silly.
It's very silly.
But it is filled with actors whom I guarantee you'll think "OH that's THAT guy" (or girl) for most of the movie.

It has a simple plot and it is outrageous but it is supposed to be.

This movie is, in no way, high cinema nor is it a masterpiece worthy of critical acclaim.

What it is, though, is a film that is written and directed and acted by people who understand the LARP and reenactment communities.

The film portrays so many aspects of these communities in a way that is amusing and accurate without ridiculing them that I, as someone who has taken part in both LARP and reenactment events, was thoroughly amused.

I look forward to owning a copy of this film so I can watch it with my friends over and over again.

Temple Trouble by H. Beam Piper - Review

Piper generated several linked story sets, one of which is the "paratime" set. Paratime is, essentially, a multiverse and there is a prime civilization that has figured out how to slide between realities and governs all of the rights to mine, etc all of the various realities in a variety of ways.

Temple Trouble deals with an isolated incident in which a troublesome world is only marginally controllable by religion and the paratime people from the prime world who are trying to exploit the world for resources that the world is not using and probably never will due to the divergences in its sociological development.

This is one of several stories I have encountered in which religion is portrayed solely as a means to control the population. It does pose some interesting questions, one of which it does very overtly toward the end.

This story, while familiar in a lot of ways and somewhat predictable (but it might not have been when it was written and published) is still a worthwhile read and I was most entertained as I "read" it in the car.

The Answer by H. Beam Piper - A review

I am not sure how I managed to never hear of this author before but now I have and I am reading a collection of his short stories.

The first was "The Answer."

H. Beam Piper died in 1964. This story takes place in 1984, 15 years after the nuclear holocaust that devastated the entire northern hemisphere.

There is not much to discuss without generating spoilers other than to say that the direction I expected the story to take is not the one it took and it generated a new concern for me (and all of us that contemplate apocalyptic scenarios) to ponder.

If you have never consumed this story I recommend it.

The First Men in the Moon - A Review

I recently finished reading H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon.

I found this book to be very similar in many ways to The Time Machine.

Wells' insight into many of the scientific principles being explored of the day is, without question, extensive. The postulation that Wells uses in this work to pontificate on topics that he is seeing the most rudimentary study of in his age.

One of the things that fascinated me the most about his conjecture is the level of awareness that mankind had in Wells' time about the density problem of the moon. Their "obvious" answer to the problem was that the Moon must be of similar material to the Earth but filled with caverns to make it less dense. I find this a reasonable assumption that was made, given their lack of any additional information on the topic.

Another interesting item that Wells extrapolates on is something we know to be very much different from the assumptions his era was making. The creation of "Cavorite" in the book is based on the base assumptions that light and heat and electro-magnetic energy are actually different and that those differences are similar to each other in the same way that they are all different from gravity.
What we know now is that gravity is a force unto itself, and a force we do not yet understand the mechanism of while all of the other forces discussed are actually variations of the same force.

Aside from the core mis-assumption of the varying forces and the vast incorrect conjectures about the atmosphere on the moon I found only one major flaw in the overall story. We know, with absolute certainty, that one plant may not be seen from space but that an entire field of them will be visible as a color tint. The rapid growth of the lunar plant life that Wells describes would have generated a visible color stain on the surface of the Moon that would have been visible to the naked eye.

Another side note is that the main characters reference Jules Vernes' piece about lunar exploration in what might be one of the earliest examples of a pop-culture character referencing the titular work of a competing work of the same genre and rough storyline.