Fathers To Sons And Daughters

As I grow older I hear more of my late father’s voice in my words. It’s not anything I can pin down. My dad had a very expressive speaking voice, especially when he was in a light-hearted mood. I remember him that way a lot.

When I speak to the pets or to Brittany, I hear some of that coming out–I don’t know where it comes from.

Other things to pass on were more scarce. Certainly, I have genetic inheritance: musicianship, a certain playfulness with my kid, and some physical characteristics like good teeth and a certain voice.

My father and I shared a taste for good seafood and jazz: two tastes I haven’t influenced my daughter to adopt. He didn’t share my taste in science, rock, ethnic foods, science fiction, or church things.
Not three weeks into summer vacation, and Brittany has turned into a Star Trek fan, asking at every turn to view all my taped Voyager episodes. I noticed she listed it as her favorite tv show on her summer camp application a few days ago. I asked her why she didn’t list this show instead. She just shrugged. She also jumped in ghee–I mean glee at my Father’s Day dining choice this afternoon.

Afterward, we enjoyed more sf fun: she enjoyed the character Polly Perkins. That’s okay. I rather enjoyed the other female lead in the film, but I think I look at female hero figures somwhat differently.

I sit in awe at the influence parents seem to have on children–on the influence I have on one child. I’m used to people going their own way, making their own decisions, and leaving me to my own devices. You’d think that by age eleven they’re leaving family influences farther behind. But I guess not yet. It still feels like a singular responsibility.

 

Strange Maps

Surfing earlier tonight, I ran across a fascinating blog called strange maps. Way, way cool for a map geek like me.

Check out this map of evolution teaching.

And this one on how the red state/blue state situation shaped up last summer based on the  president’s approval rating.

My strange offering is this map of Australia I began to modify for an “alternate history” sf novel I considered on the premise of “What if Australia separated from Antarctica ten million years later than it did and was still a temperate continent ready for tens of millions of Dutch, Spanish, and English settlers in the 1800′s?” So here are the 37 states of Australia, which obviously wouldn’t have the same names for cities and places, but I thought it might have a set of “Great Lakes” up the center.

Here’s another map “drawn” from scratch about ten years ago when I first played around with speckling, shading, and other things to make ms paint look better:

And my personal favorite where I tried all sorts of things to make it look colorful, semi-realistic, and a bit strange:

 

Firefly

I had heard of the show on its original 2002 run on Fox, but I never tuned in. I’m not sure I should’ve, as my tv wasn’t hooked up to a Nielsen box. From what I read, the network really messed up both the presentation of the shows. Plus they cancelled it. Another good reason to bypass network tv entirely and go straight to disc.

Anita got me the box set for Christmas, and I’ve been enjoying the episodes since then. Enjoying them a lot. I tried to explain it to a friend who also doesn’t like tv but does like science fiction. The show’s creator said the opening credits shot where the spaceship buzzes a herd of wild horses sums up in four seconds what the show’s about.

I can’t quite get around the illogic of transporting cattle from one planet to another by spaceship. (It would cost NASA about $1M to send an average horse up in the space shuttle.) Maybe by the year 2517, they’ll have it figured out. More likely, they’ll have gene sequences of horses on every planet, so if you want new ones, just add a drop of water or something and watch it grow.

Meanwhile, I can enjoy otherwise great writing, good acting, and a character-driven drama with lots of funny moments. For another five episodes. Then I’ll have to hit the library to find more good sf.

 

Star Trek Resuscito

The movie franchise Star Trek getting resuscitated in two years, according to lots of people online. Going back to Kirk and Company: The Academy Years, from what I’ve read. Maybe that’ll work, though I think heading a bit more into the future beyond Picard would be worthwhile.

I have this to say:

1. Find a good writer because its about story, story, and nothing but story.

2. Find good actors, not SF stiffs.

The apex of Star Trek was the final five years of the Next Generation. The movies? Mostly forget about them. The latter incarnations of Star Trek failed not because they left beloved characters behind, but that the writing failed to live up to prior expectations. The first year of classic Trek (and some of the second) was also very well written. Voyager and Enterprise had their moments, but not enough of them.

But of course, this is about generating profit for Paramount. As long as they keep thinking like Ferengi, they’ll have about as much success as this dude had crashing a Betazed picnic.

 

On My Bookshelf

Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which, though a bit slow going at the start, has a deep appeal. The author herself describes it as influenced by Jane Austen and J.R.R. Tolkien (among others). How can you go wrong with that?

I found a copy of Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter a few weeks ago at Half Price Books. I read the first thirty pages, but I’ve set it aside for a bit. That book above is a hefty volume and I’ll probably need all of four weeks to read it before I return it to the library.

I picked up this book today after my wife’s allergist appointment: Oceans Of Kansas: A Natural History Of The Western Interior Sea. Naturally, the ID crowd would frown, but the cover is way cool.



Anybody for a swim?

Thought not.

 

The Doctor is Back

Loved the new series. My wife had never heard of it. It’s on the SciFi channel Friday nights. Now I have something to look forward to watching on tv.

 

Don’t Look So Glum

Harry’s out today.

Naturally my wife was practically the first in line to get it. Naturally, I prefer the books. Naturally, the forces of good (hyperactive Christians) are massing against the forces of evil (JK and her minions). Me? I plan to enjoy a decent movie tonight when I get home from Benediction.

Mischief managed.

 

Best of 2005 SF

Best science fiction of 2005, as chosen by the contributors to the sf site. I’ve read about a third of these books. The others are often very hard to find in print in the US or in libraries. I’ve never had an argument with any of the “Top Ten” selections in any years. To make this list, a novel has to be very well written.

I saw The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco on the list. Fill me in on him, folks. Doesn’t he write Catholic religious fantasy or something?

 

The Shape of Things To Come

Movies, that is, according to Rick Norwood, media reviewer for the sf site. St Blog’s hot (and other) spots:

The Da Vinci Code by Akiva Goldsman, from the novel by Dan Brown. Goldsman wrote A Beautiful Mind. But he also wrote Lost in Space and Batman and Robin. My prediction: terrific box office, really dumb movie.Coming in 2007:Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

Movie reviews I usually take with a grain of salt. I do latch on to one or two writers who seem to think along the same lines as I do. Norwood mostly has my take on tv sf. So if it makes the anti-DVC crew feel any better, the sf take on expecting a “really dumb movie” might do the trick.

 

Tethys Over Golden Saturn

I could not put down a story last night before bed. I’ve been taking this anthology slowly: The Hard SF Renaissance (reviewed here). It’s been a long time since I bothered with fiction outside the novels, but I’ve been missing a lot.

Anyway, the story was “Into The Miranda Rift” by G. David Nordley, an author with whom I was unfamiliar. The tale is sort of a “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” but it takes place on the low-gravity moon Miranda (Uranus, not Saturn). My wife would appreciate the love story between the narrator (a writer for a National Geographic-like magazine) and the spelunking expert brought on the trip. The characterization in this story as well as most of the others is superb. Makes me think I need to start going to some writer’s workshops if I’m going to get serious about writing in this vein.

The other two standout stories so far are Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Arthur Sternbach Brings The Curveball to Mars” and Joe Haldeman’s “For White Hill.”

I’d recommend the anthology to anyone with the vaguest interest in SF.

 

If I Ran a Science Fiction Network

Bernard gave me food for thought on the last SF thread. He’s right and I’m wrong there’s absolutely no good SF on tv. Battlestar Galactica is better than average, though there’s something about it that doesn’t quite grab me. Maybe I have to be a regular viewer. I confess I’ve only seen about seven episodes.

Good sf/fantasy tv-movie treatments I’ve seen recently on that network or elsewhere: A Wrinkle in Time, The Lathe of Heaven, Dune, and Gormenghast. Most of what is programmed for film on SciFi is ubertrashy.

I would love to see an established sf writer or two or three be recruited to write two to four shows. I think Kevin Anderson would do a good job; his books read like movies. And his Seven Suns Saga, though not top-shelf literature, is excellently plotted and characterized. (I recommend it.) I avoid spin-off lit on moral principles, so I don’t know how his Star Wars and Dune stuff is.

Connie Willis is another sharp writer who could write for film. I loved her first novel Lincoln’s Dreams (reviewed here). Certainly her award-winning Doomsday Book would be a worthy film effort.

I think the SciFi channel should eschew the lame title and go with what fans like: SF. (No serious SF person refers to it as SciFi. Not one.)

I think they could produce some good science shows. I remember a good number of interesting things (like this) on TLC or the Discovery Channel before they went true crime.

I think they could take a stab at film versions of famous SF novels more regularly than the fourth sequel to Anaconda.

 

SF for the Uninitiated

Frequent guest Brigid asked about Dune when her turn at the SF author quiz turned up that tome’s creator, Frank Herbert. On occasion I run across someone nearly or totally uninitiated to the world of science fiction and they ask about one book or another. Every SF fan will tell you something different, tilted by her or his own tastes, but if I were to put you on the track of science fiction, here’s where your spanking new anti-grav hoverwheels might begin …

(Note: I’m not going to bother linking these authors or books; you have google or amazon and can probably find them yourself.)

Asimov is a utilitarian writer. If you can imagine big ideas without tons of description, you might like him. His robot mysteries, especially Caves of Steel, are good. Every SF fan has read the original Foundation trilogy, the first two books of which were published as shorter works before being combined by his publisher.

Robert Heinlein can be testy if you’re not a libertarian. My favorite of his books is The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, which won the 1966 Hugo for best SF novel.

Arthur C. Clarke rounds out the “Big Three,” and an unofficial web site pins this accurate description on him:

“At the heart of every Arthur C. Clarke novel lies a small puzzle with large ramifications. He is an author who takes an idea and drops it into a quiet pool of thought. There’s a splash – that’s the intriguing nature of Clarke’s scientific genius. Then the ripples spread out, washing up on character, society, soaking the whole book in wonder. He’s a science fiction writer whose imaginings reverberate outside the realm of fiction.”

That said, I can’t recommend any of his novels above the others, though his collaboration with Kubrick on 2001: A Space Odyssey is worthy. His short story “The Star” might be of interest to St Blog’s readers.

After the “Big Three” you have the killer B’s: Benford, Brin and Bear. Three science guys with Big Ideas who just happen to be good writers, too. Brin is my favorite of the three for characterization and an optimistic bent. Brin wrote a good mystery Sundiver, a great fantasy, The Practice Effect, but my favorite is his award-winning Startide Rising. My favorite Bear novel is Moving Mars.

These are sf/fantasy novels somewhat off the beaten path (non-feature film material) I’ve read that were significant (or that I just remember) and that unlike most sf tv, are not weird:
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore
Lost Horizon by James Hilton (ok, well, the only good film version is over sixty years old)
The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (and his Mars trilogy is great, too)
Alas Babylon by Pat Frank
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
A Case of Conscience by James Blish
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

I will tell you that this year, there is no good sf on television. None whatsoever. If you must watch tv, watch non-sf instead.

 

What SF Writer Am I?

So I’m this guy, by quiz. I even like his writing, though he is a bit of a pessimist.

 

Bookshelf

Finished Robert Reed’s Marrow (reviewed here) and The Well of Stars (reviewed here) earlier this week. Good SF that could’ve been better. The basic idea is an interstellar ship the size of Neptune is inhabited with tens of billions of people. The human discoverers are in charge. And they’re virtually immortal, living for 100,000 years, as the action in these books unfold.

I’ve started the first ten or so pages of this book. My wife was a bit curious when she started seeing books on the other side of our bed at night without spaceships or planets on the cover. It would be cool to find an author who can treat SF with the personal depth and writing skill I enjoy in authors like Cather or Conrad.

Back to the library today: a coffee table book on Mars exploration. Lots of photos from Mars probes, but I can’t recall the author’s name.

Read any good books lately?

 

Beam Me Out of Here

Watching too much Star Trek.

Count me as a teleportation doubter. Big time. More likely that we’ll be able to pour human consciousness into a space probe and get there lightweight, though I’m still holding out hope for an elevator.